the author, robert smithson, records a journey to the desolate and allegorical panorama of passaic, new jersey. his meticulous and metaphorical documentation of monuments he encounters riding, walking, and photographing through the industrial landscape of various ruins allows for a moment of comprehension to occur. the insensate paralytic machines seized by the earth lack the necessities that define futurity. in this instant a utopian place originates and becomes a ground that contains a stratum of forgotten or misplaced meanings. these monuments display an ever changing landscape that smithson desires to create a moment of history through the lens of his instamatic camera as well as his words.
"these holes in a sense are the monumental vacancies that define, without trying, the memory-traces of an abandoned set of futures."
his successful attempt to portray the new construction with the old and the machines with the earth, allows for a limpid understanding of his desires to frame the american industrial landscape as problematic from an environmental harmful view. humans have drastically changed the landscape of the earth seeking to create futures. however, smithson determines to pause our intentions for futurity to reveal the destruction of our tools.
this particular chronicle of smithson's does not necessarily intrigue or influence a defined direction of interest for thesis. however, through further exploration of smithson and his interests to preserve and utilize the american industrial landscape as his medium for provocation, he provides the following quotes as an influential beginning to thesis.
"how we see things and places is not a secondary concern, but primary."
"(t)he farmer's, miner's, or the artist's treatment of the land depends on how aware he is of himself as nature"
both of these quotes provide an awakening. they display an acute sense of awareness that requires an immediate gateway to a further understanding of the earth as a site for architecture.
this is now a goal.
