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.

Jonathan Blow: How Mainstream Devs Are Getting It Wrong

Jonathan Blow: Video Games and the Human Condition

Daniel J Glendening & Jason Starin Artist Talk - New Function

http://archive.org/details/DanielJGlendeningJasonStarinArtistTalk