Built Environment: March 2010

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Urban Agriculture - New Roots Urban Farm

Urban Wilderness, Pruitt-lgoe stie

Matrix as art: Reporting from SGC 2010 in Phillay

The collaboration between Jason Scuilla (on the wall) and Dylan Beck (on the Floor). One of two installations featuring the wood block as part of the finished piece, and even better, a collaboration! The second was an Israeli artist whose name will follow shortly!

Music and the Urban Environment

Sufjan Stevens, son of Cat Stevens has video/ music art work on Pitchfork: TV for only 1 week. They are beautiful and moving. Check them out while they are available. Great inspiration.

http://pitchfork.com/tv/#/episode/2116-sufjan-stevens-bqe/3

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Big Press!

We begin with the colors, rolling up Kristin's shaped plyood blocks (cut on the scroll saw)...

The blocks, assembled on the press bed.

Positioning the start up blocks.

Arranging the felts.

Resulting print with ghosting.

And more demo prints.

Survival in the City

In case anyone was wondering how to survive in the urban environment, I found the answer. Over on David Galletly's blog he covers the highlights of a text from the seventies entitled "Survival in the City" that provides instructions for keeping safe and cool in the city. Check it out.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Dystopia vs. Utopia

Hello Built Environment family,

Here are a few artists using the urban landscape as a medium. This work may provide some ideas for our Dystopia/Utopia projects...Enjoy!

http://www.janvormann.com/dispatchwork.php

http://jennifer-williams.com/section/52035_collages_in_public.html

Love
Mbean

Monday, March 15, 2010

The musical stylings of The Built Environment Band!

Some people love the sound of wind chimes, others hate the racket.

Would this sound be found in your utopia or dystopia?

(Personally I think there's something sort of unnerving about the sound of wind chimes. So, dystopia for me.)

Auto-Accumulation

For this project I was interested in focusing on the objects in our lives that we hoard or accumulate unintentionally. Those things that pile up so quickly, they seem to do so automatically. The most prevalent accumulation in my life right now is paper (loose sheets with notes from days when I didn't have a notebook with me, sketches and printouts waiting to be put into process books, sketches and printouts that never made it into process books, pieces of paper towel that I eventually use for blotting paintbrushes, unused napkins, old envelopes with the letters still inside or nearby, post-its, to-do lists). I chose this clutter as the subject for my fort.

For the form, I decided to continue the paper theme by creating a book. I liked the idea of exploring a design that allowed the fort to exist primarily in the viewer's mind. My first idea was to create a typical book with written descriptions of what I wanted my audience to imagine. This idea fell flat when I lacked inspiration for its content. I eventually settled on a tunnel book. The structure of the book brought it closer to traditional ideas of "fort" as a defined space and sanctuary. The book itself cannot be entered but still surrounds the vision of the viewer as if they were in an enclosed space.

My first attempt at figuring out the structure of the tunnel book.

This experiment is about 3"x 1.5" and made with printer paper.

A second experiment with a modified tunnel book structure.

6"x 3.5" and made with Bristol Board

The final product.

9"x 6.5" made with Bristol Board, Pronto Plate interior

A close-up of the interior pages.

who is a bird?

we observed a bird skeleton at the jet runway at the saint louis airport.

i found this to be a rather dystopian experience as i considered the harm man-made flying machines can cause the living beasts of the air.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Hint, hint...

I hope everyone is enjoying their SPRING BREAK!

Here's a hint of things to come:

(from omnipresent wikipedia)

Survivalism is a movement of individuals or groups (called survivalists) who are actively preparing for future possible disruptions in local, regional, national, or international social or political order. Survivalists often prepare for this anticipated disruption by having emergency medical training, stockpiling food and water, preparing for self-defense and self-sufficiency, and/or building structures that will help them to survive or "disappear" (e.g., a survival retreat or underground shelter). Anticipated disruptions include

Natural disaster clusters, and patterns of apocalyptic planetary crises or Earth changes, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, and severe thunderstorms.
A disaster brought about by the activities of mankind: chemical spills, release of radioactive materials, nuclear or conventional war, or an oppressive government.
General collapse of society, resulting from the unavailability of electricity, fuel, food, and water.
Monetary disruption or economic collapse, stemming from monetary manipulation, hyperinflation, deflation, and/or worldwide economic depression.
A sudden pandemic spreading through the global population.
Widespread chaos, or some other unexplained apocalyptic event.

For those of you in the dystopian camp, you probably saw this coming. More to follow...

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The Other White Meat...

Accumulation: When embarking on my fort-making endeavor I concentrated on the accumulation of advertisements featuring meat that arrive in junk mail. I interested in the provocative portrayal of meat in these images, and how their explicit nature resembles pornography. Although they are intended to appeal to the viewer's appetite, many of the photographs appear repulsive and crude.

I created this print using the prontoplate lithography process. When removed from its original context the meat resembles an organic structure such as a land form. I collected several of these images and made a variety of prints from each.

I mixed colors that are evocative of flesh to illuminate the "meaty" textures. The image above is the prints laid out after I produced several editions. Time to begin fort-making!

I attached all of the prints to a strong paper backing to make it stand and curved the structure to create a barrier. I thought this form was reminiscent of the way snow forts are constructed.

My current studio practice focuses on the correlation between the portrayal of women's bodies and meat in cultural imagery. Women's bodies are consumed and dehumanized visually through sexual access to our bodies, and animals are exploited as objects available for our consumption. I am interested in how these messages are implied through representational strategies that attempt to seduce our senses I intended my fort to become a space that illuminates the territory between desire and repulsion.

Enjoy!

Mbean