justin, david and i will be live mapping only on wednesday, march 3rd, on and off from 6pm-9pm. ruthie, star of the video component, may make a cameo appearance sometime after 8:30pm. i hope you can join us!
if not, i‘ll also be there on saturday, march 6th, from 7pm to 8:30pm, hanging out and witnessing the performances and taking in the other projects in the show. bronxartspace is located at 305 e. 140th st., #1a, bronx ny10454, right around the corner from the 3rd ave / 138th street stop on the #6 train. http://www.bronxartspace.com/mar2010.php
i hope that you can come by and see life mapping, summer shade and the other work – and i hope that you enjoy it when you do.
how did you come to this place in your life? what brought me to art, to painting, to collaboration, to new media, to living in new york city, to showing in the bronx? life mapping is a conversational, collaborative method of action painting in which overlapping webs illustrate turning points in the lives of the participants, culminating in the present moment and location.
the life maps began with footprints in freshly-fallen snow. participants imagined the snow as the earth and walked from place to place, city to city, country to country, sharing memories from each spot on the map, trying to find out what led us forward each time. when the initial life maps were complete, new animated life maps were drawn on a computer and projected onto the life maps we made in the snow.
on wednesday, digitally-combined footage of the experience of creating all of the previous life maps will be projected onto the wall. the area within the projection will represent the world, and the collaborators will then create new life maps by affixing colored tape to the wall. life mapping gives a relatively succinct, painterly answer to some questions asked over and over by generations upon generations of artmakers – where did we come from, and how did we get here?
summer shade is the final of four seasonal landscape “moving paintings.” each of these pieces seeks to convey my impression and experience of a time of year. although they rely on video and computer programming in order to change through time, each of these pieces is meant to be “looked at” like a painting rather than “watched” like a movie.
summer is all about relaxing, lying in a hammock... i wanted both the process of artmaking and the final piece to provide that feeling. my plan was to go to a park and film tree shadows on a portable movie screen. projecting the captured sunlight and shade back onto the screen in a different context would bring an outdoor summer sensation inside, in any season. above you can see sketches from that original plan.
after relocating to a new apartment with a patio in the back, i was able to sip homemade limeade while my video camera recorded peaceful moments passing, just as i had hoped to do in the park. every few minutes i moved the screen and the tripod, capturing different compositions. a breeze flowed through the tree leaves and the sunlight dappled on the screen, forming patterns of light and shadow. after recording the shade, i wrote software which composites different moments of the footage, intensifying both the deepness of the shade and the brightness of the sunlight. due to the length of the video which can be composited and the variations of the shade patterns and the location of the screen, you’ll see a slightly different composition every time you look at summer shade.
had been unsure whether i'd be showing more work than that - we had discussed maybe including "walking the nakasendo" or "life mapping." mitsu was wondering if i had anything performative or interactive in mind, and i said that "life mapping" was evolving towards a live mapping - not a traditional performance, something closer to action painting combined with storytelling. we decided that i'd present "life mapping" on wednesday - which meant that i spent all day today working on the piece. but to talk about the past several hours i need to go back a couple of weeks, and actually months (or years at this point) before that.
my "uncle" has a "farmhouse" in rural connecticut. my family ends up there about once a year. there's a beautiful, huge lawn behind the house, and every time i go, i think about projecting something onto it - but i never have, and i've taken my projector up a few times. anyway, all the heavy snow this year got me thinking about projecting onto snow. i don't like the cold so i'm not too keen on building snow sculptures and projecting through them - that would probably be really beautiful but i don't want to be out there messing around that much right now. but snow feels a lot to me like blank canvas. so when ruthie and i decided to go up to the "farmhouse" a couple of weeks ago, i took my projector (again), thinking i'd scratch two itches - project onto that inviting lawn, and project onto snow. on the way up, ruthie and i were talking about what all we'd like to do, and i was thinking about making tracks in the snow (which would be like drawing or painting) and what all we'd want to talk about, and that making tracks in the snow is a little bit like walking through life, you make some kind of mark but honestly it disappears, human life is not very long in the scheme of things - things like that. i asked her how she'd like to take turns telling each other our life stories, and she said she would like that. so, "life mapping" - we'd make a map of our lives, while telling each other about your lives. also had vague thoughts of staying cozy indoors and projecting drawings out onto the snow - wasn't sure we needed to be out there walking around leaving tracks. anyway, that was the beginning of the project - wanting to project onto that lawn for so long, experiencing this winter of beckoning snow, and wanting to do something together with ruthie that would be meaningful for both of us - not just asking her "hey will you please do x for me because i want to do this art project and i think it will be fun" but trying to come up with a project in which we really share something and get to know each other even better.
in this image, we have already completed our life maps (the horizontal tracks going from the tree at left across the image are the top of the world). right in the middle of the picture you can see the balcony i put the video camera (and later the projector) on.
here's a view from the balcony taken earlier, looking down onto the pristine world (only a few animal tracks, no human footprints). the two red straps mark the edges of the video camera's field of view.
after setting that up, we went out into the world to make our maps and tell our stories. here's a view from that video camera above:
our completed life maps:
later on, i drew animations of our life maps, and projected those out onto the life maps we had made in the snow:
this is an image of the same animation, but with a black background instead of white:
then we came home and i did some work on the video and kept thinking about what the next step would be. we talked about making a painting together and projecting the other stuff onto that. i started thinking about inviting other people to make life maps, about how to make it maybe an interactive piece, about how to somehow expand the project and the collaboration. i thought about using different color tape instead of paint, or getting people to draw (using a projection?) while other people make tracks in the snow, simultaneously - but just vague thoughts. and then yesterday i had some blue tape and some black tape i was using (while installing "summer shade") and i saw that mitsu had some red tape out, and i thought jeez, why keep thinking about this thing, why not experiment and improvise? recently i've been trying to do things i don't usually do. instead of saying "i make installations = moving paintings = non-linear non-narrative," and instead of tying everything back to art history, i'm trying to feel a little freer - not think so hard, not think so much - don't treat every project like a crucially important undertaking - just explore an idea, see where it takes me (or us), accept that it might not be the best thing i've ever done and that's ok, better to keep things light and keep things moving - do something for the moment, even if it doesn't fit into my dogma, it will probably have a contemporary aspect - but ultimately not to worry about that - most ideas are old ideas and most art is rooted in previous art - monet didn't need to be the first person ever to paint a tree on a canvas (lucky for us) - don't want to think about "has someone done something like this before?" = just want to follow my instincts, if it's well-trodden territory, i'll worry about that a year from now. at the moment, that's just not going to be a big worry of mine - i'd rather just think about what it is about a project which makes me want to work on it. in this case, it's learning about others' lives, trying to find new ways to "make paintings," and sharing bits of my life and methods with others.
anyway back specifically to where "life mapping" is going - so yesterday i saw the different colors of tape at bronxartspace and talked with mitsu about the piece again and about how i felt that there was a performative aspect which i wanted to explore (combination of action painting and storytelling) and i decided that putting tape on the wall while a projection was running on the same wall would be something i'd like to do with somebody. i knew ruthie had commitments wednesday so it would be somebody else. posted to facebook:
looked out back and saw another blank canvas (for justin and i):
wrote some emails (including some inviting david to join us wednesday). excerpts from the most relevant:
justin and i will figure out what performing would mean, but i think it would be:
you and justin (i'll be doing something projected on top of you both, probably just lines, but maybe talking too, i'm not sure) saying, chronologically, where you've been (we'll take turns, like playing monopoly) and putting tape on the wall to mark where you've been. then, a strip of tape goes to the next place. then it goes to the next place. it's not a real globe, it's a map of the places significant to us.
maybe i'd be up there mapping with you and justin, or maybe my map would be projection not tape. justin and i will talk about it today. i'm thinking this goes on for maybe 20-25 minutes. also we videotape it and that can be used somehow if the piece keeps growing.
it will be interesting if justin and i do it, but i think more interesting with you, your map would overlap with both of ours, i think that would be so cool
after a very late brunch with justin, we worked on our life maps, here's a view from the video camera:
here's a snapshot from a pocket camera which gives you a better idea of how i experienced the life mapping (you can see the video camera hanging above the door to my studio, above the ladder):
we made an animation of justin's life map and projected that (layered with the animation i'd made of my map in connecticut) out onto our life maps:
and that's where the project is now. i need to do some editing and get some sleep, and email with justin and david tomorrow. i'm thinking more and more that what's significant is facing "painting" and figuring out how we all came to art (david and justin are both writers). david co-founded the ape (aesthetic purposes exploration) group with me, and i first met justin at an ape meeting not so many months ago, so focusing on the significant things-that-drew-us-towards-art might work well wednesday.
earlier this week liz asked me "what are you working on?" i realized i hadn't really prioritized projects in a while, or taken stock of where i was on some of them - so i responded by putting together this:
the idea is that this will be an ever-changing document which will help me to keep track of what i want to be doing now, what i'm planning on doing next, what i meant to do and didn't end up doing for one reason for another - i realized there are projects i've thought of doing for several years now - i don't like that, i want to finish some of them up and move on to new ones.
here's an image from working on "life mapping" - a recently-begun work-in-progress which i also want to bring to a complete phase within the next few weeks.
it may have another incarnation as an interactive piece with viewer-maker participation, but i think the initial work is nearly complete.
i was invited to share a five-second video as part of a group show of five-second videos. i think it’s going to be fun and i hope you can join us for the opening.
super short video! a group show of five-second videos curated by john tymkiw
have you ever been struck by a sidelong glance?
brief encounters always leave something open to interpretation.
and they can be more emotionally powerful than lengthy explanations.
this exhibition brings together a diverse group of filmmakers, artists and creators to explore this idea in very short videos. just five seconds long.
enough time to say something – and show something.
yet short enough to leave room for imagination.
opening reception wednesday, february 24th, 8-11 pm at secret project robot 210 kent avenue, williamsburg, brooklyn
http://www.secretprojectrobot.org info@supershortvideo.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - why i made a five-second video, and what i think about john's project: when john first approached me about making a five-second video for the group show he was curating, i was hesitant. my work is typically non-linear non-narrative new media installations which can be looked at for one second or ten minutes (like paintings) rather than viewed from beginning to end (like movies).
however, i kept thinking about it. i want to do different things in my art and in my life, i don’t want to do the same things over and over – this would be something different for me. and it’s not like i‘ve never made pure video work before, i just don’t do it very often or take it very seriously. and i‘d recently been experimenting with some pieces which exist purely in the digital realm without a necessary physical component (e.g., this unfinished self portrait which can take several seconds to load, http://eriksanner.com/random/2010/self/self.html). i really like making art and sharing it with people, and i like being invited to do things, so i was motivated to both thank john for the invitation by making some work for his show, as well as the knowledge that he would secure a venue and the work would be seen by somebody. john is fun and i could imagine that a lot of the submissions would be fun. i like shows where an instigator of one sort or another says “let’s make something and here are the rules” – for example, not “let’s all make work about [the sensation of flying]” but “let’s limit our pieces to three colors each” – formal rather than thematic limits, this makes me excited. i would want to know what it’s possible to do with three hours, three colors, and three hands, for example. so “the rule is that it’s five seconds long” resonated with me – i‘vebeen involved on both ends of that sort of project before and typically enjoy it. finally, i had been thinking, a month or two earlier, about making a short video (not five seconds short, but short). i‘’d had a very vivid and confusing dream which i‘d been thinking about using as the basis for a piece. i had pretty much given up on the idea, thinking that it would take too much time, wasn’t quite aligned with my goals for my work, etc. but could i condense maybe three minutes of dream time into five seconds of video time? an invitation, the funness of john and the likelihood of fun submissions, a potential audience, strict formal rules, and being able to go ahead and realize my dream, literally, with the pressure-relieving thought “it’s just five seconds!” – i realized yes this was something i wanted to do, yes this was an experience i wanted to have, yes this was something i wanted to make and share. since submitting my video, i‘vebeen thinking about the contemporary nature of john‘s project. not only was all the work created in the last couple of months, but i think this show is an example of the experience of “everything speeding up all the time” we are all living through. five seconds seems short now, but not incredibly short –it’s not like a second or a millisecond or a nanosecond – you can count it out, you can imagine winning a basketball game if you still have five seconds. i think five seconds is longer than it used to be, and i think ten or twenty years from now, these videos will all feel longer than five seconds of our sensation of time in 2010. it used to take months to cross the ocean, now several hours feels slow, aren’t there faster planes? this is a sensation that is only going to accelerate, that when things don’t happen instantly, they feel slow. it‘s not just that “people aren’t as patient now” or “as you get older, time speeds up” (probably both true) – it’s that we’re doing more things in shorter amounts of time, and we’re going to keep being able to do more things in shorter and shorter increments. what really struck me about the five-second videos is a memory i had from school when i was growing up. a teacher said that television networks were finding that cuts from one shot to another must occur at least once every five seconds or the audience would become bored. at least once every five seconds! television networks aren’t the behemoth powers today that they were back then, but i wonder, what do they say now?
don't want to give too much away, but here are two images from making "the bridge":
hope to see you at the show. in any case, will put it up online after wednesday night.
thank you john for including me, and thank you ruthie for starring in my dream!
at a nyfa business-of-art daylong workshop-conference thing (taking it to the streets: a guide to making art in public) in october 2008, i was wandering around trying to figure out where to sit during lunch, feeling like it was the first day at a new school, hoping to meet people but somehow nervous. i elected to sit at a table alone and take my chances, passively, knowing that all seating would fill up eventually and i'd inevitably be flanked by somebodies, and we'd either hit it off or we wouldn't - but i'd have eaten my lunch and exchanged at least one word with at least two other people. three bites into my first sandwich, i hit the jackpot. i didn't know it at the first second ("hi, i'm susan"), but there was energy, smiling, quickness, and within the first two or three minutes out came the portfolio - beyond impressed i was thinking "this is the kind of person i want to know, i want to have more friends like susan, i need to keep in touch with this person" - and i was so glad i got to see her work.
i think about painting every day. i don't paint every day but i look at paintings most days and "what it's possible to do with paint" is never far from my mind. so if ever i feel that someone is expanding my comprehension of "what painting is or can be" then i am prone to become a fan of that person. susan's work was so simple, so beautiful, so ephemeral, so bold and so unlikely (it seemed to me). it made me think "wow, there is so much more territory for artists to explore" and "the universe of painting can keep growing" and "there are infinite places for me to go with my art" all at the same time. she showed me these pictures and she told me about how she created them.
she had collected leaves and sorted them into different buckets by color. she was then in the process of putting the leaves onto the tree trunks by simply dipping them in water, she claimed that was usually sufficient to keep them up for a few hours. however, on this day, after sorting all the leaves, a brisk wind began to scatter the leaves, they wouldn't stay up. the wind only increased as the light began to wane, and partly out of frustration, partly in an attempt to salvage something from a full day's work, she scattered the as-yet-unarranged buckets of leaves on the dock. i thought this was just too cool.
anytime susan showed me new work or talked about projects she had in mind, almost invariably i thought "that is just too cool." here you can see her passionately describing a future piece at the first business-of-art group meeting she invited me to.
i started taking pictures of her because i thought "that's just too cool" and somehow being with susan often felt like a historically significant moment in the course of my life. this particular project involved putting seeds on big stacks of newspapers - the roots would bind and wrap the newspapers. as the stacks of newspaper decomposed, they would become part of the trees as they grew.
susan always seemed excited about what it was possible to do, and she had as much passion and ambition as anyone i've ever known. to know susan was to not only know someone who was driven, but to somehow be driven by susan. she constantly encouraged and exhorted everyone around her to do more, work harder, think bigger, and ignore obstacles.
it is rare, i find, to meet artists who you both really, really connect with as friends, as well as really, really admiring their work. you do find those people, but it is a rare thing, a difficult thing. susan was one of those most special people for me - a friend as well as an artist whose work i not only appreciated but admired. when ruthie and i decided that we wanted to start having art shows in our new space, there was no question in my mind who i wanted to invite for the first show - it had to be susan. i invited her over to talk about the advantages and limitations of the space (big, but outdoors) and see if she had anything in mind. she decided to install her in-progress work "carry water." she wanted viewers to bring a glass of water with them to the show, to place on an painted map of new york city and its water lines, showing them the source of the water they consume. surrounding the map hanging from the wall would be several bottles of water. these were all discarded water bottles susan had found, and filled with water from a publicly-accessible water source (such as a river). each bottle was labeled with the date on which it was found, the location it was taken from, and the source of water used to refill the bottle. the installation was beautiful and made me think well beyond the confines of the exhibition space, imagining susan at six in the morning on a tuesday finding a bottle and figuring out a way down to a river to refill it, and keeping track of this information. at the opening, ruthie and i both thought, and remarked to each other, that this is exactly how we want to live our lives - surrounded by new art we love, good friends and fresh acquaintances there with us to appreciate it together. i was grateful to susan for sharing her work with us, and i'm glad i had the opportunity to give her a show.
i want to say a little bit more about the type of influence susan had on me besides simply being a funny, honest, open-minded, supportive friend and an incredibly inspirational artist. first of all, she was there. if you wanted to meet susan for coffee, she would meet you for coffee. if you wanted to go to get dinner before or after art openings, susan would go to openings with you and get dinner with you. this is normal among friends, but what was exceptional is that susan was pretty much always willing. beyond that, she would come to see your art. this is a hard thing to ask people to do - i'm showing something, but it's in brooklyn and you live in queens, and i'll only be there for three hours on a thursday night, and you have to work and maybe you want to go out drinking with your friends on a thursday night and none of them would want to come to brooklyn or to see some art - and it's not just a one-time deal, it's every month, over and over - i'm showing a piece this month at this location, i'm showing a different piece next month at that location. susan was always there. just a handful of people have seen more then five or six shows i've been a part of. i think susan made it to every single thing since i met her. i don't think anyone else did that. (she didn't make the six-hour drive to pennsylvania last year - however in that instance we collaborated together on a piece for that show - a bigger commitment, a bigger surge of support from susan.)
one of the last pictures i have of her is at the "intangible" opening at taller boricua.
it is incredible to me that someone was always so willing to come and see my work. i know i am not the only person who feels this way. part of the gift she gave me was to show up when i was hoping that someone would. second of all, she made you be there. i mean, she would invite you to be a part of something which you weren't really sure you wanted to do, but you wouldn't really want to say no, and then you would be there and you would inevitably think "wow this is incredibly good for me, this is exactly what i need." i'm referring specifically here to a monthly business-of-art group susan started. she was a natural leader, there was never any question that there was an agenda which needed to be followed, work we all needed to be doing, and that we were going to follow that agenda and do that work. of course she led by making you want to do all these things, by making it so obviously evident that these things needed doing, it was absurd, really, that we hadn't done them already and why on earth weren't we taking care of them right now. it felt like i knew susan for years and years. i couldn't believe it when i checked the date of that nyfa workshop where we first met and found that it was just over a year she had been in my life. for somebody to have such a profound impact in such a short span of time is not normal. susan was not normal. susan was extraordinary - a fiercely dedicated artist, and a caring, giving friend. i have had two extremely vivid dreams in which she has appeared since she died. in both of them she was very happy. i always remember her as living exactly the live she wanted to live, an example of how to be the kind of person i want to be.
here are a couple more pictures of susan being susan:
at a business-of-art meeting with tracy and linda, video-skyping with the bostonians:
and on her roof with angus, on one of the occasional and super-special evenings when it ended up that only she and i were able to make it to one of the business-of-art meetings, freeing us up to yes talk about the business of art but also anything on our minds (some of my favorite memories of susan):
I enjoyed meeting you at the NYFA seminar, several weeks ago.
Although I did not find much of the information to be useful, I did enjoy meeting others interested in public art.
I am pushing more in that direction with a plan of working full time on my own projects within the next two years.
I am starting a small group for artists who are interested in forming a regularly meeting group to help each other with the practical aspects of our artistic goal.
Are you interested? I have a stained glass artist a graphic designer and a filmmaker/ photographer.
Below I am pasting the email string so far.
I am interested in the potential collaboration you mentioned when we met. Can you give me a little more background info?
Best,
Susan Woolf
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Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 10:03 PM
Subject: great to hear from you
Erik,
Nothing vague about this group.
It is all about the setting of personal/ business/ career goals and mapping a path to achieve them.
The members help you stay on task, come up with good ideas and give encouragement when things get tough.
I will include you in the email loop as we go forward.
Yes I am very interested in learning more about the Lycoming idea.
I 'm wondering what exactly you are thinking about my art.
Are you interested in doing a collaboration on a local guerrilla enviro/ installation piece?
I have one percolating through my brain.
It involves a shipwreck I discovered in an abandoned canal in queens.
There could be some very interesting media aspects.
Best,
Susan
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Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 9:48 AM
Subject: hi all
Erik,Hey if you ever need company on your gallery crawl give me a shout.
I always plan to but rarely go.
Are you doing the Basel Miami?
Best,
Susan
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Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 6:43 PM
Subject: Let's meet! - making it.....
Hey you all,
I am looking forward to our meeting on Dec . 4th.
I am attaching the powerpoint presentation from the grant writing workshop I attended at NYFA.
Although it is pretty basic I did find several point of interest.
If you would prefer that I not send you this sort of info please let me know.
Best,
Susan
P.S.
I am no longer freelancing as a wax sculptor at New foundry, more time to devote to my art!
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Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 10:22 AM
Subject: open call digital
Erik,
Don't know if you are on any of theses listserves but this one made me think of you.
http://www.islipartmuseum.org/open.call.html
best,
Susan
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Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 11:17 AM
Subject: Susan Woolf has sent you an Evite Invitation
You are invited to Holiday Brunch by Susan Woolf.
We invite you to join us for big holiday fun in Astoria! There will be lots of people you know and want to know around a groaning board filled with delicious food and drink. P.S. Bring a poem or thought to type out on the antique Underwood typewriter.
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Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 6:34 PM
Subject: Art biz group
Hey All,
Although there are nine meetings I think everyone in this group is wanting to take a big step forward toward financial success as an artist. Let's!
It is a commitment and I totally understand if it will not work for some folks schedule.
There are nine salon meetings—one every other week.
So if we start next Monday at 7:30 pm we will have meetings on 3/9, 23, 4/6, 20, 5/4,18, 6/1,15 and 29.
All Good?
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Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 1:10 PM
Subject: saturday and/or sunday morning?
Erik,
What a great idea, I am thinking of going to one of the Armory related fairs, but messing with art is way better than viewing it.
I wanted to thank you for inviting me to the crit the other night. You showed great patience with some odd and (I thought) unhelpful judgments.
I am fine with criticism but judgment doesn't move the mind toward reshaping the art.
I think your planting video clearly needs something because in it's current state it doesn't have the dynamism your other projects exhibit.
What exactly is needed I could not say.
Some interesting ideas were expressed and who knows which tangent your mind will light upon.
Keep me posted on time and place for this weekend.
I will bring materials relating to the theme.
Best,
Susan
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Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 12:53 PM
Subject: DAC
Erik,
This is a shot in the dark...
Dumbo Art Center is looking for proposals for the 2009 season.
I was thinking a site specific installation using only cardboard and cardboard boxes with video of ...boxes?
My thoughts have gone to large stacks of cardboard, boxes on boxes in boxes, boxes in water melting over time, video in boxes canyons of boxes with limited sight lines
If you are interested in a collaboration I would be happy to write a proposal jointly or do most writing (as I have more free time) with edits input from you. It is a long shot, the call is highly competitive.
Let me know what you think.
Best,
Susan
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Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 9:54 AM
Subject: great way to get some buzz
Hey all I know we do not have Laelia or Ronnie tonight.
We have entered the hardest part of this program.
This is where we realize exactly what we committed to and how hard it will be.
The exercises are not hard, rewriting our own assumptions about our limitations is VERY HARD!
If you are able to squish this tiny, but strong, voice in your own head, you have made a giant leap forward toward success on your terms.
Showing up is really 90% of the work.
So I encourage everyone to think about what we want and how helpful it is to be together as we create new and wonderful paths for ourselves.
Here is how I was feeling yesterday, Laelia picked me up by my bootstraps. Thanks!
I am feeling overwhelmed by everything.
I know it is good, what I need and want. I just get the shakes when I think about the power of my dream and how close I am to it.
I hate that women are so afraid to set their sights high. DAMN IT!
I am working choking that voice in my head.
No Limits.
Best,
Susan
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Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 6:54 AM
Subject: Next mtg
Hey All,
As often happens in my world, the circumstances of my life have shifted dramatically.
I am excited to announce I will be moving to a live/ work loft in L.I.C. on Tuesday. I am therefore unable to host our meeting as I will be away till the 27th and have no time to get wireless till July.
Is it possible for someone else to open their home? I will try to bring soup!
Best,
Susan
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Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 4:58 PM
Subject: west prize
Erik,
I did not see you listed in this years applicants.
- "the contemporary" (specifically, creating art in a time period which could have existed in no other time period, which is intended only to be appreciated to be appreciated by those alive at the time of its completion, will in all likelihood lose relevance with age and eventually be consigned to the grand dustbin of historical artifacts)
i always really enjoy the unpredictable nature of ape meeting discussions. i used to take copious notes with the goal of transcribing them. these days i listen and try to figure out, by the end, if there's some sort of conclusion the discussion has led us to, so that we can have a distinct answer to the question "what is the function of art?"
today, can't find what i wrote, but it was something like "the function of art is to create awesome artifacts which engender such passionate feelings about them that one is moved to attempt to share their awesomeness with others and find other like-minded individuals, ultimately binding us together."
the next day extremely valuable first time ape meeting attendee justin emailed the rest of us. here's what he sent.
" Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 11:18 PM Subject: APE
So, I was all hopped up after leaving you all last night and had all this decontextualized dialogue rattling around in my head resulting in the below prose piece. Sorry I'm not great with titles these days.
I had a blast. Thanks!
POEM: APE TRIBUTE For Katharine, Erik, Daniel, Toby, David and Nicole
Which is your favorite planet? Did you ever wish it had a different name? I wish erosion were the verb form of Eros or one of its particles, instead of its sometimes, sad consequence. Ah, the folly of expectations, of reliable metrics by which to justify the simplest things. Breathing, for example. That’s an important one. The urge to glue things together; things which hatch. How many choices are there? You’ve never met my family, have you? It’s about evolution and they keep changing the formula for the glue. They’ve changed it four times since I started. What do you use to clean seltzer from the carpet? Bread. A rye or whole wheat, something hearty, with seeds. Really? Yes. Kandinsky was Pollack’s awesome. I heard that too, somewhere. Does that hold true for everything? No. Cool is more minimalist. Cool is a subset of awesome. Like rectangles and squares. All squares are rectangles it’s like that, you know? Everything that’s awesome is cool but not everything that’s cool is also awesome. "
had (arbitrarily) decided to use only found imagery in found landscape, seemed to give it some kind of cohesion, helped limit my methodological choices (film new painting done on top of a picture of the painting? etc.). but then got to a point where i thought "hey, i'd really like to add something" and wanted to make it instead of finding it, so make it we did.
will see what it looks like tomorrow, getting more and more nervous that it won't look so good projected onto the painting, might make more sense as a virtual piece, viewed through your screen. however, did make it so that the background painting can disappear in the projection.
and, thinking more options would be a good idea, also made it so that i can adjust the transparency of the background painting (from totally invisible to totally opaque, here's maybe 25% opaque).
tomorrow i'll find out what it looks like. regardless, i had fun this past week! and thank you ruthie for helping me out!
next week showing a couple of pieces and giving a short talk at a small private salon. (i'd like to invite more people but space will be tight and a few other artists are presenting work as well.) anyway, a few days ago i stopped by to figure out where to set up. i figured i'd probably show spring planting since it's interactive and that seemed like a fun thing to have going during an evening of cocktails and so on. however, usually whenever i show work, i want to make new work. i mean, i almost always want to make new work, but logistics (where, when, and how to show, where to store before and after, what materials to use, how large to make something, how much money and time to spend, etc.) can make me hesitate. but what might appear to be logistical obstacles can also end up providing opportunities to do things i wouldn't have thought of otherwise. and that's what i really want to be doing, working on things i couldn't have thought of or wouldn't have imagined unless i had started working on them. this is what happened earlier this week. isabel and i were talking about where to hang spring planting and we decided the best spot would probably be a place where there's already a picture hanging. while we were talking about materials and dimensions for this presentation of spring planting, i kept looking at that painting. i started thinking that maybe i wanted to make something new, which would involve projecting onto that painting. after mentioning that to isabel and then hanging out for a few more minutes, i decided yes, that's what i wanted to do - rather than show spring planting i'd make a new piece, a collaboration with an unknown artist (whoever painted that painting and gave it to isabel). so i took a picture of it and started thinking about what i wanted to do.
the first step was to isolate the painting from the rest of the room.
decided that since it was a landscape painting i had stumbled upon, it would remain a landscape painting, and i'd call my piece found landscape. at first i thought i would do some paintings (or parts of paintings, and collage, somehow making animation maybe) and project them onto that painting, but then i decided that since i had found that painting, i wanted to find all of the elements i was projecting onto it as well. what did i want to project onto it? although it's a recent painting, it shows only nature. i thought i'd try to make the water appear to move. and i decided i'd like to introduce some human artifacts and technology into it, along with some color tension. began searching on the internet, where i found these balloons:
decided to use the bottom-left one above, needed to get rid of any backgrounds in order to isolate just the element i wanted to include in the piece, here (below) you see the sky around the balloon being erased:
after i had a few balloons and watercraft, wanted to see how they fit in the landscape - figured i'd get some motion not from the trees and the wind but from the artificial artifacts making their way through the scene:
one thing i won't know until i show the piece is whether or not to project the painting onto the painting, or a black background. the images might look very transparent and ghostly either way. i'll be borrowing a projector and anyway there's no way to know until i set it up. but i'll make it so that i can toggle between both versions and decide which i like better just before showing it.
the only remaining decisions are what to keep adding (decided no buildings, just things passing through) and how many new elements to introduce. i'm very happy with the walking skeleton:
and once it became as surreal (maybe goofy) as that, decided to make some burning giraffes which can walk through. i've been reading a biography about dali, and today started thinking about breughel (was probably the skeleton that brought him to mind).
it has been really fun working on this. i like the short timeframe, and i'm not feeling much pressure, it's not something i've been building towards for a long time, it's just something i wanted to do which is happening very quickly. knowing i'll be able to set it aside after tuesday evening makes me want to work hard on it until then (but not too hard). one surprising "crafty" note is that i had a much harder time with the walking giraffe than with the flames on it. i thought it would be the other way around. i'm happy with the flames (although i might want to add smoke) but am thinking of redoing the giraffe (am just using an animated gif i found at present, but maybe i'll be happier if i animate it myself). anyway i have until tuesday to show it one way or another. want to see what it looks like!
