strange world...

some kind of homespun parade float from an early 1900's RPPC from switzerland. they'd have the whole world in their hands if they had any...

to begin anew...

initiation:

Whoever you are, go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know each bit;
your house the last before the infinite,
whoever you are.
Then with your eyes that wearily
scarce lift themselves from the worn-out doorstone
slowly you raise a shadowy black tree
and fix it on the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world (and it shall grow
and ripen as a word, unspoken, still).
when you have grasped its meaning with your will,
then tenderly your eyes will let it go...

for some unknown reason i never realized that my single favorite work of art and my single favorite poem fit so nicely together. strange that someone who tends to so easily find connections between things that seldom make sense together, has taken so long to connect these two very connected trees that i mentally walk past every day.

the drawing is a pastel by odilon redon from 1906-07 called "la budha", the text is a poem by rilke called "eingang", here the translation by c.f. macintyre, and curiously rilke's poem is from nearly the same period as redon's drawing - the poem from a group written between 1900 and 1908. on rilke's poem macintyre says "it is with the eyes of the mind that the more real world of the seer is observed." a line that could easily serve both the poem and the drawing...

on this new years day, i would suggest everyone follow rilke and redon's cues, and go outside and ponder the form of a tree or two and begin to build a world inside yourself, "(and it shall grow and ripen as a word, unspoken, still)." begin the year with open eyes, open ears, and gentle hands... to accept all that 2009 will offer you.

two painted hands...

two paintings of a single hand that i have been somewhat obsessed with for the last 25 years. the bottom image is of course, by philip guston, a painting called "talking" from 1979; while the painting on top is an early painting by george baselitz called "the hand of god" from 1964/65.

i discovered the guston painting in 1982 in a whitechapel gallery exhibition catalog - the same year i graduated high school and started art school. i remember my painting teacher telling us to bring a catalog to class of a painter whose work we liked, and when i showed her this catalog of guston's work from 1969-80, she became very angry with me, telling me his late paintings were "delusional paintings of an old man". i had discovered guston's work 4 or 5 years earlier on a visit to SFMOMA, and the combination of cartoons and violence were very appealing to a budding punk rocker.

i discovered the baselitz image in a catalog of early works, published by anthony d'offay gallery in 1985. i don't believe is saw this exhibition, but i was living in paris at the time, and must've picked it up at a bookstore. i do remember not being much of a fan of baselitz's mid-1980's upside down neo-expressionist figure paintings. for some reason i had little interest in them at the time, feeling they were too formulaic and too consistent - although it is more likely that my disinterest was rooted in the fact that the teacher who bashed guston kept saying how genius the baselitz's were because they were painted upside down. i have to admit at the time, i wasn't much of a fan of 80's figurative painting, particularly artists like sandro chia; and even though i wasn't a fan of baselitz either, i found the early works to be truly strange, off putting, and pretty interesting... they somehow felt sincere.

like baselitz's early work, guston's late work also seemed out of sync and out of place. neither artist's work seemed to be outsider in relation to the artworld's take on the term (both were educated and participating), but both were making works that seemed, at least to me, a bit outside of what was going on in the artworld's center at the time. more than anything else, i couldn't find resolve in either artist's work, and i was very interested in how they felt like stories but revealed very little "facts" - how they suggested narrative, but there was really no trajectory. the works of these specific periods of each artist seemed full of life, yet seemed somehow mute - which made them feel uncanny. but regardless of all of this, the truth about why i bought the baselitz catalog in the first place was because it had the painting "the hand of god" on the cover, and it instantly reminded me of guston's "talking".

i hadn't thought much about either painting recently, but a few days ago i was dealing with some flooding in my studio (no damage except to a few boxes, but not contents), where i discovered a sketchbook/diary from 1985, and in it i found a mention of these two hand paintings. when i went to the disaster that is my bookshelves this evening to see if i could lay my hands on either of the books, i found them next to each other - as if they'd always been together, not just in my mind, but physically in the world.

there's something about the composition of both - one against darkness and one against light; as well as how each hand seems a world or a site. both have things flowing away from them - one birds, and the other smoke - although birds going up, and smoke going down. baselitz's hand seems an offering, gentle as if quoting rilke: "hands must be simple and good to accept the offering", while guston's is angular, geometric, almost like a crude wooden cross. baselitz holds the world inside the palm of his hand, while guston's radiates smoke as if it were on fire. (and if guston's was decidedly more comforting and less ominous, it could be a heaven in relation to baselitz's earth... or one could see guston's smoke as a hell in relation to baselitz's muddied palm, which would need a bit of a cleansing before it could be seen as a heaven...)

in terms of paint they both seem to have been painted out of necessity, with a bit of struggle - baselitz to bring out form, and guston to flatten out form. both hands have pinks and reds, but baselitz also has yellow/brown. both hands are bordered in black, guston's graphically through a black field, and baselitz's by softened ethereal lines. both hands also point to a place between 2 and 3 o'clock.

in terms of lasting influence, it wasn't either artist's work that fueled inspiration towards my own practice as much as the 9 page transcription of a talk guston gave that is reproduced in the whitechapel catalog (which doesn't cite the date or place). in it he speaks a lot about his own struggles as a painter, as well as how dissatisfied he had become with an artworld filled with works that were "official" and "against risking". for many years i used the text as a reference point for my own work, not in terms of what or how guston painted, but for the bigger things he speaks about in terms of practice - an ethical, questioning, and rigorous approach to being an artist. guston illustrates one of his points with a quote from isaac babel (one of the "two writers he admired most for years" - the other was kafka):

"isaac babel gave a lovely ironic speech to the soviet writers union. it was 1934. he ended his talk with the following remark:

"the party and the government have given us everything, but have deprived us of one privilege. a very important privilege, comrades, has been taken away from you. that of writing badly".

"isn't that beautiful?... doesn't anyone want to paint badly?"

when 2 non-musicians make music...

i recently discovered these images in different books.

the top image is film director yasujiro ozu playing a mandolin at age 19, from a japanese book on ozu and his work.

the bottom image is designer george nelson playing the japanese sho, from a japanese trade magazine in english, circa 1955.

since i don't read japanese, i can't tell you much more about the context of the ozu image, but the nelson image is from his first trip to japan, accompanied a somewhat lackluster article he wrote regarding the preparation and serving of tempura (nelson was a fantastic writer, but this was clearly a fluff piece).

when i discovered the nelson image several weeks ago, i was completely obsessed with it for a number of reasons. i've written before about how nelson's design-work and writings inspired me to immerse myself in mid-century industrial design; but i'd never really come across any reference in his writings to japanese music.

the sho is probably my favorite sounding instrument in the world, and the fact that someone captured an image of nelson blowing through one, leaves me wishing there was an audio recording to go along with the visual. it might be my favorite image of sound and architecture colliding...

the image of ozu was also a surprise, as i'd never seen an picture of him playing an instrument either. of course, ozu used a ton of music in his films, most of it relatively straightforward sounding japanese film music, the earlier films infused with a healthy dose of folk songs, children's school chorus, etc.

music was clearly important in ozu's films, and he used it kind of like the way he used trains. both are always present, and both create atmospheric situations and suggestions - the trains tending to always take one away or bring one back home (for what else can trains really do...); the music usually more grounding than emotional, repeated motifs occurring less as transitions and more as reference points - more of a grounding presence than music usually is in films.

of course, more than anything, i wonder what sounds, melodies, musics, were played at the moments these two photographs were taken, and of course, they also lead me to wonder what kind of music these two might have listened to (i'm guessing ozu probably listened to folk music, while nelson most likely listened to jazz).

to tweak this duo into a trio, i would include one of the early photographs of strindberg playing guitar... but perhaps that is best left to another post...

a month or so ago i went on the MAK center's annual architecture tour, and one of the stops was the home of julius shulman (designed by raphael soriano). shulman passed away last year, and it was a bit strange to visit his house under the circumstances. it seemed as if some family still lives there, but the house is for sale, and a lot of the furnishings are gone, and it feels like life has moved out of it... not to mention his studio being entirely empty.

when i walked into the living room, the first thing i did was take a few pictures of the speakers that were embedded within the walls, thinking about shulman sitting in this room and listening to music or radio emanating from certain locations. then i noticed the hi-fi near the couch, and next to it several records... i had my phone camera with me, and so i snapped a pic of shulman's record collection - one more collision of architecture and music...

the strange thing is that i did a post a few years ago related to a photograph of the living room i was standing in. in the old image, featured on the cover of a sunday newspaper magazine, there was an LP visible on shulman's end table containing the sound of famous architect's speaking about the future of architecture. i have the LP in my own collection, and at the time, loved the idea that shulman and myself had both listened to the LP, although of course, in different listening spaces.

when i got home from the tour, i pulled out the image of shulman's living room and compared it with my own experience of being there. it felt incredibly odd to look at an image of a space 50 years before i visited it. the room was emptier now of course, but it still looked the same, even the light in the space was similar, and it was nice to know the room hadn't been remodeled since it was built. while we were walking around, looking at the emptied space, i couldn't help but think about putting one of shulman's records on the turntable, to give back to the space a little more life...

i've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand...

i've been thinking a lot about how certain images remain in your unconscious mind and kind of work on you over time unknowingly. the one thing blogging has done for me is that there is an automatic record of the date of discovery for every image i post.

i don't go back and look at older postings or images much, in fact revisiting things in cyberspace is almost never. i don't have the empty minded flipping of pages experiences in this space as i do with the bulging books in my studio filled with cut out findings, held in place with tape. with the books it's not so much a process of seeking as wandering through images that are familiar, but which i'm still struggling to understand why they attracted me in the first place. they contain images i've gathered over a longer period of time and on a less consistent basis. with the blog, i simply roll towards certain things in a just awakened state, where inspirational fodder for a morning gets replaced the next morning...

the blog as a set of images is much like my conscious brain, with each image fading a bit as i add a new one (strange that these digital photos now live as though they were actual photographs fading with age...).

last night i was working on finishing up a piece that i've been working on the past 6 months or so (it will be part of my show that opens saturday). during its making, things hover conversationally as i build: watts towers, tramp art, molecule models, bruno taut's alpine architecture, terragni's ideas towards the danteum, the paintings of kupka. these, and other things i've already forgotten, bubble to the surface out of the process of thinking and making; but as always, there are things that go into a work, that i really i hadn't thought about or consciously noticed as an inspirational presence. last night, i went into my studio to take a picture of all the parts lying on the floor. it actually wasn't until i looked at the window on my digital camera to take a picture, that i saw the space of my studio as a flattened image, and i remembered this snapshot of toy trains that i posted on airforms a year or so ago.

i had posted it in relation to the paintings of alfred jensen, and strangely enough suggested then that the arrangement could be or might be 'a score' (this entire work was birthed from a 12 page classical music score, and could still also be read as one). the interesting thing is not only might that the train photo have unconsciously suggested the structural form which is so clearly present in the piece, as much as i originally connected the train forms in the photo to images in a painting (jensen's). this responding to a sculptural work in a photograph and connecting it to images in a painting, suggests a deeper relationship between the painted and sculpted things i make.

it is rare when a single image or simple object can become a model of the connectedness of all things that one makes, as well suggesting a connectedness among all things one responds to in the world. the train photo and the photo of these objects on the studio floor reveal to me a kind of intuitive focus - being able to work while both knowing and unknowing at the same time - and in some ways the trains show me more because it's difficult to see one's own works in a light of such distance and clarity.

the other interesting thing is that the train photo is taken at an odd angle, where the images of things lying flat on a table, are read as cascading and related to pictorial rather than actual gravity. when i started these piles of wood i imagined they would be on the floor, a series of minor architectures for humble thoughts. eventually, i decided to string them together, suggesting more of their internal musical and narrative structure. to allow them to not only suggest architecture but to also construct architecture with them. the final work will not reflect the train images as they were in life, but as they are in the reading of a photograph.

inspiration is such a strange thing. an image or object tends to work hardest on me when i've seemingly forgotten all about it. conscious replication is of little interest, as it tends to deny a source the ability to reveal deeper truths beyond it. for me, it's about planting seeds and allowing them to grow within you unnoticed, until they bubble to the surface in these relatively surprising ways. i don't try to direct these things so much as i let them continually jab my insides in tiny and seemingly unimportant ways - never really noticing they've had their way with me until i finish a piece and realize it didn't exactly come from where i thought it did.

when benjamin wrote that for book collectors "ownership is the most intimate relationship one can have with objects. not that they come alive in him, but it is he who lives in them.” i think he's both right and wrong, for there are many things we do enter and live inside of, but there are also certain things that enter us - and while they are sometimes slumbering inside us unnoticed, there are times that they do come alive. in many cases we might not remember they are in us, but they are continually working their quiet magic in wonderfully mysterious ways. once in awhile, a moment decides to let you in on this little secret, and you see what you have done, and you realize that you are not so much the guide, as much as the guided.

frankie and my mom...

well, since it's mother's day today i thought i'd post this picture. my mom's not in it, but i'm sure she wishes she was. it's a great photo of a bunch of folks who won some kind of frank sinatra contest... each winner holding an LP (it doesn't really matter because my mom had all these LPs already i'm sure!).

when she was a teenager, my mom was completely obsessed with frankie. she had one entire wall of her bedroom covered with magazine photos (in today's world we'd call her a stalker), and even went to vegas on her honeymoon to see ol' blue eyes perform. at one point my grandfather had some dealings with frankie and because he was extremely indulgent to his kids (and grandkids!), he let his 13 year old frankie obsessed daughter secretly listen in on the phone... lo and behold frankie let off a string of F-bombs that had both of their mouths agape.

in light of all this, happy mother's day wishes to all the moms out there, including govi's mom, who's having her first mother's day ever. my advice to her is when her son wants to listen in on a phone call from strange uncle steve is that she should not let him near the phone...

when land is like sea...

the wind rises, screaming faintly, intensely against the north side, and the old house creaks.


"the hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel."

and in a letter, he (melville)

"i have a sort of sea-feeling, here in the country, now that the ground is covered with snow. i look out of my window in the morning while i rise as i would out of a port-hole of a ship in the atlantic. my room seems a ship's cabin; & at nights when i wake up & hear the wind shrieking, i almost fancy there is too much sail in the house, & i had better go on the roof and rig the chimney."

and again, at another season,

"in summer too, canute-like: sitting here, one is reminded of the sea. for not only do ground-swells roll the slanting grain, and little wavelets of the grass ripple over upon the low piazza, as their beach, and the blown down of dandelions is wafted like the spray, and the purple of the mountains is just the purple of the billows, and a still august noon broods upon the deep meadows, as a calm upon the line; but the vastness and the lonesomeness are so oceanic, and the silence and the sameness, too, that the first peep of a strange house, rising beyond the trees, is for all the world like spying, on the barbary coast, an unknown sail."

paul metcalf, quoting herman melville (his great grandfather), in genoa, 1965

when music lies beneath the surface...

he looked into her eyes, which mirrored the whole rose-colored sunset and green shores. then they heard music, like a glass-harmonica, but in strange keys - such as only those dreamed who wished to do something new in the world! but it did not occur to them to seek outside themselves, for they thought that the music was within them.

august stringberg, the big gravel screen
translated by velma howard, 1912

the parting of crickets and bees...

it was strange how it began, he sitting always in the park, one hand resting on top of the instrument, the other resting on the keys, and he unable to really make it sing. he never really understood the bellows, or the pulling necessary to make it sound, so he sat there daily, moving his fingers up and down the white keys, making only clicking sounds to the world, but music always sounding inside of him. he sat there, like a statue, living half a life, clicking away, and every time anyone passed by the park, he was there, and the clicking, well it sounded a bit like crickets. then, as it happened she wandered nearby holding a guitar, not that she could play it, she was taking it somewhere, i know not where, but somewhere. as she carried it, the wind played a bit on the strings like an aeolian harp, and as she passed him and his clicking, he could hear the strings vibrations, at least a tiny bit. he was blind, and the strings buzzings sounded a bit like bees. he knew not what was around him, but he spoke gently, as if into the air. 'i hear bees, with their transparent wings, and i know what that means'. she stopped to look at him and she listened for a bit to his fingers moving up and down the keys. the clicking sound, well, it moved her in some way, so she stood just behind him and shifted the guitar to catch more wind on the strings. the strings vibrated a bit louder, and the man began to be a bit agitated. the bees were coming closer, and he felt a quiet yearning for the sweetness of their honey. at this point she began to strum the guitar, every once in awhile, between blowings on the strings by the wind. the old guitar was quite out of tune, but he could feel within himself something was right. he whispered something to her, that i did not hear, but the most remarkable thing happened next. for some reason, he grabbed the left side of his accordion and pulled it out as long as it would go, creating an extended rectangle of the bellows almost twice the size of the instrument. as he pressed the sides back together, a wheeze and a whine escaped, and over the landscape a small wind blew from the cracks and holes. and you can even see in this photo, that the trees behind them began to dance from the breeze. for a moment, perhaps even for two or three days, their faces made gentle smiles, and you can just about see them if you look closely. and then, as though their time was up, they parted, and the landscape became quiet again, and he remained making crickets as before.

nietzsche, in his seventy-five aphorisms said, "in parting.- not how one soul comes close to another but how it moves away shows me their kinship and how much they belong together." somehow in all this one senses he was right...

not immune to colors...

a series of photos of the top scientists studying the immune system circa 1968 from an issue of life magazine. what is stunning of course, are the strange and wonderful backgrounds. created by an anonymous artist, the paper cut outs are certainly in line with the illustration and design of the era, clearly related to the work of textile designer alexander girard and designer on disneyland's "it's a small world" mary blair. it's amazing how forty years later, much of these backgrounds resemble a lot of what's going on in contemporary painting.

rest ye weary traveler

the weary traveler returns to find life relatively unchanged. he sits in darkness with the secret objects that signify his journey, recently taken, each thing significant in invisble ways to the world, perhaps because this significance is not in them, but truly inside him. these things can never be navigational for us, for we are the outsiders. yet he is anxious and able to cover them with his eyes and hands lovingly; and then, with eyes closed, fingers strumming, he visualizes everything he left behind - every moment these claimed objects really speak of. he relives these moments through these objects, and he sings songs that replicate their original atmospheres, his hummings suggesting spaces, lighting, and feeling of there and then. through song and object, images grow in his mind, and they are as difficult for us to navigate as the objects themselves, because we are not allowed to enter... but within his mind they are clear and potent: a small bell, a train, a fruit market, a lake, an apple tart, stars, daguerreotypes, spiders, and finally after much seeking, printed on the page of a book the word 'aufblitz'. the smile on his face conveys the depth of his connection to these things he now holds inside of himself with great strength and longing, his memory as a series of beautiful moments, small pools of light strung together as on a chirstmas tree. these things bind him. his face also betrays a sadness in his heart, maybe his eyes, maybe his smile, but his face still remains a kind of premonition of the tears that begin to fall just after this photo was taken, as if the bright flash and the shutter click had finally broken him, forcing him violently to go from there and then to hear and now... but he seems an unwilling traveler... still his back remains upright, and his knees stiffly crossed, his face still staring, and solidly mute. the photograph has been taken, but he has not gotten up and wandered away. he remains still, even now, in this state, existing in that strange netherland of threshold where one must stand at the precipice of here, and at the same time long to be there. he is either a stone, or he evaporates... i'm guessing that at some point that beam on the right of him will soon collapse. it will either fall upon him and crush him, or it will fall right past him, through the floor, and he will quietly crawl through the passage to find all his of his seekings....

a different view...

george nelson writes about discovering "the new subscape" by rolling off the couch to pick up a fallen magazine and noticing how different chairs look when one is lying on the floor looking up at them instead of standing or sitting and looking down. nelson provides his own dictionary definition for the term as: "view of the furnishings of an interior, ranging upwards from the floor to the height of a chair seat or at most the underside of a table...the lowest zone within a room, averaging thirteen inches in depth and never more than twenty-eight inches..."

nelson goes on to talk about this first moment as a kind of epiphany, for as a furniture designer (and architect, writer, teacher, industrial designer, etc.) he had never thought much about the view of a chair from the ground up. he continues, "the subscape unfolds its manifold wonders in a zone of nearly total invisibility... i stared about me bemused by the view as a visitor from mars... (from) a region of whose existence i had almost been totally unaware..."

eventually he goes back into the zone with his camera to photograph what he sees, and discusses "the value in the shock that comes with seeing familiar objects from a strange point of view... is still one of the most potent and least-used tools in the design process". he then compares the subscape view to skyscrapers, connecting the aesthetics of current (1950) furniture design to current architecture, and suggests that this lower interior subscape as an aesthetic equivalent to the designed upper exterior landscape.

many years ago, when i first discovered nelson's work of the 40's and 50's; i was immediately attracted to his furniture designs; but as i eventually discovered his writings, i found them quite inspiring. nelson not only approached design with a set of ethics that involved curiosity and experimentation; but his way of looking at the world seemed very much connected to rilke's ideas regarding "inconsiderable things".

rilke says: "if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you, not in your intellect, perhaps, which lags marveling behind, but in your inmost consciousness, waking and cognizance."

by simply lying on the floor to see the underside of tables and chairs, one begins to see the old as the new, and the ordinary as the extraordinary. the familiar becomes the unfamiliar, and something seemingly empty is suddenly full of potential and inspiration. clearly, the designer had the perception of the poet.

for years i've made recordings in architectural spaces by closing my eyes and letting the sounds suggest movements of my hands holding a pencil or ink on paper. experiencing architecture with ears, sends one inside of a different kind of subscape, an inscape perhaps; and similarly suggests the potential of a different view. at one point i used a nelson designed bubble lamp to generate a soundwork, plucking and rubbing its surface and interior like an instrument, for a work titled "a subscape of resonance".

perhaps, like view, there is are also different ways with objects, and beyond normal use, there is a kind of "sub-use". as one may see things from different angles, one might also handle things in unintended ways, toward unintended uses - a new use disconnected from intentions, towards a new way of seeing, hearing, or holding. there is much poetry to be found in quiet anarchy...

a sad day for small music...

"when i went to a garden in okayama, a crane landed and suddenly gave a loud cry. i was surprised that a sound like that could exist. and then the silence afterwards: in complete harmony in the space. then i understood the beauty of japanese gardens."
rolf julius, 1992

life and death are certainly strange things. last weekend i picked up a copy of a recent cd release of rolf julius' music for the ears and small music no. 1 - both ecordings from 1979. on monday, i spent the entire day in the studio painting, with the cd repeating for about 10 hours. every time i took a break from painting, i sat and listened to these stunningly beautiful and simple works in their entirety, and i realized how much his work has always inspired me.

when i first started to make "sound art" i wanted to be rolf julius. the first time i met him, for a small festival in berlin, i ran into him in a hallway, where it had looked a bit like he had dropped a small suitcase on the floor and all of his gear had fallen out of it in disarray. he was standing there bent over looking at the small speakers, wires, and small cassette players as if reading a map. after standing next to him for a few minutes, i realized that sound was also present, barely audible, and that this was his installation. it was a wonderful first meeting, like being kids and looking for small colorful insect in the grass.

his work always had this natural feeling of happenstance on the surface, and then it started to work its immersive magic on you. it was the least pretentious work i've ever encountered - certainly more "lower case" in terms of its presence than i could ever achieve; and as an artist and human being this humility was also always present. he was incredibly generous to me, not only over the years that we exhibited together, but most importantly when i was just beginning, and he simply treated me like an another artist.

monday, immersed in these two early pieces of his, i spent a lot of time sitting and listening. at one point i went over to my desk and started to write him a letter, as i realized how long i had been listening to his work in its various forms, marveling at his drawings, his writings, and just how hugely inspirational his work has been to me - not only since the beginning of my making sound works, but continually, still, now. i wanted to tell him that his work was like a beacon to me - like the painters myron stout, alfred jenson, arthur dove, lee mullican, who always kick my ass and push me forward, julius' work is always there as a kind of measuring stick, something to live up to. unfortunately i never finished the letter.

these early works of his contain the core of everything he would do from that point forward, and i wanted to thank him for the continued tactile nature of his sound, its fragility, its presence and absence, its repetition and abstraction, but mostly its minimal presence and some undefinable quality of the organic and natural, as well as how composition too can be humble. so many times rolf called his work "small music" and it wasn't bullshit artspeak... he really meant it...

so, this morning when i received some emails of rolf's passing, my mind went to those little pieces i remember first hearing at e/static, small tea cups with little lids and tiny speakers inside - so one could sit with the object, and with the lid off the sound barely audible but constant, and then to place the lid on the cup to silence the sound. its a very sad day for sound art, and it is a very sad day for ears.

i hope anyone who is unfamiliar with rolf's work will use this sad day to discover his quietly magical world, and for those of us who were lucky enough to know him, i know we will all continue to be inspired by the works he has left behind. his sound works will continue to grow ever more present, while his physical presence will certainly be missed.

the do nothing machine...

in the late 1950's, as part of the alcoa company's "forecast collection", the eames office created the solar toy. this toy was unique in many ways; but the most unique aspect (particularly in light of the way things seem to be done today) was the fact that charles eames was interested in creating a toy that did nothing. in terms of "doing nothing" he didn't mean that it would be a static and mute object -he was interested in an object that didn't direct one towards specific answers (or in the case of the work of a designer, towards a specific "use"). it followed an ideology found in much of his works, where the power of play is valued as an experience that can be quite powerful in and of itself - and where a sense of wonder can lead to a depth of thought and a kind of expansive understanding (think powers of 10).

in alcoa's 1959 publication "design forecast 1" (the first image above is from this book), oscar schefler elaborates on the ideas behind the eames's solar powered "do nothing machine"..."there is little pertinence in asking what the toy is supposed to do. it is not supposed to do. it is supposed to be. its whole function is in its being." eames adds "we now have a moment in time which is very precious; but this is valid only if the toy does nothing". eames then goes on to talk about a kind of delightful awareness - found in the attraction to little things that rilke talks about in letters to a young poet; but with a sense of delight in the ability not to want to "know" found in zen (particularly in the same way cage seemed to find this childlike delight in much of the world through zen). eames is toying with the idea that the object really is mute until receptive perceptive humans begin to interact with it and find meaning in their experience with it. it's a wonderful connection to duchamp's ideas regarding the viewer as the "art coefficient".

the solar toy was never manufactured beyond the prototype stage; but alcoa used it in their forecast ads and for some strange reason it ended up on the cover of billy mure's supersonic guitars volume 2 (a somewhat lackluster space age bacheolar pad LP). the toy design is part alexander girard fabric patterns come to life; as well as a healthy dose of irving harper's nelson clock designs, the eames' house of cards and other toys, alexander calder's mobiles, and old chemistry lab kits (and it would be quite an idiosyncratic stretch, but perhaps duchamp's spinning bicycle wheel on a stool too...). here's a track off the mure LP called the moon of manakoora...