ADColab

Friday, November 20, 2009

Paul Chan, What Art Is and Where it Belongs

http://e-flux.com/journal/view/95

Here's an article by Paul Chan from the Museum of Contemporary art in Barcelona. He ends on a note we recognize: "The irony is that because it cannot express what it truly wants to be, art becomes something greater and more profound. Its full measure reaches beyond its own composition, touching but never embracing the family of things that art ought to belong to, but does not, because it refuses (or is unable) to become a thing-in-itself. Instead, art takes on a ghostly presence that hovers between appearance and reality. This is what makes art more than a thing."

Nell

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Art + Design Mad Libs: pre-fab sentences

These Mad Libs feature a series of definitions for both art and design, and the definitions are interchanged. Users customize the definitions by completing the text.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

prefab dreams...by Lauren Mackler

dream bare construction. shapes roll to the dream. light suspend shade. directions turn in motion. dim the normal eyes. see flickering...
through your eye lids.
- concrete poem made out the instructions to make a dream machine.

This is a kit for prefab-lucid dreams.
Acording to Brian Gysin (inventor of the dream machine) if you place this pattern onto a 78RPM record player, close your eyes and sit very close, the flickering will provoke lucid dreams.

THE KIT CONTAINS:a pattern for the cut-outs, a dream interpretation book, a dream catcher, stickers of animals, colors and shapes to illustrate your dreams and finally, instructions for use:

Materials: .34"x32" piece of heavy paper or cardboard for the Dreamachine light-shade. You should use a material that is stiff, but flexible enough to be rolled into a tube with the ends glued together.
.exacto knife.
.a bare hanging light bulb. 15 to 50 watts.

Construction:
.trace the template onto the light-shade
.cut out shapes. These form the slots that the light will shine through.
.cut and trim the two long ends of the light-shade paper to form the glue tabs as seen in the overall plan.
.roll the light-shade paper into a tube and overlap the glue tabs. The tabs should be positioned on the inside of the tube, rather than the outside. Glue the tabs to the inside surface of the tube.
.place the Dreamachine light-shade on a 78 RPM turntable.
.suspend the light bulb 1/3 to 1/2 down the inside of the light-shade. The light should be in the center of the tube and not touch the edges.

Directions:
Turn on the light bulb and set the light-shade tube in motion. Dim the normal room lights so that most of the ambient light comes from the Dreamachine. Sit comfortably with your face close to the center of the tube. Now close your eyes. You should be able to see the light from the Dreamachine flickering through your eyelids. Gradually you will begin to see visions of flickering colors, amorphous shapes, and fields and waves of color. After a time the colors begin to form patterns similar to mosaics and kaleidoscopes. Eventually you will see complex and symbolic shapes; perhaps people or animals.