Yo. Before I forget, there are many miscellaneous things you should know. I will now list them.

• Bryan and I were up very late indeed making and installing the SPACE ROCKS! poster (as you see above), and it would be great if you came! It’s next Saturday at the GSD, and a bunch of graphic designers and artists, etc, will be speaking about SPACE. And how it ROCKS, no doubt… the full info is here. Indeed!
• In the course of the making of this poster, I paired Johnston ITC with Mr. Barnbrook’s Bastard Fat, which I am like rilly pleased with in some perverse way. I can’t explain that shit. Rilly, you tell me:

• The day after that, though, I got totally busted by the Mason building’s sysadmin for circumventing the school’s print system. He had documentation of how much ink I had (allegedly!) used, down to the microliter or somesuch. So I am now in some serious trouble. Whoops.
• I love ffffound. My paean to it has been up on SpeakUp for a little while, so maybe you knew that, but still. It’s fucking awesome. Yeah.
• My show went up. I call it “my show”, which is wrong, really; I was one of many many participants in what was the graphic design graduate show, which I curated along with Jerlyn and Hoon. So not at all entirely mine (although I did do the identity posters for it) but in my mind I still call it “my show”, however erroneous that might be. Erm. It was a blast, I’ll have you know, yis.
• Through all of these things, I took copious notes on tumblr, where I post both thesis-related and non-thesis-related miscellaneous shit. In the course of our space rocks work bender, Bryan asked me what the value-add of tumblr was, and I described it much as I described ffffound’s allure: more of a value-subtract, really; the lack of control over minutia that you have with most bloggy things (tags, comments, RSS, APIs, etc) make it kind of a pleasure to use. Many of my friends have been using them, because who cares about most blog features? I, for one, could give less of a shit, for the most part, and so yeah hey.
• I got the thirty-inch monitor, like finally, and the ipod touch, on an impulse. Laura pointed out that these are exactly the things I’d throw out my window, if I wanted to make a Yaz record… but frankly I like “Situation” and its ilk as they are, for the moment. The one thing I will always go gaga for is a bigger fucking monitor, and I think I can safely say with this one that I’m good for a little while w/r/t monitor envy and whatnot. Ok. Yes!
• Looking for thesis advisors. Need to find them, like this week. Can’t I summon my recently graduated friends???? Argh.
• Sleep cycle is pretty fucking abnormal. As such I will kill this list now, cuz bleah. But yeah I have to churn out the writing for thesis, so there will be more drivel here soon, I will warn you. Yis!

love ya

-fish

What follows is a rather annoying essay I had to write for grad seminar, in which I “reflected” on a presentation I gave on my influences vis-a-vis my work. Please excuse the rampant pretense. Yes.

There are a great many things in this world that pique my interest. Of those that fall under the general aegis of my practice and work, I’d say it’s pretty easy to draw a line down the middle of them. On one side, there are the things that I love because something about them speaks directly to my persona.

Figure 1. Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Room, synchronized light bulbs and mirrors, 1965.

Yayoi Kusama’s monumental works, through which she sought (nay, seeks; she’s still a practicing artist) to defray the constant crackle of her neurological problems, inform my process in a way that naturally goes beyond mere formalism. Her work offers a viewport into the war she fights with her own errant brain on a daily basis. As such, it serves as an example of how such a force can be channeled, rather than pacified or otherwise “cured”, into art. I see things like that and I think, aha yes, I could do that.

Figure 2. James Turrell, Live Oak Friends Meeting House, light installation, 2000.

James Turrell, on the other hand, produces work that is austere in presentation, punctilious in process, and clear in intent. My hands aren’t steady enough to make the things he makes, and my mind lacks the zennish clarity one needs to conceive of these things in the first place. I’m attracted to the work, because it offers something I need. Turrell himself, however, is not someone I particularly identify with: we have little in common in most aspects. I’m sure that if we were stuck next to one another on a plane and forced to converse for a time, we’d wind up pissy and uncommunicative long before landing. (Not that that would ever happen; he’s most likely flying first class these days, whereas I’m stuck in coach.)

Figure 3. Karel Maartens, Counterprint, experimental monoprint, 2004.

Unsurprisingly, those few characters who straddle that line are among the most compelling: Karel Maartens, for example, is a supreme master of printing processes and data visualization. However, he does not allow these highly technical and systematized facets of process to rule his work; he still finds value in irregular metal junk, as the monoprints in his “counterprint” monograph wonderfully illustrate. His work multiplexes the calclulated and calming qualities I find attractive with the ragged human aspects I can identify with.

Figure 4. Maya Lin, Topologies, variable installation, 1997.

Ditto Maya Lin: In her Topologies show, she had meticulously and mathematically CNC-routed slabs of wood happily intermixed with prints she made by inking fragments of glass. The stochastic and the inductive were both bent into form by her vision.

This, I think, is what I aspire to do: I would like to harness the edge of my constructed systems. The points at which these constructs break down is frequently where the most fascinatingly unexpected situations can arise. In edge-cases like these, these break-down points frequently serve as on-ramps, as it were; they are where the humanity of the maker can break through the mask of the system to greet those on the outside.

You know, like this:

Figure 5. Unknown Artist, Longcat vs. Tacgnol, apocalyptic cat vision, 2007.

See, back when I wanted to do the double whammy of an architecture degree and a law degree, people would always be like, WTF?? To which I would respond, “Architecture is written in law. Like building codes and whatnot? And I like code, because I’m a geek, and so.” And still, the quizzical expressions of doubt would remain unabated. But look: Andrés Duany suggests suspending code in New Orleans, so that reconstruction can, you know, actually happen for reals. And this one Wes Janz has fantastically illustrated how most of the once-prosperous United States is now a complete hole, due initially to economic factors but now held in place by fucked legal situations.

If I were still an architecture student, I would use this stuff as a starting point for a thorough investigation of the International Building Code, and the cultural and economic normativities that lurk within. I can’t find the fucking link but a few days ago, I saw some article that offhandedly attributed the nature of all the new glass-box condo construction in Vancouver to a specific code exception about the tower’s core and egress stairways and that sort of thing. But I’m a graphic designer, so it’s in your court… All you architecture nerds better drop the bullshit archibabble and subscribe to Harvard Law Review if you know what’s good for you. Fuck yeah.

Blech. So MCAD was great. I saw lots of good shit and also got blisters on my hands from ripping staples out of a wall. We had a raging party in a luxury hotel room, too. All very good. Listened to Jose Gonzales and Girl Talk freakout mixes on loop. It was cold, but not unbearable. Need a real break, tho. Not sure what is going to go on for “spring break”, but you can bet considerable money on the fact that it will be AWESOME.

Also, in case you were curious, OFR was not so great. Or at least, it could have rocked considerably harder, most definately. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, because it would be much easier for me to say “it was awesome”, so that you would feel bad about missing THE EVENT OF THE SEASON and show up for sure at the next jammy jam. But no, rest assured that whatever you did then was an excellent use of your time, indeed.

Now I’m back in the studio. Because that’s what I do, right? It would appear to be the case. OK. Yes. Love you. Right.

-fish

Yo. Still no progress on writing that galleryfuck essay (as I previously bitched about) but I did see Jenny Holzer talk last week, which was nice because of course she does exactly that type of shit, notably up in the guggenheim, which (the guggenhiem) seems to provde for the best object lessons in galleryfucking. So. Erm. One “bullet point” on that essay down, of many many. Fuck yes.

Anyway so yeah, I purloined all her slides with a digital camera, which if you have any info about these pieces, you should lend me a helping hand and put it in there in the flickr comments, cuz I don’t rightly know all about ‘em. Yet! Because I also taped the whole lecture. I say “taped”, but in fact I used an olympus-brand “dictaphone” which contains no tape, only flash RAM, but there is no convenient verb for “to record audio using a tapeless dictaphone”, really… “Dictaphoned” sounds like you are trying to say you fucked a telephone, so no. But yeah I haven’t transcribed that shit yet so I dunno.

I have been all about the “reportage” these days, cuz of my independant study. Did I not tell you about that?!? Haha, it appears not. The deal is I am sitting in on crits in all the other departments at RISD: glass, architecture, textiles, digital media, et cetera, one new department a week, and taping them, as well as taking pictures and acquiring any other ancillary info I can. Then I transcribe the crits and typeset them all up, and look for all-new, all-singing all-dancing bullshit patterns… it’s pretty awesome so far, except for the fact that transcribing all that shit is kind of painful. But the information to be had is truly eye-poppingly fantastic. I am still in shock that all the faculty I tell about this are into it. Not only are they permissive but encouraging. It’s kind of hillarious.

But so yeah I’m doing that under the tutelage of David Sokol, who is awesome. I made a poster for his panel discussion here last week, see?:

Figure one: 24x36 on bright-white toothy inkjet paper

Figure two: newsprint version, inkjetted directly onto the new york times

… which is the first thing I did this semester I am at all proud of, really, yeah. It cost me too much sleep last week, tho, so now I am in a rather shitty mode. Also I am broke. So send me food. Fuck yes! Food! OK.

-fish

I re-read Harriet the Spy, after like 20+ years, and it was at least as all-encompassingly awesome now as it was then. If you haven’t read this, I would go read it right now if at all possible… it will take you all of 3 hours, max, to get through the 240 pages. That’s not to say it’s simplistic or childish, no, it’s just awesome. Plus the illustrations take up space, indeed yes.

Of course, I could detect all sorts of stuff this time around that I missed back when I was a wee lad. The book is packed with all sorts of New York-specific stuff, which now that I consider it very well may be the source of my personal fascination with the city. Plus there was the usual bevy of socioeconomic and social angles that any quote-unquote “children’s literature” is encoded with but is not consciously accessable to you when you’re actually a child… those bits are always a guaranteed hoot during adult revisits, yeah.

Anyway. Now I’m trying to write up a bunch of stuff about how contemporary gallery shows have to necessarily enngage with, and ultimately fuck with, the gallery hosting them to be at all effective. Like this one did… such things provide perspective to the gallery’s fundamentally priveledged viewport, rite? Yeah. I’m not done, or I would have posted it here. If you have any links or leads on that sort of thing, do let me know, cuz I’m sort of blocked at the moment, yes.

Another impediment to such writing, besides my own sloth and ineptitute, is the fact that my new “mac book pro” has either a busted battery or a busted power-management thingy, and as such it turns itself off when unplugged for a few seconds regardless of the charge. Anyone else with such a fucked computer? It’s retarded, indeed, but it definately could be worse, all things considered.

Yes! Now to eat a candy bar, and go home. More when I got it, yeah.

-fish