A bunch of people have been asking me what this series of cut-up text pieces, the Blast Series, is all about. The common questions are "How do you come up with these arrangements?" and "Why is there text on them?", both of which are great questions. Some knowledge of the process ought to make them more interesting beyond the initial formal level.

I was digging through my archives a couple of weeks ago and came across some life drawings I did during grad school. Though unrelated to my overall agenda, I still quite like some of them. Enjoy!

There has been a lot of talk about rights lately, and rightly so. The main right we're seeing in action is the right of the public to congregate and peacefully voice their dissent.

Check out Andrew Napolitano's Daily Show Interview here.

Peter Oakley works at The Collective on Depot in the studio space next to mine, and he and I tend to be the ones who are there most often. Here are some images from his show at Flanders Gallery in Raleigh, NC

I've been following the developments of OWS whenever something comes up on the twitter feed, and there have been some fascinating developments. There are a bunch of articles and videos after the jump.

It was Freud who said that, at least within dreams, it's precisely that which is non-sexual that is the most sexual.

I leave you with a video of an inflatable Santa, popping out of a tree. Happy Holidays!

I've written about Avatar before, but it's only recently that I've been able to articulate the exact reason I despise the film. The real tragedy of Avatar is not the destruction of the natural way of life on Pandora, though this is the surface level interpretation. The real tragedy within the plot is that salvation comes from the antagonists.

Remember back in 2001, you know, when 9/11 happened? Remember how very soon after the event, in October-November 2001, Hollywood and the US government (the Pentagon) got together to plan out how Hollywood could help with propaganda? Well, there are some obvious connections, but Avatar is one that, while seemingly against imperialism and environmental takeover, actually perpetuates America's exact style of imperialism, throwing it in a positive light, ultimately.

Let's review the overarching plotlines of our last couple of imperialist endeavors. First, in Iraq, we invaded to depose Hussein and to remove any WMDs, while freeing the country, saving the people, installing democracy, and rebuilding everything we destroyed. We assumed that the people of Iraq would be happy about this. Quite simply, they were, and still are, pissed at us and want us to leave. We were both the antagonists and the saviors, at least from our perspective. We destroy with one hand while rebuilding with the other. Second, we did the exact same thing in Afghanistan. We invaded to go kill Bin Laden, free the country, promote democracy, and rebuild everything we blew to bits. The Afghanis are not happy with us.

Let's take a look at Avatar's plotline. The earth's military (read: America. The general even has the accent.) has invaded Pandora to mine out its natural resource of "unobtanium" (read: "oil"). Jake is sent, via his avatar, to get the natives to move out of the way or to force them out, if necessary. He attempts to integrate into the native society, and in the process, angers them. Eventually they become accepting of him, and he ends up leading the natives against the foreign invasion. Without Jake, the natives are doomed. The natives transport Jake's soul fully into his avatar, and the natives wind up ejecting the military presence from Pandora.

Is this not the exact way we (our government officials) see our invasions of other countries? It is our new myth and method--the hero is the man who is the benevolent antagonist. The man who can work for the invading powers while saving the natives. It suggests that the natives can't take care of themselves--that they require the foreign presence for their salvation. The antagonist eventually becomes accepted as a hero by both the natives and the antagonists. It is our contemporary ideology par excellance, and it is unquestionably misguided. It's so fundamental to our existence that we don't even notice it when it hits us in the face within cultural products such as Avatar.

My continual frustration with search engines and navigation of data to find relevant, specific information has me wondering if heirarchized searches are the way to go. Everyone is familiar with the concept of the democratic forest, even you are unfamiliar with the term itself. The idea of the democratic forest is that, now that millions of people have internet access and there are hundreds of ways to put information on the internet, it creates a dense thicket of information that is totally disorganized and difficult to navigate. We have access to as much information as we want, but we have no way to find the exact information we require. Take, for example, an uncurated online artist registry. The face-value function of a registry is to help interested parties find new and undiscovered artists, but with every artist tagging his/her work under every category (to appear in more searches), it becomes impossible to navigate. An even more popular example would be facebook. Try to find something one of your friends posted 3 months ago, and you'll find that there is no good way to go about it.

This post begins a series that will become an overanalysis of MTV's Jersey Shore. Bet you didn't expect this to be the subject of a post, let alone a few of them. Hah!

Reality TV has always had a structured approach--contests, games, tasks, etc.--that is intended to produce an emotional range in the characters and viewers. Think of shows like the Bachelor, Survivor, or Road Rules. The casts of these shows change each season, and viewers follow the show because of its variety within the format. Jersey Shore is something altogether different.

I want to discuss the deeper levels of my work tonight. These thoughts all began in a studio visit with Josef Schultz, which was a little over a year ago, and are just now within my power to vocalize.

In one way, my work revolves around an almost religious debate. The surface and its revealed understructure mirror the myths of creation and the creations of myth. I make works that are representative of intangibles--objects and moments that we know are present but can't be directly observed. The Black Holes are three-dimensional objects that break down into voids with the willful suspension of disbelief and return to their existence as physical, man-made constructions when the viewing angle shifts.