Green Bean Audio Project

Okay, you made it this far, go with me just a little farther. You need to be sitting in the chair on the riser, facing the window. Not the first one up against the glass but the second table back.

Those people won't be outside. It's okay.

 If you can’t get the seat it’s okay but understand that the orientation for the project is from that vantage point.

Click the link to access the audio.

This project was, to say the least, frustrating. The pileup of technical problems had me hateing life for a time. The poster was to be bold and eye catching and, much to my chagrin, entirely computer generated. I am not a computer person. Really. Not at all. So in the spirit of fair play I would like to thank the team of people that made this possible. Todd, without the mic and your skill with all things computers the audio portion of the project might never have been done. Mel, your ability to spot my idiotic mistakes and technological follishness saved me in many ways. Morgan, you found tumblr and shared with all of us. And last but not least, Lee, you assigned the project and remained patient and understanding as well as being a huge help along the way. Thanks go out to all of you. Also, a special thanks to the Green Bean for being there and having internet access for the price of a cup of coffee. They don’t know about the project yet, but I’m guessing they will. I couldn’t have done this without all of you. That being said, none of these people have heard the audio. That was all me. So if you hate it, blame me.

The idea for the work was kind of a flash out of the blue. The assignment was to create an audio file that referenced this specific spot. It was kind of open ended. I decided to go with the various stories of relationships that I found out about or already knew that crossed paths with this location. Since Iwas confined to the spot none of the stories are complete. You only get the parts that you could observe from this chair. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the result. The rest of this post will be about the process of creating the project and is mostly for Lee and my class mates. It will probobly be dull, you have been warned.

I decided to go streamlined. Nothing but my voice. The surreal nature of the concept, I thought, would be muddied by other sound. The recording process and learning curve were kind of steep. Our in class experiments with recording to a video camera and isolating the sound were informative but cumbersome. It seemed like extra work. When I had a chance to look at Audacity (open-source recording software) I decided I wanted to use that instead. With the aquisition of a microphone I was off and running. Once the scripting was done I recorded and realized I had way too much material. Running over 10 minutes and spanning 300 years was too much. I cut all of the historical references and focused on the personal stories. The revision ran just under 7 minutes and that seemed okay to me. My first tech glitch was with exporting the file from Audacity. It would not create an MP3 without an add on. This was overcome by simply importing the WAV file into I-Tunes and doing a simple conversion. That took me a long time to figure out though (about a day). Once I had my MP3 I went to load it onto wordpress, the system rejected it and after about 20 minutes of searching I found out that you have to pay $20 to load audio onto this site. Not having $20, I began looking for places to host the audio that I could link to. I came up with nothing. Todd found a business site for hosting downloadable audio that would have worked but didn’t allow streaming. Morgan told me about tumblr and I was again on the path to completion. With the site running and a link established (after much complication and wrangling) I thought I had my audio online. I was wrong. It was there but I was the only person who could listen to it. Thanks to Mel, the problem was discovered and the audio is now live.

The poster was less exciting. My original concept was for something much cooler looking than the finnished work. After doing some prelim scetches I realized that, while the thing would look good, it was completely useless. The image was too busy and too garbled to be an effective poster. Too bad too, I wrote all this stuff about the quantum theory of time and was going to use transparent lettering to create a background with a picture of the space and all of the headings and info top and bottom. It just didn’t grab my attention when I looked at it. I thought it would blend into the pile of posters and flyers all over the places where you can put these things. I reconsidered. In the end I decided to make the poster as streamlined as the audio. Stark black and white with a bold green border. I am counting on the text to actually draw people in to listen. I really hope it works.

A Brave New World…

So we begin, out and about in the big bad city. Last bit of work was a bit weird. We get to class and Lee tells us we are going to be catching a bus to downtown where we will be working on a bit of reality hacking. That’s not what he calls it of course. It’s an observational project in which we use line (drawn with chalk) to accent or complete the world we see. Much of the class has a great time with the thing, myself included. We split up into groups of two (or pairs if you prefer) and venture off to essentially perform acts of school sanctioned temporary vandalism all over the surrounding area. The line thing I get, but what the hell is up with the pigeons? “What pigeons”, you ask? The one he had us build out of a certain local, conservative, weekly newspaper (and I use the term loosely) that identifies itself with a different animal all together and tape. I would show you pictures but our illustrious leader did not see fit to inform us ahead of time that we were going to be doing this, as such, I had no camera and am now at his mercy for getting pics posted. With luck, I’ll have some soon.

Okay, to amend the post, we have at this point done some of the things that Lee was talking about. The weather has been less than favorable this spring so I think some of the plans got modified. We spent some time in class discussion about the Dada movement, yes actual book learning, and had a couple of really good talks. Moving on, we then went in for theft. Okay, borrowing really. We went around the studio art building and procured doorstops whether they were in use or not. We then redecorated them and returned them to the places we found them. Lots of good ideas in the class, one or two birds, a wedge of swiss cheeze, and my group who collectivly had their minds in te gutter that day and collaged ours with text out of a “Cosmo” magazine. Yep, all the sex quizes and articles about STD’s. We laughed our asses off the whole time. It was a one day in class project so I have no pictures but if you happen to see a brightly colored doorstop we probobly did it.

The doorstop thing lead into yet another really good class discussion about subversion in art and the idea that art students used to do a whole lot more challenging of the status quo than is allowable now. This class is starting to feel like a class.

So the thing that I do have some pictures of came next. The idea is simple. We went to the library, randomly picked three books, literally judging them by the cover, and composed collage insterts for the books. The works were to be thematically linked to the content of the books. We, of course, had no clue what Lee was up to when he had us get the books. Here are mine.

The first one happens to be my favorite. It includes text from the book in english, german and greek and also gives a hint to the other two books with collages in them. The library catalogue numbers are spliced in with the text. Of course the images are fun, all works I’ve studied this semester in anchient art history. The book was a study of an anchient Greek poet so I included works that he would probobly recognize.

The secod is much lighter fare. The book itself was one on logic. The kind where nothing makes sense outside of the acedemic circles that actually read stuff like that. I chose to include a bit of humor. Not my best collage ever but not the worst either.

My last book was a history of the circus age in america. I redid the cover and used only elements from the book to make the collage. The book in the collage is not a history of Mr. Darks Carnival. If any of you are Ray Bradbury fans you know the story. If any of you are readers and unfamiliar with Bradbury, go directly to the bookstore. You are missing out.

The only other thing that I can think of that we hit on during this leg of our adventures with Lee was the Now&Later fiasco. We were told to go to this local convenience store and buy the afore mentioned candy from one of the proprieters. The problem was, every time I went in there the person we were supposed to be buying from wasn’t there. The one time I did catch her working they were out of the freaking candy. It turns out not to matter because this one never went anywhere. We got sucked into the whole Green Bean thing and never looked back.

Do you hear what I hear?

Another observational assignment, I’ll be interested to see where this one goes. We have been told that the part of the semester where we get to sit around and work is over and that from now on we can expect to be going out into the community and doing projects in public. Our warm-up was this; Go to Tate St. and find a place to sit for 30 minutes and observe, as intensly as possible, your surroundings. We could draw or write as we saw fit but it must be only 30 minutes. I have a good brain for remembering images based on words so I chose to write. We also had to limit our observations to the sheet of paper with the assignment printed on it. Here it is.

I spy something...caffeinated.

I’m not going to tell you what my observations were. You can attempt to decipher them for yourself. I can tell you that there was a redhead involed and art being screwed in to the ceiling. I will say that I tend to observe intensly all of the time so going out and really pushing my ablity to do so was, by the end of 30 minutes, very uncomfortable for a true introvert. Just to give a chance to read some of what I wrote, here’s a cropped image.

Did you get all that?

L.H.O.O.Q. it’s not.

Spring break arrives. I had a lovely time, working on various projects at home and resting up. Lee wanted to keep things light over the break so he assigned something simple. Or so he thought. We were to find a 2D readymade. Something that we found compelling and visually stimulating. As I have mentioned, I’m a sculpture major. I find 2D images static and thin for the most part. I decided to spend the week looking for an interesting metallic object that displays one of my favorite accidentally beutiful patterns. Galvanization. The plating put on steel through a chemical plating process to prevent rust. I know, I know total snooze, right? Well if you don’t know what youre looking at I guess it might be. I am a metals guy, so I love it. The pattern on galvanized is essentially a blown up look at the microscopic crystalline structure of metal. It shows, big as life, the inner workings of metal. Just thinking about the stressors applied to a crystalline form in heating and bending fascinates me. Try hitting your mom’s crytal vase with a hammer if you tink that the stucture of metal isn’t unique and inspiring. To know that the basic internal form is the same, but metal simply will not let go of itself is just about the coolest thing ever. To me. There is a problem however. When’s the last time you saw a peice of galvanized steel small enough to carry to class? I know what you’re thinking, “Why, in the electrical department at Home Depot, of course!” Problem is the assgnment was to find it, not to buy it. I also felt that I couldn’t cut one due to the restricion that the peice should be unaltered. You may think that I had no way out, but I told you, I’m a metals geek. About 10 months ago there was a demolition crew tearing down the old Cotton Mill Square building in Greensboro. I went and took photos. One of the shots I took was of a galvanized louvre in the sun. So, while I made the thing, I made it a long time ago. Does that count?

My ready-made

Since this shows my intended form, I’m using it.

Next class Lee adds to the assignment. Go to the Weatherspoon Art Gallery and find the “soul mate” of your ready made. Something to go with what we found that either compliments it or accents it in some explainable way. He jokes to the class, “It sounds weird, but when you find it, you’ll just know.” I, for one had loojed at the exibit already and was not thrilled with the prospect. I figured I’d have to force it, that there was no way that I would find something in there that went with a photo of a galvanized louvre. Boy was I wrong. I walked in to the exibit with my photo in mind and with out hesitation, without even having to look around, there she was, right across from the door. Beutiful in its simplicity. I was amazed that it was right there and I hadn’t thought of it before. I wash I could show her to you, I really do. The image is not available anywhere that I know to look. So you’ll have to go and see her yourself. Andrea Blum (1950) Untitled, 1978: pastel on paper. Enjoy.

Have pencil, will travel…

Okay, more line excercises. This one was simple, inspired by the hallway line drawing we were to come up with some action that was repeatable. A physical movement that did not involve the basic fine motor control of drawing. I chose to use my left hand, a pencil and set a duration of 45 minutes in which I would be drawing a recangle as many times as possible and as consistently as possible using a motion in the shoulder to make the mark.

How to induce a shoulder cramp.

 The results were only shocking in that, at about 20 minutes in, my shoulder cramped. You can see the results of the cramp in the drawing where there is a line that shoots out of the pattern toward the center from the upper left corner. If you have had a cramp in your shoulder, I’m sorry, if not and you want to experience one this is a good way to get there. I thought the spacial effect was interesting. A lot of people commented on the appearence of depth, like looking down a well. I wish I had something entertaining to say about this one, but I don’t so I’ll keep it breif.

The big blue book of everything.

So, not to blow any chance at all of having a good grade for this blog but I have to talk about someting that happened in our class crit of a project recently. We have been working on the idea of endurance in art and allowing a porocess to dictate outcome in or work. Great so far. In class, Lee gives us the assignment of spending one hour doing one process to complete a composition or to carry it as far as it will go. He specifies that this is a drawing and gives us a restricted list of materials to work from. I was not having the best of mornings so mine is dreck. I decided to draw eyes for an hour as this is something that I enjoy doing and figured I coul do a series of drawings that showed all kinds of emotions.

Yeah, I didn't like it either...

So we do the thing, no problem, everybody has good days, everybody has bad days. When next we meet the crit begins. This is normal and not a thing much feared in my world. You may be thinking at this point that I am going to complain about a bad crit of my own work, well, I’m not. What I’m going to talk about is semantics. Conversation depends on it. Words have meaning and no matter how badly we want them to mean something else, we ca’t go around willy nilly adding meanings to suit our own ends. One of the people in the class chose to push the limits of the exercise. Good on her for doing it. She folded origami ballons for an hour. Great idea, neat interpretation of the project, I liked it and hope that she gets a good grade for it. The problem comes down to the word ‘draw’. I have no problem AT ALL with Morgans project, it was imaginative and in my opinion fit well enough within the confines of the assignment to work. Lee liked it to. The problem is that he called it a drawing. Now, I’m an art major not a linguist, but I don’t think this qualifies as a drawing. So I went home and looked it up in here…

I take my dictionary very seriously.

Turns out that there are 71 seperate dfinitions for the word draw. None of them apply to folded paper. This sounds terrible and I probobly shouldn’t post it, but I’m and opinionated jerk so I’m going to anyway. I hope that no one involved takes this the wrong way. I really don’t mind breaking the rules, unless by rules you mean my bones and by break you mean puree. It gets confusing quick doesn’t it.

A little something extra.

So we have to find a movie extra. Somebody who stands out to us and without speaking makes an impact on the scene. I think to myself, self, you need to use Boondock Saints for your film. You need to do this not just because it’s a great movie but also because your first thought of using Star Wars is just too geeky. So I sit down to watch the film ready to pour over the thing scene by scene. I have alloted about three hours to do this for rewinding and such. Much to my surprize, I find the perfect thing in the first 3 minutes of the movie. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d46hgS4CVi4

So while the embedding code has been removed from the clip linked to above, this is the scene from whence my extra came. My extra is the man with the shaved head in the foreground of the shot at the 45 second mark.  I went over my reasons for choosing this guy pretty well in class but I guess I need to do it again here. First, it’s the director of the film. I love looking for the scenes where a director saw fit to add himself to a movie. Second, the look on his face is possibly the silliest thing I have seen in quite a long time. After viewing the scene several times to get a feel for what was going on so that I could talk about it in detail I realized that I had chosen the perfect scene for an art class assignment. I can only assume it’s intentional on the part of the director because there are too many similarities. This is going to sound crazy, but I think the scene is modeled after DaVinci’s last supper. The guys at the bar are all arranged in such a way that, taken as a whole, the body postures are spot on to match the painting. The guy in the center, Rocco, is the Jesus figure, long hair, beard, he’s even wearing the right colors. The bartender is in the place of Judas. He’s on the opposite side of the bar/table and is the betrayer in the sequence. I can’t say that I knew going into this that I could make a classical reference out of Boondock Saints but I love that I noticed the correlation and would love confirmation of my theory. I just don’t know how to get it.

If everyone would please stand in a single file…

Without further ado, we begin to look at lines. Do we do this by playing with our materials to see how bold or narrow we can make lines from the various tools at our disposal? No. Do we look another artists line drawings to see how far the concept of the line drawing can be pushed? No. Crosshatching to tie in with value? No. We instead perform a little social experiment called lets see how long a bunch of students will go along without organizing a revolution. Oh, wait, it was a revolution. Or eighty some odd slow and long circuits you could call revolutions. Not making sense? Yeah, well welcome to the club. Here’s what we did. Holding a pencil at hip height, the entire class walks down the hall with the pencil tip touching this 10 meter long sheet of paper taped to the wall. As you may have guessed this produced a really big…you got it…line. Would you like to see?

Another brick in the wall...

I’m still not sure what Lee was getting at so I’ll tell you what I came away with. Graphite, like many art materials, builds. If you grind away at something long enough and with enough gusto you’ll get a result that someone will call art. Some how this project came from the same man who questioned the validity of a statement I made at one point about the difference between craft work and art being scale and dedication of purpose. Go figure. The thing that kills me in all of this is that some other teacher thought this was a great idea. So the bizarre line project gets it’s own copycat.

The cheap copy improved with the addition of Nekobunny.

To make matters worse, I find that when I see that the other class had 19 students to our 18 I suddenly feel one-up’d. Somebody stop me I think I’m starting to buy into this. I didn’t mean to, I want to be cynical. I want to walk by this thing everyday and think, “There’s 20 odd minutes of my life I’ll never see again,” but for some reason I have this emotional attachment to the thing. Luckily, I took intro to psych last semester and know that this is a common phenomenon. It’s called justification bias. We all do it all the time. It basically means that if you do something for long enough you find a way to make it feel important in your head so that you don’t have the stress of trying to deal with a memory or event that seems antithetical to your morals. Thanks brain, I feel better already.

Family Of Values

It's not as big as it looks.

And into value we go. A choice between darkness and light. We make a graphite scale, as seen above. This is for reference purposes only. I have made these before and am teased for being a bit on the obsessive side in generating my scale neatly and precisely. The thing is that this is where I think I differ from a lot of other artists. Surface, sheen, value, hue and all other aspects of finish are the things that I find most compelling in art. I want to make a living in metal sculpture. Finishing work is vital to my existence. Everything is practice. The way the paper holds the graphite is just another application of polishing and finishing the paper. The manipulation of the materials to the greatest extent possible is something that I always aim for. Even if I never again use the softest mark a pencil can make I need to know what that mark looks like. Just like I need to know how shiny or how dark I can make a metal surface.

We also got this homework. Lee walks around the room passing out these alphabet stencils to everyone and says he wants us to make a composition using value only that uses only the shape provided. Some people did really cool stuff like buld up a human head out of V’s in various weights. I did this.

Imagine all the stencils...living life in peace.

It has it’s own charm I suppose but I was thinking that it fell a little flat.

As per the now developing norm this is not the end of the exploration. We start into value as an expression of a randomized event. In class we go outside to play with coins and chalk. The chalk is for making a target. Shape is irrelevant, the point is to make a target and number the zones one through nine. We toss the coins into the target zones and record the resulting number sets. We then are told to make a composition based on the corresponding number zones on the value scale.

They said it looked like stained glass so photoshop and I went to work.

The results just fell short of actually being interesting.

The assignment at this point was to come up with our own idea of how to create chance art using value only. No line, no representation, just pure value as a result of randomizable process. I look at all of the possible outcomes to this and see disaster in the making. Too much random will kill me. I hate bowing to the whims of chaos. In order to control the process a little better while remaining within the confines of the project I decide to alter the parameters slightly. I decide to use the full value scale, nine of them in fact and cut each value into it’s own little square. Each scale was to be redistributed onto a new page based on the flip of a coin. Each coin flip gave a reading of heads or tails which meant putting the next value above or below the center line. The result looked like this. 

Well, I liked it better than the alternative...

Down the Barrel of a .45

The printmaking, it seems, was not to stop. We are told to spy. To listen in on conversations and come back with a full page of quotes from random strangers. The exercise is frustrating. Most people have nothing interesting to talk about. I hear the same garbage over and over. “…then she said…and I’m like…no way…care less…” etc., etc., etc. The few things that I did hear that were something worth writing down were less than inspiring. “This is the best cake ever!” not being the most dramatic or moving of statements.

Again we get to class and Lee has a plan. Take one quote, one phrase that we recorded and create a composition based on the text. The quote was to be the title. As soon as he told us what we were doing I knew which phrase I was using.

"They Can't Have Guns Like That."

The image sprang to mind as a fully formed concept. Details being irrelevant at this stage I set out to find the images to create the photo montage I used to create the final image. I wish I could tell you who took the original photos but the three I used were uncredited where I found them. If the photo is yours let me know and thanks. I made no money on this, it’s a school project.

So I wanted drama and involvment of the spectator. I am told that I acheived my goal. Having the main kid pointing the gun straight at the viewer seemed a bit heavy handed to me but it works. I have watched people stop in the hall (at school) and stare. It’s very flattering. I always want to ask them what they think but I’m always afraid they’ll say something like, “Oh, I was just looking at this one thinking about how trite and two dimensional it was and making note not to make the same stupid mistakes as this guy”. I have some issues, I admit it. In my head the finnished work seems more like this.

Paranoid Version/Vision

  Totally indecipherable.