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I created the database in 2000 and moved a few hundred art ideas into it from bits of paper collected over the years, then updated it every so often.  In 2010 I deleted maybe 1/8th of the worst entries, but there's still too many impossible, personal & opaque, or just plain stupid ideas.

In fact there are so many stupid ones that I had to add a Stupid(er) category.  But while reviewing the ideas recently (2018), I could still remember how powerful some of the most far-fetched ones felt when I had them.

The idea here was to organize items and get a sense of how they add up; it turns out that was a silly idea.  But I tried, and there it is below, in category-tree form.

I'm well aware that unrealized ideas are no better than empty talk, and that an artist must "produce."  This is part of what I produced during some wayward, but not quite lost, years.

[ About the Idea Database ]
[ Picture of the Idea Database ]

Click idea titles for description (or link; links open in another tab).
Human
  • Constructions
  • Insight
    • Graphs Over Images
      • Draw Bands from Earth's Core to Space
        • Draw bands of activity circling earth. From the center out: tectonic currents, underground infrastructure, pollution plumes, ground-level infrastructure, traffic, cellphone & wireless traffic, air pollution, air traffic, clouds and wind currents, radiation and cosmic rays, orbiting satellites, magnetic fields, solar wind, the moon.
    • Idea Database
    • Perspective
      • Land of Lakes - Reflective Surface of Painting
        •    – See the idea
      • New York Underground
        •    – See the idea
      • Views of Scene from Different Vision Systems
        • We see according to our needs, the way we're built. Grid of (4?) visual interpretations of the same scene, from viewers with different vision systems or perspectives. Subject is a 3D model of clear blobs on an open plain, something new to the viewers? Viewers are e.g., insect, mammal, human, a Mars rover. Views differ by layout, zoom/focus, color/spectrum, etc., depending on the needs of the viewer. The best demonstration could be a scene where the target object's parts are color-coded for their visibility in each vision system, so viewer sees just parts in colors visible to them.
    • Reality?
      • Google Earth Flight - Earth Becomes an Idea
        •    – See the idea
      • Information Continuum from Physical to Abstract Being
        • From the first picture drawn in the dirt, to the first spoken phrase, to now, when everyone on earth expresses themselves all the time and most of the world is pictured and described. The medium is what matters, all the way across, from being bound to earth, to a grid of flickering images conveying abstract information (re data visualization). Convey the character of our involvement with physical being vs. our involvement with information media. (How?!)
      • Layered Prints - Gray Seas
        •    – See the idea
      • Live Satellite Scan of Painting
        • Put a terrain-like painting on the darkest wall in a dark room. Mount a light-sensitive camera on a track -- like for a dot-matrix printer -- that crawls over the painting. Or use a web cam that can be aimed to follow a grid in the same way. The camera output is projected onto the opposite wall, or on a monitor pointed away from the painting. Have night-light markers to keep people from stumbling into the painting. The image should look like the surface of a planet.
      • What Is Photo Presence?
        • Find cases of things with photographic "presence" and demonstrate what triggers it. It must have to do with: the viewer (and archetypes); the camera perspective, the suggestive atmospherics or "effects" of the picture. Re Uta Barth's slight shifts of perspective that reveal the mind behind the camera, and David Lynch's quick surreal asides that suggest what you see is not all there is to a situation.
      • Data Visualization
      • Immaterial
        • All I Can Be - Terra Cotta Army

          • A grid of bags hanging from a lattice of string hanging over a large shallow hole, like a dug up terra cotta army. Clear plastic bags full of dirt / paper effigies? How to create above ground?

        • All I Can Be - Wading Pool Water

          • Re All I Can Be - Terra Cotta Army and Water Ghosts Clear plastic pouches of water suspended from string grid in wading pool. Re nuclear fuel rods.

        • Ghost Show of Lost and Test Paintings
          • Large photos of lost/test paintings. Could do straight reproduction of BQ show in 1994, with the few survivors and notes on formula and titles.
        • Land of Lakes - Water on Tarp
          • Translucent plastic tarp draped over objects with puddles of water on top; I noticed a stack of lumber with the effect, like mountain lakes at dawn. Do it in a dark room, with horizontal lights at the side bouncing off the water. Could do a video from a model in a box for better lighting control.
        • Lit Water in Grid Suspended from Ceiling
          • Suspend a grid of clear plastic bulbs (just 5 mil. sheeting gathered, filled, then tied off with string), half-filled with water, in midair (above or below "eye level?"). The surface of water in the bulbs must be on the same plane (level) throughout. Then try to bounce one light off the top of the water, or pass multiple lights through rows of bulbs. Should get effect that lights grid. (First crude test did not work.)
        • Room of Alternating Pictures and Voices
          • Spotlight on picture (or projected picture) is replaced by 3D voice projected at same spot.
        • Room of Swirling Ghosts
          • A dark room with synchronized 3D sound and projected images circling around the walls, like inside a top loading washing machine. One projector per wall playing sections of single animation.
        • Water Ghost
          •    – See the idea
      • Juxtaposition
      • Shadows
        • Arm Sticking out of Surface, Throwing a Shadow
          • Real-world space made obvious by the "L" of an arm or tree limb sticking out of a surface, throwing its shadow. Is it the minimum indicator of presence in the world?
        • Clouds as Transition
          • Clouds as the transition from empty space to matter, given form by light. Like shadows. (And clouds throw shadows.)
        • Faux 3D Elevation from Shadow
          • E.g., 3D model of the gutter formed by the shadow thrown by a fence post. For simple shape-from-shading, dark is translated to lower elevations and highlights into peaks.
        • Headlights of Passing Car on the Ceiling
          • Video of car headlights crossing the ceiling of the front room here when it's dark.
        • Shadow as Transition to Other Dimension
          • Photos of shadows as connector / transition to other (physical or psychological) dimensions, where matter and energy (light) meet. E.g., (1) a shack fills the screen; (2) move the camera slowly back or to the side to show its place in the world; (3) descend into the shadow the shack throws. Or link multiple prints, with strings connecting shadows.
      • Undercurrent
        • Foam Chip Mountain Covering Light
          • Make a Devil's Tower of foam chips, sticking out from the wall. Can use a globe lamp inside, or big light box.
        • Impale Milk Cartons on Black Spike Fence
          • Impale three cartons or paper cups of milk on the fence spikes at McCarren Park. Do it at the "pigeon airport" there to attract cats? Use spokes-model dressed in long black dress to do the impaling.
        • Whispered Soundtrack Added to Quiet Video
          • Add whispered soundtrack (and captions?) to videos of quiet places: golf, funeral service, wedding, watching wildlife from a blind, surveillance. Record some golf from TV and try it. Added soundtrack is subtext, subterranean.
      • Virtual Reality
        • Are We Inside a Virtual Reality Box?
          • Are we inside a virtual reality box? Where scenes are not built until looked at, and they need just enough detail to fool the eye? Spread a bubble of pixels (dome of dots that spread at center) on a real-world photo to reveal the digital units and empty space beyond.
        • Wireless World
          • Connect cellphone users, with arcs through air, in pedestrian traffic in Times Square, and turn those not on phones black & white.
  • Traits
    • Association
      • Tree of Possible Phrases
        • Show a root phrase, then a branch for each possible association. Do it with well known lyrics? Do not have to branch only from ends.
    • Emotion
      • Anticipation Is 90% of Pleasure or Pain
        • Anticipation is 90% of the experience. A two-panel cartoon with someone about to have sex and someone about to get their head chopped off. Or one person anticipating both at once.
      • Blow Away Foam Chip Forms
        • Video. Build two mountain ranges or human bodies out of foam chips on the floor. Turn on fan(s) and blow the foam away. Could run the video backwards and forwards.
      • Faith
        • Anonymous Jesus Test
          • Text next to crucifixion scene: Would you suffer a long and painful death to save the world, even if no one would ever know what you'd done? Would you trade your life for Hitler's before WWII if given the chance? Related question: would you want someone to die for all your sins without asking you beforehand?
        • Core Sample - Layers from Sacred Places
          • Faux sacred core samples from religious sites, the more conflicted (Temple Mount / Dome of the Rock) the better. Stack layers by date of associated myth, separated by burn marks from miracle / ascent.
        • God as Luck
          • Replace "God" with "luck" or "chance" in text. E.g., from Genesis, or from statements that thank God for an outcome, like rescued coal miners. Re the idea that everything happens for a reason, and that prayers can directly affect reality.
        • Jesus as Virtual Reality Avatar
          • Depict Jesus as an avatar sent from the world outside this virtual reality box.
        • Stores to Churches
          •    – See the idea
        • Ugly Jesus Test
          •    – See the idea
        • Faith vs. Knowledge
          • Demonstrate the certainty of a fundamentalist whose faith provides a narrow "knowledge" that allows them to feel in control. Picture fundamentalists using the products of science, that their world could not produce, to destroy the culture that produced them. Picture monks with solar panels and ask "How long would they have to meditate to produce this?" Also, believers are willing to walk into bullets, convinced they're invincible or headed to paradise. They're willing to blow up the world, believing it's evil or an illusion. Fundamentalists hate secular knowledge, but have no problem using the products of technology to blow up the world.
      • Nostalgia
        • City Block Built from Every Building I've Lived In
          • Pictures of the front of every place I've lived in, stitched together. Describe each place in text along the bottom. Note that on each move, the same crappy TV shows greeted me everywhere, reminding me I was still in the same place: on Earth.
      • Paranoia
    • Relationships
      • Dating Website Eyes and Dogs
        • (Just) The eyes of women on dating sites who "definitely" want to have children, vs. the rest. They seem more intense. Also collect pictures of dogs, with nervous eyes bulging, while their owner squeezes them.
Nature
  • Warped Spacetime

    • Use bungee cords to demonstrate spacetime warped by gravity. Whiffle ball at center, with bungees pulling thick clear plastic container inward from open barrel.

  • Elemental Phenomena
    • Fresnel-Edge Rainbow
      • Shine horizontal light past the edge of a board through a Fresnel lens; the board is between the lens and light source. Aim the light at a slight downward angle towards the board and lens. (Don't remember if this made a photo strong enough to come across.)
    • Chance
      • Babble
        •    – See the idea
      • Birth as Lottery - Person vs. Culture
        • Where and when a person is born, as a lottery.
      • God and Gambling - Give Structure to Chance

        • I'm not sure this even qualifies as an idea, since I can't think of a good way to illustrate it.

        Both God and gambling give structure to Chance, and the universe pretty much runs on Chance, with random decisions and actions built into the way we think and move, the way things grow and flow, and on and on.

        The idea of God lets accidents and bad luck happen "for a reason."  Gamblers pray for luck at the ultimate altar of Chance, the slot machine, which stands in for nature's supreme indifference to feelings, merit or "a reason."

        God is omniscient.  Casinos have surveillance everywhere, from cameras behind mirrored ceilings to the smart slot machine debit cards that track you through the casino.  All the slots are wired into central computers that can change their odds, and their appearance and sound to suit gamblers' tastes.

        Our pathetic governments look to both God and casinos for easy answers.  Don't want fiscal responsibility?  License casinos and lotteries, then skim the profits.  Don't want social responsibility?  Turn it over to religious groups.

      • The Necessity of Chance
        • Demonstrate the necessity of using chance and intuition. With the huge number of possible choices we face all day every day -- e.g., where to put each foot and how to move around objects and people as we walk down the street -- we need to guess and make arbitrary decisions. Our brains are built to do that -- to make a choice, and if it doesn't work, to back out and try another route -- just like "backtracking" solutions in computer science.
    • Flow
      • Flocking or Flow Over Subway Rush Hour
        • Video. Overlay and synchronize a flocking simulation with a subway crowd (from above) or another real-life moving crowd, like a flock of birds.
      • Now That I Can Dance
        • Born shy, bottled up for a lifetime; the only thing I miss about drinking is dancing. So prove I can dance when relaxed. Video from back with what I'm listening to.
      • Subway Station Rush Hour Video
        • Video at chest height as I weave quickly through a rush hour crowd changing trains at the Union Square 4/5/6 line. Would need help with low-light steady-cam camera.
  • Landscape
    • California Suburb Pictures
      • From suburb photos. A ridge-line six photos-wide, gleaming roofs below, repeated refineries. Misty dawn to daylight in same picture. How all this stuff is tied together: roads, wires, and fuel from the noxious refinery.
    • Hood Fades to Landscape
      • Re Anasazi. A panorama with houses on one side of a rundown neighborhood street, then the other side of the street is the beach, a desert or an orchard. Suggest the long continuum from the landscape we came from to the world we live in today, and the possibility of re-connecting. I guess it would be the light that connects the two. This may be just another thing I'm not able to get across. But if I can make something I respond to, others may too.
    • Shift Top Halves of Orchard

      • Take a neat-grid orchard of trees in a 3D program (Bryce?), cut trees at a horizontal plane halfway up, then shift the top half so its trunk sections are a foot away from the bottom halves. What about a real-world picture of a flooded forest? Or an HO model landscape embedded in Lucite, then cut into shifted planes? Doing it virtually might be harder than doing it physically.

      Below, a real-world example from Hungary's 2010 toxic flood.

  • Life
    • Nature Climbing Up Through City Cracks
      • Demonstrate nature trying to retake the city, with soil, water and vegetation breaking through, reaching for the sun or the river, sometimes wrecking the infrastructure.
    • Release Termites on a Painting
      • Sic termites on a painting on wood panel, in a sealed vitrine.
    • Things In Between
      • Say, in Times Square, in between two overdone attractions, a weed growing out of sidewalk, struck by light on a gray day. A video that takes in the whole noisy, flashy scene, then slowly zooms in and goes quiet until it's filled with that simple beauty?
    • Evolution
      • Evolutionary Value of Individual vs. Collective
        • Compare species and societies where individualism is allowed (U.S.) vs. not (N. Korea, hive, ant colony) and what it means for ultimate survival of a culture or species. Re mono-specie ant colony that extends all the way up the California coast. The emergence and extension of knowledge is more powerful than disciplined units acting in the interest of the whole? Individual freedom creates more opportunity for unexpected discoveries, but collective action does more to ensure the survival of a species or culture. (Have no idea how I thought I might demonstrate this...)
      • Nervous Caveman in Bouncing Lowrider
        • Video of an anxious caveman, thrown around by bouncing hydraulics, from the door of a low-rider. Title it Inya Dome.
      • Terrain to Tower of Babel Sequence
        • A satellite shot of craters straight down (my painting), then a cliff face (Babel cliff face picture), then Van Eyck's Babel. From the ground to gods.
Stupid(er)
  • Barking Dog Web Cam
    • If you have inconsiderate jerks living nearby with a barking dog, set up a bark-activated web cam, upload the video clips to a website, and share your joy with the world.
  • Bleecker and Bleecker
    •    – See the idea
  • Burka Dance Video
    • To Morocco Songs (ululating); to Snoop's "Serial Killa"; to Country Western; to Prince Markie Dee's "Trippin' Out"
  • Cellphone Cursing Excuse
    • If you are prone to curse at cellphone users, get one of those ear-clip cellphone things. Then when you unleash a string of obscenities and they challenge you, say "I'm on the phone with my mom... do you mind?"
  • Custom Carved Soap
    •    – See the idea
  • Drive-Through Things

    • I wanted to do a series of pictures of drive-through things.

    America is built on gas guzzling vehicles, and roads through some National Parks were designed to let visitors see the park from their car (or the living room of their moving RV), so they never have to actually walk across a few feet of nature.

    When I was a kid I rode in a car through more than one redwood in California.  Then there's drive-through banks, liquor stores, fast-food outlets, etc.

    Interesting drive-through buildings here in New York include the Manhattan Municipal Building downtown (the roadway underneath now blocked off against terrorists), and the tunnels at the foot of Park Ave. proper that travel under, around and through the buildings at Grand Central.
  • Dumpster Home Sign
    • Photo of sign on dumpster that says: If you lived here you'd be home by now.
  • Instant Karma Machine

    • This one really is a stupid idea.  I guess because we see so little evidence that people get what they "deserve," I thought a "karma machine" might help solve the problem.

    My saved description: "Detects wrongdoing and retaliates immediately."  Considering the level of evil coming out of Washington, DC for the past six years, where better to place the machine than the top of the Washington Monument?

    Of course ceding "justice" to an extra-worldly overlord/device, after the myriad ways we've seen the idea of God abused lately, is a bad idea.  But since the alternative is permanent vigilance on our part -- work -- the idea is appealing.
  • Manhole Cover Art

    • I saw this manhole cover and was reminded of an idea I had and forgot long ago: you could probably make money if you went out and made molds of distinctive manhole covers, then cast them in a lightweight material so buyers could hang them on the wall.

    This is exactly the sort of thing a real entrepreneur -- or real artist for that matter, since most of the commercially successful artists I've met run what amounts to a small business -- would just go ahead and do.

    I have cast things before, and I'm sure a reliable technique for casting-in-place could be developed.  You would need an art intern to assist you, of course -- to direct traffic around you while you're working in the middle of the street.

  • Newtown Creek Garbage Disposal
    • Load garbage onto disposable barges, then float them upstream through locks to water so nasty it dissolves everything. Rare earth elements recovered from the toxic juice will finance the process.
  • Remix Cover-Art Photos
    •    – See the idea
  • Suicide Bomber Video Portrait Franchise
    • Like old photo portrait franchises, but for suicide bombers' final videos. Potential bombers do "final statement," but always chicken out: "Oh, I felt better after I ate some lunch." Mix of humor, crazy and dead serious. Taxi Driver video in background.
  • Waiting Video
    • Grid of "waiting at the altar" in Las Vegas wedding videos, plus of "psychics are waiting for your call" video.

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 from Greenland.

2) Anchor it next to a subway station, on a line that connects to many other lines.

3) Throw a giant tarp over it so that, as it melts, the cold air is directed into the subway tunnel.

We might need some fans to disperse the cold air, but since sweaty summer heat seems to find its way into every corner of the subway all by itself, probably not.

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 the Tourneau store on 57th St.

Yes, this is one of my worst ideas.  And not just because it's tasteless and exploitative -- I simply don't have the resources to recruit 30 speed freaks, or the patience to get them organized.

Speed freak photo credit: the Internet.

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 is going to waste, selling nothing.  With ever more powerful portable video projectors coming on the market, the time is right to start your own pirate Ad Projection agency.

Get some clients and burn their ads onto a DVD.  Rent a portable projector and mount it on the rear deck of a rental car.  Park near large buildings and project ads onto them.  Move every half hour to stay ahead of the police.

Bonus suggestion: sell ads to a name brand's competitors, then project them onto the brand's headquarters (below).


(Of course later I found that a few companies already do this, but not in a pirate way.)

Accidental Street Sculpture

Some ideas don't pan out.  I thought I had a lifetime's worth of twisted street signs to discover, but I was wrong.

In their place here, I have what looks like the tidy, resigned leftovers of some street person's failed idea: to put everything on wheels, then work out at the New York Health & Racquet Club** to build up strength to walk a few thousand miles south, "where the weather suits my clothes," as in Midnight Cowboy.

** The card in the middle of the photo says "Join the New York Health & Racquet Club and get the Yacht Beach Club and Golf Free."

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