Funk Bot – I made tons of loops and short "songs" like this one around '99-'02. All the voices (but the laughter and "yeah," ...
Idea: Subway as Air Conditioner – Thirsty Dog Sights Ice [ YouTube ] How to use the subway to ventilate NYC, in 3 easy steps: 1) Sail an iceberg down ...
Planning for madness – If McCain wins in November, I'm sure I won't be the only one seeking solace in madness. The background: If you ...
The World of Plastic – Here are a few plastic things I put together. I had fond memories of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, which has a ...
Vignette: Something Missing – I was born with something missing. I've felt it nearby: in the bittersweet wail of a hip hop chorus; in a high ...
Idea: NYC Danger Maps – What with faked concrete-strength tests and killer cranes, hellbent development has outstripped city government's ...
Nail Painting – It's not a great photo, but: the nails are stuck by their heads to the surface with polyester resin, pointing at the ...
Idea: Speed Freak Chorus – The plan: hire 30 speed freaks to stand still for 30 minutes on stools placed below the loud and relentless clocks at ...
Poor Man's Star Nursery – Now everyone can own their own model of star formation. Made from foam packing chips and fresnel lenses. [ Also ...
Lost Painting: Land of Lakes – Another resurrection from an old slide. The full image above, closeup below. This one was the subject of a ...
Lost Painting: Resurrection – I resurrected this failed painting from an old slide. The image above includes most of the painting, with sun from the...
Idea: Pirate Ad Projection – Even after the city sold CEMUSA the right to build ad displays on every block of NYC, 99.9% of the city's surface area...
Hills of Mesh – I'd completely forgotten this. The image is made up of a few "wireframes" of the 3D model produced by running a "...
Elevator Music – I think I posted this -- a short bit that loops four times here -- for a few days long ago, when it illustrated a thing...
Idea: Agents with Dirty Faces – Another clip employing an agent, this one with a (sort of) human face superimposed to let the agent's mouth show ...
Lost Painting: Layer Failure – The idea with these paintings (closeups above, full images below) was to have lower layers show through a mostly ...
Lost Painting: Golden Roots – This painting (36 x 36 inches) always had me thinking of roots in raking light -- a forest floor outside a golden city ...
Idea: Found vs. Factory Made – A tale of two grids: a sidewalk grate vs. "a Damien Hirst." (I need a better picture, but lately all the grates ...
Lost Painting: Underwater Mustard – (I had to remove the old Test Painting I posted yesterday. If you are going to resurrect something, make sure ...
Lost Painting: Strutting Hulk – I haven't put up a lost painting for a long time, so with plenty of time left before Halloween, here is a vaguely ...
Idea: Increase Subway Capacity – The ability to live without a car is a big part of what makes NYC special. But that ability depends on public ...
Idea: Country Road Vortexes – I'm familiar with the New Age vortexes out west. As explained by The Center for The New Age in Sedona, Arizona: "...
Idea: Water Ghost – This photo is of something so simple I won't say any more about it...
Idea: Webcam Time Machine – Now that I'm done complaining about everyone else's Everything ideas, here's one of my own: Connect to every single ...
The Everything Craze – The Everything craze, spawned by computers and a shrinking world, seems to have died down -- and that's a good thing. ...
Idea: Car Alarm Coffin – I described the idea in something I wrote a few years ago: I was in the park in front of City Hall last Thursday, ...
Idea: Nerdiness Sells – I'm not sure what my idea was here, beyond noting the cultural trend set by Wrox books featuring their nerdy authors on ...
Idea: Architecture 101 – Is sitting in a light-starved room getting you down? Tired of the world's demands, and people knocking at the door, ...
Video: Chorus of Hands – A slowly accumulating chorus of movie hand gestures (and sound). The movies, clockwise from top right: Taxi ...
Image Inversion – I've been way too wordy lately. Here's a spin-off of an inversion of this lost painting...
Idea: Fix Summer in the City – Top left: shirtless buildings reclining in Bryant Park heat. Bottom: The Plan. I love walking in New York, but ...
Idea: Babble – Babble (full title: An Inexhaustible Stream of Babble) is an idea I followed through on. It's funny that words ...
Idea: WTC Freedom Tower – In place of the current icepick design for the new World Trade Center Freedom Tower, pictured grimly to the left, I ...
Idea: Custom Carved Soap – Yet another borderline practical business idea. Customers send in a picture, then you use computer programs (for shape ...
Lost Painting: My Favorite Potato – I've been saving this one -- it's my favorite of the paintings I made with a potato. Though it has a black hole at its...
Idea: Starbucks Inside McDonald's – Years ago in San Francisco I stumbled on a combination Starbucks / bank. It really impressed me, and other ...
Lost Painting: R.I.P. – This one was 48 by 48 inches. I have deleted my reasons for destroying it (after keeping it around a few years) ...
Test Painting: Shadow Presence – This is one case where the photo glare may help the image. The hood-like loop in the shaded tangle, just about where ...
Tremendous Days – In honor of the Easter bunny, a cartoon I did back in 2001 or so. It uses agent cartoon characters. I ...
Test Painting: Uglier Patches – I promised uglier examples of my attempts to do patch paintings. This one is pretty ugly at this stage (with parts half...
Lost Painting: Asteroid Belt Pelt – Shaped like a rabbit, some of it looked like fur, and some like stones in space; an ungodly mix that if done better ...
Idea: Popeye vs. Sinbad – A tale of two cans and their seaworthiness. Spinach for Popeye, and a dhow-like sardine can for Sinbad. &...
Lost Painting: Great Lakes – Great Lakes or great puddles, this has the look of water erosion at work on some unnatural blue material, like the "...
Test Painting: Pleasance, Presence – Here's a picture that's just slightly (13%?) more than pleasant. That's alright for a test on paperboard (16 by 20 ...
No Salesman – A few years ago I thought videos like this were the most promising way to explore my interests. I enjoyed ...
Lost Painting: Skeletal – More vines, but this one looks skeletal to me. I don't remember how I wrecked it, but would guess I overdid the glazed...
Lost Painting: Patches – (Update: Some uglier patches to make this more interesting.) It was near impossible to rework or edit paintings with ...
Searching for Warmth – Searching for warmth, as we finish a week of "feels like" zero F temperatures here in New York, I came across an old ...
Lost Painting: Dark Green – I dislike the purple painting I posted yesterday so much I removed it. I like this one better, in spite of its ...
Idea: Sidewalk to Terror – I'm not sure how I planned to demonstrate this "idea" from a few years ago, but it might make a good high school student...
Clear Cups Raw – Sometimes you can put a huge amount of work into an image and have it turn out no better than what you started with. I ...
Idea: Flying Sideways – Some ideas are too big, like ones comparing the power of sound to the power of images. I have a few of those...
Stuff on Pictures – These are photos of stuff sitting on my work. Above left is a plastic drop cloth on a painting, throwing early ...
Illusionism 101 – I've used this section of a failed painting in all kinds of variations because, with a simple light-for-...
Lost Painting: Loops – Since I haven't posted one of these for a long time... I like this painting's shaggy, Dr. Seuss look, and the loops ...
Magazine Block – Friends gave me a yearlong subscription to a magazine. The issues slipped in one by one, and before I knew it I ...
Idea: Subway Grate LCD – How have advertisers missed the opportunity to turn subway grates into pixelated, LCD-style ads? With a $10 bag of ...
Cliffs – Looking for something to post just now, I saw the picture of Anasazi cliff dwellings below. Notice the stripes ...
Lost Painting: Dragon Skin – This painting was too rough (partly because it was on canvas instead of the smooth panel I normally used) and hard to ...
Passion of the Torture 2 – I went back and improved the video I mentioned earlier enough to show it here. The yellow tint makes a ...
Yogurt Lid Reflector Field 2 – Here's a close-up view of yogurt lids tacked to the wall, throwing shadows and reflections. See a small picture of a ...
Clear Cups – This picture began life as a photo of clear plastic cups, paper-clipped in a bunch, hanging against a window in ...
Idea: Picture of Idea Database – Early Idea Database category tree, split in left & right halves I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to ...
Idea: Building in Cliff Face – I've always liked the idea of a living in a cliff face. You get a solid foundation, good insulation, and a nice ...
Idea: Idling Agents – The animated character "agents" I used in videos have several animated states, or actions, like: turn left, greet...
One Man's Plans – I've mentioned before that my videos are made with a program I wrote that uses the same agent technology as the ...
Idea: WTC Tower of Babel – This is something I did when New York was asking for designs for a 9/11 memorial. The picture combines a photo ...
Idea: Yogurt Lid Space-Time – This one looks more impressive in real life than you'd think from the description -- though maybe it takes an interest ...
Idea: Subway Car Airliner – (Another one-liner. Yes, I am moving several of the easier things from my idea database to the blog this week.) ...
Idea: Instant Karma Machine – This one really is a stupid idea. I guess because we see so little evidence that people get what they "deserve," ...
Idea: Bleecker and Bleecker – Yes, some of these "ideas" are just one-liners. But nothing says every idea has to be earth-shaking or mind-...
Idea: Drive-Thru Things – I wanted to do a series of pictures of drive-through things. America is built on gas guzzling vehicles, and roads ...
Idea: Accidental Street Sculpture – I've walked by a lot of wrecked street signs, some of them bent in interesting shapes; the picture to the right is of ...
Layered Print 2 – This is another of the layered prints I planned, even simpler than the one I mentioned here. It could be printed on ...
Idea: Manhole Cover Art – I saw this manhole cover, on the same hex tiled sidewalk I mentioned earlier, and was reminded of an idea I had and ...
Simplicity – It's one of the painful paradoxes of the creative process that you have to be ready to throw away what's most important...
Idea: Brain Freeze Victims – I wanted to do some pictures of people (usually heroin addicts, I believe) whose brains have "frozen" in the middle of ...
Lost Painting: Sea Debris 2 – This is another one that got away. I remember I liked it a lot -- especially the color, and the "swept onto the ...
Idea: Self-Standing Door – This was the first good art idea I ever had, long ago. I drew it on graph paper, then picked up some 8 by 4 foot...
Lost Painting: Pink Rock – I kept this painting around for a few years before I painted over it. I still like it in a way, but its ...
Paint – This is yet another one of my videos that "just sits there," even though I am moving furiously inside it. The ...
Test Painting: Marooned – The photo was terrible (and again, like a lot of the old ones, taken from the side), so I was lucky to get this much ...
Talking – I've said nasty things about the videos I've made; this is one of the more recent ones. My comments usually boil down ...
Idea: Channeling – These pictures come from the sidewalk outside St. Mark's church in the East Village. Seeing the way the hex ...
Lost Painting: Sea Monster – I've always been strangely drawn to this wrecked painting, and its suggestion of a sea monster and boat floating ...
Idea: Idea Database – A lot of the ideas here come from my Idea Database. I remember standing in a room full of paintings at my last solo ...
Idea: Huge Yogurt Cup Ball – I've done a lot of things with yogurt cups. I built a 3 by 3 foot chandelier out of them, though it didn't work ...
Idea: Foam Fossils – I used to roam the aisles of Kmart looking for interesting stuff. I've always enjoyed taking an inexpensive ...
Triplet – I wasted a lot of time trying to get three images, based on the same source, working together. I was stuck on ...
Lost Painting: Potato 2 – I was in between painting techniques, searching for a new way to pull magic from the ether. So I started painting with...
Convertible Images 2 – This painting survives at a friend's house out west. The official orientation was with the "light source" at the ...
Lost Painting: Early Harvest – Here is one of my favorite paintings that did not survive. It was too dark, and had to be optimally lit in a ...
Convertible Images 1 – I rotated an image on my old website from the one on the left above to the one on the right. (I figure: it...
Test Painting: Bars 2 – Bars can suggest rhythm or waves, or a barrier between the viewer and the space beyond. And, similar to the way ...
Deserted – One of the churches pictured in stores turned into churches is in this shopping center; again, I expect others to see ...
Convincing Picture – I just found this picture under some old papers, undisturbed since I moved a few years ago. I'm glad I found it...
Frankenstein Forest Rescue – I've had a few paintings that were living contradictions: beautiful to me in some way, but ugly at the same time. ...
Idea: What People Are Looking For – After I put up my first web site, I used a small program to collect the phrases people entered in search engines like ...
Self-Organizing Yogurt Lids – Yet another use for throwaway yogurt packaging. Note this is 100% fact -- there's no trickery involved...
Green Cups – It started with yogurt cups. I would paper-clip a bunch of them together, so they made a curved shape like the ...
Idea: Paper Armada 2 – I tested the idea from the previous post a little further. I taped a few sheets of newspaper to the floor and ...
Idea: Paper Armada 1 – It would probably be harder to pull off than it seems -- like everything else -- but I like the simplicity of this idea...
Idea: Wall Panel Facial Recognition – Speaking of (hellhound) faces staring up out of the quicksand of abstract imagery, one of the most fertile sources of ...
Underworld Hellhound Rescue – The picture above, scabs and all, is my attempted rescue of a near-no-resolution photo of a (36" x 42"?) painting that ...
Idea: Global Air Conditioning – Speaking of "trading climates" reminds me of a few things: 1) An idea I had to make a "core sample," as though it had ...
Idea: Gold-Plated Car Alarm – I've been oversensitive to (other people's) noise for as long as I can remember. I still feel guilty about asking...
Test Painting: Sea Debris? – This is another one of the 2 by 2 foot tests I did on particle board. The color is sort of nasty; purplish-greenish ...
Passion of the Torture – Update: see the video described below here. I watched Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ on DVD; I wanted to see if it...
Idea: Ugly Jesus Test – I went to Sunday school as a child, and the pictures of Jesus were straight out of Hollywood -- put him in tights and he...
Skies of America – (I'm not an Ornette Coleman fan, but always liked his Skies of America.) I used to live in a place with a great view, ...
Idea: Is "Idea Space" Shrinking? – Having an idea is my favorite stage of the art process, the one full of potential and free of drudgery. I wanted ...
Overheated Monkey – I can draw OK, I just never feel the urge. I sort of enjoyed drawing in high school. It gave me an inkling of ...
Wireframe Roll – This picture comes out of the shape from shading experiments I did, where I ran an image of one of my paintings through...
Idea: God and Gambling – I'm not sure this even qualifies as an idea, since I can't think of a good way to illustrate it. The topic is: the ...
Test Painting: Synapses – I wanted to test some ideas, so I bought a stack of 2 by 2 foot particle board. The board turned out to be not much ...
Idea: What Is Schlock? – Excuse the ugly picture, but it's hard to describe schlock without an example. Art about art (or the art world) puts ...
Paranoid Landscape – The pictures above are from the same group of photos I took the last time I was in the Bay Area (see Stores to ...
Lost Painting: Bars – I never could approach painting head on, and had to find unusual techniques to get the job done. In the early '...
Idea: Yogurt Lid Stack Code – I've always liked yogurt, but hated all the non-recyclable packaging, so I found ways to use it. The brand I used to ...
Idea: Stores to Churches – I don't take pictures very often, as you can tell from the crappy outdoor photos here. But I took a lot of ...
Idea: New York Underground – I think everyone's sick of "Every [this or that] in New York" projects, where artists present a multitude of items of...
Light Across Worlds – Beyond the restlessness that working on digital pictures encourages -- because there's always a more interesting ...
Idea: Mix Face and Flow Chart Ads – A few years ago I was struck by the widespread use of what I call "face ads" -- advertisements featuring a close-up ...
Idea: Layered Prints - Gray Seas – This is one of a few images (again based on a failed painting) that I planned to print as layers, then sell as an ...
Idea: Reflective Surface of Painting – I worked on paintings on the floor, and was impressed with the way some of them looked when they were wet. Sometimes I...
Idea: Cruise Missile That Recognizes Faces – I like some war movies, but for the stories not the stuff; I don't consider myself overly interested in weapons and war...
Shape from Shading – I wasted a huge amount of time before I figured out it was the mutability of digital pictures, not the pictures ...
Lost Painting: Blistered + Inverse – On the left is a painting from the late '90s. I liked its blistered look, but it was a little too sloppy in ...
Idea: Remix Cover-art Photos – Combine cover-art portraits of artists involved in a remix, e.g., Janet Jackson and the now sadly departed Ole Dirty ...
Lost Painting: Vines – This is a painting from 1997. It was 48 by 48 inches. It would never be all it should be -- the blue was a...
Idea: Mystery Wall – Cut a 2 foot square hole in the wall, 8 feet from the floor. Use the cut piece as a door, swung out from the ...
Idea: Yogurt Lid Reflector Field – Pin a field of clear yogurt lids to the wall, then light them from the top and/or side...
Lost Show – These are paintings from a hard-luck show I mentioned earlier. I painted over or destroyed all of these. ...
Paintings: Shown 2001 – Here are some of my most recent paintings, shown at Pierogi in 2001. Obviously, I'm fond of illusion, and things ...
Paintings: Bright But Never Shown – Here are some paintings I did in the 1990s. For whatever reason, I felt the need for bright action. None of ...
Paintings: Some Range – Here are some more paintings I did in the 1990s. The blue ones below were shown (though the top one was seen by ...
Paintings: Fickle Fate – Here are a few paintings I did in the mid 1990s, part of a show (at Braunstein / Quay in S.F.) that hardly happened -- ...
Paintings: Shown 1995 – These are some of the paintings I showed in 1995 at Braunstein/Quay in San Francisco (all four here were done in 1994 ...
Paintings: First Illusions – For the record, some of my first (at least sort-of) illusionistic paintings, shown in 1994. All three were 36 x ...
Idea Tree – Human Constructions Culture Ads Mix Face & Flow Chart Ads...
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