The Myth of the Artist

In preparation for a visit by Dave Hickey to Madison, I've been reading several articles he has written. We are doing a short workshop with him.

What I like about his writing is that it's rather no nonsense. Straight to it. He doesn't bog you down with too much theory, yet makes his points.

In an article that he's working on about Andy Warhol, he makes a connection between Warhol's work on Orthodox Icons. While brief it was a good discussion of how Warhol used icons and not images to elaborate in his art.

For me though, more importantly, the article got down to who Warhol was beyond the images we see. The article portrays him as a professional. "Down to business" For me this is being an artist. There is a time to play and a time to be serious. Too few of the people I've dealt with in Madison are the later. Many of them would rather bullshit about who got drunk at which opening or how they taked to this person or that. They think that being an artist is more about performance than it is about making the work.

My biggest issue with many of the artist I know is that they want to become this image of the avant garde, a saint of all that is creative. They don't even care about what is truly at stake. The publics perception of what it is to be an artist and what an artist does. I'm sick of artist being thought of as a clown (Nauman) or some oddity. That is what the artist has come to portray in our contempory world.

For me an artist is a voice of reason. They bring a different perspective. They bounce between being spectators to being activitists in an effort to conceptualize the whole. Artists are good at taking tools and making them relavent.

As long as we dance around, doing foolish things, we will be understood as being just that. When the responsibility of being an artist weights upon your shoulders, then you know you are actually creating something that is full of meaning and worth.

This is a quick rant - just needed to get it out.

Beginning a New

After two weeks of dealing with my grandmothers death and my daughters sickness, today is a new day. It's is a pleasent morning with the sun streaming through the windows. My hopes are up and I feel ready to challenge the world again.

The major outcome of these events was a recommitment to specific aspects of my life. Family is now very important. I'm no longer willing to miss dinner and am relishing my morning time with my daughter. Also have cut the fat out of things that I've been doing, which is giving me a little extra time to focus on things. While I definitely didn't want to go through what has happened, it has given me a much different outlook.

Two things of note - Heard a great interview yesterday on NPR about a guy who decided to say "yes" instead of "no' for a year. I fell like I've been saying yes to the things I should have said no to and no to the things I should have said yes to. I pledging to be a bit better at this.

Also heard an interesting talk about fatalism's effect on our perception of identity. Since nothing is going to work out, why even worry about the effect of choices. This is definitely me. Glass is always half empty. I'm wondering about how this outlook effects our willingness to be reflexive.

life and death

Has been an exhausting week - First my grandmother died and then my daughter got extremely sick, sending her to the childrens ICU. It hasn't been fun. (She is doing well and how the way to recovery)

Losing my grandmother has been an interesting process. While I hadn't seen her or talked to her much, upon hearing of her departure, I felt a loss of presence. Like a part of me had been gone. It's no longer there. I can feel where it should be right now. I'm going to miss her dearly.

With Greta, things happened very quickly. One moment she's a energetic kid and then next she's hooked up to a ventilator, totally sedated. It's hard to look at her now in bed and not expect her to just jump up.

Life tends to knock you up side the head when it needs too. Made me realize that family always should come first, art second. In a pursuit to reach goals, that distinction can get blurred.

So, with all this negativity, something has to go right soon. It might have already. Just have to be patient.

Context and Action

A lot has been happening since the last posting. I've been trying to work on a house that I'm supposed to have finished by the end of June. Greta, my daughter, took sick last week, which has taken me to places that I'd never had thought I'd go. Then there are the future plans for Singapore that seem so good and strong that are yet to take definition. I guess that is part of being at this point in my life.

A major project has been started for the Games, Learning and Society Conference that I am partaking in, as a game designer and panelist. I lead designing an Augmented Reality Game about Madison. Preliminary discussion has come up with some amazing ideas and I'm now focused on making this a very complete and well organized project. Could mean a lot to my future in game developement.

One note that I'd like to mention - I've have always been interested in action and context. I am curious how context defines action. In discussing this topic a few different things have come up - Situated action, Activity Theory, Distributed Cognition. All take action as the definitive way that people connect to there environment. For me though, I know that action is prescribed by context. While you can have a religious experience outside of a church, the church seems to focus our attention the actions of religion. Maybe that is a poor example. My point is that while action can move across context, context can solidfy action with a more meaningful purpose.

I made the example today with a friend that I see the relationship between action and context like coffee and cups. Coffee being action and the cup the context. So, while the coffee always remains the same, based on the cup the coffee takes on new preportions, shapes, aromas, etc.

Was watching a PBS documentary on the importance of mental stability and stress in medicine. They found that people who had less stress heal much more quickly. The program was talking about how medicine , while very much a black and white science, needs to learn that there are other aspects that effect healing, finding a need to embrace aspects that fall in a less quantifiable way. For me it's the same with our connection to our environment.

Action and Context work together. While they change and flucuate they still influence each other. So while educators focus on the action based studying of learning, I also think the context needs to be taken into consideration.

This is still loose thinking, but I has credence and will go somewhere.