SPELL READING 5: Animism & the Alphabet, or Lack Thereof

I remember this morning vividly. My alarm went off at 9am and I heard rain drops outside my window. I never wake up when it's raining. I snoozed for several hours and then it was about thirty minutes until class. I hadn't had time to make my response to the chapter and had planned to spend all morning working on something, since I ended up sleeping instead I decided it would be best to continue sleeping and did not come to class. It is a lot like that Jack Johnson song "Banana Pancakes."

Here is a picture I took from my work of the rain later on in that week. It was a rainy week.

Hotel Show

For my hotel show piece, I decided to create a secret from the hotel's perspective. I created a scenario where the hotel was infested with monstrous bugs and the hotel staff were keeping it a secret.

I had this stack of fake articles about the infestation sitting on the dresser then above the dresser was a giant monster insect breaking through the corner of the ceiling and walls!

The monster was built out of paper, tape, paper mache, foam board, styrofoam balls, wooden teeth, spray paint and acrylic paint. Here is a picture of the monster before the paint and teeth were added and then in the painting process.

My hope was that the monster would startle viewers upon sight and then appear as though it were really coming out of the walls upon further inspection. 

My inspiration for the monster bug was mostly from the alien in the first Men In Black movie, Edgar. He is related to the cockroach and at the end of the movie Will Smith has an epic battle with him in which Tommy Lee Jones intentionally gets eaten by the giant insect in order to get his blaster cannon which the alien previously devoured. He then shoots the monster from inside it's own stomach and explodes nasty slime and alien guts all over the place. Here is a link to a page devoted to Edgar.

http://meninblack.wikia.com/wiki/Edgar_the_Bug

"More sugar" -Edgar, MIB

Sea Prism, The Prism of the Sea

 During research about happenings around St. Augustine I came across an article about Dr. Stanley Paris, a 76 year old man who is sailing around the world solo. He set sail from St. Augustine in November 2013. When he is finished with his journey he will have set the world records for the first person to sail around the world solo and the oldest person to sail around the world. I found this to be very remarkable and I decided I wanted to make a tribute to his voyage.

The Sea Prism is that tribute.

Here is a link to the Dr. Stanley's website:

http://stanleyparis.com/

For my tribute I wanted to create a floating object to set sail in the harbor where Dr. Stanley left from on his way around the globe. I wanted to create something based on the nice triangular shape of a sail without directly creating a sail. I decided to create a pyramid frame out of wooden dowels atop a wooden base. I then put nails along all the edges and wrapped yarn across each side. The total structure is 4'x4'x3' and sits on an inflatable tube. It has been nicknamed the Sea Prism or David Buoy.

SPELL READING 9: Time, Space and the Eclipse of the Earth

The Lacota used to place stones in a circle around a central stone in order to measure a year. I have always been amazed by how ancient tribes used to be able to create structures that would use shadows and sunlight to tell time and seasons. It really blows my mind.

On page 189 of the Spell of the Sensuous Abram writes:

"On the high plateaus in the Rocky Mountains, where the visible horizon is especially vast and wide, are circular arrangements of stones arrayed around a central hub. It is known that such "medicine wheels," still used by various North American tribes, once served a calendrical function."

I created a miniature version of one of these time telling circles. I arranged some rocks around a central rock on a wooden square that I cut to size and sanded. Then to show about how big I imagined it would be in real life I put a small toy man beside the rocks.

Peephole Project

I chose the local business Planet! Sarbez! to use for my peephole project. Planet! Sarbez! is a new business here in St. Augustine that sells clothing made by owner Ryan Kunch as well as the best grilled cheese sandwiches in the world. The store is very unique and eclectic and full of bright colors and interesting artwork and furniture.

I wanted to create my peephole project to capture some of the playful and exuberant personality that Planet! Sarbez! displays daily. I built a  box out of foam board and spray painted the outside all silver. One of the walls of the box is on the outside of the front window of the store while the rest of the box sits inside the shop. When you look in the peephole on the front face of the box you see a glowing space-scape. I created planets out of styrofoam balls and spray paint and hung them from thread. I created an alien space ship out of wood and spray painted that as well. There is a black light  and red light inside the box for mood lighting. In the lower corner standing on a planet surface of yarn is the cantina band from Star Wars.

I decided to name my peephole TVC15 which is the name of a song by David Bowie. In the song Bowie sings about a hallucination that Iggy Pop had while at Bowie's house where his girlfriend was eaten by his television set.

Animism and the Alphabet

The portion of the chapter where Abram talks about using words on the page like prints on the ground to track the meaning stood out to me. I decided to play off the idea of tracking using words. So I drew a deer head on a piece of nice illustration board and then created a track of words leading the reader to the prey.

SPELL READING 8: In the Landscape of Language

I responded to the part of the chapter on page 160 where Abram talks about Apache persons associating certain locations with specific relatives or ancestors who walked there. On PAGE 160 Abram writes:

"Apache persons often associate places with particular ancestors. Indeed, the earthly places seem to speak to certain persons in the voices of those grandparents who first "shot" them with stories, or even speak in the voices of those long-dead ancestors whose follies and exploits are related in the 'agodzaahi tales."

I think it is cool to relate the land you walk to those who walked it before you. I associate the land of St. Augustine with Juan Ponce de Leon. Abram says that the Apache used to even talk in the voices of those ancestors who had relevance to these spots. I found audio that I portrayed to be Ponce de Leon's voice speaking in this location 500 years ago. Then I went over to the statue of Ponce by the Bridge of Lions and got some footage of cars and people going about. I put the audio over the video clips and ran a filter on the video to make it appear aged. I call the video "Juan's World."

A Natural History of the Senses

Sense: Touch

I chose to create my hallway installation based on the sense of touch. Yarn World was built February 17, 2014. I wanted to create an enclosed space where you could not avoid being touched. In the book "A Natural History of the Senses" Diane Ackerman talks about hair being a receptor of touch. When something is close to our bodies our hairs get all tingly and send information to our brain that something is there. Yarn World was supposed to be a kind of claustrophobic touch overload. When you step inside Yarn World you are being touched by thousands of strands of yarn coming from all sides.

The part of the book that I took the most inspiration from was the section titled "Adventures in the Touch Dome." Mostly I just think that is a great title. I imagine a giant dome packed full of different objects to touch, all the different textures and consistencies. That is essentially what you do at San Francisco's Touch Dome apparently.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/west-gallery/tactile-dome

In the Tactile Dome you explore the pitch darkness using only your sense of touch. Yarn World is a similar concept, but not the same. I created Yarn World by covering the brown floor and skirting with white paper which I taped to the wall. I then created a false ceiling out of foam board to hide the pipes above as well as to give a surface to attach yarn to. Using multi-colored duct tape I taped strips of yarn which I cut to reach just above the floor to the foam board ceiling above. I used 12 rolls of yarn and calculated that there are over 1000 strings of yarn hanging. I then hung a thick yellow curtain in front of the yarn with an opening so that you have to enter into the curtain to find the yarn. Over the top of the curtain I created a sign on foam board to seal the top of the curtain and invite guests in.

I wanted Yarn World to be playful and have almost an amusement park feeling but also be a little intimidating and make the guests feel uneasy about being inside the tiny space.

SPELL READING 4: The Flesh of Language

On page 89 of the Spell of the Sensuous is an excerpt from a Modoc song which goes like this:

I

the song

I walk here

I found that to be very poetic. I like the way the author refers to them self as the song. In a way we are all a song. Then the song says I walk here. I thought about places I walk and I pictured being among the trees. On page 88 David Abram talks about how owls speak and how indigenous hunting people would be careful about what they spoke about in the woods because the owls hear them and spread the word. 

I had the vision of creating a miniature nature scene with a small tree and an owl perched below it but I had trouble with ideas of how to make the owl. Then I decided to search the antique stores by my house for owl figurines but could not find any. During this hunt though, I stumbled across a wonderful little iron goat. He looked so sad a lonely on the shelf and I knew I had to have him. To create a tree for the goat to walk by I picked a small weed from my yard and planted it in a rectangle box I made from balsa wood. I flattened the soil at the rim of the box and placed the goat under the tree limbs. 

I imaged how the goat would talk in his miniature land. I think it would be something like this:

 

Or this:

The next day when I went to take pictures of my small scene I found that my "tree" had withered. I was sad at first but then I realized that it was actually quite fitting with the piece. The sad little goat with his sad little tree both singing "I the song, I walk here."

Philosophy on the Way to Ecology Part II

"In Aristotle's writings, for instance, while plants are endowed with a vegetal soul (which enables nourishment, growth, and reproduction), and while animals possess, in addition to the vegetal soul, an animal soul (which provides sensation and locomotion), these souls remain inseparable from the earthly world of generation and decay. Humans, however, possess along with these other souls a rational soul, or intellect, which alone provides access to the less corruptible spheres and has affinities with the divine 'Unmoved Mover' himself." -David Abram from The Spell of the Sensuous

I like the thought of layering the three different variations of souls over one another. On the inside every living thing has a vegetal soul, and then over top of that animals have an animal soul and even on top of that humans possess a rational soul. I made a type of flip book to show the plant on the first layer, an animal on the second layer, and then a human on the third layer.

First Layer

Second Layer

Third Layer

SPELL READING 2: Philosophy on the Way to Ecology

This chapter of the book spoke a lot about reality and existence. It compared Objective Reality and Subjective Experience. Somehow we live and exist somewhere in between the two. Life is a strange kind of balancing act between the physical world and intangible beliefs and ideas. In order to display this strange phenomenon I built a wooden replica of existence. I cut, sanded and glued a beam to a platform and then erected two pillars atom the beam on opposite ends. On one pillar is written "Objective Reality" and on the other is "Subjective Experience." Then between the two pillars is stretched a thin sketchy ladder. Hanging from the center of the ladder is a plaque the reads "Exist" on one side and then "Life" on the other. This is to replicate how our lives dangle precariously in the vast expanse between objectivity and subjectivity as well as reality and perceived experience.

The Ecology of Magic

In the first chapter of his book "The Spell of the Sensuous," David Abram speaks of an experience he had in the forests of Indonesia where he came across a wild bison. He had been on his journey for quite some time at this point and he had grown extremely in-tune with nature. When he passed through some branches and found himself face to face with this wild animal, he did not turn and run or scream and try to scare it away. He stood silently and found himself in some kind of connected state with the creature. They began to communicate in some kind of mimicking fashion. The bison would tilt its head to one side and he would reciprocate the motion and then move one leg and the animal would follow. David had reached a level of oneness with nature that he had never experienced back in America.

This piece is inspired by that story from the book. I created the bison head, leaves and base using Super Sculpey clay. It stands about three or four inches tall. It is intended to recreate the moment of David coming face to face with this magnificent creature.