Orbs

Image 1: Spirit World Central
Image 2: Spirit World Central

Orbs

I'm fascinated by the fact that so may people on Flickr have opted to tag their dusty pix with the words orb and orbs. Some of them do it jokingly (a way of shrugging off the poor quality of the image). While others clearly believe that they have been lucky enough to witness and photograph the paranormal (a Google search reveals many more). Either way, the resulting images are always more interesting as a result of these spherical flaws.

Also, be sure to click through the credits below, the uncropped originals (and the accompanying comments, notes and descriptions) are so worth the time.



Image 1: Prada Mama
Image 2: astrangegirl
Image 3: GLiTcH-ViXeN
Image 4: JadoreRadiohead
Image 5: ghettodiva
Image 6: b3h0ld3r
Image 7: Mystic Dream
Image 8: z_ionlee
Image 9: Jeremy Dennis

Image 10: Prada Mama
Image 11: b3h0ld3r

Exscape

Please view the full image as well.

A response to Thursday's response.

Ex. 1

Another treehouse in Bushwick. I pass it everyday, but had not seen it in light worth photographing until now.

Balloons

I often wonder why I'm fascinated by certain things; why certain forms, structures inhabit my thoughts for months, years. Take balloons for example, I've made over a dozen posts in half as many months, motivated by their plump presence.

Is it because they're empty?
Is it because they're hollow?
Is it because they're full?
Is it because they're contents are invisible?
Is it because they float?
Is it because they float away?
Is it because they come clustered?
Is it because they're essentially shells?
Is it because they gain life from human breath?
Is it because they don't gain freedom until untethered?
Is it because they're only controllable when tethered?
Is it because they're lighter than air?
Is it because they create the illusion of volume?
Is it because they're subject to the whims of the wind?
Is it because they're a nearly pure form?
Is it because they're taken for granted?
Is it because they catch light like gems or stained glass?
Is it because they have a finite life-span?
Is it because they die?
Is it because they seem anxious to be lost?
Is it because they're born to collapse?
Is it because they pop, loudly?
Is it because they become invisible as they rise?
Is it because they're purchased for potential rather than value?
Is it because they're containers?
Is it because they're colors denote occasion?
Is it because they're colors connote emotion?
Is it because they can be killed with a touch?
Is it because they get caught?
Is it because they fascinated Warhol as well?
Is it because they're multiples, part of an infinite edition?
Is it because they model larger systems?
Is it because they're disposable?
Is it because they're a true commodity?
Is it because they're available to nearly everyone, nearly everywhere?
Is it because they're proxies for lungs?
Is it because they're mass-produced orbs?
Is it because they're only content is spirit?

Try Me

Still

Last night, like most nights, I popped into our bodega for some beer. Calling it ours has become a natural thing to do; most New Yorkers have a convenience store that they call their own, chosen most often on the merits of it's proximity to one's apartment. Ours is not half a block from our building's door, and consequently I rarely have a reason not to flip-flop my way through theirs, dropping too many bills on an inner-city six-pack.

Last night, I stepped into the store, through that door (now tied back and perpetually open, celebrating the recent warmth) and walked past the cans and Coors in the cooler. I walked my comfortable path towards the freezer they keep in the back, stocked with beer kept at 33 degrees. These bottles (Corona, Heineken and Presidente (the only imports)), though free to buy, are tucked away for a reason; preserved for the locals that socialize within the establishment, drinking on sunny afternoons.

Last night, after lifting the heavy lid of the cold chest, I leaned in to select 6 frosty green ones. They were not well stocked, so I was in up to my armpits, my cheeks feeling the chill. As my heels left the floor so that my fingertips could dislodge the first bottle, my ears descended past the plane made by the lips of the freezer and the sounds of the bodega vanished. There were no horns, no flirting, nor arguing in informal Spanish, not the hum of the fridge itself. The air was so cold that it could not vibrate audibly. The quiet within the chest was pleasant (refreshing in a sleepy way), so I took my time selecting the next 5, already drunkenly thinking of physics.

Don't Fear The Future

Today's response to yesterday's message.

Ghost

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Vestiges on Union Square South.

Quotations

"The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be." - Paul Valéry

I Miss The Old New York

Halo

Please view the full-scale image as well.

I could see the shadow cast by the plane I was in on the thin clouds to the right; around it a rainbow halo.

Model

Sometimes I think I've studied the fashion game for too long now. When I'm anxious and walking, or when I know people are watching (which in New York is more often than not) I walk one foot in front of the other (along an imaginary balance beam) allowing my heals to pound hardly into the ground. I tense my jaw, knowing that it's a bit more photogenic. It's infested me.

My Huckleberry Friend

Take a look at My Huckleberry Friend. Within seconds, I think you'll see why I see parallels between Tibor's blog and my own. Love it for the look, the links, and the bird songs (a curated page of mp3s, each a song that involves birds).

Ash

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Sustenance/Supplies

Home Lifes

Marginal

Caught

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Increasingly, I've been dealing with rent-a-cops who think that I'm a security risk. It's not that I'm carrying a messenger bag into the spray paint section (as I have many times), it's not that I'm looking for a shady place to spark up; it happens every other time I take my camera out. I can be in work clothes, on city sidewalks, mid-day, and they'll approach, chests full of ignorance and bravado. I think they think they are protecting me by advancing the culture of fear that has draped this country since September 11th. Nothing could make me more sickened, and sad.

My first encounter with this phenomenon was a little over a month ago, in Jerz while visiting my folks. On an errand to berate Verizon for their abuse of my brother, we found ourselves within the Mall at Short Hills (a consumption playground for the North Jersey elite (it's got Fendi, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, etc.)). Bored, while half my family took turns screaming at the arrogant cellular sales associate, I started to take pictures of the mall's architecture, of people walking by, of other totally normal shit. Within minutes of pulling my camera from my bag, a fucking security guard sauntered over to counter this threat.

To his credit, he was a reasonable person who regretted having to start a confrontation. He explained that as a matter of public safety, there was to be no photography within the mall.

All I could think was, "I'm on 200 fucking video cameras right now, they are taking my picture and have been for an hour, doesn't it just seem wrong that I can't take theirs?".

So I've been shooting cameras.



I had to speak with three different men in uniform today, all within the 20 minutes I'm above ground on the way to work. Depicted above, are 16 of the dozens of video cameras that caught me along my route to the office this morning. I navigated as usual (and counted at least 22 that captured my image during my 40 minute journey). I guess I looked suspicious.

Related: The MTA Photography Ban

Window

Please view the full scale image as well.

Board

Please view the full image as well.

Deep Pressure

Occasionally it's wonderful to work for a company that hasn't realized the bubble's burst. I was offered one of the coveted "free professional massage" spots this morning and accepted. Normally I avoid blurring the line between life and work (as well as on-the-job nudity), but after the a couple fatiguing weeks, pragmatism prevailed; I needed it. Now that I'm back at my desk, one warm hour later, I feel like my employer had invited me to a lunch of OC and Soma, and then handed me a Harp to wash it down. I'm syrupy and smiling.

420 Friendly

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Cast

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Days in NeoTokyo

Some mornings I awake knowing that the day is doomed. Often, it's because I'm literally overscheduled (and thus I will have little opportunity to steal back time, to have even a single creative thought on the company's dime). Others, it's just a feeling that permeates the air, hanging heavily above my head, waiting for consciousness to lift my eyelids before befalling me slowly yet violently.

I've known since dawn plowed through our uncurtained window that today would be such a day (actually I've known since I awoke Monday that this would be a sullen week, but that's another matter). On days like these, I pound my way down the streets I tread every morning and every evening, down subways steps and down the corridors that lead to my desk, each step synced with the hardest, dubbiest shit I can find within my personal sonic library. I blast it at a damaging volume (killing my ears the way I kill my lungs with hot smoke), littering my environment with the tinny frequencies that escape burrowed earbuds. With each rolling bassline, I imagine that pressure waves of massive power emanate from my head, reducing the surrounding buildings, people and materials to fragments of their former selves; dust dwarfed by pebbles. As I walk, taking heavy steps, my music and my mood leave a powdery wake of dissolution. All that I've passed, gone.

Partnership

Please view the full-scale image as well.

In 2002, within the New York City Clerk's Office, within one of the many partitioned rooms where Heather and I waited to push papers registering our domestic partnership, is a prayer tree of sorts.

The trailing couples, 30-deep in line to speak through clusters of small holes, were pressed up against a thin plexiglass panel that protected the municipal wall from the public's filth. Our predecessors had been as well it seemed: Behind the clear sheet, six inches from each of it's edges, happy hopeful couples had stuffed small notes (messages, wishes, primarily proclamations of devotion), each handwritten while waiting to cut checks and sign duplicates. We loved the marked scraps and spent much of our wait examining their variety and warmth. After queuing through, we paused to add a note of our own; a gesture in appreciation of the inscribed sentiment (the text itself, something short and common once nestled amongst the wrinkled bits).

Images of these brief letters still anchor my recollection of what was perhaps the most human "New York" experience I've had since I could begin calling the city my home.

Invisibility

"but just cuz i'm invisible doesn't mean i'm not here" - TRUE

Sunburnt

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Almost a year ago now; with more on the horizon.

Breathe

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Late Tour

I left the house hours ago, without a destination in mind. Knowing that after I made a preliminary purchase (50 cents worth of air for my soft tires), I'd roll around Brooklyn, under sun that hints at summer on the German bicycle I'd missed all these months. I'd feel the back of my neck, and the tops of my thighs, both burning lightly. I'd watch the shadows grow longer and the broken glass blink, quietly through my amber lenses.

Dull

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Porthole/Portal

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Pass That Dutch

Sarah's passed the blogosphere's latest fascination to the left:

Behold, the Caesar’s Bath meme! List five things that people in your circle of friends or peer group are wild about, but you can’t really understand the fuss over. To use the words of Caesar (from History of the World Part I), “Nice. Nice. Not thrilling . . . but nice.”

How can I not participate in a invitation-only chain letter for haters? Puff, puff, give:

Spring and Summer: While I fully admit to enjoying the first 10 days of spring and the last 10 of summer, I pretty much loathe every minute in between. Now that the mercury has passed the 70 mark once, maybe twice, the streets are awash in more vapid, glistening flesh than Wild on E! They are flooded with the smiles people think they are supposed to wear. Flooded with an immediate distaste for the independent, quiet, conceptual time that winter fosters. I miss snow, sweatshirt jackets and Jameson and we haven't even hit May.

Cocaine: Don't get me wrong, I understand that New York runs on the shit; entire industries and social networks would collapse with out the ubiquitous white lines. I just don't understand why people get so psyched to drop $100 on smurf-sized baggie of mystery chemicals that won't last an hour and'll leave your throat feeling as though you drank mace. I've done it, I'll do it again (let's face facts, I hang out with the kind of art/fashion people that pride themselves on living above their means). I just don't seek it out. I'm just not impressed. Growing up, it was impossible to ignore the aura that coke has in our culture. It is the definition of a hard drug. Not only is it supposed to be hard, it's supposed to be glamorous. Of course, I always wanted to give it a try. When I finally did (in college I guess), I was stunned at how minimal the effects were. Maybe it's that my body doesn't need uppers (any friend can corroborate, I'd trade a couple ritalin for a klonopin with a smile). Maybe it's that I'm a pussy and the drip makes me tear up and gag. Either way, coke aint my candy.

The Lower East Side: As much as I try to ignore the city's provincialism, and out of principle try not to frame my hood as superior to any other, I've got to say to all the Lower East Siders: Max Fish is played, and you spend 80% of your salaries on spaces smaller than closets. Why all the attitude?

The Smiths: I know, I know, you can deal with my distaste for cocaine, and my disgust for LES elitism, but how dare I infringe on the last bit of your holy trinity: Moz. Well, sorry, I never liked to be miserable in high school, I was angry instead.

Larry Clark and Terry Richardson: Two words: Victim Photography.

Honorable Mentions: Guinness, Matthew Barney, Interpol.

It's cashed, time to repack. I'm passing it to Etienne, Paige and Mick. Careful, it's hot.

Home Life

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Quotations

"Humanize something free of error." - Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt

This quotation is from an art object entitled Oblique Strategies, originally released in 1975 (there have been reissues since) by Eno and Schmidt (a British painter whose works grace the cover of Evening Star and the back cover of Before and After Science).

Oblique Strategies, described by its creators as "over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas", was and is a deck of cards. Each card is solid black on one side and white on the other. The white side is marked with an aphorism set in a 10 point sans-serif typeface. The type on each card offers one of the many approaches the two employed while working through the low points in their creative processes. Each set was produced to be used as a creative tool for artists in need of inspirations/complications.

Image by Hotdogsladies

Protest Balloons

Image 1: BlogBurg, April 3rd, 2005
Image 2: BlogBurg, April 3rd, 2005
Image 3: BlogBurg, April 3rd, 2005
Image 4: BlogBurg, April 3rd, 2005
Image 5: BlogBurg, April 3rd, 2005
Image 6: BlogBurg, April 3rd, 2005

The Handwritten

At this point I'm sure it's abundantly clear that a portion of my artistic practice discusses/employs handwritten texts, both found and personally created. They've been at the forefront of my recent work, and bubbling beneath the surface long before that.

Maybe they came into the picture early, when I thought comics were my calling. Maybe a bit later when I first picked up a can of spray paint and discovered public walls. Maybe once I found Kosuth, Weiner, Nauman and witnessed the power efficient text can have within the world of visual art. I'm still working on understanding exactly how they became so central, but looking back through the portfolios that are rarely seen, it's clear that they are; that the private/public dichotomy inherent in the handwritten text brands much of what I make.

Currently, I'm fascinated by the rich resource for the handwritten that the internet has become. Google searches for the obvious keywords return tens of thousands of results. Tags on Flickr return much the same. There are dozens of specialized, curated sites as well, cared for by people with obsessive taxonomies and extensive networks of contributors.

Two such sites, ones I've returned to for a while now, are The Grocery List Collection and Pictures of Walls. Both are titled quite accurately, both are bringing the untyped word to the web.

The Grocery List Collection:



Pictures of Walls:



Image 1: Grocery Lists #118
Image 2: Grocery Lists #129
Image 3: Pictures of Walls #11
Image 4: Pictures of Walls #13

Indexed Cards

Please view the full-scale image as well.

My best friend Aaron goes through a lot of index cards. Easily a 100 a week I'd bet, filling each one with the polysyllabic facts one must conquer in medical school. He keeps them in boxes specifically designed to hold such cards, and has become quite picky about the brands that he'll acquire.

He knows which ones absorb liquid ink, which ones don't; he knows which are long fibred, which short; always looking in cheap drugstores and expensive stationers for something new, something that will hold his pen's interest for the next week or two. As each pack is opened and consumed, the last is dropped in the box, the newest layer in the striated stack. Together, the layers (of mostly pastels and recycled brown) look like sedimentary rock (the kind we remember visible along highways cut into Appalachian hills).

He announced his most recent find (white cards with thick pink stripes) with the charming thought depicted above, handwritten in his signature blue and mailed to Heather several days ago.

Limousine

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Trust me, a limo is a rarity in in this part of Brooklyn.

The Highline

Why isn't The Highline ever mentioned in all the controversy surrounding the proposed Jets stadium on the westside railyard site? Looking at the maps it's pretty obvious that the two proposals would have to be integrated in some way...

Tracers

I've always wondered: If you put nothing but tracer bullets into a gatling gun, would it look like a laser beam when it was fired?

Toast

Someone should open a gimmicky bar called Toast. It'd be gimmicky because of the dual meaning, this bar would serve toasted bread instead of pretzels or peanuts. They'd have two of those industrial conveyor-belt toasters right on the bar, left and right of all the booze. One set to regular (the toast would fade gradually from untoasted to a rich golden brown) and one set to dark (some bits burned black). Light would be a custom request, though one happily honored (the bread would appear untoasted until touched). With every drink purchased, the patrons would be free to request a small ceramic plate topped with two buttered pieces of toast (toasted as much as the customer wanted, selected from a rotating list of available locally-baked breads, and buttered with real salted butter). Over time the bartender would learn to suggest certain kinds of toast to go with certain drinks, like wine with cheese. I'd go for sourdough with Guinness and seeded pumpernickel with Stella.

Wait a minute, am I the only person who likes warm toast with a cold beer?

Color-Aid

This Morning's Light

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Ever since the time change, I've been unable to sleep in on the weekend. Today, the sun woke me at around 6:00. I was able to doze for a while longer, but only after milling about, getting a glass of water, and realizing that a prism that has never made a decent rainbow, had caught the newly timed light. It was throwing a 6 by 8 inch rainbow on the side of our fridge. The air was calm, and the spectrum sat still, so I sat in for a self portrait (something in which I'm normally reluctant to indulge).

Dawn

Around

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Shattered/Scattered

Image 1: The front door to our building, whole as of last night.
Image 2: Consumed packets of fois gras, left by APT.

Mirror

Highline Sky

Memory Maps

Within hours of Google's announcement that they had added satellite imagery to their already elegant mapping service, a new and quite brilliant image pool has developed on Flickr that takes advantage of the feature. Called Memory Maps, users are taking satellite images of places they have lived or experienced from Google, and then annotating the images using Flickr Notes feature. The notes vary from simple location descriptions to elaborate stories about entire hometowns (and the people that inhabit them).

Again, I'm amazed at the speed by which people create new forms from the free tools now available; this has a lot of potential. Aaron, Heather, when can I expect the annotated Kanawha Valley?

PostSecret

I complain regularly that I see so few blogs that aim to be art. It just seems like such an obvious thing to do with the blog format. I don't understand why there's not more experimentation out there, why artists aren't taking advantage of these free tools.

Occasionally of course, I find a gem.

New on my radar, PostSecret is an art blog that solely features scanned postcards received by the author. The idea is that anonymous contributors write secrets (anything they want, as long as it has never been disclosed) on postcards and mail them in to the creator of the project, who then makes them public using Blogger. The results are rich; sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying, every card dripping with honesty and relief. Visually impressive as well, the cards tend to take on a graphic quality, attractive to any student of typography, and familiar to any fan of mail art.

Image 1: PostSecret - February 13th, 2005
Image 2: PostSecret - January 7th, 2005

Google Maps

Today, Google announced that they've added satellite imagery (via their acquisition of Keyhole) to their Google Maps service. All of the features that are normally available have now been integrated with Keyhole's detailed overhead photography. In satellite mode, the system still superimposes driving directions, still pinpoints businesses, and still displays web links. Best of all, you can still drag the maps around with ease.

When Google Maps first debuted, people said that quickly dragging the maps felt like flying over land; they didn't know how right they were.

Mirror

Mirror

Quotations

"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet." - William Gibson

Lost Balloons

Image by Urbanbohemian

Sunsets

Last night's sunset was the first I had seen from home in months. I've left the office within minutes of the setting sun all season (just after in 2004, and just prior in 2005). Now, with the recent spring forward, I see the beginning of the dimming glow just as I exit the subway a borough away, the actual dip below the horizon minutes after I drop my overstuffed bag from my shoulder to an overstuffed chair at home.

Last night, after depositing my things, catching my breath, and cracking a freshly purchased Beck's, I climbed the stairs to our roof. I climbed again, up the loose ladder that leads to our deck (really, the augmented framework beneath an absent water tank), and watched as our star steadily descended behind the Manhattan skyline. The wind was strong, and as I stared at the sun, my eyes dried.

Images from that 15 minutes: