Web designs - Wabi-Sabi

[Adithya Biloor]

The designs of the web are fascinating ones. They seem to have symmetry, yet look like intentionally broken ones. As raj said they are the perfect examples for Wabi-sabi.

Here are some images of those designs.

As always waiting for your comments and critique.

[Ganesh H Shankar]

Adithya,

Interesting observation nicely summed using the set of images above.

They seem to have symmetry, yet look like intentionally broken ones. As raj said they are the perfect examples for Wabi-sabi.

I think Spinoza is very right when he said:

Whenever, anything in nature seems to us ridiculous, absurd or evil, it is because we have but a partial knowledge of things, and are in the main ignorant of the order and coherence of nature as a whole, and because we want everything to be arranged according to the dictates of our own reason; although in fact, what our reason pronounces bad is not bad as regards the orders and laws of universal nature, but only as regards the laws of our own nature taken separately. (from Ethics by Baruch Spinoza)

Yes, "we want everything to be arranged according to the dictates of our own reason".

I think we simply want to see the nature from our limitations of our understanding of what nature is (or what it should be), probably concluded based on observing smaller subset of other elements of nature.
I think 'Wabi-sabi' is our humble submission of that limitation of us.

[Rajkumar]

Hmmmm. I like a collection of photos. It gives the artist more of an opportunity to say something . A single photo of a spider web/ strand / colors for me is "'visualization of science" . Nice to see . Pleasing . Has been done many times and can be done in new ways, but, beyond that ?

A collection like this can be steered in many directions. Some examples that come to my mind

1. Unfinished thoughts and things in my life ...rest of life is functional but these parts are there hanging loose ?
2. Uncertainty in life. Things are transient, delicate and can be broken but need to be fixed and we need to move on...I read about a project of a photographer who used to complete the web with plastic to make a series and a statement
3. And of course the "perfection in imperfection " Spider does not want to be perfect in others' views only for its own view and purpose
4. A collage of 4 photos of the same Web.... how stupid is that in nature unlike say 4 phones of the same model . We will return the non conforming phone and get our money back

Bottom line a set of photos allows the artist to create a language and convey a deeper theme
Thoughts ?

[Ganesh H Shankar]

My philosophical quote above also has some relation to this post below I made couple of years ago:

[Adithya Biloor]

Ganesh,

Those are profound thoughts.

" partial knowledge of things "

but only as regards the laws of our own nature taken separately

These lines make a lot of sense.

Raj,

Yes, A series or collection of images helps us to share thoughts in a more efficient way. Many times a single image will not be enough to elucidate what we are trying to say.
However, I also feel, in the quest to make a point we snatch the very essence of photography in a series i.e. freezing a moment. A photograph is different from a painting or a piece of literature by its ability to be spontaneous and capture a given moment without having an opinion. A photograph may be political, conservation-related, etc, but at the heart, it is just a spontaneous reaction of the photographer to a scene. A collection is a compilation of opinions of the photographer.

For a long time, I thought working on a theme is better than capturing random themes/ moments. But off late I have started feeling otherwise. being able to be at the scene is what a photographer needs most.

Just a few more thoughts to add your observations. Hope I am making some sense.

Adithya

[Sarthak Agrawal]

Hi Adithya ji,

You have put forth a very interesting series. The web strands were fun to watch There was a nice little surprise after every image scroll and I was stunned by the differences in web strands, sometimes for their design, other times for the kind of lighting you have chosen and most of the time for the combination of both. I can also see raindrops in two images that are adding great texture too.

Although, I want to say that my level of excitement was scaling up until the 4th image and after that I felt like the factor of surprise was missing. This might be due to similar web strand images.. The 4th and 5th image look similar because of the colour tonality which you may try changing and/or cropping the 4th image a bit. I found the centre part really interesting. The same for 2nd and last image.
None the less, this is a really captivating series and you can keep adding more images to it. I would love to see a updated list after some time
Thanks for sharing.

Also, these are my honest thoughts about the series and if these don’t work for you, please don’t mind. _/\_

[Adithya Biloor]

Sarthak,

Thanks a lot for your feedback. They definitely work and help me, please don't hesitate to share your views.

I have intentionally chosen 2 identical images - 4th and 5th - to highlight the imperfections in those strands. Yes, there isn't much difference between the two.
I wanted to include the 6th image, due to some technical issues I couldn't delete the other image once I uploaded it. Then thought of retaining both

Thanks again for the comments,

Adithya