statement (<100 words)

i aspire to create genuinely new contemporary visual art. currently I combine new and old media to build installations, conceived as paintings that move. i employ different processes for each project. for example, recently i projected dynamic video onto egg tempera paintings. at present my work adheres to the following methodology: 1) it must be experienced visually by the audience; 2) it must constantly change without repetition, providing a unique experience with each viewing; 3) it must utilize current technology; and 4) it must be something i have never done before. this propels the continual evolution of my artmaking practice.

play-by-play

not everything works out, not everything gets done, but exploring the different things, you can do or you want to do, is how i work. you try it, you like it, you maybe focus on it. maybe it involves too many obstacles and you keep it in the back of your mind for another time. this chess thing, the germs of it really were there in the late nineties, it was based more about the concept of using a timeclock to collaborate on paintings so that each contributor had the same materials to work with - pallette, surface, brush, time. it has changed a bit, but even wanting to use chessboards, that was a while ago, just never took priority, never had the feeling that there was a park in my neighborhood where people would want to do it, or the video element to really make it something i felt i was making - anyway so here's an image from a meeting with one of my most excellent brothers not too long ago.

you could say nothing came of this or will come of this, because we were really thinking about it differently.

or you could say that these images are proof of a meeting which cemented and acknowledged our desire to collaborate again (last time was sonntag). and we were led to silliness rather than beauty, but now i'm thinking, won't the "chess" "players" enjoy a little play-by-play announcing during their "games"? announcing as something we'd like to do was put forth by paul a few months ago, and we've been kicking it around a little bit, where or how to use it - i think this is a pretty good chance, really hope he can show up and feels the same way.

other feeling

for a long, long time have wanted to paint and use computer with drawing tablet and projection all simultaneously. this finally happened, with ron and michael. it didn't feel like painting, far more time-based-artform sensation, like music or dance. a bit like playing with waves in a swimming pool, wasn't prepared for such a different sensation. exciting. wonder what my dreams will be like tonight. that's my hand, holding paint brush, putting wet paint on a chessboard taped to my easel, michael's white photoshop splotches, he's using drawing tablet attached to laptop outputting to projector, ron holding camera for this picture, and there's a virtual chessboard projected onto a real chessboard, but it's flipped, so black squares being projected onto white squares and vice versa - this is right at the beginning of a collaborative piece, one of three or four made today using these techniques, many more earlier in the park, just painting...

what is art for?

one of my goals was to blog definitions of art. and that question looms large in my life, not always at the front of everything, but look forward to engaging in some kind of exploration.

yesterday was a lot of chess email. today a bit of chess email as well. another session coming up, excited.

but maybe more important (long-term) is that i met shin-il. this is someone who is not afraid to address a large room full of people with the question "what is the function of art?"

it has been over six months since i've done that. but i think we have something in common. and i think chasing that answer is going to be fruitful somehow. either way, something not so project-specific which matters, impacts what i do every day.

if you want to join a monthly round-table discussion focussing on this topic, please let me know. first tuesday evening. and if you can think of a good space, with coffee, maybe food, but definitely where a few people can sit and figure out the purpose of art, suggestions much appreciated.

the world is shrinkifying

soon mike and i will talk. skype keeps improving things for me. everyone all the time we're around each other we are. this is his.
http://www.lipnoise.com/
and that makes me want to do more. there's nothing like other people - friends, collaborators, idols - to push/pull. mike, you make me want to do more!

tokyo is nyc, now, practically. this is an old cliched thought the global village but with daily contact between me and matthew everything just feels so small it's getting silly.

real

this doesn't exist yet

















http://www.eriksanner.com/es_blog_2007/070430_illum_proposal.pdf


but this is something you can enjoy right now

luminous

stacked traffic cones, daylight shows through


















hours later, another stack, another kind of luminescence

traffic cone dreams

well, i think about traffic cones daily pretty much, over ten years i think, at the beginning wondered if it was silly or serious and if i'd still think they were interesting down the road - eventually have come to the conclusion that you can say they embody the paradox i see in the nature of everything - so the answer would be "yes" (silly/serious).

anyway this past week cones very high priority art-thinking. want to make a proposal, trying to distill so many projects (want to do) into one or a few (really want to do, more than the others) - it's been a very valuable exercise. what do you really want to do? what does an hour feel like, a morning feel like, a day feel like? if you say "i want to be an astronaut" that means much of your life spent studying math? or what? i don't know. but i bet it means very little time actually spent in space. if i want to make art, which i do, and it's going to involve traffic cones, which it usually does, what will my role be? painter? photographer? that is a big part of how i think. not just "i want to see this work" or "i want this art to get made" but "can i make this work?" and "what would i have to do to make this work? is that what i really want to do? is that the kind of artist i want to be, the kind of life i want to live?"

so i'm almost there. three projects could throw self (and hopefully others would want to be involved, or at least be willing to help) into, will figure out how to present to non-erik-humans over next fourty-eight hours or so.

in the meantime, let me tell you this: my sister-in-law had a dream in which i had made an experiencial art piece involving traffic cones. very much in line with some of the concentrated brainstorming i've been engaged in this week. now there's definitely a coincidental aspect, i babysat for my niece last saturday, and went and had breakfast with them, my brother and my mom today, and she knows i'm really into traffic cones, so i'm not saying "oh man we have this powerful psychic link." but i think it's neat that those things are connected in her mind at a non-waking-state level, and that she was dreaming about below and above cones, which is where the breakthroughs have been coming for me. i do find it an auspicious omen that she dreamed i had some sort of connection involving arranging experiencing traffic cones in an aesthetic manner in a very public place. i believe this will give me confidence to submit a very achievable, unique, and exciting proposal.

also in the real world (was going to say "back to the real world" but let's face it dreams exist in this universe, this is part of the paradoxical nature of everything, dreams exist but they don't exist right?) there have been some very unique cone arrangements in midtown. here are two examples from a wednesday morning stroll. mentioned recently that there had been a sudden influx of yellowish-greenish cones in manhattan, here one is seen bound near some of its orange cousins:

















and in central park, these cones seem destined to disappear, begging the question, when we walk around, or play frisbee, anywhere, how much of the earth beneath our feet contains, in addition to rocks, dirt, and worms, submerged traffic cones?

gift conduit

steph's uncle in california has an avocado tree. her pepere brought some avocados to maine. steph brought some to nyc and gave me this seed.

















part of spring planting, people will see it in a piece of art. then i'll give it to someone with a yard, maybe christine or eugene/joann or jong/tim or toby or...

more seeds

from lunch, for spring planting