Resetting the Stupid Machines

So one of the issues we're having to deal with is how to reset a Stupid Machine once it's been tripped. In this one, for example, we'd need the boot to reset itself every time, lest the whole thing just becomes a one-off. And this is the hard part, because, as our friend Tim is wont to say, It's easy to make a ball roll down a hill; getting it back up is what's tricky.

So last night I was talking to a fellow lover of elaborate means of doing simple things -- I'd just met him; he's in craft school in Portland and is the cousin of a buddy of mine -- but he was thinking we should have the initial crank attached to two different contraptions, the first being the one illustrated in this drawing, the second being some means of building up potential energy, perhaps winding up a spool or something, so that once the boot does its thing, all that potential energy from the second contraption will get triggered and then will yank the boot back in place.

Of course, this would still have to be sketched out and all that, but I think it's a good idea. Plus the extra contraption would also serve as yet another distraction to the viewers, and that'll just make it even easier to kick them in the butt.

Oh, by the way, we didn't get the Lawndale thing. Back to the drawing board, as they say.

Floor Composition Revelations

The whole floor art thing started simply enough, I found some targets. Well, really is was a little more interesting than that. Some friends and I had heard about some old concrete bunkers that were a prime place to "party". They were deserted and most of them were wide open. We found out where they were but we also found out that there might be a security guard roaming around in a jeep. Fun, a game of stay away from the security guard as well as deserted bunkers. So we went to where they were, once we got there we realized this was bigger than we thought, it was like a neighborhood of bunkers. We found some swept clean but in others, buried treasure and still others remnants of homeless/squatters. The buried treasure, for me, consisted of a couple of old army books about hand to hand combat and some life size human shadow targets. One day, in a new more peaceful frame of mind, I needed to beat my swords into plowshares and decided the targets needed to go...for a cause. What I had realized was the targets would make a great yin-yang and cut a few teardrops out of them, but they just didnt work for me. I tore them up and threw them on the floor. Later, after a few more failed attempts at my anticipated solution, I had paper all of the floor. When I decided to clean up, I got a little OCD about the different colors being together, they ended up little piles of white, black and beige paper in neet little piles. That is when it hit me, why dont I do kind of mosaic out of them to make the y-y? And the scanned in polaroid of it was what came out. It stayed around for a few months but then I became host to a keg party and since this was an efficiency apartment that had a 3 foot yin-yang in the middle of the living room floor, I didn't think it would have survived anyway so it continued down its path of life, in my garbage. As a Chef's Apprentice and with a few artist friends, I didnt really consider myself an artist I never really thought about trying to show it to people but my artist friends sure liked it.

Now, we have had a couple of discussions about what other floor art we could work out, for Lawndale. How much you see, shows how far open your mind is.