Exploding Art Mimbulus Mimbletonia style

Scientology, Cheeseburgers, and Getting Lost. Not Much has changed, apparently.

2011-02-01T12:29:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I updated this. I was worried that I would taint the memories of my study abroad trip by ever using this blog again, but I realized recently that I had intended this to be an ongoing thing. So for the first time in quite a few years, I'm writing a new post here. I hope I get around to doing it again, as I'm already having fun.

Coincidentally (or maybe not so), I am back in New York - One of my best friends from Carleton lives here, and I try to come visit every so often. It's a little cold today (around 30 degrees), and so cloudy that I can hardly see any of the Manhattan Skyline, even though it's just across the river. I was reluctant to go out this morning, but I did anyway.

Can you guess what happened? That's right, I got lost. Not immediately though. I guess I'll just start at the beginning.

Not long ago I discovered an awesome website called Fitango which allows you to track your progress for various goals (weight loss, financial, events, etc.). One of the "Action Plans," as they're called, didn't really belong there, but it seemed too awesome to turn down: A week long Burger Tour of NYC. I went ahead and implemented it, and went to the first place on the list today: Five Napkin Burger. Amazingly, I just hopped on the PATH Train, only wandered aimlessly in the subway station for about 2 minutes before I found the C train, got off at 42nd street, and walked about 4 blocks, pretty much right to it. In fact, I did it so quickly, that they weren't quite open yet, and the hostess asked me to come back in about 20 minutes. I figured that I was right near Times Square, so I started wandering over in that direction, in hopes that I could find that interesting sound art piece that I remembered from our New Media trip.

I dodged pretty much all of the people handing out pamphlets and was just starting to feel proud of myself when a fairly young, good natured looking guy approached me and handed me something saying "this is for you!" with a big smile. I took it and smiled back and looked down to see what it was. A ticket to a free showing of something...something that I vaguely recognized with a picture of a volcano...Then I saw the words: Dianetics. It seemed familiar, but I couldn't quite remember what it was. He asked me "Have you heard of Dianetics?" I stared at the card for a moment, trying to think how to answer that. I wasn't sure if I wanted to say no and find out way more about dianetics than I ever wanted to, or if I should say yes and hope he didn't probe too much. Almost as soon as that thought crossed my mind though, I remembered it having something to do with Scientology. I have always found Scientology fascinating, mostly because I can't understand how anyone can take it seriously enough to become a Scientologist. I was taken in by my curiosity, and decided to answer with "Well...it sounds familiar, but I can't really remember what it is..."

"How about you just come see the movie now? Let's go!"

I panicked for a second, wondering what I was getting myself into, but I figured, what else am I going to do while I wait for Five Napkin Burger to open? So I followed him around the corner and straight into the Church of Scientology. The movie was the best thing I've ever seen. It was about this teenage boy on a highschool football team who gets injured during a game and becomes paralyzed from the waist down. Then, most of it is about how he's in the hospital and all of these evil psychologists want him to tell them that he's envious of his father and then cut his head open and poke his brain. He freaks out a lot, and eventually his girlfriend, who looks pretty from far away but horrible close up, brings him a book about Dianetics, and just in the nick of time (for the doctors are on their way to give him unnecessary brain surgery against his will), he figures out how to walk again. Despite my attempts to contain myself, I did actually start laughing out loud at some point, I think when the main evil psychologist saw the kid walking around the hospital room, and his accomplice doctors put a stethoscope on his chest and said "It's IMPOSSIBLE!"

When I left, the girl at the front desk showed me the Dianetics book, hopeful that I would buy it (I definitely did not), then gave me a free DVD of the awesome movie I had just witnessed. I've already promised to send it to two people, so I might need to go back tomorrow and get some more.

I made my way over to Five Napkin Burger, and enjoyed myself immensely. The burger was good, the atmosphere of the place was even better, and I was still giddy from that movie. Wanting to end on a high note, I decided to just come back to Brandy's apartment when I was done. About halfway through the subway ride, however, I decided I was too excited to go home already, and wanted to have more adventures. I figured maybe I'd stop by the little guitar store that I always go to when I'm in the village. I hopped off the train at 14th street, wandered out, and wasn't anywhere near the village, though it took me about 45 minutes to realize that. Finally, the cold water was starting to seep through my shoes, and I decided to just try again tomorrow. So now I have some plans.

Now, I'm sitting in Brandy's apartment, my socks and pants are in the dryer, the cats are all asleep on me, and I think I might finish the rest of my cheeseburger. Overall, it has been an amazing day.

Finally...

2007-02-18T22:55:00.000-08:00

Watch the Video
You guys have all been waiting for it, and now, I am officially posting my final project from this trip.
It was quite a journey. Now that we're back at Carleton, we don't see eachother nearly as much, though we have all still remained friends. When we get together, we still talk about all the awesome things that happened in the different cities, and all of us agree that it is impossible to describe what went on while we were abroad. This apparently is a common scenario:

Parents: Yay, we're so glad you're back! How was your trip?
Student: Uh.....good.
Parents: ....Well, what did you guys do? Tell me all about it!
Student: Uh.....we looked at art....and stuff.....had fun.....learned some things...yeah.
Parents: ......

Unfortunately, that is really the best explanation I can come up with for what happened. If you've been keeping track of this blog, you'll know all kinds of things happened every day. I guess there was just so much stuff that it has kind of blurred into one, big, indescribable life changing thing. I'm glad it happened though. I've come out of it with a new perspective on art, about 20 new friends, and a lot more experience.

So, here are some things that have happened since we got back:
- Andy has gotten an internship at the Film Archives
- Tom has either gotten one there also or is looking into it. He might also try to work at the ARChives, the music place we visited
- Stacy, Caitlin and I are still very good friends and hang out together fairly often
- Alissa and I are officially Studio Art majors
- Boris is in Australia doing an Art program
- Juggles the bear is still being passed around among the CAMS roadtrippers. Not sure where he is right now

- CAMS Roadtrip shirt idea:

Front: Gangbang Documentarian
Back: "95% of what you just showed us is stupid, and the other 5% is borderline stupid."
CAMS New Media Roadtrip 2006

The End.

Titles are for people who know what they're talking about

2006-11-11T13:29:00.000-08:00

***Note: If you are here looking for the link to the song I used in my movie, scroll down to the bottom of this post.***

I am currently sitting here in Berlin, listening to Boney M christmas songs, eating really good chocolate, drinking cheap orange juice, and waiting for my socks and underwear to dry after washing them in the sink with dish soap. This is the life.

The last two days have probably been the most intense of the entire trip so far. Our final projects were supposed to be ready for presentation (not necessarily finished) today at Tesla, a prestigious art gallery in Berlin.
Since there are twenty two of us, it worked out that our presentations should be about 4 minutes each or the audience might kill themselves. My final project is only about 3 minutes long, and I hate presenting, so my plan was to talk for about 30 seconds to 1 minute, and then just show the whole thing. It seemed simple enough, I just had to finish it.

I worked feverishly on my project most of the day yesterday, up until we were due to go to our scheduled event of the night: what apparently seemed to be some kind of VJ club. I don’t think John even knew quite what it was, because he also seemed pretty surprised when they revealed that they weren’t really a VJ club, but a company which creates interesting art projects (generally with a theme involving architecture) but happens to own a space where there are often parties and VJ events.

We spent about two hours there listening to presentations, watching cool videos that they made, and checking out the space. It was actually a really interesting room. All the chairs had lights on them, and there were these awesome refrigerators for the drinks at the bar that each had a little scrolling LED display which showed what drinks were in there and how much they cost.

I just realized that thinking that the LED thing was the coolest part of that night might seem a little offensive to them. The guys were cool, and so were the things that they did. I just like blinking stuff.

Afterwards, we returned home, complaining the whole time about how IES made us all gather and spend the money to take a tram to Alexanderplatz, even though we could have walked there in the same amount of time. Then I worked until 3am on my project trying to get it done. I went to sleep only having about 15 seconds left to do, which wasn’t too bad since I already knew what I wanted to do with it.

I woke up this “morning” at about noon, and started frantically working on my project again. We were due at Tesla by 2:15 (the show started at 3pm), but I wanted to get there early anyway so I could have time to go over my presentation which I hadn’t even thought about. Unfortunately, about half an hour into working on my project, horrible things started to happen.

First, my computer having been made 2 years ago, only has 30GB of memory. As much as my iPod. As I write this, I only have about 2GB left on here, and this morning, I only had about 250MB. Lesson of the day: Computers don’t work when you have no memory. I had to figure this out the hard way, meaning my computer/iMovie ate the last half of my project. It wasn’t too hard to put back together, but as it got closer to 1:00pm, I started freaking out. I added some ghetto transitions to make up for the better ones which got eaten but took too long to redo, and tried exporting it. But then it was only exporting the first half of the movie and I couldn’t figure out why. Random problems like this continued and before I knew it, it was 1:45 and I had to go.

As we walked, Caitlin and Stacy reassured me that we’d be able to fix my project when we got there since we had 45 minutes before the show, I could always put my project onto someone elses computer and fix it on that, etc. But have you ever noticed that when something dreaded is coming, time seems to go by even faster? Just like in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Suddenly, it was 15 minutes to showtime, my project was still totally screwed up, and on top of that I was second to present. Why, god? Why?

I exported my movie, hoping that iMovie was just being weird (it doesn’t deal well when you put over 2,000 pictures in it) and that my project would be fine when I played it in Quicktime.

5 minutes to showtime, my project has just finished exporting, and it turns out that the second half has completely disappeared and is a BLACK VOID OF NOTHINGNESS. Like my soul. I pretty much lost it at that point. My presentation was ruined, because my movie is just kind of weird if it’s cut up at all. So it was going to be me talking for 30 seconds, and then 2 minutes of random movie. I gave in to defeat, too exhausted to be stressed out anymore. Caitlin tried to help me out by attempting to put the iMovie file on her computer and see if it would work from there, but her iMovie is slightly different than mine because her computer is brand new. It’s amazing how much computers can change in 2 years.

I sat there, totally emo, awaiting my fate. This presentation was going to be so stupid. Paul did his presentation on The War on Terin, but I wasn’t listening. Suddenly, it was my turn to go up. I wasn’t even nervous. My presentation was so botched at that point, how could it get any worse? It wasn’t too bad though. The few people who were there who weren’t from our class were smiling and happy and seemed fairly interested in what I was saying, so I felt a little better. I explained what my project was, and that I had weird computer problems so I would only be showing about two thirds or a half of it, and then had Karina press play.

I watched it, thinking to myself how much it sucked that I couldn’t show the whole thing, and how stupid my project was going to be without the last part, which was my favorite section. The screen went black and I started getting ready to explain some more about why this project seemed more stupid than it was, when I thought I saw a small flicker of another part. Then I saw a whole chunk that I remembered putting in, then it went black again. I was a little confused and kind of stood there wondering what was going to happen next, when suddenly, the last part started pretty much at the best possible part that it could have. I actually squeaked with excitement. Not sure if people noticed that.

It played the whole way through!! Apparently some old guy in the front, who turned out to be a professor from an Art school here in Berlin, really liked it and was bouncing around in his seat while he watched it. Everyone looked really happy at the end (including me), and I got much applause. Then I got asked about 80 times what music I used. It was a little weird, because I almost feel like people liked the music more than they liked my movie, but at the same time, I really believe it’s the music that makes the movie, and not the other way around. So I’m really happy for Colin, my friend who made it and allowed me to use it. He’s going to be famous!

Afterwards, I got to see what everyone else’s projects were. It was really fun, since I really had no idea what most people were doing. Tom (T Dogg) did a really interesting project where he made 6 movies, all related, which he displayed on 6 laptops. Caitlin’s project is totally hardcore. She used Google Earth to make a map of graffitti artists in each of the cities we’ve gone to, and plans on continuing it. Her hopes are that it will become international and anyone can search for any graffitti artist and find all of their tags all over the world. I plan on sending her some pictures from Santa Fe as soon as I get there. I also really liked Jenny’s dance project, where she video taped everyday movements of people and turned it into choreography. I could go on and on. All the projects were so much better than I could have imagined. I feel like we really are all artists now, and John was really really proud of us.

After our presentations, we went over to the Philharmonie to listen to an orchestra from Prague. It wasn’t the best performance I’ve seen (I’m a little spoiled from my dad working at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and getting us free tickets all summer) but it wasn’t bad. They played a lot of really famous songs which now that I think of it, I don’t know why they’re that famous, because they’re not very good. Maybe they are, but I’m just confused by them because they remind me of vaccuum cleaners and other appliances since they’re used in those kinds of commercials all the time. I don’t know. It was weird though. But, the building it was in was the coolest building ever. I can’t even describe it, but there were cool lights everwhere and things were all at weird angles. It was awesome, and I kind of want to go back there just to take more pictures.

And now I’m sitting here typing. Still waiting for my underwear to dry. A lot of people went out tonight, but after the last couple of days, I thought it’d be nice to just stay in and wind down. Tomorrow, we’re going to a soccer game where John is going to provide us with all of our “libations.” We’ll see how that goes.

Here’s the link to the Obsession With the Sky Blinking myspace page where you can find Fever Dream, the song I used:
http://www.myspace.com/obsessionwiththeskyblinking

someday I might put pictures on this post.

It's like San Felipe Casino, only everywhere and all the time...

2006-11-04T02:24:00.000-08:00

Realization of the day: There is only about one more week of this program left. I don’t know how it went by so quickly. While people at Carleton have been studying, writing papers, and going to class, we’ve been submerging ourselves in art and culture, and more importantly (at least to me), learning about life and people. I thought life at Carleton was fast, but is life in the real world even faster? And if it is, I’m going to be who I am for the rest of my life in no time. I think right now, all of us feel this, even if it’s subconcious. Even knowing that we will be graduating in a year is a little scary. We were talking about all of this last night as the party died down, and I think all of us realized, as Julian put it, that we’ve “learned more on this trip than during all of freshman year at Carleton.”

It’s day four here in Berlin, and it’s going great. We have a nice apartment, good roommates (Stacy (again!!!), Rachel, and me), and of course, some very interesting art lectures. Most recently, lectures about public screens. We talked to two people, one who helped build many of the large public screens in Berlin, and another who told us about the direction public screens and surveillance are going in. It was a little strange having both of those lectures so close together (one on Thursday, the other on Friday), because both said very similar things. The gist of it was (this wasn’t what their presentations were about, necessarily, but it’s what I brought back from them) that public screens are going to take over the world. Or at least things seem to be going in that direction.

Public screens are definitely awesome. The first lecturer we talked with showed us some of the projects he has worked on, including the SPOTS buliding and a museum called Kunsthaus. Both of these have really interesting and beautiful screens on them. But it seems that having a few public screens in a city isn’t enough. Everyone wants more, which I think is a little weird. They claim that with these public screens, we can project art and other messages to the city, so that all people will be able to see these things, and no one will be excluded.

It all really comes down to communication. For some reason, we need to all be able to communicate with each other, whether it’s a random thought while we’re walking down the street, or a strange art movie we made in high school. But why? I don’t understand why it’s so important to show people things that they won’t necessarily care about at all. Sure the internet does this all the time, what with blogs, pretty much everything on youtube, etc., but at least with the internet, we can choose to keep watching it. We can always turn it off or open a new window.

But if these public screens go in the direction that it seems they’re going, then we can’t just turn them off or look away. We’ll see some odd movie on a building, and we’ll turn our heads only to find another movie advertising Coca Cola. My friend Lauren can’t even watch movies because they are disturbing to her somehow. Are we just going to ignore people like that? Will she be forced to walk around staring at the ground? What if they start putting screens in sidewalks?? Holy crap, the whole world is going to turn into some kind of giant movie screen, and there will be no escaping it! And then you start thinking about light pollution, noise pollution (they’re still considering whether to put sounds with the images), communication pollution....

Moral of the story: One to ten buildings with screens = cool.
Every building flashing different images and giving people epileptic seizures = Not cool.

MisSteps: Where the Hell am I?

2006-10-29T13:34:00.000-08:00

In case you were wondering if I had gotten over my getting lost phase, the answer is a resounding “No.”

We were recently assigned to do a project by John called “MisSteps.” In groups of two (some people, like me, did it individually anyway) we were supposed to come up with a walk that was based on some kind of conceptual idea, action, or even drawing. As long as it wasn’t just us walking randomly, it was good.

Originally, I was going to do a sort of ADD inspired walk, where I went towards anything that seemed interesting at the time. It could be a pigeon, sparkly objects in windows, interesting music in a park, anything. In general, that’s how I get around anyway. I have a destination in mind, and then I go wandering around finding other interesting things and almost never actually end up where I was intending to.

I started off this morning with the school video camera I had checked out in-hand, but after about thirty or forty minutes, I realized that my walk was totally lame. I think the problem was that I had already walked around much of this area, and nothing seemed too new and interesting. Also, being a Saturday morning, there wasn’t much going on people-wise. Then I had left my memory card for my camera in my room, so I couldn’t even do my cubes. I decided to just turn around and go back to rethink my walk.

After an hour or so, I came up with a new idea. It was a little windy outside, so why not do a walk based on the wind? It would almost be like putting myself in the hands of fate. Seemed like something I’d like. So here were the rules:

1.Everytime I got to a place where I had to cross the street, I had to stop and see where the wind was blowing and go in that direction.
2.If the wind wasn’t blowing, I had to go straight.
3. If going straight was not an option (there is a buliding infront of me or the side of a bridge), I had to do a cube.
4. If there was a really strong gust of wind, I had to turn in that direction as soon as possible.

I also came up with another rule while I was walking, that I didn’t HAVE to go where the wind told me to go (though I generally did). Not because I was feeling lazy or scared, but because a big part of fate is deciding whether or not to take the path it leaves for you. Then you can even think, maybe fate knew I was going to not do what it told me to, so I’m really still doing what fate wanted. It’s all very complicated.

The walk went fairly well. I ended up in some odd places that I had never seen, took a lot of video of various kinds of birds, saw a guy get into a motorcycle accident (he slipped on the tram tracks, but he was alright. Always wear protective gear when riding a motorcycle!) and even got the Dutch version of Fonzie hitting on me (Heeeeeeyy!!!).

I ran into Tom and Andy on my walk, and they reminded me that it only had to last 2 to 4 hours and that I could probably stop and go home. It seemed like a good idea, so I began making my way back.

On the way, I stopped at a grocery store and in a style Eric Streeper would admire, I bought the cheapest food I could find (though I did NOT buy the Barbeque Pork flavored chips, even though they were 25 cents. It was just too creepy.)

I began walking again, but somehow ended up in a really odd part of town that I had never been to. It started to rain, but I kept walking in hopes I’d find something familiar.

Fifteen minutes later, I spotted a building that looked a lot like the Rijksmuseum, and everything around it looked like that area, so I had finally found out where I was. Then I realized that this in fact wasn’t the Rijksmuseum and that I was just hopelessly lost. It was beginning to get dark.

I kept walking, thinking I had to be near SOMETHING. Turns out I wasnt. Desperate, I finally pulled out my map (I’ve gotten lost multiple times on this trip, and have not once used a map to find my way back) and tried to find where to go. Unfortunately, the first step in finding your way back home is finding where you are on the map. Either the street I was on was too small to be on the map, or Amsterdam is just too massive to find a little tiny street which, like every street here, is just a jumble of 3 consonants, a million A’s, and a couple of J’s and K’s thrown in for fun. Luckily, I had seen some signs pointing towards Centraal Station, so I decided that was my only option.

I followed signs for a good half hour, not knowing what direction or part of town I was coming from, and by the time I got to the station, it was completely dark outside. I hopped on the tram, which was unusually full to the point where the driver started telling people to wait for the next one if they could, and rode back to Apple.

(Pictures coming soon. Just trying to post this while the internet still works)

The Waag Adventure

2006-10-26T14:46:00.000-07:00

Wednesday morning we left at 9:30 to go to the Waag, one of the former gateways to the city, and now a headquarters for various new media related things. It was definitely an interesting trip.
For one, none of us knew what to expect. All that was posted on the wiki was that we were going to “do a workshop at the Waag.” No one knew what kind of workshop we were doing, and I don’t think most of us knew what the Waag was in the first place.
When we got there, the Content Developer, Sam Nemeth, and the Head of Program Connected, Floor van Spaendonck gave a brief presentation on what they did there, but seemed much more interested in what we were doing on the trip. Being who we are, none of us really knew how to answer the “so, what are your projects?” type questions we kept getting. We ended up having to go around the room and introduce ourselves and explain our projects a bit. It was a little weird, but I think it was pretty good practice for our exhibition in Berlin, since (hopefully) we’ll be having to explain our projects a lot.

Then it was tour time. They showed us around the building a little bit, and explained the history of it. Apparently, the Waag used to be a meeting places for all kinds of guilds from the 1500’s including the Masons guild and the Surgeons guild. We also saw where Rembrandt did the sketches for his painting Anatomical Lessons of Dr.Tulp in a room in the Surgeons guild. Yay history.
Afterwards, John came up with the idea that as a thank you to the Waag, we should all make some kind of “response” to it in an hour. Apparently this was the plan all along. So, suspiciously based on something that seemed to be my parking meter project, we did “Circling the Waag.”

John asked me to do my photo-circle thing around the building (the same thing I do with the parking meters), and how could I refuse? I did it, and it was interesting to do that process with something so big. I also extended it to go inside the building and up the cool spiral staircases.

Jenny's photo of a group remake of the famous Rembrandt painting Anatomical Lessons of Dr.Tulp

Also, be sure to check out Joe and Jeremy’s movie they made in response, and Caitlin’s cute tea cup movie, which is a lot like the kind of thing I did, but better and more interesting. Damn you Caitlin....Damn you!!!

When we finished making things, we met upstairs again to talk about what we had done. Sadly, no one really wanted to say anything, so it kind of sounded like we didn’t really do anything. A lot of people seemed to get the feeling that the Waag people didn’t like us very much, and that they were expecting us to jumping out with ideas and overall exploding art like a mimbulus mimbletonia, and that we somehow disappointed them. But I didn’t get that feeling at all. They were very nice to us and seemed to be genuinely interested in what we were doing. Even if our explanations sucked.

We left shortly afterwards, and since the Waag happens to be almost right next to the Red LIght district, that’s where we ended up almost immediately. Fortunately, it was the middle of the day, and it was Rachel, Jenny, Stacy, me, Julian, and August in a group. So we had two guys to keep people from hitting on us.

We had many good conversations on the way back, my favorite being a conversation between me and Stacy about Julian. To explain this, I have to tell another story.

When we were leaving from Newark airport to go to London, Julian and I had our tickets mixed up by the ticket lady because his name is Julian Laurent, and my name is Julia Lauren. This is where you go “whoooooaaaa!!!!!” I know Julian did. It sparked a whole conversation about whether our parents planned it as some kind of joke.

Anyway, I decided that because of this Julian should be my brother (especially since we look so much alike!), but Stacy thought that we should get married so we could be Julian and Julia Lauren Laurent. So, we eventually dubbed him as my “Brusband,” a mixture of brother and husband.

August and Julian walked all the way back to Apple holding hands (Bromance), and I’m pretty sure nothing too interesting happened after that because I don’t remember it.
The end.

Dutch Photo Media Booster

2006-10-24T02:44:00.000-07:00

Monday was filled with things to do. We started off the morning by getting yelled at for taking notes by a dutch woman who was giving a lecture on the history of Dutch art.

John had told us right before the lecture that there was an exhibit by Tjebbe van Tijen, and he had convinced the gallery owners to keep it open for one more day so we could see it. We were supposed to be there at 12 or 12:30 if we wanted to meet the artist, so we were planning on leaving at around 12.

Unfortunately, the lecture ran over and we didn’t leave until 12:30. Everyone speed walked after John to the gallery, and when we got there we found out the artist had already left. The gallery owner said it was fine to look at the art anyway, so we checked it out for a while.

Tjebbe van Tijen creates narrative photo collages based on subjects like communication, language, and technology over the ages. Each photo collage is color printed onto a long piece of paper and then presented, in this case, by being hung from the cieling and winding around the room. Many of these photo collages are up to 40 feet long. Underneath the sections of many of the collages is some kind of text which describes what that section represents. Some of these descriptions were in the form of poetry, some were well written prose, and some were simply describing.

After about ten or fifteen minutes, the artist showed up again to see if we had arrived.

He talked to us a little bit about his art and what he was trying to do with it, then answered Terin’s questions for as long as he could stand. It was interesting, but we were running late and had to leave to get to the Netherlands Media Institute, aka Montevideo, the biggest distributor of video art in Europe.

We arrived at about 1:30 or 2pm (Julian stopped at Dam Square and picked up some cotton candy on the way), drank all of their coffee, and watched a presentation by the art historian there. She showed us a bunch of videos that they have in their collection, including (these were my favorites) Papillon d’Amour by Nicolas Provost, The Diamond Lane by Barbara Bloom, and Building by Anouk de Clercq.

Watching these videos got me thinking. I’ve noticed on this trip so far that I’m starting to like things that I would have hated before. I’m not necessarily saying that I’m a fan of modern art/filmmaking/anything, but I wonder if maybe all of the new exposure to all art, good or bad, has made me more tolerant. I probably would have hated Papillon d’Amour a year ago, but when I saw it on Monday, I couldn’t get over how beautiful it was. So, Monday’s lesson: See as much art as you can, because it makes everything else so much better.

After the presentation, the Director of Netherlands Media Art Institute gave his own presentation about what they do there (they generally work to spread video art to the public and make it more accessible), and then gave us a tour of the building. The stairs were really awesome and I couldn’t resist taking a picture of them. If you'd like to find out more about the Institute, I recommend looking at their website. It's pretty interesting.

Afterwards we were free for the afternoon. Julian told us that he was going to go ride the Booster ride at Dam Square and tried to convince people to do it with him. Most people were too scared to go on it, and I wanted to go, but it was one euro more than I had. Julian was desperate for people to go with him though, and said he would pay for me if I actually wanted to go.

I was in.

Stacy, Julian, Paul, and I were going to be going on the Booster, a 40 or 50 foot high ride that spins like a windmill and goes about 60mph. Jenny and Caitlin came to document the event and hold our bags, respectively.
The ride was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. The first time I saw it, my reaction was “Hey, that looks like it’d be fun!” But when we were walking towards it and it struck me that I was actually going to be riding it, it almost seemed to loom over me as dark clouds covered the sun and the screams of terror from Dam Square grew nearer. How could I have thought that would be fun? Holy crap.

Standing in line was pretty nerve racking as well. The ride seemed so much bigger and faster up close, and I knew that now that Julian had bought my ticket, I was bound to do it. I also realized that not only does the ride hurl you through the air upside down for two and a half minutes, it actually stops part way through and goes in the other direction. But I had to go. There was no turning back.

(I apologize for the bad quality of this video. I'm working on getting blip.tv to work for me so I can display things in Quicktime)

Nothing much happened after that, in fact, I think I went to sleep early that night.

That is it for today. Here is the latest map of who's been to my blog:

Excitement.

Doritos. Yiiiiiiiiha!

2006-10-21T15:47:00.000-07:00

Alright, the internet at this hotel is really unstable, so I'm going to try to make a short post and hope that the internet doesn't cut out before I finish. Today, I woke up and decided I was going to explore the city. So here's a list of what happened:
-Got lost almost immediately. Figured that it didn't really matter since this city is pretty small. I'd have to find my way back eventually...
-Saw a swan in a canal. Wtf.
-Passed about 20 "coffee shops," all plastered with Bob Marley photos. Four words: Lion with a joint.
-Bought a really expensive "Tosti," aka toasted sandwich. Not worth 4.50
-Wandered around some more.
-Got lost, had no idea where I was
-Found my way back to Rijksmuseum. Got in for free with my Museumkaart. Saw some Rembrants. They looked like...paintings.
-Walked back home
-Cool spider.

I spent way too much money since I got here, so I had a nutritious dinner of Doritos, Nutella, and wheat bread. Mmm.

Next time, I'll do my post before hand and just copy paste it.

Kraut Rock

2006-10-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

I have yet to do my last post about how awesome Amsterdam is, so I guess I'll do that right now.

Absolutely nothing has gone wrong since we got here. We arrived sometime in the afternoon, so we weren't cranky and tired for the rest of the day. Our program guy, Mark, seems pretty cool, our hotel, while slightly ghetto ("is that blood on the curtain???"), is pretty nice and has excellent beds, and the city is awesome. Even the exchange rate isn't that bad. This place is already a million times cooler than London.

Today we got up to find a really really good, free breakfast on the second floor (they call it the first floor here). Then we took the tram to go to our IES orientation.

The tram was so much fun. There's a stop only about a block away from our hotel, and it's just as interesting as the subway except it's above ground. This morning, there seemed to be some kind of kindergartener field trip going on, so there were about 15 really small children, all with names like Rojtr and Ingmar (I'm not joking!), and they were very entertaining. At some point we passed some kind of mural with semi naked people on it, and all the little kids started yelling something that sounded very much like "naked butt!!" So it was a good morning.

When we got to IES, we took a tour of the building and then learned all about drugs and getting pick-pocketed. There was more than that, but those were just the highlights. Then we got more free food of really odd gourmet sandwiches (I can now recognize the word sandwich in Dutch, by the way. I have no idea how to say it though.). Mine was goat cheese and (raw???) ham. Yeah. It also had pine nuts. It was weird, but kind of good in it's own way. It was about 80% cheese though.

The best part of the orientation though, was when Mark was telling us about "Kraut Rock" concerts, and how they play on a stage that's below the audience so that "it's like you're looking into a hole to watch them." Everyone started cracking up at this because at our first meeting in New York, we all remember John saying something about how "going to Berlin is like lifting up a manhole cover and looking in, and inside there are a bunch of people dancing in black." So this basically proved he was right.

Afterwards, we had a free afternoon, and then we met at the Music Theater to see the ballet "Carmen." I liked the whole experience a lot, just because if I've ever been to a ballet, I wasn't old enough to appreciate it. The main feature was preceeded by two other short ballets that were more modern style. The first one was really interesting, partially because I wasn't expecting anything like it. The music wasn't actually music, it was more like noises arranged to be like music. And the dancing was like some mixture of modern dance and ballet, but it was still awesome.

Towards the end of the first dance, I started falling asleep. The ballet wasn't boring or anything, but I think I just stayed up too late and got up too early. I didn't see the second ballet almost at all because I fell asleep almost immediately, but I was wide awake for Carmen.

Oddly enough (coming from my family), I didn't really know the story of Carmen. But I could tell what was going on, just from watching the dancing. There's a hot girl, and some army guys, and they all are molesting the other women. Then one of the army guys "falls in love" with her. She gets captured by the army guys for some reason, then they dance around and he accidentally lets her go. Then the army captain gets mad at him and so the guy quits and runs away. Then there's this other hot guy who dances around (in a purple tank top) and Carmen is all like "ooooh, I want me a piece of that." So she "falls in love" with him too, but then the army guy convinces her that he's better, and they're going to get married, but her friends are like "no! stay with us!" then the army guy tries to beat one of them up. Carmen gets mad and runs off with the other hot purple shirt guy, then the army guy gets mad at her and stabs her with a knife that comes out of nowhere. Then he gets shot and dies. The end. It was really well done.

Tonight really has changed my whole perspective on ballet though. I think it might actually be one of the best things a person can do with themselves, mostly because you have to use your body to it's full potential to do it. And in that way, you're making use of yourself completely, and doing something beautiful for everyone.

Afterwards, we took the tram home. Overall, it was a good day, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow. I don't know what we're doing, but it's probably going to be fun.

By the way, our radio program for Resonance FM in London can be found here. Luckily, mine and Stacy's got in and stayed almost exactly like we left it. Hopefully, I'll make another version of our discussion, "The Director's Cut," as we call it, and I'll post it.

Otherwise, I've got a short project I'm thinking of doing of a day in the life of me...I don't know what it's purpose will be. It might just be an excuse for me to run around doing fun things in Dam Square. Who knows. It needs to be thought out more.

Internet explosion

2006-10-17T05:46:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone. Due to technical difficulties, the internet sucks. Because of this, I'm having trouble posting my last two updates, but hopefully everything will be working again soon.
Check back periodically. We're going to Amsterdam tomorrow!

London: The Bermuda Triangle of....London...

2006-10-15T12:15:00.000-07:00

It seems that it's going to be a regular thing for me to get majorly lost at least once in each city. Even when my directions are "straight, right, left, right."

I woke up yesterday intending to go to the Tate. Ever since we went there last week to meet with the Film Curator, the giant metal slides there are practically all I can think about. For some reason, going 30mph down a twisty slide is the only thing that will make my stay in London complete. Apparently I have some kind of death wish.

I noticed immediately that something was wrong when I had been walking for half an hour and still hadn't encountered Gower Street. It's almost like that street only exists when it's not being looked for. I decided that it didn't really matter what street I turned on, as long as it went in the right direction, so I just picked the next street that looked fairly large and turned right.

I hadn't been walking for very long when I saw couple of guys with big spikey mohawks walk past me. They turned onto a very small street that turned out to have a strange little park at the end of it. It looked interesting, so I figured, hey, it's only 3:30, I've got time. I walked into it and found that it was like the a lot like the Santa Fe plaza in that all the weird Nightmare Before Christmas clad 14 year olds hung out there. I took pictures for my micro culture cube, and then walked back the way I had come.

I turned right off of this little street and kept going. Walking, walking, walking, everything's looking normal, and then BAM. The most beautiful park I've ever seen in my life is suddenly right in front of me. There were huge Roman looking buildings, two giant fountains, the typical British "guy on a horse on a 70ft pedestal," and a bunch of really cool metal lions everywhere. It was awesome, and I stayed there for a pretty long time just taking pictures.

I started to continue my journey to discover the Tate, when I saw that Big Ben was just a few blocks down the street. Figuring that I had to walk that direction anyway, I went towards it.

While I was walking down the street, there was some kind of protest on the other side. All I could tell from what I could make out of the signs was that it had something to do with the Democratic Republic of Congo, and deporting. I watched for a while, and there was definitely a second where it looked like it was going to break out in a riot. The people were yelling and dancing to this drum music, then they started shaking the fence to the beat, then they started pushing the fences over. Luckily, the leaders of the protest started running around and telling everyone to calm down, so everything was fine.

I moved on to the end of the block, where I was almost right in front of Big Ben. I hadn't realized that it was covered in gold. I took some pictures and was about to turn around to go back to where I SHOULD have gone, when I saw a really cool looking rose window. There seemed to be some kind of cool catherdal across the street, so I went to go check it out.

It turned out to be Westminster Abbey. And it was awesome. It was closed by then, so I couldn't go inside, but the outside was cool enough. It's one of those huge gothic cathedrals with big windows, archways, and really intricate designs all over it. So I guess "WEST MINSTER ABBEY RULZZZZZ!!!!" is good way to put it.

I finally left, decided that the Tate must be closed at that point, and started walking around doing other things. I saw a really cool phone booth that had a bunch of little pieces of paper stuck to the inside that formed a note: "I wish you all well, but I can no longer thrive in England. I think it is hell. Goodbye Hell." I also collected a whole bunch of the phone booth porn advertisements for my project which I probably won't be doing anymore (at least not for credit).

It was getting late, so I decided to go home. I had only walked down one road, so it seemed simple enough. I started walking, and found that the road forked at least 5 times, and I hadn't noticed it before because there was only one way to go while I was walking there. But now there were multiple directions. I stood there contemplating for a long time, then finally decided that I should take the fork that looked more directly ahead of me. I don't really know if or where I messed up, because everything after that was just dark lostness. I had no idea where I was for at least an hour, and wandering around at night by yourself in an unfamiliar part of town in a different country is a little unsettling.

Somehow, I had ended up way north of were I was supposed to be, but I didn't see any point in going back since I didn't know how to get home from there either. I looked at my compass, made sure I was going West-ish, and kept walking. It seemed to be working for a while, but then suddenly the streets started getting creepier. They were more deserted as it got later, and it was also starting to look less touristy and more "I live by the highway." I was freaking out because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to find my way back, but then I was freaking out because I didn't want to look vulnerable and lost, and I totally did. So I was trying to look like I knew where I was going, even though I totally didn't, and that just led to me getting more lost.

I finally saw a street name that looked familiar, and just took it hoping that I remembered it because it was near ISH or something. It was called Farringdon, and it was a little bit ghetto, but not too bad. There were also a lot of bus stops on it, so I at least felt better knowing that if I really couldn't figure out how to get home, I could just take a bus.

I started coming across maps while I was walking, and saw that Kings Cross was at the end of Farringdon apparently. So I decided to just go for it. I walked and walked, the only thing driving me the idea that I might find something I recognized. There were many points where I wondered if I had read the map wrong and if I was actually headed in some random direction, but I figured if there was a chance I would end up in the right place, that was enough.

Finally, after walking around for about two and a half hours, I saw Kings Cross. Yay!! I was starving at that point, and there was a noodle shop right in front of me with £3.30 noodles, so I went in. It was good, too. Then I walked home, hung out with some drunk people, and went to sleep. The end.

A fun filled night of Haribo Starmix and ghost stories

2006-10-13T19:33:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. Sorry I didn't post yesterday, but I seriously was busy from the moment I woke up until the moment I went to sleep. Here's how it went:

As I mentioned in my previous post, Stacy and I were assigned to make a review of the Frieze Art Fair for a big audio project our group is making for Resonance FM. It was technically due at 9pm that night, so that Terin could get started on putting it together. The pressure was on. I had stayed up late the night before, so I didn't wake up until about 12:15 the next day. Stacy and I were supposed to be at Frieze at 1:30 or 2:00 so I spent most of my time up until that point getting ready and picking up audio equipment.

Stacy and I were still trying to figure out how our mini disc player worked right up until we got in the door, but it didn't matter anyway since we ended up having to give it to Caitlin (she was doing a creative response and Stacy and I were doing a sort of talk show like thing, so we didn't really NEED it). We weren't really sure what we were going to review, so we just kind of wandered around looking for anything that interested both of us. Eventually we came across this piece that was just some text on a canvas, and thought that we should discuss this "text art" for our portion of the program.

After wandering around and looking at all kinds of art for another hour or so, we came back to ISH and got a microphone from Karina. Then it was time to record! We played around with the microphone for a good two hours "learning the equipment," which basically meant us messing around and recording weird noises into GarageBand. Our microphone sucked really bad and recorded pretty much everything except for our voices (you could hear us, but you could also hear someone coughing in the next room just as loud), so we had to kick Rachel and Jenny out of the room and then set up a "sound booth" by putting our comforters all around the bottom bunk of Stacy's bed.

It reminded me of those little forts you make when you're little. Like that time Talia, Lanning and I made a fort out of umbrellas to hide from Zara Kriegstein's self portrait during a lightning storm. Pretty soon, Stacy and I were all giggly like a couple of middle school kids, and we recorded this very long radio program that not only went into this text piece by Fiona Banner, but also into Contemporary Art in general. We discussed Andy Warhol and....some other guy....and we talked about art being for the people or for artists....it was all very deep. But this deep and philosophical discussion was also interrupted by the fact that Stacy and I are both.....not very good at expressing our thoughts, shall we say.

I think my best moment was when I said "because I don't usually understand...............words....." and Stacy's best was definitely right after we had messed up on something and had to stop recording and then start again. She began by saying "I agree with Julia that.............." and there was this really long pause and then she just made this weird squeaky sound. Oooh, it was beautiful.

Unfortunately, most of it isn't in the actual finished product. After cutting out most of the awkward pauses and bits of us just pausing and thinking for a whole 30 seconds, our discussion was about 15 minutes long. I set to work editing out any unnecessary parts.

2 hours later, it was down to 12 minutes. About another 2 hours later, 10 minutes. Then 9, 7, 6, and finally, after cutting out a lot of my favorite parts, I got it down to 5:15, which is just a little longer than it was supposed to be. By the time this happened though, it was about 5:30 or 6 in the morning.

I must have woken up at around 10:45 this morning to the sounds of most of my roommates running around. Apparently, the alarm (I guess we only have one) hadn't gone off, so all of us were late for our 11:00 class. Stacy hadn't even woken up to this, and I was fully concious but too tired to move, I guess. All I remember is hearing someone say "Should we get up Julia and Stacy?" and someone else saying "I don't think they're coming." and then I fell asleep again.

Stacy and I woke up at around 12:30 to the sound of Russian mades yelling to eachother while changing the trash in our room. We did our morning getting ready type stuff, I cleaned up our talk show a little bit more, and then we exported it and gave it to Terin.

At around 3pm we went to an Architecture school to learn about Unit 15, a program where Architecture students learn to make beautiful things using programs like Adobe After Effects. We watched a whole series of short films by students there, my favorite of which was by a student named Peter Kidger. I can't find it online anywhere, but if I do, I'll definitely put it up. It's beautiful.

Afterwards, we had a discussion with the professor of the class and the students. I think a lot of us felt a little intimidated by what they were doing, and weren't sure how to go about talking to them about it, or ask them question about it. Or at least I was. But we still had a good time. I think the best/worst part was when John said "but I do think a lot of times a person has to be mediocre to be successful. I mean, look at you!" and everyone just went really quiet. John, of course, was joking, but it's one of those things where it only works if everyone laughs, and no one laughed. So we were all a little embarassed and were laughing about that for quite a while afterwards.

Nothing really happened after that. We got dinner, watched various short movies and TV shows in our rooms, etc. Actually, Caitlin got tricked into going on a date with a french guy she met in the cyber cafe. Basically, she had gone into the cyber cafe with Joe, Kristen, Jeremy and Rachel, and they were all sitting around talking. There was some random guy staring at them, and after a while they decide to wave. Not long after that, he came over and sat with them and started talking to Caitlin. Figuring he must be trying to practice his english, she talked to him for an hour or so. I came in around the end of it and listened to them talk for a while about politics in France and the US, and Lance Armstrong taking steroids. Then the conversation suddenly turned.
Pierre (that's actually his name): Well, I go to smoke now. You smoke?
Caitlin: No. But it was nice to meet you. I'll see you around!
Pierre: Yes, nice to meet you too. Are you going to be here tomorrow night?
Caitlin: Yeah, I hang out around here sometimes. I'm sure I'll see you soon.
Pierre: Ah, what time you think you'll be here?
Caitlin: Oh, I don't know. In the evening sometime...
Pierre: Ah, maybe I see you at 9:30?
Caitlin: Uh, sure, I can be here then...
Pierre: Okay, I will meet you at 9:30. Maybe we go to pub or something. See you later!
Caitlin: *Look of confusion as she realizes what just happened*

Sadly, Caitlin isn't really too interested in this guy. We're hoping we can pass him off to Jenny, who speaks french and apparently is desperately looking for a man, because I don't know why anyone would want to hit on a guy they haven't even met yet.

The night ended pretty well though, when Tom, Andy, and Terin had a party in their room. It wasn't so much a party as it was people sitting around drinking beer and talking, but it was still pretty fun. We talked for a long time, then decided to turn off the lights and tell ghost stories. The stories progressively got worse and worse until they were just kind of depressing ("My great grandmother got hit by a semi truck while crossing the street to go to Dairy Queen!"). Then a few of us hung out with Terin and played around on his computer, and then everyone realized it was almost 3:00am and decided to leave.

And now it's even later and I'm still awake. At least tomorrow is a free day.

Into the cave...

2006-10-11T14:01:00.000-07:00

Today was going to be our big day. It was the first day of Frieze Fest, one of the (if not THE) biggest art fairs in the world. And it was about a block away from us. Poor Terin (at least it'll look good on his resume) is in charge of putting together this audio documentary we're making on the festival for Resonance FM. He did a very good job of organizing the whole thing, and I know he'll do a really good job of putting it together.

But since we are basically trying to do this for Terin now, everyone is a little stressed out over it. We had to schedule times to go to the festival because there isn't enough audio recording equiptment for all of us. Terin organized it so that the first group (profiles and narratives) had to be there at 10:30, and my group (Vox Pop, reviews, and creative responses...I'm doing a review with Stacy) had to be there at 1:30.

Unfortunately (or fortunately...depending on how you want to think of it), the group that got up this morning to go to the festival found that since we aren't licensed journalists, we can't get in to the Press/VIP day. So it has been postponed until tomorrow. Everyone went back to sleep and woke up at noonish, and in our room, we stayed in here all day fixing our blogs and working on projects. I didn't even leave my room until about 20 minutes ago when I went to get dinner. So I really don't have anything eventful to talk about.

And yet I will keep going. I feel kind of bad that I didn't go out today, but this place just isn't as fun to randomly go out in as New York. I suppose that the deal here is that I feel weird about just being a foreigner. In New York, most of the people weren't actually from there anyway, and there were so many people from out of the country that it seemed like they belonged there anyway. But here, I feel like if I open my mouth, it's given away that I'm American. And in a place where I've actually seen a sign that says "Nothing good ever came out of america," that's a little scary. I never know whether people hate me or not, or whether they're ripping me off, etc., because some people don't care, and some people do.

I also don't know whether I'll feel like this in every country, or if it's just here in the UK. It's like everyone here hates us because of what our country does, and I wish I could just wear a shirt or something that says "I don't approve of it either" and be done with it. But then people don't believe you, or think that you do in some other kind of way. I know Britain has kind of always hated us, but I don't know about the other countries. how do they feel in the Netherlands? I have a feeling that people really aren't going to like us in Germany...So yeah. I guess I'm just getting a little taste of what it's like to be stereotyped. Which I'm sure is good for my character or something.

Well, that's all I've got for today.

This blog is officially international!! I'll update this map everytime someone from a different place visits.

When There's No More Forever

2006-10-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

I haven't been in a blogging mood for a couple of days, but I'm back now. So you can all continue your lives. You haven't missed much though, so I'll just quickly update.

Sunday: We went to Camden Market (the awesome goth market) in.....Camden? Yeah. There were many awesome ultra goth clothes which I wanted to buy, but couldn't either because of a lack of money, or because I'd just look weird in them. I did almost buy some £34 pants, but then I realized that I would only have £8 if I did that. Eventually, I ended up getting this really cool and useful skirt that you wear over your pants. It has big pockets on it that you can actually fit something like a passport in, a secret pocket (good for hiding money) and a compass. And it looks cool. It was £20, but for something so good for travel, I think it was worth it. Otherwise, I bought a couple of shirts that were only £2 each, a new messanger bag for £4, and a few presents for people. So I really didn't spend too much money.

I also ended up MAKING some money!! While I was walking back from the subway stop, I sort of (not really) got lost and ended up on the street next to the one I was supposed to be on. While I was walking down, there was a guy with pamphlets on the corner watching me. So I kind of did the "don't make eye contact" thing, but he walked up to me anyway and said "Hello, would you like to take a survey for £20? It'll only take about 15 minute of your time." $20 is a lot of money to get for a survey in America, so I was like "hell yeah!" But not really.

I'd heard a bunch of stories about tourists getting tricked into going into allies and things and then they get mugged or whatever, so I was a little suspicious at first. I asked him where the place was, and it was in a building with a bunch of people looking like they were about to take a survey in front of it, so I said something like "Sure, as long as you aren't going to mug me or anything." and the guy assured me that he wouldn't. So I went.

It was some kind of survey about cell phones, and they needed more women for it in my age group. So I made back the £20 I spent on this skirt. Yay money.

Monday: We got up early and went to a circuit bending workshop. A nice guy named Ben showed us how to dismantle toys and then make odd noises with them, basically. It was fun though. He had a Furbie which he had taken apart and messed with, so it was even scarrier than they usually are since it now had a crack twitch and made really odd noises.

I took apart a Turtle toy that made music, and poked at it for a while. It was kind of cool, and I got it to make some interesting noises. The best part was when Alissa and I hooked her phone toy and my turtle toy together and made a bunch of really cool sounds that came out in "stereo" (both of our speakers were making noise.)

After that, we made a "ghetto amp" out of a speaker and a cardboard box, and hooked it up to our toys so that we could make even louder weird noises. Then Ben tried to show us how to make an oscillator, but none of us pulled it off (I think.).

Overall, we had a good time, and I spent the rest of the day working on my parking meter project, which still isn't done. At all.

(By the way, now you can see a nice documentary that Joe and Jeremy made here

Today: We got up early (so early...) and went to the Tate to speak with the film curator there, who happens to be a Carleton '90 graduate. We watched a really strange movie that I didn't understand at all, and then discussed it. Apparently, it was about gangs and surveillance. I had kind of thought it was about dancing.....I guess I'll never know.

Completely off subject, the Tate has the HUGE (and cool looking) slides that you can pay to go down (I heard it was only £1) and it looked like it would be fun. But I didn't get a chance to do it. I will though. I will.

After the Tate, we went to CCTV, a surveillance place. It was really odd. When we got inside, we were greeted by these two very stoic looking guys in black suits who looked exactly like secret service agents. They turned out to be pretty nice though. They showed us around and told us about what they do, which is basically....surveillance. Of everything. They had screens all over the place that were showing various parts of London, mostly streets. What they do is watch all of this live feed and record it, and make sure nothing weird is going on. If something looks suspicious, they can call the police and have them check it out. What they apparently do most of the time though, is find the recordings of crimes for court cases.

So question of the day, what is the big deal with surveillance? We went there and saw what they were doing, and really all it was, was that they were checking to make sure that nothing illegal was going on. Sure it's a little wierd that we can be watched all the time, but as long as you're not doing something bad, does it matter? I tried to talk to some people about it today, and pretty much their reasoning for it being bad is that "there's no privacy." and "it could be bad." But it's not like they plaster what you're doing all over the internet. It was seriously one lady watching stuff. As for "it could be bad," sure, if it fell into the wrong hands. But couldn't we just make sure that doesn't happen?? Though I suppose Bush got elected a second time and I never thought that would happen. Anyway, people's thoughts on surveillance would be cool.

I came back and worked on my project for a while (by the way, the trading card project is in motion! Sort of!) and then went off to find a dance studio to take some swing classes and hopefully go dancing. I took both the beginner and intermediate class, and they were both alright. It always bothers me though that old men seem to always blame the follow for messing up, because mess ups are almost always the leads fault. But whatever. I realized that I didn't have my ID with me, and the dance afterwards was in a bar, so I just decided to walk home.

It was about 9pm, and I realized that I was a lone girl walking home (about a mile away, not too bad) at night in a city that's not very safe after dark. I was kind of freaked out, and the fact that I saw a guy smoking crack (he had the spoon and everything!) five minutes into my walk. Things started to seem better since I turned onto Oxford, a fairly populated street, but that doesn't mean I didn't also see a guy doing cocaine (while walking!) eventually. So yeah. Moral of the story: London is sort of creepy at night.

Well, weird German guys are sexually harassing us through the door, so I should go.

Hot Black Cathy and the Mature Beauty

2006-10-07T16:38:00.000-07:00

Aaaah free days. How quickly they pass. Not like nothing happened today....

I set off at about 2pm, intending to find the British Museum and possibly check out the Tate. I looked at Google maps UK and found that all I had to do to get to the museum was go straight down the street and turn right on Gowan. Not too complicated. But first, I needed to change some money.

As I walked down the street looking for a place to exchange money, I came across all kinds of interesting stuff. One of my favorite things about London so far is the phone booths. They're full of porn. Well, it's not really porn. It seems to be advertising. Usually, it's a little card stuck to the wall, with some mostly naked girl on it doing something suggestive, and then a phone number with her name and maybe a brief description of what she does. Sometimes they fall off or get pulled off and left on the street, so I picked up a bunch while I was walking. I've got The Queen of Kink, Hot Black Cathy, Sexy Scandinavian, and a few other ones that I can't remember right now.

While I was walking, I realized that I had no idea what street I was on or where I should be going to. But it didn't really matter because at least I knew where I had come from. I eventually saw a Hilton hotel, and from my intern work that I did at CCA (distributing many postcards about events), I knew that concierges are very helpful people. So I went in and asked him where I could get some money, and it turned out there was actually a place right down the street. Yay money.

After that, I kind of lost track of where I was going. It sort of reminded me of John telling us about a style of GPS mapping where you go based on what feels comfortable or interesting, and then track that. Except I wasn't doing GPS mapping. I was just sort of wandering around.

About an hour later, I had completely given up on going to the British museum. I had walked through all sorts of streets, gone left, right, right, left, straight, and then right again, and while I still knew where I had come from, it wasn't worth it to go all the way back and restart my search. I decided to just wander and see what would happen.

There were definitely some interesting things that happened. I had stopped to take a picture of a restaurant or bar called Bung Hole (just because it's immature doesn't mean it's not funny!) and some random guy walked up to me and started asking me questions. Not a crazy guy, just a normal guy. Apparently, his friend was still good friends with an ex, and his new girlfriend didn't want him to talk to her anymore. But then it turned out that the friend had a whole box of stuff from this previous relationship, and the new girlfriend wanted him to burn the whole box. We finally came to the conclusion that she should just get over it. But then we started talking about swing dancing (he could tell I was American and was asking me if I was "on holiday" because he'd met some Americans at swing clubs who were), and then we started talking about how much the exchange rate here sucks for me. It was an interesting conversation, mostly because it was with a complete stranger.

I'm going to have to change the subject for a second to explain this one. So while we've been here, we've noticed these signs in the subway stations and around town that have pictures of famous actors (the only one I've actually seen is the one with William H Macy) and underneath it says "Who says nothing good ever came out of America?"

We were all very entertained with these signs, and took lots of pictures of them. But while I was walking away from this guy, I saw one that was just black and said "Nothing good ever came out of America." I kind of stared at it for a while, thinking maybe someone had painted over it, but I'm pretty sure they didn't. I think it just said that. So I stopped and took a picture.

I got tired after a while, and decided to sit down and write out some post cards, since I was right near a post office at that point. There was this totally crazy old lady who stared at me the entire time I did it. That's really all I have to say about that moment.

Eventually I made my way home (I picked up some really odd British gummies on the way), and retold my story of the day to Rachel, Joe, and Kristen who all thought that me collecting pictures of the naked ladies in phone booths was hilarious. Rachel came up with the idea that we should turn them into some kind of trading card, and hopefully that will happen. Then we ate dinner (meat!) and came back to work on stuff. The end.

Hello everyone! I can see you....

2006-10-06T14:01:00.000-07:00

Today, we actually had class for the first time in a while. Mostly, we talked about the exhibit we saw at the Institute of Contemporary Art yesterday. It was a minimalist peice that was pretty much as minimal as it could get. So we had a big discussion about whether it was art or not.

A lot of people seem to believe that if something has a meaning, it counts as art, and if it doesn't, it's not art. In fact, Gracie said that Monet's Lilly Pad piece in MoMA was nice but that she just thought it was boring because it had no meaning. So I know I've talked about this before, but I just think it's really weird that some people can't accept something as art because it's only beautiful. I don't see what's wrong with that. That mirror in ITP at Tisch was one of the best pieces of art I've ever seen, and that had no deep meaning in it. It was just cool. But I'm getting off subject already.

A lot of the group really liked the minimalist piece at the Institute and found deep meanings in it almost to a ridiculous point, and others thought the whole thing was just completely pretentious and stupid, and couldn't find any real meaning in it at all. I don't even know what I think. I have kind of opposing opinions sometimes, especially when it comes to art. In some ways, I feel like if the art doesn't make sense to people and it's all about it's meaning, then it isn't very good. If people don't understand your statement, then what's the point of even making it? But at the same time, there are many really interesting pieces of art that wouldn't make sense on their own and really need someone to explain them. Then, when they are well explained, they make perfect sense and say something really interesting.

I think that minimalist piece was one of those that needs to be explained by the artist or by someone who heard an explanation from the artist. Because it was kind of stupid by itself, and just because something can be interpreted as having a deep meaning doesn't mean it actually does have one.

After class, I came back here and worked on things up until now. So I didn't really go out and do anything today. But tomorrow's a free day, so I'll have more social things to talk about then.

What I did do today, though, was check out my new counter on this blog. It does all kinds of creepy tracking things that I didn't even know about. It started when I was reading a comment on my question about HD from yesterday. The person who wrote it didn't leave a name or anything, and I was wondering if it was just some random person. Alissa (who suggested I get this counter in the first place) suggested that I check it to find out if it was one of my friends or not.

I explored the options, and found that I can actually find out how many times someone has visited, how long they visited for, their IP address, their location, the network they're on, where they found the link from (if they found it on a website), and probably a bunch of other things I haven't discovered yet. It's a little creepy actually, but it gave me a cool idea for a project. I don't know how I'd do the project though, so I have to talk to John about it before I disclose any information. But if I can do it, I will definitely need all of you to help.

Hi Singapore!
Hi Kentucky!
Hi Iowa!
Hi person from NYU!
I don't know who you are, but you should leave a comment or something if you ever come back!

Alright, I'm tired. So this is it for the night. Here's a clip of my New York project (STILL not done)

Hello, Butt Rape.

2006-10-05T12:16:00.000-07:00

I hate listening to music, working on my blog, and eating all at the same time. It's like, you're sitting there typing, and your roommate is sitting there typing, and you eat some bread, take a bite of cheese, drink some water, whatever. Then all of a sudden, the music stops, and you hear yourself for a second. And you realize that you sound like a very loudly ruminating camel or something. How long have you been making that noise? Has your roommate noticed and not said anything? Do you always sound like this when you eat? I don't know. I just thought I'd mention that.

So apparently last night was more interesting than I could have experienced. I went to bed at around 2am. A couple of my roommates went to bed before me or around the same time as I did, but Caitlin stayed up for a while longer. So I guess this is what happened, based on the story:

Me: *lying there with my eyes open*
Caitlin: Julia? Are you asleep???
Me: *stares blankly into nothingness*
Stacy or Rachel: Oh yeah, Julia sleeps with her eyes open.
Caitlin: Really??? *goes over to me and dances around*
Me: O.O
Caitlin: *makes weird faces*
Me: O.O
Caitlin: *Slowly points finger towards my eye*
Me: *suddenly closes eyes*

What I thought was weird about this story is that someone in this room knew it was perfectly normal for me to sleep with my eyes open. I didn't think I did it that often, but I guess I do.

But that's not all. Later that night, everyone had gone to sleep and Caitlin had just gotten into bed. It was all dark when suddenly she heard someone, possibly Stacy, say "Good Morning." Then from somewhere on our (Mine and Rachel's) side of the room someone said "Hello, butt rape."

Rachel is apparently well known for talking in her sleep, but it sounded like something I'd say. So I guess we'll never know.

The morning was very entertaining since we woke up to all of these stories. Then we went downstairs for breakfast where a bunch of other people from our group were sitting and eating. We got into all kinds of discussions involving Ghandi eating veal, putting salt on slugs, and something else that was really disgusting, but that's all I remember about it. It was nice though, to know that if it turns out London does suck really bad (it's actually alright now), I could at least just hang out with the people on the group and still have a lot of fun. Just realizing that has really made me feel a lot more comfortable here, so I think everything is going to be fine.

Stacy, Rachel, Jenny, Caitlin, Karina, and I (there were possibly more people with us) all went out to a grocery store to get some food. I ended up buying a loaf of bread for 60p (bread!! I feel so much better now that my mom approves), and a bag of those little wax cheese things to eat with it. Total for lunch today: 1.85. Oh yeah, I'm good.

We ate in Karina's room, then made our way down (or up...I'm still so confused) to Illuminations, a sort of television/art production company. We met the principle there, John Wyver, who was a very nice british guy. He told us about what they were doing, and we had some conversations about the differences between public television in the UK and in the US. Apparently you have to have a license to have a TV or radio here. And it sounds like public television here is waaaay more interesting. Illuminations was working on a television show, possibly called ArtLand? Anyway, they travelled across the US in a giant art bus, looking at art all over the country. It sounds pretty interesting, and we watched a bit of it. It's also in HD. I don't know how I feel about that.

Question time. What is the point of HD? I can imagine it being useful for an art show or art documentary because the audience could see the art almost exactly like how it would look in real life. But what about regular documentaries? I watched that movie about the blind guy climbing Mt.Everest in HD at the Santa Fe Film Festival, and that was cool because we were looking at landscapes for a lot of it, and it was almost like looking through a window. But why use it for hollywood films and primetime television? Does that really need to look realistic? I guess I just don't understand why everyone wants to make things in HD. It bothers me a little that it's in such demand, because there's not really any point in making EVERYTHING in HD. It's getting to the point where people don't want to produce something that's NOT in HD, and that's just as stupid as people not wanting to accept my sisters art in their galleries because she uses gouche. I saw a piece of art in MoMA that was made with gouche!!

Anyway, back on track.

We were supposed to go to the Institute for Contemporary Art after the talk, but only John knew where it was. We all kind of tagged along and followed him to the tube (hehehe) station. At that point, things started getting bad. It was about 5:30, so everyone was getting off work. All the cars were packed with people, and there were 20 of us, not to mention the other 50 people on the platform. If I've ever felt crammed on a New York subway, it was NOTHING like this. We were literally all pressed against eachother and squished against the door. I would have been worried about pick pockets, but I don't think they could have moved enough to steal anything out of my backpack. We stayed like that for three stops, and were very relieved when the doors opened and we fell out.

We had to get onto another train, but it wasn't as bad until after the first stop. At some point I just started giggling uncontrollably at how smashed we were in the subway. It was kind of funny though.

We got off and followed John to ICA where he bought us drinks (coca-cola!) and we looked at the art exhibit. The first room we walked into was supposed to have a 4 minute film going on it. There was a projector and a screen all set up, but there wasn't really any kind of movie. It was just film running through the projector. It kind of looked neat, but I think everyone else hated it. Alissa described it as "extreme minimalism: Let's project nothing and then watch it." Which was totally true. We looked at the other pieces: a neon sign that said "And if I don't meet you no more in this world then I'll, I'll meet you in the next one. And don't be late, don't be late." and an otherwise empty room with a little computer moniter on the wall that was typing out a paragraph in morse code.....slowly.....

We went downstairs where John Schott said very loudly infront of the front desk people that the exhibit sucked, and then I bought some postcards for 70p each (ouch). I decided though, that today was the day I was going to figure out the coins here. I always get confused, and there are always a million people in the line (queue!!!) behind me, so I never have time to get it. But there wasn't really anyone buying anything so I pulled out my wallet and said to the guy "I'm going to figure out this money someday.." and started searching for 40 pence. I sat there and read each stupid coin while he looked at me, entertained. Finally, I came up with a 20p, a 10p, and two 5p, said thank you, and we left to go back to ISH (International Students House).

Nothing too evenful happened after that. Except for that I started working on my blog at a decent hour.
So I guess this means it's time for answers to the picture game!!
Picture 1: Silver
Picture 2: Glassgow (spelled wrong, I know)
Picture 3: Sheer
Picture 4: Boot
Picture 5: Furry (it was obvious, but that lobster was so cool!!!)

The winner of Game #1 was Matej! With 3 out of 5. You aren't going to let him beat you, are you Mara? Talia? Come on.
So no random words today, because I managed to find some pictures to put in. But you guys better play tomorrow. Or Matej will win and you'll all be losers. Except Matej. He'll be a winner.

Chips, crisps, and brown bread

2006-10-04T16:03:00.000-07:00

First off, I want to apologize for my ranty blog this morning. I had to get that out of my system though. I was in a terrible mood. Maybe I'll delete it.

Today went much better than yesterday did. I woke up at 9:30ish after a really weird night of sleep (I kept waking up feeling like I overslept from a nap or something), and ate a very european breakfast of....bread!!! A croissant and some wheat toast (the lady asked me if I wanted white or brown...hehe) with butter and jam. It was good.

Caitlin slept in until about 12:30, so I waited for her to get up and ready before I went to meet the IES people and presumably John at the subway (tube!) station. John wasn't there and the lady (Miia) pretty much told us stuff we could have figured out on our own about buying a subway (tube!!!!!!) pass. Basically, we should probably get a pass because it's only 22.30 pounds for the week, and therefore probably cheaper than paying for tickets individually. The whole meeting only took about 5 minutes, and then we were free for the rest of the day.

Stacy and Rachel went out with some other people to do stuff and wander the town, and Caitlin, Alissa, and I decided to stay in and unpack/mess around on the internet. We got some lunch (I bought a bunch of apples and some peanut butter...protein and fruit!!) Eventually, it was time to find food and go meet up to go to the Globe Theater.

We decided to walk since it wasn't REALLY far away (about an hours walk), and because we were hoping to get more acquainted with the city. Alissa made a sandwich and ate it while we walked, and I bought a snack (bread!) when we went into a store to buy a map. Then we were off.

One thing that I don't like about London is that I feel so much more uncomfortable here. I think a big part of that is due to the fact that I can never ever figure out what direction I'm going in. In New York it's really simple because if you're on a street, you can figure out which direction to go based on the numbers of the Avenues. Also, New York is in a handy grid pattern most of the time, so if you start going north, you pretty much continue going north if you go one or two blocks over and walk up.

I don't even know how london works. It seems to be some kind of a circle or something. Everything spawns out from the center somewhere, and goes off it odd directions. There aren't really any landmarks that you can see, because most of the buildings are the same size, and all the streets have different names that just kind of sound like they were named after some english guy. But back to the story.

With much help from our maps, we found out how to get to the Globe. We crossed the Thames on the Millenium bridge, which was kind of cool since it was sunset, and ate at a random greek restaurant near the theater. We started off by ordering water. Apparently it's a very american thing to do here to order tap water. But we managed to get the waitress to do it. She tried to put it in a carafe to make it look nicer, but since the carafe's here aren't really used for anything except wine, the water just kind of tasted like wine and was totally nasty. So we didn't drink water. Caitliin and Alissa got some kind of pita/wrap/gyro thing, and I ended up getting "chips" (bread-like!) because they were only 2.75. Then we sat outside for a while eating food and making fun of how English people run.

Afterwards, we went into the globe and watched Comedy of Errors. Our seats weren't great, but they weren't terrible either. Overall, the play was pretty good. There was a part where the characters were talking about a woman and describing her by pretending she was a world map, and then asking questions about particular countries. At some point, someone in the audience screamed out "SPAIN!" and the actor sat there trying to think of something funny to say about Spain for a while. That was pretty funny, and it was also pretty funny when they couldn't come up with anything good to say.

Afterwards we took the subway (TUBE!!!!) home. It's so different than in New York. In New York, the trains are kind of small and dingy, and all the seats are plastic and everything is all mismatched. But here, the trains are kind of big and roomy, everything is really clean, and the seats are fabric (clean fabric!) and cushiony. Also, here, you need to have your ticket to get on *and* off the platform. Caitlin lost her ticket somewhere, and we were waiting for her while she looked for it for about five minutes before a station worker just let her go. I yelled "thank you" to her from across the room, and she acknowledged it, so that's a start. Maybe London people aren't THAT bad? We'll see.

So before I go, I'm going to try this again. The other day, my post was eaten by the computer. In that post I was going to start a new game that was going to be really fun (I think). The thing is, I don't always have enough pictures for my blog posts (they're kind of long...as you can probably tell). So I was thinking that when this happens, I'll pick 5 or so random words, go onto google image search or something and type them in, and then pick the weirdest picture I find from that word. I'll list the words in the post, and you guys can try to guess what picture belongs to what word. Yay interactive blog! If you want, you can post your guesses in a comment, and I'll post the answers in the following day's post. I can also keep track of who gets the most correct, and whoever wins might get something extra when I come back.
So here are the words for today:
1. Boot
2. Silver
3. Glassgow
4. Furry
5. Sheer

For the sake of updating...

2006-10-04T03:11:00.000-07:00

Okay, I haven't updated this in a couple of days for two reasons:
1. I typed up a whole post on Sunday night, and it was awesome, and while I was adding some final pictures to it the internet exploded and ate it. I was too angry to try again.
2. I spent all of Monday night on an airplane/in London.
3. Wait, there isn't supposed to be a third reason...

Well anyway, I'm here in London, and so I was bound to miss a day of updating the blog, just because of the time difference. It's about 11:15 am here (According to my computer it's 5:15 in the Midwest) so I was asleep last night when I usually post. Oh well.

So we got on the plane at Newark at around 6:00pm on Monday. For some reason, it took a really really long time for the plane to take off (a little more than an hour, I think) but that apparently was scheduled because we were still on time. I ended up sitting between Stacy and Jenny on one of those huge planes that I thought they'd invented for movies. It had three rows of seats with two aisles instead of two rows of seats with one aisle. WOW!!! Okay, it wasn't actually that exciting. It did have screens in the seats though so that we could watch movies. I think we watched X-Men 3.

After that, I get confused about what time it was. At some point (it might have been 9ish New York time???) we got "dinner." It was so incredibly nasty. Apparently it was Chicken Parmesan, although I couldn't really identify any sort of chicken or parmesan in it. It was just some kind of weird crusty brownish thing. And yet I ate it. I must have been hungry.

I tried to sleep after that, but I just couldn't. I wasn't really tired enough. Eventually we got breakfast, which was considerably better than dinner: a Croissant with jam and butter and some fruit. The fruit was kind of gross because it wasn't ripe enough. I knew I had to eat something with some kind of vitamin in it, and I tried really hard, but I couldn't. I'm sorry! We landed in London at about 6:45 am (London time), went through Customs ("do you plan on working while you're here?" "..............no?" "Good."), and got on a bus to go to the International Students House.

I could already tell I was in a bad mood when we got here (I was really really tired, and in need of some actual food), and it was not made better when we went out to get food. The exchange rate is horrible right now (I changed $40 and got 17 pounds back) and although everything here is priced like it would be in America, it's twice as much to us. Apparently the school didn't consider this when they gave us $25 for food everyday, so we only have 13 pounds per day for food, which is like having $13 per day for food in America. So, I ended up eating a nutritious lunch of...bread! Yes. I bought a muffin and a roll from a grocery store for about 65 pence. I was kind of hoping for real food, but there wasn't anything there really.

So I was kind of mad that I couldn't eat real food. We walked back to our new dorm place to eat, and found that there wasn't really anywhere good to eat our food. It was too cold outside to eat, we weren't allowed to sit on the stairs inside, upstairs had a nice place to sit down but food wasn't allowed in there and they kicked us out, the main floor had places where food was allowed but there was nowhere to sit, downstairs had a restaurant area (which was empty at the time because they were closed) and we tried to eat down there, but a guy came out and told us we couldn't eat outside food there and that we had to leave. Finally, we found the pub here, which was closed also, but we went in and ate anyway.

No one kicked us out (for once), but I was really upset about how rude everyone here has been so far. The only nice people we encountered yesterday were the IES people in charge of our group and (later) the lady who gave us a tour. Although now I think I understand why people always say Americans act like they should be "treated better than everyone else." It's because in America, we're actually NICE to people, regardless of whether we know them or not. No one here ever says "I'm sorry, you can't eat that here. I'll have to ask you to leave." It's more like "You can't eat that in here. Take it somewhere else." I think it's funny (and a little depressing) that just about 36 hours ago I was talking to a lady on the corner in New York who was telling me about how polite british people are. LIES!!!!

Yeah. It was about 1pm here, I had been up all night, the conversion rate was horrible, I had no real food, and I was realizing that I was going to be stuck in a place where everyone hated me for no reason for the next two weeks. That was pretty much it for me, and I just started crying in the middle of this pub while a bunch of people from my group were passed out on the couches next to me.

I finally calmed down a little bit, and found that they had all gotten up and left without telling me or saying anything........rage. But at this point, I was actually so angry that I couldn't be angry anymore. I guess it's kind of like when you break your let and you're in so much pain that you can't feel it. But that's not nearly the end of the story. We still had 8 more hours of stuff to do! Yay.........

We met up on the main floor here and had our rooms assigned. It turns out there were only 4 rooms for all of us. Two for the guys, and two for the girls. I was assigned a room with Stacy, Alissa, Rachel, and Caitlin. The rooms are pretty small, but our room isn't too bad otherwise. The other girls have their own bathroom, but their room also smells really weird and looks a lot more like a prison cell.

Afterwards, we walked down to IES London headquarters where we had a kind of orientation. I don't know, I was kind of out of it at that point. I don't even know how I got there. Afterwards, we got on a bus to take a tour of London. I don't know how most of this went, because I actually passed out (I didn't realize I was going to sleep, it just kind of happened) for most of the tour. Caitlin did throw something at me to wake me up for a minute while we passed Diagon Ally. I appreciated that, but then I went back to sleep.

We stopped at Buckingham Palace at some point. I was kind of just half asleep and walking, so I didn't really know what was going on and I didn't really care.

I slept some more on the bus, and eventually we got to the British Museum where we spent half an hour looking at stuff. I have some pictures of that because I was finally semi-concious, but I don't have enough time/battery power to post them right now. There were some cool things there (we saw the Rosetta Stone, those wall things from the Parthenon, and the Egypt exhibit), and I can write about them more when I go back there and look at them for more than two minutes.

We had some other kind of meeting afterwards where I was still falling asleep, and then IES took us all out to dinner at a nice Italian place. I had pasta (more bread!) for dinner. For some reason, IES thought it would be a good idea to order a ton of wine for everyone at the table. Everyone, except for me and a few other people, drank a ton of wine and got really drunk. Also, I think the people working in the restaurant were either trying to make fun of us, or be nice to us by playing a bunch of semi-popular american music like Hole and Greenday.

Afterwards, we came back here, checked to see if the internet in our rooms was working (wireless in the rooms! yay!) and then I went to sleep.

Nothing has happened yet today, but we're about to go out and get our passes for the subway. I'll try to update again tonight, and add some pictures to this, or I'll just update tomorrow morning.
Sorry, this was kind of a rant.

Oh No!!

2006-09-30T21:28:00.000-07:00

Well, we only did one thing today really, and that was go to NextFest. John asked us to pick an exhibit there and write a couple of paragraphs about it, but I can't quite figure out how. I want to talk about all the interesting things that were there, and I have about 30 pictures of everything. So this should be interesting.

After a night of hardcore partying, almost everyone managed to get up and meet at 9:45 to go to NextFest, which took place in the Javitz convention center. John picked up our tickets, handed them out, and we were off to explore.

And now I'm going to write the longest sentence in the universe.

There was a cool harp made out of lasers that people could play, some kind of light up blocks, a cool fog screen thing, a "Media Mirror" that projected what was in front of it in the form of little tiny live television feeds, a cool space-time spandex pokey screen, a projected dandelion that blows away when an infrared hairdryer is pointed at it, a bunch of interactive projected games/images that move when a person tries to push them, Coca-cola Blak (eeew), some kind of underwater diving suit that was basically made so people can take oil out of the ocean floor, robot dancing follows, some kind of blinking robot xylophone, mechanical hands, therapy baby seals that squeek when you poke them, another mirror type thing with little discs, electronic prostitute shoes, a robot Albert Einstein, electronic people that read your blog outloud for you, a program that searches the internet for images based on the captioning on whatever channel you're watching, a weird circle bike/car thing, and a really cool musical light thing that the creator admitted was just an excuse to use Toshiba stuff since they were his sponsors. *Catches breath* Actually, that wasn't as long as I thought it'd be. Picture time!

Even though I just discovered my new love of Mirror like electronic things, now that I know how they work, they don't seem as interesting. Especially since now I've seen four of them in the last two days. No, by far my favorite thing in all of NextFest was Laptop_Orchestra by a nice guy named Paolo, who seemed to be one of the only people in all of NextFest who actually wanted to tell me about what he was doing. Even though the poster claimed it to be "an interactive synthetic instrument," Paolo told me that it wasn't so much an instrument as a media project where a person could create images and tones in any way they wanted.

Here's how it works (sort of): There are 15 laptops set into a table, each programmed with different algorithms that cause them to make different patterns on the screen when activated. They are activated with touch sensitive "stem tops" (long antenna like things) that are arranged in the same order as the laptop screens. Each time the stem tops are touched, the screen makes an image that has a corresponding tone, creating a very nice image and sound piece which has absolutely no purpose other than to be beautiful. And that, I've recently discovered, is my favorite kind of thing. Paolo actually explained to me that he was being sponsored by Toshiba and basically made Laptop_Orchestra because he needed to use their product. It just proves my point that sometimes people make the best things when they aren't trying to.

Donations for Tisch??

2006-09-29T22:23:00.000-07:00

Today is an optimum day for blogging. It's Friday night and everyone is at a toga party. The internet is so fast right now.

Well, today was yet another exciting day. We started off the day by going down to the ARChive, an archive for pretty much all the popular music ever created since the late 1940's. The guy there had some amazing stories about people that he's met with all over the world, and told us about some of his adventures in Columbia where it seems he was almost murdered a few times a day.

Afterwards, we had a couple of hours before we had to be at Tisch for some kind of unknown reason, so we wandered around looking at random shops and sort of looking for food. We found a few really cool things, including a restaurant called Felix, an advertisement that made no sense, and a mailbox with "My dick is big" painted on the side.

Eventually, Jenny saw a place that she had heard had really good hot chocolate, so we stopped in there. It was $4 for a 3 ounce cup of hot chocolate, but that was because it was so good. They basically melt a chunk of really good chocolate in a cup for you, and then you drink it. I almost considered buying something there, but it was $7 for two 1in big pieces of chocolate, so it didn't happen.

At around 5pm, we got to Tisch. Caitlin and I had our first New York hot dog stand hot dogs while we waited for everyone to get there. They were pretty good. I kind of want one now.

When everyone got there, we went up to the 4th floor. I don't remember what that floor is, but it has to do with technical stuff. The point is, it was awesome. In the lobby, there was this really cool piece called The Wooden Mirror by Daniel Rozin. Basically, it was a bunch of little wooden squares connected to motors with a camera in the middle of the whole thing. The camera would record the image of whatever was in front of it, then the motors would move the wooden squares accordingly depending on the shade of gray that was in the image. I played with it for a good 20 minutes.

There was another really cool piece there by a guy named Tristan. I remember seeing something at SITE Santa Fe that it reminded me of a little bit. He had programmed some motors with some kind of algorithm, then hooked up some fishing wire tied to a pen, so that the motors would move according to the algorithm and draw some kind of random picture. I also stared at that for quite a while.

The guys at Tisch told us about the school, what they did there, etc., and now I really want to go there. It's only a two year program! It can't cost that much, can it??? So I'm thinking that everyone who's reading this should get $1 from everyone they know, and donate it to the "send Julia to Tisch" fund. Or the "send Julia to the Manhattan School of Music" fund. That should start me off with about $1000, and then if I sell crack on the street and pimp out some ho's, I might be able to pull it off.

After Tisch, I stayed in the Village for a while and had a really good dinner of delicious sushi!! Mmmmm. Then I came back here, went to Tom's birthday party and had a really good time watching everyone get really drunk, and then I came back here to do my blog post. The end.

I'm sorry, but eyeliner just doesn't look good on everyone.

2006-09-28T20:09:00.000-07:00

Finally, after almost a week, I've recovered from the Come Out and Play Festival. I celebrated by walking way too much today, which I celebrated by eating ice cream! Yay!!!

We had class at 11 today, where John told us about how we had to finish up our Cube project (the project that he commissioned an artist to do with us), which I'm pretty sure none of us are even close to finishing, and mentioned that he had planned a tour at the Whitney for us at 1:30 and if we could go we should.

The show we were taking a tour of was about Picasso and American art (yay more picasso!!), and since I decided I loved him so much when we went to MoMA yesterday, I had to go. We got there a bit late, but met up with the tour guide and had a great tour...apparently.

When our tour first started, there were a couple of old people who decided that they could follow us around and take the tour with us. I was kind of angry about this (I can't really explain why, but wouldn't you be?), but there wasn't really anything I could do about it since they weren't being annoying or anything. A little while later, we acquired a couple of little old ladies. I suppose that people saw there were a few older people in our group and thought that it must be some kind of free tour. So suddenly there were about twenty people following us around, and I was just going crazy trying to decide if I should stop the tour and make them all leave. But where would they go? 5 feet away? It seemed stupid. And they weren't really doing anything, they were just following us. So I couldn't really justify it, until the end of the tour where they started standing in front of us and asking questions. But since we were on the last artist of the tour, it seemed stupid to throw them out then, too.

After the tour, we were free to wander around the museum. I looked around a little bit, but my legs hurt from standing for so long, so I decided to leave after about half an hour.

When I left the museum, I realized I wasn't sure how to go about getting back. We had taken the subway, and then the bus, and then walked a bit, but I didn't know exactly where we had come from or what bus to take to get back to the subway stop. So I just started walking west (not randomly, alright?) towards Central Park. I could have just walked up and around it, but I figured since I hadn't really been there yet, I might as well just walk across.

It was actually really cool. There was grass and trees everywhere, and some statue of a king in Poland, a pond, a totally random castle which was right next to some kind of concert stage, and other interesting things. But I think the most interesting thing about it was knowing that none of it at all used to be there. I watched a huge long special on PBS or something random like that about how they made Central Park, and how pretty much everything in there, even the huge rocks, had to be brought over from other places. I sat down on a big boulder, ate an ice cream bar, and appreciated things for a minute, then continued on with my journey home.

I kept walking west until I was on some Central Park street, then I was on some other street that I didn't recognize. Eventually, I found Amsterdam Ave, which I know is near where I wanted to be. I walked down there for a while, then went over another block to Broadway because I realized that all the subway stations were over there. At that point, I was on 86th street and felt fine, so I just skipped the subway stop there and kept going. Nothing too eventful happened on this walk. There was a point where I thought I'd be generous and give my daily pocket change to some random homeless guy on the street (I have change in my pocket that I reserve especially for this) but what I thought was probably a bit more than a dollar in change turned out to be about 35 cents in nickels, so then I just felt stupid. Especially since the guy had a huge basket to put stuff in, and there was only about 30 cents in there anyway.

Oh, I also did find this sign though:

Eventually I was on 116th street and figured I might as well walk the remaining four blocks up to International House. I actually met up with Stacy and Jenny on the way, who had remained at the Whitney when I left and were just getting back also. Except they didn't walk as much as I did. At all. I realized that I had walked all the way from around 75th street to 123rd or so. According to Google Maps, that's 3.8 miles. Wow.

When I got up to my room, I intended to work on my project and other things I need to finish, but as usual when I decide to do that, I just passed out on my bed for three hours. Eventually I woke up and had a nice nutritious dinner of a bowl of Raisin Bran. Don't worry momma, it's full of fiber!

Luckily, Terin happened to have some left over salmon from a fancy dinner he went to with John tonight, and gave it to me. Yay salmon!

That's all for today. Bye.

No good titles today. Sorry.

2006-09-27T22:27:00.001-07:00

First order of business: I was half asleep for the first hour of the day, so I was stupid and completely forgot to put my memory card back into my camera. Because of this, all the pictures I took are on my camera, and I can't get them off without a cord, which I left at home because I was only planning on using memory cards. So not only did I hardly take any pictures, but you won't be seeing them anyway. Because of this, I declare this random picture day. Only a few of them will make sense with what I'm talking about, so if you don't get it, you probably aren't supposed to.

I had to be ready to leave this morning at 9:15. I know to some of you that's not that early, but considering almost everyone on this trip stays up until 2am to 4am working on projects/blogs, it's pretty early. We had to get up that early though, because we were going to Astoria to see the American Museum of the Moving Image. Even though I was mostly asleep for the first hour of the tour, it was still pretty fun.

I didn't exactly learn anything new (there wasn't enough time to get into too much detail about anything), but I did get to try all kinds of fun things. While we were learning about the very first moving images, there was a machine that the museum had made where you could record about 5 seconds of video and have it made into a little flip book, so I did that. Then there was an animation station where I made an astronaut get eaten by fish and turn into a woman who fell over and turned into a frog holding a knife and fork (they had some really random things to use, alright?). We also redubbed a part of the movie Babe, and watched a scene from Titanic with the soundtrack divided up so we could hear all the different parts of it. We also saw the first video games and played them a little, which was kind of cool. Finally, we all went downstairs and played more video games in the arcade lounge until the other half of us came back from the tour.

Afterwards, about half of us got lunch together at a restaurant across the street, then made our way over to the Museum of Modern Art. To be honest, I found it a bit disappointing. There were some really amazing pieces in there, and almost all of my favorite ones happened to be Picasso, but I only found about 5% of what I saw interesting. I think I might just not like modern art too much. Unless my mom explains it to me. That usually helps a little.

Something else that I thought was interesting there was actually seeing really famous pieces of art. We always see these famous paintings and sculptures in photos and on television, but we just recognize the image and don't really see them as a painting or a sculpture. When it's actually there, you can see the texture really well, and see how the artist made it. For example, I spent a good ten minutes staring at Starry Night by Van Gogh, and thought it was really interesting to see how it was painted. Even in photos you can tell that that painting is full of texture, but when you really look at it, it's not a slow and subtle layering of paint like a lot of textury paintings are. You can tell he just put a glob of paint on his brush and went for it.

It was also kind of funny to see how people looked at the art. There were constantly about five or ten people crowded around Starry Night, but almost no one even glanced at the OTHER Van Gogh painting right next to it. I also thought it was really interesting that people paid all this money to get into the museum and see famous art, and then they didn't even spend more than a few seconds looking at things like the HUGE Monet painting (which I actually thought was kind of hideous in real life) and all the cubist paintings. I also had a bit of fun with that, because I soon realized that if I stood there and stared at a really boring looking piece (or at least something that no one else was looking at) with a look of deep concentration on my face, people would start to stop and look at it with me like there was suddenly something more interesting about it. So I got my free $12 out of the experience at least.

I wish this post ended there, and I almost wish the night ended there because I was and still am pretty tired. But it didn't.

Right after visiting MoMA, we were due at a sort of send off Cocktail party that was going to be full of Carleton Alumni, down on 22nd street in a really big apartment (By the way, if David Diamond ever sees my blog, thank you for the party. It was very generous of you and we all had a good time). John had basically been telling us for days that it was our job to mingle as much as possible at that party, and I feel like I did a fairly good job of it. I talked to a guy who was a concert pianist and 1964 graduate, and a nice lady who was a recently retired graphic designer. I also ended up talking to another lady who turned out to be the concert pianist guy's wife. They were very different people, but they seemed to like eachother, and it was interesting to see how they interacted. She high fived him at the end of the conversation, which was funny because I thought he seemed so dignified.

This was my dinner tonight. Mmmmm....I had some grapes too.

Okay, that's it. I'm going to sleep.

Only Empty Walnuts Make Noise

2006-09-26T21:08:00.000-07:00

Today we did two things - gallery hopped in Chelsea, and met up with a sound art writer and critic.

The End.

Haha, you wish my blog posts were that short. As usual, I will explain in excessive detail what went on today.

Everyone got up at the crack of dawn (11:30am) to go down to Chelsea. The plan was that we would divide up into smaller groups when we got there, wander around for a little bit checking out a bunch of art galleries, and then go meet a sound art guy infront of MoMA at about 5pm. As usual, I was with Stacy, Rachel and Jenny.

We got to Chelsea and wandered around for a long time looking at random art galleries. Most of them weren't very interesting actually, but I attempted to find something good about the art that we looked at. I was sort of reminded of John telling us once that most people spend about three seconds looking at each art piece before they move on to the next, and I often counted while my group checked things out and it was actually about three seconds per piece. I tried to counter this by talking about the art with the gallery people and getting some press releases, but it was kind of pointless. By the time I was half way through the press release, everyone else in my group was mostly done with the show and I had to leave.

The gallery hopping wasn't a total loss though, since we found a really amazing artist named Michael Cheval. His work reminds me a little bit of Renaissance paintings, but it's also got some very surrealist qualities. I'm pretty sure he's considered a surrealist painter actually. So I'm excited about finding out for him and I really wish I could get his art album *coughhintcough*.

Another show we saw was your typical political art exhibit. Basically, it was about how everyone hates Bush, Bush is destroying the country, etc etc. I was a little upset though when we met up later that that was the one my group remembered best. We were talking, and I was saying that I thought Cheval was amazing, and then all of a sudden it was "Yeah, that political one was really good too!" and the truth is, it wasn't. There were about six or seven really interesting pieces in that show, and the rest of them were kind of shallowly deep "Yeah, Bush is stupid." type pieces.

So I've got a new question to think about now: Does art have to be about some kind of issue in order to be good? I really don't think so. Terin was talking once about how he appreciates nice looking images and all, but he doesn't think something is really good unless it has some kind of deeper (he seemed to mean political by this) meaning. But if someone takes a picture of a tank with a baby on it and claims it's a statement about the war in Iraq, does that make it better than a well thought out, hand crafted surrealist painting? I suppose I'm just a little disappointed that someone can disregard something as cool as Cheval for something that has a much more obvious (and therefore shallow, I think) "deep" meaning. But you can be the judge of that.

We finally met up with the sound art guy (I can't remember his name, no one else seems to be able to either, and it's not on the Wiki. Sorry.) and he turned out to be probably the nicest person we've met on our trip so far. He really seemed interested in explaining sound art in general to us, not just his own work, and was just really excited about us learning about it. He took us to two sound art pieces: The Times Square piece by Max Newhouse, and another piece up in The Dreamhouse (sort of in Soho) by Laurent Marion (I think). About half of us (myself included) thought both of the pieces were amazing, and the other half hated both of them and never wanted to hear sound art again.

One thing that we discussed was that Max Newhouse didn't agree with the term sound art at all. He felt that the sound itself wasn't an art, and that the placement/atmosphere of the sound is what mattered. I agree that his piece, which is actually right in the middle of Times Square, would have been stupid in a gallery or something, because it was just a synthasizer playing the same tone forever. But in Times Square, it was really relaxing to have a single note playing. It kind of reminded me of Tibetan throat singing or something.

The other piece was in a gallery, and was also just a continuous noise that didn't change, but it was awesome by itself. In that case, placement didn't even matter because there was actually a point where I was lying there with my eyes closed and completely forgot about where I was. So I'm not sure what to think about that, but I loved both of them.

We talked a bit to the guy afterwards and discussed sound art some more. It actually took quite a few times of asking him before he would go into his own work, and it was kind of nice talking to someone who didn't think what they were doing was the best thing in the world. Then I went home and spent way too long working on this. That's all for tonight.

I am PONG!!!!

2006-09-25T18:51:00.000-07:00

Alright everyone, I've talked to a bunch of people about my blog, and the main suggestions seem to be better paragraph distinction (I have no idea how to explain that one) and most of all MORE PICTURES. I do try to put up as many pictures as I take in a day, but that's not enough. It's never enough!!! Is it!? So I'm going to do something that I already sort of do, but I'm just going to do it more now; I'm going to start inserting any kind of image I can think of when I need one, even if it makes absolutely no sense with what I'm talking about.

So here's what I'm thinking: Just to keep this a little more interesting, if anyone wants to they can put in suggestions for pictures I should put in my blog. I'll type the word/phrase into google or something, and pick the weirdest thing I find. I'll even go into InDesign and put a little border around it with word on it so you know what's going on. Sound good? Comment leaving starts.............now!

I didn't really feel like posting yesterday because....well to be honest I was just feeling kind of lazy. But, I will post about yesterday today because nothing really happened today anyway. Woo!

Yesterday was the last day of the Come Out and Play Festival. Since playing Journey to the End of the Night and Cruel 2 B Kind within a few hours of eachother had pretty much destroyed any desire I had to move, the only game I played was The Go Game. It was................................uh....................well, it was pretty crappy actually. But that wasn't entirely the games fault.

The Go Game was recently bought out by something called Think Geek, which decided to technologically enhance it by using mildly complicated cell phones instead of paper notes in order to get instructions. These instructions are generally things like "take a picture of someone in your group doing something they've never done before" or "go to (insert location) and find (insert random thing)." The game sounded pretty fun on the website ("Go Game, by way of the Come Out and Play Festival. Like a scavenger hunt, on completely insane technological steroids."), but I ended up getting grouped with some horrible people.

I arrived at Washington Square Park half an hour early, even though I thought I was late at the time. When I found my team, there was only one person from it there: an older lady (maybe in her mid-forties or fifties) named Reenie. She seemed pretty nice, and we talked for a while. But forty five minutes later, we were still the only people from the team who were there out of the eight that were supposed to show. A lady from the game came up to us and said that she was just going to stick us in another group- Team NYU (yeah, that doesn't sound like a group of....well anyway). That team consisted of three jocked out (but reasonably nice) muscular blond guys with puca shell necklaces and sandals, and the parents of one of they guys-a lady who looked waaay too unhappy with her life considering the clothes she was wearing (Trophy Wife), and an older guy who was so obviously bent on thinking he was better than everyone else that I almost left the second I heard him talk (Old Guy).

Eventually one of our original teammates showed up. He was a tall blondish guy who kind of looked like he belonged in a really fancy coffee house or something, but he was actually really nice and one of the only people I didn't want to kill by the end of the game.

To avoid ranting too much, I'm just going to make a little list here of all the things that were wrong. Otherwise this post will be as long as my last one.
(* means I'm actually going to write in more detail about it)

1. Our phone was screwed up and we spent about 10 minutes of the game trying to figure it out while the Old Guy told us stories about how "back in [his] day...."
2. Old Guy so obsessed with finishing the game before everyone else that we ended up half assing the whole first part of it.
3. Same problem as #2, but it led to lots of speed walking which was really painful for me at the time.
4. I morally objected to our first photo*
5. All of our missions were kind of lame and one involved doing a word problem....about pizza. PIZZA. WORD PROBLEM.
6. Trophy Wife complained about everything the entire time*
7. Old guy bashed Carleton*
8.Two of the younger guys had to leave, taking with them any hope of doing something interesting for our photos and videos.
9. Old Guy sexually harassed bat girl*
10. Did I mention speed walking?

So one of our first missions was to take a picture of one of our teammates doing something they'd never done before. Terrified that they were going to say something like "Let's have Julia get naked and dance in the fountain!!!" I decided to hang back from the group a little bit while they figured that one out. Almost immediately, a possibly homeless transvestite walked by us. Apparently no one in my group had any kind of sensitivity towards other people's feelings because they thought that it would be hilarious to do a "take a picture of me with the freak" photo. I ended up standing about 20 feet away from them staring in disgust while they did this and considered running over to the guy to apologize afterwards, but the were already speedwalking on to the next mission. Now that I think back on it, I should have either left right then, or stopped them before they even did it in the first place. At least I won't have to see any of them again.

Later on in the game, I was walking a little behind the group (I couldn't walk quite fast enough to keep up) with the trophy wife lady who also couldn't keep up. She walked up next to me and said something like "This game isn't very fun..." and I started agreeing with her and going on about how I thought it was so horrible that they took that picture, and that the old guy was so bent on winning that it was sort of draining the fun out of it, and she starts with "And its all in parks and I hate parks. They smell like dogs. I hate that! And all this walking! I really just need a soda." I suppressed my look of disbelief/horror/disgust, and walked on, hoping the game would get better somehow.

Not too long after that, trophy wife walked up to her husband (we were in a park again) and started complaining about how it smelled. He looked around, said something like "yeah, it does smell weird." then turned to me and said "remind you of Carleton?? Hahahaha." I just gave him a really dirty look and said "No."

Towards the end of the game we finally got hold of Bat Girl. Bat Girl was pretty much there to give bonus points. If your team could find her, she'd give you a special photo assignment that you could get points for. Our assignment was to take a scandalous picture with her for a fictional tabloid magazine. Old Guy jumped in immediately and said something like "I should be looking up her skirt!" and started getting down on the sidewalk to do it. Bat Girl was like "Whoooaaaa..." pretty much everyone did a kind of nervous giggle and I looked just about as horrified as the guys wife did. Old Guy tried to convince us that we should do his "looking up Bat Girls skirt" photo a little bit more, but we eventually got him to settle for making it look like he was paying her for sex.

There were a few good things that happened at The Go Game though. For one, we made a nice video of my team reenacting pong which you can find if you register on www.thegogame.com and look for the video by Love Parade. Also, there was free food afterwards (good free food) so once again I didn't have to pay for food for an entire day.

And just to quickly update on today, all I did was work on my project. Exciting. I'll try to get some more pictures up on here soon, it's just really late right now and I actually have to get up tomorrow.

Are you ready for....YESTERDAY'S POST!!!!

2006-09-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

Yeah. If you don't have a lot of time, you might want to wait to read this. Or at least save your spot when you leave because 1) A ton of interesting and exciting things happened today, and 2) I took A LOT of pictures.

Chapter I: Class, Eyebeam, Postmasters
So it all begins at 9:30 this morning. Just like any other day, we got up to go to class. John had reserved a bigger room for us so we didn't have to have class in Andy's room again, but all the walls had wood paneling so we weren't sure what to do with our projector. After trying a few different spots on the wall, we realized it wasn't going to work at all there and used the ceiling instead. Everyone laid down on the floor and watched as John explained to us how to use Pages, a graphic design program. We all had a good laugh because John was doing somethign where the background faded from white to gray, and he put a white square for a picture over it, but the projector was really bright so everything just looked white. So John was going on and on about how good this white square on a white background looked.

Class ended and there was some time for lunch before we headed to Eyebeam to meet with the graffiti guys (sorry, I can't remember their actual names anymore). Rachel, Stacy, Karina, Jenny, August and I all met up to go to Chelsea and find some food. We walked around for a long time, and Stacy, Karina, and Jenny didn't seem to be deciding on anything, so Rachel August and I took off to find our own food. We got some really expensive pizza, speed walked over to Eyebeam, and waited around for the guys to show up. When they arrived, they showed us around their lab where all kinds of awesome things were going on. The main guy showed us what he was working on, which had to do with retelling his life using robots that he made of himself and his wife. Then he introduced us to a lady who makes things like Gameboys and mp3 players from scratch out of strange things. There was also a guy who was making a program to help people conserve energy, another guy from the The Yes Men who was really nice and told us about some of the stuff he's done, and then we watched a few short movies about things that the graffiti guys have done. Afterwards we went upstairs to talk to them a little more, then we left to talk with a director of Eyebeam and take a tour. She showed us around and we finished in this room where they haad been having classes earlier. For some reason, there were these really creepy crawfish in jars on the table, and all the childrens drawings around the room made the whole thing kind of spooky. We lingered around for a little bit when the tour was done so we could ask questions and talk, and I saw this really scary childs drawing on the wall about disecting crawfish.
I don't know why, but lately the idea of any kind of animal not dying a natural or acciental death has been bothering me. I guess I feel like people are animals too, and if it's not right to kill a person, how is okay to kill a different animal? But this post is already going to be huge, so I won't get into that any further.

After Eyebeam, we had a short break before going to a different gallery, Postmasters. We decided to get something to drink somewhere, and stopped in this really small Mexican coffess shop (not really sure how to explain that place). While I was paying for my drink, the guys behind the counter asked me about our group. I explained that we are on a trip for school, they asked where I was from, and I told them New Mexico. Naturally, this lead to "Do you speak spanish?" So I got to display my excellent spanish skillz of "No esta aqui!" and "No habla espanol!" They were very impressed. It just goes to show that even Mexicans have no idea what goes on in New Mexico.

Soon after, we began walking to Postmasters. On the way there, there was a huge group of policemen on horses. They seemed to be doing some kind of ceremony, and I heard someone say somthing about it being a 9/11 ceremony. Then a guy in a plaid suit/outfit walked by, so I had to take a picture of that too.

We got to Postmasters alright and talked to the curator/owner about what she does there. Her main point was that she wants New Media to be just as accepted as art like painting and photography, so she shows all kinds of art in her gallery to demonstrate that New Media isn't any different. There was also an interesting show that had to do with birdhouses and in a different room there was something with remote controlled ducks. I don't know.

Chapter II: The Diner and Eyebeam Party
It was about 5pm, and the Eyebeam/Come Out and Play festival party was at 8, so none of us really felt like going home and coming back. Rachel, Stacy, Karina, Jenny, Alissa (or Kirsten. I've forgotten her name), Terin and I all went to this place called The Diner which was really nothing like a diner. It was happy hour, so Stacy, Karina and Terin ordered some drinks. And kept ordering drinks. We had 3 hours to kill, so we stayed there for a really long time ordering drinks, eating food, talking about philosophy, and telling stories about John Schott.
See, earlier in the day, John had an idea for a project that he wanted to call a "Gangbang." Apparently he does stuff like that a lot. Terin ended up telling us a story about John telling some people not to "blow their loads" why they did their portfolios. Oh, and Terin also tied a cherry stem into a knot with his tongue and told us a story about what happened after his dog ate a tub of Vaseline. I won't relay that one.

We left the diner at about 7:45, got to Eyebeam, and hung out for a while at the party watching people play space invaders on the side of a building and using musical instruments to play Mario Cart.

Chapter III: Journey to the End of the Night

I was very lucky to get Susan to take over my volunteering shift for tonight (last night), because otherwise this never would have happened to me.
Journey to the End of the Night is like a mixture of Amazing Race and tag. There were checkpoints that we needed to get to that were ALL OVER manhattan, but there were people who were running around trying to tag you. If you got tagged, then you also became a "chaser." So now back to the story.

For some reason, Stacy was not really very excited about playing this game, and refused to even register until Jenny arrived. Rachel and I (me especially) were really excited about playing, and signed in early. Jenny didn't show up for a while, but she found us and signed in. Stacy never found us/Jenny though, aso she wasn't playing.

The first checkpoint was on 32nd street (we were on 21st). I had been a little worried that Rachel would be too relaxed and not really even attempt to hurry, but Jenny was more hardcore about it so it all worked out. We set off together in search of a subway that would take us to 32nd street, all the while looking around for chasers and probably looking really paranoid.

We made it to the first checkpoint fairly quickly and without encountering any chasers. We figured out where we were going (checkpoint 2 was in the village), and started walking.

As we walked down the street, I was keeping an eye out for chasers. Walking walking walking, and then all of a sudden I saw one calmly walking in our direction but not looking at us. I walked way over to the side of the sidewalk and sort of stood/hid behind a mailbox. The guy was walking very casually almost past Rachel and Jenny, and then all of a sudden screamed something about how they should run and started chasing us. We took off down the street as fast as we could and ran until we couldn't see him anymore. Then we realized that Rachel was gon and started freaking out thinking that she'd been tagged. It turned out she was just hiding in a shop though, and we got back together and headed to the subway to get to the checkpoint.

Chapter IV: Checkpoint #2

Part of the rules of the game was that bus stops and subway cars and platforms were safe spots where we couldn't get tagged, but actual subway stations weren't.

On the way to checkpoint 2, we were standing on the opposite platform from some people who we realized were chasers. We kind of stared at eachother for a minute, then decided that it was a safe spot and waved at them. Instead of waving back, they started whispering to eachother and then went down the stairs to come over to our side of the platform.

Jenny, Rachel and I all freaked out and had to hide behind an elevator while the guys hunted around for us. A train came and left and it seemed that they had gotten on it, so we were safe.

As we waited on teh train, we had paranoid conversations about whether or not the guys were waiting for us at our stop or if they had gotten off somewhere else. We decided to get off a stop early incase they were waiting and walked for a few blocks probably looking very suspicious since we were constantly checking for chasers.

We were walking down the street trying to find where we were going, and all of a sudden this guy on a corner turns around, walks towards us and says "Hey, I've been waiting for you!" It was one of the chasers from the subway!!! Aaaaahhh!!!!! Jenny screamed "RUN!!!" and she and Rachel took off across the street. The chaser was in my way of going across safely, so I turned around and ran as fast as I could between the parking meters and parked cars to the end of the block. I didn't see him anywhere, so I crossed the street and hid in some kind of hotel until I could call rachel and find out where they were. We met up again in a minute and continued on.

Chapter V: Battery Park, Guys from London, and a Phone Explosion

We got on the train to Battery Park (checkpoint 3) with a few other people on our side (we'll call them Oranges, because chasers had yellow ribbons and ours were orange). On the platform, we had seen some chasers who get onto our train, but we weren't sure if they had seen us or not. All the other Oranges and ourselves were a little paranoid, so one of them went to look out the window to see if the chasers were looking like they'd seen us. They weren't, and they got off at the next stop so we were alright. We all introduced ourselves to eachother, and Rachel, Jenny and I met some really nice guys from London named Alex and Alfie who also had no idea where they were going. So we teamed up with them and a few other peopl to figure out where this labrynth in Battery Park was. On the way, there were a couple of Oranges walking ahead of us who I guess thought we might be a mob of chasers. We decided to have a little fun with them and started walking after them fairly quickly, then when Alfie yelled out that we were on their side they slowed down and agreed to join our group.

Battery Park was a little different than the other check in points we had because the safe zone was really small-only about a 15 ft radius around the actual checkpoint. Since we had no idea where the check in point was anyway, this was a little scary.

We cautiously approached the park, looking around fr chasers, and as we climbed over some benches to get in a chaser on a bike came out of nowhere and started coming after us. We all sprinted into battery pakr, not knowing where we were going. Rachel twisted her ankle, Jenny stayed behind to help her, and the british guys were way ahead of us. Suddenly, I was alone in the dark. In Battery Park. In the middle of the night. But Alfie and Alex popped out from somewhere and waved for me to come over, then we waited for Jenny and Rachel to get over. Our group slowly reformed and we went looking for the labrynth again.

We finally found it, right next to where we had come in almost, got out paper signed, and then went off looking for the next checkpoint which had moved to Broadway. Apparently the police didn't like the one on Wallstreet.

We began following some girls who seemed to know where they were going, and ended up on this tiny street between Broadway and something else. We were walking up the hill as quietly as we could, when we all glimpsed a chaser running towards us from about 20 feet away. The two girls leading ran off down Broadway, but most of us turned around and headed down the hill. I was running as hard as I could and checked behind me to see where everyone was. I saw that someone had fallen down and was on the ground, so I started slowing down to turn around and help, but the chaser yelled something like "She's down, but I'm still after you!" and Alex, Alfie and I had to keep going. The chaser was gaining on me really quickly, and I knew that unless I thought of something really creative I was going to get caught. I could hear him about 5 ft behind me, and I tried to turn the corner quickly to get out of the way or something. I don't know what I was trying to do. But as I did it, my cell phone flew out of my backpack pocket and exploded into about 10 different parts all over the sidewalk. I heard the chaser say something like "Go get your cell phone!" as he passed me to get Alex and Alfie. So I was safe. I picked up the pieces of my cell phone and walked up the hill to see if anyone had been tagged and find out who fell. It turned out it was Rachel, but she wasn't hurt too badly. She had a light scrape on her elbow and a slightly ripped shirt.

The checkpoint wasn't too far from where we were. There were apparently some chasers and everyone scattered for a moment, but I just hid behind a pillar and never saw them run by so I continued walking. Then I saw one on a bike lingering around in an ally, so I had to sprint by to the checkpoint. We got our paper signed and were just starting to talk about what had happened to Alfie and Alex when Alex showed up...by himself. He told us they got Alfie and we were going to rest and then keep going when Alfie showed up! He was, in fact, a chaser at that point, but he said he was on a "mission of peace" and told us that since the game was almost over (it was about 11:30 and the game ended at midnight) the chasers were easing off so people could finish. Then he said that if anyone was tired of playing, they could just go straight to the after party and hang out. We decided that we had been through enough for the night, and went off with him and Alex to find the after party bar.

Chapter VI: I think this is the last chapter

It took a while to get there, but we had a good time talking on the way and confusing people by wearing chaser and orange ribbons. Unfortunately they were carding at the door so we couldn't even go in and hang out. We talked outside for a little bit, but eventually the desire for beer was too much for Alex and Alfie and they gave us their numbers and told us to "text" them when we get to London. If the night had ended there, it would have been one of the funnest (is that a word) nights of my life. Right up there with Eric's all night chocolate syrup dance party. But we had some trouble with the trains (they were slow and a bunch of them weren't running) and by the time we got off at our stop Jenny and Rachel were really really grumpy. I tried telling them happy stories and making jokes, but I only got one sort of chuckle out of Rachel when I said that talking to Terin was like watching a Shakespeare movie because you have no idea what they're saying for the first 15 minutes or so, and then it suddenly all makes perfect sense (Terin has an extensive vocabulary which he uses. A lot). I still had kind of a good time on the way back though. We met some middle aged ladies in the subway who were terrified of rats, and there were rats all over the place, and we had to get off at the other 125th street stop which was more in Harlem, so we got to walk through Harlem at 2am. It actually wasn't that scary. I don't know what the big deal is. I guess it's just because black people live there?? Oooooh black people scary! Seriously people, get over it.

When I got up to my room, I really just wanted to lay down and pass out because we had been running around all night. But Stacy and Terin were sitting on my bed talking about stuff, and since I was not actually that sleepy (just physically exhausted), I hung around and talked to them for about an hour. They got up and went to bed, and I spent two hours writing down stuff from the day in my Harry Potter journal so I wouldn't forget it. And that is the end.

One last thing: Jenny has some video of Alex and Alfie which I hope to put up soonish. I'll see what I can do, but keep them in mind because otherwise you'll be like "Who are these weird british guys?"

I just want a Java Chip Frappuccino

2006-09-23T20:58:00.000-07:00

Despite last night's excitement, today was not a total let down. At all. I didn't get to sleep last night until 5am, but I still managed to wake up in time to go play the game Cruel 2 B Kind down on Broadway between Columbus circle and Times Square. The game was made up of 70 or so teams of two people. When a person signs up (which we did by texting the people in charge, since it's a text message based game) they recieve a text message on their phone with their "weapon," "weakness," and code word. The weapon is a kind of compliment or nice thing to say to someone, and that is how you "kill" people in the game. By saying something nice. BUT, a groups weapon can only kill someone if it's the other groups weakness. It sounds confusing, it'll make more sense in a second.
Stacy, Rachel, Susan and I got there a little late, and only Rachel and I officially signed up before the game started. We walked about a block before we recieved our first text telling us that our weapon was "Nice shoes!" our weakness was "Have a spectacular day!" and our code word was "cold." We had totally missed the meeting with the rules and such, so we were trying to figure out what all this meant when we were approached by a couple of tourists who asked us if we could point them in the direction of Rockafeller Center. None of us quite knew where it was, but we told them to go towards 42nd street and it was near there somewhere. They thanked us and ended with "Have a spectacular day!" We all stood there kind of confused for a second, then Rachel said, "wait, are you playing the game!??" It turned out they were, and we had just died. It was a little sad since we had only been playing for about one minute, but in this game when you "die" you actually just give the people who killed you your code word and then join them and become a bigger team. after about half an hour, we had become a huge group of about 12 people. Our new weapon (there were updates every once in a while) was offering someone help, and our weakness was being serenaded.

We walked around for a long time trying to find people who looked like they were playing (some people had really well thought out disguises: there were people dressed as business men, tourists, mothers with their children, and girls window shopping. So we'd be walking and someone would just pop out and scream a compliment at us, we'd say "you're too kind." and then try ours. Sadly, we never found the people who were supposed to serenade us. We did (as a group) scream "Can we help you!?!?!" at about 100 people who weren't playing the game though. I must say though, my favorite part of the game was about half way into it. About 5 large groups of players (including us) were all standing on different sides of the street at an intersection, just by coincidence. We recognized eachother, and there was about five minutes of "CAN I HELP YOU!?!?!?!" "NICE SHOES!!!!!!!" "YOU LOOK JUST LIKE (insert celebrity)" "HAVE A SPECTACULAR DAY!!!!!" and "WAY TO GO!!!" from all sides. The tourists just stared around with this expression of "What the hell is going on???"

There was a "picnic" (we were a little disappointed) of cupcakes, cookies and juice boxes, and then they gave out awards to the people who won the game. The leaders of our group won "Super Assassin," which was exciting, and then it was off for lunch followed by a game I signed up for called "Tag Shufflesition." There was a little bit of time before the game started, since we needed a certain number of people for it to work alright, so I talked to the creator of the game a little bit. It turned out he's a student at Indiana University and he made the game with one of his professors. We talked for about 10 minutes about games, and Journey to the End of the Night, and then the game began.
Tag Shufflesition is a lot like Simon Says. Each player receives an ipod Shuffle with a special soundtrack programmed to it. On the soundtrack, someone gives you directions on things to do in the game area. I think "You are a Jogging Bumblebee. Weave in and out around the other players and make buzzing sounds." was my favorite, but there were also things like "lean to the left for the duration of this song" followed by a 5 or 10 second song and "Orbit in a clockwise direction around another player." The object of the game is to find the person who has an extra direction on their shuffle (and will therefore do something no one else does every once in a while), and then start imitating them. When everyone is imitating the correct person, the game is over.

The first round of that game didn't go too well. No one ever found out who the person was because we didn't quite understand enough to develop a kind of strategy. But in the second version (there were multiple soundtracks and multiple difficulties), a few of us knew to be on the lookout for anyone doing something we hadn't been asked to do yet. It seemed like forever of watching everyone walk around like a zombie, pretend to catch stars, stand like a steel pole, etc., before a girl started walking around pretending to shake hands with people and greet them. All at once everyone turned around and started following her and imitating her. When the guy running the game held up the green piece of paper (signifying that it was over and we won) everyone yelled "Yay!!!!!" So it was pretty fun.

I left Shufflesition before I really wanted to because my legs hurt (still from last night) and I needed to be volunteering at Eyebeam for the festival in a bit. While I was on the train, the driver? conductor? came on the speaker to tell us that the 1 train had gone express (which there isn't supposed to be on the weekend anyway...) and that we were stopping at 34th Penn Station and 14th Street. Neither of those were quite where I wanted to be, so I decided I should just get off at Penn and see what happens.

Penn Station is HUGE. It took me 15 minutes of wandering around to find the exit. Never go there unless you have to. That is all.

I ended up walking way more than I wanted to in order to get to Eyebeam, but I made it there half an hour early anyway for my intense 2 hours of volunteering which involved watching people play Sonic Pong, setting up some chairs, getting a free t-shirt, and eating pizza. Yeah, I was really exhausted after that one. But I still had a really good time. I talked to some people about the games, helped a male volunteer figure out the toilet paper situation in the women's bathroom, and just enjoyed myself in general.

There was a talk at Eyebeam about gaming that started right after my shift, but I was just too tired to stay there any more. I took off about 10 minutes into it, came back to my room thinking I was going to work on my blog or something, and ended up just passing out on my bed from exhaustion. Then I woke up and did this.

Tomorrow is going to be pretty exhausting but fun too. I'm playing The Go Game, which is a sort of scavenger hunt type thing (I've found that the descriptions on the website really don't encompass what the games are at all so far, so we'll see what it actually is). I'm on my own, so I'm being placed on someone elses team. It should be fun. But I won't be able to walk until the middle of next week at this rate. I'm going to start working on my post from yesterday. Make a note of what time this was posted and what time that will be posted, and you'll be able to understand how long I spend on these. Look at the times on this one and the one before it. These take forever!!

Quick Note

2006-09-23T20:03:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. Sorry I didn't update my blog last night, since I know all of you linger on my every word. But it turns out that yesterday was actually SO much fun and so exciting, that I was too tired to write it all out here afterwards. I did begin transcribing it in my Harry Potter Journal (thank you mara and matej!), and so far it has taken up seven pages (gasp! Same number as the books!) front and back.

I'm pretty sure that something in that much detail would be counted as a kind of personal "life journal" type post, but for the sake of the people who actually read this regularly, (hi Momma!) I'm going to do it anyway. Sorry John.

So here's what's going to happen: This post is HUGE. and I mean gigantic. Because of this, I have separated it out into "chapters" so that you guys can leave off and come back later if you have to. However, I still have to write my post for today, which isn't nearly as interesting, but not worth completely ignoring either. I did do things relating to the festival today, some of them were pretty fun, and out of appreciation for John I feel obligated to update my blog if anything interesting happened to me. I think I'm going to do today's post first, that way it won't seem totally lame after yesterdays, and I'm more likely to forget parts of it since I haven't been transcribing it in a journal for two days. So here we go.

Today, I only ate one thing...

2006-09-21T20:13:00.000-07:00

...and it was chinese food. Today was yet another project day (I actually did work on my project), so I woke up at 10:30, took a shower, and decided it would be a nice day to take some more parking meter pictures, write my essay, and find something good to eat. So I packed up my backpack with my computer, my camera, batteries, etc. and headed towards the train station.

Then I decided I felt like walking a little more, so I started heading down Broadway looking for a place to eat/going to the 116 street station. I passed about three stores before I saw a big chinese food sign and decided I felt like chinese food. I was trying to not stand inside the store in case I didn't see anything I liked, but the lady kept waving at me to come in so I did. She said "You hungry?? We have lanch special! Foa Fiddy *point point*" I looked over at the lunch special menu she was pointing at and contemplated that for a while. "You get soup or soda too!" "hehe, alright..." Finally, I just decided to get some Pineapple Chicken because it sounded good and $4.50 for lunch is pretty cheap. So I got it. While I waited, I read all the signs written in bad english. There was one that said "Joining now!" and a standard Heimlich Maneuver sign that said "Victim of food-choking" on it. I was going to take pictures, but I didn't want to offend the lady because she was nice.

I eventually got my food and headed back towards the subway station, but then I decided that I should just eat here and work on my paper. Yeah, that happened. I sat here (actually, in the dining room place...) for hours alternating between changing the first three sentences of my paper and working on my parking meter project. But at least I got a little bit of both accomplished so far. I'm finishing the paper tonight, don't worry. It's just a rough draft anyway. I was down there for at least 4 or 5 hours, then I went back up to my room so I could work and be less distracted. Somehow, this is what happened instead:

Apparently, I just can't concentrate on anything. Ever. So, I got a little more of my project done (I'd post what I have so far, but the internet is going too slow and I know it won't work. Maybe later.) and a little more of my paper done, and had a lot of fun learning how to adjust things on my camera. I found out that I can make the exposure time anywhere from 1 to 5 seconds, and ended up taking pictures of my screensaver to test it out. They actually came out really cool.

And now I'm back down here, because it's time to work on my blog. That chinese food though, ended up lasting me all day. It was so much food. So I only spent $4.50 today. Wow...Sorry, nothing too educational happened today. But tomorrow I think we're going somewhere, I'm (very very hopefully) going to be playing my first game of Come Out and Play, Journey to the End of the Night, and I'll post again later.

This post is kind of boring.

2006-09-20T21:07:00.001-07:00

I have no idea how to describe today. It was very hectic and nothing happened all at the same time. This morning we left at 9:45 to meet with a guy from Anthology Film Archives down in Soho. Unfortunately, we took the 3 express train instead of the 2, and ended up not being able to stop on Houston street like we intended. John seemed kind of upset about this and we ended up walking (kind of quickly) all the way back up to Houston. Some people had gotten off the train on 14th street and got there before us, so at least we had someone to say that we were on our way. There were also a few people who weren't in our train car when John realized we had gone too far, and we lost them too. I guess they figured it out alright though, because they eventually showed up.

When we finally got to Anthology, we watched about six movies, all avant garde. They were a little bit weird, but in general interesting to look at, or listen to, or think about, depending on what it was. There were a couple by Stan Brakhage, who I hear is a very very very famous avant garde filmmaker. Personally, I'm not sure if I LIKE that style of filmmaking, but it is kind of interesting. These films in particular were especially interesting since they are apparently pretty difficult to find and aren't shown publicly very often. So thank you Anthology guys for at least showing me something I've never seen and probably will never get the chance to see again.

Afterwards, we got to wander around Soho a little bit and eat lunch before meeting the famous John Canemaker, an Academy Award winning animator who runs the animation department at Tisch. It was a little depressing going over there and seeing all the cool film stuff they have at NYU. I'm missing the chance to major in Cinema Media Studies by one year, and even then, I doubt the department will be anywhere near that developed. It kind of just got me thinking again about whether things would have turned out better for me if I had known I wanted to do film stuff before fall term Sophmore year. But I don't know how I could have known that before then, so I end up wanting to regret something but not being able to. So now I'm just kind of sad but in a confused sort of a way. Oh well.

I had written a bunch of stuff about how much I like New York here, but then the internet exploded and all that was left of my post (so glad there's a "recover post" option) was this last paragraph and everything before it. Luckily, that was pretty much all the important things I had to say anyway. Well, I'm going to go now and sleep. My article on Chris Barr is supposed to be very roughly drafted by tomorrow night so someone can look over it. So I will write more tomorrow. Hopefully it will be more interesting, and there might actually be some pictures.

On the Corner of Porn Street and Porn

2006-09-19T18:16:00.000-07:00

Do you often walk into the red light district and think to yourself, "I sure wish these porn shops were closer together!" Are you tired of not having all of your porn stores within 30 seconds or less of eachother? I know I am! That's why there's the corner of 4th street and 6th ave. I went down there yesterday to meet up with some people for dinner, and while I waited found that there were 6 "adult stores." Some were right next to eachother or across the street from eachother, and some were just around the corner. But they were there. And there was a baby in one. But that's it for that moment.

So Monday was a free day, but I used it to work on my project, and today was a project day, but I used it to accidentally pass out on my bed without getting much done. So I figure it works out alright. At risk of sounding like some kind of artsy "lets find a deep meaning in this thing that's actually just a line on a piece of paper" person, I'm going to tell you about my project. I think I've finally got it figured out enough to explain what it's about.

Basically, I'm taking pictures of parking meters all over the city. Or at least as all over as I'm willing to go. I take them in a circle around the parking meters so that I get all angles of it, and when I put them together it almost looks like a movie where you rotate around a parking meter. I'll see if I can get something up of it. What I'm going to do with it is change around the pictures a little bit, so that it looks like we're rotating around this parking meter, but the background is going to be changing the whole times to scenes from around the city. You might be saying to yourself, "Wow, that sounds really awesome. But what does it meeeeeeaaaan!?" That's why I'm writing this.

It is an exploration of place. No matter where you go in this city, there is always an object that is familiar, like a fire hydrant, a stop sign, a traffic light, or a parking meter. I dont know about you, but I always feel like being totally lost really isn't that bad if there's SOMETHING familiar around. Even if it is just a stupid parking meter. Now you might ask, "what about if you're lost in the woods? Trees are everywhere, and they're familiar." And to that, I say "shut up, you're ruining my point." No, not really. I suppose in this case, parking meters can just be a symbol that there is civilization around. If there is a parking meter, you know you're not in some place completely foreign to you. So that's kind of what this project has to do with. I got the idea for it while we were looking at Sophie, the program that the Future of the Book people are making, but I might be able to use Memory Miner for it. I'm not sure, we'll see.

I'm also currently working on another, less meaningful but hopefully still visually exciting project. From what footage I got on the subway before I found out it was illegal to do that, I have enough interesting, semi-low quality (personally I think that'll make it look better in the end) video of the lights passing by outside to make a pretty interesting visual light show type thing. I'll probably make it with Final Cut Pro if I can get it to work, or if nothing else, iMovie. But I do have a problem. I'm not sure whether I should use my recordings from the subway, or if I should put music with it, or both, or what song I should use, etc. So if anyone feels like telling me what to do, that'd be awesome. I was actually thinking of maybe making different versions of it and having people vote, or, for something even more interactive and fun, I was thinking people could send me songs or sound and I could make a customized one for everyone. But I'm not sure if people would want that. Tell me what you think in my comments! Those things are actually pretty useful.

Well, I'm all signed up for a bunch of games for the Come Out and Play Festival this weekend, and I'll be volunteering a little bit for them also. We'll see how that goes. I think that's it for today.

Quick question...

2006-09-19T12:15:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, I was too tired to spend 4 hours down here updating my blog last night, so I'll talk about yesterday and today when I spend 4 hours down here updating my blog tonight. But I do have something I was hoping to hear from people on.

Apparently John got an email from a friend, whom he wouldn't name, who thought that most of us had horrible blogs and that we should work on them a lot more. I have no idea if I'm included in that group, but based on the descriptions of why some of the blogs were bad, I'm assuming I am. So, if you guys have any suggestions on how to make this better, it would help a lot. Apparently the graphics of some of our blogs were an issue. I don't really feel like that's much of a problem on this one, because compared to some other people's blogs on this trip, it's fairly interesting visually. Also, I don't know how to work html very well, so there's not much I could do anyway.

Now, I know my blog is a little informal....maybe a lot informal, but I kind of like it like that. If people wanted to read about what we did on this trip from a more objective point of view, they could go read John's blog. I just don't really want to repeat the same thing everyone else is saying.

As for the writing style, I do it like this because I always feel like formal writing gets really boring to read after a while. Sure it looks better, sounds better, makes me sound more intelligent, etc., but that's not really who I am. I am *able* to write more formally if this is really bothering people though. Well, that's really it. Leave a comment on what you think of the whole blog, parts you liked, parts you didn't like, things like that, and I'll see if I can make this better. Thanks everyone, there's a real post coming soon.

Greenwich: The Bermuda Triangle of New York

2006-09-17T20:35:00.000-07:00

The internet is taking forever, so I’m going to type this out and copy and paste it when the page finally loads. I have no idea why I’m telling you that though.

Today I am a changed woman. If by “I” you mean “my” and if by “a changed woman” you mean “feet really freakin hurt.” So there was no meeting this morning. According to John, he wants to give us Saturdays to stay up all night and party and stuff. So I ended up sleeping until 1pm and then got up to work on my project. Right now, I’m taking a series of photographs of parking meters in different areas. I know it sounds totally lame. But it’ll be cool, I promise. I might also do some kind of mapping thing where I can make a link on google earth where I took the pictures and then people can click on it and watch the actual thing that I made.

I think I just ate a peice of tinfoil.

Back to the story, I started kind of wandering around exploring. I found Washington Square (the place where that arch thingy is) and saw all kinds of awesome street performers. There was a jazz band with a guy who played two trumpets at the same time, a group of middle aged white guys with guitars who were with some crazy homeless black guy who I’m pretty sure just sort of decided to join them on his own accord, and a guy who played drums on buckets and had a whole performance with two other guys. I have some audio (hopefully coming soon) and a picture for each of these three people. Here you go:

Anyway, the guy who was doing drum stuff had this whole huge act and I didn’t get out of the park until it was starting to get dark. I started leaving, and then realized that I had no idea where I had come from, where the nearest subway stop was, or anything. Then I walked for a while and realized I had no idea where I had come from again. So I was wandering around Greenwich Village (which luckily isn’t too creepy) in the dark with no idea where I was going or where I should go, for about an hour and a half. I finally got really tired and thirsty and stopped in a Starbucks to get something to drink and ask for directions. The lady told me to go down 12th street and go right until I got to Rudolph street or something like that, and there would be a subway stop somewhere really obvious. So I sat down and drank my strawberry frappuccino thing, and this lady came in who totally looked like a prostitute in a silver sequine ultra short dress, silver platform shoes, and with a pound of eye makeup on, and then I left to finally get to the subway. I walked down 12th street, turned right, and the next thing I know, I’m on 4th street.....What!? So I turned around, and decided that I must not have gone far enough down 12th street. So I started going back, and then suddenly I’m on 10th street. So to get out of this, I picked this other street that was going in the direction that I had come from. But then I ended up somewhere that looked totally wrong. Where the hell was I??? I don’t know. I might never know. Anyway, I started seeing things that looked familiar from the last few times I’ve been down there, so I sort of walked around there until I found a different subway station (the one on Christopher street instead of 14th street) that I knew would take me to the place I needed to go.

I got back alright, but I am never going to Greenwich Village without some kind of map ever again. Seriously, that place is like the bermuda triangle.

Anyway, that’s it for today I think. My feet hurt, I’m sleepy, and I think there’s some kind of meeting in the morning tomorrow. I have a picture that I plan on putting up on this post if I can figure out how to make it. Otherwise, There will probably be a new post tomorrow, as usual. Until then....
UPDATE: Here's my pictures/music clips from Washington Square. The first part I was just trying to make exciting. As you will see, I totally did. The next part was based on an idea from my sister, and the last part is just something to keep you entertained. Here you go:

Not the Sharpest Egg in the Basket...

2006-09-16T22:47:00.000-07:00

Alright, so I'm going to try to keep this short because it's almost 2am and I'm going to be so tired tomorrow if I stay up much longer. Today we all got together to go to lunch in Brooklyn with these two prestigious mapping guys that John met last night. Unfortunately, we were really late (the subway was delayed....a lot) and we completely missed them. So we split up into smaller groups, got some food, and hung around until the "Street Art" tour. Completely off subject, but I always wonder what people think of this. Does something count as art if the person wasn't trying to make art when they did it? Because some street art is actually artists going around and making cool pictures and things, but some of it is just nice looking graffiti. So does that count? I don't know. I'm sort of leaning towards no though. Anyway, you people should comment and tell me what you think because no one seems to want to discuss this with me. Back to the story. So we were taking the street art tour, and I started to notice that people were staring at us because it was a huge group of 40 people or something and there was this guy leading us with a huge speaker on a tricycle so we were making a ton of noise. Then I started to notice that people were sort of giving us this look of disgust. Then I started to hear people yelling at us to get out of their neighborhood. Anyway, after a while, I realized that we were being sort of obtrusive, in a kind of literal sense. There were so many people that we were standing in the road and blocking traffic, and no one in the group even noticed or cared. And then there was a point where we were walking by some shop, and all the people working there had to stop and wait for us to pass because we were blocking their way. So at that point I started to feel pretty bad and just walked off when we got to the corner.

So this leads to my next adventure of the day. The subway!!! So I found the subway entrance after walking for about 10 minutes down this street, but I realized I didn't know what stop to get off on. Whatever, I've got an unlimited pass and there are always directions in the subway anyway. So I got on and was looking at the map, and there must have been a sticker on it before or something because all the names of the streets on the line I was on were sort of illegible. After looking at it for a while, I decided that I either get off on 6th ave. or 8th ave. and the worst that could happen is that I could get off on the wrong one and have to get back on. So I got off on 6th because it looked right, and waited for the next train. I started taking some pictures while I waited, and a subway guy came out and told me that people aren't allowed to video or photograph any part of the subway because of terrorist stuff. So that was kind of annoying because a lot of us were doing parts or all of our projects on the subway. So finally, the train came and I got on and everything seemed right. The stops were the same, etc. But when it was time to get off on 125th street, it was a totally wrong stop. It turns out I had gotten on the 2 instead of the 1 and ended up on 125th street, but instead of being on the corner of broadway, I was on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Street. So I was all pissed off from the street art tour, and my feet hurt from walking around a bunch all day, and it was hot and I couldn't believe I was on the wrong train and didn't notice. So I left the stop and just started walking in the direction that seemed the most correct at the time. And I walked for a really long time. Eventually, it turned out I was right and I saw the other subway stop on the bridge, which was really exciting for me. So I got some ice cream, and walked all the way to International House and went to sleep.

When I woke up, my roommates were back from Conflux and were about to go to this party at Monkeytown. So I decided to just get up and go with them. It was really fun actually. The second movie/piece they showed was a bunch of really awesome colors and sounds projected onto the screens. There was also another cool one that was sort of like that, where it was more of a visual thing than an actual movie. But the last one was really fun. The announcer person came up and said her thing about how this next performance is by blah blah (I don't remember their names. I have it somewhere if you really want to know) and it's the last performance of the night. Thanks. So it was time for it to come on, and there were just these digital numbers on the screen that said 10:00:00. And that was it. And we were all sort of waiting around for something to happen, and this one guy started clapping. So everyone was just kind of like, what the hell is that guy doing? and as he was clapping the numbers started moving. And it was a clock that was ticking downwards to 0. But the more noise there was, the faster it counted down. So at first, it was going pretty slow because it was just the one guy. Then some other people joined in, and pretty soon everyone was screaming and clapping and freaking out trying to get this clock down to 0. There was even a really cool moment where everyone kind of quieted down and the clock slowed down, and then we all started screaming again and it started moving fast. So that was a lot of fun. We got home alright, Rachel said something about someone not being the sharpest egg in the basket, and now I'm going to finish this up and go to sleep. Again.

"Can somebody please help me?"

2006-09-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

Today started off pretty fun. After waking up way earlier than I should have (it was actually about 9am, but I went to bed at 2, so I really should have gotten more sleep) we met up with Patrick Kelley and talked about GPS systems and mapping. It was actually way more interesting than I thought it would be, and I actually understand it as a form of art now. There are all kinds of cool things you can do with a GPS system. You can use it to track where you go and then put that into something like Google maps and show where you were. And if you have a mapping program, you can put links in to a certain spot and show a picture that you took at that exact location. Or something else I thought was really cool is that you can actually draw a picture (something made out of lines would probably work best) and then put that into your GPS unit and it will make a route for you to follow. Then you can essentially draw a picture just by walking around. I hope I get the chance to use it soon to do something like that.

My roommate/friend Stacy and I went out today to go explore the city. We went all the way to the last south-bound subway stop in hopes of glimpsing the statue of liberty. Unfortunately, it's been raining the last two days, and it was really unpleasant outside. That doesn't mean that we didn't end up walking around out there for an hour though. We looked out over the shore at the statue of liberty, Stacy took her picture, and then we sort of wandered around a little bit. Without realizing it, we ended up at the World Trade Center site. It was sort of depressing to see just a big hole in the ground and think about how so many people died there that day. So I'm not really going to get into it.

Finally, we got back to a subway stop, went up to 14th street and got some coffee at a Starbucks. It was really good, but not even delicious coffee can sooth the burning anguish within my soul!!!!!!! Okay, not really. It totally can. Anyway, afterwards I went to go do my volunteering at Conflux, with pretty much consisted of me discussing mechanical labor with this artist guy for two hours. It was cool though, because I don't think I've ever had a semi-deep conversation with someone who I didn't know pretty well. So I made some kind of accomplishment today.

Anyway, after my "volunteering" shift, there was a Conflux party with some movies/presentations/audio things that were going to be done, and then there was going to be drinking and socializing afterwards. I watched all of the movies and things, but left before the actual party. Since I'm not 21 yet, and I was pretty tired, I didn't see much point in staying.

So John Schott, Rachel and I all left together to come back here to International House. It was quite a trip, since we missed one of the stops and ended up having to get on three different subways to get home. At the end though, the homeless man of the day came on the train and did his whole "excuse me ladies and gentlemen" thing, except this time it really messed me up for some reason. Well, not for some reason. I was filming stuff out the subway window for some little movie I'm going to make in a bit (it's not really a project, it's just to keep me busy) and when the homeless guy came on the bus I thought "yes! I finally have my camera out and ready and I can catch this on tape. Maybe he'll do something entertaining!" But this is what I got instead (sorry, it's sort of sideways because I was trying to do it discreetly):

It's sort of hard to hear, but at the end he says "Can somebody please help me?" And that kind of made me feel bad, but it was time to get off the stop anyway, and blah blah excuse excuse. Anyway, I was walking back to the building with Rachel, and we were talking about him, and I ended up saying something like "Well, he was a little too creepy to give money to anyway." and the second I said it I felt horrible. And then Rachel agreed with me, and I realized that's probably what everyone was thinking. It really bothers me because I was just really disappointed in myself and everyone else that we can just judge people like that. And that we can deny someone help just because of how they look or how they seem at first glance. Even if someone is really creepy and weird, does that mean they need help any less than some other slightly less creepy homeless man? And it's sad, because that's generally how people think of it. I mean, that guy is probably homeless in part because he's so creepy. He can't do anything about it. So from now on, I'm going to give money to any homeless person who needs it, whether they're black or white, creepy or normal, naked or almost well dressed. Because it's not any different than my other philosophy about giving money to homeless people. I was talking to another girl about homeless people earlier, and she was saying that she doesn't like to give them money because she's afraid they'll spend it on drugs or something. And I told her that I don't worry about that anymore because I'm too afraid that they actually want it for food. So I give it to them anyway. So lesson of the day: Just because someone is strange in some way doesn't give us the right to deny them help.

I'll try not to be so preachy next time.

I don't know. I am maybe a frog.

2006-09-14T20:16:00.000-07:00

So today was full of eventfulness, but sadly not very much art. I finally came up with an idea for a project to do this week during our meeting with the Future of the Book people yesterday. I'm not entirely sure how to explain it. It has to do with space and place and objects, and it's really taking a whole bunch of pictures from different angles of the same thing, but in different parts of town. Anyway, this idea was my motivation for going out (on my own! I feel like Elizabeth Bennet or something.) all over town today.

First, I walked down Broadway looking for things to take pictures of. It's a little tricky because the object in my photos has to be something sort of indistinct, like a pole or parking meter, so that it looks like I'm taking pictures of the exact same thing all over town, even though they are different ones. I don't know if that made sense, but if I finish this project, it will. Anyway, I thought there might be something in Central Park, but for some reason I couldn't find Central Park. So I took some other pictures of completely different things instead that have nothing to do with my project.

Then I sort of forgot about looking for Central Park, and just sort of wandered around for a while checking stuff out. I found a neat Japanese market and bought some Asse chocolate because it was funny. I don't have a picture of that, but I could. Anyway, while I was wandering around, I found this:

That made me happy. It was raining though, so I went back to my room, changed into some dry clothes, took a nap (living like an artist! Yeah!) and went out again to see if I could get some dinner and find some more parking meters to take pictures of (my object of the day). I got on the subway, and went to Greenwich Village. Then I had sushi....mmmm. Anyway, the day ended with me going to Times Square to find a parking meter, finding that there were no parking meters at Times Square, and instead I ended up with a bunch of odd pictures and a horrifying video which I have put up for your enjoyment.

Are you having nightmares yet?

So maybe I didn't get much done with my project today, but I suppose the day was not lacking in art. I got some good pictures, made a really short movie, and maybe tomorrow I'll have something even better since I'll be volunteering at the Confluxfestival for a few hours. We'll see.

I'm sorry sir, but I'm going to have to arrest you for being SEXY!

2006-09-13T19:48:00.000-07:00

Alright, humans. I'm in New York, and it's more awesome than I ever expected it to be. I ended up staying up all night on Sunday to pack and get ready, because by the time I had finished saying goodbye to my friend Pete, it was almost midnight and I figured it wasn't going to be worth it to pack for three hours and then go to sleep until 6am. I guess security was all pimped out because it was 9/11, so there were these really strange box things that everyone had to step into individually and it sprayed you with air. Does anyone know what those were and what their purpose was? Because I still can't figure it out.

Well, I got to New York fine. I met up with Rachel Teagle (another girl on this trip) in the Houston airport, and we shared a taxi from La Guardia to International House when we arrived. My room is freaking HUGE. I have a video of it which I'll put up when I remember to take it of my external hard drive. And if I figure out how to put videos up that aren't google videos. (UPDATE: I didn't figure out how to put up videos that weren't google, so I just got a google video account. Ha!)

Yesterday, we had a meeting at 10am that took a pretty long time, but it was informative. I can't believe I actually woke up that early. All I really remember about it right now is the part where John Schott said something about how Berlin was like lifting up a manhole cover and finding people dancing in black down there. I only really caught the end of that part, so I have no idea where that came from.

Afterwards we got a break to get lunch, and Caitlin, Joe, Jeremy, and I (I think there was someone else who was with us, but I can't remember who it was...sorry!) took the subway to some random Indian restaurant with a chinese/christmas theme. Then we were late for the next meeting at 1:30, but so were a bunch of people. We also decided on a "classroom" to have our meetings in, since we're not allowed to have a special meeting place here without paying. It turned out to be Joe's room, and we all crammed in for a presentation by John about the Institute for the Future of the Book. To be honest, it sounded kind of lame. But it's actually amazing. I'll get to that later though.

After the presentation, "class" was over for the day, and we got to wander around New York a little. Stacy, Rachel, Jenny, Karina, and I all got on the subway and went to Greenwich Village to check it out. I ended up giving some crazy old homeless man money, and some Russian girl directions to the subway. We took a ton of pictures, checked out Washington Park and saw these two hippy folk singer guys with beards, and finally ended up getting pizza that this really good (and inexpensive for what it was) pizza place which I can't remember the name of anymore. I think it started with an A. Yeah.

That night a few of the guys decided to have a party where we could all get to know eachother. It was actually really really fun. We sat around and told stories about the day and such. Apparently a few of the guys got ticketed by an undercover cop in Central Park for drinking a beer (this story is where the title came from). We also played Never Have I Ever, told everyone where we were from and what our favorite color was, and then started talking about ideas for projects to do for the trip. Eventually though, it turned into how we could harass people. Julian had an idea where we would all make the same kind of expression while we were being talked to at presentations and such, so that when the person turned around, we'd all look really excited, then the next time they'd turn around, we'd look really bored, etc. and we'd record the audio of how their voice changed when they saw our expressions. Eventually, we came up with a part where we'd all wear eye patches when the person turned around, and then when they turned around again, we'd have them off. That was about the point where we decided that we weren't talking about anything useful anymore and we should all go to bed.

Before I went to sleep, I decided to finish reading up on the Future of the Book people. I ended up staying up until 1:30 am and being really tired when I got up at 8:30 this morning. But it worked out alright. We met at 9:30 and took the subway down to Brooklyn to see these people. Like I said earlier, I thought this whole Future of the Book thing sounded totally lame. I mean, why would you really need to "recreate" the book. We went up to their office and said hello to everyone, and then walked down to this New Media night club called Monkeytown.. It was a little different than I'm sure it looks usually, because it was the middle of the day when we were there, but it looks like it'll be really cool. I think we might go back there on Saturday. Anyway, the reason it's a sort of new media nighclub type place is because there's this sort of cubic room with four really large screens and projectors where they show some kind of visual images with sound. They ended up giving their whole presentation to us there where we found out that the Future of the Book isn't really that much about books as it is about everything. They have this amazing software that makes all kinds of things so much simpler than they are right now. Graphic design or page layout could be done within a matter of a few minutes. You can make links inside of movies without having to do anything too complicated. You can have an audio book with illustrations to match what you're saying when you say it. It's the most amazing software I've ever seen. When they asked for questions or comments at the end of the presentation, all I could think was "when do we get this?" We do get it in a week or so though (for free. Muahahaha!!!) and I already have an idea for a project that I can make in it. So I'm really excited.

Afterwards, we walked around in Brooklyn until we found a place to eat. I'm still not sure what I think about Brooklyn. Looking at the people, it doesn't seem like a bad part of town, but there's graffiti on almost everything and it just looks really bad. I might have to explore it a little more before I decide.

Well, I'm going to finish putting the links to everything in this blog, stick a picture or two in, and then I'm going to bed. We've got our meeting at 9am tomorrow, so I need a little bit of sleep. If you're reading this, good job getting to the end. I was thinking I would wait until today to post since I wanted to have something to talk about, but I probably should have just done this in shorter posts. Next time.

Zozobra!!

2006-09-08T00:01:00.000-07:00


This is a little bit of last years Zozobra, just for illustration.

Tonight I attended one of my favorite Santa Fe traditions: the burning of Zozobra, aka old man gloom. Supposedly he is the bringer of all things gloomy and bad, and when you burn him, those things go away. But it never actually works for me, so I generally just go to watch the fireworks and see people I know. This year, my friend Pete came with me. It was his first Zozobra (he's from Montana), so I thought it'd be really exciting for him. Unfortunately, this year's Zozobra was really different than usual. For one, most of my friends are gone, so we didn't really see anyone I know. Zozobra is like a huge social event, and you always walk around and find people who you haven't seen since 5th grade, or who you dated for a week in highschool. But this time there was no one except for this guy who sort of works at the same place I do, but he was really drunk and didn't recognize me. Anyway, the most prominant difference was that this year it rained. A lot. It's been raining a ton (for New Mexico) all summer, and it rained consistantly all day. So we were all cold and wet the whole time. Luckily, it stopped raining about 15 minutes before they actually burned him, so it wasn't too bad. Anyway, since we were all freezing the whole time, the little ceremony before the actual burning (the dancers running around, the people in their tight costumes with torches, etc.) seemed to take FOREVER...but eventually they burned him. There was smoke everywhere because he was damp and the wind was blowing towards the crowd. Then there were ashes falling from the sky. Overall, it was fun, but not as fun as usual. Oh well. Maybe next year. So what does this have to do with my OCS trip or art? Well, I totally forgot to bring my camera to this event, so I guess the answer is....nothing.

Still in Santa Fe

2006-08-27T18:17:00.000-07:00

One of the only things I don't like about Carleton are these final two weeks of summer break. My friends Mara and Matej just left town to go back to school, which leaves me with one friend in town. And the only reason she's still here is because her boyfriend paid to move her flight over a few days more. I'm already consumed by loneliness. Well, not really. But I know that by the end of the week, I'm going to be really bored. Maybe that will help me with this whole art block thing.
Yes, that's right. Instead of exploding art like a Mimbulus Mimbletonia, I'm imploding it like a...well, I don't know. Whatever the opposite of a Mimbulus Mimbletonia is. But I can't seem to make anything creative lately. It's a little scary, since this whole study abroad trip is focusing on making art. What will happen if I get there and it's my turn to make something, and I can't think of anything? Will I get in trouble? Will they just make me make something stupid? Will I be caned? I don't know. And what if I don't get in trouble? Will I just end up not making any art at all? That would make the whole trip kind of pointless, wouldn't it? We'll find out. I plan on making a very short documentary soon about the employees of CCA (the place that I work), and I've been thinking of making a few music videos and such, but nothing really great. I guess I just kind of feel like everyone has already done everything, and everytime I see someone still come up with something new and original, I feel shot down. But I'm going to stop before this blog turns into some kind of horrible online diary and some sketchy 14 year old emo guy finds it and starts writing to me about how he knows my pain.

No art explosion yet, but it's coming...

2006-07-26T16:24:00.000-07:00

So I got a bunch of my books today. I've got New Media in Art by Michael Rush, New Media Art by Mark Tribe, and Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing by Adam Greenfield. I haven't gotten a chance to look at the Rush book too much yet, but apparently there are a ton of artists who had stuff at SITE Santa Fe (the big fancy modern art museum here. It's actually pretty awesome), where my mom works, so I'm going to be way up on those artists. Tribe's book is pretty awesome though. It has all the webpages of the art and the artists, so you can actually look at what they're talking about. My favorite thing in there was called Every Icon (it was at SITE Santa fe!) by John F Simon. I'd explain it, but I suck at explaining so here's the link instead: http://www.numeral.com/everyicon.html According to the book, it takes trillions of years. O.O
Anyway, I've decided that I really want to do some kind of interactive art, though I'm not sure how yet. I was thinking maybe some kind of music program type thing, but I'm not going to say much about it until it's developed further.
In other news, it's really hot here in santa fe, my dad is going crazy vaccuuming, and my mom's cooking, making it even hotter. I'm hiding out in my room right now with the cat, listening to Bayside, and pretending that I'm still at school where I can hang out by myself for a while without people bothering me.
I might have to change over blogs soon though, because I don't know if there's a way to put any media up on this one, and I'd rather have that than have a million links to youtube and various other file storing sites. We'll see.

Die Bloggy

2006-07-17T19:30:00.000-07:00

So this is my first blog ever. I'm not really sure what to write about yet, since this was developed for the CAMS trip that I haven't gone on yet, but I feel obligated to write something as a first post. This trip will be my first ever out of the US (I've never even been to Mexico), and I'm sort of terrified. The ladies at the health seminar made a huge thing about how we're all going to get raped, murdered, and robbed if we are women and/or Americans, and although I've heard tons from my friends about how it's really not very different than America over there, especially where we're going, the whole idea of going somewhere so far away with a bunch of people I hardly know, to do something that I've never really been very good at, is starting to get to me. But I'm working hard. I've been looking at art books whenever I get the chance, getting as much information as I can from friends, and trying to think of ideas for projects on this trip. So far, I haven't come up with any, but at least I'm working on it.
Well, I'm working right now, so I should probably go. Hopefully I'll have something more interesting and educational to say next time.