Happy Birthday dj donut and Phil Glass!

To celebrate I drank Mojitos with Alison and then listened to as many arpeggios in a row as i could stand. As a dedication to Alison's bday and as a review of the month which closes in one half hour, I review my astrologyzone.com Scorpio forecast and see what sweet little lies Susan Miller cooked up for last month and if she hit any nails on the head. Alison really likes talking about astrology and one time we made a functional model out of cherry tomatoes and pennies and squashes on the kitchen table of the universe. One day (in a few more birthdays) she might become the next susan miller.

this school

this school could exist now or 40 years ago or in 14 years. it feels like the end of the world or the beginning, but design takes a lot from it, because something tells me that it's not taking much from design.

Lying about natural phenomena

That's what I'll do.
So the story goes for my new piece of art that will be on display February 10 here.
Two parts make the piece. The first part is a photo collage I have made of parts of puddles I photographed mostly in Bushwick and Bed-Stuy during this past summer's heatwave-- when all the hydrants opened up for a pool party in the streets.
The collage looks like a sparkly puddle or pond and is printed about 24x36" on paper. It will sit on the floor surrounded by stones I find in Brooklyn, which will gesturally contain the water.
Second part of the piece is a lil billboard with an image of what looks like a starry night sky that can sit next to the gigantore windows. The image is actually the homemade pond but super saturated and extra contrasty so it looks like nighttime sky in a place where you can see galaxies and stuff.

The project is a bunch of lies about our experience of nature here in NYC (the climate/culture of turbo environmental awareness/total inactivity). The clean and clear puddle water in the streets was caused by sweaty children. The 2d pond is preserving the idea of water as an image and an idea. The symbolic preservation of water as a resource is just a worthless ceremony.

The faux night sky billboard mocks the NYC one with invisible stars. But this more ideal sky is water.

So, the title of the show is "It isn't funny anymore." There is no confusion about sincerity in my work, it is amusingly present even when it's not funny anymore. I think the piece worries about hyper preservation of ideas with ignorance when it comes to the actual thing.

Everything in our NY experience is constructed. So now I am lying about natural phenomena too. Or just constructing my own versions. But I suppose that these homemade celestial bodies are not so much fake as they are my own.

protest posters

A dog! A bookmobile! Hank-n-books! The bookmobile is totally putting the Library of the Streets out of business. They have a staff of three people who fill the streets with joy and books. But they don't limit themselves to the joy of people, they are open to k9's as well.

I have become rather excited by the lagoon blue that has been added to the entrance of every public school in NYC. Notice the paint job on the landscaped front yard: the lovely concrete pool blue bushes compliments the new digital sign in front of the school that has recently replaced the screaming security guards.
The new subway technology that puts us on par with the likes of San Francisco (bart) and European train technology is being tried out on the L platform at Broadway Junction. Very exciting.


I just ran into this photo, the first addition I built onto a museum as a study for the Infinite Museum. This is a little 3d photo collage of a add-on shack on Lee St. in Jewish Williamsburg. In this photo I first tested out the expansion of the HVCCA.

cheap wine

The story of living in NYC: trying to remember that everything that you can't see is always happening and contracting amnesia on scheduled days so you can rest. Eagerly attending to the radio, the news, the family, the culture, and everyone else's culture probably isn't healthy and doesn't allow for sleep but here we are masters of everything. I think we are addicted to knowledge. I have been addicted to exercise, to food, to people, to a ritual, to coffee, but in New York I am on a compulsive search to discover information that will excite me. I join and follow many colleagues in the search. Scouring the publications, wandering the streets, documenting everything: trying to know something first or more than thy neighbor. Trying to find something to be critical of. Being critical of everything, especially when it seems acceptable to others. I think the desire for a unique body of knowledge is not that different from the desire for organized religion. It is not acceptable to be holy, but it is status quo to maintain a scrupulous journalistic questioning of everything. Don't have an opinion unless you can support it and keep the churches in the strip malls and the museums expanding in every direction. Our American education is very passive and there seems to be a movement towards creating a infallible structure of intellect that we can believe in with more than our tender loins. Is it my generation or is this a permanent NY framework? Nothing is ever cutting edge enough. The artists are always ruining everything for the crazy people when they appropriate the turbo-nerds' lifelong work. No idea is original and no one gets to own anything that is worth owning. Cory Arcangel is boring and he stole my college boyfriend's projects. Relationships seem important from an anthropological standpoint but are very repetitive and cliche in practice. Very few chances are taken in proportion to the chances there are to take chances. There are websites to act as catalysts for couch surfing. Experiences remind us of good websites, websites lead us to human interaction; Nerve.com sounds like a hybrid of the flinstones and the jetsons: Neanderthals01011100. Embarrassment is not easy to come by when everything is so understood, and accidents are prevented instead of responded to when preempted.

some earth

from the plane, around 4:30 pm travelling east over some fancy landscapes.

Anarchists vs. Hippies

In Berkley, California, a fine line divides the anachist frozen soy stick vegans from the organic goat cheese eating vegetarians: rats. I witnessed an instant of battle. The anarchists killed a house rat in a trap in the house and the vegetarians winced. The anarchists called the vegetarians wimpy and pathetic and the vegetarians put their heads in pool of soppy soy milk granola. I have to say that I sided with the vegetarians despite my fondness for zines and intolerance. I hate to see a dead rat and now the kitchen is filled with infinite little ghost rat cries.

California is like a caricature of itself when in Berkley. Drugs and tea and new age and sun. Good food, ugly buildings. Tanned homeless people and vast hills. Dumpster diving and car pooling. These are the things my california dreams are made of. And this is why I missed my plane when I tried to come home.
Sara Blaylock's curatorial endeavor at Blank Space Gallery seemed to go well. This is her friend Jamie who lovingly spray painted every beer can with pink or brown. One old college acquaintance saw the card for the show with my name on it in San Francisco and came to say hi. That was very exciting. I like to pretend she is my fan base. Her and my mom.
The show was very professionally presented. It was weird to be reunited with my work after such a long time, especially because it hadn't seemed much like art to me before, more like mail. But it was a good experience to have made a piece and to let it go out into the world with out getting my grimey hands all over it. Here is a picture of the piece:

These guys spent about 2 hours talking with me about NY, cable cars, and a movie called 'Remo Williams' which they went and got for me during a lapse in our conversation.

Anyway, my project was born out of running into a Swiss girl in Iceland. We kept in touch and decided to do a project where I designed a construction site and she made the appropriate building that would come out of it. So I made scaffolding for a floating skyscraper and she made a homeless building that fit inside. Then Sara made an Oakland version where there were homeless boxes for roaming mini people.

The highlight of the trip was either heading to Marin County and tromping around in the Headlands or missing my plane due to sitting in Paul's yard with way too much coffee and nice california sun complaining about the anarchists and 'pop'apocalypse (paul's version includes a reversal of the poles and massive volcanic eruptions in 2012).

dirty bronx sunset

January 11, 2007
A moody sunset in the Bronx. The smoke billows really stood out in contrast to the saturated greenish skies.

Ryan=Still Walking

I hadn't heard from dear Ryan since New Year's Eve at approximately 11pm. But with good reason, because it looks as though he has been strolling across the east coast like the two footed gentleman that he is. He could not post to the walkspot so i will do the dirty work for him.

beautiful business

My receipt sheet. I have been spending a lot of money on art supplies for children. The creative desert that is the public school system relies on me and what I can carry in my backpack to Canarsie, Manhattan Beach, and the Bronx to provide the creative component of thinking.
This is the building (with the high attention to gutter design) that houses the school I teach at in Manhattan Beach. Temporary for almost 35 years and still going strong! If you could see through the school you would see the ocean.

geocity

i heart geocities

Gods and Libraries

Library of Babel.
Man, the imperfect librarian, may be the work of chance or of malevolent demiurges; the universe, with its elegant endowment of shelves, of enigmatic volumes, of indefatigable ladders for the voyager, and of privies for the seated librarian, can only be the work of a god. The god of libraries. Of knowledge? Of the religion of science?
Random House Dictionary.
Library, with one r-sound following close upon another, is particularly vulnerable to the process of dissimilation—the tendency for neighboring like sounds to become unlike, or for one of them to disappear altogether. The pronunciation /ˈlaɪbrɛri/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[lahy-brer-ee] while still the most common, is frequently reduced by educated speakers, both in the U.S. and in England, to the dissimilated /ˈlaɪbəri/[lahy-buh-ree] or /ˈlaɪbri/[lahy-bree]. A third dissimilated form /ˈlaɪbɛri/[lahy-ber-ee] is more likely to be heard from less educated or very young speakers, and is often criticized.

Crystalinks.
Ancient Egypt names Thoth and his mistress/daughter Seshat as gods of the library. Seshat was the goddess of wisdom, libraries, and measurement of time. Thoth was the scribe god. hoth was the 'One who Made Calculations Concerning the Heavens, the Stars and the Earth', the 'Reckoner of Times and of Seasons', the one who 'Measured out the Heavens and Planned the Earth'. He was 'He who Balances', the 'God of the Equilibrium' and 'Master of the Balance'. 'The Lord of the Divine Body', 'Scribe of the Company of the Gods', the 'Voice of Ra', the 'Author of Every Work on Every Branch of Knowledge, Both Human and Divine', he who understood 'all that is hidden under the heavenly vault'. Thoth was not just a scribe and friend to the gods, but central to order - ma'at - both in Egypt and in the Duat. He was 'He who Reckons the Heavens, the Counter of the Stars and the Measurer of the Earth'.

Borges.
When it was proclaimed that the Library comprised all books, the first impression was one of extravagant joy. All men felt themselves lords of a secret, instant treasure. There was no personal or universal problem whose eloquent solution did not exist-- in some hexagon. The universe was justified, the universe suddenly expanded to the limitless dimensions of hope. At that time there was much talk of the Vindications: books of apology and prophecy, which vindicated for all time the actions of every man in the world and established a store of prodigious arcana for the future.






Me.
Man, the underqualified overseer of a boundless source of knowledge, may be the remainder of an experiment attempted by an evil force; the universe, with its refined capacities for the perfect and mysterious, with limitless tools with which to survey, and secrets only for the patient and qualified, can only have come from a different source.

Borges.
I know of a wild region whose librarians repudiate the vain superstitious custom of seeking any sense in books and compare it to looking for meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of one's hands.

Library of the Streets EXPANDS!

A large branch of the Library of the Streets was inaugurated on Eastern Pkwy today! There are two wings. One is the center for Soggy Outdated Statistical Research with Bad Graphics, the second is the "Book Biosphere" offering waterproofed books from Prospect Heights Public School. Welcome! I will be hiring a librarian onsite if I ever can find anyone qualified to organize this collection. Please forward resumes asap to human resources.

Paolo Soleri

This is from the Arcosanti Project website: Paolo Soleri's definitions:

Art

The esthetic incarnation in specific objects-events. When true, the event is the transfiguring of anguish into the esthetic and "on the spot" is an end itself.

Art is the more persuasive and powerful example of frugality. It does so much with so little. Think of a short sonnet rebounding from one culture to the next leaving minds in awe.

The Future

It is a semantic make-believe because the word is a sort of self-denial. In order to be true to itself the future cannot exist.

What exists is the tide we call the becoming which in some sort of coherent fashion makes possible anticipatory scenarios. Perhaps the word instead of future should be anticipation . The anticipation of presents made on the basis of the memories delivered by the past (upon demand or not). Physical memories, genetic memories and cultural memories.

Miniaturization, M

Miniaturization is the progressive reduction of the physical dimension of an event favoring a tighter performance among contiguous events. The mass-energy, spacetime savings is locally critical and such frugality rebounds throughout reality. Via miniaturization the impossible becomes possible.

This makes Miniaturization the "physical side" of Complexity without which Complexity cannot hold; a content, Complexity, in search of a container Miniaturization. By this miniaturization-complexification operation a threshold can be reached where matter becomes life and knowledge.

The nature of Complexity demands the rigorous utilization of all resources- mass-energy and spacetime, for example. Therefore, whenever Complexity is at work, Miniaturization is mandated and a part of the process.

Manhattan Beach, Bronx, Flux Factory

Starting on Tuesday I will begin a program called 'Museum in a School' at a brand new pilot school for 6th graders located on the Kingsborough Community College Campus. It is an interesting situation because the principal of the school simply decided to start this experimental school and now it exists in one hallway of a weird prefab trailor/ practically Mies van der Rohe box/ large microwave with windows to the ocean. On the outside of the building is a big T7 sign- it is one of 8 Temporary buildings completed in 1973.

The deal is that the kids will stay in this school until 12th grade when they will have the option to graduate with an associates degree at Kingsborough if they take classes throughout high school at the college. Normally in NYC students are not allowed outside but at this school during enrollment, parents sign a waiver that allows the students outside to encourage a relationship with this unique school landscape. The campus is surrounded by water on three sides: Sheepshead Bay, Jamaica Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean.

There is a nautical light fitted to the tower atop the round section of the Marine and Academic Center at the college that was designed to be an aid to navigation and is officially known, and registered, as the Kingsborough Community College Light! (US Coast Guard Light List #31687). It is a white light, 360 degrees, with a four second period and a one second flash duration (one on, three off) with a range of eleven miles, dusk to dawn. It is equipped with an automatic bulb changer, which rotates a new bulb into place when one burns out, for a total of six bulbs. The bulbs are located behind a cylindrical Fresnel lens. The height of the Light above mean high water is 114.5 feet. The Light was activated on December 1, 1990.

This is a photo of the bathhouse that replaced the lavish Oriental Hotel, one of two hotels built on Manhattan Beach by Austin Corbin, who was a banker and president of the Long Island Rail Road. When the two hotels were torn down, the wood was used to make the boardwalks at Coney Island. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Kingsborough College is punctuated by the ghosts of these two hotels.



Here on the left is the Oriental Hotel and on the right is Manhattan Beach Hotel. I will be teaching right in the front by the text in a building called T7.

Anyway, we will be making a small museum inside the school. Within a situation with such a diverse history including anti-Vietnam War protests and bath houses and railroad patriarchs, it is a very exciting opportunity. Since the school is in a temporary building I think it would be fun to help the students to develop the future of the school.




In the meantime, back in the Bronx, my window drawing is getting bigger and I am starting to get some assistance from all the kids in the cafeteria. I like getting to the High School around 12:30 when everyone gets there for lunch. It is a big surprise to everyone that you see the same landscape in a different way from wherever you stand. We are all observing the landscape a lot more now that we are tracing it with paintmarkers on the window. One dude was so excited when he figured out that if you traced the clouds, the window would be the only evidence that the cloud was ever just so. It is really hard to make something that is well designed with a lot of audience interaction but I think the drawing is accumulating a good density of observational drawings. Good or bad, I think it does a job.













Last night I went to the Flux Factory for a big vegan dinner with lots of preshredded cheese, sour cream, and beer. It was a lovely time. A man in a green suit led us on walking sound tours that he made. We were guided in circles blindly on the roof in the cold while we listened to a medley of melancholy interviews. I was not paying much attention to what the people were saying as much as the way the voices mixed and the rhythm of the speech, etc. It was really soothing to be led around blindly and to be completely absorbed into someone else's work and thoughts. Nick Normal also gave a slide talk about his work. It was rewarding to see a concrete line that links all of his ideas and art. He is a librarian, archeologist, statesman, and anarchist. Tough job, but someone's gotta do it.

Gutters

Did I mention how much gutters are growing on me? It all started because at the new school I will be teaching at in Coney Island on the Kingsborough College Campus, the only figment of design or ornament for the poor oversized trailor of a building (on the ocean!) is the diagonal gutters that bisect the exterior grey planes. But now, looking back at photos of old homes of mine, even (especially) prefab(ulous) houses use the gutter as a design element, and I dig it. It is cool to wrap your house in a big bendy straw. With all the ayurveda up my nose these days, it makes me think of all sorts of new age metaphors for the house or building secreting toxins (ama).
Seriously. The gutter is a great term for so many situations:

1. A channel at the edge of a street or road for carrying off surface water.
2. A trough fixed under or along the eaves for draining rainwater from a roof. Also called regionally eaves spout, eaves trough, rainspout, spouting.
3. A furrow or groove formed by running water.
4. A trough or channel for carrying something off, such as that on either side of a bowling alley.
5. Printing The white space formed by the inner margins of two facing pages, as of a book.
6. A degraded and squalid class or state of human existence.
7. (of a candle) to lose molten wax accumulated in a hollow space around the wick.

   10.	(of a lamp or candle flame) to burn low or to be blown so as to be nearly extinguished.

So yesterday, before I went to the Vaidya for the first time, I went to the dentist. I was alarmed when I discovered that the first dentist was from India, a Hindu vaidya! How deeply interwoven my life has become with this ancient mystical medicine.

Subtle Toronteologies

Neighborhood Ayurveda

I will apply an Ayurvedic approach to living, developed to promote health for an individual person, to a city block within Toronto. My interest in completing this project is to explore the healing properties of an ancient medicine on a social body. Ayurveda is an ancient Hindu system of medicine, drawn from Vedic literature and based on the belief that physical and mental health are dependent on a balance of biological humours (or doshas) uniquely constituted in each individual. As an interested novice in the world of Ayurveda, I will attempt to use my knowledge derived from pop medicine library books and internet texts as well as my own consultation and diagnostic process with a Vaidya (Ayurvedic Doctor) to assess a city block and prescribe a balancing solution based on the principles of the three doshas in Ayurveda.

In Ayurveda, problems occur because of an imbalance in the doshas (constitution type with particular strengths and susceptibilities based on the characteristics of universal elements: space, air, fire, water, earth), which contradicts modern science's understanding of disease in terms of pathogens, infectious agents and genetic disorders. In order to regulate an imbalance, an evaluation must be made to determine what dosha the entity is. Traditionally, a Vaidya will measure and proclaim an individual’s dosha based on a series of examinations, preceded in the west by a liability waiver relieving the doctor of any legal responsibilities for a patient’s health or the success of the recommended treatments. The consumption of an ancient medicine by western culture is limited by western filters such as mass prognosis, sterile systemization, a disinterest in preventative medicine, governmental jurisdiction, and bureaucracy. Resources (internet, books) are available for individuals to engage with ancient traditions, but without a visceral connection to the traditions through experiences with benefits and ingredients, it is difficult to attain the mystical wealth the medicine has to offer.

My hypothesis is that Ayurveda as a concept is applicable and beneficial when applied to a social body. In order to apply a system of observation, classification, and rebalancing, I will set up a table on the block and I will serve tea and conduct interviews with members of the block to give antidotes and guide individuals to determine their dosha. I will put up mock city permits which will mimic a liability waiver and inform the block about the project. To supplement the census I will research the roots of the neighborhood, architecture, and land as well as observe the current climate (take the pulse) of the street so that I can offer a plan to create a better sense of balance on the block. A step by step plan will restore balance to the block and through simple prescribed treatments include cleaning, planting herbs, creating more space, adding water, changing the shape of the earth, or redirecting walking paths. Using whatever means necessary, I will take the initial steps with the inhabitants of the block under observation to create sustainable change.

Bed-Stuy, Ain't it Fly.

New York city is so loud. It must be the loudest place ever.
My ideas for shows that are coming up immediately are not formed like they should be right now and my brow is starting to collect sweat. It's just that I have been working really hard for other people lately and it hasn't left much time or energy to make stuff. It feels good to work hard and eat and sleep and have fun but I have made some commitments to do some art and so things must start poppin real quick like. My most pressing project is that for the Project1981 show in February. The project I wanted to do included documenting what I saw from each pane of glass within the massive walls of windows. I was hoping for each photo to hang on its corresponding window and to be a subtle comparison between my perspective and the viewers and it would also highlight one month of urban change and natural decay. I do like the comparison between the small changes: puddles on the roof immediately in front of the window verses the large changes: the skyline is always evolving thanks to highrises and dramatic shifts in the clouds. BUT, the show opens at night and so the piece should make sense for people to see it in the dark. Plus, change is a boring subject matter and we might be over it. The project is not specific enough and when I leave things open I usually have a good ol freak out when it comes to the spontaneous part. Roommate Jenny recommends making the piece more interactive. I think giving specific character to one significant or purposely insignificant part of the landscape might be good. Like a puddle. I think it would be really cool to have a subtle physical intervention that corresponded to the photos that happened in the landscape- like if I could install light on the thing that I am paying attention to. I am constantly trying to think of ways to incorporate a throwie but if I wasn't using it to fight evil or do good or something, it might just be plagiarism. When stuff gets hyped up like this show, I freeze. I wish I could do things in a lighter hearted way. I will try.
My real interests these days lie in Ayurveda. My goal is to try to find a way that ayurveda might be applied to a city or a social body. I need a friend who is a Vaidya (Ayurvedic Dr.) to apply the doshas to a city, hopefully Toronto for the Subtle Technologies conference. I asked on craigslist-toronto, but believe it or not, I did not get a response!
In thinking about education lately, I have been daydreaming of the class I would most like to teach. Anarchy 101. Since my recent discovery that I am an anarchist to the bone, I would really like the chance to learn the history of NY anarchist movements and pe0ple. For example, PUTYOURBACKUPAGAINSTTHEMOTHERFUCKINWALL has a ring to it, and I would love to explain it to children. The concept as a class could start as a investigation into the definition, history and the theory of anarchy, and move towards a description/prescription for today's version. The final project would ask kids what anarchy is to them and would let them create some sort of alternative anti-structure, some way to thoughtfully subvert all the systems we are accustomed to accepting. I like the idea of anarchist gardeners and composers. It would be great if the class translated to kids desiring the experience of learning how to maintain themselves minus stores and nail salons and ipods. here in public schools, anarchy might be campfire and growing sprouts and writing. Or that might be what Paul Tyree Francis is doing.

Bronx Bathroom

I started what will be a large window drawing in the windows of Wildcat Academy. This is in the girl's bathroom, overlooking Lafayette Avenue near Bruckner Expressway.