         
conceptspaul-3/31
games invention I'm been thinking a lot about Creston as a place that marks the transition from city to suburb. It is on the edge of where the city ended. The country club was an early institute of wildness at the edge of town. The housing development east of the club is a pristine example of suburban housing devleopment. Much of the culture of suburbs are sticking points to this day and are embodied in spaces (public and private) and in material goods which of are items of desire and consumption. Much of the promise of the suburbs is about experience. Space and relaxation/ calmness/ idealized nature/ recreation. (At the end of each of the lines of mass transit, the private companies operating transit developed recreational parks). I like the towne club concept because of how it engages this promise in it's brand and in the promise of flavor and enjoyment. As a lost brand it opens up the constructedness of the now accepted "naturalized" brands. Games and RE-Creation In terms of the promise of the life in the suburbs, recreation is a big one. It is tightly connected some major cultural categories that are related to visual/material forms. 1. space (golf, tennis, football) can all be interpreted as games about property. Space is needed for them all, and space has new, artificial, imaginative, and powerful meanings within the construct of the games. 2. Imagination objects: Game pieces, bats, balls, courts, hoops, ropes are all items through which we extend our imagination in social space in relation to others. After one engages a game and becomes familiar with the game objects, every little thing about the object can become full of meaning and significance. The industry of facilitating this materialized cultural imagination is huge. How might we as artists give the design and making of such variation back to citizens? Why don't people alter their own tennis rackets and golf clubs? Our imagination is nearly fully facilitated by commerce. 3. Rules/codes; each game has a set of rules or codes that prescribe or constrain behavior and interaction. These are meaningful as metaphoric laws or social mores. How the rules change, bend, are mediated (written or remembered), and enforced all have rich implications. 4. Mindless fun: games are good to play not because of their intellectualized cultural meanings, but because of their integrated experiential, psychological, sociological exercising. They mess with hugely meaningful human things, but do it in a completely virtual space - where there are no consequences, injuries, deaths, . . . . They are mindless fun, but deeply engaging and meaningful to the players. They facilitate behaviors and human engagement that would be completely unacceptable anywhere else in public. 5. Games are performance and social theater. In many ways I could only hope that art (and public art) could have such relevance. I keep thinking about the neighborhood desire to turn the rock shop into a teen recreation center. I imagine a center of new games with recreated towne club soda for all. How might we invent and present games in varied places around Creston? How might games use the context here as a way of designing a very specific experience of fun? How might games be particularly relevant to this place historically, culturally, spatially? This activity could start playfully as a studio investigation. It is also granular and could become one or many related or non-related activities that all fit together curatorially.
The Brittany Brainity Bonanza – FEBRUARY 18, 2005 Just now at lunch, Emily, Becky, Kate, Jenny Pope and I had a wonderful discussion about our studio. Kate said she imagined making our entire space super shiny— glazing and waxing and glossing everything. I then continued to propose the idea I've been half joking half serious about for the past 3 weeks of suspending a huge cargo net about 8 inches above the floor in the space. This serves many purposes. First of all, it ceases all activity on the floor. The mop marks, the dust, the melted snow, the asbestos, the foot prints, and showcases them. It makes them an index that is decidedly (by us) finished. It makes the marks extremely important and vital to the foundation of the space, a history and a monument of people and time and function which no one made notice of, but literally trod over for decades. The different tiles also reflet this site-specificity and identity over time, and evokes questions and narratives. Why are there patches of mis-matching tile? Is there something that was covered up, or did one style just sell out at the local hardware store? Whose footprints are walking in circles? What were they thinking/experiencing while doing this? What footprints overlap, and what are the relationships between those people? The cargo net provides a way of suspending the viewers and the trodders from disturbing these histories and artistic indexes of life and place. The difficulty of maneuvering on the cargo net almost creates child-like instincts of crawling on the nets, and therefore inspecting the floor at an unusual level, peering through the holes between the ropes at the showcased floors, noticing things never noticed before about the space through its often forgotten history of the floor index, and at a very personal level, low and in your face. One could even touch the floor by poking a finger through the spaces between the ropes to further examine their imagined stories. Also, cargo nets remind me of the cargo nets in the ape house in zoos, and often with our large store front window and the activities that are new in this space, passers-by pause and stare in at us, sometimes cupping their hands against the glass, and I have felt like we almost need to or want to perform, just as the apes at the zoo, so the aesthetic quality of the nets is a signifier of many things, and could be more to others than the ones even listed. Another way we discussed of showcasing the history of this space and appreciating its beautiful ugliness of the gutted dusty building is to cover the floor and walls with plexiglass, same idea, suspending the walls and floor behind an untouchable. Protecting us from hurting the floor and walls, ceasing all activity and arbitrarily calling them "finished", and creating the same spectator source as the cargo net, just a different quality. Making a floor important by showcasing it behind a clear protectant, kind of like framing trash and giving it a totally different connotation. Again, narratives would be formed as well as provocative questions, and history/index would be preserved and celebrated; instead of focusing on making something "NEW" in the space, we'd celebrate the history and beauty that is still existing there, and some that has been mysteriously boarded over, mopped clean, or otherwise obscured, for any reason. We enjoyed the thought of the new footprints and marks made on the new plexiglass floor would be layered over and relate to the old marks, the foundation marks, and then we thought theoretically, once the new plexiglass layer was deemed "complete" with indexical history, then a new layer would be put on (all layers with about 1 inch of separating air betwixt) and continually, the space would be filled with layers of this indexical history, and evenutally the space would change as you'd have to stoop through it, then crawl through it and eventually, the space be so filled with history it would be inaccessable. AND WE LOVE THAT.
Paul (2/11) Near the end of the day today a few folks brought up 2 cases of empty bottles of "towne club". They got me thinking. Immediately a suburban brand, they got me thinking about the major distinction between "public" - towne, and "private" - club, and all that is loaded into these legal, cultural, economic, social distinctions. Zona placed the cases carefully in the window and took everything else out. I shot a few shots of the bottles in the window. I'm having imaginations about the product as food, culture, media. I wondered about making some beverage and bottling it. Ideally we could go up to Kent Hills Country Club and drink some as we looked over the urban meadows. Maybe shoot a video or advertise the brand and the unique qualities that will acrue in anyone who consumes it regularly in large quantities. click to see a few more towne club images. 
[From there I think:] what's the point? what might we do here? We have to acknowledge our 'outsider-ness'... we're not creston, can't speak for them. BUT we gotta do something cuz we're artists! er, rock-shoppers.
possible goals:
[Qs, going off of teaching-learning:]
using social networks
possibilities
what to share? recipes skills advice stories contacts books movies games clothes “junk” thoughts pictures food warmth love joy, pain etc. art money furniture dance song style language culture hobbies possible means of communicating deposit box time capsule swap meet recording – audio book, paper board wishing well show and tell discussions booth (as in ‘the ___ booth’) walking down street slam poetry field trip (for school kids) challenge tempt them (to act) ‘court’ session public debate making things potluck confessional canvas, wall stage, theater direct actions public readings public playing zine newsletter workshop dance game night (or day) mini carnival ‘fashion’ show museum Olympics/athletic competition talk show format clothing and accessories means of indexing/recording photo video audio footprints/tracks transcribe writing drawing tracing counting graphing mapping filing archiving installation insertion (installation of things into neighborhood...) rubbings so that's my cracked out brainstorm...i hope it's not too cryptic; it made perfect sense at the time. ;D Rachel J
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4472935 ...Teresa
And it's application in government http://www.peerproduction.org/ In the creation of a digital library http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october03/krowne/10krowne.html An example of a digital library project - that uses a similar software as this swiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
This studio project was created by Brian Schorn and used in CPS. It was designed to be done from one's home, but we could do it from the space in Creston. Check out his project description Seeing Connections (micro/macro systems) what are the forms that interconnect us? how do they work? what goes in and out of a space
Link to this Page
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