silence is good

a recent study found that brain activity increases dramatically when there's a pause in a piece of music. tonight's ape meeting (aesthetic purposes exploration) had fits and starts, quiet moments, and thoughts were churning. tough discussion sometimes equals learning.

not such clear notes, but feel gained some conviction, bad art often gets labeled gratuitous, lacking in purpose, senseless. so, good art must have a purpose, right? and "powerful" - eliciting an emotional/mental response - bad art can do that too, nausea, revulsion - that's pretty brief, seems a little obvious, we veered off into some side topics and there were many picky sticking points, trying to be honest and considered, is this really important? am i convinced this is what i believe?

what can something i make do for you?

lookin' for tasks

matthew and i had a little memory-based disagreement this evening. luckily the evidence was at hand.

back in the day, i'm guessing late ninety-six, he started teaching me about the situationists, and we talked a lot about art that wasn't art, or living in a way that was where art is meant to take you. i think. this is back in the day, after all.

anyway, the situationists used to do these wanders, i think they were called. very much about games, and living an aware life, and making the absurd apparent (i think).

matthew and i used to engage in some activities which seem overly mundane but became ritualistic, i think that was another part of it, we were already trying to do things, not just hang out and talk, but take silly or strange pictures, etc. anyway, i think, again this is all memory, as a result of both years of messing around with paint, drawing, collage, photography and video, and then the introduction of the situationalists, we decided to invent a "game" which was sort of a participatory art piece. most of this was probably his instigation.

it was called, eventually, lookin' for cats. it involved cards, and i forget what else. i do remember that if we saw a cat we all had to race back to home base (my apartment).

what sparked the memory, though, was our discussion of the art project aspect of our kisokaido journey. defining tasks to be completed each day is something we're both excited about, for a number of reasons. i like the "feels-like-work-yet-fun-and-absurd" aspect. matthew likes the "we're-not-necessarily-creating-a-product-or-engaged-in-artifact-making" feeling, rather the sensation that it's something we're engaged in purely to enrich our experience (and perhaps other people's lives as well, particularly if we interact with them, or document and share the tasks). one task he proposed for consideration is helping someone every day. i think this is already done as a matter of course in some cultures. doesn't feel like art, but definitely feels like something we both want to do, so yes, this is a way we're very very likely to go (not excluding anything or committing to anything yet). as a high school student in china for a few weeks, out running one morning with two friends, we helped push a stone-laden cart up a long hill, i don't know how long it would have taken those guys otherwise, that's maybe my most enduring (and favorite) memory from that whole trip.

anyway the disagreement. i remembered my favorite rule of the game (probably it was my rule right?). oh yes, in addition to cards and wandering, a clown nose was involved. i forget the rules involving the clown nose (wouldn't surprise me if i do have this notated somewhere, but want to go to sleep rather than hunt for it). anyway, whoever drew a certain card, or whatever happened that triggered the role-status or change of situation, one of the players was allowed to pose the other players as he wished and take a picture. (matthew had no memory of this part of the game. well, brother, hope this reminds you.)

saw this sign.



























when it was my turn to wield the camera, i asked matthew and michie to strike the pose illustrated in the sign.









































this task-definition is really feeling like something we're both going to get very involved in. it's the big question of everything, really. what exactly is it that you want to do? right now? every day? what do you want to do?

matthew even said asking for suggestions might be an interesting approach. anything you want us to do, taking less than one minute, once per day, while we walk from kyoto to tokyo? all ideas welcome, to be seized or deemed not-something-we-want-to-do. definitely open, though.

if you can figure out a way to relate it to hiroshige or woodblock prints, that's a bonus.

task-based

during chess rendering


























was thinking about the nature of different activities, and how we define them. bob and bob used to set up rodeo rodeo, i read in a book. little plastic action figures, a rodeo, when they were living in i think beverly hills, rodeo drive. daily. matthew and i used to make lists. when i visited new zealand maybe two years ago, we would make up a list in the morning, and cross the things off during the day. maybe this will be something we're both keen about. sixty-nine tasks, something we need to do at each stop on the kisokaido. observe the sun for a minute, or pick up all the litter we see for five minutes, or do six thirty-second sketches - don't want to speculate about the nature of the activity, but defining an activity, to be performed together, as a ritual maybe is one way to think of it, which will work towards developing a piece of art which we can create and share, might be something we're both keen on.

then i saw the shadow people.



























this isn't photoshopped, the sun was hitting buildings beyond the reservoir while joggers ran by closer to me down below. we can all become as flat as we want, completely shallow, two-dimensional. if we want. or we can choose a different way, fill up ourselves, our lives, expand. find new dimensions. shadow people became shallow people. and i thought matthew and i are really going to want to make this trip meaningful. all this planning, training, feels fairly ambitious, what are we going to learn? i think it will be deepening no flattening no matter what. but a bit of thought and effort and the degree could increase. so variable. i don't want to be flat. i'm afraid of being defined by tasks, but i don't know how else to create something. maybe definition, which is limiting, is a precondition to further freethinking, which is enlightening. paradox. limits = freedom. we will do x, which will occasionally prevent us from doing y or z, but which will teach us about q and k, which we otherwise would never have considered. and years from now, we'll still benefit from the lessons of q and k. maybe someone else will as well. that's the hope of today.

more of the same

during chess rendering
























was able to do some walking yesterday

























and today

training again

leery of peaking too early, and unwilling to commit so much time, had cut back on the walking a bit. now we're under three months before beginning our trek, getting into shape and building up endurance a priority again. 10 miles yesterday, along with chess progress which will continue today and tomorrow.


























last night, thought "beauty unimportant. truth and beauty no. truth important. beauty irrelevant." might free me up a bit (and result in something more beautiful).

technical challenges

spiral staircases last night, really tough at the beginning, but after a few attempts, started coming easier.


























turns out i didn't forget to hit the export button before leaving for the weekend. for some reason it just no longer works. don't think i have done anything differently and can't imagine what changed - so, mysterious problem, in the meantime pushing on one-at-a-time instead of automating a bunch of them. may figure it out. ron posited the possibility that there is another way, an easier, more efficient, less time-consuming way, and one may have occurred to me, but that will involve testing/research to see if it's possible. either way, chess is still coming along, gracelessly.

consistent concentration

something to aspire to.

last friday the dread pinwheel was spinning a hole in my screen. eventually, in the car, sister-in-law driving, trying to get work done on the animation, blocked at every click, decided to take a break. some solace knowing that chess rendering would continue back at my studio while i was out of town for the weekend.

did some walking saturday, with reasonable load (twenty-one pounds).





















here's how my niece and i appear to the shadow world.





















ruminated on what matthew and i might like to do together to make the kisokaido trek meaningful and fulfilling for both of us, and give us an opportunity to make some unique art which would otherwise not exist. keep returning to memories of our collage sessions in tokyo. painting in numazu was fun, but the tokyo sessions seemed more "serious" and the work is far more accomplished. of course, situationist-inspired wanders and games put us into a rarely-attained state of mind, but none of that has ever been shared, beyond a few participants. there might be a way to incorporate tasks and rules into, say, photographing certain subjects, or using certain methods to take pictures, which will enable us to share some of those sensations with an audience.

sunday morning up at six to climb the highest mountain in connecticut (haystack). oh, there are no mountains in connecticut. well, i climbed a hill.



















view from the top






















but what most impressed me was the sunlight diffused by the fog yet still backlighting this structure, seeming to create a murky sillouette somewhere between our world and the shadow world.





















witnessing visions like this, as rich as imaginings, provide a great deal of the motivation for undertaking the kisokaido journey. that and a mysterious desire to wear a clown nose with matthew again.

back in the studio, there were again moments when i saw a still frame of the animation in progress and thought "wow, i'm glad i was stuck here looking at that"























amazing how quickly that sentiment was replaced by visceral frustration






















faster computers? more-easily-executable ideas? concentrating on what i'm doing would help, too. realized, late sunday, never hit the "export" button and all those chess clips i was relying on my machine to churn through while i was off playing human with my brother's family - aren't ready. aren't even started. can't animate one thing and render another at the same time. so, it has been a week, was up late doing as much as i could. this isn't really what i had planned, but those ideas (of visual rhythm) are now notated and i did learn quite a bit. this animation is now complete, called "i never get that far" because it seems to illustrate the difficulty in thinking anything new - we are who we are and we think the way we do and we think the things we think over and over and over. everything is changing all the time but there is of course a paradoxical sameness inherent in how we live our lives. just over a minute, hope you enjoy it.

process views

in classroom of the apes last night, we did shadows in perspective
























and reflections

























both got me thinking about the shadow world

this morning, that continued, interpreting this: blue = complementary color of orange; orange paint on the sidewalk is where some of the cone [bled] [escaped] [slipped off the world]; in the absence of the orange on the cone, we see the shadow world (blue paint) (lack of orange cone = blue). also thought that this cone looks a bit like a guardian [against] sunlight.


























these are solidly in this world, i think (maybe guarding against the creep of the shadow coming from under the van)




















then was absorbed in working on that animation. one of the most rewarding parts of artmaking, and an aspect i try to incorporate in (convey through) my work, is all the in-between stages. a painting goes through a lot on the way to its completed state, each stroke changes it into a different painting - this animation is providing me with a lot of images which probably won't be seen by anyone, and they aren't my objective, i have a clear method of visual rhythm i'm trying to follow in order to create this animated piece, but doing the work, i'm forced to encounter one still picture after another

























which makes me feel like the pinwheel is actually on my side for a change, doing me a favor, forcing me to stop and look at what i'm doing - never thought i'd feel sympathetic towards that damn thing.

decisioning

comfortable with the timing and depth adjustments to the animation, had been ready to abandon it late the other night, now want to press on, hopefully can finish tonight or tomorrow so this machine can get back to chess rendering.

making work on the computer, it's relatively quick/easy to change the entire color scheme, as opposed to painting where you either stick to your guns or commit to a lengthier adjustment process.

three stills from roughly the same point, different color processing, maybe i should pick one of them, or figure out a way to use all three?

efficiency

so there are ways to set things up and have sweet machine render one after the other, no prodding from me

























for both computers



















means at least one of the three of us is working all the time.

but if i want to blog, it's not really possible, just takes their total concentration. so, until chess is done, figure at least two more weeks flat-out, pictures will be sporadic for sure, typing likely spotty as well. (one computer should be fast but it's not happening that way - anyway roughly four hours per game, one hundred twenty-eight games, do want to give it breaks sometimes, maybe fifteen done at this point.)

but the rendering can be interrupted. yesterday decided spur-of-the-moment to make an animation, not something i've really done at all.

basis is imagery taken from kurt coble's pamband website (i'm messing with it, most of what you see here is taken from the homepage).





















enjoyed some of the views when working on it




















the result - quite enjoy looking at stills



















but the piece, the movement that's there - well, i'm going to spend a little more time on it.