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.
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Click idea titles for description (or link; links open in another tab).
Human
- Constructions
- Culture
- Babel Tower vs. Aztec Temple
Become vs. propitiate a god? Compare the purpose and appearance of the Tower of Babel and Meso-American temples. With the tower (in myth) man tried to ascend to heavens and become a god; I believe the Aztecs tried to propitiate gods with sacrifices. Show the tower/temple side by side, with people walking up around Babel ziggurat, then getting kicked down the stairs of the temple?
- Bad Words Go Limp
Graph the original use, then the new use. E.g., "sucks" lost its sexual connotation, and epithets have been co-opted by target groups.
- Brain Freeze Victims
I wanted to do some pictures of people (usually heroin addicts, I believe) whose brains have "frozen" in the middle of the sidewalk as traffic flows around them, like pebbles in a stream. It's amazing how well they can balance in paralysis, and how people ignore them.
But not only would I be exploiting them like they're wildlife, they are hard to capture.
Then this guy was in Washington Square Park, functioning normally, when he locked up right in front of where I was sitting. He stood, balanced but seeming asleep, for a long, long time.
I thought "Why should I act like I didn't see this?" Still, you'll notice his face is not shown.
- Nerdiness Sells - Wrox
- Rap Video Meets Bollywood Video
Combine rap video and Bollywood music video, for mix of hip-hop's wary posturing and Indian song & dance -- especially the hand gestures from both.
- Reality TV's Purpose
As we turn digital, people recognize that their survival depends on being recorded, and it doesn't matter to them how it happens -- on Cops or at the Nobel Prize ceremony.
- Starbucks Inside McDonalds
- Thoughts Powerless Until Communicated
How an individual's thoughts are powerless until they're communicated. This is good in the case of negative thoughts, e.g., racism, but bad in the case of wishing you could do something as the world around you crumbles. Contrast lack of harm/good done by silent person vs. that done by someone who's heard. (How?)
- Architecture
- Architecture 101
- Building with Less Surface Detail per Floor
The first two floors of facade have N types of overlaid detail, N being the number of floors in the building. One element is removed per rising floor, so the top floor is naked. Detail is thick as a cuckoo clock. This could also be reversed, with the top crusted in detail and the base naked; call this the Palm Tree version. (Have I seen a building like this in Manhattan?)
- Bury Buildings to Roof
Photos of tops of buildings -- like around Central Park -- lined up as though at ground level. Could also bury the buildings in earth so just their tops are exposed, making it similar to "Shift Top Halves of Orchard" idea. Bury highrise offices -- the people inside are supposed to be working, not looking out the window.
- Flop Ceiling and Front Wall
To cut out noise, flop the ceiling and front wall so the windows become skylights. Must be a drawing, unless I can get a fish eye lens. Goes with Architecture 101 idea.
- Lego-Like Global Chain Stores
Since they cover the world and there are only a few local variations, build global chain stores like Legos for quick assembly.
- Mystery Wall
- Self-Standing Door
- Sheetrock Shelves
Recreate sheetrock shelves from Third St. with foam core and balsa wood. Do drawing for this. (Was shelves made from sheetrock already hung, by cutting & folding it between studs.)
- Sidewalk Contstruction Detour
Video of rolling fast through zigzagging sidewalk detours under construction sites, so the result is like going through a dangerous amusement tunnel. Need steady-cam.
- Sinking Line of Self-Standing Doors
A line of sheetrock (or thick recyclable cardboard)
self-standing doors, a few feet apart, get progressively shorter, as if sinking into the ground. Or could simulate animation frames, of a door falling over. Show desert videos on both sides of this.
- Art
- Aesthete TV
- Art Special Effects
Art has had special effects just like movies. E.g., Leonardo's sfumato, and Renaissance depth and realism were the special effects of their day. And Turner, Pollock, and Richter's work, to name a few, suggests natural forces.
- Art Video from Good vs. Bad Movie
Compare the difficulty of making a good art video from a good movie vs. from a bad movie. E.g., isn't almost anything you make from a Kubrick movie going to be good unless totally distorted?
- Fresnel Box Next to Images Made from It
Photos of stuff inside a box made of Fresnel lenses. Display the box on a shelf near a large photo from it, labeled as something it looks like, e.g., "Hubbell Star Nursery" for my foam-chip forms. (This is like revealing a secret process.)
World of Plastic features photos of chips in Fresnel box.
- Is Idea-Space Shrinking?
- Sell My Secret Painting Processes
Sell them for a lot to a limited number of artists who could use it, or sell video demonstrations cheap to the public, like a painting teacher on TV. Two processes are represented on the
Painting pages at Attempted Art. And it's no secret, but there's
Potato Paintings at Attempted Art too.
- Spooky Room Full of Paintings
Something about how the 2001 Pierogi show gave me the creeps -- it was something like "Is that all there is?" (Likely post-goal emptiness.)
- Abstract Pictures
- Channeling - Flow Paint on Hex Tile
These pictures come from the sidewalk outside St. Mark's church in the East Village. Seeing the way the hex tiles channel water in a patterned way, and having made some paintings by flowing layers of paint over texture, I'd guess there's some potential in painting on hex tile.
I guess this is where it becomes obvious that talk is cheap, and that I would have to actually make a hex tile painting to prove my claim. Maybe one of these days...
- Paintings with Braille as Action
- Paintings with Ornate Frames as Action
Flow thin layers of paint over an ornate frame embedded in a panel. Could build gutters into the frame, so the work environment is self contained. "Flow layers" like
Paintings: Shown 1995 at Attempted Art.
- Public Art
- Schlock
- Masterpiece to Schlock Translation
Take a set of masterpieces, and translate them to schlock by changing color or adding a schlock cliche. Display prints of original and mutant side by side. Do test cases from different eras, movements. Sort of did this in
What Is Schlock?
- Schlock Like My Paintings
Pictures of slick schlock similar to my paintings. Atmospheric, process, all over; that black and blue stuff in ArtNews ads. Describe why they're schlock, e.g., "that nasty pthalo blue.".
- What is Schlock?
- Street Theater
- Art World
- Cultural Evolution
- Coronado to Kid Frost
From cliff face to cliff dwellers to Coronado to ghosts to
Kid Frost street-flow idyll, suggesting the survival of a submerged native culture. And let hip-hop demonstrate the beauty -- the humanity -- that can come out the end of all that struggle.
- Everything Idea
- Every Garbage Pile in NYC
Walk around Manhattan for a day and take pictures of the biggest piles of garbage. Re the Everything Craze idea, and the stunning amount of garbage this city puts out.
- Everyone Who Ever Lived
Photo of everyone who ever lived: superimpose or overlap photos of a Times Square sidewalk taken in different eras.
- Everyone's Thoughts at Once
Six billion lines (translated to English) - the substance of the thoughts and dreams of everyone on earth at dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss UTC. Does a time-slice of web activity, tracked on servers, nearly represent this now?
- The Everything Craze
- Maps
- Media
- Rap
- Technology
- Fake Second Coming
Infect media company servers with a virus that causes "Jesus" to appear on all cable channels at once, or launch a satellite that can simulate reception of a transmission by him from somewhere in deep space. After he's awed believers, have him sell lots in heaven like it was swamp real estate. We have the technology; we can do this!
- Fix Summer in the City
- Flying Sideways
- Subway as Air Conditioner
- Trees and Utility-Line Trellis
Photos of utility lines through trees, like a trellis above a patio.
- Computing
- Image Tree of LOATI
Build a tree of my LOATI images, from root photo of failed painting -- at top of
this post. (LOATI, or Land of a Thousand Images, was a very large group of digital images spawned from the same source.)
- Next Possible States - Tree of Snapshots
Tree of pictures of the next possible action / state from some current state. The past is a straight line of former states. Read left to right. The future is a binary tree branching to the right. Start with a person walking down a sidewalk. Tree branches on left / right turns. Only go 5 places out, to 32 leaf nodes.
- Agents
- Agent Borg and Idling Free Agents
Idling agents form a borg or flying pyramid. Layers of the same characters in two opposing groups form at the sides and meet in the middle, threatening to battle or absorb each other.
- Agent Clones Fill Screen, Saying "I'm not you" Over and Over
A room full of agent clones say "I'm not you" over and over to each other, but then do and say things in unison. Fill the screen by the end.
- Agent Lip-Syncs Backwards Song, with New Lyrics
Agent lip-syncs a backwards song and thinks lyrics for it -- chipmunks become Volga boatmen. Re
I Deny It.
- Agent Triplets - Person, Angel, Devil
Angel and devil agents sit on the shoulders of a character and advise him. Multiple copies of these triplets meet.
- Agents React To Live Speech
Use voice recognition (with voice "confidence" always high so actions are triggered on anything vaguely close to a trigger-word) and TV, radio, or an opposing laptop running the same program, to drive agent actions. From Attempted Art: This was another case where working with the idea -- of putting human faces on programmable characters that could react to each other and outside events -- was interesting, but led to the realization that a huge amount of work would have to be done to give the agents even a tiny bit of "agency." Hard as it is, it's easier to produce -- and more interesting to watch -- a scripted story than to create a situation, define the behavior of relatively simple beings like agents, and set them loose.
- Agents React To Live Text Feed
Use web text feed (news, weather, soap-opera closed-captions) to command agents. Certain words trigger actions. Some agents just parrot the text, others react to words in the text.
- Agents with Human Faces
- Idling Agents
- Automated Process
- Home Control Devices Change Room Theme
Use home control technology (eg
X10) for something about control of environment like Bill Gates room: when you walk through it with a particular ID card, images on monitors change to preferred ones. Visitors would carry cards that would change "theme" or design of room by triggering sets of light, sound, video, fans, steam, etc.
- Generators
- Art Review Generator
Generate art reviews from a grammar and input terms. Criteria? Test case: A show called "Dark Lexicon" at the Coffee Institute in Times Square, where works are named after Starbucks coffee drinks. No-doubt this has already been done on the web.
- Artwork Title Generator
Give otherwise mundane art some "attitude" with a title that can be used to project meaning onto the work.
- Identification
- Form Conversion
- Real to Digital Rainbow
Demonstrate the arc from physical object to 3D wireframe and back again, or from scan to (malleable idea) to print. A rainbow with transformed object(s) sitting in the dirt at either end.
- Property Sheets
- Web
- Junk
- Accidental Street Sculpture
- All It Can Be - Pool Full of Water Bottles
Completely fill a clear-sided wading pool with bottled water. Place it in a dark room and light the bottles so they glint like disco lights.
- Blow Plastic Bags Off Body
Video. Cover a person with a pile of hundreds of plastic bags. Turn on fan(s) and blow the bags off. Could run the video backwards and forwards.
- Doormat Pictures
Get a black rubber door mat with long, densely packed nubs. Get white balls or beads that fit between the nubs. Make pictures with the balls. It would ideal if you could do chance throws, photograph the result, then flex the mat to release the balls and try again.
- Foam Fossils
- Huge Yogurt Cup Ball
- Napkin Tornado
Video. Napkins (thin, like at Starbucks) or similar paper, crinkled up into a tornado shape, then stuck on a paper spike so blowing at it turns it like a pinwheel.
- Paper Armada
- Plastic Bags Over Light
Put layers of colored plastic bags over a light box or refrigerator light (cool, so won't melt plastic). Bags could be shaped to suggest a mountain, brain, or the top of a well.
- Plastic Burka Standing on Light Box
5 mil translucent plastic tarp, wrapped in folds. Life size, on my 36" light box. Use child mannequin with wig, as in picture here? Tarp is blurred enough to make it hard to tell it's not alive.
- Popeye vs. Sinbad
- Sculpture Shaped by Act of Delivery
This seemed like a good idea, but the simplest test -- using foam chips and glue tossed in a box then handled to rearrange the material -- did not work because the glue wouldn't dry. It would probably take some sort of time-release gizmo inside to do the trick, but that would be too much like a bomb to mail. A life form (insects that would shape the material but not survive the journey) might work, but that's probably a bad idea too.
- Self-Organizing Yogurt Lid Video
- Subway Grate LCD
- Yogurt Lid Reflector Field
- Yogurt Lid Space-Time
- Yogurt Lid Stack Code
- Yogurt Lid Trail
Burn a "trail" through a clear yogurt lid column with a hot wire or knife. It looks like frozen frames of movement, like Muybridge shots of horse.
- Noise
- Cell Phone Users Spread Out
Picture of cellphone callers in every quiet nook and open space of some public place? Now every quiet corner is occupied by someone making noise, and they're spread out to take up as much space as possible.
- Noise Torture - Koyaanisqatsi of Noise
A Koyaanisqatsi of escalating noise. E.g., people eating loudly, yakking loudly, laughing hysterically, every cellphone in a cafe goes off, boomboxes in a closed space, every car alarm on a block goes off, jackhammers, a room full of crying babies and screaming kids, church bells like hammers on an anvil, 600-watt car stereos, straight-through mufflers on motorcycles, car and truck exhausts, etc.
- Car Alarms
- Rockets & Weapons
- Bomb That Digs Graves - No Muss No Fuss
Bomber drops a cluster bomb that splits in mid-air and blasts a honeycomb of graves when it hits the ground, along with shrapnel charges shaped to funnel victims into them. No muss, no fuss.
- Cruise (Missile) up Newtown Creek
Tried and failed to do this in a video using Google Earth.
- Cruise Missile Coffin
- Cruise Missile Package Delivery Service
Cruise missile delivery service. Just program its destination, load the product, and launch it.
- Cruise Missile that Recognizes Faces
Launching a normal cruise missile to kill an enemy is stupid, because people move around; what the missile blows up is a place where (bad intelligence claimed) an enemy hung out, so anyone working or eating at one of Saddam's favorite restaurants was in more danger than he was, and the massive explosion destroyed any evidence of exactly who was blown up. With face-recognition software, you would at least be guaranteed that a look-alike would be among the dead.
- Missiles and Smokestacks
Image of interleaved smoking smokestacks and launching missiles, for tubes and smoke going up and down.
- Reagan's Star Wars Dream
Demonstrate the far-fetched bullet-hitting-a-bullet idea behind Reagan's "Star Wars" anti-missile scheme. Have rocket launch scene repeat over and over. Tension builds as attempts at interception fail, and it goes on to annihilate the dreaming nation.
- Strapped-Down Rockets Drive Wheel
Hobby missiles strapped to an armature above a potters wheel or lazy-Susan covered with clay terrain, or a block of ice, etc. The rockets are angled to drive the wheel around like a pinwheel when they're set off.
- Transportation
- 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
- New York Underground
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Juxtaposition
- Bryant Park Audio vs. Silent Video
Contrast idyllic video of warm Saturday in Bryant Park with the hellish horn honking on 6th & 42nd. Maybe headphones, or separate rooms?
- Building in Cliff Face
- Clashing Images and Sounds by Era
Side by side videos with swapped sound tracks. Clashing images and sounds from different eras -- new (motorcycles, car alarms and horns, cellphones) vs. old (horses, newsboys). Get sounds from Open Video Project? First talkies? Old radio?
- Clashing Images and Sounds by Location
Clashing images and sounds by location -- ice-scape picture with screeching cicadas; a desert scene with the sound of s waterfall; Manhattan rush hour sounds over a deserted beach; the sound of wind and waves over a video of rush hour. Just shift each soundtrack to the next environment?
- Compare Expressive Power of Image vs. Sound
Compare the amount and types of information that can be presented with sound vs. with image. Maybe the only way to do this is a 360 degree video pan of a very busy spot with traffic, crowds, etc. Play the video without sound, then the soundtrack without the video. Is this the same as Bryant Park item? 6th Ave. at 42nd would be a good place to do this.
- Cuckoo Clock Bird Pops Out Door in Wall Under Video
A cuckoo-clock bird pops out of the wall under a projection of an Alpine video. White bird, white snowy mountains.
- Merged Skyscrapers and Cliff Dwellings
- Mixed 3D Modelers - Mechanical vs. Natural
Put items from one 3D modeler's world into another's. Grow
Bryce trees and mountains on Nendo's mechanical forms (in the background
here), and vice-versa.
- Squadron of 3D Forms Hover Over Sunflowers
A squadron of (mechanical looking, Nendo) 3D forms hover over sunflowers as virtual duplicates or engineered ghosts.
- 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
- Ugly Jesus Test
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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.