pluralism

post_post?

This past week has been field with lectures from miscellaneous art and architecture bloggers and media theorist. Welcome or post-welcome to Postopolis. This was put on by the Storefront for Art and Architecture and ForYourArt, and it is part of Los Angeles Art Weekend. Some of key people of blogs were David Basulto from Plataforma Arquitectura and ArchDaily, Jace Clayton from Mudd Up!, Régine Debatty from we make money not art , Bryan Finoki from Subtopia, Dan Hill from City of Sound, and Geoff Manaugh from BLDGBLOG. It was a 5 day event. I was able to attend the opening night and the closing. I was absent in the middle due to a cold. But all is well because I followed the whole thing on Twitter. Other people who presented were Fritz Haeg, Inaba, GOOD magazine, Islands of LA, Fallen Fruit, and Benjamin Bratton.

los angeles unicorn hobos

do you believe? French photographer Jean Yves Lemoigne is a amazing.

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.

BEEN AT THE BEACH

Sorry for the delay in posting. I have been busy graduating and etc. I am a master now. (i still laugh when i say it to myself)

Latest scheme::
I worked under AWESOME STUDIO (soon to be Jenna Kappelt and my little studio) with the help of Jessica Rivera to participate in Park(ing)Day LA. I made a beach on Traction Street. Here are some of the photos that some one took and sent to me. More to post later.

repost:: mani-pul-ation

This is the proposal for an installation I am making for the Downtown Los Angeles Film Festival . This is exploring some of the points in Level 1 of the steps to Inhaborg. This is also for a class I am taking with MarkDavid Hosale. So by the end of it (or at least August 8th) I will know how to get my little arduino board up and running.

Please keep checking the inhabitable organism blog because that's what's been taking most of my energy. Though, I have more to bring to these pages also.

love in LA LAnd

Welcome to the Fog Bank. The fog bank emerges via those who seek to stalk the ethical force we use to navigate its density. Juan Azulay is guiding us through this fogbank mess, or at least dispersing us like wild spores into the allergy season. We are looking at Los Angeles, LA LA LAnd. Above is the is a short still movie that I made for studio with some stories nested and no story at all. Watch it with out the sound first and then with sound for the full cinematic effect. I have no need to tell the story, but feel free to tell me your interpretations.

Another product from studio so far is a mashup with Entourage and Wattstax. This is a diagram of the use of the voyeuristic camera. Entourage, as a tv show, has many angles for the camera positions that are very similar to documentary shots. Documentaries, I have observed, are more constrained due to the lack of choreography and scripting. I would post it but I can't seem to compress the file.

I also did a mash up on Existing to Escape::Escape to Exist, mixing multiple movies about Los Angeles.

makers and shakers

Before I get to the gut of it, Ive been making some things happen around these parts. As some know, I am really good at instigating things and getting into trouble. Back in the burgh, Carrie Nardini and I started a nomadic market, I Made It! Market. The market has been continuing since I've left. The whole idea behind the market is to give people to opportunity to sell the things they make. "Do you make things? Do you want to sell the things you make? Sell it at I Made It!"
That's a common phrase from my mouth. "By you coming to the market, you've made it too!"
I saw it as an opportunity to create event in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is a city with many little neighborhoods and is not so foreign from LA as one would think. Pittsburgh is a bunch of broken puzzle pieces that fit but don't flow. As small and manageable as that city is, its not self aware.
With the I Made It! Market in Pittsburgh we are able to interlace through exposure and repetition. I see it as an example of urban acupuncture.
As I am now in Los Angeles, I have stumbled accross a gallery, a potential space. Inmo Yuon has decided to let me in on use planning of the space. So what do I do? Put an I Made It! Market! The exception fo the rule is that its not nomadic though the space is pretty ephemeral. I joined forces with Los Angeles Craft Mafia and we have about 15 vendors. Morgan from the craft mafia has stared a blog and has made this fantastic poster for it.


Please join us on FEB 9th at Billy's Coffee Shop at 5th and main street downtown Los Angeles.


Downtown is amazing. It's soo Pittsburgh. It's sooo raw with real Dirt. Real fear. Real urgency. I love it.

There are some new blogs on the side one in particluar, the Solstice Creative, by dearest Doug. He has also brought to my attention that the Library of Congress has just uploaded like 3000 photos on to flickr. THANKS LOC!

An Adventurous Day

I woke up this morning, and read some more Shockwave Rider. Got on my bike with some of the recycling I had been collecting and road off down Alameda Street. While on the bike in traffic, a homeless woman wondered around me and other cars asking for change. She would' t talk to me when I asked here where she was from. Road towards 6th on my way to the recycling center and met a homeless man just siting on the curb. He was from Massachusetts. He asked if I had change and I gave him my bag of cans. I thought it was fair. That would have been the change I gave him if I had turned it in. Right?

I then made my way down old skid row. (DUM DUM DAH) Note: this is all during the day time. even the homeless said don't go there at night.
I first go to the Midnight Mission.

I make some new friends while I walk inside the gate. There are just people spread out everywhere on benches and bags. I brought my bike in and then some woman who had a badge on and white shirt started to yell at me. She asked what I was doing there and why and I can't bring a bike on to the patio. She directed me to talk to a person inside who bounced me to another who bounced me to another. All I got after that was a card of someones who I need their permission to ask the people where they've been since they strive for an anonymous environment. The shelter is a point of sanctuary. I move on.
Alot of people also sleep in the adjacent park. I noticed more families there. The next mission was between 5th and 4th on San Pedro. No court yard. This one seemed more like a hospital. I went in and talked to a guard who told me to wait for one of the directors and then ultimately the director said no questions for these people. Ok.

I then head to the LA Mission. On the way I found a bread tab so I thought everything will probably work out with me asking. I ride up. Park the bike. And go in the gates. This one was the most relaxed than the others. They let me talk to the people but not the ones who were taking classes at that time. I asked the main supervisor if he knew anything about people being bussed in from different cities, specifically New Orleans after Katrina. He said it was news to him.

Here are the results of my efforts, as from what people told me:

• 2Massachuesetts

• 1 Boston

• 1 Iowa
• 1 Rhode Island
• 1 Washington State
• 3 Texas
• 1 Houston
• 1 Beaumont
  
• 1 Guatemala
• 1 Chicago, Illinois
  
• 1 Ohio, Massillion
• 16 Los Angeles,
  
• 1 Compton, LA
• 7 Mexico
• 3 Vera Cruz, Mexico
• 1 New Jersey
• 1 Fort Dixon, New Jersey
• 1 Pittsburgh
• 1 San Diego
• 1 Puerto Rico
• 3 Detroit
• 1 New York City
• 1 Rochester, New York
• 1 Peru
• 1 Washington DC
• 1 Las Vegas
• 1 Honduras
• 1 St. Petersburg, Florida
• 1 Philadelphia
  
• 19 New Orleans, Louisiana, who all got bussed after Katrina
• 1 from outer space

All this information has been mapped on the Homeless map that is on the right side of this blog.

I ended up talking to a guard named Renard for a bit. He has been working security for the mission for the past 15 years. He said he was working on a movie about Skid Row, not a documentary. He said not everyone who is at the shelter is homeless. He said people come down there to hang out, smoke up in the yard, buy crack at the corner, run away from domestic situations, or just stay there if they don't want to go home. He said it is a place where people run away from responsibility. Another Other Space if you will. This is also similar to the paid avoidance places in Shockwave Rider, but these places are free. Free food. Free Clothing. Free Shelter.

I met another man walking around, nicely dressed with a manila folder. He said he was a economist. He thought I was studying sociology. The guard asked me if I was a social worker, when I said architect he asked me to draw something. The manila folder man also confirmed that during the winter months other cities bus there homeless to LA so they don't have to house them. Tons from NYC, Philly and what not. So come November, we will see an influx of the homeless population in Downtown LA.