ls;fj

1. Paradigm:

The paradigm I am responding to is the general area of body/mind dualism.  Unaware moments of moving through space.  Only noticing the things that obstruct us from what we want.  Allowing the physical to be the means to the end- the end being us achieving a new mental space.  The physical becomes a disembodied (by being so embodied) way of moving from a pre-decided point A to point B.          

My problem worth having: becoming what pushes back against you- losing track, making patterns, forgetting signs. Allowing your environment to move you.  Allowing your boundaries to expand or contract.  A trail obscured, moving inward to disperse outward, falling into/becoming what pushes back.  

Failed tracking devices, subconscious pattern making- the things that grab you, the things that push you.  

2.  Intentions: 

Large scale: translation issues... the ways we inhabit spaces literally and abstractly (Physical movement and also through language/relationships) What does how we move mean?  How could how we move change us?

Becoming what pushes back against you: self and space are fusing.  What we used to call space is now “that which pushes back against us” and what we used to call the self is now that which pushes back against you.    

This project: What speaks loudly in an environment when your natural modes of space meaning-making have been altered?  What communicates back to you, how how?  I intend for people's trajectories through space to snag, falter, and realign by becoming what pushes back against them.

3.  Speech:

I think there is something to be said for being pretty literal about this. I'm working on it. More to come.

4. Action:   

In order to experience this work, people would have to participate on some level.  The levels of mediation are important- writing about the experience, videos, pictures- all the methods of showing somebody else experiencing these things have the potential to be pretty interesting/valuable, but I think ONLY with in combination of the shared vulnerability of participating in making your own meaning.  I think the individual experience is important.  Also, it could start to feel counterproductive/hypocritical really quickly if I were to make a performance about the internal stage and its transformative potentials and ask people to sit in a proscenium arch theater in the dark, staring straight forward with their eyeballs.  The modes of experience are what’s being experimented with, so I think that needs to happen literally.  

Here's some possibilities I'd like to explore: 

Group exploration: people will be guided through a series of exercises in some kind of unfamiliar location. Initially this will happen in an unfamiliar location to most (such as a remote wood or field), and then people will be taken to a gallery or into a crowded area to do the same exercises in different environments. The exercises will primarily be designed to interrupt normal modes of moving through space. Senses would potentially be altered somehow. Bag on head, etc. This would be done in a workshop style in a group, with instructions given by me.

Geocaching: this will be solitary experimentation, with instructions to complete some kind of "task" given on paper or potentially via an iPod or walkman or some shit like that. People will come to the experiment on their own, participate alone, and leave when they are done. There is no record or documentation of their participation.

Viewership: the ideas above, mediated somehow into a more traditional performance. This is potentially the most challenging. Interactive theater comes to mind. How can I move people to move through this traditional mode differently? Bribery. Flattery. Some desire to be included. Make participating more interesting and/or enticing than what they were doing before.

What habits and gestures do these things inspire/need?

5. Livelihood:
Something really interesting about this project is how quickly it begins to necessitate a lifestyle.  While trying to become aware of your body in space in a specific and focused way, my body has become more visible to me all the time.  I am more aware of sore muscles.  I am more aware of eating, and the ways different substances affect me. I am more aware of body alignment.  I am deeply more aware of the tiny movements that make big gestures.  I’m trying not to allow this to turn me into that annoying vegan who’s always talking about posture, but there is a deeper awareness that is impossible to avoid, and I think it would only continue to take root the longer I do these things.  

I imagine these practices would begin to turn into daily or at least very often practices that would happen in the world at large and also in some kind of studio (whether its a dance studio, theater, or parking lot doesn’t really matter, but some kind of space where I can assure myself of relative non-interruption).  I imagine using them as jumping off points into many different kinds of making....

* work with furniture makers. I’m getting increasingly interested in objects that hold weight, and the potential flexibilities they hold. How does tension hold? How are boundaries defined? What pushes back? What expectations are put on the body? On repetition.

* work with engineers. I feel like they would have interesting things to say about becoming what pushes back. How do different substances push?

* work with people who inhabit spaces I want to inhabit. Farmers. City park officials. Etc.

6. Effort:
I want to create openings and opportunities for people to be surprised and led by their own movements.  I want to muddy the waters of the body as a service object that facilitates higher planes of knowing.  Perfection would look like finding ways where people can use their own bodies to confront their ingrained movement tracks and expectations.  Perfection would look like crafting some kind of vehicle where people would be able to/be willing to participate in these things easily.  

7.  Mindfulness: 

these are not all discrete pieces, but things that create a general trajectory.  
I think the trajectory that begins to emerge is one of personal and public practices/exposures beginning to blur.  Exploring these things is a highly personal experience, and the ways in which it moves out towards others seems to be most often an experience of asking other people to participate in highly personal ways, albeit sometimes mediated by other levels of experiencing through empathy (documentation or mediated performance).  BUT!  The real core of this territory demands experience, which is a difficult and exciting thing to ask people to do. WHAT A WEIRD TRANSLATION PROBLEM.  


8. Concentration:
In regards to method of sharing this work: I think the more traditional modes of theater are not relevant to this particular trajectory.  I would like to begin experimenting with combining the performative, the interactive, and the concept of a workshop all into one cohesive unit, which would be able to be create an unstable situation that would be instructive about what is effective.  I think that this is a terrain that is asking for more inhabitants, and that flexibility will be key, as the population of the terrain is wildly variable. and the art begins when people begin to participate.  

8 Question Redo

1. View: 

Paradigms:

Crisis I: Somebody drinks my homemade cider. This is great, they say, how did you make it? I say: with my spit and toe fungus. They spit it out in disgust and get angry.

Crisis II: My old sweet Aunt Betty asks what kind of art I’m making if I’m not painting anymore. We’re at the dinner table. I have no idea how to begin to tell her what I’m doing.

Problems: How do I get people to drink my spit? How can this all be articulated and talked about from every perspective involved (human and non-)?

I’m fighting against a germophobic, communal-phobic paradigm. I’m trying to establish us as strictly communal sites for collaboration, symbiosis, dynamic change. This is implicating the world of microbes, the world of humans, and the world of alcohol production and consumption. These worlds already meet every time we have a glass of wine, but I’m trying to intersect that process, deregulate it, exaggerate it, so that it can be critically and intuitively examined. It’s important that this project not be simply ‘gross’ but compelling—this is why it’s so difficult to talk about, because people get caught up in the grossness of growing microbes from groins, or at least I imagine that they do.

2. Intention:

Explicit: I’m interested in making drinkable fermented beverages using our bodily yeasts as collaborators.

Implicit: I’m interested in creating a culture of general acceptance of our (and each others) communal and plural selves (or maybe it’d be better to say non-selves). I would like to cultivate a practice of thinking of ourselves as communities, ecosystems, flows and movements. This could happen consciously or by trickery.

3. Speech:

Speech is my problem! I don’t know how to do it yet. Not only from my end (how I talk about my project concretely, simply, in a non-jackass way. In a way I think it mostly comes down to letting the ciders/wines do the talking. Drinking as talking. The way I articulate the vision is to create Utopic communal drinks. Simple enough. But then I begin to get lost in to much meta-bologna when I start to articulate philosophy of individuality, symbiosis, agency, body w.o. organs, etc. This is getting better but is taking time (necessarily).

In a sense I have to defend myself against conventions that have to do with bodies, cleanliness and culture. I have to defend myself against scientists who, in the worst (most fruitful) case scenario would say: this is pseudo-science, a willful bending of scientific facts, and also biohazard. I have to defend myself against brewing practices which optimizes, processes, filters, and abstracts alcohol from its vital sources.

4. Action:

Drinking (and all the things that go with it) is the only mode for engagement as a participant.

Brewing (collaborating, chewing, squishing, waiting, setting up environments for other creatures to thrive in for a while) is the mode of making.

5. Livelihood:

I guess I am now a brewer, not an artist. But not a normal one. Like a schizophrenic brewer. Also maybe a lab scientist. But this can just be folded into brewing. But lab science might be  a good way to allocate resources, funding, and materials. Currently I’m working with friends, acquaintances, but could be working with mycologists, microbiologists, and local brewers, archaeologists.

6. Effort:

Perfection looks dirty, tainted and impure… it’s when you and I achieve new microbiota from consuming each other’s microbiota. It also involves a change in perspective, compromises, and complacency.

7. Mindfulness:

The general logic and trajectory is tending toward a world where we can only think, make and evolve by combining ourselves with and implicating other things. We can only do anything with at least one partner.

8. Concentration:

Pragmatically, I really need to know how to selectively grow and propagate yeasts and fungi over bacteria. So I’m concentrating on the laboratory skills more than anything.

form

If the paper form is a system in its own right, a strip that has become curved on itself, something must have caused it to bend. If it is not a living thing, if could not move of its own accord; it must be acted on by a force. This could be provided by a collision with another non-living thing, or by interference from a living thing (me) . Therefore the paper strip can’t be an isolated, unique system. It must be a component of another system. It would remain straight, otherwise.

Are non-living things such as plastic bottles floating in the ocean, or blowing dead leaves isolated systems? These things were produced by living systems, but are not alive. They move, but not of their own accord, so they must be part of the action of a matrix-like system.

If the strip is a living thing, it could move in response to a stimulus, but then it would be a container for smaller systems that keep it alive. I think of seaweed drifting in the tide that has no muscles to move with, but is living, moving in a current,  anchored and made of cells. 

Suppose the strip were modeled on a cross section through a complex graph with many cusps in it, then the form the strip took could remain abstract, determined by numbers, which have no actual form of their own. The strip would be hypothetical, non-living, its shape determined by numbers (which we invented!).Imprisoned in its graph, it could be a  pure form.

Is there a difference between a straight strip and a convoluted strip? They are both strips, so topologically, I don’t think there is. This would be like the difference in form of a donut and a coffee mug: they are both donuts, but one has a big dent in the side.

So if there is no difference between a curved strip and a straight one, could the curved strip be an all inclusive system, alone? Whether it is living and molded by other living things, or non-living and manipulated, the impetus for change doesn’t matter. The form remains.

The questions once again (try 3)

Worldmaking Questions:

Here they are again this time I answered them specific to a planned practice that is meaningful to me.

1. View:

●      What is the big picture? I have been given a lot of resources, How do I share them in a meaningful way. The plan is to create a social public environment for the sharing of knowledge and skills. This will be accomplished by setting up a workstation in a public space with foot traffic. A sign will read something like “I will help anyone make anything” or “I will teach you something if you teach me something.”

●      What is the paradigm (of values) behind it all?  The cash economy certainly works and creates a certain kind of value, but there are many other forms of value and wealth that can be created and shared. Also the sharing of skills is empowering. Finally, I really like people, socializing is one of my favorite hobbies. This would allow me to get my social fix in a productive way.

●      What are the main values that it is in opposition to? Specialized knowledge, social interactions that are mitigated so that the interaction generates revenue for third parties.  

●      What model of action are you using? Action, social dialogue, making.

2. Intention:

●      What is the practice’s concrete intentions? To share skills that I have found to be valuable and enriching to my life. To engage in a process of learning and creativity.

●      What are the practices implicit intentions? Reframing of common space and time spent in it. Instead of a plaza being a place for loitering it becomes a classroom, a productive space. Learning, and the sharing of knowledge and skills can be an community based leisure activity instead of highly individualized and isolating. A stronger smarter community may emerge. Also self-directed skill based learning/making introduces joy to the pursuit of knowledge.

●      How do you differ from the intentions of a single piece and the whole of the practice? Each manifestation would be specific to the social interactions of particular moments. All fall under the overarching framework and intent.

●      3. Speech:

●      What do you need to communicate to allow the work to have a context? The community building intent of the work. I will probably also need to be clear that this is a non-monetary endeavor to avoid licensing hassles etc. Also my station must be approachable. Steve Lambrecht does this well when he does his piece, “I will talk to anyone about anything.” He uses a hand painted sign. The environment must be inviting.

●      What terms and concepts do you have to develop? Articulation. Speak well about what I am doing and in terms that are friendly, inviting and accessible. E.g. It is difficult to be democratic if one sounds authoritative.

●      What spaces of dialog is your work involved in? Public social space specific to the local environment. Pickering square seems like a good place to start.

4. Action:

●      What are the practices associated with the work? Social interaction. Teaching, learning, creativity. Specifics arise with individual requests for making.

●      What are the key actions involved in making the work?  Teaching, interpretation, planning, research, making.

●      5. Livelihood:

●      What are the actual life practices associated with your question? Sit in the square, learn, make things, make friends.

●      How do you make a livelihood? Job through the university and picking up shifts at a group home. If the described practice began to generate more interest, could probably apply for grant funding. This sort of thing is likely to build stronger community/ reduce crime a number of cities will find these kinds of projects. There is probably enough research to make a valid case for funding. It is very important to me that the public can access my service without having to pay – I would probably accept donations or trades but I really want this to be engaging and accessible.

●      Where do you need to work? Pickering square seems good. It is trafficked by the types of people I want to reach. If successful, others will here about it and show up.

●      What does this consist of? See big picture section.  

●      Who are you working with? Whomever wants to work with me (I will reserve the right to refuse to work with anyone though)

6. Effort:

●      Perfection: What does perfection look like in regards to this work? A healthy community where members strive to live as their best selves. In Washington DC there is a drum circle thing that has happened every Sunday in Malcom X park for a number of years. Now Sundays in this park are so much more than drumming – people come to play a variety of games, do yoga have picnics etc. Perfection in my work looks similar: the transformation of unused public space into a social environment for activities and growth. In this ideal situation, the square becomes no longer just about my station but rather spurs involvement of other actors and activities as well.

●      What are you actually striving for? (For the art and in your own life). That will not fit here. If I am strong, diligent and carry through, you may be able to visit me in a decade or so and I will try to show you.

7. Mindfulness:

●      How do make sure all the parts of this practice are part of the same general logic? (It is important to imagine that your thoughts and your actions link up so to speak). Reflection, solicitation of feedback, looking for indicators of success or need for improvement.  

8. Concentration:

●      Where should you locate your effort? (It is easy to shape your practice into existing methodologies but given your problem in a pure state where should you locate your activities -- imagine that it is not in art as we know it...) Everywhere: art is not for museums, it is for living. 

Representations of Memory

I am also updating my eight answers on a continual basis.  My answers are turning into interesting one-way conversations that evolve and change as I go along.  I am thinking I might one day learn to put worry aside so that the possibility of actually living a life that means something to me can have room to breath and grow in. 

Worldmaking Questions: 

Attempt 2 - more specificity with respect to the experiment

1. View:

●      What is the big picture? Performing actions based on a prompt. The intention is to do something new and different from my usual practices to gain a new and broader framework for understanding and acting in the world.

●      What is the paradigm (of values) behind it all?  Grad school, submit to instructor, suspend judgment, observe without allowing things to fall into preexisting modes of understanding.

●      What are the main values that it is in opposition to? Previous way of being in the world where preexisting thought patterns dictate understanding. In the older framework there is little possibility for anything new because outcomes are already in a way anticipated and determined.

●      What model of action are you using? Using a number of chance and linguistic operations to get to somewhere I wouldn’t otherwise explore. Attempting to develop new ways of understanding that are less discreet/ quantified. The goal is rather to understand things as a gradient of known possibilities and allowing the potential for unforeseeable and unknowable possibilities to emerge.

2. Intention:

●      What is the practice’s concrete intentions? Playing with rocks glass and water, trying to use this to get at some sort of sense of ‘breaking like waves.’

●      What are the practices implicit intentions? Doing leads to understanding.

●      How do you differ from the intentions of a single piece and the whole of the practice? Iterative combination of elements.  

●      3. Speech:

●      What do you need to communicate to allow the work to have a context? The difference between say a discreet, binary system of understanding and a more relativistic, wavelike understanding of the world.

●      What terms and concepts do you have to develop? Better articulation. Better understanding and relation to the experience of others – I am finding that it is very difficult to relate or even imagine art as I once did or as the way other people think about it. Perhaps terms that exist with a spectrum of meaning. Linguistic methods that take this into account and allow gradients of meaning to flourish.

●      What spaces of dialog is your work involved in? My studio, our worldmaking class/blog, occasionally I can articulate something sensible to people outside our community, but lately I get stressed out and confused.

4. Action:

●      What are the practices associated with the work? In studio experimentation. Reflection, reframing of worldview.

●      What are the key actions involved in making the work? Combine elements apply wave like energy, do so without thinking too much, follow the process.

5. Livelihood:

●      What are the actual life practices associated with your question?

●      How do you make a livelihood? Aimless experimentation with glass does not equal food or shelter. Maybe this sort of thing could lead to some practical understanding of glasswork or could yield some sort of teaching position.

●      Where do you need to work? A place where the glass won’t hurt anyone else.

●      What does this consist of?

●      Who are you working with? Others in worldmaking class.

6. Effort:

●      Perfection: What does perfection look like in regards to this work? If I had any idea what that would look like…..

●      What are you actually striving for? I don’t know -  if I did I would just end up somewhere I have already been right?

7. Mindfulness:

●      How do make sure all the parts of this practice are part of the same general logic?

8. Concentration:

●      Where should you locate your effort? Myself. I need to find a way to feel less like an emotionally unstable, directionless waste of resources.

8 questions

1. View: Transformation

● What is the big picture? 

How to create transformational devices

Transcendent, multi-sensory communication

● What are the main values it is in opposition to?

Art practice as an isolated, egocentric activity that may not have the capacity for transformation 

● What model of action are you using?

Dovetailing earning a living as an educator with making art in forms that are systematic and have finite time in their production method. The time factor is important for me because I have very little free time. Both practices are transformative and feed each other

research, reading, information gathering, printing, drawing from observation (which helps me understand things) small paintings, making mindfulness manifest in personal actions, re-purposing day to day events so that they can be used for expression. 

2. Intention:

● What is the practice’s concrete intentions? 

Communicating with an audience overtly in an artwork, creating a mental space that allows cognitive associations to develop a sense of transcendency, self and environmental awareness through participating in the artwork.

● What are the practice’s implicit intentions?

To make works that give people a means of becoming something else, of transformational processes, of unawareness crossing a threshold into awareness through interaction with the artwork. To uncover knowledge, to name it, bring about a state of becoming liminal from subliminal

● How do you differ from the intentions of a single piece and the whole of the practice?

Sometimes a single piece is an exploration of a technique, or preparation for a larger body of work. It is part of a general direction of a practice, or it can be a pivot point, a process where a new direction is taken.

3. Speech

● What do you need to communicate to allow the work to have a context?

I see each work as a teaching and learning juxtaposition. This is not to say I am doing the teaching. I am creating circumstances for transformation by presenting an artwork that is directed at particular understandings. The audience is teaching itself and brings its own set of experiences and filters to bear on the work and learns new ways to change awareness of them as they experience the work.  I don’t expect people to always understand the paradigm within which I work, but by scaffolding ideas on what is already known, I can perhaps help shift understandings. 

To provide context is therefore to explain the paradigm of the work and help make it accessible for consideration. Either the paradigm has to be so simple it can be immediately accessed by an audience experiencing the artwork, or it needs an explanation, especially if symbolic imagery is used. 

To communicate with an audience requires a coherent body of work to consider.

● What terms and concepts do you have to develop?

I need to articulate my practice better, and not just to remind myself that it exists and needs frequent re-assessment. To be able to describe it in a persuasive and concise way to people who might wish to participate in it would be helpful. If I am to collaborate, or locate helpful people, then common language must be found, or a personal dictionary written for translation.

● What spaces of dialog is your work involved in?

The space of consciousness of each viewer of the artwork, and a physical space in which the ideas are located. 

My practice is a system of spaces, each filled with a stock of knowledge, emotions, practical skills, life experiences, interests, livelihood, histories, and evidence.

4. Action:

● What are the practices associated with the work? (The practices of engagement,

i.e. “Viewing” the work). 

Work is seen as a a way of showing aspects of the human condition, of becoming transformed, transcendent. This is not a religious process for me, but making ineffable things effable, if not in words then by other sensory means.

● What are the key actions involved in making the work?

Printmaking, painting, photography, 3D forms, perhaps making an installation to put them in to create an environment of sensory and intellectual discovery, film, writing

5. Livelihood:

● What are the actual life practices associated with your question?

I make art in ways that mesh with earning a living by other means. While this takes away necessity of selling work, and allows freedom from economic worry, it might take away the urgency and depth of intent that a person earning their livelihood from art might have. I feel that things are off balance in this regard and have to work very hard to correct this i.e. find more time. On the other hand, it gives me daily work that I value very much, and which often gives inspiration to art practice.

I have always been mindful of living in an ethical way: Raising our own food (not any more), living without electricity (we have it now), home schooling kids and having them born at home, helping to start a school, taking care of both parents with dementia and cancer, etc. This has left little time to be an epic art maker, but has given me a huge incentive to make up for lost time.

● How do you make a livelihood? see #7

● Where do you need to work?

To earn money, see #7. For food, in the garden, for anything else, in my studio, my computer, kitchen table, in my classroom, local woods

● What does this consist of?

● Who are you working with?

Alone right now, but have been making mental lists of all the people I know who can help me do stuff

6. Effort:

● Perfection: What does perfection look like in regards to this work?

Several pieces of work that are coherent, aligned and transformative. Large silver blobs that reflect the people looking at them, mazes, a rack and thumb screws.

● What are you actually striving for? (For the art and in your own life).

Communication, acceptance, balance, community. Producing work, enough work that I feel I have something to show someone. 

Simple, elegant solutions to making art and earning a living that offer every day things for closer inspection, and hint at transformation, Utopia, the sublime.

7. Mindfulness:

● How do you make sure all the parts of this practice are part of the same general logic? (It is

important to imagine that your thoughts and your actions link up so to speak). 

I am very fortunate to have a job in which for the most part I have a great time helping kids to study their favorite topics of the moment, make art, ask questions, and share love of learning about things. It can be exhausting keeping up with students’ energy, but also inspirational. As their teacher, and role model, I am always conscious of living up to the high standards of ethics that I expect of them and try to help them develop. A flaw in this is that my job eats up a lot of time that could be spent making artworks for a wider audience. 

8. Concentration:

● Where should you locate your effort? (It is easy to shape your practice into existing

methodologies but given your problem in a pure state where should you locate your

activities -- imagine that it is not in art as we know it

Illustrating interactions of things; I think I am a systems thinker (re: Danella Meadows), and this concept is a huge attraction for me. To be systematic and see a an artwork as not just a whimsical creative process, but a collection of activities that work in concert to make it effective makes the task of actually making the work seem more feasible.

Heath Robinson mechanisms, self-perpetuating environments such as hives, bureaucracies with intriguing new rules, networks of transparent hoses filled with colored dyes, algae etc flowing into one another, compost heaps, model houses with strange interiors and strange structures and perhaps aliens living in them, miniature theater installations, smooth sculptural surfaces, re-purposing every day events.

Ben's Eight Questions (so far)

1. View:

The Big Picture is where alcohol production/consumption and microbiology meet… the meeting place implicates evolutionary process, symbiosis, intoxication, dialogues, drinking, interspecies bodies, metabolic processes, etc. The main values it’s in opposition to include innate material, nature culture dualism, and the individual self. I’m using intoxication as an allure to consume other people’s symbiotic microbial flora.


2. Intention:

The concrete intentions are to use bodily microflora to brew ciders that are then intended to be drunk. The implicit intentions are to redefine what a body is, how we are constituted (in and of ourselves) by populations, and how we are not only inside an ecology but are an ecology.

3. Speech:

In order to communicate clearly, I have to make something completely unappetizing and perceived as potentially dangerous totally normal and benign. Yeasts aren’t harmful but other culture grown from body parts have potential to be. So my job is to remove yeast from body parts (feet, armpits, groins) and other cultures (streptococcus for example) in order to use them to brew. Concepts I have to develop run oppose our germophobic culture. Spaces of dialogue include science, art, and drunken ramblings.

4. Action:

Drinking, brewing, plating.

5. Livelihood:

A lab is where I need to work as opposed to a studio. Maybe a kitchen. I don’t need an actual biology lab because the techniques I’m using aren’t that complicated or expensive. Sterility is the only real issue. My livelihood is isolating cultures, brewing, sharing.

6. Effort:

Perfection would be the most optimal-tasting yeast that comes from the most undesirable part of a stranger’s body. I’m striving for not only a rethinking of what it means to live (i.e. always symbiotically an collectively) but also an ethics and politics that can be derived from this.

7. Mindfulness:

I get carried away with metaphorical / poetic / philosophical implications of work often before it even happens, so I think I have to follow actual physical process in this project to avoid that problem… that’s especially relevant right now because I happen to be rather lost as to what my most important problems actually are. In a way I have to let the yeast’s metabolic processes do my thinking.

8. Concentration:

I’m locating my efforts of making in an interspace between art and lab science. I’m not sure where I’m locating the sharing aspect of this work as a final piece. Obviously not in a gallery nor a ‘bar’. So far it’s been intimate conversations between friends over quarts of cider… I’m happy with this for the moment.

Trying to have a problem...

Worldmaking Questions:


1. View:
·    What is the big picture? Memories can be linked and indexed so as to preserve their integrity, they can exist as fragmented shards that float on surfaces depending upon what they're suspended in.  A memory can come to us for study, when they do, we're not sure where they came from or what they mean, these are issues that are interpretable and impressionable, and depend greatly upon the the context in which they're being studied in.

·    What is the paradigm (of values) behind it all?

Memories are worth, preserving, maintaining access to, opening up for sharing with others and that we need not be present when this happens.  The importance of the accuracy of memory can vary depending upon the outcomes such accuracy will affect.  We need, therefore, to understand better what memories are, where the come from, how stable they are and what they can and cannot do.

·    What are the main values that it is in opposition to?

Keeping memories in such a state that they don’t survive, aren’t shared, are misinterpreted, misunderstood, relied on to much, not enough, not at all, internal only vs. external possibly, interpreted or re-lived by one instead of many, that memories exist only within the past and there isn’t a way to affect change in them. 


·    What model of action are you using?

I am thinking about ways of understanding memories and the context of where they exist and how an understanding of memory might be important to us in ways that we don't currently understand.  Sometime I do this by indexing through linkages and setting them adrift from their originator, but I also write them down and create art from them and then live in that art so that I can understand the memory better, I communicate my knowledge of memories to others, I speak with other professionals who work with memory, I seek out new life forms on other planets and ask questions about Einstein and Carl Yung.  I dream about trees.  I study tree rings as indexes to weather, farming, forestry, lumber, economy and industry. 


2. Intention:
·    What is the practices concrete intentions? To preserve and link memories, to make them accessible to us all for possible collaboration
·    What are the practices implicit intentions? To share lifetime narratives, to allow others input into our memories, to gain a better understanding of how memories, depending upon how they’re suspended, can become weak or fragile
·    How do you differ from the intentions of a single piece and the whole of the practice? A single act serves a limited purpose for a smaller number or people, the whole of the practice teaches others the value or memory, how to collaborate within an enivirnment where memories are shared

·    3. Speech:

·    What do you need to communicate to allow the work to have a context? The possibilities of how we can share and access memories is changing and participation is invited
·    What terms and concepts do you have to develop? Terms for environments where memories can be shared and accessed, terms to describe processes for interacting with memories that are external, terms that describe processes of linking to a memory
·    What spaces of dialog is your work involved in? Work space is a place where dialogues can begin and be carried on, picked up from, reviewed, revisited, collaborated on, perhaps there would be supplemental materials to guide us, therapeutic artwork books, life story libraries both on line and in physical form

4. Action:
·    What are the practices associated with the work? (The practices of engagement, i.e. “Viewing” the work). Demonstration, discussion, invitation, outreach
·    What are the key actions involved in making the work? Recollecting, recording, publishing, linking, sharing, responding, joining, asking, teaching, reflecting

5. Livelihood:
·    What are the actual life practices associated with your question? Linking people to memory collaboration centers
·    How do you make a livelihood? Membership fees, contribution, donation and grant
·    Where do you need to work? Potentially anywhere, libraries, record halls, in a computing cloud
·    What does this consist of? Forming collaborative environments and assisting in their administration and functionality
·    Who are you working with? School age and beyond, students, teachers, the curious, the wounded, the lost, the curious, families, veterans, genealogists

6. Effort:
·    Perfection: What does perfection look like in regards to this work? Perfection to me would look like resolution of unanswered questions, reacquainting people with memories and people, new understandings and appreciation for memories,
·    What are you actually striving for? (For the art and in your own life). Collaborative environments that work to preserve and share in personal memories

7. Mindfulness:
·    How do make sure all the parts of this practice are part of the same general logic? (It is important to imagine that your thoughts and your actions link up so to speak). I seek feedback, input, revisit key goals frequently, re-evaluate my progress frequently, reaccess outcomes,

8. Concentration:
·    Where should you locate your effort? (It is easy to shape your practice into existing methodologies but given your problem in a pure state where should you locate your activities -- imagine that it is not in art as we know it...) A public forum, a publically available space, open environments, learning conducive, inviting and easily navigable

Iain's Worldmaking Questions:

These questions made me think quite a bit. I know my answers are pretty vague but my practice is so broad it is difficult to speak about it as a whole in more precise terms. Feel free to ask me about specific cases and I can explain how they fit.

1. View:

●      What is the big picture? Live life well and in alignment with a set of evolving values.

●      What is the paradigm (of values) behind it all?  A set of ethics derived from empathy and introspection. I am attempting to better understand the systems affected by my living, and my participation in them.

●      What are the main values that it is in opposition to? I find many current elements within society as unethical and in a sense my activities can be seen as ‘in opposition to’ however in many of the areas that I am working it is not useful to think of things as ‘opposed.’ Opposition tends to cause things to become rigid; if one is trying to offer the possibility of alternative values it is best to do so in a way that does not solidify existing ones.

●      What model of action are you using? Action, living. My thinking and values can be seen reflected in many (although certainly not all) of my actions. As an example, a significant amount of thought goes even into little things; for example the way in which I throw out a bag of rotten vegetables is something that reflects years of thinking, moral and even spiritual beliefs. One’s life is one’s art. This is not about a mode of action or a practice within a discipline.

2. Intention:

●      What is the practice’s concrete intentions? The concrete intentions are to build new ways of living. It is intended that these will function within the current social paradigm yet offer a different possibility of human existence. One that is (mostly) comfortable and worth living and also less detrimental to the other living things of this world.

●      What are the practices implicit intentions? That there is some benefit to making a new way of living. Maybe this notion is wrong, perhaps everything is perfect already (although I know many who would disagree).

●      How do you differ from the intentions of a single piece and the whole of the practice? Each piece reflects a moment in the larger practice. It can be seen as representative of the thinking of that time as such the intentions in individual pieces may vary from the overarching goal. There is coherence though: if one were to imagine these actions as plotted out, one could probably make out some pattern with a standard deviation about some midpoint.

●      3. Speech:

●      What do you need to communicate to allow the work to have a context? The specifics of my rationale and the situations in which the work arises. Without these it may be difficult to see how or why the works arose from my framework.

●      What terms and concepts do you have to develop? Better articulation. Terms and contexts must be gleaned from the language of the people one is trying to talk to. Try using Deleuze’s language around my neighbors in Milford and see how far you get. Most people can listen and can understand, but you have to speak the right language and present in the proper way.

●      What spaces of dialog is your work involved in? Most places I am in or around. A whole bunch of places that I am also not. Even small daily purchases can have global effects.

4. Action:

●      What are the practices associated with the work? (The practices of engagement, i.e. “Viewing” the work). Some of my works are more conventional ‘art’ pieces. You look at them, you go home. A larger number are about lived experience. I climb on a building, if you come along for the ride, you get to be on top of the building too. The world is my playground, it can be your playground too.

●      What are the key actions involved in making the work? Too varied to fit here…

5. Livelihood:

●      What are the actual life practices associated with your question? Wise resource use. Good relations with those around me. Betterment of self. Many prayers of thanks. These are just a few. A great variety emerges as I go, but they are highly circumstantial.

●      How do you make a livelihood? Work in ways aligned with ethics. Provide quality work. Do not spend disproportionate amount of time earning abstract things from abstract work. This is only possible for me now from some stroke of luck that I was able to pursue my education in the way that I did. In many ways it is difficult to have a choice in the work that one does.

●      Where do you need to work? Ideally somewhere that I can get under my own power; walk, bike etc. Ideally some place where I feel OK with the larger consequences of my work.

●      What does this consist of? Circumstantial. Right now for my official ‘jobs’ I take care of people with mental illness and work for the art department. However in Maine there is the wonderful possibility of piecing together one’s livelihood from multiple sources. Here too there is the possibility for non-monetary exchange as a way of meeting needs.  

●      Who are you working with? I work with such a variety of people it is probably easiest to describe them as those who are geographically or technologically proximal.

6. Effort:

●      Perfection: What does perfection look like in regards to this work? A healthy community where members strive to live as their best selves. They think carefully about their way of being and live well with all around them.

●      What are you actually striving for? (For the art and in your own life). That will not fit here. If I am strong, diligent and carry through, you may be able to visit me in a decade or so and I will try to show you.

7. Mindfulness:

●      How do make sure all the parts of this practice are part of the same general logic? (It is important to imagine that your thoughts and your actions link up so to speak). I agonize over this regularly. Looking back at previous works and writing I have noticed a some consistency however whether I have had any real effects at my goal are doubtful.

8. Concentration:

●      Where should you locate your effort? (It is easy to shape your practice into existing methodologies but given your problem in a pure state where should you locate your activities -- imagine that it is not in art as we know it...) Everywhere: art is not for museums, it is for living.