My dear ITP friend, Stefanie has left New York to work in Sweden. I’m sure she loves this exciting new chapter in her life but I can also imagine it being difficult. To cheer her up, I wanted to send her an interesting care package. I remember a while back I saw on the Makezine.com blog of a guy who made drawings using the postal service. I’m also inspired by Ray Johnson’s correspondence artwork and Tristan Perich’s drawing machine. So, I decided I wanted to make a drawing for Stefanie. A week later, she sent me a picture of the results.
Making this drawing machine reminded me of programming. each color pencil had a behavior that was dictated on it’s placement. A random variable of how the box was shaking created the random strokes. I’m pleasantly surprised with the final outcome. Originally I wanted to place another paper mask layer with a cut out so that when you remove the mask it would onlly show the markings within the cut out hole of the mask. I have a couple friends I want to send drawings to, so I will post the results.
I also made her a video of New York and Brooklyn. here is the video below.
So we had a meeting early this week with the Fivers in New York City to brainstorm possible project ideas. I personally like the idea of coming up with ideas the day of, but Rob Faludi who worked on the 7-in-7 project recommended to come up a few ideas beforehand. So here are a few ideas I’ve come up with that would be interesting to work on next week. The TeleForensic Art with Stella is the only definite project since I had to schedule with her in advanced. Stella and I are collaborating on a project but we are in two different countries, 12-hour time zone apart, so it was crucial to work out a tenative place to meet online. The description to the projects and the rest of my ideas are listed below.
TeleForensic Art (with Stella): “Forensic art is a law enforcement artistic technique used in the identification, apprehension, or conviction of wanted persons.” Stella and I will choose a person, take a photo of them (for documentation) and then describe the person’s facial features through instant message chat for the other person to draw. If time permits, I’m interested in creating a time-lapse of the drawing with the messages appearing as subtitles.
Tape Art: Create a 3D “wire frame” using tape and found materials. I will also create a time-lapse video for documentation. This project is an exploration of spacial design.
East Fort Greene T-shirts: Gentrifying BedStuy Movement: Design and create East Fort Greene silk-screened T-shirts to promote gentrification in the BedStuy area. This project was inspired from the re-branding of neighborhoods to gentrify poor and unsafe neighborhoods by associating the area to another prospering area (i.e. East Williamsburg is the rebranding of Bushwick). Effects of such re-branding of neighborhoods can be found on Craigslist’s apartment section where listings are purposely miscategorized in the hope to get ignorant apartment hunters to come visit the location. I want to create awareness t-shirts to see BedStuy re-branded to East Fort Greene. T-shirts will be silk-screened and given to BedStuy proper residents.
Performance: I Need Music Lessons: Possible idea. I am interested in the idea of “begging for music lessons” as a performance. I don’t know if I should have a sign asking for money for lessons or just asking for music lessons. I will be trying to play the guitar (never played in my life.) in the hopes that someone would stop and teach me how to play a simple song.
I have been creatively drained and quite unmotivated to start on any personal projects so far. The job hunt is the only major thing on my plate so time is not really an issue. Luckily, my ITP mate, Vikram decided to setup a group project called 5-in-5, where each member will produce 1 project each day for 5 days. 5-in-5 was initially inspired by 7-in-7 started by ITP resident researchers. They setup a 7-in-7 blog to document there process throughout the week and showcase their creative endeavors.
I’m excited to work with 10 other ITPers and see how they deal with the creative process in such a tight time constraint. I have no idea how I will approach this project but not too concerned since I often have to deal with tight timelines at work. Another interesting creative project is the ongoing Create-A-Day blog. Although kind of on the craft-side of things, I find it quite motivating with the idea to make something on regularly basis.
Awhile back someone forwarded me an article of an interesting talk by Ira Glass on creative work. He talks about a period of time where many creative people give up because what they create does not measure up to their expectations. So the 5-in-5 projects for me is a way to push through a body of work, to get to a point where I am satisfied with the output.
As the saying goes, “Better late than never.” Oscar Torres and I made the trek up to Adams, Massachusetts to the Greylock Arts gallery a few minutes after the last visitors left and the door about to close. We ran into unfortunate traffic and icy weather conditions that kept us from making it up on time but arrived to welcoming arms of gallery owners: Marianne Petit and Matt Belanger. We headed up to see ITP’s own Todd Holoubek: “Everyone Wins (Hoora! Hoora! Hoora!)” exhibition. Even pulling up to the front windows of Greylock Arts we could see part of an illuminating image of the sun through the glass doors and small shining lights suspended in the window front (Saddest Light). Once we entered into the gallery space, I felt I was immersed by seemingly familiar objects (not only because I have seen most of Todd’s work from taking his physical computing class) at first glance but once you take a closer look you realize it is not what you expected. The Meat Clock below is part of a three clock series where each clock is representing how countries describe the different cuts of a cow. The clock below is how the United States names the different cuts of a cow and the other clock are England and New Delhi.
Todd was gracious enough to give Oscar and I a personal tour of each of his art pieces and shared stories associated with them.
I took some great video of Todd’s stories. Afterwards, we ate like kings. Marianne’s lasagna was so delicious that Oscar and I had to get seconds and the assorted sweets was a great way to end a long day. Many thanks to John Schimmel and Jeff Grey for letting me hitch a ride back to New York City. We had to drop the car off at JFK International so I had the opportunity to ride for the first time the AirTrain, an automated train line that connected to the Long Island Railroad and MTA subway station, which gave a great view on my way back to Manhattan.
For detailed information about Todd’s exhibition at Greylock Arts check out: www.greylockarts.net/everybody-wins.
