Artist's Comments
So, a while back I posted a journal entry about train tracks and why they seem to fascinate so many people. Well there are lots of train tracks around the place but I admit I've never paid them much attention. I decide every so often I'm going to take a walk along a different stretch of the tracks and see what I find. To get out of the studio and do something different yesterday I walked along a stretch of tracks near campus.
Here's one thing that jumped out at me, bright orange dots. ;)
V. These are fun! It looks like 7 or 8 different locations... Hmmm.
J. Yeah I enjoyed it. Same tracks just different spots along it. I don't know if it was someone having fun or someone marking something.
V. It would be nice to think it had something to do with Morse code for aliens or an art project by a devotee of Christo and Jeanne-Claude but it's more likely to be railway folks marking ties that need to be replaced... ?
J. *chuckles* Well it's not really on their scale at least the stuff of theirs that I know. Though that would be interesting and I suppose in some way it could be a massive scale. I think I'll vote for alien code, I like that answer. ;) Or maybe it's the squirrel's, it must be the squirrel's fault.
Yeah, I wondered about the replaced ties, though most of them didn't look any worse then any of the others at least as far as my uneducated eyes could tell.
V. Hi! My name's Crisco. I'm an installation aahrtist from Alpha Centauri. Last week I painted each railway tie with a bright orange dot from Bellingham WA to IN. I usually work bigger, but I've been a little sick. You should see what I did in 1054. Oh, wait, I guess you can see it. One of my finest "plasma balloons"...
J. LOL. That just made my morning. *giggles*
So, Crisco while you're here can I ask you a few questions?
Are you here to take over the world with art? Or is the whole alien domination and take over thing rather over done?
V. Oh, dahling, we don't just take over worlds. Our motto: "We'll annihilate anything for Art." Nothing gets your blood pumping in the morning like a supernova. And, as Joan-Clod says, "lasts longer than a box of radioactive Sharpies."
J. Hmmm... I see. Well then let me pose one of the fundamental questions to you, what is art? I've always been under the impression that supernova's and such were naturally occurring. If you consider the creation of one art; what is heart to you and your people beyond the limitations of Earth?
V. Ah, Ah. As I, Crisco, have written elsewhere in one of my many books available through Rip-Em-Right-Off-Press: Art is {all the stuff you draw/make/write/sculpt/sing/weave while you're trying to become an Artist} minus all the bits involving feces. And the latter is sometimes negotiable, as you demonstrated brilliantly: link. For example, the Trooblinquat Bemquine tribe of Beta Centauri IV produce very interesting and colorful fecal sculpture hundreds of meters tall and it has been hoity-toity art among them for 10,000 or so Earth years. And supernovae are far from naturally occurring, Grasshopper. You really have to work at one. They take several billion Earth years to actually bloom.
J. Well, then you must've perfected the art of longevity as it seems we short lived humans have missed out on much.
(You know perhaps it's not so much about what artists make it's about the fact that they make it and they present it as art. So it comes down to the presentation such as Duchamp's Fountain. Or for example fecal sculptures; are made and presented as art and thus become art over time because they have been presented that way. We become defined by what people previously have declared as art. Lol as a side note this came up in my search for the above as a picture from Burning Man. lol or link.)
V. Yes, humans do miss out on much with your short lifespans. Someday perhaps you'll live long enough to see some of the art that other species have been making all around the galaxy for eons... :-)
(Ah, Duchamp's fountain. I never learned whether he made the fountain or just presented it. I'd have to argue, personally, that if he didn't make it, it isn't art, no matter how he presents it. In some sense it trivializes the creative act to simply take an object and present it unadorned. This separates goats from Goats dressed in tires and paint [link] a la Rauschenberg. Yes, it's also true that we become defined by what people previously have declared as art as you say. Burning Man. Ah, never been to it, but I keep hearing about it year after year...)
J. So, then you have not uncovered the secret of ever last life? You are simply blessed with long life spans?
(He simply presented it as art. I don't really care for him or the idea or the Dada movement; however, the observation I think stands. Simply in terms of what we present as art then can become viewed as art. So it's those who present things who begin to define what art is. Which doesn't persay answer the question but it is an element of some sort in the whole mess.
Hahha poor goat.
Yeah I haven't been to Burning Man though I to keep hearing about it. It would be neat to go.)
V. The secret of everlasting life? Don't die. Very simple. The trick is living through the next "big fizzle" or "big collapse" and through the "big bang" that follows it on the other side. :-)
Anyway... Dada can be fun in some ways, but it was mostly similar to what young people were doing in the 60s: doing whatever it takes to annoy the establishment. :-)
J. *chuckles* Well in terms of art, and just people in general there will always be some element of that. Annoying the establishment, doing what they think is, 'shocking', but may or may not be anything that's really new.
V. Exactly. It's mostly been done in one form or another through the ages, somewhere on Earth.
This conversation can be found here and was carried on by myself and vanilla-vanilla.
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