the moon was breathtaking

have fallen out of the habit of carrying my camera with me at all times, just over the past couple weeks. think it started with water fear. yes have special case but bulkier than just-camera-in-pocket, enough so that necessitates carrying backpack. and yes, have been carrying backpack, want to get used to some weight, but think the real reason is to free up my mind a little bit. i think it's to try to imagine ways of sharing the kisokaido experience. we're talking about making collages and taking pictures. is what we're seeing going to be the most important part? are there other ways to convey what we experience, maybe more effective? not sure if anything else would suit us more. in the meantime, equipment gathering (got the rain jacket yesterday) and getting into shape are most pressing, nice to just focus on that, somehow.

so i can't show you the moon.

yesterday was really hot, only did about eight or nine miles. today, though, think was sufficient.

























oh, i can show you this, michael found and gave me some luck.

























and you can believe i appreciate the support. merci.

the temporariness of priorities

so, short-term, my focus has shifted quite drastically, and it's going to hopefully shift somewhere new in a couple of months. can't know that now, of course. but expect, anticipate.

it's the morning of august 25th. the first walk, from kyoto to wherever (it's all in the wiki) (details) is october 23rd. so, thursday made a commitment, let's see if i keep it, a priority. want to be in shape. want to succeed in our walk. want to see what hiroshige saw (or rather would see today) (although today he'd take a train or fly so this is all a bit silly perhaps but hopefully we get that and are ok with it). training, therefore, is the biggest thing for me right now. want to get injured? want to flake out and hop on a bus? no, and no. walking, without pain, being able to concentrate on what we're looking at, and thinking about, and talking about, that's part of the kisokaido goal. entails, right now, significant investment of time and effort. the intention is to walk at least ten miles per day every day until we leave. will probably miss a few. but at this point would rather miss an art experience or meeting up with friends than miss a walk.

so august 23rd (thursday) did twelve miles



























and yesterday (august 24th friday) eighteen miles

































today the ongoing quest for a rain jacket will continue, did get pants, and more shoes

what about finishing chess before i leave? had intended to show it next week, then mid-october - now thinking it can wait. as nice as it would be to declare self "finished" and move onto something else, want it to be as good as i can make it. don't think that can happen before fly-to-japan-day.

what about video experiments, programming experiments, painting, drawing, taking pictures, more art creation? it's nutty, very weird feeling, saying all of those things are secondary right now. can't remember feeling that way. maybe when i moved last. the hope is that the kisokaido project will push all those things forward. matthew and i will likely collage together. who knows what we'll come up with. but it won't happen if i can't make each day's trek, and that won't happen without sincere, dedicated training now.

after a month of wandering, away from my life here, what will seem most important?

what will the-art-i-want-to-engage-in-making look like, in my imagination?

the living room

brainstorming session tonight, a few of us think there are some connections worth exploring and are putting together a group show. inspiring to look at work, figure out what's already there, waiting to be related. quick scouting trip up to boston next weekend? repainting (from unpainting)? chess? tea? domesticity = ?

biggest wake-up jolt was "continuum" exhibition method - distinct separate bodies of works (by individual artists, not collaboration) but we show them in such a way that it's a seamless transition from viewing one work to the next, placing props in the space?

we all seem to fit, it's fascinating, when things go so well together that you might not necessarily think would go well together. i think all of my art has been like that, maybe. or should have been, or strove to be.

reaching out

http://www.creativetime.org/

super-cool space


























one of the things they offer is advice
http://www.creativetime.org/programs/opendoor.html

today my twenty minutes with curator meredith stretched to forty, very supportive, gave me a boost

everyone at creative time works under a halo

chess = real

set up current version of chess in my studio today, just need to finish the video rendering (maybe two weeks), bigger issue is getting it seen, still working on where to show...

landmark day

big thing, chess programming is complete. yeah i had a version ready for e32 a few weeks ago, but that was "hey, this is along the lines of what i was thinking, and it's a piece, still a work in progress but it works." now is "this goes a little bit beyond what i originally set out to create" (which is of course how you want it, when you start a project, it should grow, or is there any point in pursuing it?).

























and in primate reinforcement was told if there were grades, i'd have received an a. today was final class, archways into nowhere.











































































fatigue is inevitable. on the thirty-block walk home, with the sketchbook and t-square and textbook and newspaper in the portfolio bag, laptop plus one hardcover and one paperback in backpack, did project my feelings a bit onto this cone a few blocks from my place



























it got worse, though. sometimes people leave stuff on the landings of my building. i do it too. a day or so, and then the sidewalk or the trash, but first see if anyone wants it. lamps, scarves, magazines, there's a new york post most days, i got a really nice grater once - anyway, today it was depressing, original art pieces.



























thought briefly about trying to do something with them, but feel pretty much that the projects i'm involved in (chess and kisokaido mostly, plus other stuff on my brain for after they finish) are pushing me to my limits. thought about doing something with guenter again, but the walking, and i need to be doing a lot more of it, it takes time.

started researching hiroshige a bit, for all my fandom really don't know anything about him, not reading a biography yet just seeing what's on the web - anyway, he walked it, and did his work, apparently, from memory. i don't know if he sketched or what. i was taught corot could glimpse a wooded glade from a train window as it sped past, and then in his studio paint the scene exactly as it appeared.

point? after you see art abandoned, you think, try harder. and then you remember your heroes, who tried harder. and then with the mild breeze in the plaza, hearing the fountain back up the keys clicking, relaxing after a full day, you might, if you're me, be really excited, far more than exhausted, to see what might be possible, in the evolving realm of artmaking.

so close

no remaining feasibility hurdles (i don't think), just a bit of work (not too much) and some decisions (aesthetic).

finally got this part working (dynamic mask, each of the sixty-four squares will decide whether or not to show what's under it)

























which was part of my original vision, enabling this (so, the squares which aren't showing one thing, are showing something else, either a different point in time of the same game, or a point in time of a different game, that's one of the decisions).

























the aesthetic choices: show translucent layers? had this idea that a ghost before for positive squares and post now-time for negative squares would illustrate the light-vs-shadow worlds a bit. that's the main one, use translucencies or not? biggest sticky issue is, think really slows down speed, video not smooth already. but again, that's something that could change with a different machine. other pause = this is already a bit confusing, maybe, to the eye, a lot of things happening at once. might look really neat but might push it into what-the-hell-am-i-looking-at instead of hey-cool oh-i-get-it. quite prefer a bit of mystery, but if it doesn't need it, it's overdone and that becomes a problem. remember part of my original concept was to avoid translucencies, had been leaning on them quite heavily for the always-looks-different expression of my goal to make work which feels new to me. since the chess board is so broken up by nature, seems like that's more suitable. ok, no translucency, dilemma solved.

show two or three games at once? early idea was three. also flirted with two different times of one game. well, chess is a game with two players, two colors of squares - it's two. that idea of three, that was before making half the squares negative, and projecting onto a chess-patterned surface, those only arose into the project a ways. i think with those things going on, three falls into the "yeah confusing and yeah more complex but does it add anything no" category. another dilemma solved. actually that's both, the two different points in time of the same game, i want to show more, i think that will be a bit more. more = what? fuller. powerful. interesting. engaging. whatever. more.

ok sticking with these choices and hope to complete the programming phase tomorrow. editing (rendering actually) still under way.

the way is clearer

frustrated with some choppy (slow) dynamic video, and wondering if some visual effects were really doing the right thing, today tried some different methods of getting chess to do what i want it to do. each time i had something work a new way, it performed exactly as well (or as poorly) as before.


















so, now the choice is an aesthetic one. do i want more points in time playing simultaneously, and different transparent layers, or nice smooth video and a maximum of two points in time, all flat? since my hunch is it's going to be slightly rough anyway, i'm leaning towards doing it exactly as intended. there's still one possible way to smooth it out, i think, and there's also the hope that it can get shown on faster machines than i've been using. probably i'll end up with two versions, and make a last-minute decision on which to use. even if the problem disappears, i still need to make that choice. it's a tough one, i was wrestling quite a bit today. the expression of an idea isn't always best expressed by exact illustration of that idea. you might show something similar and convey that thought/feeling more clearly, more immediately. just a few smoldering embers at the edge of a vast black pit and we imagine what the inferno must have looked like.

not yet

yes chess programming is much further along, but there's still more i want to do



























at 6:30 decided finishing it tonight was a false deadline, and went for a walk (11.2 miles), along the river while the sun was setting



























but i didn't take any pictures of the sunset

incremental progress

yesterday, if you had told me "you'll be able to show different points in time, and positive or negative, in a patterned mask, in layers" i would have been thrilled, and thought yes, that's enough. but i would have been wrong. made that happen this morning, and all of a sudden, feel the lack of functioning transparency.

once you achieve whatever was blocking you and you push past it, there's something else, immediately following, which isn't quite the way you want it. is it solvable? all i can say is, by tomorrow night i should have a second working prototype of chess, constructed entirely differently, which should be a lot closer to what i want to do. if i can't get it all the way there by tomorrow night, maybe it will take another week, or maybe i have to build it differently. but i believe there's a way and i'm getting closer to finding it.