This map (at the end of this text) was made at the beginning my year at the Center for Integrated Media. In it I map out the seeds that have been lodged in my brain waiting to rise from the frozen murk into a lotus bloom, symbol of enlightenment; lotus flowers usually grow in dark murky waters, from which they rise to bloom floating on the surface, rooted in the darkest pit.

Adorno's critique of mass culture helped to shape my own relationship to celebrity, and pop culture. Which is a move from right or wrong, to why and how.

Jarry developed his own brand of philosophy called pataphysics, which was an absurd explanation of events: "If you let a coin fall and it falls, the next time it is just by an infinite coincidence that it will fall again the same way." It relates to how I think about un-identity:


Two people are having a conversation, one of them is wearing a mask made of a highly reflective surface, the other is not. The man without the mask begins to recognize his image in the mask and although he is aware that it is not him, he begins to identify the statements coming out of the mask as his own. The man wearing the mask is in complete control of his identity, and in fact can sense when the other man begins to respond mainly to his own reflection. This is un-identity.

My Grandmother is my counterbalance, she is as compassionate, loving, understanding, and nurturing as I am not. When she looks at my work sometimes she will cry, sometimes from joy and pride, and sometimes from sadness; and I know that those are the feelings I was having at the time the work was made. When I make work I always hope that she will like it.

Once I was ill from living the noxious life of a young artist, I was in my bed asleep and the mattress began to vibrate, like an earthquake, but ticklish. I was frightened until in my dream His Holiness The Dalai Lama handed me a small white envelope, with a green stamp on it. He handed it to me and said: "This is for your nose bleed." He exited the darkness of my dream, and the feeling of safety left me. And I became very frightened. Later I went to see him speak at Royce Hall in UCLA, when they asked me what the most important thing in life was he said: "At this moment, this glass of water," from which he sipped.

Yoko Ono's book Grapefruit, her cd box-set the Ono Box, and her fluxux piece YES, influenced me to become an artist. Grapefruits poetic instructions help create a creative space in the middle of turmoil, it takes the everyday and recontextualizes it as art. The Ono Box compiles six albums which map out a trajectory from guttural vocals, to lyrics dealing with the everyday. And YES is the monument to optimism, in a gallery at the top of a tal ladder rests a loupe which is chained to the ceiling, on the ceiling is a typed out note which reads YES. Also the white chess set, in which all of the elements are whte and the game continues as long as you can remember which are your pieces.

Buster Keaton is the father of performance art. His physicallity, brought awareness to the cinematic frame, the body, and the space which it occupied: the set.

Morton Feldman wrote a piece called the Rothko Chapel in which he envisioned music that would occupy the space much as a painting would. Giving sound physicality ties into the idea of phyaicalising the typography, and my 1-10 project with Mr. Keedy which was about creating environmental typographic panels.

Elaine Radigue is a sound artist who has grown nearly deaf after years of working on sound. When I met her she presented a piece at the ROD in which I not only heard sound, but became aware of the space it occupied there. Will i grow nearly blind in my old age from making, and looking at so many images?

Andy Kopra's work with python, and programming is inspired by the idea of using basic computer functions to create work which is rooted in the relationships created with language, writing, programming, and ornamental syntax.

Hillary Kapan's investigation into calmness, tangents, ancient civilizations, dialectics, and politics create a multidisciplinary approach to making video, and creating cultural critique.

Matthew Barney's exploration into restraint, symbols, myth, architecture, taboo, the body; created a body of work which reiterates itelf of a plus-grand scale each time. From drawing, to scultpture, to film; the fantastic output ot this artist interests me.

Korinna Schmidt uses well known stories, and characters in a deap-pan cinematic structure for use in installation; film cranes, extreme zoom, the rupture of fantasy through the ironic introduction of the everyday (like those bowler hats in Bun~uel's films, but not at all subtle), and the use of surveillance equipment reaffrims the role of the voyeur.

Lorraine Wild always has the best metaphors, like the other day we were talking about my short attention span and how it has played out in my design work at CalArts, and I said tha I felt that I needed to tie up loose ends with previous projects that I abandoned to callously, and she said that it was like going into an old drawer and that something might come out of it. I love that. Also she wrote an essay called the macrame of design, she has the conceptual strength to tie sophisticated concepts to an everyday experience like watching skateboarders land jumps in Venice.

Michael Worthington is the reason I came to CalArts. I met with him when I was just out of my Undergrad and no one liked me because I hadn't made a corporate identity, or a brochure, or something designy; instead I had been experimenting with my ink-jet printer, and black and white laser printouts of type that people had abandoned. Also I had made doodles of statues on the computer in Illustrator that looked like they had been traditionally sketched. Everyone told me that it wasn't design, except Michael. He said I should come to CalArts, and eventually I did. But, what is interesting to me about his work, is his preoccupation with counterculture, or subculture. Somehow he manages to tie that into the projects that come into his studio Counterspace.

Ogylvy-Mathers, and the Holy Roman Empire are like two peas in a pod. Ogylvy's book on advertising is a seminal read into the significance of advertising as a current condition of society. If you want to stop the proliferation of advertising in the world read this book, not adbusters. Better yet, any research into The Holy Roman Empire will reveal how we are still living in the shadow of the greatest publicity machine ever created. If you want to learn about branding, word of mouth, ritual, relational aesthetics, performance, and symbols go to catholic mass!

This map (at the end of this text) was made at the beginning my year at the Center for Integrated Media. In it I map out the seeds that have been lodged in my brain waiting to rise from the frozen murk into a lotus bloom, symbol of enlightenment; lotus flowers usually grow in dark murky waters, from which they rise to bloom floating on the surface, rooted in the darkest pit.

Adorno's critique of mass culture helped to shape my own relationship to celebrity, and pop culture. Which is a move from right or wrong, to why and how.

Jarry developed his own brand of philosophy called pataphysics, which was an absurd explanation of events: "If you let a coin fall and it falls, the next time it is just by an infinite coincidence that it will fall again the same way." It relates to how I think about un-identity:


Two people are having a conversation, one of them is wearing a mask made of a highly reflective surface, the other is not. The man without the mask begins to recognize his image in the mask and although he is aware that it is not him, he begins to identify the statements coming out of the mask as his own. The man wearing the mask is in complete control of his identity, and in fact can sense when the other man begins to respond mainly to his own reflection. This is un-identity.

My Grandmother is my counterbalance, she is as compassionate, loving, understanding, and nurturing as I am not. When she looks at my work sometimes she will cry, sometimes from joy and pride, and sometimes from sadness; and I know that those are the feelings I was having at the time the work was made. When I make work I always hope that she will like it.

Once I was ill from living the noxious life of a young artist, I was in my bed asleep and the mattress began to vibrate, like an earthquake, but ticklish. I was frightened until in my dream His Holiness The Dalai Lama handed me a small white envelope, with a green stamp on it. He handed it to me and said: "This is for your nose bleed." He exited the darkness of my dream, and the feeling of safety left me. And I became very frightened. Later I went to see him speak at Royce Hall in UCLA, when they asked me what the most important thing in life was he said: "At this moment, this glass of water," from which he sipped.

Yoko Ono's book Grapefruit, her cd box-set the Ono Box, and her fluxux piece YES, influenced me to become an artist. Grapefruits poetic instructions help create a creative space in the middle of turmoil, it takes the everyday and recontextualizes it as art. The Ono Box compiles six albums which map out a trajectory from guttural vocals, to lyrics dealing with the everyday. And YES is the monument to optimism, in a gallery at the top of a tal ladder rests a loupe which is chained to the ceiling, on the ceiling is a typed out note which reads YES. Also the white chess set, in which all of the elements are whte and the game continues as long as you can remember which are your pieces.

Buster Keaton is the father of performance art. His physicallity, brought awareness to the cinematic frame, the body, and the space which it occupied: the set.

Morton Feldman wrote a piece called the Rothko Chapel in which he envisioned music that would occupy the space much as a painting would. Giving sound physicality ties into the idea of phyaicalising the typography, and my 1-10 project with Mr. Keedy which was about creating environmental typographic panels.

Elaine Radigue is a sound artist who has grown nearly deaf after years of working on sound. When I met her she presented a piece at the ROD in which I not only heard sound, but became aware of the space it occupied there. Will i grow nearly blind in my old age from making, and looking at so many images?

Andy Kopra's work with python, and programming is inspired by the idea of using basic computer functions to create work which is rooted in the relationships created with language, writing, programming, and ornamental syntax.

Hillary Kapan's investigation into calmness, tangents, ancient civilizations, dialectics, and politics create a multidisciplinary approach to making video, and creating cultural critique.

Matthew Barney's exploration into restraint, symbols, myth, architecture, taboo, the body; created a body of work which reiterates itelf of a plus-grand scale each time. From drawing, to scultpture, to film; the fantastic output ot this artist interests me.

Korinna Schmidt uses well known stories, and characters in a deap-pan cinematic structure for use in installation; film cranes, extreme zoom, the rupture of fantasy through the ironic introduction of the everyday (like those bowler hats in Bun~uel's films, but not at all subtle), and the use of surveillance equipment reaffrims the role of the voyeur.

Lorraine Wild always has the best metaphors, like the other day we were talking about my short attention span and how it has played out in my design work at CalArts, and I said tha I felt that I needed to tie up loose ends with previous projects that I abandoned to callously, and she said that it was like going into an old drawer and that something might come out of it. I love that. Also she wrote an essay called the macrame of design, she has the conceptual strength to tie sophisticated concepts to an everyday experience like watching skateboarders land jumps in Venice.

Michael Worthington is the reason I came to CalArts. I met with him when I was just out of my Undergrad and no one liked me because I hadn't made a corporate identity, or a brochure, or something designy; instead I had been experimenting with my ink-jet printer, and black and white laser printouts of type that people had abandoned. Also I had made doodles of statues on the computer in Illustrator that looked like they had been traditionally sketched. Everyone told me that it wasn't design, except Michael. He said I should come to CalArts, and eventually I did. But, what is interesting to me about his work, is his preoccupation with counterculture, or subculture. Somehow he manages to tie that into the projects that come into his studio Counterspace.

Ogylvy-Mathers, and the Holy Roman Empire are like two peas in a pod. Ogylvy's book on advertising is a seminal read into the significance of advertising as a current condition of society. If you want to stop the proliferation of advertising in the world read this book, not adbusters. Better yet, any research into The Holy Roman Empire will reveal how we are still living in the shadow of the greatest publicity machine ever created. If you want to learn about branding, word of mouth, ritual, relational aesthetics, performance, and symbols go to catholic mass!