Superstition in Pigeons

ttp://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/Pigeon/

interesting article on how Pigeons developed superstitious responses to random stimulus. So if they were given food at the touch of a button, then given food randomly, they would try to replicate whatever they were doing at the moment they were given food, in order to be given more!

Goyte- Thanks for your time

Goodnight Ladies meets Fred Astaire

I don't even know how to describe this. Beautiful dance sequence, but the wrongness and the rightness of it... oh!

Matthew Barney, wide neck crewneck

Just the title and appropriated images are powerful enough.

Levi van Veluw- bedroom

These installations are inspired by different aspects of van Veluw's boyhood bedroom, where he spent many solitary hours between the ages of 8 and 14: the Origin of the Beginning.
Not sure how much I like the outcome but I appreciate the idea. You do become very preoccupied with the surface of things because there are a limited amount of things to look at in one room.

From Andre Gide's Journals

25 July 

When desire subsides so does my whole being. 

When beauty no longer excites in us any need of approach, of 
contact, and of embracing, the state of calm that you were fool enough 
to long for at a time when an excess of desires tormented you, that 
state no longer seems to you anything but apathy and deserves to be 
praised only because, perhaps, it makes the idea of death less atro- 
cious, by taming you to it. 

found here 

Keith Haring

http://keithharing.tumblr.com/ they are publishing one page of his artistic journals/sketchbooks for every day of a current exhibition. It's good to read them when you want to remember all 'artists' have the same doubts, concerns etc, and he always manages to get back to the bigger picture within a page. Also, nice to see so much writing. I sympathise.

James Nizam

Really feeling this guy.
James Nizam is making incredible work based in Vancouver. These pieces are about abandoned houses, of which apparently there are a lot where he comes from. He seeks them out, and precisely cuts into them, transforming them into works of art.

Sometimes he uses mirrors to acquire geometric shapes.

 He uses fog to enhance the living, present nature of the light. I like how he's found the location, taken a deserted, abandoned, disused and 'ugly' thing and altered it so simply into something beautiful. The works exist as photographs which I actually find quite strange. I suppose, he can't exhibit an abandoned house, or keep the smoke machine going forever. But I guess the photographs serve still as reminders that somewhere out there, this exists or existed. I simply can't see the photographs as the final piece here.

Art Jokes

"Getting" art is like getting a joke because art is jokes now. When you're telling a joke and nobody laughs, that's because your joke wasn't funny. Or maybe it was funny but then you fucked it up, which is not the point because the same thing happened: no laughing. When that happens it's never because people didn't "get" it.

A lot of jokes these days are "can you believe it?'s", which are sometimes not that funny, because what if you can believe it? Also it's like that thing where the joke isn't funny because the person is trying too hard to make you laugh and you're like "why don't you just fucking relax?" instead of laughing at your own joke to make me do it too. (I do this sometimes.)

And that's my new dissertation. I call it "art jokes."

Erwin Wurm/ David Byrne (Brenton Bostwick)

I love Erwin Wurm, everything he's about.

His stuff is visually exciting, pleasing, often spur-of-the-moment. I love the fact that lots of his work clearly comes to him that second, he doesn't over think it, he just goes and does it. The fat cars are amazing. His inspiration comes from everyday situations and concerns. And a great deal of 'what if'. I like the idea of playing with the things we interact with every day.

This reminds me of my 'jug' project. I want to present ordinary objects in an extraordinary way, make you think again about them or their possibilities. I only choose objects because these are the things we come into contact with everyday in the city, in city life, and we really don't notice them, they are just utensils. Just like a pavement or road is a means to an end. Except they're not, they are things in themselves, and life is more exciting when you can see these things in depth. Not all the time, but some of the time. I think a work has done it's job when afterwards, you see a broom and you think, 'but what if it was pinning a flip-flop to a wall?'

This is a good quote from... well you'll see.
“Often our view of the world is overshadowed by the minds ceaseless ability to categorize and store information. Without this ability, we would scarcely be able to walk down our block without falling over with amazement at each blade of grass poking through the soil, at each tree rising to the sun. It is this ability to process and disregard information that enables us to move through the world, but it is this same process that can stop us from seeing the beauty all around us. To take away the tool of sight is not a blinding, but instead an opening of another quieter vision, an effort to feel the beauty around and inside of us. This freedom to see with a deeper vision is what I strive for, to break away from all that is cluttered and un-essential, leaving behind what is beautiful.” - Brenton Bostwick

His square suits remind me of David Byrne (of talking heads) in this video of a mock-interview (below). It's unbelievably magnificent. "I try to write about small things, paper, animals, a house, love is kind of big. I have written a love song though; in this film I sing it to a lamp."

He also wears the suit onstage in 'Stop Making Sense'. For me it represents so many things: The little man trapped inside the huge corporate world (suits) that swamps his personality, individuality and movement, the personae we put on or play, how our fashion choices instruct the world how we want to be seen and how we see ourselves, how we dress for certain situations or people. How little of ourselves there is in our clothes. How anonymous clothes can make a person.

While wearing the suit his arms always hang limply by his sides. His tiny head appears to declare that his intellect or sense of himself is underdeveloped, or that he has a pea-brain. "I wanted my head to appear smaller, and the best way to do that was to make my body bigger. Because music is very physical, and often the body understands it before the head." He also is a fan of not over-thinking things. I think writing a song or making artwork is very similar, often you do just write it, and understand later.

The multiple archetypal interviewers (who he also plays) mock the standard interview characters that hosts play and the inane questions that they often ask. This way Byrne declares himself not willing to play up to his fame. He has mastered the 'pop star' game, he is both star and anti-star, and at the same time his own fame-generating machine. By parodying the situation, he reveals its inherent falsity.

"The better the singer's voice, the harder it is to believe what they're saying. So I use my faults to an advantage." This quote relates to everything I'm doing right now.

Transformer

I've been revisiting a strange thing I did last year that I'm finding more and more interesting and getting better and better able to talk about why.There's so much input from the world that goes into my reading of the thing that i did, why i think i did it in the first place and why i think it's important, that it's really hard to express or collate. But i'll try.
It's almost everything about this album that draws me.

-Transvestites
-Theatricality
(beauty, tragedy)

Kowloon Walled City

Kowloon Walled City- photographs by Greg Girard and Ian Lambot
Amazing photographs of the most densely populated place on earth. Not sure why I find this so interesting, but it definitely fits somewhere. I'll keep collecting.

Greyhound

Fred and Ginge dance to Motown

Wow, this works incredibly well!!!

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers- 'I Won't Dance'

In the recording he says, "ring-a-ding-ding, you're so lovely..." Marvellous.