Do you even know

Do you even know - Adam Farcus, Created by members of the University of St. Francis woman's volleyball team: Ashley Richards, Jazzmyne Robbins, Laura Shain, & Ashley Thompson (acrylic and spray paint on canvas) 2' x 2', 2012

Andre

MCA artist guided tour with 7 1st graders today:

(all of the students are sitting on the Carl Andre piece)
me - are we now part of the art?
all students - yes!
me - ok, can we make a circle around the art now?
(students circle around the Andre)
me - are we still part of the artwork?
student - yes because we're thinking and talking about it

Carl Andre - Zinc Lead Plain (zinc and lead) 1969

@)>-%---

per Hennessy Youngman's video about curators:

Adam Farcus - A Flower for Nat (Youtube comment and digital image) 2012

 

[watch the video here]

ideal vs real

Weltschmerz; noun
\VELT-shmairts\

1. mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state
2. a mood of sentimental sadness

The Man Comes Around (prep)

names

blame

same

down

around

up

sup

cup

ground

around

pipers

signin'

kettledrum

cryin'

dyin'

come

tree

wick

tree

pricks

shalom

home

throne

crowns

around

still

still

still

down

around

pipers

signin'

kettledrum

cryin'

dyin'

come

tree

wick

tree

pricks

pound

around

Adam Farcus - Scare Eyes (collage) 2011 

[preparatory collage and color scheme for a sculpture. also, reference to the title and words above]

On the road beside it, BLOOD.

    FADE IN:

1    EXT. THE EMPTY STREET OF A CITY - DAY

No people. A FEW CARS AND TRUCKS are parked at odd angles, abandoned.
A TITLE FADES IN, one phrase at a time.

FIVE YEARS...
SINCE THE DEAD FIRST WALKED.

2    EXT. THE CITY - DAY

We hear THE SOUND OF A STRONG WIND. DEBRIS flutters through the streets. A LARGE ALLIGATOR slithers into frame, stops and looks around.

MONTAGE: as MORE GATORS explore the empty streets, knocking over GARBAGE CANS, upsetting the MANNEQUINS in A DEPARTMENT STORE WINDOW. A GATOR crawls out through the open doors of AN ABANDONED BANK. LOOSE BILLS are dragged along under the animal's tail. They flutter away on the WIND.

3    EXT. THE CITY - DAY

GATORS crawl over A '79 CADELLIC. A FEMALE SKELETON sits slumped over the steering wheel. In the back a BABY'S BONES are strapped into AN INFANT'S SAFETY SEAT. One of the gators THUMPS its tail maddeningly against the windshield. ANOTHER TITLE APPEAR:

FLORIDA - 1987

4    EXT. THE CITY - DAY

CLOSE ON A SECTION OF PAVEMENT as we hear THE SOUND OF SLUGGISH FOOTSTEPS approaching. A SHADOW appears at the bottom of the frame. It gets longer and takes on the shape of a man.

TIGHT ON THE AFTERNOON SUN, blinding us. Into the FOREGROUND lurches THE FIGURE which cast the shadow. Glare obscures all facial detail until the head jogs into position directly in front of the fiery ball in the sky. Then we see its hideous, dead eyes, its blue-grey colour, the blackened wound where a large portion of jaw has been ripped away. This is a ZOMBIE! A MUSIC CHORD SOUNDS and THE MAIN TITLE
APPEARS:

DAY OF THE DEAD
 

28 Weeks Later script

job stuff

like a fucking champ. i applied to 2 teaching jobs this morning (U. of Montevallo and Bellevue U.). i've done 9 in the past few weeks, with 5 more (currently) left to do. LA (for CAA), hopefully here i come!!

unseasonably warm

been hearing, and thinking of, this term a lot recently.

Library of the Human Genome, the best conceptual poem evar!

i found these images of this after looking for a published (as .pdf) version of the whole human genome online. such things do kinda exist, but they involve .tar and .fa files, and programs that i don't have - or care to get. you can find it here: http://hgdownload.cse.ucsc.edu/downloads.html#human

i was looking to find the whole code to use it for a project, but then i found that it was first printed and is currently installed at the Wellcome Collection in London. for me, this set of books is a better project than could ever be made. let me explain: we have decoded our genes to get a better understanding of how we, humans, work. scientists have identified many genes that explain our traits, evolution, and ailments (mutations, syndromes, cancers, etc). this knowledge is then used to inform modern science and medicine. this re-application of this data by scientists is what makes this research applicable and relevant to our lives. but, this bookshelf is only raw data - a huge sequence of letters. this data can't be read, especially by visitors to this collection. thereby these books don't hold transparent language that tells us something about ourselves, but holds an opaque depiction of how we are trying to further understand ourselves. and in a way, that is a failure. for most people the experience of 'reading' these books must be about only the process of it's creation. this is why i believe that this library is one of the best uncreative pieces of writing... ever. (Kenny Goldsmith eat your heart out!)

the first printed copy of the Human Genome (displayed at the Wellcome Collection, London)

detail of ASCL1 (Achaete-scute complex-like 1)

i still wanted to add (through further mediation) to this discussion, so i created another piece based on this transcription of our DNA. the following is two excerpts from a 2,451 page (printed) text piece called human_genome_map.jpg.

the excerpts are shown here as images because the text, when pasted into blogger, goes kinda crazy. to make this, i saved an image (human_genome_map.jpg) of the human genome from a Google search, changed the file extension from .jpg to .txt, opened the file in Microsoft Word, and saved it as a .doc - the final piece. interestingly, at the very beginning of the file you can read a bit of the code - it says "file written by Photoshop 5.0". in this piece there is a fairly straightforward conversation about coding, legibility, and language.

Hexes

i photographed the first of these hexes along RT 14 between Harvard, IL and Beloit, WI (there were many more that i need to go back for). the last one is from outside Coal City, IL - specifically at the intersection of RT 113 and Jugtown Rd.

details of the 4 hexes

New Year Dérive

"The revolutionary transformation of the world, of all aspects of the world, will confirm all the dreams of abundance."

-Guy Debord, 1955

Guy Debord - The Naked City

last night i played games till 2, then danced till 4...awesome. this morning i went to a coffeeshop. i was reading through chapter 2, "Language as Material", from Kenneth Goldsmith's Uncreative Writing, when i came across an idea [below] that can solve a project/assignment problem that i will encounter in the coming spring semester of Intro to Drawing: we can't do our outdoor (city) dérives when it is cold.

Moved indoors, branding has its own psychogeographic typography. [Matt Siber's] Untitled #3 shows a drug store display, scrubbed of its texts. Here packaging, with a slant toward natural beauty, sets the structure and tone of the work.

 Matt Siber - Untitled #3, 2002

 from this, the plan is to get a college van and bring my drawing class to the Louis Joliet Mall to execute our dérives. during prior in-class dérives in downtown Joliet the students have document "the appealing or repelling character of certain places." [or things] (Debord, from The Introduction of a Critique of Urban Geography) in text. this text then takes final form in another Situationist International form, graffiti. the final collaborative piece resembles concrete (pardon the pun) poetry and Siber's text erasure pieces.

documentation of the Fall 2011 Introduction to Drawing dérive graffiti

the final piece(s) of the mall dérive will probably not be graffiti, but a discussion around each or our lists/poems/maps. to test this out i went to CVS and did an in-store dérive. below are the results.

Essance
High Life
19.9
HEAT
AZO
VSFlu
ets. 1837
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Ο
WOW!
5
grey felt squares
orange crush
sun drop
Congclados
b    2x
"I can see so clearly"
rum
Beauty
Implements
93930G790957
09/09/10
red $5
poofs
blackhawks
wisk
bounce
gain
purey
boost
fantastik
horizontal teal stripes
bones
bolts
car cigarette lighter light-up angel
nut
only
sweet peas
fire
AMEREX
AtoZ
blood pressure test 
(1)
say it with flowers
-4-
-5-
-6-