"The Future-Present is a series of weak signals, gut reactions, and uncanny fascinations, laid out into sketches and short blurbs, printed on an esoteric deck of cards."

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/jul/12/guide-future-present-archetypes-part-1-spark/

‎"Retro physible hackers will take up woodworking, just to “make something real”.

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/mar/8/shape-shaping-things-come/

The Return from a Fantastic Place

I entered the virtual space as an object maker, recognizing Sketch Up as a sculptor might recognize a chisel as it is in the context of a great hunk of marble challenging him to carve out of it some thing greater, if not beaconing a worth while pursuit of time.  The virtual space confronted my notion of material, my tactile self in knowing and understanding my self as a person who processes life and the world through expressions of the hand.  Physical material slowed me down, gave me time to contemplate my emotions, stresses, and intellectual curiosities.  Virtual space and the material it is composed of, was shockingly immediate; it was altogether uncomfortable.  I persisted though, and spent a vast amount of time there, adapting by producing many digital things.  Indeed, I spent more time in that universe of virtual material, than I did in my initial world of physical material wrought with all its resistances.  Only the intermittent realms of dreams interrupted my waking hours in this new virtual space, which probably only exacerbated my temporal confusion.  

Still, and once again as it is a truism in my life, this new virtual environment needed processing, and after a days journey through virtual space, I still had to process my findings physically.  I continued to make with my hands in my medium of choice since very early childhood, clay.  The great amorphous philosophers stone if there ever was one, again only adding to the chasms and endless tunnels of my elastic mind.  It appeared for a long time that every thing I once relied upon to keep sane was only compounding my sinking into the fortuitous and proverbial rabbit hole.  Working in clay, which was once a stronghold in my psyche was now equally queer as the virtual worlds I was inhabiting by day as well as the dreams I was having during sleep.  Nothing made sense anymore, and yet I persisted as the good student I was and as I only know how to do, on masochistic levels, hopelessly addicted to the nothingness.  

One day, while crafting some new digital object, free from the confining notions of entropy and gravity, I had what addicts can an epiphany.  The digital material I was working with created both form as well as space.  In physical reality, on earth, we have air as space, only defined by the ground and the objects protruding from it or resting on it, in what ever substances they may be occurring in, of natural materials or human made ones.  In virtual space there is no preexisting air.  All that is seen on the computer screen is code, ones and zeros.  In order to define the simulacra of digital things, all must be programmed.  This premonition gave way to my understanding of context as it is defined and in relationship to form, in a very formal way.  As an object maker, my idea of physical context has always been taken for granted, except perhaps when considering the display of said object or sculpture.  

It has been a while since I have visited the virtual space of Sketch Up, about two years.  Sure, I may dabble here and there, but I am grounded once again in the physical, it seems more important to me.  But I am still left with questions.  For instance, if it takes physical knowledge to create virtual spaces, for both visiting and creating, then can the opposite be true?  Can the virtual influence the physical?  What is happening now, in my head and in my studio is, I am making things by hand as they have been influenced by virtual means and experiences.  I am using tools such as Push/Pull and Rotate from Sketch Up in my mind in order to create physical objects in clay.  My studio is now more than a sum of equipment, it is in my mind as well as my hands now.

I am still an object maker, but these new objects are strange as if created by a foreign self who I’m still getting to know.  Considering clays origins, the buried earth, in conjunction with the context / form relationship in Sketch Up, that of each thing being created of the same coded material, blurring the lines of distinction and distinction-ability, I feel my self finding common treads in the land and the landscape.  Both made of small things like rocks and trees, and at the same time vastly expansive as far as the eye can see and the feet are willing to traverse.  As infinite as a virtual plane and also composed of the same unifying material.  In a way, my current practice has come full circle, the last major intellectual journey having taken during my undergraduate studies, where I returned processed clay of various mixed powders to the earth to do with it what it may through a series of different weather and climate conditions.  Accepting the larger and uncontrollable forces as they come; what ever the outcome may be, clay can adapt. 

The objects have become contexts or fragments or ideas of contexts, which is a very odd thing to think about, distinguishing intention from interpretation.  But, that is how I felt during my virtual journeys, each foot in two different worlds at the same time, not alive and not quite dead.  In the physical world, I felt as if I was just going through the motions, a sort of muscle memory reaction to life and the things going on around me.  Like knowing where the light switches are in the dark but not using them because I knew they now longer worked.  In the virtual realm, every moment was wrought with tense short bursts of excitement that never amounted to any one memorable experience of pleasure, a steady drip of morphine, one drop at a time just sustaining me until the next, always under the guise that the next click will be the click of something great.  But nothing there amounted to anything, or I should say any actual object.  How does a sculptor conceive of this?

These feeling of loss of self and detachment have began another line of work that is intertwined with the loss of making by hand.  When working with digital material, it seems odd, almost futile to go back into the clay studio and get dirty.  The medium, as all physical materials do, has its limitations, quite unlike virtual material.  Furthermore, and from another perspective, I thought a long time about excess.  I would ask myself questions that challenged my making beyond mere compulsory habits.  Such as, do I really need to make another ceramic cup?  For that matter, with the ease of digital technology at our fingertips, three-dimensional printers, and factories, do I really need to make by hand, a coffee mug?  Won’t it become yet another coffee mug to add to the heaps at Goodwill later?  Does yet another coffee mug need to be made at all, by anyone?  Some would say yes, as a defiant gesture of the hand made.  As an act which defines humans from all other things, in meaning, imagination, and identity.  For those qualities of humans, I agree, they are vastly important to uphold and have daily reminders of, but the time of designed trinkets are over.  They, in the context of virtual communication and connections, like morphine drips themselves, are outmoded.  If you believe other wise, stay in the Shire.

My point here is that for my own practice, making by hand, and all the functions those objects hold themselves to answer, is being replaced by virtual things.  At times I feel very sad by this and at other times it makes the most sense logically and I think it may actually help our overly commercial and materialistic society.  But at what cost, is always the opposing thought in my head.  It is in my nature to flip-flop over issues and this subject matter will not change that fact about me.  As our lives become more and more entangled with virtual experiences, my feelings of the loss of human identity, as making physically has sustained and formed our minds since our beginning, has also become a major theme in my practice.  This feeling is nothing new when seen in reaction to new growing technologies, just look at all the hoopla over industrialization.  Our current neo-craft movement is nothing more than a reaction to virtual technology, just as folks were reacting to machines making objects instead of us and our all import souls.  Both reactions are about loosing touch with the ways of life and how we as humans have always understood it, by manipulating the earths material with our hands.  Life is a processing of natural materials, or I should say it was.  

So what we have here is death on an exponentially rising incline.  Not the death of humans per ‘se, instead a very old and identifiable human identity.  The pinch pot holds more information in our being than it does the liquid it was mean to contain.  Now we cast is away.  The new world is untouchable, not worth fixing, and quickly replaceable.  

As per usual, I have about two or three main bodies of working going at all times, usually each contradicting the other, or each merely presenting the two sides of the same coin, as if coins naturally stood on their edges, as a sculpture would be seen on all sides at all times.  The last few paragraphs explaining the loss of human identity is the first.  The other body of work is about fantastic new perceptions of what is possible, embracing the qualities of virtual spaces and digital materials, accepting their influences by finding similarities between them and the unseeable and expansive preexisting earth.    It is a hybrid living that is mature, simple and constant.  I feel this understanding is broad in scope, which reassures me.  This series calms me and gives solid weight and grounding to me and I feel that it is moving beyond my initial hang ups and gut reactions to digital technologies, alas it must be made though.

Material Interest

I am interested in the dynamic between interpretation and intention during the act of making with clay, a medium that inherently possess parallel states of being as it changes from soft and malleable to hard and permanent.  I find these active moments in making similar to the process of experimentation, creating a push and pull tension between the desires of play and control.  

I like swishing clay with my fingers and hands.  With little effort or refinement, the impressions of my curiosities are recorded instantly.  Due to the amorphous nature of clay, human identity is at once set and challenged during the same moment in time, urging constant reevaluations of self as it exists within fluctuation.    

My interest in making, and not things to be made, gives suggestion that its end products   can be understood as evidences or artifacts.  It is the firing process that instills the making act with meaning, holding it in place, slowing down the experience, nearly stopping time completely.  These petrified moments are possibilities in form, alluding to the meaning of material and its connections to our consciousness. 

Craft / Craftsmanship

(Having recently re-watched Sloppy Craft, a public conversation hosted by The Museum of Contemporary Craft, at PNCA, Fall 2009), I believe much confusion on the topic of craft is based on conversations which confuse the place holder of certain things with the notion of skill for intention.
The latter, Craftsmanship, in my opinion, is a sliding scale of quality based on a makers intention and/or concept; do with it as you would or need to do, for the sake of the viewer / user of that thing you are making.
Craft on the other hand, is two things.  One, a wonderfully confusing, frustrating, and convoluted catch-all of issues, topics, and objects that have double, if not unlimited, meanings as those things mean so much to us as a species. Due to which, and my second belief, Craft is the origin of all humanly constructed things, parenting Art as well as Design, because it was and continues to be the defining moment of our very existence in survival and intelligence.  Craft is simply the manipulation of natural materials for our perceived betterment, and indeed survival and intelligence are important, but furthermore, as we work with and change materials, we become attached to them on many levels, making Craft emotional.
When opening discussions about Craft, as in new perceptions of form or considering intentions in concept by challenging traditional techniques, I think it would be thoughtful to consider one's statements either in the realm of Craft or Craftsmanship.  Not doing so, as I have seen in this lecture, as well as having participated in many academically based critiques and conversations, sets any discussion of Craft on a confusing path, which becomes quickly heated and subject to ominously broad quagmires of tangental topics and passionate interjections.  As a participant in such discussions, after some time has gone by, I have always felt like I was watching a Great Dane chase its own tale until it has exhasted its self.
Such is the arena of public lectures, but discussing Craft is sticky enough already, I think that by stating distinctive guidelines between Craft and Craftsmanship could ease the tension and hopefully lead to greater insights.

Virtual Funeral

http://www.calebbooker.com/blog/2008/01/13/v-funeral/http://www.calebbooker.com/blog/2008/01/13/v-funeral/

Click link above for a small essay on the experience had by the participants.

Virtual Conclusion

I have come to the conclusion that talking about Virtual Reality publicly is a bad idea for my artistic career.  I presume folks either think I'm crazy or a few decades late to the postmodern world.

When I say Virtual Reality, I tend to think of it as digital things, places, objects and materials such as the Internet, SketchUp, or Minecraft.  Different environments alter human consciousness and I do not think these digital realms are any different.  Having massive influences on how we communicate, distribute information, VR is challenging our perceptions of what is real and what is not, turning the pillars of philosophy up side down.

I try telling this to common folks and they just look at me weird.  On the other hand, I want to talk about it with art peers and sometimes I feel like they are staring me down with the loudest "Duh" one could utter.  To the former group of folks, I want to say go read some McLuhan, and consequently, the latter group may being saying the same thing to me.  Thanks, I have, and then some.

I see this VR thing being worked out/on by artists of all sorts, but in very abstract manners.  I know, that's art right?  I argue that the source material strange enough; why are artist's making it more confusing?

Calling on abstract explanations of VR as modern day witchcraft or magic is unsettling for me, a rising theme in contemporary art I have noticed, including Neon-hippy or cyber-pagan expressions. I mean, I get it, when the notion of objects transcend physical law, defying gravity and begin to levitate in the digital spaces we inhabit, appears more common than actual grounded  concepts of objects, there may be rise for any sort of reasoning.  When a co-worker, an avide Minecraft player says, "You would think real life would be more interesting, but it isn't." I begin to worry, on some fundamental level, about the state and condition of human beings.

Casting off science and math as magic has always been a fools way of explaining that which is not commonly, publicly, or rationally understood.  It's too simplistic.  Indeed the power of influence that VR has is ominous, so I also wonder if these fantastic explanations are warranted in a way.  Maybe a Virtual Reality is that much so, that these types of reactions are no longer ignorant or with out consideration.  Maybe these explanations are the closest rational we can get to a real understanding of something so mind boggling.

Magical explanations, although they leave me stunned, in a paralyzed sort of way, are but one way to explain the influence of VR on the human conscious.  In terms of identity, VR has influenced every notion of trans-person-ness in every which way.  Which brings me back to my understanding of what VR is and what it means to me and my artistic interests.  To me, VR is changing how we think of material.  How materials ought to act, bend, and may be formed and manipulated.  Changing material has been our first inclination toward a relationship with the earth.  Now that material has been numerically coded, those limitations have been stretched so far, that it is hard to even see their origins.  I fear we are literally losing touch with the previous understandings of the haptic world.  Possibly, testing the limits of our notion of materials may set a new perspective of our own limitations, questioning just how far we want to influence how we see ourselves and how we see others.

Alas, I have been thinking about this subject of VR and how it is changing us, to the core of our being, every fucking day, every exhausting waking moment for well over two years and I am sick and tired of it.  I'm tired, very tired.  It has been a constant circular conversation that i just can't shut off or tune out.  All this thinking and considering isn't getting my art work anywhere.  It seems I need an equally outlandish explanation of VR of my own, just so I can move on.

In conclusion, a quote from an unknown-by-me source:

"I fully realize that I have not succeeded in answering all of your questions... indeed, I feel I have not answered any of them completely.  The answers I have found only serve to raise a whole new set of questions, which only lead to more problems, some of which we weren't even aware were problems.

To sum it up... in some ways, I feel we are as confused as ever, but I believe we are confused on a higher level, and about more important things."

Amateur Word

Perfection.

A group of us were asked once what the definition of perfection was.  The asker was a designer, and we were a group of MFA candidates in an applied craft and design program.  I answered quickly and without hesitation.  "Perfection is the awareness of a materials limitations."

Meaning then, that perfection is not an ideal, more so an acknowledged relationship between person and material.  In a way perfection is perfectly flawed and suited best so.

The question of perfection came up today in the context of ceramics, in technique and skill.  reasoning I have never understood as ceramics very history proves that there is no such ideal.  If there was, humans should have figured it out by now.  Our continued pursuits of this stuff only proves our ignorance.  Clay, as a formless and squishy material, I think matches ignorance quite well.  It is at once only itself, temporary, and ever stupefying in imagination and intention.

Perfection is subjective, it is merely a human notion.  Therefor fraught with expectation and let down.

Ceramics is Finished

A co-worker and I finished Ceramics last week.  We still show up at work though, we just call it reenacting.

Artist Statement August 2012

My artistic practice centers around the tension between opposites.  I am interested in a consciousness created from material as well as non-material experiences, traversing between the preserved records of physicality and the amorphous possibilities of the virtual.  I favor the acts of production and interpretation.  I create objects in order to evidence the act of making, a function which continues to define my existence and human behavior.  Conversely, producing virtual things acts as a counter point to making things by hand. I find these non-material experiences to be fascinating as well as highly influential to my notion of what an object could and can be.  Through experimentation, finding the similarities and differences between these two ways of thinking about  things, objects, and materials, constantly serves my artistic practice with unique challenges.  Incorporating aspects of utility, function, and the deliberate use of my hand into my works, helps to ground the infinite and fantastic possibilities of the virtual to the everyday physical experience of making.