Is an accidental mathematician.

"I started studying art hoping to one day be an artist so that I would never have to do an office job.  But more and more my artistic process begins to resemble an office job."  - me

Making a database, creating mathematical formulae, writing a stupid bloody thesis, organising schedules.  Why can't I just learn to paint?  Why do I have to make my working process into a boring mundane combination of reading, writing, maths, data entry, organising, repeating, uploading and other such uncreative acts?


The answer I do not know.  Today I spent time doing maths.  Looking at the dreaded n pattern of sequencing.


1, 2, 6, 24, 120, 720, 5040, 40320, 362880, 3628800, 39916800, 479001600, 6227020800, 87178291200, 1307674368000, 20922789888000, 355687428096000, 6402373705728000, 121645100408832000, 2432902008176640000


Its the sequence that means the number of possible combinations of a deck of cards is:
80,658,175,170,943,900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000


Its the sequence that makes no sense but is annoyingly true.  If you have just 7 people in a line there are over 5000 combinations you can be in.  This pointless maths might not be of any interest or relevance to you but it has been quite frustrating for me.  Scuppering some plans of mine but possibly inspiring some new ones.  Sorry not sure why I wanted to share this.  Was just staring at numbers and when you stare at a number with over 150 0s on the end of it it becomes rather meaningless and mind numbing.  Oh well at least I did the maths before attempting to order things.  Just ordering 10 objects would take me the rest of my life.  Bring on plan B.  

An explanation

So this relates to the photo of my hairy feet with toes tied together.  It is part of a huge project I have started and am continuing with.  Should explain it a bit for seminar tomorrow even though in my quick presentation I doubt anyone will read this and I wont read it out to the group.

But any ways the project involves massive repetition of events.  This involves doing various things on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis.  These actions/events are given set amounts they need to be repeated or a set amount of time they need to be done for.

So the best example is the toe tying from the photo.  Every week at an unspecified time I must spend half an hour with my toes tied together.  So between midnight Sunday one week and midnight Sunday the next half an hour of my time is spent with my bare feet attached with some form of string at the toes.  Normally the big toes but this is not a requirement.  This action must be repeated every week without fail for 50 years.  After that time the artwork is completed.  If at any point for whatever reason this action is not undertaken within the time frame of a week then the work in progress is deemed a failure and no work has been made.  The rules of this have been written down and I will type them up at some point but for now I think I have explained it enough.

Another example of this is the annual backwards dinner party.  This will be an event where me and others (unspecified and allowed to change) eat a 3 course meal backwards every year on a set date.  This date has not been decided yet as I have yet to organise the first enactment of this event.  Backwards means simply going desert, main course starter instead of the usual course order.  The meal must be eaten at a restaurant and happen on the same date every year until my death.

Both of these events/actions have more detailed and complex rules that I won't explain right now but will post in future.  The very specific rules must be written down and a hard copy kept for reference.  Breaking of a single rule will mean the project ends uncompleted and no art is made.  These are just 2 but I intend to create a constant schedule of events so that I am constantly working but with far off completion dates.  New projects can be added at any time and failed projects removed.  My life will be become a constant workload of progression of various works in progress but with no finished pieces being completed for a long time and perhaps ever.

Before the end of term/2010 I intend to have at least 1 daily, weekly, monthly and annual project in progress and hope that there will be many more than this in future.  Right now it is an experiment on an idea and needs testing, researching and analysing but it could become my entire artistic process.  The undocumented performances of first year taken off on a massive tangent and turned into a life long endless artistic process with little to no work ever being created and sporadic if any documentation.

Okay that will do.  Totally text and so nothing enjoyable for the seminar group to look at.  And now it is 2:22am (deliberate blink) and I am off to sleep.  Will probably be talking about this shit in exactly 12 hours.  YAY!

Database work

Trying to capture this screen shot I realised I had not saved the custom coding which made my access database function properly.  I had gone in an made my own coding to automatically insert images into the database without too much additional storage space and lag time.  But enough nerd posturing here is an image from something I am working on at the moment:

Basically this is one form from a huge database I have started working on.  It will document every possession in my life.  Like I said before these have been problems with the image insertion, as you can imagine there is also a problem with the photo taking.  I am needing to organise all my possessions in 1 place with a good camera, a good memory card and my computer to label, compress and order the whole lot.  So it is very much an ongoing process which is ongoing but does not progress.

Basically once complete the database will be the corner stone of some actual artwork that I want to create from it.  This will only be possible once everything is put on there and then it is updated weekly to take into account things brought, sold, lost, found and stolen by or from me.  So very early days but a big process which will eventually lead to some finished work.

Thesis

So thesis draft is in, first feedback on things happening tomorrow.  Thought I would tell friends and seminar group a little about my chosen topic and the way I am writing for this thing.  Last year when we were doing thesis proposals I handed in 3 short ones instead of one proper one.  I could not decide on a topic or find a way to make the process of reading and writing bearable.  But I do now have a far better idea of what I am doing.  It will obviously have to be negotiated with a tutor over the year and be subject to much change but here is the current plan.

My thesis will be in the form of a play, neatly avoiding the horror that is academic writing.  Said play has the working title "5 conversations had in heaven" and that describes it pretty well.  Set in the smoking area outside the pearly gates where heavens smokers are shuffled off to due gods smoking ban.  The characters involved in these conversations are currently Marcel Duchamp, Oscar Wilde, Noam Chomsky and Martain Creed.  Two of these will be killed off to get to heaven.  But their death and other things will be avoided.  Plot will be near nothing as I don't want to be writing a story but imagining a conversation.  The focus of the thesis/play will be the conversations the group have about politics and art both as separate and as interconnected ideas.  This will mean attempting to get into the characters thoughts through their writings and then trying to create a realistic conversation based on the ideas of the men in question.

Problems I foresee include: tutors hating it flat out, criticism of it being a group of white males, criticism of the fact I'm putting words into other peoples mouths, 2 of whom are still alive and capable of talking for themselves and criticism of me being an atheist using heaven as a setting for conversations between people who religious people might not think worthy of heaven.  So it will be an uphill climb but I needed a topic I was and can remain interested in and a way of writing that would give me the freedom to be creative and address serious issues without having to use elitist alienating academic jargon.  Wish me luck.

Seminar Group

I will now be using this blog for the additional purpose of showing work to my seminar group.  This is because we have to set up a blog, I don't want to create a 5th blog when I have trouble updating the ones I have while working on bigger internet projects, trying to survive London and of course doing my work at Chelsea.  So this blog will continue to be a mess of random things from plays about bus stops, photos of my old doodles, things about friends work and other miscellaneous crap.  But more formal writing and things specific to recent university work will also appear in places.


For seminar people:

If you want to look at everything on the blog feel free.  If you don't then you can filter out some of the random to get things more relevant to the seminar.  To do this just click the seminar button on the top of the right hand side bar.  Comments are moderated so they won't be visible to others until I have read them and deleted any spam ones but please do feel free to comment with any thoughts, links, opinions or whatever you feel might be relevant.

If you do look though non-seminar things read the writing bits or at least look at the labels as some things on here are not my work.  They might be friends work, work I own, collaborative work or something else.

To be explained in the future.

Art as religion

"Art’s like religion....invented by the cunning to gain power and profit from the ignorant and gullible... recruits through powerful institutions where the indoctrinated replicate themselves... makes believers self-righteous and condescending... infiltrates and uses the state to gain power and funds... has tentacles in the education system manipulating the syllabus to create a more docile malleable youth... splits regularly into separate belief systems... has many followers who while not being true believers play along out of fear of accepting the indifference and meaninglessness of their lives and everything they create...  uses a fear of existentialism [that will make] even the most intelligent live life in self-denial... will become less meaningful... as it accommodate the freedoms demanded by a larger more diverse group of followers."

Selective editing done by me to turn something a lot longer into something more digestible for sharing.  While I think this raises some interesting questions, provides an interesting context for discussing some issues in and around art and has some truth to it; it is not an expression of my thoughts and opinions.  It was just something that I found interesting and spent some time cutting and pasting into something to share with you folks.

I will respond to this the way I respond to religious preaching: respectfully say nothing preferring to quietly digest and contemplate in my own time if I consider it worthy of attention.  Attempt to form my own opinion before trying to deal with other peoples and unless I can come up with a definitive truth and undeniable evidence for it I shall continue to respect difference and understand that my beliefs are as fallible and individual as any others.  Interesting though.

If a conversation can be considered art then this one still isn't

Things to know before reading this:  MK is a freaky mixed-race weirdo I know who has ruined my life.  She smokes Marlboro and is of indiscriminate sexuality.  Ohhhh and she is a big fat racist art fag with a rediculaaas ack-sent.  This is our collaborative art/random conversation highlight.  I love her, in that hate filled urge to kill kind of way.

MK:  i like my tobacco as i like my women.

Will: Cheap and poorly rolled?

MK: NO

Will: Imported?

MK: NO

Will: Wet?

MK: NO

Will: With nothing but white cotton separating it from your lips?

MK: NO!!!!!

Will: Duty free?

MK: NO

Will: Golden and called Virginia?

MK: Noooooo

Will: Pre-rolled in cigarette form with a red and white Marlboro packet?

MK: NO

Will: Filterless?

MK: NO

Will: Bum sucked??

MK: huh????????

Will: English term meaning a soggy end from someone not used to smoking salivating all over it.

MK: Ewwww NOOOOOOO!

Will: Capable of killing cowboys?

MK: NO

Will: I don’t know then, how do you like it?

MK: cold wet and full of jamaican!

Will: What the fuck has that got to do with tobacco?

MK: oooops sorry meant toboggan!

Will: You are really not funny.  AND...Its a bobsled

MK: I like my lead boobs like I like my tobacco

Will: Cold wet and full of Jamaicans?

MK: RACIST PERVERT!!!