Sunday, November 23, 2008

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.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Sex MAchine!

I recently participated in a film contest all about remixing or using archive footage. My friends Ben Hernstrom of Ambulantic Videoworks and my friend Justin Crimone of Zeno Films
were the organizers. Below is what the description of the project was. It was screened November 2nd at Pittsburgh Filmakers. (yes that was the same day as my bra opening)

Here is my entry::


PUBLIC DOMAIN PRIVATE DOMINION 3! The premise is pretty simple. A group of varied filmmakers, from all kinds of backgrounds will be given a selection of public domain films from which they must make their own film. They are permitted to alter the footage in any way possible, but cannot use any images that do not come from the source material. Audio is left completely to their discretion but may not contain copyrighted sound, which they do not have permission to use. The screening will be held at Pittsburgh Filmmakers on Sunday, Nov 2nd 2008. All submissions must be in our hands by Monday, Oct 27th. Any filmmaker who has previously screened at PDPD may submit without fee. Submission fees will be waved for any filmmaker based in PGH. We split a portion of the admission money among all competing filmmakers, so selected films will recoup at least their submission fee. Your film must be between 2 and 7 minutes in length. Be as creative as possible. We've had pseudo-docs, music videos, anti-safety films, pornography spoofs, super depressing narratives, comedic gems, and all kinds of other stuff we don't know how to describe. Please make sure you adhere to the rules. Disqualifying you if you fail to do so will make us weepy. Please email ambulantic@gmail.com to alert us of your intention to participate. We will screen all entries if possible. If we receive too many, we will cut the ones we don't like.

The source films this year:
http://www.archive.org/details/DIA40
http://www.archive.org/details/twenty-five_hour_day
http://www.archive.org/details/RCA16mmS1958

Monday, November 10, 2008

watch your head.

Bras bras bras! So I am back in LA (finally) after being away for a month. My travels took me to Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and NYC.
While in NYC, I installed Brascape at hiChristina gallery in the Lower East Side.
We had the opening Sunday Nov 1 and it was packed! There were serverval performances also.
Featured were Amy Ouzoonian (a fantastically scantly clad chanteuse), Patrick "mangina" Bucklew, trachtenberg slideshow players, touching you, and a sweet dance brought to us by Christina, Fritz, and the sock puppet *who i forgot his name.

The brascape is still up until the 12th of Nov. If you are in NYC please go down to Orchard and Rivington and tell me what you think. Also if you take any photos, send them my way.

Thanks! Here are some photos that I have collected so far(mainly from my sister).

The last ones are photos of the first time the 200 black bras got together and "hungout."