Pictures of “fireflys” being built.

My high speed has been down at home for a week and couldn't get pics downloaded. And god knows I'm not doing it at WSU in my studio with dial up. But here are some pics of the "fireflys" being constructed at Henrion. Each of the pics are listed from left to right below. All together there were 50 "fireflys" constructed, 48 will be used in the installation.

1. Cutting the LED wires down to cut down on heat shrink tube.

2. Cutting heat shrik.

3. Using soldering flux on the wires.

4. Soldering the wires to the LED posts.

5. Affixing three pieces of heat shrink on the fireflys. One on each LED terminal post and ove around both wires to keep from pulling apart.

6. Pile of finished "fireflys".

7. "Firefly" detail.

8. "Firefly" detail.

Shift Space VII: Rent Event Fundraiser, An open letter and review.

So, if you haven't recognized it, there is soap box under my feet. A very large one at that. As the event coordinator for Shift Space VII, I have a few open wounds to bandage up and some words of advice for the WSU Art and Design students as a group. This past Final Friday was an attempt to save an excellent off campus art venue; WSU Shift Space Gallery. And you know what… I did it. I raised over $6000 in 7 hours. Now that single "I" should not be as far as I am concerned. Don't get me wrong, I had help… but it was the same help that always steps up to the plate and follows through. Is this a problem? You bet it is!

The event, which took several months of extremely indepth planning and hundreds of hours, was attended by an estimated 1200 people. This number is almost three times our usual attendance. Over 450 artworks were donated by WSU students, faculty and staff and sold for the unheard of price of $20 or less. It was a raging success in my opinion and provided a continuation for Shift Space.

Now, what is my gripe with the students of the WSU Art and Design Department? Many of you are lazy, complaining, non-follow through excuses of artists. Yes, I said it. Does it piss you off? Good, it should. Many of the 450 works were donated by the same people who always follow through with events at WSU. Many of you donted over 10 pieces of work, some even 20. And several of you, put in countless hours of volunteer work for the event. Where were the rest of you? I continually hear complaints on our campus of nothing going on and nothing to get involved in. Well, I am here to tell you that you are blind as bats. Our department has countless events that happen throughout the semester that are poorly attended by the students of WSU. Not general students either, art and design students. Event planning and guild meetings are extremely difficult to have due to poor attendance as well. Overall, almost anything in the Art and Deisgn department is difficult and discouraging to have due to poor attendance and a general lack of interest from the students.

So here is my words of advice to you. Get off your butts, quit complaining and take charge. Plan an event. Participate in events. Get involved with the Art and Design Department at WSU. Finish your homework on time, attend your classes with a positive attitude and be glad you are in school and not working a dead-end job somewhere.. that will happen soon enough in your life most likely. And most of all, VOLUNTEER your time and FOLLOW THROUGH WITH THOSE TASKS. I ended up doing much of the work for this event that was deligated out to students who fell through. And this seems to be a constant at WSU. Do you think that the real world is going to put up with such things? I can tell you that it will not. You will loose jobs, miss out on opportunities and generally be thought of as a flake due to such actions. You are the only person in your life that will drive your abilities and opportunites. Take advantage of this and open your eyes. Prove me wrong and make me eat some crow. Believe me, I am hungry from it so start cooking.
Now for those of you who continually volunteer, attend events and participate… THANK YOU! You are the backbone of our department and the future success stories of our society. If it weren't for the select few at WSU that continually participate, this event would not have been possible as well as many other events. You give me some hope that people are good natured and care about other things than their own selfish ideas. Congratuations on a huge underdog win for Shift Space. We are here for another run of excellent shows and opportunites for the students of WSU.

Fire Fly Environment

Muaz and myself came up with another idea for the final project. The mason jar idea is something that there really isn't time to do the correct way and I don't want to show them half evolved. They can come along at another time.

Muaz had said something about lights in a past discussion, which got me thinking about a more visual idea instead of auditory. The Fire Fly Environment will be 50 LEDs hanging from different lengths from the ceiling, each lighting randomly like fire flys do. There will also be a hint of an outside environment with a plot of grown grass on the floor (probably 4' x 4') with a jar or two on it… full of fire flys. This is a simple idea to evolke feelings of childhood and summer evenings. There was also so discussion the other day to put some sapling trees in a couple of spots for another hit to the outdoors.

R.I.P. Logochip

My logo chip seems to have kicked the dirt. As in dead, corrupted and not working in any way, shape or form. Hmmmm. Steve A and I spent the evening working with my chip to get me more familiar and to play around with his "vibrating pole". My chip did fine and then stopped existing. We swapped out chips on my breadboard and his worked fine…. R.I.P. Logochip. Here are some pics of the motor at the end of the rod. It is the vibrate feature on a cell phone battery… pretty cool!

3:31 am

Well, again I find myself in the early am trying to make this thing work. I guess I am just not catching on to the lessons in class… Thursday is a lab day, we’ll see what Muaz has time to show me I guess. My laptop won’t load the Logo file… it hates it for some reason and my new laptop won’t be here until next week. Oh well… all I can do is try to understand this stuff.

Tuesday’s class sucked for me.  I had a headache and got tired of listening to the shitty remarks that seem to be a constant from Tweedle Dee and Tweedly Dum… I wish they would just go back to their homes and play Halo instead of joining us… it’s annoying as all hell.

Review of “Decelerate”, Kemper Museum-Kansas City, MO

Again the Kemper has proved to be one of my favorite local museums. The current show, Decelerate, is a great example of some excellent contemporary sculpture. The idea behind the show is the act of slowing down or decelerating in an art environment or artistic process. Many of the pieces in the show could actually be considered direct examples of O.C.D. in the artists themselves. ———– draws window screen on fairly large sheets of paper. ———— stacks silk thread in a strip that is approximately one foot high and 50 feet long. And ——– knits materials such as bridal tooling, nylon rope and rubber into very large format sculptural installations that envelope the veiwer and much of the gallery proper and entrance to the museum.

It was refreshing to see good works of art that were contemporary in the midwest. Much of the contemporary work in our area is only contemporary through the 70's and 80's and is lacking in structure, both on the work level and the gallery installation level. Conservative galleries and museums do not show such works usually, which is what most of the Wichita area is made up of.

I left Kansas City with a recharged attitude and willingess to create art. The ideas behind the show, mostly well thought, made me think about the slowing down of our society and as artists and our art making. And many of the processes seemed very cathartic and processed as theraputic movements by the artists themselves. Just the very action of a repetetive movement, mark making process or construction was a strong backbone for many of the works.

I only wish that I had not gone on the final weekend of the show so that I could have revisited the Kemper another time to participate again in the artists thoughts and products of Decelerate.

Final Project Idea

I have been working on these “mason jar hives” for several weeks now.  The jars are quart mason jars (canning jars) that are partially covered with industrial flocking and partially with dipped wax.  The ends of the jars are filled with an industial aircraft phenolic honeycomb to represent a real honeycomb.  What I have come up with in the past few weeks are small motors that fit into these jars and have small pieces of rubber attached to their drive shafts.  When turned on, the motors turn the rubber, flicking it against the class and causing a noise reminiscent of a moth or butterfly trapped in a jar.

The final project would be a hanging cluster of these jars.  Most of the jars would contain only the motoroized parts while several others would contain the rechargable battery, sensors and the chip to run the sensors.  When a viewer comes in contact with a sensor, it will trigger certain jars to turn on and off… causing the butterfly noise.

The visual part of these jars is already in production.  Now I just need to figure out the sensor and processor chip….

4:15 AM

Holy shit… for some reason my file won't attach to the wiki properly. I did it the first time and it worked, but then went away… and hasn't worked since…

blah!!!

B E H I N D

Yup, I know… I am behind.  Was ill the first part of last week and rediculously busy for the rest of it trying to give my class a critique, a quiz and a new assignment… not to mention all of my personal critiques with other professors.  God this sememster is moving at a past pace.

A Meeting…

Several of us all decided to meet at the Anchor on Thursday night for some beers and conversation.  The group consisted of Ann, Myself, Jason, T Jay, Joey, Danielle and Andrea.  I’m not leaving anyone out am I?  Anyway, it was a nice evening of getting to know one another better and just shooting the bull for a while.  I think there seemed to be some nice ideas and at least one group informally formed to work together.  That will have to be worked out more I am sure.  So… I say we do that again.  I had a good time.

I had alse met with Muaz earlier in the day.  He and Ann were headed over to Engineering to pick up the Logochip boxes so I tagged along.  Good conversation between the three of us!