Q no U

Animation As A Bodily Experience

2012-01-30T22:12:00.000-08:00

I recently discovered all of my new school supplies were, in one fell swoop, destroyed by cat urine. So ah, that stuff had a quicker than usual turn around time. School supplies be gone! Too bad I didn't get to use them first.

This semester I'm taking Animation for Installation, the class explores experimental film, projection surfaces and animation as gallery installation, focusing primarily on the technology to make it work. Personally I like flipbooks and zoetropes which are physical objects, things we have to touch to operate, things that we have to interact with in order to experience for all too often as viewers we play a passive roll in the discourse that art invites us to consider, it's a one way stream that we cannot, as viewers affect - it's really only in very limited environments where we are allowed to play with art, touch it, walk with it, interact with it in a very real tangible way. Last night I dreamt up a kind of giant sized reverse zoetrope that would utilize playground equipment or cyclecide (I'm leaning towards the vomit inducing solution) with the idea of making the work stimulate the body physically, something that made the animated installation an ecstatic experience. This isn't a new idea but I'd like it to be an individual experience rather than a group effort.

I like the idea of making an animated art object that we intimately interact with and are also made vulnerable by that interaction so that our psychological well being is caused to wobble a tiny little bit. Above I describe a desire to make a giant interactive piece, but the other end of that scale is making something hand-held. For class we have been tasked with making prototypes. A project I'd like to experiment with fuses extremely hi-technology display units in extremely low-tech looking interfaces i.e. VRD in old timey steroscopic viewer looking thingies, nickelodeons, coin-drop flea circus kind of things. Things you put your face up to to simulate a state of isolated darkness by way of putting on blinders, leaving the rest of your body unattended to in physical space, creating an augmented space. Whoa, yeah. I wish money were no object dang it. How does that lend itself to crap reduction? Prototyes.

This last week I used a bunch of crap materials in my house to make two prototypes of these display interfaces. Ding! No pictures yet, sorry, but I'll have them soon as I must document my process. Moreover they are as yet undecorated as they are mere interface prototypes.... so cardboard and spray paint. But because I think I'd like to pitch a grant proposal to the HIT Lab to maybe barrow some gear for an installation I'll have to flush out the objects fairly well. In due time.

While a VRD "stereoscopic viewer" is pie in the sky, or a cyclecide zoetrope for that matter, at the moment the crap reduction via creative process is in effect.

gestural

2012-01-24T12:53:00.001-08:00

an unexpected cry

2012-01-21T23:25:00.000-08:00

To my dear sweet baby kitty of 14 years, JuneBug.
Oh my little darling, you won't be mine forever.

It's been a year. I still look for her and I still expect to find her. If that makes me crazy, loving so totally, then I'm effing crazy, so be it.

Truth

2012-01-19T13:10:00.001-08:00

front of found art object

back of found art object

Admission of an inner truth:

I struggle with wishing photographer friends well in their professional endeavors yet hating their untrained sophomoric work. To be honest I'm troubled that they are succeeding with their levels of craft and I am not.

I'm afraid this makes me a bad person.
I'm better than that.

This doesn't mean my work isn't untrained or sophomoric, but neither am I asking people to give me money in exchange for my crap work.

Waterfall

2012-01-18T20:37:00.001-08:00

Chalk drawing on concrete wall.
Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland OR

Sent from a tiny touch screen. Go! Technology go!

Back at it

2012-01-17T22:00:00.000-08:00

Today was the start of spring semester.

Under-slept due to the furnace fan that I cannot sleep through (programmed for my roommates wake time), I'd rather freeze than be awoken by the damn furnace fan. Earplugs don't cut it. It's not that it's exactly loud but more that it's a deep vibration. I will HAVE to figure out how to sleep through the furnace. I've always just turned it off at night. I am not an evil roommate who refuses to have the heat on in the dead of winter and I accept that this is my problem to solve. If sleeping pills, white noise and earplugs don't help I don't know what I'm going to do.

When my alarm went off indicating it was time to make like I was waking up -- it was more a snotty reminder of how long I'd already been awake begging the gods to let me go back to sleep -- to discover it was a snowy winter wonderland outside. I was all kinds of thrown by this. We dug out tire chains and managed to get me out of the house no more than 10 minutes late - without breakfast. I did get coffee so there is that. Priorities.

Regardless of being groggy class was fun. In one of my animation classes we did a series of gesture drawings then scanned them and loaded them into after effects to use as key frames. The homework is to draw some inbetweens to animate the sequence into a sort of choreographed something or other. I don't even care if my drawings are scroobily globs of crap, once I've animated the shit pile together it'll be a learning experience.

This semester I'm taking a continuation of an animation class, more animation, contemporary art theory (a crap generation lecture class) and, Pacific Northwest Literature. Chugga chugga.

At the mo I'm tired, waiting for Tony so that we can have chow together and maybe a movie before I pass out form stupid exhaustion. Here's to hoping I'll sleep through the 5:30 wake-up furnace fan.

Embroidery Animation

2012-01-16T22:08:00.000-08:00

You know what this is? A fuck of a lot of work is what! Holy CRAP! Animation is a lot of work as it is but embroidering a music video, that's admirable.

Surprises

2012-01-15T18:50:00.000-08:00

I recently set up the self portrait studio in the house in an unused room. The stuff is all behind a closed door and takes very little effort to turn on, a few switches and it's all good to go. Every so often I check the card in the camera, every once in a while there are surprises to be found.

Bobo had made a bunch of detail shots of some of his parts, a clavicle, an ear, up the nose, a close up of a bandage and, this open mouth. I am loving the intimacy of this group, I'm not ready to publish them all yet but will soon =)

Stains of Death

2012-01-15T17:22:00.000-08:00

At the Hour of Our Death from Mark & Angela Walley on Vimeo.

Photographer Sarah Sudhoff takes on a responsibility to document evidence of someones passing, celebrating deaths as we celebrate births. Through all of her work she presents life, death and the body in all of it's bits and pieces with clarity and honesty with large prints inviting viewers to closely examine uncomfortable material.

Bobo In Residence

2012-01-11T14:47:00.000-08:00

Tony has been staying at my place since The Holidays as he'd been moving out of one unlivable place into a new place only to find the new joint also unlivable. The previous tenant still has literal heaps of stuff to remove before Tony can so much as position his bed let alone get his own stuff sorted. Also it seems that having the space heater on pops the breaker. Booooo!

We've almost fallen into a delightfully rote domestic pattern. I think it's incredibly sweet. I've been home on winter break I've not had too much to do but sleep in, graze the internet buffet of image fluff and, sort through crap; I've not been trying to manage homework projects or school reading and writing. So it's been fun domestic blissy cuteness. I love that he's here. I do like hanging out with the guy quite a lot. Although, I think my hospitality might be getting on his nerves just a little bit. He's used to being alone most of the time and I'm all up in his business pressing him with tea and requests for sexy time.

I understand not being settled is stressful regardless of how comfy The Secret Spygirl Hideout may be, it's not his place and he's not with his stuff. There is an end to this transitory state, he's working on getting his place sorted and organized so that he can actually move in to it.

Until then, I'm enjoying having him around.

New Tattoos

2012-01-10T01:32:00.000-08:00

A while back my brother gave me some gift certificates for tattoo work that he'd won as part of a prize packet for a race he'd participated in. He's never going to get tattooed so he passed them on to me. Last summer I got a blue tear drop on the inside of my left index finger (seen below). Last friday I got a heart on my thumb and three little black dots on my fingers of both hands (seen above). I've been wanting the little dots for about 30 years. It's like a dream come true.

A Shrimp Running On A Treadmill To The Benny Hill Theme Song

2012-01-09T19:01:00.000-08:00

Because I love you.

There I said it.

It's just crap

2012-01-05T21:25:00.000-08:00

The crap pictured here is not my crap, thankfully.

Over and over again, I think 'if it isn't crafted with exceptional skill and of quality materials and, hasn't been passed down with an explanation which adds a value, an object is just crap.' And even then, sentimentality does not add an actual value to an object. It's just crap.

Moving into this house with the daunting task of sorting out the crap from the wheat, moving my own stuff down here and now living with all of it for a year, most of it really is crap. I have managed to knock a big ass hole in the mountains of crap, the bigger stuff is gone. Now I'm working on the smaller aggregate of crap. Through the last few months I've made an effort to sort accordingly or shit-can the crap. I could find something in any room of the house at any moment that qualifies. It truly amazes me how much crap we amass in a very short time period.

I'm opening my own bins and trying to sort through stuff that was packed in haste many years ago and has been moved a number of times until I had a home to unpack the stuff. It's overwhelming. I open bins to find completely disconnected items thrown together and I don't know what to do - I shut down a little, put the lid back on and move on. Frustratingly, all of my bins are like this. I'm working towards having some all-together empty bins to toss things into as I find them so they can begin to be organized or made to leave the house.

One of the trickiest things for me is that I'm a do it yourselfer. I'm your asshole friend that proclaims "I can make that better" to everything you or I want to buy when we go shopping together (unless it's vintage or quality retro). I save things to make other things and have a whole classification of stuff that I justify as "material goods". The trick being if I use it to make a craft project then I've just made crap with my bare hands. I would love to make decor for my mythical dream house, but since I don't live in my dream house I'd be making crap. If I make stuff to contribute to the comfort and beauty of my present home, as soon as I leave it the stuff I've made for this place becomes crap. You see the problem here? I'm a crap generating machine. I could write artist statements to accompany the stuff thus transforming the object from crafty crap to Art - I am an Artist after all. I could go through my entire house assigning Arty Bullocks to everything I've ever made. That is a good idea, admit it.

All those Christmas cards, letters, uncurated photos, crap. All of the, two steps from being finished projects, crap. All of the upcycled or reconditioned stuff, crap (polished turds, really). Duplicates that are not a set... whittle down to the minimum and get rid of the rest, unless it's a bag of diamonds it's probably crap (anybody need a sewing machine? I have a nice Elna or a Viking for sale). Somehow I have 10 bed pillows! I will make throw pillows out of them because I am capable of exceptional skill in that department, therefore they will not be crap except then I will have twice as many cushions as I had superfluous bed pillows, I'm not sure how I feel about that (maybe I'll attach artist statements to them).

I keep talking about the Great Crap Reduction Program, it's underway and moving along well enough, even though at times it's completely overwhelming. Maybe in addition to my Get Rid of Something Everyday Program I'll also undertake a Finish My Abandoned Projects Program and a Make Something With All of My Crap Program - this might be tough with my school projects which will lead to a Bachelors Degree in Making Animated Crap.... switching to Contemporary Animated Arts probably isn't going to help my Crap Reduction Program, making the kind of work I have been doing generates even more crap than you could possibly imagine (unless you're an animator and know what I'm talking about). Those tissue paper pom-poms I want to make because the look like a fun way to decorate, crap. I'm kind of disappointed that so much of what I want to make my space joyful is infact crap. Perhaps I can find a balance... Shabby Modern or Modern Bohemian or realistically DIY Crap.

So this is my singular goal-set (outside of school) for 2012, get rid of the crap.

Things that have totally rocked seven ways to Sunday

2011-12-30T19:57:00.000-08:00

Team Awesome wishing you a happy New Year!

Looking back on the year, I've had some really stupid injuries
1. The Backsaw Incident, April
2. Toe Gash 2011, July
3. The December Neck Pull, Mid December
4. Back Out For Art, Late December

I had a good run of not hurting myself Summer/Autumn

Things out of my control that hurt really bad but aren't injuries
1. Losing JuneBug
2. Failing vision
3. Migraines

Not bad considering. Losing JuneBug was a major event though, I could have stopped my list at that one item for the heart break was too much to bear at times.

Things that have been hard but worth it
1. Quit smoking
2. School (I'm a Junior now wee)
3. Abject Poverty (I wouldn't have quit smoking if I weren't so broke)
4. Finishing my INW board term while living in PDX

Things that have totally rocked seven ways to Sunday
1. Meeting Tony (May)
2. My job for Burning Man
3. Gifted ticket to Pacific Fire
4. Getting the Godspeed running and delivered to PDX
5. Redeeming a gifted tattoo gift certificate
6. New glasses
7. Good grades
8. A gifted a trailer hitch welded to my truck (yet another gift)
9. Camping in a trailer at Burning Man (gift)
10. Camping with Tony (squee)
11. Tony and I changing our relationship to Team Awesome (September)
12. My mom paid off my SallieMae loan! Holy crap!
13. Therapy, thank goodness for therapy
14. I've made a pretty good pile of Art
15. Reading A Chronology of Water was a jolt and a half that I really needed
16. Meeting the author of A Chronology of Water
17. Doing the Artist Way (well, part of it anyway)
18. My house! The gift of my house is amazing!
19. Gifted an awesome mechanical drafting table
20. Gifted the very computer I am using to craft this list (thank you Stuart)
21. Gifted 3 seamless backdrops
22. Homemade chocolate pudding, seriously.
23. Went flying at Burning Man
24. Critical Massive was pretty fun (gifted ticket)
25. A friend helped me pick up my motorcycles
26. The same friend is storing them at his place, and repairing one of them
27. Redeeming another gifted tattoo gift certificate
28. My roommate is pretty rad, without him I'd flounder
29. Did I mention Tony?
30. Yeah. Tony.
31. The gift of a Flickr subscription for 2011, thank you K
32. The gift of cash from Gabi
33. Anybody who bought something from me last year contributed tremendously
34. Craigslist free listings
35. KITTIES!

All and all a giant massive sincere heartfelt round of thank yous out to all of the amazing people who have helped me through the last year.

totally random factoids

2011-12-28T13:11:00.000-08:00

The holiday was perfectly awesomesauce with Tony. We slept late, cooked lots of ridiculous food and ate damn near all of it, went to a movie (The Artist) then came home and watched another movie (Down With Love) staying up late and then, slept super late again and ate more! Holy wow. GO TEAM AWESOME!

The average height of american women is 5'4 1/2", this has gone down 2 1/2" in my lifetime. I am now "far above the national average" height. Glancing at a chart for the world, I'm generally considered tall. No wonder nothing fits.

I just found the paperwork for Mocha and Shadow also known as Muffin and Dude showing they were born on 9/25/2005. They're younger than I thought they were and I'd been rounding up. I was told they were 7-8 when I got them last year making them 8-9 now and I was rounding up due to the known memory problems of the reporting party. Everybody was wrong. They're just 7, not possibly near 10 as I had been thinking.

Perma Pink

2011-12-24T03:26:00.001-08:00

Perma Pink, originally uploaded by Qathi.

I tried and failed to change my hair color. Apparently this _is_ my natural color. So I trimmed it up to enhance it's elf like qualities in an effort to not shave the sides which I want to do ever so badly. Yes I do. It needs a trim badly. And a hot oil treatment. One thing I know: it won't fade. So there is that.

Seeds of Change

2011-12-22T21:58:00.000-08:00

As we move through to another Birthday/Solstice/Christmas/New Years/Sumble season I can't help but reflect on what I had to say about all of it last year. Last year I acknowledged that all of the things I hate about holidays don't exist anymore and there is little reason to continue to harbor the deeply rooted anger. Looking at it that way has eased my distaste for Christmas some. Some of that is my mom is out of town and the rest of it is that Tony is real and Tony being the guy he is, suggested that we make our own traditions and ditch all the crap we hate about the holidays. And you know, it's working. Bad Idea BoBo Monkey has been coming up with stuff like 'get drunk on eggnog and go puke on shoppers' and 'throw bottles at trains' and 'go to the movies' (which we will likely do), and instead of suffering through the weird traditional food my mom cooks (badly adapted to ensure blandness and cranberries) but doesn't know the origin of the traditions (I do). That Tony is of the mind to suggest we make our own traditions is a HUGE win. Rather than throw bottles at trains we're probably going to stoke a fire, cook food we especially like but don't get to eat very often, cuddle on the couch, maybe play some dice games, perchaps watch sappy movies, dream up some art projects to work on together (we already have one in the works) and generally hang out for a whole day together which we rarely get to do. I've pitched a makeshift 'tree' in the living room from a step-ladder. I've made him a gift from things I have around the house, wrapped in paper I made and decorated myself. These may be the seeds of new traditions.

Last year, as a 'resolution' I declared

* I shall open myself to receiving welcome, sustainable, fulfilling, healthy, balanced, accepting, romantic, respectful love and partnership (with me).

Pinch me!

Every so often I think things like, 'Am I in love with the idea of being in love or am I in love with him?' And then I see him and I'm overwhelmed with bliss and joy. Yes I am in love with him. He's a truly magical person. And he seems to harbor mutual feelings, though he admits to being not very good at gushing and compliments, the sentiments are there, and I can see and hear them very clearly from his actions and language even if it isn't concise or specific. I feel completely encompassed in delight from being with him. I want to savor the simplicity of this feeling forever and ever.

Here's to planting seeds of new traditions!

The Christmas Ladder was hung with care

2011-12-21T19:47:00.001-08:00

The Christmas ladder was Hung with care, originally uploaded by Qathi.

The Christmas Ladder was hung with care.

The closest thing I'll get to a tree. It's topped with pasties from my burlesque days and a festive gargoyle.

Finals Week

2011-12-16T21:49:00.000-08:00

Finals week is over! Four heavy assignments are in the bag with three studio classes and one liberal arts presentation. One of the projects was fairly labor intensive and caused my neck to bunch up in a way that hasn't eased since monday; I've been fighting that all week, trying to get by without taking muscle relaxers simply because I couldn't afford the downtime.

School is out for a month and I am so ready for the break. Now it's time to catch up on sleep and TV shows! WOOO and take the muscle relaxers I really need. ow.

Like, Eclipse

2011-12-16T19:47:00.000-08:00

Eclipse book from the Twilight series reduced to the filler word "like" which have been sewn together in longs strings and sutured back into the spine of the book.

I utilized filler word data collected in class (from previous assignment below) to systematically recontextualize a preexisting literary work, removing all but the filler words. Utilizing the system of collection, to establish rules of reduction, the final piece will be a physical book reconfigured to reflect the collected data.

Pie Chart of filler words, felt, 9" round. This accompanied spreadsheets of collected data and a live performance piece reciting a conversation of filler words only.

Data visualization of filler and placeholder words collected during a specific time period of a specific set of participants. The shape of the final project will be dictated by the final collection of data. Data will be collected via redundant methodology of record taking to include tabulation and recordation of our established criteria. We’ll transcribe the collected data into physical and visual form to represent how we use filler language in academic settings. The final piece will be a mixed media presentation of data as 2D data visualization, 3D visualization and 4D presentation.

Animated Arts final FA11

2011-12-14T15:05:00.001-08:00

Dedicated to Anthony D. Shafer.

About growth and natural transformations, journey and explosive transformation into a desired form.

xoxo

Flip book. Watercolor and ink on Stratmoore watercolor paper and brown craft paper. 4.5" x 6" originally designed to be viewed in the hand. Shot in iStop in 3s, with a couple holds and some cycling, digital viewing is intended to be looped.

I'd like to add more cels to the end but it's getting too big to handle. I went into critique feeling pretty bad about this assignment. I didn't think I hit any of the assignment goals, but as it turns out that's not true, I got most of them. The project I originally proposed failed failed failed oh man, so I had to move on, but not after beating that dead horse. I'd conceived of a new idea, mapped it out and then fought with it for a while. Yesterday-today, (they all blend together), I gave in and let it run it's course. Of what you see here there I cut 50 pages and would like to add 30 or so to round it out the end nicely.

But right now - it's nap time, I've been up for three days.

With YAY! Built Right In

2011-12-13T21:35:00.001-08:00

Six Eyes

2011-12-12T13:56:00.000-08:00

Now, more hispster than ever before.

YAY! My new glasses have arrived. No wonder my head has been hurting, my prescription is radically different (at least it feels that way). It's going to take some time to get used to the bifocal though but, whatevs I CAN SEE! I can read directions and see clocks and read my phone, I can see the symbols on my keyboard, I can see my food! I'll be able to paint my toenails again! I was not seeing very well at all, it's a wonder I could drive.

All told though, it's taken over a month since I began the process to get new glasses. That is including eye examination, hunting for frames, ordering incorrectly, the return and reordering. Over a month is a little frustrating to my internal conflict with our modern world of immediacy -vs- delayed gratification Delayed gratification FTW! I ordered this pair November 28th, they arrived December 12th, two complete weeks to process when ordered correctly. Not bad for $43.

Bonus points, through the magic of technology and the virtual try on feature at Zenni Optical, it was possible for Monkey to help me select these frames; not directly, but with screengrabs, email and chat windows we were able to narrow the field of choices. We decided on two pairs, these and if they were correct I'll order the other pair soon.

In my glasses shopping I looked at a couple of known to be painfully hip eye wear boutiques, just to see what I was missing out on. Yeah. No. Zenni Optical has frames representing current trends. Not a HUGE selection of bleeding edge eyewear fashions but enough that I didn't feel I was making any compromises.

I can see my food. Is this a good thing?

Inside The Genie's Bottle

2011-12-11T19:16:00.001-08:00

Last night Monkey did something so incredibly astonishing I completely melted. The sensation he gave me through a perfectly innocent act unexpectedly and instantly sucked me back into the deepest reaches of my comfort-cave safe-place, it was if he accessed a place so sacred and protected within me that it felt as if he was inside the core of my being with me.

I have never experienced anything like it.

Big Girl Phone

2011-12-10T16:28:00.001-08:00

I've been on T-Mobile for a while. I switched when my Virgin Mobile phone took a crap, at the time they didn't have an android phone (I wasn't going to spring the cash for a handset I didn't actually want) and T-mobile was the only company supporting the android. With the switch my bill went from about $30 a month to about $70 a month for a no contract deal with t-mob. Last year when my G1 died a miserable death I sprang full price for a new phone and have been rockin the super smart phone to it's fullest potential. Recently t-mob discontinued their no contract plans thus forcing customers to sign a contract. I was about to do it but with enough question asking learned that it would cost me more and I would have fewer and more limited services. Boo. BOO!!!

Last month Monkey suggested putting me on his plan. We did the math and determined that by having a family plan in conjunction with a 25% discount through his employer we'll both have less expensive bills. WIN. There is a contract, which I hate, but that's more of a symptom of my state of brokitude that drives that more than any fear of commitment. I don't want to be penalized if I can't pay my bill exactly on time. I like a little flexibility.

Anyhoodle. I upgraded my handset to the HTC EVO. Man this thing is slick! I've been using android phones for a couple of years now and the improvements built into this version are so sweet. I'm not going to gush but to say that I'm really impressed with the magic boxes we get to cary in our pockets these days.

And also... squee!!