moving announcement 1:29 AM

hello everyone!

so i have been thinking & talking about this for a while, but i've finally made the move.

all of my posts from here on out will be found at my new location on wordpress:

invisiblethings.wordpress.com!

everything here will stay here. but everything new will be there! so please update your bookmarks etc etc.

see you there!

there's a reason for everything 11:13 AM

this past week, i officially unveiled & committed to 'invisibility' as the new lens of my thesis topic.

yesterday, i officially confirmed for myself that i need a stronger contact lens prescription.

who says these things aren't personal?

seeing + making 11:41 PM

after class today, i went walking around downtown. as soon as i got out of the subway, i looked up, entranced by the blue of the sky. there was a flash. it didn't make any sense for there to be a flash in the sky. there was another. i stood on the corner, waiting, watching. it came back, just a little farther away. it disappeared. it came back again.

it was a flock of birds. they were so high up that they were invisible—until the light of the afternoon sun caught the white feathers under their wings.

this isn't done, but it's something. getting back to making.

the word for today is lucky.

little somethings 8:52 PM

as mentioned previously i have been thinking about moving away from blogger [because let's be honest: this page isn't doing either of us any favors], but i keep getting stuck at the part where i have to choose a name. my own name is so clunky & strange but i can't seem to think of anything cute / witty / neat enough to go with instead. if you have any thoughts please let me know.

aside from that, i have been doing a lot of thinking. i have made some decisions. they are, in part:

+ to take a photograph of what i am doing every day.
this is a restructuring of a project i started in 2008, a few months before i graduated, that i called the beautifuldays project. it lasted for a few months & then died when i started my first real job & got the subsequent depression, but i still keep it going sometimes & it still lives on in a folder on my hard drive.
but so this isn't about beautiful things. this is about documentation. so on that note:





work! studio! ever-expanding Stuff On My Wall!

+ to note my feelings every day.
a lot of this semester has been spent being swept up in debilitating panic. i feel like as upsetting as it is, there is probably something i can do with it once i can step back from it. this is a similar project to the one above, except i assign each day one feeling or thought or phrase. we'll see where this goes. today is nearsighted.

+ finally, to get a real topic for my thesis.
in reflecting on the last two weeks, a lot of my inability to work / make stems directly from the fact that this topic—this intersection of narrative+object+image, that may or may not have anything to do with the physical form or idea of 'book'—is far too broad & undefined to support generative work. it's an umbrella term for things that haven't been created. it's stifling.

yesterday, i was meant to present a written draft of a selfdirected project for our technology class. one hour before the class met i still had nothing. we were asked to consider the theme of 'impossibility' for this project, & since my panic attacks are usually brought on by my thinking that things are impossible, you can imagine how much fun i was having with this as an assignment.

but so i had an hour. i put on my coat & i left the studio. i walked. my plan was to walk to printed matter & to look around & see what sparked some thoughts but as soon as i crossed 7th ave & felt my ears turning red from the wind & cold something clicked. i started writing things down. my notebook says: flight. it says: the 5 1/2 minute hallway. it says: now. now. now. now. i was walked into by a group of teenagers. i was passed by by everyone else. it says: the impossibility of being invisible.

& i knew i had something but i still went to printed matter & i still looked around & i even saw a few things that i liked & so now my notebook says other things too. i left the bookstore with eight minutes to class & called sasha & talked out this idea.

it's got something to do with camouflage, maybe. or invisibility. not sure. maybe they are the same. the impossibility of being visible / invisible. hiding in plain sight. maybe something to do with social media. if i tweeted my location from a location would anyone find me? what if i were camouflaged? what if i stood out? what do each of those things mean? & i felt good about it so i said it in class & i took lots of notes as people ran with this idea.

afterwards i did a lot of thinking, & with some encouragement, i am dipping my toes in the pool of water that is Maybe Invisibility Is A Thesis Topic. as circuitous as this all is, i think this new topic allows me to get at the parts of my previous thesis topic that i really loved & found interesting while giving me freedom to move, a cultural background, a historic precedent, & a lens to continue working in.

despite how much i can type on the internet, i am in reality a pretty introverted person. introverts tend to get the short end of the stick in western society (especially american society), & so i have come up with coping strategies. some of these include 'faking it until i make it' in one way or another. there are times they work & times they don't. but throughout all of this, the idea of invisibility is present. sometimes i feel so invisible that i don't exist; other times, i feel safe in my perceived invisibility.

i feel like this can go in a lot of different directions while still staying on-topic, on-theme, & i like that. i think that some of my projects can be retroactively edited to fit with this, too, if necessary, & i like that a lot.

so now i'm trying to work a little in very basic visual terms & come up with a set of projects i want to start working on immediately. it's weird how these things come back! see below a few entries, with the cutout head? i keep coming back to this. the cutout thing. clearly i have to do something with this.

other things i have been thinking about exploring include: opacity. transparency. the idea of superpowers. the vernacular of the comic form. ghosts (supernatural, sheets). light & dark w/r/t visibility. omission. neglect. power / freedom. personas. public+private. the city's role in invisibility. visibility as not limited to one sense. presence & the lack thereof. participation, as in: all is invisible unless it is seen by someone or something else. filling in the gaps. what happens in the moments when you blink, or are asleep. how graphic design really boils down to the relationship between the visible & invisible.

so i think this is good. it's weird & it's different & it's scary & i'm a little hesitant about it but that's good too.

plus now i get to talk about things that are fun instead of just things that are serious! i need to build in fun to this project. otherwise it will just be a whole year of panic attacks & i am not ok with that.

the most serious charge that can be brought against new england is not puritanism but february 10:37 PM

long time no blog!

or at least it feels that way. but then again i keep thinking that the thursday that was only about three days ago was actually two weeks ago, so there's that.

i have meant to be making something every day for my thesis but have fallen short of this goal. unless we count 'having a meltdown' as making something, which i don't. even if it led to a different kind of making the next day. some days get lost this way.

last week i started this project, which is a calendar. when i get stuck sometimes i dream up ideas for calendars. i don't know why it is my go-to format, especially since i have never actually followed through on designing or making any of them, but it may be in part because calendars have individual parts that are numbered [not ongoing], that speak on their own but also add up to a whole, that read mostly linearly [or are expected to]. these are good requirements for small, self-initiated projects.

so this calendar is a calendar that is also a book. or it is a companion to a book. or it is an enticement to read a book that includes significant portions or elements of the book. or here is an analogy, in honor of my younger brother having just finished some now-unrelated sats:

book trailer : book :: THIS PROJECT : also book.

the book in question is shane jones' light boxes, with which i am madly in love & have wanted to make something around since i read it. i threw something together last week but was not thrilled with it, so i reworked it a little tonight. when i was done i called sasha in to look at it & as we went through the pages he kept whispering 'jesus' like it was a good thing, so i figured maybe it should go up on the blog?

except it is a huge file. & also i am not quite sure it's done. but it partly looks like this:



of course some elements will need to be adjusted. the type is still not 100% because i have only seen it printed once, a few iterations ago. my printer at home can't go as big as this is [something like 11.5 x 16.5, or thereabouts]. but i'm excited about where this is going & what it is doing & what it means for some other Real Projects i have been working on too.

other thoughts & such may be forthcoming. there's been a lot percolating these days.

also a move to wordpress may be in the near future. blogspot feels a bit odd to me these days. but we'll see.

updates on the precarious mfa 5:12 PM

it has been some time since i have written here last! i am sorry, internets.

here is some of what has happened in the interim:

+ i had a thesis presentation two fridays ago. more like three, now. sorry. it went ok. i learned a little more about the kinds of things i should say to people about my thesis & my ideas & the kinds of things i should keep to myself. the feedback i aligned myself with most was all about how i should just keep going but then i did the opposite of that.

+ i had a shutdown for about a week where i felt too overwhelmed to do a thing. this was mostly due to exhaustion. i wish i could say i was exhausted from thesis but i don't know what this is. i think it was a lot of things. there were a lot of projects due this past week & a lot of preparation that needed to happen for those & also we had the best houseguest in the world for four days & all of these things can be exhausting.

+ i spent a lot of time just looking at things, spending time reading, acknowledging a time of intake rather than output. that was good for a while but it should have stopped sooner & instead it has just kept going.

+ i had been working & presented a rube goldberg device for our technology class. the device said hello. or sort of. i was interested in the idea of slowing down the phonetic process of saying the word 'hello' [again inspired by ben marcus & the mouth-caverns of notable american women], so i organized this 'device' as a performance piece. i got five people in a room [the getting-there was part of the device] & gave them instructions on how to vocalize the sounds of H E L L & O. i got some other people to be in the room to respond to this vocalization. i took some photos & some audio & some video & those looked like this:


this past thursday i was scheduled to present this project, so i put together a little installation in a side-room of the studio. i had artifacts from the performance, little handouts that went through the scientific method of this project, photos on the wall, & three laptops playing 2 video & 1 additional audio recording of the performance. what i wanted to get at was to show all the different media from this event as hierarchically the same. in this way i think the installation was a failure, but i also think that goal was not what i should have been getting at. the documentary aspect of this is really not what was the most interesting to me. it was the performance aspect. so, with that in mind, i am now re-doing the project as a kit of sorts—a kind of instruction manual for anyone to organize their own performance of this small rube goldberg device. i am happier with this than the installation, even though i'm a little proud of myself for doing that & reaching out of my comfort zone / skill area.

+ i have been working on this precession project, mentioned below. it has taken a very different turn from what i posted & i am not using those images or that string ideas at all. or, i am going in the second direction: the one about the envelopes & the messages, the one where we regret to inform you. i am excited about this & i am trying to keep a lot of things in mind. trying to remember that the work should explain itself, mostly. sometimes i struggle with that. right now i am struggling with form & execution & keeping a grasp on ideas.

+ i stayed up very late working on a lot of different things on a lot of different nights & keep exhausting myself that way.

+ i have been trying to get started on my thesis work again but it's been more difficult to pick up the threads than i imagined. i feel drained & lost most of the time. for a while i have only been able to envision my thesis 'topic' as something like a tangle of snakes & on good days i want to get inside to see what is in the middle of all that but on most days i just want to stay away. i know the answer here is to start small but it's hard to do that when you don't really remember where to start at all. or are too scared to start. both could be equally valid.

+ i went to a reading & then the afterparty for another reading that i missed because i was working & i realized how infrequently i really get out of my work & how i should do that more.

+ i went to yesterday's creative morning with liz danzico & i realized how infrequently i really get out of academia & how i should do that more.

+ it seems like i have had a string of days now where things seem to be going just fine until something terrible happens or i get some kind of terrible news that changes everything & makes me cranky & upset the rest of the day. this is ironic because it is exactly what i am trying to communicate with my precession project but that doesn't mean i want to live it too.

so that's about where i am right now. it is chilly in our apartment & i have put on polarfleece socks & sweaters & we are going to have a nice dinner tonight & see family. sasha got a package yesterday & it contained two corduroy mountains & they are now creating a landscape on our couch. this seems appropriate for the weather. i had boobytrapped myself last night by leaving my laptop in the studio [that way i would HAVE to go back to the studio!] but instead of going back to work i ended up staying home & commandeering sasha's computer. this also seems appropriate for the weather but not for this point in the semester. tomorrow will be a working day for sure.

studies in precession 12:00 AM

small tests for now. thinking about precession. about what happens when your north is no longer north. about loss. about the last time i felt the madness of wanting to break something open from the inside. about commiserating with all the sad love songs on the radio. about the way light fades the wallpaper when you have something up long enough.

& then all this thinking led in another direction. one about how everyone regrets to inform you. about the distance between the red & blue stripes on airmail envelopes. about the little things that can shake you to the core. about the cats that will not stop crying.

i did a visual exercise like the one above a little less than a year ago, where i took photos of me & sasha & i cut him out very carefully with an exacto knife. it was meant to represent 'missing'. it was physically painful.

what i mean here is that context is everything. i did two of these tonight & read through diary entries i had written at this time of year the year this happened & all i can hope is that the dreams i have been having lately where we run into each other underground stop coming back.

i never expected that the projects i put together for this studio class would be so personal, peering so far into things i had kept private [the fear folio, all of this]. i am surprisingly unafraid of putting my heartbreak on display [despite knowing it was my own fault at the time—the heartbreak, i mean] but am also unsure it is the best thing to do, here. if all i show is my own north pointing somewhere more like northwest, is that isolating? if i try to move someone else's compass, would that be more effective? & the answer i keep coming back to is: try both. see what happens.

as always.