smartphones

Yesterday I watched this trailer for Naqoyqatsi.
I had never heard of it, but it came up as a suggestion on Netflix so I checked it out-
of course it confirmed all of my worst nightmares and now I don't think I really want to see it.
No nature, only technology, war always.

If you have an extreme movie plot about the dreadful future, and are looking for someone to convince... I'm your gal.
I've been feeling especially negative lately, probably due to my classes. Let's see, Comparative Children's Rights- we go around the room and each say what our research paper is going to be, and our teacher jokes with each person, "is your topic depressing too?"

OF COURSE ITS DEPRESSING- we are taking a class on children's rights!
My environmental seminar isn't much more uplifting, it's an environmental seminar at a school of anti-environmentalists.
I know I represent the extreme in this case, so I'm about to let y'all in on a secret.
I don't think people realize how much I truly hate smart phones. You think you know, because I whine about it, but I bite my tongue 90% of the time.
So here we go:

If you're subtle about your smartphone ownership, or can put it down for great lengths of time, then I will look the other way and it won't get to me. But let's face it, the large majority of smartphone users do not use their phones in a controlled manner. And it drives me insane. If you have a smartphone and my standards make me think it's excessive- I look down upon you. I think lesser of you. I sound excessive but I mean it from the bottom of my heart!

The fact that you need to look up all directions on your phone, when you could easily use your eyes or just ask an information booth (that's their job, and I prefer human opinions and interactions) - then why do otherwise? At least if you get lost the human way, you're having an adventure. If your screen is wrong, you start to get frustrated and stumble and try to apologize on behalf of it, then you're just staring at a few inches of screen and not living in the present.

[I am really thankful for my roadtrip with Riley and Ola- they both have internet on their phone but we all quickly agreed to not use it for directions- Riley's mom gave us a map of the NE states and we used that for pretty much everything (sometimes we picked up a more detailed map in a state-specifically TN and LA). We got on and off at random exits, drove through old towns, ghost towns, hidden towns...]

Most likely to be continued


love.love.love.

Verdant

Verdant

Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Verdant is an exhibition that deals with the relationship between humans and the natural environment. It showcases the contemporary artists Binh Danh, Paula Hayes, Tim Knowles, and the Workingman Collective. Together, they take an active role in the environment by using living organisms rather than simply capturing images of them. These artists recognize the inevitable interaction between humans and nature but do not cause destruction to the environment; they use techniques that allow plants to continue growing, unharmed. In displaying this exhibit to the public, free of charge, MassArt has entered into a contract to not only supervise the artists’ work but in some cases, to take care of it.

Binh Danh was born in Vietnam in 1977, but moved to the United States shortly afterward. His collection of prints, Military Foliage, reflects Vietnam’s collective memory of the Vietnam War. His prints vary in size and fill a wall of the exhibition space, with a simple bench in front of them. Each print shows a blown up image of a leaf set aside a solid black background. While in the past Danh has placed images of portraits onto these leaves, Military Foliage is much more abstract and shows monochrome camouflage patterns. While this series made in 2010 employ a very simple pattern that leave much up to the observer, it references the relationship between the Vietnamese who used foliage to hide in their environment, which was then bombed by the US military using Agent Orange.

However these are not simply photographs of leaves; the media for each image is chlorophyll print and resin. This technique of chlorophyll printing is one unique to Binh Danh, having stumbled across the idea of using photosynthesis after observing the affect a running garden hose had on a lawn. He places a negative on a leaf, puts it in a contact printing frame, and leaves it in the sun for days or weeks (depending on the piece) leaving the final product completely up to chance. The idea that nature has a role in art is one employed by each artist in Verdant.

For instance, Paula Hayes’ exhibit is not a product of plants used in the process, but plants are the final product. Here she exhibits a series of over fifteen terrariums, laid across a long, white, wooden surface. Each terrarium is shaped differently and ranges in size, approximately a foot in length and half a foot in height. They are transparent, round, and oblong, with an opening at some point in the glass. Inside these hand blown vessels are different living plant species mixed with rocks and bits of gems and crystals.

Paula Hayes knows that an owner of her piece not only will have a relationship with it, but also must. Her artwork cannot be left unattended for great lengths of time, for it is as living as its owner. The Workingman Collective takes a similar approach in its piece Swing. This steel swing set is 108" x 110" x 115" in dimension and uses fir, powdercoat, clay pots, and the assorted household plants that fill them. An evolving group of people in itself, The Workingman Collective invites its audience to be one of many that will sit on the swing and engage in this piece of art. The swing is supported by red steel poles that have pots jutting off of them at different lengths and heights. The plants used are meant to be recognizable to the participant, and remind him or her that nature does not need to be separated from our everyday routine. Plants can be a part of any home, a message that Paula Hayes communicates in her terrariums. However, the Workingman Collective goes farther than the personal space of one’s home and brings the idea of art in public spaces to the forefront through something as interactive as a swing.

Tim Knowles’ series, Tree Drawings, are large pieces of blank paper with ink patterns. He spent time in the Arnold Arboretum (Jamaica Plain, Boston) and had the trees participate in the artistic process: he attached pens to the tips of branches and allowed them to splay ink onto the set-up stands of paper. In this way the trees become the artist, expressing an “emotion” or action tied to a natural element: wind. Beside these prints are occasional C-print photographs of these trees in action with the work.

Knowles’ work, the product of a collaboration quite different from Swing, causes the onlooker to wonder why nature does not usually speak for itself. Knowles allows the object he studies to tell its own story, rather than explicitly impose a meaning of his own. This theme of nature as a storyteller is one employed by each artist. Pieces such as Swing invite the participant to ask, why don’t we see more art like this in urban settings?

In areas of San Francisco, strangers have illegally thrown simple wooden swings across the branches of trees that border sidewalks. For a few days passerby use them, until officials take down the swings. Are these strangers, and the artists in Verdant, pleading for society to reconnect to the land? These works of art do not merely capture an image, they force the artists to engage with their environment. In the instances of the terrariums and Swing, the observer must also engage with the environment through caring for plants. In an age when the natural environment faces daily degradation, these artists call for art that limits its negative impact on the earth. While some of the artists may still use chemicals and dyes, their impact is minimal compared to human creations that are wholly estranged from nature. Verdant, exhibited January 30^th-March 10^th, ,2012, will live on beyond the space provided by MassArt through the caretaking of individuals and the minds of the viewers who must now reconsider how society relates to its environment.

Little Bat

Today when I was walking home from work, I passed by a plastic cup on the side of the road. It was raining a bit, and I thought that the dark shape inside of it might have been a turtle. This obviously excited me because cute little turtles remind me of people I know, and I thought it'd be a nice chance to check up on a friend.
But it wasn't a turtle! It was a little bat, and I raised an eyebrow to look at it, the rain coating its small fur coat.

"Bat...? Are you okay?" No response
"Little bat! What's wrong?" I moved the cup gently and afterwards the bat gave me a little wiggle.
"Bat, what's going on?" No response
I then had this moral dilemma- if there is a little bat in a plastic cup, chances are it was not there by choice. So then did someone
a) put their pet bat there to hang out for a bit, in a plastic cup
b) find the bat and rescue it...in a plastic cup
c) hurt the bat and then leave it in a plastic cup?

Oh god it made me feel so anxious. So then should I
a) call animal control to save him- but maybe the person in scenario b already did
b) leave it there in case of scenario a
c) rescue the bat if scenario c was true

goshhh I just kept staring at him and asking him what was wrong. So then I moved the bat to the corner of the building where it seemed to be out of the rain. Do bats like rain? God what if it gets pneumonia-
I broke off a piece of my sandwich from work. A small piece of chicken because don't bat eats bugs so isn't chicken similar? And a small piece of bread in case that's easier for him to digest.

And then I thought about how I was a human, potentially interrupting the natural process of a bat's life-

but no natural process in a bat's life should land him in a plastic cup!
God I'm just another human that made this poor wild bat an urban bat!


I thought of Morgan, when she stepped on the chipmunk over the summer, and tried to resuscitate it... why are there sidewalks and why do both animals and people walk on them!

The world is a scary place.

Save the bats.
(And chipmunks)
(And my turtle friends)


love.love.love.

Why You Make Me Sad

I Don't Remember Your Laugh

Sometimes trying to think of all the opposites is really hard

Dear Friend,
I am writing to tell you, that yes, I am! Today I re-ordered all of my clothes so that the blouses and skirts hang by length in the front and the coats are far out of reach. I pulled out my daybook and I penciled in each hour next week, I've got time between 3 and 4pm if but only for a walk-and-talk meeting.

I re-listened to all of my musical library in order of album release year, and I've filled my walls with the selling points to all the speeches I'd like to give. Beethoven still bores me but the new Jay Z album was a huge hit; I'm into the hits now- any suggestions?

I loved that Rihanna single when it came out, but I'm kinda over that craze. Always hard to get over a single like that though, am I right?

Crazy for you



love.love.love.

If I tell you I'm being a bitch then it makes me NOT a bitch!

I hate being in a bad mood.
I'm going to blame it on the dreams I cannot remember from last night.

Though I'm sure watching two (Pretty Young Girls and Restrepo) depressing documentaries doesn't help.
I'm addicted to the depressing elements of reality!

(But I finally have finished one of the ten books I chose to read for my new year's resolution. And I'm almost done with the second)

Today I am a prickly cactus.

love.love.love.

Lucid Dreams

I'm in the [lucid dream] club-
last night I was in a room, there were two people standing on opposite sides of the room.
I don't know what made this dream the exception, but next to one person I noticed a light switch-
I know this is something people use to turn a dream lucid (or is the dream lucid before I notice the switch?). I walked over to it and was ready to switch it, to see if the lights change, when the person tried distracting me. He was trying to scare me, to prevent me from my mission, but I forced myself to reach out quickly and flip the switch. Nothing happened, this is how I knew I was finally lucid dreaming.

Since January I've been having such strange dreams nightly. (The other night I was kidnapped.) The majority of them have been unpleasant, and nearly all have been strangely realistic situations. (I did finally have that cliché dream of my teeth falling out- for which there are far too many interpretations.)
Many of them consisted of conversations between myself and others that have been so realistic, I started to feel I was on the edge of having lucid dreams.

Last night after I tried to flip the light switch, and confirmed my dream state, I turned to face the person who had been trying to distract me. I decided "I will push him over now" and placed a finger on his chest, and lightly pushed back. He very slowly fell flat on his back like a plank of wood.

When I wake up and do not feel the need to get out of bed, I often choose to slip back into a dream. Sometimes I choose to do this with unpleasant dreams, just out of curiosity to see where they'll go. In this sense I do not feel in control of what I am dreaming, but more like I'm reading along with a story.
What if I don't want to read along? What if I want to write the story?

Today my friend told me I am supposed to use this opportunity to do crazy things like "have sex with Obama", but those aren't the dreams I am trying to perfect. There is another man that is often in my dreams, and it is his presence that I want to keep.
The last dream we had together took place in New York. We were wandering and visiting, but he was distracted. He seemed only partly present, the rest of him vaguely making plans to see other friends while he was in the city. I felt offended though he was doing little to offend. Why could I not hold his attention? Was I a slave to the dream, and its storyline predetermined?
If "this world is based on rationality and logic", then why would he take such a rational role in my dream---dreamland felt hardly dreamlike.
Tell me Steven LaBerge, how can I hold his attention, where does his gaze wander to?
Is it that my body prevents me from reaching the 5th sleep stage, denying me the opportunity to control my dream? It may be that controlling it would be futile if it does not change "my waking state".
I want to be a Tibetan Buddhist, and allow myself to practice "dream yoga".
I want to slip into a dream tonight and have him in it, but if I'm forcing him to be there, is that strange? If I can perfect lucid dreams, I want to use them to reach for his hand, go visit beautiful places, maybe have the courage to place a kiss on him.

Then again, I guess sex with Obama would be cool too.


love.love.love.