Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Residency 4, Day 8: 'AI will be responsible for reducing [car accidents] one of the leading causes of death in the world.' - Mark Zuckerberg

Robot artists Carolin Liebl and Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler sent some pictures from the studio visit they made a month or so ago, with the pleasing message, 'we found some pictures of the studio visit at your place in Skibbereen. What a great moment :)'. I don't think I'll bother posting them or sharing them yet. A hell of a lot is happening. Rather than share everything here in advance, I'll encourage people to turn up on Saturday, 17th September at 2pm, for the opening event. This though, begs the question, about what to post about (here). Maybe the issue of 'craft' is worth mentioning (again!!!)?

My craft is in striving to not make (or craft) anything. In other words, the extent to which I find myself making or crafting something is the extent to which I have failed. And, believe me, it takes huge effort not to make anything.

Thinking about those 'sky dancers' with blowers and the possibility of having one outside the art centre, on the roof of the connected café, during the exhibition, there are so many things to consider. Intuition says there's something wrong with the idea of having one at all. A word GIMMICK positioned on the side of it, might, 'em, 'work'. ('It works', another on of those problematic phrases often thrown about long ago.) That would be funny (-ish), but then how does a 'whacky dancer' contribute or somehow connect to the general themes? Maybe text like WIND POWER, or WIND ENERGY would be better. Then again having text printed on the side constitutes designing and that's against the principle just discussed. To do it properly would involve searching until some whacky sky dancer jumps out, so to speak, and seems appropriate to the show. I can't imagine what that would look like. It might take months to find. There might be nothing out there. Besides, words like mad, crazy, whacky or complex undermine the intentionality too. These are stresses and strains in Mocksim's life.


Monday, June 27, 2022

Residency 4, Day 6: 'The possibility of a thinking machine and the actuality of the human agent should be exposed as a false dichotomy.' - Reza Negarestani


Been brewing titles for the upcoming show:
  1. Find Yourself - 2022
  2. Insecurity Camera Dance -2021
  3. Irish Signatures (More PODS) - 2019
  4. Soi-veillance - 2022
  5. Uillinn Pipes - 2022
  6. Typical Cross Section - 2021
  7. Array - 2021
  8. Insurance - 2021
  9. Boring 2 (Drive-by) - 2022
  10. Inflatable Wind Turbines - 2022
  11. Stupid Plugs - 2022
  12. Battery Powered Wind Farm - 2022
  13. #camponagolfcourse Tent - 2022
  14. #camponagolfcourse Poster - 2022
  15. You are Trespassing - 2022
  16. Insecurity Guards - 2022
  17. Immersive Interactive Installation - 2021
  18. Signage 2 - 2022
  19. Battery Power - 2022
  20. Solar Power - 2022
  21. Wind Power - 2022
  22. Hand Power - 2022
  23. Making Wind - 2019
  24. Breaking Wind - 2022
  25. Dutch Stamp - 2020
  26. Turbogolfing Real - 2021
  27. Turbogolfing Real Still - Probably won't do this
  28. Turbogolfing - 2019
  29. Turbogolfing Still - 2021
  30. Turbogolf Proposal - 2021
  31. Signage 1 - 2022
  32. Spare Balls - 2022
  33. Ball on Pipe - 2021
  34. Reserection (Easter Rising) - 2022
  35. Balling - 2021
  36. Loading Bay, and the Rest - 2022
  37. Green NRG - Probably won't do this
  38. Killed Negative - 2022
  39. Turbine Kick - 2021
  40. Autofocus Feedback Loop - 2021
  41. Die Cast! - Probably won't do this

Sunday, June 26, 2022

Residency 4, Day 5: 'Art will always be a site divided between subversion and institution, contemplative passivity and active rupture, the State and the crowd, creation and the market. An important work displaces these frontiers but it cannot abolish them.' - Alain Badiou


Today involved getting up close to wind turbines again, driving over my reading glasses and smashing them to smithereens, getting new ones in Macroom (2 for €12!!), chatting with and listening to the wisdom of Miriam O'Connor on the question of residencies in a) a cattle mart, and b) a field (of her own), listening to the world premiere of Amy Rooney's Pendulums and Sundials, and even more.



Friday, June 24, 2022

Residency 4, Day 3: 'Video... displayed in a temporal manner might be considered as theatre whereas video displayed... as part of an installation... results from the abandonment of the movement of time in favour of an emphasis on the spatial dimensions of exhibition.' - Bridget Crone

 


I got another phone call from Google HQ in Dublin last week, this time about the traffic jam promoted as tourist attraction, and business, on Google Maps. ‘Hello, is this Skibbereen Traffic Jam?’, they asked. The call took me by surprise, for some reason I was made to feel guilty, and lost my nerve. Rudely, I hung up on the caller but regretted it immediately. The location/business was then removed from Maps.

But why should I accept this? Fair enough, Skibbereen Traffic Jam is not yet a successful business, in the profit-making sense, but I do see it as a tourist attraction, and doubly fascinating, in that you can simply observe it, the vehicles, the facial expressions, bathe in its murmuring engine sounds, OR you can participate in it yourself (ideally with a car but possibly on foot). For my part, I had completed a street photography project in connection with the jam, and a film will be shown as part of the exhibition opening at @uillinnwestcorkarts the West Cork Arts Centre on 17th September.

In addition, I had begun, in discussion with experienced entrepreneurs, to think up ways of expanding the enterprise by producing actual Traffic Jam, in different flavours, to sell at the famous farmer’s market and/or directly to drivers trapped in their cars. So I have put the location back up on Google Maps as Plódú tráchta sa Sciobairín: https://goo.gl/maps/g6G3uWoNEWZT5yfn9

Thursday, June 23, 2022

Residency 4, Day 2: 'As long as I live I will have control over my being.' - Artemisia Gentileschi

 

It is not always easy to know what to do. In fact, arguably, it is surprising people are motivated to do anything at all. That is considering there is no meaning in the universe, especially. About a year ago, I arranged to meet the person who ran the MAFA I completed about two decades ago. He'd had health problems including a period, speculatively due to the medication prescribed, of having zero drive. It sounded terrible, to my ears unimaginable. The ordinary way he described it got me thinking. Perhaps curiosity, and the energy to pursue interests, is not special or mysterious, but simply chemical or equivalent. On the other hand, and this is maybe Beckettian, once you have decided life is worth living, or a slightly better option than not being alive, then that slightly becomes enormous, if not infinite. Leaving out the question of pain or love, if you accept that not being alive would be one-hundred percent nothing, then existence and consciousness becomes everything. So, it is a binary thing. Which would you like: nothing or everything? I'll have everything please. And it is enchanting, it has its charms, this existing business.

Thursday, June 2, 2022