[KSCHHH]

5 Things You Didn't Know About the Internet

2010-01-28T00:37:00.010Z

1.
The Internet owes its' existence to the pinnacle of 1950's technological advancement, Sputnik. The ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network - the internets' great-grandfather, was born in 1969 as a response to the Russian's 1957 launch of the first man-made satellite.

2.
The first piece of commercial spam was sent by a US law firm in 1994. The message was titled 'Green Card Lottery - Final One?'

3.
David Bowie was the first musician to offer an album for commercial download with 'Hours' in 1999.

4.
As recently as 2002, UK citizens were confused by British Telecom's first major advertising campaign for broadband internet as they didn't realise they needed a computer.

5.
The web recieves an estimated 100 billion clicks per day, contains 55 trillion links and is thought to have the same processing power as the human brain.

Urban Friends and Animals

2010-01-25T00:14:00.010Z

Design Is Hard / Design Is Fun [Graphic Design]

2009-11-07T12:11:00.006Z

Design Is Hard / Design Is Fun is a typographic, illustration and graphic design project to visualize this phrase with both of the elements 'hard' and 'fun' in a single image.

As well as designing the title image, I also created the image above as the first submission to the project. I hope to regularly add images to this project, ultimately with the goal of publishing it as a book. It would be cool if I could interest other designers in contributing to this project and get a cross-section of how different designers tackle the brief.

Culture of Decline [Editorial]

2009-09-27T23:55:00.006+01:00

Is High Culture A Burden On The Economy?

The growing effects of the recession are being shared across the globe. Rising unemployment, the collapse of long standing institutions, poverty and hardship are widespread. Could there have been a single driving force behind these crises? Some blame under-regulated derivatives trading or the sub-prime lending spree, but perhaps the cracks run deeper in the crumbling foundations of this house of cards built on sand.

The symptoms of our crisis are felt throughout the world, but they are best illustrated in the land of their birth, the United States of America. Not only due to their heritage, but also because nowhere else is everything quite so well documented.

I stumbled across the image above while researching the effects of the economic crisis to be able to make an informed book recommendation to a friend. It is an illustration of unemployment trends after the the effects of the economic crisis were beginning to bite in the US. The first thing I noticed was that worst hit areas were those that are more known to be centres of culture generation, the east and west coasts. This made me wonder what role high culture plays in this observation. Could there be a correlation between high culture and economic decline?

First, to prove that, beyond the stereotype, the east and west coasts are genuinely cultural hubs. This image, mapping the sales of Classical music (red) against Country music (blue), isn't as detailed as the map of unemployment, but if you look at the red areas as those more likely to have higher unemployment, there are the beginnings of a correlation.

Record sales alone are no basis for condemning high culture. If that were so America would have followed George Orwell's advise and scrapped art and the dictionary after Mariah Carey sold her 200 millionth album. So I introduce the work of Peter J. Rentfrow, Samuel D. Gosling, and Jeff Potter looking at the geographical variation of personality traits.
This map charts the trait of 'Openness', which the researchers describe as reflecting "curiosity, intellect, and creativity at the individual level." They suggest that people demonstrating Openness would hold liberal values, and have an above average chance of being in the "artistic and investigative professions." It appears that when 'Openness' is paired with above average sales of classical music (red) or below average sales of country music (white) - sure signs of a propensity towards high culture - unemployment is sure to follow.

So, is culture a medium for spreading fear in a system tenuously built on faith? Is a cultured populous therefore more prone to fear of the future, leading cultured consumers to rein in spending and cultured business people to cut back on employment? Could there be a religious element to contribute to fear of the future? Is there more hope if the Good News tells of an eternity of happiness, while the News at Noon tells of unending suffering and woe?
When we add together the evidence so far, a compound of classical music, 'Openness' and a lack of religious adherence seems to be a deadly concoction to employability.

We are fed stories of innovation and creativity being the driving force behind economic recovery, but they seem to be the cause here, rather than the cure. In the past the only things to have pulled us out of crippling recessions has been good old fashioned ideologically charged politics and an energizing war to stimulate manufacture and bolster the military-industrial complex. Wait, that was before the recession...

On an individual level at least, it looks like the best way out of circling the economic drain is to abandon any hopes of a creative life, listen to country music and buy a bible.

Standers - The Politics of Feet [Illustration]

2009-07-29T16:19:00.006+01:00

Standers is a planned series of illustrations based on the body language of people standing. A lot can be read from the way people position their feet. Whether interlocked, shuffling or curled, the actions of feet can signify everything from the standers involvement in conversation to their feelings toward the owners of another pair of feet. I hope to explore these inferred emotions and group dynamics in this series of illustrations.

...more to come

Governor Glitch [Video]

2008-11-14T18:20:00.003Z

Governor Glitch

Taken from a broadcast from the Governor of California governmental website, this video was originally a speech regarding California feeling the effects of the economic crisis. This video has not been edited. The stuttering is a glitch, a byproduct of the embedded video player used by the website when the user scans through the video from one time code to another.

'Butane Blood Bubble' renamed to 'Too Polite to Ask'

2008-10-27T15:55:00.012Z

Too Polite to Ask

Installed as 'Butane Blood Bubble (Internaut Naught Naught)' in the exhibition Passage, Belgium.

'Butane Blood Bubble' was a name chosen out of a passing obsession with alliteration and was used in part to experiment with the perceived necessity of an artwork to exist dually as object and as critical text. Later, when the work was to be exhibited, I added '(Internaut Naught Naught)' to the title in an attempt to suggest the exploratory nature of the work - as the inspiration and the black and white stock footage contained in the work were taken from surfing the Internet. However, given time to consider the effectiveness of the name, I have decided to change it.

'Too Polite to Ask' is a reference to Gore Vidal's famous quote on the subject of his bisexuality. When asked about the gender of his first sexual partner, Gore Vidal replied, "It was dark, and I was too polite to ask." For me, this sums up this video installation.

Firstly, I must point out that the videos are arranged in order to be read, from left to right, and as such are in effect a narrative. Between the two videos a scenario of observation is introduced. The first video presented has the hallmarks of internet-video, reduced in resolution and image quality to better be transmitted. As an internet-video taken from it's original context and placed in an artwork, it is a symbol of mass observation. The second video introduces the observer who is outwardly acting the process of observation. The protagonist is building an interpretation of the video with the limited tools that have been allowed him, until he has something that resembles the original.

Now, the question referred to in the title is asked by the protagonist and it is this: "Am I watching the video? Or am I watching my video?" When observing, there is truth, and then there is our construction of the truth. This, I think, is applicable to how we construct ourselves. The constant narrative that we construct and tell to ourselves is rooted in this same questionable act of observation.

Beyond our mind is darkness and, like the ancient idea of the human eye being a source of light illuminating the objects we look at, we incorporate the illumination provided by our own distinctive perception. To ask what truth these objects would hold in the darkness without the light of our eyes is a profane question.

Hexagon Traffic and Venetian Babies [Video]

2008-10-21T21:48:00.007+01:00

Hexagon Traffic (cut)

These short video clips are from experimental works Hexagon Traffic and Venetian Babies. The original videos were made exploring the idea of making video as another instrument in a musical composition, following it's structure and mood.

Venetian Babies (cut)

Both videos were made by filming an old TV of mine playing pre-recorded footage and digitally editing the clips together. The TV used was 17 years old an when you fiddled with the tuning knob it would suddenly explode with bright colours and other great visual distortions.

"The Upside Down People 2007" for Il Tempo Del Postino, Manchester [Project]

2008-10-17T12:57:00.011+01:00

In 2007 I spent ten days wearing upside-down goggles with 11 other people for the benefit of Carston Höllers' work in Il Tempo De Postino, a time based (as opposed to space based) experimental gallery. The exhibition was held in Manchester's Opera House and lasted around fifteen minutes. Here are some images from the ten days that lead up to the show.

Seen Scenes [Photography]

2008-10-17T12:45:00.005+01:00

Schiphol in Fog [Photography]

2008-10-17T12:38:00.004+01:00

Solemn Figure (from the series Defrock) at the Temple Bar Gallery and Studios [Exhibition]

2008-10-03T14:16:00.006+01:00

photo Barbara Knezevic

Video work 'Solemn Figure (from the series Defrock)' on display as part of the Circa Culture Night 2008 Video Screening. Circa, Ireland's contemporary visual art and visual culture magazine, in conjunction with Temple Bar Gallery and Studios hosted the first Circa Culture Night video screening on the 19th of September 2008. The screening was curated by Lee Welch, artist and co-director of Four Gallery, Dublin.

Conway Kawaii [Video]

2008-09-21T11:11:00.019+01:00

Conway Kawaii

"Kawaii: (kah-wah-ee) Japanese for 'cute,' but beyond that it refers to the exclusively Japanese cult of cute."

British mathematician John Horton Conway developed 'The Game of Life' in 1970 which is an extension of ideas introduced in the 1940s by renowned mathematician John von Neumann and is still today one of the finest examples of cellular automaton.

'The Game of Life' is a zero-player game based on an infinite 2D grid. Each square on this grid can be in two states, alive or dead, and interacts with the eight squares that neighbour it, abiding to a set of simple rules. These rules can construct massively complex systems from very simple beginnings.

Musicians like Brian Eno have adopted this ability to simply govern complex systems and continue to develop and use such systems to create compositions, not by playing and arranging instruments, but by devising rules that the music must obey and letting it write itself. These pioneering musicians and artists are setting a precedent for creatives to change their roll in their work from medium or muse to a god-like creator of idea ecosystems. Intelligent generative systems in which the creator does not create, but governs the process of creation are becoming a wide spread creative practice.

This is by no means a new phenomenon. In 1757 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart devised "Musikalisches Würfelspiel" (Musical Dice Game), a very early example of generative art. There was the emergence of 'open' compositional systems, such as those by John Cage and visual art generation techniques using notation, instruction and restriction by the likes of the Fluxus artists, Hans Haake and Andy Warhol's 'Factory' in the 1950's and 60's. More recently these veins of investigation have developed and evolved into technology focused divergent species such as 'livecoding' (another livecoding link) and new-media works by artists such as John Klima and Kitty Clark.

Posting Drop Off [Apology]

2008-09-20T02:02:00.004+01:00

I would like to apologize for the lack of posts in the last month and a bit. In most unwelcome fashion, several parts of my hard-working laptop decided to fall to pieces at the same time, leading to a long (but thanks to an extended warranty - not costly) repair induced blog hiatus.

However, posting can now return to whatever normality existed before. To get the ball rolling, here is the above video.

Congested? [Illustration]

2008-07-27T04:02:00.008+01:00

Congested Sinuses? Imps only make it worse... Drawn in Flash.

Pixel By Pixel By Pixel: 8-Bit Ackbar [Conceptual Art]

2008-07-26T14:44:00.016+01:00

"At that close range, we won't last long against those Star Destroyers."

This image is the product of a process I call Pixel Fractaling (or Pointillism Pointillism Pointillism). Three layers of pixelation are applied to an image through restrictive color and pattern dither algorithms. The result is an image made up of pixels that consist of sixteen pixels, which in turn are made up of sixteen pixels. This process of repetition both highlights and absurdizes the fetishizing of the exposed pixel - mozaic-like imagery that points to a shared experience of the 8-bit entertainment systems of the Nintendo generation.

When printed, this image to 2.1 meters high and 1.7 meters across.

Remastered Old Spool [Illustration]

2008-07-25T15:09:00.003+01:00

Remastery of illustration 'Old Spool' with some futur-tech 3D-ery. All done with lines and fill, no 3D software, just Flash vector drawing. Hopefully will be a tee!

Phist Tee [Illustration]

2008-07-25T01:27:00.002+01:00

Remastering of old KleenFist illustration to make for cooler T-shirt.

Phace [Illustration]

2008-07-24T22:29:00.001+01:00

It took me hours to learn how to do this and draw myself in the mirror. In the running to be a T-shirt.

Victory On Aisle 5 [Graphic Design]

2008-07-24T14:29:00.003+01:00

Concept imagery for no longer existent band 'Victory On Aisle 5,' of which I was a founding member. Jamie and me have formed a new band 'Tyrannosaurus Hex' (website coming soon).

Despite the band dis-banding (hold your breath for a comeback) I really liked this image of Custer rallying the instant mashed potatoes on aisle 5. It's dramatic, yet calm and quite sad. It's like a Sigur Ros soundtrack over a slow motion war scene, if there were one in the movie Clerks.

"MyX" Love Democracy T-Shirt Design For Threadless [Graphic Design]

2008-07-24T12:38:00.001+01:00

Bold and simple design for Threadless Loves Democracy competition (can also be used as messy Scotland T-shirt). See more of my T-shirt designs here.

Old Spool [Illustration]

2008-07-23T18:44:00.000+01:00

An idea I had a while ago realized through Flash. I prefer drawing with flash over any other desktop software package. This took half an hour to make in Flash and would have taken me forever in Illustrator. But I should probably use Illustrator more because I'm sure, once it becomes as intuitive, it can do so much more. I think this would make an ace tee.

Untitled [Graphic Design]

2008-07-23T16:38:00.001+01:00

Another ident for musical side-project Kleenaxe. Made in Flash. Hopefully it can some day be used as a gig poster or album cover.

New Flashy Flash Layout [Flash, Graphic Design]

2008-07-23T01:55:00.000+01:00

Another Kschhh.com design that I'm probably not going to use. View the full page by clicking here, but please don't click any of the buttons. The pages they link to aren't uploaded and clicking them will reveal my horrible secret: that I use Geocities free web hosting to store some of my files... Netiquete faux pas and extremely unprofessional, but cheap. Free in fact.

I'm probably going to use similar fading slide show buttons to navigate through the categories of this blog, replacing the right hand menu ---->

Crimson Empire [Flash]

2008-07-22T18:31:00.001+01:00

Clip from Crimson Empire

This is a clip from an animation I made to fit an audio book called 'Star Wars: Crimson Empire.' I didn't do the whole ninety minutes, but I got a good three minutes done. I'm quite proud of the backgrounds in this as they really capture the look and feel of an imperial ship. However, I don't like the lazy animation of the Sith's flappy jaw.

Click here to watch the clip from Crimson Empire

Noirish [Flash]

2008-07-22T18:16:00.001+01:00

Watch Noirish

Stills from animation Noirish. This animation study was made after I read an issue of 'Heavy Liquid,' a great comic by Paul Pope. I wanted to create a Batman like character that would jump across roof-tops and stop speeding cars using nothing but agility and inventiveness. I never got round to making the sequence where the character breaks a flag pole off a building while falling from the roof and stabs it into the ground in the path of the speeding Mustang then fights the big guy weilding a giant bronze staff. I hope to some day.

Click here to watch Noirish

Hosho [Flash]

2008-07-22T17:46:00.001+01:00

Watch Hosho

Stills from Hosho: How a Pheonix Dives. A homage to westerns, this animation was made in a day but never finished. The hanging ending contributed to the introduction of the 'punchline' idea that can be seen in some of my video work. I like the way this animation keeps going, it just keeps building the tension until you realise it was never finished and will never end.

Click here to watch Hosho

Untitled [Illustration]

2008-07-05T23:45:00.000+01:00

Acrylic, ink and spray paint on canvas

The Great Bear Performance at Structural Distress, Monument for Masses [Exhibition]

2008-06-29T16:57:00.001+01:00

Stills from video work 'The Great bear (Bobo Hobo),' video of live performance for Structural Distress, Monument for Masses exhibition in Beelitz-heilstaten, an hour outside of Berlin, Germany, 2006

Theory of Be [Writing]

2008-06-29T01:59:00.000+01:00

I wrap myself in a blanket of things, a collection of objects and materials that in some way or another epitomize my construction of reality. We all build our own worlds, a picture of the world around us cobbled together from snippets of experiences, images and objects taken from moments in our lives. We consider the intricacies of our experience and stitch together a personality for ourselves as we are shaped by time and the expression of a great equation evolving through it, the theology of science, a unified theory.

My work has become a reflection of this process of personal evolution and the multifarious factors that influence it.

To map this process of personal evolution, in re-applying the concept of collecting and constructing over time, I take a space and create a memetic eco-system. A system of rules that mirrors the hierarchy of semiotic experience; Object, the source of experience and fodder for future manipulation of our attachment to the Signified; Image, moving or otherwise, pierces our perception and hijacks our linguistic appreciation of Signified and Signifier, it references our own personal experience; Person, the consumer of experiences that traverses the space, consuming Objects and Images to assimilate or discard.

This process calls for immediate innovation and gives rise to the unexpected, calling for constant analysis and adaptation. How much of the world around us was built on a considered process? Are we in control of our individual and collective actions, or do we merely respond over time to the demands of our immediate environment, be they physical, financial, political, cultural or of our own individual construction?

Bad Boy Art [Writing]

2008-06-29T01:47:00.000+01:00

I'm half way obsessed with the 'bad boy' image of artists like Damien Hurst. Not for pushing limits or taboo but the brushing aside of restrictive analysis. The argument "but is he just having a laugh.." was always present to dispel whatever mire the hard theory analysis threw at the work, which left it open to infinite interpretation.

I'm trying to find the right mix of interpretations. I've always looked at art as a conversation. A piece of art presenting an idea and that idea following its memetic path through personal debate, a piece of art made in response or even vandalism to the original artwork. But if you were going to get involved in a debate, Which would you join? I cannot decide, so the work I've been making seems, having the unique perspective of and aerial view of all of my endeavors, to be sporadic and eclectic.

Installation view 'Dymkovo Pyramidion,' 2006

As an example, there is one piece I made as a direct response to space and sound, 'Dymkovo Pyramidion'. It was an exploration of mindlessness guiding activity that resulted in a residue in the space. In this instance the residue was a forest of stacked chairs, with electrical cables draped like vines between the trees. A light bulb became animated moving around the forest like an inhabitant of the space. You could interpret superficially the juxtaposition of the office chairs as trees and electrical cable as vines as a visual joke playing with the office space and nature both as opposites and similar (superficial difference in appearance and materials, while both predatory spaces). But it is that constraining appreciation, a blinder to other possible interpretations, that I am trying to dispel (I tried to dispel with the facetious title).

There is another piece I made that parallels this loss of possibilities while demonstrating the apparently random, eclecticism that I observed. The idea was that this bottle, a mythical artifact, was the measure of the space lost when the infinite possibilities of the imagination are lost when fact replaces dream. For example, before the Americas were explored, what lay ahead for the conquistadors was left to their imaginations. There could be pastures hundreds of miles across or there could be forests that spanned thousands of miles, there could be giants and cyclops, anything that they could imagine. So in total sum, what could be was infinite. However once they explore that space and have for fact what exists there, the infinite possible space is lost. The bottle was a measure for the difference between dream and fact.

Maybe it would have been fitting to put the bottle between a fiction novel and a road map or something. But you see, that meaning would be all the object was for and that seems too flimsy a destiny for an object in physical space. It's alright as an idea, when it's virtual, but when it has a physical presence there needs to be more purpose for its existence. It must be worth it's cost in matter. That is the inspiration for my eclectic approach. I feel that to be worth it's cost, an object must have depth. Like a person. You've heard the phrase "he's a waste of space...", the same can be true for an objects waste of matter. If it to be interesting an object must have depth, multiple intentions with multiple interpretations, it must be an ever changing cloud of shifting enigmas.

I'm trying to find the catalyst for structured argument and a fit-like outburst of my perceptual digestive system.

Interaction Esoterrorism [Writing]

2008-06-29T01:39:00.000+01:00

Interaction Esoterrorism

Exploring mythologized interactive systems through their failures

Contemporary acceleration of technological advancement has lead to the integration of interactive systems into many aspects of daily life. From swiping your RFID Oyster card on a London bus to finding out where you are using your WiFi enabled GoogleMaps enhanced GPS phone in The-middle-of-no-where Massachusetts.

While these interactive systems are enriching/enraging our lives, the systems themselves are held behind a wall of secrecy. Piracy has forced the proprietors of our digital world to hide behind encryption and intensely regulated copyright and intellectual property laws. The specifics of the inner workings of these systems are obscured by esotericism and are left almost entirely to the users imagination.

The language of these interactive systems that have permeated our daily lives, from phones to computer games to computer games on phones, has become our second language just as the language of cinema has - through excessive exposure.

The sub dialects of these interactive languages have emerged from the methods and functions of the interaction. First person shooter games have developed a recognizable language with their graphical user interface commonly called a HUD, or Head-Up Display. These displays efficiently summarize the environment the players character inhabits, often with statistics, like ammunition supplies, and graphical displays in the form radar or maps. These displays, formed out of function, have been incorporated into our visual language as a symbol for the first person shooter genre, in a similar manner to how, the red 'record' symbol that early cam-corders imprint on the video they recorded has become a symbol for that recording method.

At the same time, the failure of these systems has become a language to itself. A recognizable residue, a semiotic fingerprint. Whether the glitch in the game's virtual environment that leaves your character falling through infinity, or a network problem leaving your GoogleMaps GPS icon floating in a grey square. The imagery generated by the failures of these systems has become a language as recognizable as that used by the systems themselves.

But to the consumers of this language, these failures represent a view into the mysterious inner workings of these systems. A glimpse through the clock face and into the assemblage of gears, coils and springs.

Recipe For a Piece of Art [Writing]

2008-06-29T01:38:00.000+01:00

Recipe For a Piece of Art

- One Art historical reference: a pinch of a once treasured teleology lost to the annals of fashion, or a mention of historical/classical artistic materials (paint, print, canvas, bronze, stone or celluloid, plastic, concrete, readymade, video) or specific absence of.

- A series (repetition and variation on repetition suggest an intended dialogue) of contemporary cultural references, from every day objects or events to iconic representations/reorganisations. Be weary of specific political or social references as they will date the work and cheapen it, but rather make grand gestures to the timeless questions and the human condition; inhumanity of humanity, the unsettling, long standing ideologies or politics that have been questioned for centuries and still aren't going anywhere etc.

- And finally a name. A witty rehash of the subjects you might be (but probably aren't) raising, or maybe an honest witty rehash of the subjects you really are interested in because either way it'll be taken at face value. Maybe even a nonsensical arrangement of words or phrases that provide the illusion of intention or meaning (but that could arguably be a subconscious convergence of ideas or references, a diving board to a zeitgeist of whatever culture you've been swimming in).

Navigate [Flash, Graphic Design]

2008-06-25T19:46:00.001+01:00

Navigator designed for kschhh.com but never implemented. View full-size.

Kschhh Poster [Graphic Design]

2008-06-25T18:41:00.000+01:00

Poster advertising kschhh.com

PlatformTitle [Graphic Design]

2008-06-25T18:40:00.001+01:00

Title design for series of web articles called 'Platform' concerned with the influence of computer games on art, music and film.

DogSpeak [Illustration]

2008-06-25T18:35:00.001+01:00

Rock Chicken [Graphic Design]

2008-06-25T18:21:00.001+01:00

ManNoseSpiral [Illustration]

2008-06-25T18:11:00.000+01:00

ManFallBlue [Illustration]

2008-06-25T18:10:00.001+01:00

HandArmSpiral [Illustration]

2008-06-25T18:09:00.001+01:00

DogGlassesSpiral [Illustration]

2008-06-25T17:47:00.000+01:00

Rear Aspect [Video]

2008-06-02T16:07:00.001+01:00

Video made for collaboration with the Royal Academy of Music, London. It is a rehash of imagery from the film Rear Window and combines it with the concepts introduced by the film of constricted perspective, shifting understanding and tense mood.

FlyFace [Illustration]

2008-06-02T15:23:00.000+01:00

Ident for offshoot music project Kleenaxe.

03:23:13 [Conceptual Art]

2008-02-12T21:40:00.002Z

This piece was a continuation of the 'punchline' idea introduced in the Defrok series. Your attention is held by the kitsch 1950's movie 'The Day The Earth Stood Still,' while the purpose of the blu-tac and the time-code on the screen is only revealed when the time-code reaches 03:23:13.

Butane Blood Bubble (Internaut naught naught) in Passage [Exhibition]

2008-01-15T19:07:00.001Z

Watch Video

Students from ten art schools from eight European countries have all worked on a common theme: the multiple relations between moving image and performance. Passage, initiated by Contour Mechelen (BEL), is the first networking event of its kind. Among the many candidates, the jury has selected thirty four talented young artists.

Mapping a cascade of iconic techno-empiricism, Butane Blood Bubble (Internaut naught naught) is the result of a communion with the gods of Looney Tunes, motorways, monosodium glutamate, Google, composite audio/visual cable, aspartame, cardboard and YouTube.

Butane Blood Bubble (Internaut Naught Naught) is where cyberspace and meatspace collide, amalgamating somewhere in the middle as the abstract that is cognition.

One Second Sculpture [Sketch]

2007-12-09T03:12:00.001Z

Mousetrap [Sketch]

2007-12-09T03:08:00.000Z

Lie, Figure / Defrock Series [Conceptual Art]

2007-12-09T03:02:00.003Z

Originally, Defrock was a series of sculptures I made from rubbish materials - paper cups, coffee filters, pie tins, old computer parts, unused carpet - called Lie, Figure 1, 2, 3 and 4. The fabric draped over the rubbish acted as a figurative and literal veil, hiding the mundane, everyday materials beneath a facade of the kind of classical art that perpetuates mysticism. The duality of the works to act as a rhetorical joke.

Lie Figure No. 1

Three days later an opportunity to show the sculptures in an exhibition arose and I took it. The exhibition, organised by eleven other artists, the events manager of the venue and myself, was held in a local pool hall. The exhibition opened to the dismay of the regular customers who approached the works with an attitude of annoyance rather than interest, although not too little interest for a patron to uncover one of the draped figures. The deceit of suggestion was discovered. The joke was given a punch-line.

In this punch-line I found the power of ‘the reveal.’ The act that draws into sharper focus our patterns of processing sensory information through the filters of cultural ideology and conditioning.

It was in this effort of deceit that I found a discourse that I followed with the creation of the Defrock video series; a discussion of the factors that condition perception.

Seated Figure (from the series Defrock)

Best Kept Secret [Conceptual Art]

2007-12-09T03:00:00.002Z

Easy Ways To Pay [Conceptual Art]

2007-12-09T02:53:00.001Z

Bubba the love Sponge [Sketch]

2007-12-09T02:51:00.001Z

|\|ail in the \/\/ay [Sketch]

2007-12-09T01:41:00.000Z

Video playing with the idea of 'the reveal.'

Art Attack [Sketch]

2007-12-09T01:40:00.000Z

A camera is loaded into a wooden wheel and dragged and thrown around, sometimes at unsuspecting victims

Butane Blood Bubble (Internaut naught naught) [Conceptual Art]

2007-12-09T01:33:00.001Z

Mapping a cascade of iconic techno-empiricism, Butane Blood Bubble (Internaut naught naught) is the result of a communion with the gods of Looney Tunes, motorways, monosodium glutamate, Google, composite audio/visual cable, aspartame, cardboard and YouTube. It is both an expression and result of the integration of the visual, aural and chemical onslaught on consciousness from TV, computers and the internet, portable technology, other dromospheric pollution from urban life compounding with psychochemical fallout from food additives such as caffeine and MSG.

Butane Blood Bubble (Internaut Naught Naught) is where cyberspace and meatspace collide, amalgamating somewhere in the middle as the abstract that is cognition.

Edited Version

Beanface 1 and 2 [Sketch]

2007-12-09T00:46:00.001Z