December 8, 2007

The World Needs More (good) Blogs

Shawn Records has one.

Posted by mary at 7:25 PM | Comments (0)

April 28, 2007

Rabbit

(Warning: the bunny experiences some duress.)

Dave/id L. passed this along as a follow up to a conversation that I either don't remember, or wasn't a part of. I wish I has been, or could.

More movies and arty stuff here.

Here's a rabbit movie of another sort:

And yet more bunnies here.

Posted by mary at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)

April 27, 2007

Mariachi Audiences

I've recently switched to "Mail" from Entourage, and this has meant the resufacing of some very very old emails indeed when I use the search function.

One just popped up from my "actively dating" days (I'm not really sure what I mean by that, except that I was doing a lot of dating back then) where I expounded on my theory about how when two performative people go on a date they should be able to hire a third person who would act like a talk show host and mediator, gently interceding: "Mary, if I can interrupt -- that's a really interesting point you just made, I wonder if Mr. Jones here has any thoughts on this?" etc. Sort of like a verbal chaperone.

Then I thought you should also be able to hire a modest audience to follow you around -- like those bands in Mexico restaurants that serenade you at your table, only the opposite, so instead of performing for you (which, frankly, makes me uncomfortable), they would laugh and clap when you said something so that you, as a performative person, would feel good about yourself. Maybe that would make me uncomfortable, too, but I'm not sure. I think I might like it.

'Cause I really hate it when I can't get a word in edgewise and no one listens to me. Maybe this is why I'm so interested in projects that invert the relationship between performer and audience. I'm just not a very good audience member by nature.

p.s. You may wonder what this Dog LOL has to do with anything, and the truth is, not much -- well, nothing. I guess you could argue that dog looks kind of like a dog you might meet in Mexico. Nat made this LOL and it was just in time to throw up with this, which would otherwise not have an illustration. Maybe I'll include an image macro with all my entries from now on.

Posted by mary at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2007

Political Campaign Image Macros

Nat has bridged the gap between Historical Image Macro and Political Image Macro -- just in time for the 2008 elections! ... I think 40 point bold Impact font messages superimposed on pictures is JUST the level of discourse we need to move this country forward in the 2008 elections.

Not to mention keeping the ape hands off of us.

Posted by mary at 4:25 PM | Comments (0)

Oregon Governor Image Macros

Nat has risen to a challenge set forth by Greg, who pointed out that Dr. John McGloghlin, the "Father of Oregon," is simply cruisin' for a LOLin'. (Good Lord, Nat -- you don't think McGloghlin was creepy enough already??)

I extended the challenge to include all the Governor's of Oregon because, after all, there are many to choose from.

I also shared some instructions on kitteh as a second language that might be helpful.

Some may point out that Oregon Governors are not as cute as cats or walruses, but they are not without their own, particular charms. Look at George Woods and his crazy beard, for instance. What do you think is living in there??

And something tells me there might be a cheez burger in John Davis's future ...

This recent entry inspired my response to Nat's (even scarier than usual) vision of McGloughlin:

Another stroke of brilliance from Nat -- Would we have more buckets if we had a sales tax?

Here's one from Pete, and he would totally know what those robotz are up to.

Greg rises to his own challenge.

Posted by mary at 4:06 PM | Comments (0)

More Historical Image Macros!

These courtesy of Greg S., an actual practicing public historian.

I was looking for this image for my Superfund talk and couldn't find it for some reason.

By the way, if you like image macros, you might be interested in Chris Higgins's blogging on the topic over at Mental Floss.

Posted by mary at 10:31 AM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2007

Historical Image Macros

So, the more I think of it, why not try to convey the sweep, drama and complexity of history by way of image macro? Museums and other history educators are always trying to find ways to communicate to the young. I think I'm actually going to a museum conference in May. I wish I'd thought of this in time to put together a panel!

More to come as I think of them! (I need to figure out how to get the outlining going on my fonts --brushing? is that what it is? that's how bad I am at PowerPoint and how much I have to learn from the thousands and thousands of industrious youth making image macros. Sigh.)

(I am reminded in this project of the people who have converted the great speeches to Powerpoint.)

Posted by mary at 1:38 PM | Comments (1)

April 10, 2007

The Fine Art (of) Image Macros

Like a lot of people over the age of 30, I first became aware of image macros with the briefly-ubiquitous Nancy Pelosi impeachment visual. Once I noticed them, it became quickly apparent that there was a huge world of image macros out there.

I became particularly intrigued by the sub-set of image macros known as "LOL Cats." (Chris pointed out that this would be a great name for a band.) I discovered them first by clicking on someone's signature line in a Woot forum, which begs the question of how incredibly bored must I have been to have been doing that and the answer is, pretty bored, but not as bored as you might think.

Anyway, here see my first venture into the art of LOL cats -- not a cat, not even a live animal but, to me, very, very gratifying. It was a hand-made e-card to a friend who had sent me possibly my favorite email of the year, which read simply: "THERES A SQUIRREL IN MY HEATER!!!!!" (subject line: "SQUIRREL"). Followed sometime after by the message, "THERE"S A SQUIRREL IN MY FIRE PLACE!!!!!!" (subject line: "squirrel"). I suggested he spend some quality time at squirrels.org and listen to the "This American LIfe" story about the flaming squirrel before trying to smoke his visitor out. This exchanged ended with one of weirdest emails I've ever received, which simply repeated the phrase, "The squirrel is gone!!!" for 498 pages and made my email crash.

Anyway, back to the image macros.

Shortly after I first noticed LOL cats, boingboing blogged them, which made me feel like I truly had my finger on the pulse of the internets, albeit in a 30-something way.

And after making my LOL squirrel, I was hooked!

Then I started thinking: why should l33t speak slogans in big ugly fonts be limited to defacing images of cute animals? I've been going to a lot of artsy things lately: why not fine arts image macros? The image macro form itself is reminscent of Barbara Kruger.

So, here are my examples of Fine Art Image Macros. If I were an art history teacher, I'd have my students do this as an assignment -- my students would probably do a better job. If I had them. You could probably do a better job -- and if you do, let me know! Some of my friends already have, as evidenced below.

Here are some directions (just replace the word "cats" with "fine art.") And here's one of many l33t generators.

Note: I'm also sure something like this has been done before, but I haven't found it yet with my brief search for "fine art image macros." I found the concept mentioned here -- I was thinking of doing Dante's Inferno as image macros, too!) Livejournal is a HOTBED of image macros, btw, if you didn't already know. I'll bet there are many more examples of fine art image macros in there. It also seems like something something awful would have done. Be that as it may! Here the ones I made in a hurry.

(after the O RLY Owl).

A FAIM by Nat, inspired by this of course.

Another one with the same inspiration.

(A FAIM by Nat inspired by the "invisible__________" line of thinking.)

(A minimalist version of the same thing, also by Nat.)

Nice one from Chris -- Pwned -- I'll say!

Here's Pete's Contribution:

Higgins's contribution to the Fine Art (of) Image Macros. I h8z it when th@ happens!!! (loosing ones contact lens in a wheat field).

Another one from Chris -- awesome, but is it ART?

Posted by mary at 8:05 AM | Comments (1)

March 22, 2007

Some Thoughts on Dante's Inferno

After Dore, Virgil reproves Dante's Curiosity.

After Dore The Thieves tortured by Serpents.

I loved Dante's Inferno when I was a kid. Who didn't, right?!

At my request, Terry sent me these pictures of this Ukrainian Easter egg I made based on the Dore's illustrations of the Inferno when I was 11 or 12. I love the way Terry's pictures make my egg look like a Grecian urn. Not to toot my own egg-making horn too much, but I was also very proud of a leviathan egg I made a couple of years ago at Amy's house. She kept the egg, though, and I don't have a picture.

Anyway, given my interest in the Inferno, I was particularly interested to read about Sandow Birk's film interpretation of the Dante's Inferno. I was following a BoingBoing link about Birk's fantasy paintings of the Iraq War. I was also intrigued by the beautiful paintings of prisons -- maybe he'll do Superfunds next? And Susan S. may appreciate (as do I) his interpretation of the raft of the Medusa. (Incidentally, I think that painting is the only one I really remember seeing while visiting the Louvre. I'd never seen it before, and very rarely remember what I see at Great Museums, but this one, I remember. It's BIG!)

Disaster art is pretty interesting, I have to admit, but is not to be confused with Art Disasters. And actually, I can't think of other works of art commemorating disasters, but I know there must be a million of them -- including lots of shipwrecks. Maybe my readers can think of some.

I started wondering about the presence of the Divine Comedy on the internet, and found this site from U. Texas, which has some nice features, including audio.

(I note that U. Texas is also known as the site for the other Mary Wheeler whom I recently have topped in google rankings to become the number one Mary Wheeler! Take that, Mary Fannett. Given that her website was last updated in August of 1999, the accomplishment may not seem that impressive, but given that she seems to have actually done something with her life, maybe it is. *Update*: She's now back to #1. I'm thinking maybe it's because I linked to her, so I removed my link.)

I'm not sure who ever really reads the rest of the Divine Comedy (Paradiso? snore! And double snore for Purgatory) but it's available -- be sure to check out the Finnish version!

I like this Gilligan theory of the Seven Deadly Sins which concludes: "Gilligan is SATAN."

I think I'd probably enjoy playing the Dante's Inferno Game, although it does look fairly complicated.

Here are the results of my Dante's Inferno Test (I'm not sure how I got such a high score for "violent" but otherwise the results seem spot on):

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test.

Posted by mary at 11:09 PM | Comments (1)

January 7, 2007

Portland Photography Shows/People with Their Christmas Presents

If I were a photographer, I'd take a series of pictures featuring lots of different people with their Christmas presents.

I went to go see Patrick's photos and Shawn's photos this last week -- about 200% more art shows than I generally go to in a given week year.

I also enjoyed Dennis Chamberlin's "Screen Culture" photos, which were next door to Shawn's, and seeing them, combined with finally downloading my pictures from Christmas, gave me the idea for a Christmas Gift series.

The thing I like about this idea is not so much the opportunity to give some heavy-handed commentary on the excesses of consumerism or the weight of family anxieties or even the pleasures of modern domesticity. What I like is the fact that it would be really difficult to do unless you spent, like, 5 to 10 years doing it. Because really, you could only really make it to, say, three Christmas gift opening frenzies a year. (It's funny to me that we don't have a word for that -- that time when we all open our Christmas presents together and make a huge mess in the living room -- do we?) Because everyone's doing it at more or less the same time -- some people might do it in Christmas Eve, and some might do it earlier or later on Christmas morning, but even so, you've still got a pretty narrow window. It's kind of like Ian's idea for doing a history of the FBI witness relocation program: challenging for logistical reasons. Plus! Assuming you celebrate Christmas yourself, you'd have to give up celebrating it in any kind of relaxing way, if you were zooming around town trying to get to other people's opening frenzies. So, if nothing else, an audience would have to respect your persistence and sacrifice.

I'm pretty literal in my appreciation of photography -- once I get past the aesthetic response of "that's pretty!" (or ugly, or whatever). Patrick's photos make me wonder which of the construction workers he got to know, or how high he was off the ground when he took them. Shawn's make me think things like, "hey! cute animal!" (or sometimes, "what's an animal doing there?!") or, "do I know that person?" and with the Portland Grid Project I'm all about trying to figure out if I can recognize where the pictures were taken. I'm basically shallow as hell.

My main response to "Screen Culture" was to wonder: how did he get in all these people's living rooms? Are they all friends or family?

My other thought was, "Man, that looks relaxing," which I suspect is not what a lot of people think when they see other people staring blankly at screens. It's kind of like the time Tim and I were driving late one rainy night in Bremerton and saw some police lights flashing in the distance and I said without thinking, "Man, those lights make me feel like drinking."

Anyway, here's Betsy and Porter enjoying two of Sol's Christmas presents. This is a crappy photo -- but this website brings the ideas, not the goods. Just imagine about 20 or so of these, only good, and with all different families, and you'd have yourself a show (or a Life Magazine story, anyway). And after you put in your time on Christmas and established yourself as a photographer of people opening presents, you could move on to birthdays and finally get your life back.

In the meantime, if you want to see some actually good photography, Patrick's show, featuring his photos of construction of the Portland Tram, Max, and from the Portland Grid Project, is at Marylhurst in the Art Gym through February 14. Shawn's photos from his series, "At a Loss" are up at at Nine Gallery (1231 NW Hoyt -- aka, just inside the Blue Sky Gallery) through January 29th.

Posted by mary at 9:58 PM | Comments (5)

July 1, 2006

Worst public scupture EVER!

Says Kathy. Think you've got it bad with cob benches?

Posted by mary at 3:08 PM | Comments (1)

Ever wonder what you'd look like if you got pregnant and then your skin was flayed back while you were alive?

Here you go!

Posted by mary at 3:05 PM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2006

I Like These Little Houses

... these ones here

(found by way of the sleep position lady)

Posted by mary at 7:56 AM | Comments (0)

September 18, 2005

My New Art Project: RUB MY FEET

I began a new piece last night. It's called, RUB MY FEET, or RMF for short. Or maybe "Rub Me." I haven't decided yet.

In it, people rub my feet. So far, one at a time, but I am definitely up for trying multiple, simultaneous rubbers.

This piece blurs and inverts the role of audience and creator, artist and participant. Although I initiate the work, the rubbers are the artists and I, the rubee, am the audience. It is a commentary on the relationship between workers and capitalists, using the story of Christ washing those people's feet like he did that one time. It's something that only I can experience, but in which anyone can participate. Like a play put on for a lonely critic, there is only one person in the audience, but many actors.

So the next time I see you, I hope you will join in this creative political act and RUB MY FEET.

Contributors to the RMF project so far:

Amy
Pete
Spine
T'chacka
Nat

(Note: you can contribute more than once.)

Posted by mary at 5:43 PM | Comments (1)

October 16, 2003

Sound Sculpture Idea

This is an idea I had a few years ago, but I don't think it got the exposure/celebration it needs.

I met this guy once (a friend of friends) who did sound sculpture, and his work included, as I remember it, one piece outside a restaurant where you heard sounds of dishes and glasses clinking and people talking and eating, etc. Here it is.

This reminded me of this restaurant in Seattle where you heard foreign language lesson tapes in the bathrooms. Then I read about these machines in bathrooms in Japan that make the sound of toilets flushing to cover up other sounds and prevent water waste (this was one of those stupid "aren't the Japanese crazy?" stories that was making the rounds on NPR and stuff). These are the elements that inspired my idea for a sound scupture.

It would be place-based, and the place would be the bathroom. There would be no visual component (at least that I've thought of yet).

It would be the recorded sounds of bathrooms from around the world. In one version, they would be live -- piped in from afar -- but I'm thinking that might pose some technological challenges we're not up to -- but maybe not if it was web-based. Anyway, it would just be all the sounds you hear in bathrooms. Ambiant sounds. Possibly edited to make it more noisy, or you'd end up with a lot of dead air, I expect (you'd encounter the same problem with a live feed).

It would obscure which sounds were live and local, and which sounds were mechanical, which shy people would like. Intellectually, it would explore the idea that humanity is bound by the commonality of its basic animal functions, and then explode that assumption, because the noises would actually be quite different -- you'd have your third-world bathrooms, outdoor bathrooms, french bathrooms, your public bathrooms, your private bathrooms, your bidets (sp), your sex in bathrooms, your people snorting coke in bathrooms, changing diapers, etc. etc. etc. And of course going to the bathroom.

And if I were commissioned to do a restaurant sound sculpture, I think I'd do one that was close up sounds of stomachs growling and people smacking their lips and stuff.

Posted by mary at 12:06 PM | Comments (6)

July 28, 2003

A Classic Mary Idea: Identi-Dress

I had this idea about 4 years ago but I want to get my old ideas out of the way here so they're at the bottom of the page. I wish I could have made one of these for my wedding -- and Chris could have had a matching suit!

"Identi-dresses": Plain white sleeveless sheath dresses with life stories embroidered on them in black thread. Story would start on the upper right shoulder, wrap around entire body. Several ideas:

1) The well-to-do dress wearer could commission her own life story, combining several levels of vanity (publishing and body).

2) Could have the life story of the person actually doing the embroidery (poor third world exploitee), for the socially aware to point out their own internal political/moral/cultural contradictions ("I love clothes; I feel guilty because some poor person made them..."), the internationalizing of capital in the textiles/clothes context (see T-shirt idea for more on this theme).

3) Could have different, "Sex" "Body" "Work/CV" "Family" "Party" dresses depending on the occasion ("My first sexual memory is..." “I start my work out with aerobics ...” “I really like working with people...” “my research is on the body and identity...”).

4) Could have random life stories that would either be really unlikely (e.g. woman wearing man's story) "disrupting appearance-based expectations about race/class/gender/sexuality" (use similar wording for brochure) etc. etc. -- that could be called the "disrupter-dress" line, or else ones that looked like they could be likely (upper class white lady wearing some *other* upper class white lady's life), but weren't real.

5) Could go mainstream with celebrity line of famous life stories everyone might want the "J-Lo" or the “Bobby Kennedy” (to be more self-referential, could have lives of famous designers — Versace, CoCo Channel). Party game could consist of trying to guess whose life story you were wearing, necessitating close examination of every inch of your body.

Capitalizes on popular interest in biography, the confessional mode, "reality TV" could become reality clothing, and also coincide with artistic pretensions about "identity" "self" "the body" "tattoos" etc. etc. Sell first as haute fashion, then on Biography channel, Target. If you had a really good life story commissioned, there would always be the chance that it might catch on as a best seller and you could become famous. Personally, this would combine my interest in oral history, autobiography and fashion in one neat package. Consider making skin tight & stretchy -- so that you were on display in every possible way; make translucent for the runway version.

Posted by mary at 8:20 PM | Comments (1)