philip sherburne

Cerro San Juan de Dios

I've been neglecting the visual for the past few days. This is the view from the communal house where the MUTEK crew stayed in Valparaiso during the runup to the Chile fest. It's a pretty sloppy photomerge -- no, the skies in Chile aren't really striped, and neither does perspective there follow De Chiricoean laws, alas (unless you've had a lot of pisco, but that's another story) -- but should give you an idea of the awesomeness of the view. The uppermost building in the center of the image is a defunct prison, now used for art events and installations; the building on stilts to its right, just to the left of the blue house, burned on our last day in Valpo, sending up sickly yellow smoke into the sky. One or two houses a day burns in Valpo, thanks to deteriorating wooden construction and the maze of streets, alleys, and stairs, all of them impossible for fire trucks to access. (Click on the image for a more generously sized popup.)

We love photomerge, by the way. Who needs Hockney now?