All our cities

Text messages as signal flags...

Some images of popular text abbreviations rendered as signal flags for the Artship Olympia project...

IMO (in my opinion...)

OMG (oh my God...)

POS (Parents over shoulder...)

TBH (To be honest...)

WTF (What the f*ck)

Another avenue for this is still to use the old signal flag code books to compose a story of some kind. I have begun to try my hand at a pre-colonial form of writing from the Philippines called Baybayin...I think it would be interesting to have a subtext in that script...

Manilla Location flags with Baybayin subtext...

Where in the world?

In in the International Code of Signals (1917 version), there is an extensive index of four-flag codes for locations...I am thinking of using them as I hone on on the text for the banners that will be on the Olympia this summer...

Boston 

Los Angeles

Manilla

Philadelphia

Olympia viewed from Spruce Street Harbor Park (Proposed)

Trying to get a feeling for what the banners I'm thinking of would look like from the park...

A few more code signals...

The International Code of Signals has a vocabulary for affirmative, negative and evasive responses...how incredibly useful...

I am not in a position to be able to form an opinion.

I do not know.

I think so; most likely.

Artship Olympia brainstorming...

I'm very interested in the call for proposals for the USS Olympia now available through Philadelphia Sculptors. I've thought about the Olympia for a long time, but never really as a site for art work. But it's been an important place for me for a long time, so I am trying to think of how to work with it.

The Olympia

A few weeks ago, I visited with my friend the painter who makes things, H. John Thompson. This seems made for him - especially after his last show at Napoleon. We looked around the Seaport Museum and were very helpfully guided through the ship by an employee who shared a lot of good info.

John at the place where the remains of the Unknown Soldier of WWI were placed en route to Arlington Cemetery.

I had been to the Olympia earlier this summer, with Carmina and the boys. We stood on the spot where Commodore Dewey began the Battle of Manilla - the spot where you could trace a line through American international relations from May 1, 1898 and the end of the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines to the 1960s and the immigration policies that made it possible for the Ocampos to come to this country.

On this most recent trip, I learned about change to the international signal flag system and was able to get a lead on the way the flags would have been used in 1989. Through the library at Temple, I got a hold of the International Code of Signals for the Use of All Nations - 1894 edition. My work with signal flags made this a natural course to follow...

Using old work for placement, to see how it looks on the rails

The signal book describes how three-letter combinations are used to communicate certain frequently used messages...much like three letter shortcuts are used in text messages (LOL, etc.).

A version using some simpler banners

Here are a few of the short versions...I am also thinking of making enamel pins of them...

Are you on fire?

We shall have calm.

Will you give me passage?

Clipping

Hanne Darboven wrote by hand, copied different kind of texts by transferring them into her own handwriting. Only in few cases would she have them copied by someone else with a typewriter. This personal aspect of her art-making is reminiscent of the practice of monks in the Middle Ages, copying the texts of the Bible day after day, writing the codex, and this is rather a contrast to the idea of the depersonalized primary structures of the prefabricated or mechanically created, mainly geometrical forms, being used by the Conceptual and especially the Minimal artists of the time. Darboven chose the medium of the book as the classical medium of knowledge of the early modernism, constructing a personal reading of history and time. She practiced cutting fragments of encyclopedias, literature and later of articles out of magazines and newspapers, transferring them into her own handwriting and combining them to form a new text, a privately hand written ‘cultural history’.

 Schoofs, Miriam. "Hanne Darboven: I inscribe by I describe nothing". Flash Art. Jan -Feb 2013, p.

More about care...

...trying to keep track of stories about mending and repair (less about curation, please). See an earlier post on mending.

Here's one, "Preserving what is valued", from University of Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum...reviewed by Allison Meier for Hyperallergic...

Recent research...

I have a couple or three shows coming up and I am moving away from the literary quotations that have been subject matter for a while...I am looking for new subjects in the argot of various groups. The idea of dictionaries that guide readers through worlds that are intentionally closed off by language is interesting...

This could get messy...

This brochure, produced by a detective agency around 1880, contains a section of the slang of Philadelphia's petty thieves. We are told that "You rarely hear slang form thieves over 30 years of age. Although all crooks are familiar with the terms, its use is chiefly confined to pickpockets, sneak-thieves, and the younger class of criminals, who take delight in mastering the language of their elders and in familiarizing themselves with its use." (21) 

Bruce Rodgers' 1972 book is as personal and idiosyncratic as these kinds of books tend to be. "Slang flourishes in the ghetto," he writes in the introduction, "Those who leave the ghetto shake off its language first, then decry its message. Slang is secretive, a form of protest and an expression of social recognition [...] yet this secretiveness is not snobby; anyone interested can break the code [...] when the secrecy in slang becomes and object in and of itself [...] slang stops being primarily a means of communication." 

More to come. These were found at Temple University's Special Collections Research Center (thanks!).

Further progress...

From the studio...

Some drawings coming together on the drawing board...

Secret Society

Interesting podcast of Fresh Air in which Jamie Barrett discusses his research into the 'dark web'. The importance of encryption is discussed.

Hand Lettering Workshop with Mike Meyer

I am so excited to be going to this in September! And more than mildly anxious...

Michael Swaine: "Mending for the People" Tenderloin National Forest, San...

Some time ago, it occurred to me that a good way to teach some of the fundamental skills that are part of a BFA Foundations program might be to use repair as a focus for a project. (This is an idea I have talked about with artist H. John Thompson a little.)



It would require knowledge of materials and assembly logics, as well as careful measurement and fabrication. One can imagine a number of conceptually engaging approaches to repair that students might take.



I've been making note of examples of work like this, but I I thought this was an interesting take on the subject. Perhaps I'll keep track of examples here, and I invite your suggestions...

Rochelle Toner

Interesting video of Rockie Toner talking about her work and career...

SAI 2015 Rochelle Toner from Senior Artists Initiative on Vimeo.

Chomography Talks - Melinda Steffy

Chromography Artist Talks - Gerard Brown

Listening to swine flu

Swine flu virus (according to Wikipedia...could be a grape juice spill I suppose...)

Using the I-am-a-bulletin board function of this blog this week... here is something I came across that I need to keep track of - protein and amino acid music.

I gather this is an example of audiation (a variation on the idea of visualization) in which patterns and correspondences hidden in data might be revealed through translation to music. Here's another spot to look at...

This example (on a blog by Stephen Zielinski) looks at the sequence of amino acids in swine flu and produces ambient music. I'm a little bothered that he had a goal - ambient music - in this. I suppose I should just accept that as a form of translation, this intends to make something in the target language rather than to find something in the source....but I am just more interested in what happens when you haven't got anything in mind and let yourself go where the text leads...

You can listen here...

You can see the whole post here.

Edit: this link - to a simultaneous ambient composition created by edits to Wikipedia - is what got me thinking of audiation earlier this week...

WHYY-TV Friday Arts visits Rowan University Art Gallery to talk Art & Technology

Video: Other Selections @ the Center for Art in Wood

I want to be everyone sees this piece by John Thornton...it's interesting how the Center for Art in Wood is producing these short videos in lieu of conventional exhibit essays. There is a lot to talk about in terms of the relationship between craft and sculpture in this show, but that's for another post...