Encyclopedia

This is a first stab at trying to organize some material for a thesis. For now I’m working with the form of an encyclopedia, one that includes information that informs or inspires my practice, as well as personal memories, dreams etc. I’m organizing it in alphabetical order for now, the floating words and letters are place holders that I will be filling in.

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Alpine Architecture is a book published by then unknown German architect Bruno Taut in 1918. In it 30 watercolor drawings depict elaborate crystalline structures, most of which are speculatively situated in various Alpine regions. The book was originally printed in an Atlas size format and breaks down into five sections. As the book progresses the drawings become more complex and fantastical, by the fourth section “Earth’s Crust Building” the drawings are from the vantage point of outer space and depict crystalline structures covering the entire earth. By section five “Astral Building” Taut has left the earth completely and is now describing floating architectural structures among the stars.
Excerpt from a letter to his wife Hedwig, dated November 2, 1917:
-- What is it about which all the fuss in the world is being made nowadays? Eating, drinking, knives, forks, appliances, railways, bridges, etc. And what comes of it all? The “good” life? Isn’t that ridiculous? Everything revolves around feeding, flags, comfort. Then the great expenditures of factories and slavery. Childish! Less than an animal that at least innocently enjoys the moment. People must have a task that involves them so deeply that they subordinate everything to it. They may moan about slavery even then – but they will see their works accumulate, their earth become more beautiful. Just imagine, we – our children will surely use the aeroplane as a matter of course, as we today use trains or cabs. And then, below them, the radiant, continually growing splendor! Lonely great beauty as the work of men – can’t this be piety as well? – I know, for you the quiet beauty of nature is enough. For me too, as long as I am alone or quietly with another person. But we human beings are herd animals too, and this herd must be prodded to greatness – roughly if need be! – to prevent it’s becoming dangerous. If people can create this greatness, which has begun in rudiments in ancient India, China, Egypt, then their works will appear like a piece of nature which will later speak as profoundly as a tree in the forest. –

Afterimage and Anti-image
An afterimage is an optical illusion that refers to an image continuing to appear in one’s vision after exposure to the image has ceased. A common after image is seeing an image in complimentary colors after staring at it for awhile and them looking away, to a blank wall or sheet of paper.
Joseph Beuys developed ideas about what he called the Anti-image. Believing that everything was connected to it’s opposite whether it was visibly present or not. With his use of mundane materials and dull colors he hoped that his work would create inside the viewer “a very colorful world as an anti-image”.

The Beach at Cleone

Cyanotype
Sir John Hensel invented the cyanotype process in 1842. A photo-sensitive chemical solution is used to coat a sheet of paper or fabric. A positive image is produced by exposing it to a source of ultraviolet light (such as sunlight) with a negative. After exposure the print is flushed with water and the result is an insoluble blue dye known as Prussian blue. A friend of Hensel’s, Anna Atkins (1799-1871) was an English botanist who within a year of it’s invention adopted the cyanotype process to solve the problem of making accurate drawings of scientific specimens and is considered to be the first female photographer. She self published the first installment of British Algae: Cyanotype impressions – only 12 copies were printed and is the first book illustrated exclusively with photographic images. Around the same time Atkins was using cyanotype to record plant species discoveries the process was also taken up by architects and engineers to make copies of their drawings – what we now refer to as blueprints.

Cenotaph a Newton

Dream, July 2005, Tokyo, Colleen is 6 months pregnant
I am sitting on a sofa in the living room, writing in a journal I use to record my dreams as if it were a diary. Our roommates, Keiko and Muto, enter the room with a group of friends. They are saying goodbye. I notice a small boy hanging around Muto’s legs, and a baby girl on his shoulders. The baby has straight silvery hair, big brown eyes, and is apparently half Asian/half Caucasian - besides me the only non-Japanese person in the room. The boy, speaking to the baby points at me and whispers “That’s the foreigner”. The baby turns to face me and gives me a smile so radiant it’s like the sun is emanating from her face. I immediately feel a strong urge to approach the baby, but when I stand and begin to walk a wave of energy like a force-field coming from her smile hits me and knocks me back onto the sofa. My body is paralyzed and tingling and I feel myself loosing consciousness. I wake with a jolt feeling like a strong electric current has just run though my body.

Drone Music
Drone music is composed around a sustained tone that establishes a harmonic center for its accompanying elements; this might be a single note repeated indefinitely or, at the opposite extreme, all of the scale’s notes spread across numerous octaves. Other aspects include extended duration, modular repetition, and a focus on overtones.
Influenced by the music of India, Indonesia, and Africa, drone is often played in alternate tuning or just intonation.

Electricity
Although we know it exists none of our five senses correlate with it directly. We know it only through it’s effects, which we have learned to harness, yet we have no idea what it is in and of itself…

Froebel’s gifts

Flatland

Gravity

Goethe’s theory of color

H

I

J

K

Length of a meter

Memory
When I was growing up in southern California, my grandpa Toby lived in San Francisco. He came down to visit us a few times a year and would often take me and my sister to play at the beach. One day we were sitting in the sand watching the ocean when he told us, “I want you to remember this moment for the rest of your life, look around, take in the details, and try to commit everything to memory.” My sister and I both quietly looked around and took in the scene. Nothing particularly distinguishing or eventful about that moment, waves crashing on the shore, slightly cold sand, slightly pink sky, not unlike most of the other days he took us to the beach. I probably would have forgotten it and never thought about it again, expect that each time he visited he asked us if we remembered that moment on the beach. He would say “Do you remember what I told you to remember?” And we would say “What?” then think for a second, “Oh yeah.” He still to this day asks me sometimes when we’re talking on the phone. Over the years my brain turned this simple memory into something of a fixation, something so important that it must never be forgotten, and so a few times a day it pops up out of nowhere and replays in my head… Sitting on the beach with my sister and grandpa, the waves, the cool sand, the pinkish sky…

Moon Illusion

Naqushbandi School
One of The largest sects of Sufis is the “Naqushbandi School”, commonly referred to among Arabs as “The Designers”. Their primary work is the encoding of information from the Koran into rugs, calligraphy, and architecture. The Sufis believe the Koran is a code, a mystery, and to solve it is to become enlightened.

O

Persistence of Vision

Point, Sphere, Plane

Polarity

Perspective

Public Outdoor Room

Queen of Night
In the scenography from Mozart’s opera the Magic Flute, the power of the Queen of Night’s hold over the universe is depicted by her ability to constrain all of the stars in a geometric pattern. They appear like ribs in the vault of the night sky.

Rainbow

Repetition

Scale
All beings have roughly the same number of heartbeats per life – 25 million. Small creatures live on a shorter time scale than large animals. Rats live about three years, rabbits seven, humans 70, and blue whales 120. Since the rate of respiration is coupled with heartbeat – one breath for every four heartbeats – the rate of breathing also decreases with increasing size. We all notice and mark the passing of time based on rhythms and cycles of nature, but it would seem that the rhythms happening within our own bodies play a large part in our experience of time, and that those rhythms ground us in our relative time scale.
Only a being the size of a human could effectively control fire. A campfire is the smallest fire that is both controllable and reliable. A smaller fire is too easily blown out and a larger fire too easily becomes out of control.

T

Universal Language

V

Wonder of Jena

X

Yesterday

The discovery of Zero

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Some artists, designers, architects (In no particular order):

Bruno Taut
Ad Reinhardt
Adolf Loos
John Cage
Jasper Johns
Yayoi Kusama
Fluxus
Gerrit Rietveld
J J P Oud
Hans Arp
Goethe
Marcel Duchamp
Joseph Beuys
Enzo Mari
Louis Khan
Rudolf Steiner
Yves Klein
Joseph Albers
Hans Haacke
James Turrell
Robert Irwin
Piet Mondrian
Leonardo DaVinci
Etienne-Louis Boullee
Jean-Jacques Leque

Statement 1 Edited

1. Edited Version

A rainbow appears under special conditions: it has to be sunny, it has to be raining, and someone has to observe it. Sunlight refracts and reflects inside each water droplet altering the angles of the light passing through it. The position of the drops in the air in relation to the observer determines their color in the spectrum. Without a seeing eye the rainbow does not exist because it is dependent on the perspective of the observer.
The same is also true of seeing, for example, a tree. Something is there. Scientists say atoms and molecules, but we know that they are mostly empty space so the solidity we perceive is just a trick of perception. Although more complex physics are involved, the way we perceive a tree is similar to the way we perceive a rainbow, and because of how it is constructed in our mind, is just as illusive.
Physicists tell us that what we consider to be the building blocks of reality, namely atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons, etc, are actually nothing more than quantum mechanical waves. The only thing we are ever really dealing with is our own human constructs. We call this reality, and it certainly seems that way, but there is nonetheless an illusive rainbow-like quality to all of what we know.
And yet, in spite of this, knowing that everything is essentially nothing, here we are, living our lives, experiencing all the color, tone, texture, emotion, and continuity of the world as a synthesized whole. What exists without thinking is only half the story: always incomplete and fragmentary. Only one part of reality is present in what we perceive – we experience the other part.
My work is an effort to bridge this opposition, a search for the unity between thought and the world, between ideal and physical reality. This is expressed through the use of various structures, both formal and conceptual. Each structure has a logic specific to the project which is often undercut by an organic element. Many of my works do not exist as completed objects, but instead take place over time, and have an element of inevitability to them - they grow, break, decay, or collapse. I often choose materials and objects for their ingrained cultural symbolism as a way to play with preconceived notions about the threshold between nature and culture, and ideas about the individual in relation to the universe.

1.

A rainbow appears under special conditions: it has to be somewhat sunny, it has to be raining, and someone has to be there to see it. The first two conditions are obvious enough, but can a rainbow exist without an observer? I don’t pose this question in a metaphysical sense and it’s not meant to be a riddle. The answer is no, and can be explained easily according to the most basic laws of physics.
The position of a rainbow depends on the observer’s location in relation to the sun. A rainbow always appears in the exact opposite direction of the sun with respect to the observer. The arc of the rainbow is centered around the shadow of the observer’s head, or more precisely where the eyes are on the head. All raindrops refract and reflect the sunlight in the same way, but only the light from some raindrops reaches the observer's eye. This light is what constitutes the rainbow for that observer. Different simultaneous observers see different rainbows, because each is at a distinctly different location. Without a seeing eye the phenomenon of a rainbow does not occur because the geometry and angles of reflected light, which create the color spectrum, depend on perspective. Only after the light has passed though our eyes and into our mind where it is perceived do we form the picture for ourselves of the rainbow.
The same is also true of seeing, for example, a tree. Something is there, the scientist says atoms and molecules, but we know that they are mostly empty space so the "solidity" is an illusion created by our sense of touch and our overall perception system, which has gone ahead and constructed the image of a solid and impenetrable tree for us. Although more complex physics are involved, the way we perceive a tree is similar to the way we perceive a rainbow, and because of how it is constructed in our mind, is just as illusive.
Most serious physicists have already pretty much concede the fact that it’s impossible to even talk about the nature of matter without talking about consciousness. They tell us that what we consider to be the building blocks of reality, namely atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons, etc, are entirely built-up from quantum mechanical waves. And what are these waves are composed of? They have absolutely no idea and have given up on speculating. Every theory so far put forth has proven false. They tell us that something is there, but we do not know what it is, and probably never will.
So the only thing we are ever really dealing with is our own human constructs. We like to call this reality, and it certainly seems that way, but there is nevertheless an illusive rainbow like quality to all of what we know.
And yet,
and yet, in spite of this, knowing that everything is essentially nothing, or whatever it is we can’t really figure out, here we are, living our lives, interacting with one another, seeing beauty in a rainbow, falling in love, building a house, playing checkers, writing statements about art, drinking coke, tying our shoes… Doing all the things we do as if there were some purpose, some meaning. Would it be helpful if when I’m talking to my daughter about what she did at school that day I constantly remind myself “This conversation is nothing more than quantum mechanical waves – it’s all a human construct.” over and over again? I don’t think that would be helpful or relevant at all, even if it were absolute truth.
This place, this intersection, between the external world of pure experience, shit happening in the world, and our inner world where everything is synthesized, perceived, and mingles with thought, emotion, imagination, etc. is where my work is. At its most elemental I’m just looking for the instances where these things rub together, and then trying increase the friction.

2.

A short statement about this statement: I started writing this kind of in the form of theory, but I don't think that's what it is. It's rough, fragmented, and unfinished. The part about the apples gets weird, was trying to do a Plato line of questioning thing, but feels lame. After that it falls apart. Feedback welcomed.

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Looking up at the sky at night we see an incredible number of stars. We see these by means of the light “carrying” the stars to us, there is a trail of light leading out from each star directly into our eyes, which means that this vast expanse of sky must be completely filled with this light which passes through the small holes of our pupils and into our eyes.
Another person in a different location would see the same vast night sky as as I would. The stars seen in the sky are all present in the light at any eye point – this totality is contained in each small area of space.

We live at a boundry between two worlds, two areas which exist separately for us: an inner world of thought which we relate to as being very much connected with our own individuality, and an external world which we view as being completely separate from. Like workers operating the bulldozer of our body we manipulate the world, but do not consider ourselves and much less our thoughts to part of the fabric which weaves everything together as a whole.
We are all more or less aware that our thoughts come to us through our encounter with reality. We receive through our senses objects in time and space, we are aware of an incredibly complex and multifaceted and constantly changing external world, while at the same time we also live in a more or less richly developed inner world. All of this comes to us in a seemingly completed form, we have not consciously contributed to this situation. We first receive the world through our senses instantly as pure experience. We then begin the mental work of classification, dividing the world according to form, color, texture, tone, etc. We try to justify the relationships of everything we encounter looking for causes, effects, and laws. If we see a ball rolling down the street we follow it’s path backward to understand what made it roll, constantly looking for related events. We now know the world in a dual way, through pure experience plus thinking.

When I see three apples I know I am dealing with two things: the apples, and the number three. How do I know this? I know what apples are from experience, I've seen them, touched them, smelled them, eaten them, picked them, and even read books about them. I have no doubt that when an apple is in front of me I know what it is. And how do I know there are three? I learned how to count to three even before I went to school. Since then I have had so many experiences dealing with groups of three that I know when I am dealing with three things instantly without counting. I perceive the apples through my senses, all I have to do is open my eyes and there they are. The number three however is a little trickier and requires slightly more effort on my part. Certainly there are three apples there in front of me, but the number three is only there because of the apples. If I remove an apple, the three disappears, or more precisely, changes into a two; still apples, but no three. If I replace the apple I removed with a new apple, the three returns. It’s not the same three apples, but the number three is the same number three I had before. If I replace an apple with an orange I no longer have three apples, but I do have three pieces of fruit – the same number three from before, complete and unaltered. The number is constant and unchanging no matter what it is attached to, but does not exist anywhere on it’s own in the physical world. I can never experience the number three without the mediation of a group of objects except in pure abstract thought. There the number three exists in it’s pure form and I can understand it completely.
But what happens if we just leave the three apples sitting there for a long time. After awhile certain natural processes take hold, the apples begin to rot, decay, shrink, dry, and after a very long time turn to dust and blow away. At some point in that process the apples cease to be apples, and also at some point the number tree also ceases to be relevant and when this happens it seems to me that we have reached some kind of threshold.

Concrete poem