Cardboard Warfare

Indeterminancy Project

a. the medium you will work in:  three randomly selected dollar store items, white acrylic paint, white high-gloss spray paint

b. the method by which you will generate your chance operations:  grid, with randomly selected coordinates drawn from a hat

c. the system you will use to make decisions:  the grid represents the layout of the store, I will go to the store, go to each of the pre-determined coordinates and purchase the items directly in front of me 

 

Originally, I had wanted to use this same process, but in a goodwill or secondhand store.  I thought it would be interesting to have larger items, like a book, lamp, stuffed bear, stuff like that.  My budget for the project pointed me to the dollar store instead.  I was pleasantly surprised at the objects that chance brought me, except for the hairnet.  I was skeptical of how the hairnet would hold the paint.  I think it worked out alright though.  The toy gun and rocking horse candle were a humorous juxtaposition to me.  I really liked the way they turned out after being completely coated in white paint.  They look like a ceramic piece or plaster cast, which are really popular in design right now.  People have random white animal heads hanging on their walls and collections of strange white objects clustered together on bookshelfs.  My project was intended to be a comment on that form of sculpture right now.  That if you take any random object in put it in a grouping of others in a specific context, it can become art.    

 

I enjoyed using the found art method.  It brings to mind so many movements in culture in the past 100 years.  Taking an ordinary object out of it's context and placing it in an art piece is reminiscent of surrealism.  The everyday object looked at in a new light also evokes pop art.  And most recently, contemporary interior design.  I was happy with the objects I found.  I was tempted to move my hand slightly and grab anything but the package of hairnets; I had to remind myself to give up control and let the project guide me.  I think if I set the work up in a gallery, the objects would be arranged on a white pedestal.  The toy gun would face pointing at the rocking horse candle, which would be draped in the hairnet.  My friend suggested that I paint the gun black.  I think that would be a great idea.  If that was the case, I would like to have the black toy gun lying on the pedestal solo, and remove the other components of the piece.

 

Aesthetically, I like the water gun the best.  I think that it's ironic, curious, and somewhat hilarious when painted a solid color.  It looks like some futuristic weapon.  Painted white, and not able to work, it symbolizes a plea for peace.  Painted black, I think it would be a comment on violence amongst children, who are playing with real guns, not squirt guns.  Even painted white, it brings to mind a lot of controversial ideas.  Paired with the rocking horse candle, partcularly, conjures up a relation of violence and childhood, or even a loss of innocence.  The hairnet is either gang-related or a cage, or some type of inadequate protection.  I really enjoyed this project.  It pushed me to work with materials I wouldn't normally use.  And opened my mind to how I interpret art and what that may say about me, and the art I make.

 

Future Predictions

1. In sixty years or so, the layout of urban areas and the surrounding sprawl will be greatly different than it is today.  The sprawlage will be much larger, encroaching upon much of the natural environment.  I think that the cities themselves will be much more vertically oriented.  The sky is part of real estate when you consider air rights that people have been dealing with forever, but primarily with the advent of air travel.  In America, the Federal Aviation Administration has had a majority of control when it comes to how high a building can really be, in which zones, safetywise, or can we build air travel around it- the other way?  It gets complicated.  I think that in the future there will not be enough space for the population and people will build up.  Maybe even underground, too.  Vertical gardens are already an up-and-coming means of sustainable agriculture.  I think they'll become more standard farming practice.
2. In the future I predict that people will be embedded with a chip that contains numerous functions.  It will store social security information, credit card/financial information, accumulated music, photographs, documents, keys to unlock your house, car, etc., GPS functions, and more.  It will be similar to how we operate with cell phones today, except embedded in our actual skin.  That way, you could always take it out if you didn't feel like having the government be able to track your every move at all times.
3. A third possibility for the future is that we would go back to nature.  Having used up most of our resources, we would finally realize the value of them and ration out what little we had left.  There would be lots of talk of "the old days" and Grandpa's tales about what rolling green hills looked like.  Alaska, the poles, and other previously fairly uninhabited areas would house the last of the pioneers.  The few hunters left would only be the toughest few.  The world's population would be greatly decreased and it would be a time of rebuilding and letting nature turn devastation into regrowth.  

Memex

• In his 1945 essay, "As We May Think", Vannevar Bush states that in order for a record (of anything, ie. writing, photography...) to be useful, it has to be constantly updated, stored, and actually used.  He says that there is more information out there than can be made use of and sorted through. 
• I agree.  Even now, with the internet, it is so easy to get lost in the mazes of information available to us.  Bush called these paths to which we find relevant information "trails", and the people that worked on creating these trails, through association and dissassociation "trailblazers".  I  feel that the more organized something is, the easier it will be to find the exact item you are looking for.  Frantically digging through mounds of unrelated items every single time you need to find a particular item, is a waste of time.  When things are well organized, and labeled neatly, they are much easier to find.  I think that the more 'trailblazers' work at creating useful paths, in accessible ways, the easier it will be to find information and use it. 
• Vannevar Bush makes the point that logical reasoning in itself is not enough, and that creative thinking is required in order to catalogue the vast expanse of knowledge and history that we possess.  Characteristics of certain ideas, images, etcetera should be taken into consideration when orgainizing the collective catalogue. 
• Very true.  A simple game of word association will give you an idea of how the human mind works not only logically, but creatively as well.  Some connotations many of us might share.  Many, I'm sure, though will be widely varied and dependant upon the individual's past experiences and predisposed state of being.  It is a neverending task to map out the associations of thoughts.
• Another fascinating idea that Bush brings up is the future possibility that we might be able to intercept our thoughts somehow and automatically record them.  That we would be able to pick up vibrations, similar to a telephone wire being tapped.  He notes how a typist transmits words without having to necessarily look at what they're doing.  It is simply a practiced transmission.
• The fact that Bush relates this sort-of telepathical transmission to technology that we use everyday but were once considered far-out ideas makes the process actually seem feasible.  I think that one da we very well may be able to relate information telepathically, or through some kind of interception and maybe even through our eyes, broadcast.  Bush's thinking was ahead of his time.  The memex as the early computer is proof that technology starts with fantastical ideas. 

Remember to Forget

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2012
Designed by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei
1 June - 14 October 2012

http://serpentinegallery.org/

http://thespace.org/items/e0000ens

At the Serpentine Gallery in London, they have commissioned architects over the last twelve years to design a Summer Pavilion; a temporary, functioning structure outside the Serpentine Gallery on the Kensington Garden lawns.  Very cool.

This year, Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, and Ai Weiwei collaborated to create the pavilion.  They purposefully made it to be something other than an object.  They dug underground, as well as utilize space above ground for the piece.  It represents memory and past like archaeology, by digging underground.  It pays homage to past architectural structures at the site.  The top covering is positioned 1.5m above the ground so it's at eye level.  The water on the surface looks like a mirror.

The architects/artists say that the thought behind the piece concerns our relationship with memories & time & history.  They say it is at once a "Protest against forgetting" but to "Remember to forget"