It gives me a sense of tremendous pride and joy that my art made that list!
Here is the Serpent Mother portion of the article. If you click on the image to the right, you’ll see an image of the entire article. It’s funny and oh-so endearing!
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The Serpent Mother
The Serpent Mother is an interactive sculpture, originally designed by The Lotus Girls for the Burning Man Festival which, for those of you who don’t know it, is essentially a bunch of filthy hippies getting burnt off of their asses, stripping naked, and then welding monstrous devices out of scrap metal in order to dance around them. Kind of like combining a Phish concert with the A-Team, if that helps.
Taylor Square is a new public artwork created by Paul Ramirez Jonas and installed in front of the renovated Engine 8, Ladder 4 fire station in northwest Cambridge, at the intersection of Huron Avenue, Sherman Street, and Garden Street. Taylor Square is the smallest public park in Cambridge, measuring only 57 square feet, and has locked gates. It is a communal space through the distribution of 5,000 artist-designed keys and the invitation to the public to duplicate them endlessly.
Each key, embossed with the phrases “Taylor Square” and “Copy Me”, were mailed to Cambridge households along with the artist’s words, “Here is your key. It is one of 5,000 keys that opens Taylor Square, Cambridge’s newest park. The park and the keys are a work of public art that I made for you. The park has barely enough room for a bench and a flagpole; please accept this key as its monument. Add it to your key chain along with the keys that open your home, vehicle or workplace. You now have a key to a space that has always been yours. Copy it and give it away to neighbors, friends and visitors. Your sharing will keep the park truly open.”
Further distribution of the keys and, thus, the sustained life of the park is the task of the public. In the artist’s words, “Taylor Square belongs to the public. It is closed, yet simultaneously open, re-emphasizing that the ownership of public space resides in the public itself.” The keys for Open are a tangible symbol of this relationship between public space and the public.
Paul Ramirez Jonas’s work has included museum and gallery exhibitions and public art projects throughout the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Rhode Island School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the International Studio Program in Sweden, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the International Studio Program in Sweden, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, among others. Ramirez Jonas lives and works in New York. For more information, visit: www.automat.com.
Find out more about the Telectroscope here and here. I found out about the Telectroscope when looking over my blog logs. A Metafilter article talked about both it and my Alameda-Weehawken article.
I got back from Coachella Monday morning. The weekend was tremendous fun.
High-points:
Kraftwerk - I’ve heard bits of their music for years but their super-low-key on-stage performance was enthralling.
Prince - He’s an incredibly talented guitarist, an incredible singer, terrific on the piano, an incredible showman and choreographer, a fantastic songwriter, and incredibly expressive and sexy on the largest stage. He even transposes cover songs to be his own phenomenally. (and I’ve had a crush on Sheila E since like 1988)
Brett Dennen - If she is on my top 3, I obviously don’t belong at Coachella but a folk festival. She should headline one.
Walking around with an orb following me - Marcus drove the orb while I interacted with people interacting with the orb. This one lady kept asking how they worked and I strung her along until she demanded “I am an Electrical Engineer. Tell me how it knows where it’s going!” She was crushed when I told her it was remote controlled though I tried to console her with our plans of full autonomy. I also thoroughly enjoyed driving the orb while Marcus played with people.
Serge Tankian’s performance was fun if inaudibly loud, standing about 5 rows back with Marcus.
Fatboy Slim is such a presenter, I loved the first several minutes of the show. Then he turned the bass to 11 and I couldn’t bear staying in my spot 250 yards from the stage :-(
Low-points:
Roger Waters - The music sounded too similar to how it did 20 years ago, I’m not a fan of stagnancy or living on your laurels. And I have to admit Floyd reminds me of some difficult times in my life. His new song “Leaving Beirut” was…. it wasn’t a song but a 4 page high-school essay on what he did on his summer vacation. And he read it as such. Apparently, Pink Floyd’s members make better music together than apart.
Charlotte and I have been learning poi spinning recently. One thing we’ve been doing is watching videos on the intertubes. We came across this video that introduced us to Nick Woolsey. Nick is pretty amazing. His videos show his excellent teaching, a puckish grin and an earnest streak 2 miles long. Oh and also that he is a freaking amazing poi spinner.
For the last 2 months or so I’ve been taking poi spinning classes with Jon Dickinson of Fire Arts Academy and Fire Arts Collective. All I’ve got to say is that he’s really good… a very good teacher in a good physical space with good students and… well, if you’re going to learn to spin poi, I highly recommend him.
Here’s his recent flier. If you missed these sessions, never fear, the cycle will repeat at some point!
Fire Arts Academy is offering sessions of Poi & Staff classes in Oakland. FAA is now taking registration for poi & staff classes in Oakland starting Tuesday March 11th. Private classes in San Francisco and weekend workshops are available, please contact us or check our website. (more…)
Internet Explorer viewers of this blog can now see what Firefox viewers have been enjoying for the last year or so…
The green bar behind “Lee.org” at the top of the blog wasn’t visible in IE til I fixed a .css file. Actually, the issue was that IE didn’t follow CSS specs, but it’s hardly worth griping about. IE 6 doesn’t see the background image in my CSS file when it reads as such:
I suppose it’s because IE sees the text being on 2 lines (there’s a carriage return in there) as being 2 elements. But I’m not going to spend any more energy figuring it out.
The writing actually phonetically spells my name in Japanese. Logically, it’s an odd collection of thoughts… “Lee” sounds like “Reason”. Then “Son” and “ko” sound like “village” and “old”.
I have to thank Miki Kawabe for the translation. At Burning Man in 2004, we won the Second Annual Semi-authentic Finnish Wife Carrying Event. We won her weight in beer.
In 2008 we are creating Mutopia our latest collaborative project. It will celebrate the innovation and spirit of our community. Infusing form with greater dynamism and interactivity. Every participant brings new ideas to the work which manifest in fire and animation.
STRUCTURE
13 Seedpods
97’ x 60’ installation footprint
Made of cast aluminium, steel, copper, fire, and light
An interactive LED illumination system throughout installation
Human activated movement controls, via hand cranks and levers
INTERACTIVITY
Mutopia is a participant controlled fire art installation. An individual can initiate sequenced patterns for the fire effects, LED lights and steam. Interactivity is multi-layered in the installation activated via custom buttons, sonar sensors, hand cranks and levers.
You are going to LOVE it!
My favorite part (thus far, nothing is built) is the “Liquid fuel canopy misters”. It’s not too different from a wonderfully dangerous effect I was playing with that I call Fire Fog. Rosa Anna and Mills’ idea is safer than mine but it’ll rock nonetheless!
Isn’t it odd that this downright silly post follows such a very very serious post about Lucille Rathyen. Some truths: You’re born. You live. You die. How well that middle part goes is entirely up to you.
I’d pay at LEAST $25 to see a 300 meter long banana in geostationary orbit over Texas. I put myself in for $25 and said I’d chip in more when they answered a couple questions like what the actual conditions for “success” were.
The Totemobile is cubism in action. The iconic object is radically fragmented as it grows upwards. Its several sides are seen simultaneously from all sides.
A Citroën DS transforms through three stages of abstraction. First the structure separates into its geometric parts. These parts become organic forms, and by the time the sculpture reaches its 20 meter “totem” stage, the organic forms bloom with pure light.
“During my first visit to Citroën’s Champs-Elysees showroom, I was very excited about the possibilities offered by the height and windows in the architecture. I clearly saw an image of a totem growing from a car to great heights.
“I chose the Citroën DS, not because of Citroën’s sponsorship, but because it is an icon for European cars, and I felt that the live qualities it represented (hydraulic suspensions, organic curvature, and mechanical ingenuity) were emblematic of the time. I also chose the DS because it influenced my Mexican-American low-rider car culture. A low-rider was used by the Latin culture as a medium of expression… converting classic cars with hydraulic suspensions, utilizing elaborate paint jobs, became an art form.”
Charlotte was interviewed by a live internet television show called Church of the Perpetual Party when we were at the Fire Arts Festival in July. Here’s the entire show.
Interesting bits:
Gaspo’s Chakratron at 7:20
Dance Dance Immolation at 15:20
interview with Charlotte and Serpent Mother footage at 23:00
It might take a while for the whole 50mb show to stream onto your computer.
FLG is a female-driven collaborative arts group and we made a calendar. Help us fund big flaming metal art by getting our calendar. Forward and post this freely!
I don’t think I mentioned this here before but the Serpent Mother made the centerfold (yes, literally the centerfold) of the November 2006 edition of IEEE Spectrum magazine. Spectrum is the Time Magazine of the professional geek world.
Here’s a couple SWARM Glamour Shots that Mark Alexander shot of Erik and myself. It’s mid-August and we’re working at the Box Shop on getting the batteries for the 6 orbs up to snuff for the playa.
On November 2nd, there was a talk given at Swissnex in San Francisco titled “Fire Arts and Burning Desires: Flame as a creative medium with Burning Man fire artists”. The presenters were Dave X, Crimson Rose, Lucy Hosking, Wally Glenn, Bill Codding, Louis Brill, and (certainly not least) several Flaming Lotus Girls!
You can watch the entire 100 minute presentation on Fora.tv!
Cracked Magazine did a piece called
