Posts Tagged ‘isfair 2012’

NWMMP // MMXII

Sunday, May 12th, 2013


INDIVIDUAL:
Agent Brian Dick tag-team alternating with Agent Christen Sperry-Garcia
GROUP SIZE: two or three at a time, sometimes up to ten, collectively hundreds over a decade
NATURE OF GROUP: unsuspecting art fans and/or uneasy museum managers
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: The Nation Wide Museum Mascot Project

NWMMP at MOMA

Though the origins of shamanism are cloaked in a Joseph Campbell style myth-mash and/or ivory-tower navel gazings, humans have been putting on goofy animal costumes and accosting strangers since the paleolithic era. Though the practice exists close to it’s original form among arctic Inuits and in the highlands of Borneo and Burma, it’s experienced in the arena of western society in the form of mini-tramp front-flip slam-dunks from an anthropomorphized cartoon jersey-wearing panther or a waddling purple dinosaur leading a trail of children pied-piper like into to flabby arms of television-aided consumer-capitalism. Costumery that was once a holy vessel for a divine messenger is now bouncing and waving from an Ford-land tent-sale commercial.

above and below: NWMMP at DAG

Around the turn of the 21rst century performance and prank artist (and upper echelon IS agent) Brian Dick wanted to get some fresh faces off the street and into a San Diego performance art space. Recognizing that there IS nothing better than a mascot to disarm and draw in the passive consumer, The Museum Mascot project was born. Shortly after, Brian, and ‘artner Christen Sperry-Garcia started seeking permission to “mascot” venerable art museums such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Though met with the type of snobbishly paternalistic stonewalling tactics typically deployed by the permission granters at such public art institutions, they decided to just show up in costume and see what happens. Something about the benevolence of the mission – convincing the passer-by that art is fun – and the bad-p.r. security takedown of a friendly dancing manimal surrounded by a gaggle of happy kids lead to tacit permission to do their thing.

NWMMP at SFMOMA

Developing a found-object and improvisational approach, the pair typically hits town a day before the gig to scrounge neighborhood dumpsters and garage sales for spent piñatas, children’s imprinted sleeping bags, and county-fair size stuffed animals to frankenstein together a mascot costume with multicolored duct-tape. By pulling together cast-offs from the community they create a character which mediates the low-culture of a city neighborhood with the high-culture of an art institution much in that way shamans use masks to communicate the concerns of an earth-bound culture to the spirit realm.

And the kids love it! And, the “Fine Art” patrons find it terribly awkward…

NWWMP IS fun indoors and out!

In 2012 the duo crowd-sourced funding to take the Nation Wide Museum Mascot Project coast-to-coast with a 50/50 invite vs. guerilla target list tour of 21 acronym institutions – including MCASD, MOCAD, OCMA, MOMA, SFMOMA with a stop at iSFair 2O12 along the way.
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The Museum Mascot has been the official mascot of Sociometry Fair 2008

… and iSFair 2O12.

The Emperor’s New Nose

Sunday, March 24th, 2013


INDIVIDUAL:
IS agent Mark Romero-Davis //
GROUP SIZE: including my parents? //
NATURE OF GROUP: History Revisionists, Body Modifiers, the Vain, the Self-Loathing, the Easily-Manipulated, those who are somewhat interested in noses //
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: The Emperor’s New Nose //

The following is a probable excerpt of Chairman Mao’s diary from vindicatingmao.com

“…..a comrade servant came into my bedchamber, and offered me a glass of Ensure. I exhaled heavily and slowly sat up, feeling weaker than I ever have before. I leaned forward and opened my mouth, ready to receive the beverage as the comrade lifted the glass to me. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass, and my gaze immediately fell upon my nose. If it were not for that blasted Ren Mei Rong, who when we were only children, likened my nose to the nose of George Washington. I wish I could forget this comment. But it has stuck with me through the decades. I even sent him and his family to a labor camp after I became chairman, but the memory of this insult remained with me. A grand symbol of Capitalism sits in the middle of my face! I mustered the strength to knock the glass of Ensure from the servant’s hands, spilling it on the royal red bedsheets. I had the comrade servant executed for spilling on me. If only I had undergone a procedure to alter my nose. I had the opportunity all my life and yet did nothing to put the nose hatred to rest. This, is my only regret in life…”

~ Chairman Mao – September 8, 1976

I was initially interested in exploring some aspect of revisionist history after hearing a report about a lesser-known dictator. The picture painted of the man was hardly representative of the “true” history. This then led me to think about plastic surgery and body modification and how people change their appearance for various reasons, but never change other aspects of their life (their terrible personalities, addictions, extreme bias, etc). I then started writing this fictitious narrative weaving the two ideas together that Chairman Mao did in fact hate his own nose and wanted to have it altered though never found the time (this is how my easily-distracted brain works).

Then came a website with The Nose Vote, ‘zine with carnival mask, thesis exhibit to confused and/or bemused Communication Designers and display at iSFair 2O12!

Winner of the Nose Vote: Groucho Marx! Although he was not on the ballot between candidates Castro, Engles Lenin, Trotsky (dark horse) Ghandi, and Karl Marx there were a number of write-in votes (4) that pushed him past Trotsky in the running (poor guy can’t ever win). ~ Agent Mark Romero-Davis



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ThIS report was on display and a final Nose Vote were conducted at iSFair 2O12. The Chairman Mao masks were the #1 hottest item at the fair.

10 Hottest Prophefits!

Sunday, March 17th, 2013


INDIVIDUAL:
Agent Nima*
GROUP SIZE: Approximately 2.1 Billion
NATURE OF GROUP: Muslims (through the Shias and more-so Sufis could probably care less.) 
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: Malcontent #4 – 10 Hottest Prophefits!

*Name IS slightly altered to protect the wantonly reckless.

In 2010, while working in my day-job and agent cover as an art and design academic, I served in an advisory and contributor capacity on Malcontent – a ‘zine authored and détourned together by IS agent Nima – operating in his cover as a design student.

(Below) A previous project by Nima – which resulting in him being conferred IS agent status. The Typography course assignment was to create large scale environmental graphics and photoshop them onto pictures of billboards. Nima wrote Ahhh Snap! on the outside of my 2nd story office window in post-its. (Note: he had to scale the awning of the campus police station to do so and write the message backwards for correct legibility on the inside of my office). I gave him an A+ (though it was marked down to a C- for being turned in 7 weeks late…)

Malcontent #4 The Prophets & Profits Issue was the culmination of a 16 week four issue spree. Fresh off of #3 The Animal Totems Issue – agent Nima was interested in continuing to explore the dialectic between the physical and metaphysical. He came into my office with thIS pitch for issue #4:

“I want to depict Muhammad.”


For context – here is a brief history of the “Depiction of Muhammad” controversy in the 21rst century:

It is debatable whether Islam prohibits the depiction of Muhammad. The Qur’an doesn’t forbid depictions of Mohammed (Allah was concerned with less petty things at the time) but there are Haddith – supplemental teachings – which expressly prohibit depiction of the Prophet. There is a general prohibition in orthodox monotheisms, including Islam’s prequels Christianity and Judaism, of worshipping “graven images” as a substitute for God. Sunni Islam pretty much toes-the-line on this but Shia Islam (which includes the Sufis who could care less because they’re too busy dancing and chanting) doesn’t seem to mind a respectful image of Muhammad. No one likes denigration of the Prophet in any form. It’s worth noting here that Agent Nima – a first generation Persian-American – would likely ascribe to Shia Islam if he didn’t instead pledge allegiance to good old ‘Merican Fight-Club n’ The Joker style Post-Modern Ontological Anarchy.

The recent cycle of controversy around depictions of Muhammad, crass muslim baiting with retaliatory fire-bombing, started in 2005 when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten began publishing culturally crude but satirically clever political cartoons depicting, among other themes, a borderline racist caricature of Muhammed with a lit bomb for a turban. Ostensibly Jyllands-Posten was making a statement on the self-censorship of media regarding criticism of violence in Islam but more likely they were throwing wood on the smoldering fire of Scandinavian anti-immigrant racism as a way to either editorially sympathize or more likely just to sell newspapers and consequently more full-page furniture outlet adds. The cartoons were reprinted in over 50 publications resulting in a downward spiral protest from Muslims around the world descending from diplomatic and legal challenges to street riots leading to over 200 violent deaths and attacks on Danish and European embassies in Muslim countries.

The ‘Merican sophomoric practically stick-figure cartoon South Park tackled the issue of censorship with their own spin on depictions of Muhammed in the 2010 episode 200, a complex narrative weaving together many pre-existing plots culminating in Tom Cruise spearheading a celebrity class-action lawsuit against the town of South Park that he will only withdraw if the children produce Muhammad. The children do produce Muhammed bit he is kidnapped by the Ginger Separatist Group of fair-haired children prior to being delivered to Cruz. Depictions on Muhammad had a tradition on South Park going back to 2001. He is part of a gout of prophets, including a cocaine snorting Buddha, referred to as Super Best Friends and even cameos in a group shot of the shows credits. Despite the depiction and treatment of Muhammad being largely respectful (especially for South Park standards) and a sub-plot in their vehement take-down of their arch nemesis Tom Cruz, Comedy Central and show creators Matt Parker and Trey Stone were besieged with multiple and humorless death threats.

In 2011 the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo picked up the mantle with an issue guest edited by a charicaturized Muhammad. Their offices were firebombed and reduced to rubble on the issue release date.

In 2012 B-team fraudster and Coptic Christian Nakoula Basseley Nakoula youtube released 15 minutes of a budgetless D-movie titled Innocence of Muslims which depicted Muhammad as a pedophile and simpleton – just in time for the Anniversary of September 11th. The resulting world-wide protests quickly degenerated into violence which culminated in an angry mob and/or terrorists (the jury is apparently still out on this despite the Fox News hyperbole) in Benghazi Libya killing US Ambassador Christopher Stephens.


Back to Agent Nima’s desire to dive into these murky waters:

Considering the cons, (death threats, a Fox News van parked on the front lawn of the Art Building to “defend” Malcontent, being disrespectful to the many observant Muslim students on campus, and loosing my day-job at Politically Correct College) against the pros, (honoring the First Amendment to the Constitution of The United States of America, the philosophy of academic freedom, that after all it’s just a ‘sine, and Agent Nima’s uncanny ability to be patently offensive while riotously funny and likable), I acquiesced after a long cautionary conversation.

 Though given (and taking) carte-blanche, I feel ultimately that agent Nima’s resulting article and it’s neoclassical picture of Muhammed pulled off of google image search would offend Muslim’s more due to him being third runner up in the 10 Hottest Prophefits! to Branch Davidian founder David Koresh and Christ with rock hard abs that due to the inclusion of the graphic.

 “Yep that’s him. Get over it.”

Without further adieu here is the article (click on the image or here to read in PDF format):


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ThIS report was spawned from the Malcontent tri-fold display at iSFair 2O12

Death & Rebirth in the Analog World

Sunday, March 10th, 2013


INDIVIDUAL:
IS Agent F.R. “Russ” Forster
GROUP SIZE: 4.6 million units in 2012 (up 17.7% since 2011) representing (our guess of) 1.6 million consumers
NATURE OF GROUP: indie-hipsters, club-kids, baby-boomers, throw-backs and forward-thinkers
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: Birth, Death And Rebirth In The Analog World

Part 1: BIRTH

“Lateral-cut disc records were developed in the United States by Emile Berliner, who named his system the “gramophone”, distinguishing it from Edison’s wax cylinder “phonograph” and Columbia’s wax cylinder “graphophone”. Berliner’s earliest discs, first marketed in 1889, but only in Europe, were 5 inches (13 cm) in diameter, and were played with a small hand-propelled machine. Both the records and the machine were adequate only for use as a toy or curiosity. In the United States in 1894, under the Berliner Gramophone trademark, Berliner started marketing records with somewhat more substantial entertainment value, along with somewhat more substantial gramophones to play them. Berliner’s records had poor sound quality compared to wax cylinders, but his manufacturing associate Eldridge R. Johnson eventually improved them. Abandoning Berliner’s “Gramophone” trademark for legal reasons, in 1901 Johnson’s and Berliner’s separate companies reorganized to form the Victor Talking Machine Company, whose products would come to dominate the market for many years.

In 1901, 10-inch disc records were introduced, followed in 1903 by 12-inch records. These could play for more than three and four minutes respectively, while contemporary cylinders could only play for about two minutes.”

Wikipedia: “Gramophone Record”

My own adventure with Long Playing records (as 12” Gramophone records came to be known after the 1930s) started in the mid-1980s when I decided to start a record label named “Underdog Records” to put out records by some Chicago bands I was friends with. I rushed headlong into a world I had only known before as a consumer, naïve and fearless.  Through shear determination and a willingness to make plenty of mistakes along the way, I was able to put out six LPs, one 12” EP, and a handful of 7” records before I let a collective of bands and fans take over the label in the early 1990s.

By the time I gave up Underdog, I was disillusioned about the music business, the record distribution business, and the rapidly accelerating move from analog to digital formats for a majority of music consumers. I felt a bit burned by several early Underdog bands getting “deals” with a label started by a couple of seedy coke-snorting music industry types; I got sick of having to deal with Mafiosos and flakey slackers posing as indie record distributors to get paid; and I bought into the conspiracy theories that CDs were just a transparent effort for Major Labels to get a gullible public to re-buy all the music they already owned at double the price.

Disillusioned, I walked away from vinyl at about the time LPs were declared deceased by the music industry, unsure of whether I wanted to ever put out a record again. As luck would have it, I ended up being part of a group of ne’er do wells  who started a small press magazine (“‘zine”, if you will) as an act of satire against the push toward digital. We called the ‘zine 8-Track Mind and devoted it to the promotion of the 8-track tape as the ultimate fun music format. We had no idea of where this crazy underground experiment would take us.

Above: A selection of issues from the 101 run of 8-Track Mind with a Sears Mono-8 player.
Below: Agent Forster’s corresponding documentary So Wrong Their Right on VHS (obviously). 


Part 2: DEATH

“Ever since the mid-Sixties creative boom in long-playing records spearheaded by the Beatles and Beach Boys, the album has been the model by which any musical artist is measured. That may be about to change.

The album has endured changes in format (vinyl to cassette to CD), length (40 minutes on vinyl, today many extend to 70 minutes) and sound quality (mono to stereo to digital). Throughout, its concept has remained much the same. The ‘digital revolution’ – mp3 players, iTunes, song-swapping – is set to alter all that. And, as we have seen in virtually every recent musical revolution (Napster, The Grey Album, internet CD sales and so on) the music industry is slow to react.

The key change is in the way consumers listen to the music. At the primary level of exposure, the listener no longer relies solely on commercial radio or on the blind shelling out of a tenner for the latest LP. Digital downloads from iTunes, Napster and their competitors offer singles, album tracks, live recordings and other tracks side-by-side, available for the consumer to cherry pick.”

Spiked E-Magazine, 11/22/05

As 8-Track Mind Magazine was building some serious underground steam in the early 1990s, the Music Industry was pushing CDs in and LPs out in much the way it had done for 8-tracks vs. cassettes in the 1980s.  Impossible claims of indestructibility and music reproduction superiority were heaped upon CDs in articles and ads, and 8-TM staff and contributors took a jaundiced eye and pen to the proclaimed perfection that we considered “seedy”. And while vinyl was the intended target of the Record Companies, the fatal wound was actually sustained over the course of the decade by compact cassettes once CD players replaced cassette players in car stereos.

But certainly vinyl took a great hit, and got hit even harder in the ‘00s as iPods and 99¢ Mp3 singles captivated the imagination of a new generation and trickled up to an older one.  In a quirky and unexpected outcome of the format wars of the past two decades, 8-track tapes became collectible (thanks a lot, eBay!) and by the end of the 1990s 8-Track Mind stopped being the screams from the audio basement it started out as and was subtly morphing into a mouthpiece for the collector market. As editor/publisher I was finding myself increasingly alienated by the pressure to create price lists and engage in real moneymaking, and my own personal love for the ugly duckling format became less reflected in the pages of 8-TM.

A wall of 8-tracks at the IS home office. (In the mid 90’s IS agent m[i]le[s] was pulled into the apartment of agent Vollmer to watch So Wrong Their Right. The Compound (IS spiritual birthplace in San Diego’s Hillcrest neighborhood) was already the location of weekly 8-track dance parties. After the viewing, agent m[i]le[s] began an analog correspondence with agent Forster that eventually resulted in multiple cross-submissions to each others projects and culminated in PRO a Chicago banjo and trash-can street-band covering 8-track era heavy-metal and punk classics. ~ IS ed.)

So I shut the magazine down in 2000 and walked away from the 8-track “scene” while I could still do so without animosity.  Certainly there were those who thought I was crazy to step away from “success”, but to cash in on the collector scene would have been too antithetical to the original “8-Noble Truths Of The 8-Track Mind” (which were concerned far more with fun and fraternity than with profit) for me to bear. My 8-track and LP collections became my own quiet personal seawall against the accelerating digital tsunami (which ironically I also participated in somewhat begrudgingly as music I wanted to listen to became impossible or prohibitively expensive to obtain on vinyl).

It cheered me somewhat that some of my favorite indie rock labels like Touch & Go and Matador and Sub Pop were still offering reasonably priced LP versions of many of their artists’ works, and I secretly applauded the dance DJs who were keeping many small vinyl pressing plants from bankruptcy, but I feared this underground support would not sustain long-term.


Part 3: REBIRTH

“As counterintuitive as it may seem in this age of iPods and digital downloads, vinyl — the favorite physical format of indie music collectors and audiophiles — is poised to re-enter the mainstream, or at least become a major tributary.

Talk to almost anyone in the music business’ vital indie and DJ scenes and you’ll encounter a uniformly optimistic picture of the vinyl market.

Pressing plants are ramping up production, but where is the demand coming from? Why do so many people still love vinyl, even though its bulky, analog nature is anathema to everything music is supposed to be these days? Records, the vinyl evangelists will tell you, provide more of a connection between fans and artists. And many of today’s music fans buy 180-gram vinyl LPs for home listening and MP3s for their portable devices.

“For many of us, and certainly for many of our artists, the vinyl is the true version of the release,” said Matador’s Patrick Amory. “The size and presence of the artwork, the division into sides, the better sound quality, above all the involvement and work the listener has to put in, all make it the format of choice for people who really care about music.”

Wired Magazine, 10/29/07

It defies logical explanation, but now in 2012 vinyl is not just staying alive on life support but is actually thriving!  With every passing year LPs present a measurably increasing share of all physical music format sales. Vinyl has a new generation of fans who weren’t even alive when it was declared “dead” in the 1990s.  The rise of Mp3s has actually done more to diminish CD than LP sales, in a highly ironic turn of events. Even used LPs retain value much more readily than used CDs


The Rise and Fall of Music Delivery Formats ~ by reddit user Dwellonthis

In 1996 I decided after half a decade of absence from the recording studio to write some new songs and tiptoe back in as an “extreme” solo artist, doing all playing, drum machine programming and singing myself. My first experiments proved to be quite unsuccessful, and disappointed I put recording aside in favor of my film/video and ‘zine efforts.

But the urge to get my music on tape (or hard drive) raised its head again a half decade later in 2001, when as part of a tour promoting my video Tributary (chronicling the tribute band “scene” in the US in the 1990s) I ventured into ace engineer/producer (and editor of the amazing DIY recording magazine Tape Op) Larry Crane’s Jackpot studio and recorded four songs in one day of fast and furious recording.

One of the efforts from those sessions turned out well enough that I vowed to get it on an LP within the next decade.  It took me another 5 years to get back in the studio to record tracks for the debut LP by RAKEHELL (my extreme solo project), and another half decade plus to finally get everything mixed and ready for public consumption, but now at this very table you can see a tangible bit of proof that vinyl has not died; my own modest effort to keep analog alive in the 21st Century.


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ThIS report was originally published on a tri-fold display at iSFair 2O12

RAKEHELL performing live at iSFair 2O12

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WEDUPT

Sunday, March 3rd, 2013


INDIVIDUAL:
The urban camper

GROUP SIZE: “386 members of the homeless community … in the first four months since the ‘Urban Camping’ Ban went into effect on May 28, 2012” ~ Occupy Denver
NATURE OF GROUP: Homeless, hobos, winos, all night binge drinkers, transients and travelers
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: West Denver Urban Preserve and Trail

During the Winter of 2012, when the Occupy movement was in full swing, a small cadre of Denver protestors, and a mix of homeless and soon to be homeless citizens, took up residence on the sidewalk across from the Colorado Capitol building. On May 28th the City Council passed an “urban camping” ban as a likely pre-text for granting Denver Police the ability to quash Occupy’s right to peaceable assembly while stating it was to help the cities homeless by providing a mechanism to move them into shelters and services.

About two blocks south of the IS Home Office in West Denver’s working class SoHi neighborhood, is Lakewood Gulch – an east west chasm bisecting the cities grid. The gulch is a flash flood zone and infrastructure corridor for high capacity power lines that doubles as a bike-trail route, greenspace, and for the homeless prime urban camping sites. In 2008 (accidentally) on National Trails Day IS agents guerilla installed a trail marker system designating a route through the gulch as the West Denver Urban Preserve and Trail demarcating areas along the corridor for unsanctioned use such as graffiti tagging, leashless dog walking, drinking, and of course urban camping. (See WEDUPT // MMVIII)

In 2012 the Urban Camping ban and ongoing westward expansion of light-rail through the corridor presented a double threat to unsanctioned use in the gulch. WEDUPT needed to be freshly installed to draw attention to the endangered habitat for urban camping in the corridor.

After a month of foot research to determine the new route that homeless had established to accommodate the freshly laid light-rail tracks, agents began constructing DIY signs in orange and black to match the copious construction signage in the area. IS agents m[i]le[s], Handsome Jim and DDUB installed the signs in the wee hours of National Trails Day.

At 8am agent m[i]le[s] led a guided walk-through accompanied by a handful or agents and known associates and by reporter Melanie Asmar of Denver’s Westword newspaper. See Melanie’s article for Westwords Latest Word blog Lakewood Gulch art prank celebrates day drinking, off-leash dogs from June 5th 2012.

By the end of August the light-rail tracks were finished, the adjacent landscaping was planted and the last WEDUPT survey stake fell. In conclusion IS feels that the majority of the signage and trail flags lasted throughout the prime urban camping season and the mouthpiece of Denver’s Westword was significant in increasing awareness of the endangered habitat for clandestine urban campers. Now that a four year cycle has been established from the first incorporation in 2008 and the second in 2012 we have marked our calendar for May 2016 for a third incorporation of the West Denver Urban Preserve and Trail.

Supporting documentation:
WEDUPT v.01 2008 MMVIII
WEDUPT Spring Research

WEDUPT
 Summer Research
WEDUPT  Process

WEDUPT
Trail Map + Guide
WEDUPT Walk Through: Section 1
WEDUPT Walk Through: Section 2
WEDUPT  Walk Through: Section 3
WEDUPT  Walk Through: Section 4
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Different versions of thIS report was originally published on tumblr in June of 2012, and in two articles on Westword’s Show And Tell and Latest Word blogs. IS’s final WEDUPT report was prominently featured on a re-engineered tri-fold road barricade at iSFair 2O12, our quadrennial exhibit of reports generated between 2008 and 2012.

Man Made

Saturday, February 23rd, 2013
 
INDIVIDUAL: Agent Man Made 
GROUP SIZE: Under 5.4 /sq mile 
NATURE OF GROUP: Wyoming Rough Necks, Cow-Hands, & Pilgrims on Dérive 
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: MAN MADE 
 

For this census MAN MADE across Wyoming was tagged, mapped & photographed.

Central Wyoming is the least populated part of the continental United States. On a 531 mile foot survey of Wyoming’s Continental Divide 3 IS agents encountered 414 Pronghorn Antelope (and 647 ticks) yet only a handful of man.           
 

Despite a lack of physical presence in the area, humans have scattered the organic landscape with an unfathomable amount of MAN MADE ranging from infrastructure to detritus. Fences, blazes, trails and roads. Gas wells and flight markers. Salt licks and a huge bowl of kibbles. Signs with rotting type. Rust etched garbage melting into the desert.

The infrastructure maintained on the census route often performed a control function. Way finders, harnessers of resources, containers, blockades. Though aesthetically out of context the logic of their place in the landscape was incontrovertible.

< PLEASE CLOSE THE GATE >

Much of the detritus was straight trash, though some of it presumably had a function in the past. (i.e. There were no blatant instances of intentional sculpture.) The harsh environment of central Wyoming continually reclaims any MAN MADE, breaking it down until even its function is eroded. Bereft of a meaningful context abstract forms begin to clutter the natural environment – an exact inversions of weeds growing through cracks in the driveway.

In the depopulated zone along Wyoming’s continental divide, MAN MADE and the organic landscape perform a continual dialectic: the attempt at one way control and the cyclic entropy thwarting it. (See diagram below.)  Man fills unpopulated space with functional infrastructure and a hidden scatter of debris. Anything unmaintained is either consumed by the harsh environment or takes on a battered sculptural form. By tagging notable MAN MADE, this census aimed to heighten an aesthetic and psychogeographical awareness of our footprint in a place we rarely tread.

Supporting documentation:
All 111 MAN MADE images
Agent Cyberhobos report and route map
Typeset Report (printable version)
Download a MAN MADE sticker sheet!  
Related Incidence of Sociometry: PaCT
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ThIS report was originally published on flickr in August of 2009, after the initial survey. IS’s reposting as MAN MADE prominently featured on a 6’x8′ tri-fold display at iSFair 2O12, our quadrennial exhibit of reports generated between 2008 and 2012.

 
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Vote YOURSELF! Vote DIY!

Saturday, February 16th, 2013

INDIVIDUAL: YOURSELF! 
GROUP SIZE:
 312,960,416 
NATURE OF GROUP: 
Citizenry of the U!S!A! 
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: 
Vote YOURSELF! We Know How To Do It!

In 1998 prolific German director, actor, and artist Christoph Schlingensief formed Chance 2000 The Party of Last Chance – holding rallies with placards bearing the absurdest Vote Yourself party motto and “Go on and do something! It doesn’t matter what” slogan.

Christoph Schlingensief prematurely passed away from cancer in 2010. In his honor and for the 2012 election year* IS rolled out the DIY-party screen-printed yard signs, bringing the Vote Yourself platform to the U!S!A!

Photos are from 2010 and 2012 in urban and suburban Colorado – a crucial swing state.

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ThIS full report was originally published on a tri-fold display at iSFair 2O12

 

*ThIS report was deployed using IS’ patent pending PAST DUE methodology. the art and film for the Vote YOURSELF signs was produced in time for the 2000 elections but IS was too distracted with other projects to print the signs until the 2010 mid-terms when an opportunity presented itself as one of our agents was sentenced to Community Service at a non-profit public-access screen-printing studio.
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How I Fake Awarded Myself

Sunday, February 10th, 2013

INDIVIDUAL: Agent Janssen
GROUP SIZE: Indeterminate due to their hypothetical nature.
NATURE OF GROUP: The Metro Area Urban Landscaping Award Committee.
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: How I Fake Awarded Myself – Some Of My Neighbors Don’t Like My Yard, But Somebody Does (Sort Of).

I got a notice in the mail from the City of Denver informing me there was a complaint about “weeds” in my yard. Those “weeds” are xeriscaping – hollyhocks, Russian sage, flax, Shasta daisies, irises, mint, yarrow, ect. – all plants that require little water and are great for Denver, a city that’s arid and water-challenged.

From Denver Water: “Denver Water coined the word (Xeriscape) in 1981 to help make low-water-use landscaping an easily recognized concept. Xeriscape is a combination of the word ‘landscape’ and the Greek word ‘xeros’, which means dry.”

Co-workers suggested I write obscenities in the neighbor’s lawn with bleach, but I wasn’t entirely sure WHICH neighbor complained to the city and didn’t want to start a turf war (figuratively or literally).

I decided instead that my xeriscaping was “award-worthy” and made an award sign from a fictitious organization (the Metro Area Urban Landscaping Awards), honoring my yard in the “xeriscaping category”. I mounted the sign on foam-core and used a yard sign frame, then placed it among the flax and left it there until weather destroyed it. I felt good – vindicated, but not vindictive!

Meanwhile, the city didn’t issue a ticket, and closed the case after a neighborhood inspector took a look at my yard and verified the plants are in fact xeriscaping.

SO FUCK YOU, NEIGHBOR AND HAVE A NICE DAY!
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ThIS report was originally published on a tri-fold display at iSFair 2O12

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iSFair 2O12 // Incidence Report

Friday, November 23rd, 2012

INDIVIDUAL: An audience of one
GROUP SIZE: 25 active agents out of a total 628 agents world wide.
NATURE OF GROUP: The 25 agents constituting the group in this report represent participants and attendees to the IS Fair our quadrennial conclave…
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: iSFair 2O12 InfOcalypse.

IS practices and promotes (non-quatitative) Guerilla Sociometry. Sociometry IS the analysis of individuals and their relationship to groups. As a collective IS always strives to create work for an audience of one. From mid-nineties ‘zine reports to the ongoing “all-computer issue” on thIS screen, the expectation IS that a single agent at the end of the line curls up in their layer and relates to IS in an immediatist fashion – individual to group.

See all images here.

IS makes sense in person only; it IS difficult to accurately relate anecdotes to anyone who has not yet related to the group (at least not without arousing their suspicion). So to speak, you gotta’ be IS to be into IS. With thIS method, the impluse to put on an in-person gathering is both inviting and intractable as IS Agents are a sly species who are reluctant to blow their cover.

Nevertheless, IS has persisted over the last 16 years and hosted a pentathalon of five IS Fairs. A small cadre of 11 agents have selected host cities, submitted reports and attended successive IS Fairs. For iSFair 2O12, a 25 agent brigade initiated projects, made displays, transported work, mailed videos, installed a show, became one-man bands, mascotted on the street, and sat on a hot Mission Street sidewalk all afternoon to ultimately survive the infOcalypse.

The conversion of IS’s mail art by way of a zine blog motif to an in-person adult science fair IS an interesting challenge. The logistics of making and moving 2000 sq. feet of displays held together with every type of tape and tack needed to be worked out. The ability of the IS Home Office to reliably crank out tri-fold displays balancing basic design principles with post-modern collage was tested. Concurrently, Agents out in the world who were creating and documenting their relationships to groups came through in person or via post with displays. All the elements were in place. DISseminating IS’s mISsion and vISion outside of the group of indoctrinated agents to the outside individual remains the challenge.

Friday 11/09 Opening night

INDIVIDUAL: A serious looking man, between 25 and 30 with a furrowed brow, pointy beard and clean jean jacket.

ThIS individual was one of the first attendees of the Fair. He moved from display to display methodically reading the ridiculous overload of written content. He would thumb through the literature with a penetrating stare. ThIS agenet attempted to engage the individual with a verbal comment on the tri-fold he was reading. The individual took an immediate step sideways and turned slightly away to avoid engaging thIS agent and quickly left.

About two hours later he returned and picked up reading where he had left off. ThIS agent left him to his devices. He was later spotted chatting with agent BAF like old friends.

Outcome: possible pledge

Saturday 11/10 One Man Bands
Pictured: Disposable Thumbs and Employee 

INDIVIDUAL: mErRiL, a punkISh lady in a pink leather jacket – an amateur puppeteer and full time musician on her night off.

mErRiL came to hear agent zMan perform at the iSFair as Disposable Thumbs. mErRiL immediately absorbed IS upon entry into the Fair repeating the copy off of the banner out front, “Free and open to the public,” she said, “All of humanity should be in here”. There IS no financial barrier to entry. There IS, however, an extreme psychological barrier.

Outcome: IS new agent – credentials ISsued.

INDIVIDUAL: A young lady off the street with short hair and clean work clothes IS wide eyed and giggly – clinging to her look-alike date.

ThIS individual was greeted upon entry and ISsued two Analog Survival Kits. With a surprisingly sincere thanks she and her date began to comb through the contents holding the vocab-word quill-pen and eyeball-balloon up close for micro-inspection. Ushering them in past the entry way, they were oriented to the infOcalypse and invited to take anything that was in multiple.

About 11 minutes later thIS agent turned the corner to find her doubled over in hysteria at the sight of her date disguised behind a Mao mask. A bushel of Malcontent ‘zines, No Alien Stickers, IS schwag, and tchotkes spilled out of her hands on to the floor. ThIS agent picked up the fallen letterpressed IRS report and tapped her on the shoulder. She thanks me with wide eyes for the return of the brochure tipping thIS agent off. Though it was her date’s full psychological immersion into the 10 point typewriter text of the 15x15foot ISstory collage that confirmed thIS agents suspicions: ThIS was drugs. They had tripped into the infOcalypse, a free vérité of quizzical brightly colored trinkets that only make sense to someone in a certain frame of mind.

Outcome: adherents. When they wake up with the mao mask and the 8-track mind ‘zine and the WTF haze of the infOcalypse they will start swimming upstream to find IS. We shall hear from them again.

Sunday 11/11 The InfOcalypse

As our screening was cancelled (due to events detailed below) we’re including a virtual screening here. 

Wigman’s Independence from Kelly Monico on Vimeo.

INDIVIDUAL: A 50 something manicured woman out with a friend on a Sunday Mission Street bruncheon.

After two plus hours of waiting to gain access to the show, the inner conclave of IS had set up camp on the sidewalk in front of a locked SUBmission gallery. An odd menagerie of people from mid twenties to mid sixties with a banjo and backpacks huddling in a grimy recessed door. ThIS individual approached Agent Mom and asked, “Are you all ok? I’ve been by here a couple of times and saw you all sitting out here.”

Outcome: concerned citizen. Though certainly not a recruit or even an adherent, thIS individual did notice and engage with IS feeling our dim little tractor beam emanating from our grimy huddle. She won’t remember us.

Frame (clip) from Chelsea Knight

INDIVIDUAL: An ageless hobo, swathed in full hooded outdoor gear with two wheeled trash cans brimming with recyclables.

After waiting three plus hours to gain entry to the Fair we were granted access to encounter thIS individual who had been asleep amidst the exhibit. (We had been instructed by the gallery management to stow anything valuable or not nailed down each night as drunken hordes of latin club music fans came through every morning from 3 to 5am “wasted” with “no respect for anything”.) Apparently thIS individual had been subcontracted to look in every nook and cranny for recyclables, and presumably any other shiny object that needed inspecting.

CHRISTEENE  “African Mayonnaise” from PJ Raval on Vimeo.

Already put off by being locked out, the observance of thIS individual greatly disturbed the agents present as thoughts of our odd little universe of IS relics being rummaged through and possibly disposed of by thIS individual loomed. During our brief stay in San Francisco, gravitating between the Tenderloin and the Mission, IS’s assessment of possible byproducts of homelessness would likely include extreme mental health issues, drugs and more drugs, and constant industrious acquisition and sale of odd trinkets and products on the street.

While packing up the unmolested show thIS agent observed that we were fortunate that the individual was not of the shiny trinket selling persuasion. It IS more likely, however, that this individual simply didn’t relate to the group. With a mandate to grab the recyclables it was clear that the glass head full of 2 dollar bills and light up eyeballs and embossed gold medals, or the Time-clock, or the aluminum briefcase full of human hair didn’t slot into that milieu. It might have value but how? It presented too much of a psycological barrier to be desirable.

Outcome: dISinterested.

SUMMARY:
In retrospect IS did survive the infOcalypse on 11/11. We did in fact go analog. At the off-site closing ceremony Agent Link was awarded the mISs iS Fair DANGER sash. Medals were doled out to the last agents standing: m[i]le[s] for attending every fair, Handsome Jim for making the longest journey, Cyberhobo for the best improvised project with his hack of IS’s long dormant twitter, and Agent Forrsters for being the host/s with the mosts and for being responsible for the locations of the last two Fairs, Chicago and San Francisco.

Possible host cities for IS Fair 2016 Emancipation are: Raleigh, Reno, Omaha and Los Angeles. Check thIS channel in 26 to 30 months for details.

Full reports from iSFair 2O12 projects are being release every Sunday February – June. See Current Reports.
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