valuable links to all kinds of art stuff

http://letracorrida.blogspot.com/

i would LOVE to do something like this!

check t his out
http://www.caiguoqiang.com/

have you ever seen those South east asian lanterns that are made out of paper, and that are heated with a small cup of flammable oil? they're printed with prayers and blessings, and, when heated, rise up into the sky. they go forever! im picturing a surrealearly morning, maybe with a dozen of these things weighted so they can't rise far off the surface of a lake. it's misty this time of year in the morning. a still morning would give a really cool reflection too..
..these containers of light could be moved to different settings - rural, urban, the woods..

sorry, SORRY Ming - it's been way too long since the update.

We've been busy, on and off...

we had an early morning sunrise shoot that totally didn't turn out, video or photos.


two weeks ago we had a late night shoot up at my parent's cottage - here are a couple of the images..



















we'll end up using at least one of the images - we'll blow them up big, and make light boxes out of 'em

im thinking that combining two - invert one and have them facing each other - may be interesting, but , we'll see.

MORE ideas.

ok - two ideas for photography.
it's 11:44 and this has gotten me out of bed.

go with it - again it's just a jumbled mess right now.

idea one

night shooting, long exposure. the shot is overlooking water. i want to somehow capture using a flash, a person walking across the surface of the water. this could be done maybe with a well timed jump from a boat, or rigged with someone standing on the bottom and supporting the person being shot. photoshop will fix up any little mistakes im sure.

this idea was the origional that has been brewing since saturday.

idea #2

night shot again, flash to capture.

first, i love this image


especially the pissed off st peter, forking over the money, "give unto Caesar that which is his..."


i see an open field, with this action in three parts - first, a group on the left, captured in a flast or two, a walk across by one, and then the money delivery on the right. playing with the intensity of the flash and people walking at angles to the camera (or curved paths) would also be interesting, i think.

BIBLE myths...
.. a good or a bad place to go?

update

ok ming..

Ian and i had to put off the sunrise shoot a couple of times. on friday, we did make it out, but the clouds did not co-operate. we'll give it another go at a later date. I have some film that is not very good, and ian has some photos that show some time lapse that would be kinda interesting if not for the fact that clouds obscured the sunrise.

testing...

just figure out how to add myself on this blog so i can actually post thing without signing in and out~

hey, thanks for showing up at the show~ really glad to have some trusty voice there to help me with the work.

another idea, involving the rising sun

the rising sun, the rising sun...

how about a story about how the sun was created, or maybe how it appears every morning.

i was thinking that a small campfire, placed strategically on a high horizon and shot from a low angle, could have the sun rise exactly behind it, like the sun is emerging right from the source of the fire. in a video, possibly on high speed, you would see the sky gradually fade out of black to red with the construction of the fire, and get much brighter as the fire gets brighter, eventually having the sun rise out of it.

are all these ideas flakey?
this is likely a good one if we somehow turn it into more of a narrated video..

paul

eeew....
this is way overdramatic, but i can't spend all night doing this up..

i wanted men and women being created from different places - one sex from above, and one from below. maybe they need to be different colours. i want to do a straight shot background, and insert the pics of people after - take pictures of one sex flying in by shooting people bouncing on a trampoline for the shots. i cheeze-ly thought that maybe they become the proper colour in the middle - maybe they embrace, or maybe they simply line up and hold hands.. i dunno..

nature myths!

ok -

this stupid da vinci thing is messin with our myth ideas. i want to avoid any goddess references, for sure.


that being said, i am looking into myths that are nature-based. people in nature. streams and fish and water and maybe some nighttime stuff - i have ideas but not the skill to do it. damn, i need a video camera or something.

i've always been a star guy.
ok - in writing this down, i've narrowed things down to rivers, stars, and rain. i would love to have images with lots and lots of people in them, and then blow the images up really big and mount them in lightboxes.

.we could do some pretty awesome storytelling with this stuff too, eh? mr videoman - i need your input

rough ROUGH idea

this is the beginning of an idea
this would be printed(i mena, an image LIKE this, that we'd do instead of stealing it.), plus someting at the top - either another picture of the "myth" for what causes rain, or a drawing of the myth.

myths and rellics and nature-goddess-idols

i was listening to CBC radio this afternoon while in the car, and there was a woman on it talking about myths in books and how she researched that sort of thing. she said that many books could easily be understood in relation to the stories and myths and beliefs. She also said that some books - she specifically said that the origin of most of the myths that are evident in "King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table" are untraceable - where they come from is as much a mystery as anything else in those novels..
Which sort of re-peaked my interest in invent new myths. I'm gonna medidate on this for a while. I am also gonna mention our investigation to some budding art-types (are you encountering as many people who are closet artists, sometimes quite talented or well-versed, as i am?) if it is alright with you - "the more people to steal ideas from, the merrier", i believe Carl said. well, he didn't say it, just implied it. And i think it is a positive thing; not really stealing, just feeding off an energy - like going to NYC and living in the art community - it isn't steaing, just feeding off the vibe.

..MORE off the top of my head

about six months ago I was dreaming of some BIG projects that would take months to prepare for, a couple dozen guys to pull it off, and about 20 minutes to execute. I had this idea of using the road as a sort of filmstrip, and lay consecutive images about ten feet apart down on the road. The cars driving over the images would see the images appear out from under the car ahead like a flip book, automating the whole thing. I was thinking about taking photos of people doing something (at about 2-3 images a second). i wanted to project each of the high-contrasted 50 odd images, lifesize, onto paper, then cut them out. Fisty images! - i figure fifty people with a dozen paint rollers and cooperating well could lay the images down on the road in 15 minutes in the middle of the night.

and have you ever seen the images of that artist who, using chalk, lays and image down on the sidewalk that, using really precise perspective, makes it look like there are 3D people/places/or things positioned there on the road. - i was thinking about doing the same thing with little animals (bunnies, small dogs, cats, raccoons) that's appeard to be real, 3D animals on the road, and make people slow down.

two weird ideas - where are you at???

i've been looking at the photos that a buddy of mine have been working on (http://www.flickr.com/photos/blumsy/). and the idea popped into my head that it would be interesting to organize big groups of people together to do cazy things that couldn't possibly be done alone. the idea of finding a stream somewhere and throwing fifty-odd people in to it to dam it up. it sounds kinda retarded now that i actually write it down, but the image in my head is awesome! os something like a big group of people all cooperating to do something - like constructing something in a forest all in one day, or carrying a mossive tree trunk from one place to another, or going into an over grown field and flattening it all down or i dunno..
now i am thinking of something like my fence constructions in third year where i tore down an old fence and re-erected it somewhere else, sort of out of place. or NEVERTHELESS and there yellow book project. something involving cooperation and organization.
we will be starting our own traditions, eh?

epaul

i've been looking at the photos that a buddy of mine have been working on (search for Blumsy on flickr). and the idea popped into my head that it would be interesting to organize big groups of people together to do cazy things that couldn't possibly be done alone. the idea of finding a stream somewhere and throwing fifty-odd people in to it to dam it up. it sounds kinda retarded now that i actually write it down, but the image in my head is awesome! os something like a big group of people all cooperating to do something - like constructing something in a forest all in one day, or carrying a mossive tree trunk from one place to another, or going into an over grown field and flattening it all down or i dunno..
now i am thinking of something like my fence constructions in third year where i tore down an old fence and re-erected it somewhere else, sort of out of place. or NEVERTHELESS and there yellow book project. something involving cooperation and organization.
we will be starting our own traditions, eh?

epaul

oh - i just figured out what you were doing..

comments. you were leaving COMMENTS!

... any hidden narratives?? i mean..the gesture/posture seems to suggest certain action/reaction.... to what? are they meant to provoke such intepretation?? or not?......
hidden narratives - nope, worry - im too shallow - hence the need to work with a partner.
narrative/thematic stuff that i produce usually comes out not-very-figurative. Sometimes it's representational, but never figurative. weird how that works.

"outside looking in"
- -- - this would be awkard for me - if i wanted to describe this experience, i think that i'd want to be immersed in it - i just dont have enough reference material, i think.


portrait documentations - 4-5 minutes. folklore...
this sounds kinda interesting. the word "documentation" scares me though. there's been a decade of mostly terrible art.
"folklore", on the other hand, sounds cool. What are these portraits like? are they paint, video, wirtten? is your source member of the family sitting right there in front of you when you do this, or are you just sorta meditating on the specific person? New stories, new traditions, new stories - inventing these new things (documenting them?) - there might be something there..

this is one of the images that im currently working on. I did this mostly to just figure out how to post images. SPEAKING of posting images - your website it nice and all, but where's the art, my friend?

sure brotha! take some time.. no need to rush anything..


i have some new drawings posted on my site. check 'er out.


ok - thematically or physically. i prefer a topic of some sort. if i wanted to just create, i'd smoke drugs, make a huge mess and waste paint, and call it... ..abstract art.

i'd first like to look at what sorts of things we have at our disposal. i'll go first - my wife is going to korea in august, so she can get big huge lightbox printouts done there and bring them back with her. i have a cottage - lots of nature type stuff. i have a friend who's a graphic design teacher at algonquin college who'd be up for helping out (and then there's all the other ex-queen's kids). my parents will be building a house on four acres of land that they recently bought this summer, so there'll be lots of tree cutting and digging and stuff.

the outsider looking in idea is ok - it was different for me, though. i really enjoyed it, and felt comfortable and appreciated pretty much the whole time. My experience would come across more as a vacation than some "hardship" or "odd foreign experience". i'm hoping to go to university in korea in a couple of years from now - maybe that topic would be really good then! i'd be trying to fit in. I was considered separate from society when i was an engish teacher, rather than part of it.

though i bashed abstract above, im not totally closed to sqirly, swishy art.

ok. 'nough for now. gotta think more. and im hungry.

testing.... more than a few minutes~

ok, this is kinda cool~

seeing that i am gonna excuse myself until i get through my hellish last 5 days of teacher's college, i will leave some thoughts for you to chew on during my potential absence.

there are couple way i envision this collaboration would work....
a. thematically: if we could somehow focus on a theme that we are both interested in, we could work independently while keeping each other informed with our progress~ so what are the possibilities?? i was thinking that since you just got back from your long oversea excursion.....any thought?? any memorable experience being on the 'outside' looking in?? Being perceived as the "Other'??(or being surrounded by the "Others".) Something we have in common, i guess..... experiencing that moment of 'transit'....that 3rd space between here and there..... displacement... evolution.....change..... becoming?

b. physically.... i guess we could decide on what we want to work on and actually WORK ON IT together (in kingston?? i dunno....but you are more than welcome to come and stay with me and paint here.. not paint... anything you want, i guess~) ...OR.... working on the same work through correspondance... kinda like that 'communication' show you were in, remember?? ( with somebody from Concordia..)

anyway.... let me know what you think~

cheers.

a small, developing art collective. let's get some images up here, eh?