Collection and growth

Recently I have been working projects that contribute to my idea of the inhabitable organism. I origianlly broke it down in to certain steps.
Level One consisted of
1. Noise Recycled into the System
2. Nesting/BioMimicry/BioMimetics
3. Existing/Exploration of Materials
4. Pattern Recognition and Accumulation

This latest endevor has been focusing on Level One part 4. (It also works with Level One part 1 to a degree. )

I have been having "happenings" during lunch time in Los Angeles. The project "Mass Collection 1" is about well that. Mass collection! The medium is chewed gum and plexi glass. I stand in a specific spot for 3 hours and ask people to come and chew a piece of gum and place it where ever they feel it belongs on the plexi. If some one is passing by with gum already in their mouth, I ask them to place that piece on the plexi and I give them a new piece. The gum is a Mexican brand of Chicklets and come in a variety of flavor and colors. This piece also is about mark making and territory. So far, I have had 2 of these happenings.

The first site was Downtown Los Angeles by the Public Library. There, the demographics of the crowd was mainly people in suits, bike messengers, and some homeless. There were even some tourists in the mix. Here are some of the photos of the piece and the making of it.

This is the final composition for that session::
The other site in front of a coffee shop in the Arts District in Los Angeles. The accumulation was completely different. People were more apt to changing and adding to previously placed pieces. This piece was more graffiti like. People also felt compelled to draw and be creative with it, saying "I don't know what to draw/I don't know what to make." The only direction I gave (for both pieces) was to place the gum where ever you saw fit, preferably on the plastic. This piece was also more 3dimentional, where people would add to each others mounds. People were also bringing up a precedent gum wall in Northern CA.

Here are some images from the wall in San Luis Obispo::

The next stop is Chinatown. Other sites are heavy pedestrian places... I might be in Venice Beach tomorrow doing it so come on by.