Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts

8.27.2012

Because I can't think of another title that fits this conceit

The focus of my last two posts have been mostly about things that I did during Firefly, which is an occasional pitfall of how I tend to write about these sort of things, but seems out of keeping with the spirit of the event. There were over thirty theme camps at Firefly, and most of them had at least one thing about them that was positively stunning. Camp Totenkitten featured a torch standing possibly 40 feet tall which delivered a burst of flame from one or more of 9 nozzles facing in different directions when you pressed the arcade buttons on the control panel, and a cuddle-pit filled with pillows featuring a projector and screen which showed prior footage from a webcam pointed at the selfsame pit. Camp Retarded Lions had hammocks hanging one over the other, and a gigantic net suspended up above that people could hang out in. Bring a Cup was a theme camp devoted to delicious homebrew beer.

I spent quite a bit of time at Bring a Cup.

Many of the camps had outdoor nightclub-ish setups (including ours, though the extent to which we were outclassed in that regard is part of the reason I didn't serve many drinks). Some featured space for object manipulators and firespinners to perform. One camp had a suspension rig set up between two trees.

A lot of people experienced things for the first time there, both because there was quite a lot to experience and because we were in a safe space surrounded by people who genuinely wanted every single person they encountered to have a good time. Some of those things were chemicals. You would be surprised by the relative lack of people freaking the fuck out because of this. And the extent to which people were ready to care for the few marginal cases.

In addition to group projects, there was quite a bit of individual art that kicked ass. To be quite honest, cataloging any significant portion of it would be beyond the reaches of my memory, but I will share with you my favorite bit of performance art of the week, courtesy of a new friend I made at the Bad Faerie camp.

In the wake of the Republican Speaker of Michigan's lower house denying speaking privileges to State Representative Lisa Brown-- a Democrat who took to the floor and give a speech that ended with "I'm very flattered to see how interested you all are in my vagina, but no means no," in response to the latest local skirmish in the Republican War on Women-- this self-described Sparkle Warhorse (a reclamation of "Sparkle Pony," which refers to someone who shows up under-prepared for survival and over-prepared for general fabulousity) decided that this could not be allowed to stand. So she suited up to proselytize about the beauty and wonder of the vagina.

After explaining to people what she was on abut, she proceeded to knight those supportive to the cause who swore an oath to uphold and defend the rights and awesomeness of vaginae everywhere. She then bestowed upon them a vaginal name. I was the first person to be so dubbed. I am now Sir Spam Purse of Camberville.

There's a reason why I've seen fit to fill three posts about this event. For four days in the woods, I was able to experience what it's like to exist in a space where there are no constraints on expressing oneself except that I not ruin the space or hamper anyone else's self-expression. Does that mean that the person who people met at Firefly, who was often wearing nothing other than underwear, a hat, a pair of black faeire wings, shoes, and stockings is the real me, and way I present myself in public is just a costume? No. Well, not exactly. We take greater advantage of freedoms we don't always have when we have them, which is why at the moment I'm typing this I'm not wearing anything at all.

Also, it's not like the limits placed on my behavior and my self-expression here in Somerville, MA are exactly smothering.

This is uh, how I dress about 80% of the time that there's a party to go to.

When I go out for a walk dressed like that in Cambridge or Somerville, most people I see on the street don't bat an eyelash, and when they do say anything about my attire the positive comments vastly outnumber the negative. Which isn't actually surprising, when you consider that if you divide the population of Somerville by profession, artists make up a plurality. Of course, it's a relatively small bubble. In Boston proper an old man once did a double-take as I walked past and exclaimed, "Holy Toledo! A he-she!"

I can't tell you how much I love the fact that I was there when an actual person actually said that..

I've been extremely happy with the place I live now, and the people around me, but spending time in an autonomous zone beyond the grasp-- if not the reach-- of the law and of societal convention threw the compromises I make every day in order to participate in civilization into sharp relief. Of course, my access to white hetero cisgendered male privilege means that I get off relatively light in this regard, but that doesn't make it appreciably less frustrating. Four days in the woods once a year isn't enough. I want real life to be this beautiful.

The problem with this, of course, is that Firefly is made up of people who consented to spend four days without (many) rules or currency. As the right to smoke a plant that grows in the goddamn ground has only recently become a majoritarian proposition, women still can't take their tops off in places where men rarely keep them on, and the populace has quietly acquiesced to the notion that being photographed with a drink in your hand can disqualify you for a job, I doubt that the glorious revolution of self-dominion is just around the corner. And, I mean, even I don't want all of the conditions of Firefly to exist everywhere, at all times.

Still, I'm not going to give up on the idea of imbuing my new hometown-- if not the rest of the world-- with some measure of what I found out there in the woods with all of those wonderful naked people.

I'll let you know when I figure out how.

7.26.2012

Because I can't ever just tell a goddamn story in the right order

This continues the story I started to tell in my previous post

For me, the extent to which I find myself entangled with people I know because of things that happened on the Internet has served as a kind of constant reminder of the forces of chaos constantly at  work in our lives. Hell, the result of the random number generator behind the "Next Blog" button has led to palpable real-world consequences for me. Which, in the scheme of things, is unremarkable. Random events govern what happens on any given day in any given life, but individually they can be easy to miss. On the Internet, however, there are records, and you can find your way back to the literally random input that changed everything with a good enough memory and, of course, Google.

As it happens, the story that I kind-of-sort-of started to recount the other day happened because of a hat. More specifically, because I decided to change my profile picture on the dating site that I only ever joined because of a test that Bone posted about on his blog, which Pia also took and posted about on her blog.

Did uh, did anyone else do anything with that site besides take the quiz?

The photo in question is the one that I've been using for my avatar. As it happens, when you change anything in your profile on OKCupid, its algorithm gives you a bump. One of the people to whom my profile was bumped clicked through specifically because of the hat, the long hair, and the pirate flag. Her name is Emily, and she's a human statue performer, a leatherworker, a filmmaker, and a firespinner. The first time we hung out, about a year or two ago, we spoke for two solid hours sitting atop a 300 year-old crypt. The second time was at Figment Boston, where we sat in a dome littered with rose petals, pedaled to keep the music playing while people danced, and just generally appreciated the fuck out of the various works of guerrilla art taking up temporary residency on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. She told me that there was a sort of bigger, week-long version of Figment that happened every year out in the woods of Vermont called Firefly, and that she'd be going for the first time next month.

A month later, it did not take very long at all for her to convince me that I needed to be at the next one. Really all it took was the name drop of the camp I mentioned in the previous post. She and a few others had formed a small sub-camp within it called the Bad Faeries, a concept which she intended to visit upon next years festival in full form. A plan slowly took form over the course of the year, and three art grants were applied for and received. There would be a hookah lounge, a faerie wing creation station, a dj setup, a dance floor, a bar, and a horde of mythological creatures shrunken and suspended in light-reactive liquid hanging in jars all over the camp. The bar was my responsibility.

At first, when I thought I'd have funding (or the spare cash to underwrite the project myself), I'd intended on building a machine out of wood, rope, and pulleys that would, from the perspective of the thirsty visitor, pour measured amounts of uncooled booze at the pull of a lever into a bubbling cauldron spewing colored mist, from whereupon a straight-up, undiluted, cold drink would be conjured. It's a marriage of barcraft and stagecraft I had wanted an excuse to build for some time, but which ultimately wasn't in the cards. As plans shifted, it also became clear that there wasn't room for, well, anything else in any of the cars or trucks going up to Vermont. I would be heading up with six buckets, some twine, some duct tape, and twelve pounds of dry ice. I would, presumably, figure it out when I got there.

I was riding with Helen, who I would also be bunking with for the trip.

Oh, that's right, I haven't introduced you all to Helen. Dear readers, this is Helen. We've been together since November of 08


She moved to the Boston area after having traveled to the city the previous September, along with about a thousand other nerds (myself included) from various locales who showed up at the coordinates cited in this xkcd comic. She and five other people who met there moved into an apartment in Somerville, which became one of the main places where people in the newly formed social circle of xkcd fans in the area gathered. Yadda yadda yadda now we live together. Anyways, there was time during the drive up to experiment with the excess dry ice that didn't fit inside the foil-and-styrofoam box that actually stood a chance of keeping it in solid form for the duration of the trip. I learned two things.



(1) dry ice is awesome
(2) carbonated iced coffee is weird.


7.12.2012

Because the Heavy Metal Strippers Will Keep the Bears Away

A SECRET, UNDISCLOSED LOCATION IN THE GREEN MOUNTAINS

And that's the last of it!

The heavyset man behind the camp stove bellowed to all that would hear. He emptied the final bag of uncooked bacon onto the oversized cast-iron pan he was laboring over. Over four days, fully 92 pounds of bacon had been prepared on that stove, in that camp. Cheers went up as people briefly turned away from the firebreather (who had until then been the center of attention) to sample the latest output. Teriyaki bacon, roasted garlic bacon, and Cajun bacon were laid out for any present to consume.

92 pounds? That's about what I weigh!


I looked down to see a pixielike woman standing dressed in tiny black shorts, a scarf, and some bellydancer jewelry.

She put her arm around my midsection. "I hope you don't think this is weird, but I just love tall people. I'm so jealous... do you think you could let me ride on your shoulders?"

Naturally, I obliged. We went back down to the performance pit, where a long-haired man in a black Utilikilt was swinging a flame axe to Aenima by Tool, flanked by a shirtless muscley dude and a tall, skinny woman in a bikini, each of them working a stripper pole. We joined crowd of onlookers gathered at a safe distance wearing varying amounts of clothing who were dancing as they watched the performance.

When the song was over I knelt to let her off of my shoulders. Her feet touched the ground and we were at eye level.

Now you know what the world looks like to me


Actually, I assume this position all the time

Really... do you do partner acrobatics?


Huh? no, I just have a lot of friends who I'm closer to eye level with when I kneel

Oh, because you look like you have the build for it. Put your hands right above my knees for a second


She proceeded to teach me a number of tricks that involved lifting her over my head as she balanced in a pose, and ended by doing a handstand on my shoulders.

You really haven't done this before?

Onlookers did not act as if anything was out of the ordinary, and it wasn't. Not at the Firefly Arts Festival, and certainly not at Camp Heavy Metal Bacon Strippers. Here, 3/4-naked people being casually awesome was expected in very much the same way that, on a normal day, one might expect to drink coffee in the morning. And this in no way detracts from the individual experience of doing awesome things.

The rules of the road of any given burn (the catch-all term for events like Firefly) are designed to create that kind of atmosphere Aside from the ten principles of Burning Man, there are three main rules that govern Firefly:

(1) Leave No Trace (admittedly, one of the ten principles)
(2) Have Fun
(3) Safety Third

This would explain why someone would trust their safety to a complete stranger whose sobriety was never explicitly confermed

When she was done teaching me things, we formally introduced ourselves and parted ways. There was much more adventure to be had, and only a day and a half left to have it.

More to come...




8.17.2011

Come On and Grab Your Friends...

So uh... Rick Perry huh?

All I'm saying about him right now is that I'm mortified to share a biographical bullet point with him that I consider to be important-- we're both Eagle Scouts.

Though when I got Eagle, I had to demonstrate that I gave a shit about my fellow human beings, and also that I had any clue how America works. But then again, I come from lib'rul Massachusetts, where most people (referred to colloquially as non-subscribers of the Boston Herald) think that we should expect adults to read above a fourth grade level.

In any case, one could be forgiven for wanting to talk about cartoons instead of the brutish realities of this foul month in the American experiment.  Lately, it's been impossible for me to get enough Adventure Time.

Set after what is known colloquially as the Great Mushroom War, which caused fundamental changes in the rules that govern Earth (now known as the Land of Ooo), it follows the adventures of Finn, a thirteen year-old human believed to be the last of his kind, and Jake, a  28 year-old magic dog whose parents raised Finn as their own.

The land is full of lifeforms unlike any on pre-apocalyptic Earth. Sentient candy people, floating purple clouds who speak like androgynous Valley girls, small elephants with faces like Peppermint Pattie, monsters, wizards, flying unicorns who speak Korean, and all manner of anthropods that aren't quite human, but who may have descended from humans. Littered about the landscape are artifacts of the world's previous inhabitants, none of which are fully understood by the current ones. Technology is of the cargo cult variety, as while Finn carries a portable phone, he also carries a sword.

The world's operating mechanics are familiar to anyone who's played Dungeons and Dragons.

Yeah, big surprise that I watch this show. It's deliciously absurd, playfully disturbing, and above all, smart.

And I feel a strange sort of kinship to Finn. He's literally one of a kind, living in a world that doesn't always make sense, with no direction home and few who he can truly relate to. He gets by (gets high; tries) with a little help from his friends, who are many, but few of whom actually get him. Indeed, even his adoptive brother-cum- hetero lifemate Jake sometimes has trouble understanding what it's like to be Finn.

He's brave, clever (though not as educated as might be desired), unfailingly loyal, and inexhaustibly curious. Which serves him well in this strange world, which contains monsters and barbarians and dungeons and quests enough to keep the existential angst at bay.

He spends a non-trivial portion of his time rescuing princesses from the Ice King, a sorcerer who seems to have gotten the idea that kidnapping and imprisonment in a frozen cage is a normal part of courtship. But even when they aren't in need of rescuing, Finn takes it upon himself to tend to the needs of all princesses, whether that includes throwing a movie night to stave off boredom, or helping them record a new song. Princesses seem to make up about 85% of the female population in the Land of Ooo, and they all love Finn.

He's happy to help anyone (even non-Princesses) at any time, but he's the most devoted to Princess Bubblegum, the eighteen year-old ruler of the candy kingdom who seems to have some human DNA but whose biomass is made up of candy. At the end of Season 2, he underwent the struggle of his life in a quest to save her from the grips of an ancient and terrible Lich. He succeeded, but only just, and the wasting sickness that came as a result of her exposure to all of that nastiness reduced her biomass, having the result of (somehow) reverting her to a thirteen year-old. Which brings us to this episode, the first one in which Finn interacts with the thirteen year-old Princess Bubblegum.

The episode is here, should you want to check it out. I had it embedded, but Cartoon Network doesn't seem to get the point of it being the future. It's just over ten minutes.


This episode aired last Monday, when I was still out for blood over the S&P downgrade, which I took as a declaration of war. But the ending took my mind off of it, because something about it struck me close to home.

Finn had been in love with Princess Bubblegum since the day he first met her, but as an eighteen year-old princess with grown-up responsibilities, she's not exactly approachable. She cares deeply for Finn, and indeed it was the power of her affection for him-- imbuded in the sweater she knitted to protect him from the cold of the Lich's lair-- which allowed him to break the curse that threatened her very existence. But there was a barrier between them because of their difference in age and circumstances.

Now that she's thirteen, Finn isn't quite so alone in this strange land. And they both seem to be at their happiest. Naturally, it doesn't last. For the good of her people, the Princess needs to be her eighteen year-old self again. With the donated candyflesh of he loyal subjects and a massive love-hug from Finn to act as a catalyst, she manages to age five years in a matter of seconds. In one instant, she's being revived by the warm glow of his affection, and in the next, she's shrugging him off because she has better things to do.

And the real kicker is, she can't really be blamed for it. Princess Bubblegum experienced the past five years in an instant, and is thus rightly puzzled as to why that weird little kid (cute though he is) thinks that they're still a Thing.

TV and movies tend to depict messy breakups, wrought of anger and betrayal, but my experience tends to line up more with Finn's. I've never really had a "breakup" per se; just cessations of intimacy. Often abruptly and without obvious cause. It's jarring. It leaves some questions that are never answered, and some that feel too stupid to ever ask. And even though I'm more than happy with my current situation, the dull thud of each unheralded departure continues to echo faintly in my mind, years after the fact.

For Finn, there are still adventures to be had, monsters to fight, and princesses to champion for (including Princess Bubblegum). Indeed, there are for me too, if not literally. But I couldn't help but feel a bittersweet melancholy wash over me as I saw Finn gaze longingly at the turret at near top of the Candy Castle whence Princess Bubblegum overlooked her domain.

It's a quality seen in the finest art, whatever the medium. I owe Pendleton Ward a beer.

1.28.2011

Practical Magic

Found a pretty neat blog called Paleofuture.  It's a fairly extensive log of past predictions of the future.  Including what the Thomas Edison Park thought the world would look like in 2011.  My favorite prediction is  that we'd be able to carry entire libraries in our pockets-- printed on wafer-thin leafs of nickel. As is true of his entire professional life, these predictions are brilliant forward thinking with some key flaws. The man who failed to predict that the phonograph would be used to listen to music (and despite the contemporaneous popularity of the player piano) was, in fact, mortal. And yet, what he created (or took credit for creating) was so new and wonderous that nonetheless he was dubbed the Wizard of Menlo Park; a Merlin of his own time.

I've been reading through Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and it's had me thinking about what the word "magic" means in the real world. In the series, economics is referred to as "the reflected sound of underground spirits," and much of practical witchcraft relies on herbalism and what is known as "Headology," or the practical effects that a known practitioner of magic can acheive without uttering a spell when amongst non-magic users.  Witches and wizards do, in fact, posess "real" magic, but that's because the Discworld is a world where magic is a real, physical force. But the word "magic" is still idiomatically used to describe, well, the sort of things that involve the same kind of deception as a conjurer's act, or the same kind of dexterity and creativity that Harry Houdini became famous for. It differs from superstition only in that it actually works.

Arther C Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and I think it extends further than that. In earlier times the shaman would take you in to their yoda-style living spaces and serve you a strange tea that would send you into a different state of consciousness and it was magic.  Today the active chemicals are crystalized and used for the same effect and it's called pharmacology.

The difference? Science is an open process. Magic is cloaked in mystery, whether by coercion or lack of deeper understanding. It consists of disguised invention as well as manipulation of forces that one cannot adequately explain. The economically measurable impact of an extension of unemployment benefits is science. The known predictive nature of an original NFL team winning the Super Bowl is magic.  The known impact of antibiotics on a bacterial infection is science. The known impact of antibiotics on a viral infection is magic (As is the similar effect of a sugar pill, but in the case of antibiotics, the consequences of antibiotic overuse make it dark magic).

The fields of economics, diplomacy, medicine, psychology, political science, artwork, music, drama, comedy and sex, among others, are mixed practices.

Home field advantage was magic until it was discovered that while its measurable impact didn't vary based on era or distance of travel or method of travel, it did vary based on the distance of the crowd from the officials. Another clue dropped when the Seattle Seahawks-- whose fans were outnumbered to the tune of an away game in Super Bowl XL-- got fucked over by the refs. As it turns out, while the impact of the crowd on the players may anecdotally be a psychological boost for the home team, it's far more evident that the officials are more likely to swallow their whistles when the home team is doing its thing. They don't want to be seen as deciding the outcome, and by their inaction, they influence the outcome.

It's also important to note the significance of the word "witchcraft," as the meaning of the word has a similar twang. When you examine the context of its usage in history, from the Dark Ages to Salem to Pat Robertson declaring feminism to be "a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians," to the signs featuring President Obama as a witch doctor. the meaning that emerges is "women with ideas above their station." Merlin was the picture of wisdom in the Arthurian legends, but a woman who practiced the same arts as he (and indeed, as those of that era who were styled as "wizards" historically) did was assumed to be up to no good. Come the age of Christianity, it all was verboten by an authority that wanted a monopoly on spiritual healing.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit in the past couple of days, because despite the fact we're at 9.4% unemployment that a solid State of the Union address does not statistically increase the political capital of the President delivering it, and despite the fact that the party that has any ideas that can statistically increase the number of jobs in this country has less power than it did two years ago, the 91% of respondents who agreed with the President's policy proposals have me feeling bullish about the coming year.

Because among many other things, that dude is magic.

4.10.2007

Art versus Culture 2: David and (Todd) Goliath

the thieving artist
who from the internet takes
will soon find rebuke

Exhibit A: Taken from the webcomic Purple Pussy by Dave Kelly. The September 8, 2001 strip to be specific



Exhibit B: From, well, an exhibit. To be specific, Golddigger, the Jack Gallery's exhibit of the artwork of Todd "Goliath" Goldman, which surfaced recently in Los Angeles.


Todd Goldman is a douchebag. Hands down. And I know that art plagiarism is no new concept and that it's rampant on the internet, but this fucker has made millions off of a T-shirt empire full of concepts every bit as stolen as this one. Ok no wait that's not actually correct. This one is very thoroughly stolen.



That's right. He fucking traced it. Poorly I might add; he messed up the head. And in case there was any question as to whether or not this was intended as an homage, Here's the clincher. A quote from the article.

Goldman attributes his inspiration to his wittiness and weird sense of humor.

"I'm just wacked out of my mind. Things just come to me really quickly. I have complete ADD so I've never finished a book before. I haven't really watched cartoons or read comic books. It's just my witty sense of humor and my love to draw," Goldman said.

Am I the only one cringing?

DOUCHEBAG

And while I know that I'm very likely the only one here who has any interest in the webcomic community, I'm putting this out there to do my part in making the case known, because the more people are made aware of it, the better odds Dave has at suing Todd into the stone age.

And also let this be a message to artists of all stripes who post on the net: Keep an eye out. You might be the one who catches the next Todd Goldman and ruins him.