Retrofitted

NDEWQ

High and Mighty

Artist= 1 Part Crazy, 2 parts Heart Sea

People want to entertain the insanely genius, eccentric, bizarre creative inspiration that artists live at least in fantasy.  Sherlock Holmes, Van Gogh tours or some bad rendering of Leonardo DaVinci on cable television for example, satisfy the banal attempt at living vicariously through the insanity of lone creative genius.  However, they do not want this on their doorstep or in their daughter's bed.  God forbid they actually have to deal with it in reality.  No, they just flip quickly to the "American Babylonian Idol" and get their dose of sublime mediocrity.  You see, all is a game.  The system, the money, the fame and on and on and on, and only an artist is willing to flip the card over to reveal the true chaos of it all.  That is why artists are 1 Part Crazy and 2 Parts Heart Sea.

Easter Monday 2008

Things got out of control for me at one point in my life and I had some kind of nervous breakdown.  Life's pressures will cave in and suck you in like a sinkhole.  Art has always been my anchor through life.  No matter where I go or what I do, I always have art to keep me inspired and moving forward through life's multiple circumstances.  This piece is special to me, because it was done at a time when I was going through some rough stuff.  Now I have this and other pieces to look back on with a reflective mind.

MasterDMT $ Earsnot 1997-98

I met Earsnot in 1997 when I was a student at SVA.  He stood out then as the smartest kid graffiti writer on the scene.  I knew he was headed for something great.  He came up to my studio and we did a couple quick jams on paper.  I still have this one.  He did the funny green man on the right.  He was clearly a genius and did not need any instruction about what to do and how to be culturally effective.  I'm glad to see he is so successful today.  He worked for it.

Agata Olek

Agata Olek is a very interesting artist based in NYC.  She does crochet and covers the world with it.  It seems to me to be a cross between graffiti ideas, Mike Kelley and Christo.  What is nice about it is that it takes so many conceptual ingredients and spins them out in a fresh way.  It doesn't seem to be overly concerned with galleries, like graffiti, but at the same time, it belongs within the framework of formal discussion.

The messages that are on many of the works are like memes that are reminiscent of Barbara Kruger.

Veiled Transformer Spirit

"You can't even trust the artists!"

This is a quote from my father.  My father is a cleric.  He has a lot of intelligent insights on things.  We were discussing the advent of smaller tech like Pebble and the future of cyborgism, human factors and ergonomics, etc.

We discussed as well the future of surveillance, drones over the USA, facial recognition technology, immediate access to one's data, etc.

My father said, "There will be always be a Neo.  You can't even trust the artists to be truly individual."

I think that says it all.

Think about it.

Ancient Warrior 3

Tagging, Clouds, Virtual Graffiti, Semantic Web, Metaverses

About five years ago or so I wrote an essay about "Virtual Graffiti".  I talked about contemporary graffiti artists etc. and how the commodifying of graffiti by nature transformed its cultural value and meaning.  I also talked about the visual and conceptual components of graffiti culture and their relationship to Internet, information technology and virtual worlds in general.  All of this created by a computer, I imagined that graffiti would leave the streets and the general physicality of it, and enter a virtual world completely free of these restraints.  I am not down on graffiti at all, I love the art form, but I am interested in seeing where it might be going and what this will mean.  Also, in my understanding that it is not literal, it is anticipated to be something completely transformed and other.  The concept of graffiti is a starting point that is about getting memes out in the public eye rapidly and effectively.  Shepard Fairey's "OBEY" represented the conceptual crossover (from literal to conceptual hive mind) in the streets starting a whole wave of copycats.  He was beyond a name or a crew, and prognosticating anonymity in the web.  Now the wall is a web page and a cloud.  Avoiding literal interpretations it remains new, as in neologism new, in spite of the ever increasing attempt to create a data structure that is more fluid, defined and intelligent.

My opinion is that this has happened.  I am not saying I predicted it, but perhaps in my own naive way had a sense of what was going to happen.  I think that hash tagging and tag clouds are an expression of this idea.  With W3C Semantic Web this is going to get even more translated in its virtuality by hyperlinking, data and ideational expressions with greater speed, relativity and revelatory presence.  Hacktivism too is its own version of graffiti mind, seeing the internet as a way to get information out quickly to the largest audience possible.

Street tagging aesthetically has been sort of prescient of the tag clouds that would eventually make their way onto web pages.  You might think it is not the same thing, but as we virtualize and cloud our collective consciousness through computing, we might not even be living in the "natural world" as it were.  I'm thinking something like Logan's Run,  in the sense that our hive mind will take us into another dimension through computing.  Therefore, the modes of expression, both legal and illegal will follow to these realms.  I do not know anything and I am not saying I know what it is, but this is what I see.  How we use it, will decide the next steps in our evolution as creators of metaverses.

Source Robot

ZZ

Chad Dugas, Alchemical Spectre

Trips to the quantum cosmic supermarket feeding back loops and twirls of consciousness spraying off the Christened waves of Oversoul.  Back flips through candy cane mind gardens and free falls into dark, twirling vortexes of Scorpion lairs.

My friend, brother, cohort, colleague, collaborator, co-inspirator, infinite jester on the checkerboard of life...Chad Dugas.  I don't know if you can call him an artist, a fool, a genius, an idiot savant, anarchic yogi or what?  I have never met anyone like him.  I would call him a Wizard Alchemist who dabbles in all of the above when it suits his fancy or he is conjuring up his tutelary spirits.  Either way, we started in the rave scene back to the old traditional college days to later years in Gotham, hashing it out in the bat cave.  Blessings brother from here to there.

UFO and Wondermountains

Felix Guattari's Interesting Assemblage of his 4 Ontological Functions

Montauk Alien

Plex Needs Cheese

Con $ Piracy

There is a dark side that seeks to control through manipulative means.  It lives within each and everyone of us, as well as without.  When we engage the world, we are in a conspiracy.  Con-Spirare.  Spirits living and breathing together.  The more light we become, the more aware we become of our psychic power.  We can use this to cut through the dark and shed light on an occult world.  There is nothing to really fear, but since we all have to pay a price, death awaits.  Make use of your time, fight the dark with peace, be creative, share your talents and ideas with others and bring something of true value to this world.

The forces that seek to control us are ultimately extensions of ourselves.  When we become more integrated and spiritual, we will watch these aspects fade away with time.

Universal Transformer Clown