everything worked

bar people were super-nice, good crowd turned out and was appreciative, was relatively painless to install and ran smoothly, no glitches, here's a still:
























not just a crowd, one of my heroes showed up, that was huge, many other vips in my life as well.

this is still a work in progress and i realized, there are a couple of things i want to try differently. very happy with how everything has gone, but not quite done exploring.

and thank you for the "are you ok?"s following the midtown gas pipe explosion today. missed it by twenty minutes, am fine. had trouble staying awake all through perspective drawing class (lecture night) totally unaware.

e32 tonight

if you can make it to lotus lounge, 8pm, clinton and stanton on the lower east side, welcome. the physical looks ready to go (not quite done in this image)























and the digital looks stable as well


























if it doesn't work, catastrophe or bar people freaking out or power cord keeps falling out of wall, not through lack of trying. excited.

pinwheel vs. me

the pinwheel is that whirring light-demon which (depending on what sort of computer you use) tells you to sit tight. and sit tight. and wait. and hang on. not like the lovely bar which says thirty-two percent complete, forty-eight minutes remaining, no. the pinwheel is secretive and arrogant. no warning it just comes, and when it's gone (and it does usually eventually go away), it's just no longer there, and you hope that was that.

my wonderful computer which i love very much, the computer which works very hard for me and makes so many things possible, has been showing me the pinwheel an awful lot as i try to get a working prototype of chess ready to show tomorrow night. haven't invited anyone to e32, really, because, it's just not there yet. i could show a large version of square of cones, i could show footage of past work, i could just talk about chess and show clips of the process, but i want to have a pre-version ready, and i want to be able to say that.

in the meantime, though, there's time pressure, and learning (yes discovered some wonderful things today on the programming side) and frequent bouts of will-testing, when the pinwheel gives me the evil spin.

precision work

the balance between the desired result and the desired doing, constantly face it. something you can imagine, you might think you want to see it, but do you want to make it? are you willing to take the steps required to bring it into reality? the chess project has a lot of irregularities built into it, by choice. there are ways to be very precise but i almost always prefer quick-and-dirty. paint is fast, video isn't always but i don't care as much about quality as just creating something and moving on. but i've hit a part of chess which i knew was coming, bracing myself for some time, still difficult. i want the "board" (surface to project on) to be square, and each square to be square. it's not happening. there are ways to do it, but by tuesday, with the materials and methods i've chosen, there will be obvious misalignments. that's ok, it will look more like my work. spent some time today measuring and really aiming to be exact, was glad to have those tools but wonder if this is really me.

plastic in my home

spent a couple hours on canal street and nearby, trying to find something translucent, in a light (white) tone and dark (black) tone - hard to find something black, not opaque, not transparent. all sorts of frosted clear frosted white translucent white translucent clear options - anyway, tomorrow will experiment. may end up just using inkjet on vellum again (worked for square of cones).

preview

before e32, she shows clips friday and saturday nights, here's a view from inside























and out























uplifting studio visit with linda griggs























and was given two bits of either a current project or a future project or future projects (unclear) - that's a screen, and a single-slide projector in a case

show & tell

brief clip and then some talk about chess, a few other artists as well, you're welcome to join.

otherwise, if you walk by friday or saturday night, my video will be in the rotation and visible from inside and out. some of the process of chess, not the completed result, that doesn't exist yet.

learning by rote

monkey see monkey do class tonight, starting to enjoy it

ape progress

second ape meeting tonight (aesthetic purposes exploration).

before i get to that, please indulge me in some atmospheric musings. vineel once told me if you're looking for signs, you'll find them everywhere. well, i couldn't figure out if a few things were auspicious or hinting rather at doom and foreboding. for example, two pens ran out of ink, one of mine and one of ron's. we didn't talk about it until afterwards, and then we didn't dissect it, but i can see at least two ways of interpreting it. one = hey, there's so much to be notated here, you won't be able to get it all. press on, youngsters, this is fertile land you're exploring. two = a pen is for drawing. oh, you want to think about why you would want to draw? no chance, buddy. oh, another pen, eh? sorry buddy. anyway sometimes encourage = discourage and vice versa. the occasional truck going by temporarily dampening conversation seemed mundane real-world oh right these trucks aren't all hauling art around, but the lights jolting on, and cutting off, and back on, without discernible rhythm, seemed significant, but again, there are a lot of ways to take it, what kind of reader are you? what are you bringing to it?

which is where we paused at one point. so here's some of what was talked about:

- i was urged to start charging out these discussion threads, hypotheses, preclusions; use wiki? use flash? this is something i want to do, but it's also the sort of thing that can distract one from artmaking, feels a bit daunting, in the meantime this blog will contain some sort of record;

- the transformers movie is going to inspire creativity (imaginative thinking) in twelve-year-old boys, as star wars did back in the day

- we may not be conscious of hearing structure when listening to music but would immediately notice its absence

- art which lends itself to multiple [viewings] [listenings] may be engaging us in the process of understanding its underlying structure

- [mostly narrative or representational] art which presents a mirror world is unthreatening in its unrealness [and this can illuminate this world]

- for many practitioners of art, it is not necessarily something chosen, or something one wants to do, but essential/compulsive, in a real sense, and leads to knowing oneself, which can also impart understanding-of-other to experiencer (less fear, greater compassion) (communication to peacemaking)

- escape into another world equal negating this world yes some does, but other maybe cause feeling (reality) of transforming this world into other world

- viewer bringing own visual experience to encounter with work, direct experience with the work then creates feedback loop transforming viewer (from one who has never seen x to one who has seen x for a duration or y amount of instants, constant repetition even if short time)

- give you a different experience which you could otherwise not have. (this came up quite late and was not really faced with too much verve, but sitting here now, seems like a crucial point and likely effective start spot for next discussion)

- each new piece of art a new pattern in this universe; we are pattern-recognizers and pattern-makers; art and we are there fore particularly well-suited to one another and you could end up with a chicken/egg quandary here i think

- we are players in the evolution of a thing bigger than any generation of us

- perpetual novelty

light and shadow

(editing)

even at first stroke, there's something. tree leaves in sunlight, the tripod extended overhead, sun puddles. all art is time-based and all art is a collaboration with nature.