Water Warrior

You can check out Facebook's compression of my vid - it probably looks better.

This is Penny Dreadful, signing off. Goodnight, sweet ART590.

Last Minute Final Update

I worked since 5am every day this week (and last week I think) and I pulled it all together at the last second. My water bottle armor was pretty much what I wanted it to be. One of the most intricate pieces was this helmet.

I had to heat the plastic economy sized cranberry juice bottle (recylable number 1 plastic) with a hair dryer to get it to form to my head. Don't worry I put a towel over my head before I started melting plastic to it.

The next adornoment I created was from the bottle labels. It was a long, tall banner/flag like a Samurai would wear on his back into battle. The framing object that the banner hung between was parts of a portable aluminum shelving unit which I wasn't using yet.

And here is a detail image. You can't see the packing but one of the labels reads "Ethos Water, helping children get clean water." Number 1 plastic. Woot.

I couldn't affix the banner to my costume and since I wasn't fighting anyone in particular so I just held it for the video. The metal made a really sturdy frame though.

Costume Progress Report - Eye Protection

 Working on my mask. It features extra protection for the eyes with quick release screw caps to pour off those troublesome tears during battle.

But when your shields are negotiated, all your weapons are destroyed, and your defenses are down, the mask is quickly and easily movable for more effective hand-to-hand combat.

Plastic Cyborg Samurai Arm Guard

So far, I have made my forearm protection and am in the midst of making my facial gear... I am afraid this art costume is only going to be somewhat referential to the look and feel of the 16th century Samurai warrior, as it's got a bit of a sci-fi feel to it now, but that doesn't bother me. In fact, I really like where it's going. I'm planning on a helmet, shoulder gear, shin guards to match the arm guards and possibly some type of transparent open shoe. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I think it will be neat.

My philosophical thoughts on this idea reference the elemental connotations of water among the other of the natural elements, fire, earth and air. In astrology the 4 elements are symbolic of personality traits in people born under that sign. Water is deep, nurturing, life-giving, and associated with emotional motivation. While placid and serene on a sunny day, it can get stirred up in a storm, rushing violently until it finds it's level. It can become frozen and hardened, nigh unmeltable. It can douse and even drown those who get caught up in it's torrents. But like the earth element, it's predictable in many ways. You can always expect water to confine to the laws of gravity.

Being born under this sign, I would like to use the water bottle to explore how we armor our sensitive and fluid compositions, how we canteen our nurturing natures to aid the war-weary, and how we sometimes bottle a torrential flood until the pressure makes us swell and even sometimes burst.

Digital Self-sustainability

The defining feature of most any religion deals with the facet of death. Humans like all animals, face the inevitability of their own mortality throughout the course of their lives. The death factor motivates all sorts of personal and evolutionary decisions from career and production to love and reproduction. Science and technology have worked over the entirety of human history to sustain the individual and collective human life. While facebook's answer is not quite reanimation following cryogenic suspension, it's a nice gesture. 

Facebook received complaints from a grieving family when one of it's members died, leaving his Facebook account active and open to posts. Since this event Facebook now offers a memorializing feature when one of it's users passes on from this life. Friends and family have the option to visit and engage in private supportive contact through the page of the deceased, but the activities will not go to the news feed and the account will not be deleted unless the family specifies. 

The KnowMore Extension in Action on Apple and Microsoft

It works!

I've been considering purchasing an Apple laptop for quite some time now, and I've wavered on the issue consistently for years mostly because a laptop, especially an Apple, is such an immense purchase. I got a flag from KnowMore while browsing in Firefox and learned that Apple lags behind all other computer brands in  workers rights, human rights, politics, environmentalism, and business ethics.

Here are some blurbs from KnowMore's findings

A Greener Apple! According to Greenpeace, Apple products made with toxic chemicals (such as flame retardants and polyvinyl chloride) are being sold worldwide. When discarded, they typically end up in the hands of children in China, India and other developing countries. They dismantle the products for parts and are exposed to dangerous toxins that threatens their health and the environment. Take action now to get Apple to go green.

Computer TakeBack Campaign More than 70 environmental groups have signed a letter to former Vice President Al Gore, who sits on the board of Apple, asking him to push the company to become more sustainable. Environmentalists express surprise that as America’s best-known environmental advocate, Gore would oppose shareholder resolutions—which Apple claims were unanimously voted against—asking Apple to become greener.

Here is the letter to the CEO of The Consumer Electronics Association signed by officials of 18 states (of which Kentucky was not among them) calling for laws to force companies like Apple and other electronics producers to be responsible for taking back and recycling their expensive products when they so quickly become obsolete.

But lets look at their arch nemesis, Microsoft as well. These two like to duke it out in a really ugly perpetual smear campaign wherever they can advertise.


Although they're not doing well in the arenas of business ethics and politics, and have been accused of making shitty unstable products, there is no information on Microsoft that would state that the company's environmental practices are not sound. As of 2006, Microsoft has joined a large group of companies no longer using the environmentally hazardous material polyvinyl chloride plastic (PVC) in their products. [39]
They have mixed reviews from their employees on worker's rights, as many have complained they used the H-1B bill to hire immigrant workers for $12/hr instead of paying big bucks to American developers who want to live in mansions too.

The smear campaign will assuredly continue, but I for one have never taken a side in the issue and that's because both corporations got some serious 'splainin' to do.

An interesting Firefox Add-On

 I came across this little buddy as I was researching - it's an add-on for Firefox from an organization called KnowMore that informs you of various corporations, brands or products' impact on the environment as you browse the web.  This organization does significant work to inform the public about the products they buy and the vendors they support with those purchases. Above are the founders of the company B. Dolan and Sage Francis.

Here's how the add-on works:

In search engines such as Google --KnowMore's intuitive issue specific icons will show up next to the relevant company's URL in search results.The icons represent: Worker Rights, Human Rights, Political Influence, Environmental Impact, & Business Ethics. If the corresponding icon is red, this means there are significant areas of concern, if it is yellow this means the company is neutral, if green the company has been given a positive rating. It updates every 24 hours.

If you want to download the add-on you can do it here.

Multi-productivity

From the makers of the Nice Cup in Bra dual-use-putting-mat-and-brassiere, comes (and I can't believe I missed this the first time) the  Solar Powered Bra!

TOTALLY not useful. The front-mounted solar panel powers a small billboard which proclaims eco-conscious messages or another user-defined electronic item. The small augmentation pouches are actually consumable Camelpak-style water vessels which "reduce aluminum and plastic waste while enhancing your bust size."

Once again, the answer to "How?" without thought of the question "Why" - still it's hilarious.

Powered by Salt

The Salt of The Earth...

Science...

I had to look up what "brackish water" was and how this would "add pressure" - brackish water has more salinity than fresh water but not as much as salt water.

Here's the basic concept of osmosis and how it is converted into usable energy:

"When freshwater and seawater meet on either side of a membrane -- a thin layer that retains salt but lets water pass -- freshwater is drawn towards the seawater side. The flow puts pressure on the seawater side, and that pressure can be used to drive a turbine, producing electricity."

I guess the brackish water adds a kick at the end of the process without really slowing it down at it's final destination in the osmotic energy process.

Pretty neat. 

What is Justice? My philosophical ramblings...

Excerpts from Wikipedia:

Concept of Justice

Justice concerns itself with the proper ordering of things and persons within a society. As a concept it has been subject to philosophical, legal, and theological reflection and debate throughout our history. A number of important questions surrounding justice have been fiercely debated over the course of western history: What is justice? What does it demand of individuals and societies? What is the proper distribution of wealth and resources in society: equal, meritocratic, according to status, or some other arrangement? There are myriad possible answers to these questions from divergent perspectives on the political and philosophical spectrum.

Studies at Western Kentucky University in 2008 have indicated that reactions to fairness are "wired" into the brain and that, "Fairness is activating the same part of the brain that responds to food in rats... This is consistent with the notion that being treated fairly satisfies a basic need" [5]. Research conducted in 2003 at Emory University, Georgia, involving Capuchin Monkeys demonstrated that other cooperative animals also possess such a sense and that "inequality aversion may not be uniquely human."[6] indicating that ideas of fairness and justice may be instinctual in nature.

This semester I've read from authors with a wide range of perspectives and agendas. I think, for me it all hinged on Adrian Piper's "Ideology, Confrontation, and Political Self.Awareness: An Essay"

General concepts of "justice" indicate the human capacity or instinct to judge. While this is an important facet of humans as a species, when people forget that they are animals and don't pay respect to their own and others' individual instinctual needs for self-sustainability, we engage in the very behavior we preach to avoid. We assume we are right. Piper discusses many reasons why and how we justify arriving at this conclusion that we are right and someone else is wrong. I appreciated the fair and gentle accusations she made directly to (you) the reader. The presentation was perfect. We need not only judge ourselves as we judge others but judge the rule set we are judging from. 

I conclude that justice and empathy are the same beast just as are humans and animals. We are too tied to everything and everyone to think there is one objective justice or truth.

Justice comes from within the self first, and then in empathy and relationship to others. Empathy is most productively made through the active and open engagement of ideas with others. Reception is not just listening but imagining, reaching for that which is inside oneself and opening that to another. It takes a lot of trust, something as animals we don't do easily. Empathy is a constantly evolving thing. When people get lazy, they stagnate and empathy is no longer possible.

Though justice will always be a complicated issue. I for one will continue on the basis of empathy - because that's really as far as I can get by myself. But it's far enough to have not stopped yet...

Double Productive

Since I am a (while probably untraditionally, so) feminist, this should probably be highly offensive to me, but quite to the contrary, I think it's awesome.

I don't really know if double (or even triple) use items justify something sustainable. Are they more efficient? Are they indicative of what our consumerist culture thinks it "needs?" Are products like this breeding more problems? I don't know. Alls I know is this is hilarious.

GAh, they stole my idea: What can I do with these pesky water bottles - Episode 2

A Very Similar Idea

For my recycled art project I wanted to make a "Water Warrior" costume - a combination of 16th Century Samurai Sensability with Present-day Petroleum Products. But it seems this designer has already executed a similar idea in high fashion - I'm still gonna do it though, you watch me.

What can I do with those pesky water bottles?

Here's one idea from Make Magazine.

And another from Inhabitat.

And another from Inhabitat. Coming soon, episode 2 of "What can I do with these pesky water bottles?"

Broken Glass

I find myself washing dishes when I get really upset. I had just discovered some new information concerning a member of my immediate family. Gently as ever, when I slid the freshly washed glass onto another in my cabinet, it broke in my hand. The sight of the set of 4 glasses (previously 8 in the last decade) reduced by one more, leaving only 3 made me burst into tears. I've been chastised or eye-rolled in the past for my childish personification of material objects. I guess I see where when the item is stripped of it's purpose, it's labor, it is thrown away. Pretty Marxist sentiment here, I know. I recall a time when I was 22 and working my ass off in the heat of my first summer stock theatre program. 5'2" and female, I found I was the heartiest and most dedicated worker of our 4-student crew. The pay was barely enough to live on and the work was grueling - typical for stage work. We had just had a meeting where the higher ups told us that we needed to buy our own insurance (because one girl had just cut a major portion of her finger off with a portable grinder) and I was helping the others carry some steal frames on a dolly, when in a moment we had to negotiate the steel through a small door, I had just turned down a suggestion to ram the lot over a sizable threshhold. They did it anyway and where I was standing there was no choice but for me to catch the whole stack before it fell on my toes. I threw my back out for the first time (and many times subsequently in it's weakened state) and my boss (a young male professor) has the audacity as I limped away, sciatic nerve pinched in my spine, to say "This is Kentucky, Lexi. We put down a horse with a limp."

I know I'm breaking down, like a glass, a fruit, a horse. And surely this is why people make plastics. These

plastic jars are no solution to my death fear, but they are recyclable. And they never shatter.

"Collateral"

Would you be pissed off too?

This New Zealand artist won a $15,000 competition for calling up the gallery staff and having them collect and pile the packaging refuse of the other contestants and label it "Collateral." Based in Berlin, he also never wasted any gas, dirtying up our atmosphere getting to the event, because he never left his home.

Zany.

Health Hazard of the Future?

Hold on to your childhood... there are varying accounts on the safety of your favorite 80s science snack. This facebook character argues that there is mercury and other dangerous elements in Dippin' Dots, the "futuristic" ice cream company based in Paducah, KY. The science of these ice cream "dots" lie in the process by which the creamy goodness is sprayed into liquid nitrogen which "flsh freezes" the particles into tiny beads.

This cult classic has a following of weirdos who also want to flash freeze ice cream. Here is the documentation of those odd characters' questions and answers.

Honestly I was not able to back this guys claim about the mercury and I did a lot of searching. While money-making companies are not the most unbiased sources of information, this is what Dippin' Dots themselves have to say about their process.

P.S. Dippin Dots are made in Seoul, Korea.

Sustainability for Sale

Your chance is here to own a relatively new environmentally friendly vehichle. My friend Nisha is moving to Denver Colorado and unloading her new bicycle with personal additions including a basket and helmet for a reasonable cost.

You can contact her about joining the revolution at the above number or on her

facebook ad.

Recycling Carboard

Some recycling problems:

Here are some things I wanted to recycle - small cardboard teabag boxes. However they are coated with a waxy surface that renders them out of bounds for local recycling pick up. I understand they are useful to keep freezer moisture out of the interior of the box, but my question is: If there is a plastic bag inside the box, why the extra layer of waxy coating? Couldn't at least part of this packaging be recyclable? In the case of the teas, it makes sense that you don't want moisture going into your teabags, and this particular tea company does not package their teabags in a plastic bag - they are wrapped in paper. However, I have since discovered other companies who package their tea in non-waxy boxes... though there is more packaging inside the box. Here is more information from Santa Clara University's Sustainability Q&A site.

http://www.scu.edu/sustainability/stewardship/recyclingfaq.cfm?b=143&c=3273

A Little Sunshine

As I was walking from Ekstrom to Schneider I was handed a rose by one of the tutors, Mampu, who works in the Computer Resource Center. She didn't explain why she was handing them out but there I had one and it made me happy. Why do flowers make us happy? Is it their bright colors, their delicacy? I remember meeting a homeless lady on Bardstown road who handed me a flower and told me all I had to was pass it on so that someone else could enjoy it. I did it then and I remembered to spread the wealth again when Mampu handed me this rose. Is it wrong to pluck a rose? I don't know. But it seems only right to circulate its endorphin releasing corpse to someone else with the hopes that they'll pass it on too.

Samsara

Samsara, scheduled for release in 2010 is a follow-up to Baraka (1992) and similar to the groundbreaking Chronos (1985), directed by experimental filmmaker, Ron Fricke who worked previously as the Director of Photography with director Godfrey Reggio on the Qatsi trilogy. Like both the Qatsi trilogy (Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, Naqoyqatsi) and Baraka, the film deals with Fricke's perrenial theme of humanity's relationship with the eternal.

The word, Samsara is Sanskrit संसार for the endless cycle of suffering caused by birth, death and rebirth (i.e. reincarnation) within Buddhism, some sects of Hindu, and other religions.

I'm looking forward to it.

Updated Video - Ephemeral Art

I reworked my video with a voiceover and edited it to a shorter length. This piece was submitted to the WeRock Video Festival sponsored by iTechConnect, the REACH Digital Media Suite, and the Delphi Center for Technology. You can view all the videos in the contest at www.louisville.edu/itunesu and look up WeRock Festival. The screening of these videos and subsequent awarding of winners, will be November 13 at the iTech Zone (previously South Computing Center in MITC). 

You can view my finished product here:

Dead

In the spirit of the Day of the Dead celebrations gaining speed during this time of year, Welfare State International provides us with a look at the very personal and introspective topic of death and ritual. To fund this ritual performance function of the group, they presented an art auction with many contributions by a variety of artists who focus on the topic of death.

Here is the link

Unfounded Fear

Does this image make you jump? I don't know where I first made such a bad association with roaches but since I became a vegetarian 5 years ago I have feared the day I would find one in my home and be faced with the decision to end it's life or find some other alternative. Looking at this jpeg makes my skin crawl. But why this unfounded fear? They are the "other" and I've never known a time I was not terrified by their familiar shape and freakish movement, yet they really can't harm me. As pests, they, like mice eat our food and leave toxic droppings but they don't bite, sting, or do any of the things that some bugs do which cause human fatal results.

Here is what Wikipedia says about the little guys. When I read that wasps sting and subdue the roach to drink a small portion of their blood and then leave them slightly alive to house the eggs of the hungry wasp larvae -  Link to Roaches - I suddenly began to feel a small bit of empathy for the hideous little things. How do I learn to love the roach?

My landlady recently turned on the heat in our apartment building and for the past two mornings I have been faced with that brutal decision in unfounded terror. Yesterday morning, with a little ingenuity and teamwork, my boyfriend (Buddhist, pacifist) and I (vegetarian, pacifist) managed to corral and capture a 2+ inch roach from its discovered location on the towel ring in my bathroom inside a plastic cup, where he slid my T-mobile bill between and transported the unloved creature across the street and into an abandoned field. He got lots of affection for his bravery and kind intentions. I myself, have not even mustered that bravery. But he makes me want to work on it.

Toxic Dumping

I often question justice.

How do you pin this on one person. How do you send one person to jail for 20 years after 3 hours of deliberation for a crime this big? I guess I'm just depressed - why can't everyone just not do things that hurt other people - or in this case kill them by negligence and inconsideration.

I have no answers.

Do geese die for your pillows and comforters? Do you care?

Their little bodies were once so warm, so that now they're dead, your bed can be.

Here are some spirited discussions about goose down, and the nature of making products with it.

One

Two

DMS presents WeRock iMovie Festival

If you thought about making a statement about sustainability or art, registration is open for the 

WeRock iMovie Festival

The Digital Media Suite and iTech Express on campus support students who need to check out a camera or learn editing software.

Feel free to learn a new skill set and represent for the art department.

Woot.

Veggie Delight!

 

More cool stuff, right here in our own town:

This group, EarthSave Louisville, hosts vegetarian community potlucks. Homegrown. Delicious. Inspiring.

http://louisville.earthsave.org/

Derby City Custom Drums

I visited my friend Adam's crazy drum-making shop beaneath his carriage house apartment somewhere close to Sunergos coffee. He apent some time abroad in Australia in a drum-making workshop and is now back in Louisville making some very peculiar and fantastic things. Totally at home amongst the sawdust and polyurythane, I took a round about his shop where he showed me his frankenstein machine - a lathe motor turned on it's side with various clamps and welded steel arms attached and a small router hung firmly at a 45 degree angle to the whole device. "What's is for?" I asked, and he explained to me his process. A pile of old bourbon barrel timbers from a local brewery, nearing disposal had been collected for his current drum making project. His custom-made drums, fashioned from these recycled bourbon barrel planks and his own brass hardware, were some of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. He's made them also from reclaimed cherry and other woods. I got to see the whole collection. I was floored by the craftsmanship. And this is happening right here in Louisville.

You too could have a set of Derby City Custum Drums.

Guerilla Gardening

It was in my undergrad years in Lexington when I first heard of guerilla gardening and I went to harvest some mint with my friend Joe who had planted a a variety of herbs in the vast plot of Masterson Station Park. Funny how unlawful and nervous I felt just picking plants from a public park. How unnatural to feel guilty about such a thing. However, I made some really excellent minted lemonade with our harvest later that day.

Ephemeral Art Project Video

Give me some feedback. I was planning a voiceover but I haven't had time to add it yet. I am not sure the connection is being made that when I play piano alone in my apartment, it's also ephemeral - disappearing just as soon as the strings stop resonating. Every now and then I experience a moment of genius on a piano but naturally on video I never catch any of those moments.

The person calling me at the end of the video was my ex-boyfriend who won't give me my 2008 ART390 Video Class DVD back. As if it was meant to be I noticed that I answered and said "But I'm not there anymore." at which point I turned off the camera...

It happened. In real time. So I can only thank the jerk for this gift to my ephemeral art project.

This was me in the morning, beginning my day's activities with a rangoli. A car immediately ran over it.

Blackboard Material - hidden costs

I've had an ongoing conundrum between the values and environmental morals I'm attempting to follow in this class and the resistance from other classes allowing me. For instance in Modern Perspectives in Contemporary Art, (ARTH541) all our readings are posted on Blackboard, YAY. So I read them online... but as it turns out, I am supposed to be printing them out, BOO, and am consistently asked to reference them in class from 4 - 7pm Wednesdays (which is not online). We're talking about 200 pages a week, kiddos. So I am faced with the option to save the paper or appear to be unprofessional even though I've thoroughly done the reading assignment.

"Water is the next empire."

I don't necessarily, I mean, as a video artist, think a lot of the sensationalism, the bad music, or the editing, but this looks like an interesting video piece nonetheless. In the spirit of our self-important friend Michael Moore, Tapped is a documentary film about the bottled water industry.

Permaculture

Permaculture is a holistic thing... it's a harmony thing. It should be easy. Why is it hard? Why is it seditious? And why is it more seditious to encourage such a lifestyle? Here is your holistic Reddit for the Urban Permaculture contemplator.

Rangoli - Environmental Art Is Not New

My friend Nisha from southern India wanted to be a Rangoli artist, but her parents made her study economics and business. She could pursue her artistic career on the side but needed to make a priority for more "important" studies. I had never heard of Rangoli before.



In Indian cultures, a rangoli is an expression of hospitality especially associated with the Hindu Diwali festival where locals visit each other's homes to exchange greetings and sweets. They are fragile as they are composed of colored sand just laid in rhythms and motifs on floors and surrounded by candles. They are very impermanent but highly respected as an art form and as art objects. No one would dare set foot on a beautiful rangoli artwork.

Home Movies

I'm digitizing this stack of old VHS cassettes. These contain invaluable A/V information from the past; the home movie creations of the Siblings Bass! However what will be done with this stack of plastic and magnetic tape? Here are some ideas cooked up in the brainboxes of other crazy
arteeeests...

Nesting ifs...

Baby boids

The Plastic Conundrum

These are #1 plastic bottles. Many. This, my friends is a crime scene. And I am the criminal. But karmic law is all in place because my intentions were good. I began saving these bottles and putting my own beverages from home in them so that I could A) reuse something that is typically wasted after one use, and B) have a quick and convenient beverage option for the road when leaving the house in a hurry... which is typical. However, I was informed by Bess that in my efforts to help the environment I was in fact poisoning myself with the hormone distruptors and other baddies which leach onto beverages and foods when placed inside these plastics. And washing them like I would any other container with warm soapy water was only expediating the contamination process.

Wunderkammer

Wunderkammer is a bourgeoning local furniture makery headed by a lad named Mitchell, who I met once or twice, a fine lad, which uses reclaimed wood and other objects appropriated into these very swanky home pieces.

Hungry...

This is Alys Fowler's solution to an old fashioned case of the rumbly-tum. The photography really gets the ol masticator moistened... my hands got dirty just turning the pages of this not-so-revolutionary idea of growing greens (and all the other colors of the rainbow) in your home or job and in any sort of various and sundry container. As Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) of Jurrasic Park once quoth: "Life will find a way."

Cargotecture

At some point this summer my brother was raving about buying this storage container from a local business owner. Apparently the operator of Louisvillian restaurant, "Toast" had bought up a small collection of shipping containers. These long trailer-like boxes are now being made into trendy modular dwellings, shops, studios, and other various people-holders. The movement, known now as "Cargotecture", is bolstering its numbers in Seattle, Washington and California among other places and boasts such modern marvels as Puma City in Boston. I railed with him a bit before ultimately deciding it was a practice totally unsuitable for locations with four seasons, and that ultimately it was heavily more trendy than inexpensive or eco-friendly. They do look cool though.

Crash Landing

Chaos! Utter Chaos! An earth, a planet, round and living and totally incomprehensible to me! Nigh unlivable! Here! Now! Alone! I will form a practical world from the clutter and garbage about the landscape. I will fashion this world from my own by-products! I will delve the deepest dumpsters! Forage the forgotten fixtures! I will conjure the crude cast-offs of this corporate Post-Apocolypse and create from that collection... a new home!

http://www.readymade.com/magazine/?ordersrc=google1_branded&cobrandId=ww5