AiOP setting up (part 1)

1640 moths spawned and ready to go for the project / festival. flew into LGA Saturday for the weekend before opening day to do the initial set up. Took the M60 then the N train to start in Union Square. (Thanks Kathy, for the travel direction and David for helping with the project, and Jen for being there so I'm not freaking out on my own! :D)

pinned vs. pined

“It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. "They all eat one another!" he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb, said, "They all feed one another," and called it good.”

“Eternity is not something that begins after you're dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.”

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Chrysalis

the play was the tragedy "man" and it's hero the conqueror worm -
Edgar Allan Poe

Art in Odd Places

Since I'm going to be dreaming, breathing and making paper clay moths for the next 2 months, I'm including this part of the bombyx mori project here. This is the web link for the festival:

http://artinoddplaces.org/

Meanwhile, here's a description of my project:

Multiple replicas of domesticated silk moths are placed on walls and signposts to create a sense of foreboding. The bombyx mori is used as an omen because the species now exists solely for human consumption and can no longer effectively fly or survive in the wild. The project wonders aloud whether humankind’s interactions and endeavors with Mother Nature will ultimately be auspicious or unfavorable.

Presented by Art in Odd Places 2009: SIGN, an annual festival exploring the odd, ordinary and ingenious in the spectacle of daily life.

Still snoopy dancing about being a part of the project, visiting NYC (and with any luck, going to Louise Bourgeois' Sunday salon) and I think it's going to be great fun!

Here's a recap pic of the moths:

lemoniidae and catching up!

Wow. how time flies. just noticed it's been 1.5 months (give/take) since my last post. dang! and here i was supposed to make time to do the stuff i want (and i should write the field museum person and explain my absence!) but i guess it can't be helped, especially since i had to go and catch the h1n1. (yes, i now have the antibody. yippee. :P) then it was work work work, and of course, now work is over, i'll have to spend time getting other work...

anyway, this is kinda of a tangent - both in the post and in the pics. i just had to capture these particular moths, even tho they're not silk moths, because, you guessed it, of their family name. how can i let something "lemon" related escape? they're pretty, i think, and something about the 2nd to last one makes me think of my cat.

back to moths, i'm going to be a paper clay moths making fool for the next bit - for the Art in Odd Places festival in NYC in October, where they're going to pop up in random places on 14th street. i should get the permission to incorporate that process into this blog... maybe i will. anyway, if you don't see me for the next bit, that's one of the reasons why.

there are other crazy awesome (art related) reasons too, that may keep me away, but i'll wait to talk about them when i actually got them bagged. ;)

cheers!!

sustainability

except for the last photo, these were all taken of a museum display from when they had an exhibition on silk. i took copies of the Japanese photos part of the exhibit too. it's interesting to see how certain things don't change despite the technological advances.

anyway, despite what i said in the previous about the pins and human actions being brutal, i'm more interested in how we as humans could coexist with nature, and how we utilize resources without being wasteful. (i do think traditional sericulture is good for sustainability for that reason.) i'm glad the Field Museum and other institutions keep specimens of creatures so we can enjoy and learn. my little photo project is going to take months, but travelling around the world in hope of finding these creatures would take more than a lifetime i'm sure... (and if i had my way, i'd rather not stuck in samsara for too long, thank you very much. :P)

Field trip

Had my appointment with Jim, one of the insect curators at the Field Museum, on Friday. What a nice and helpful guy! And what an incredible collection! It was quite amazing to see all the rows of rows of shelves that reminded me of library stacks and knowing in each, there are hundreds of specimens. I wish I had the time to go through all of them. As it was I spent about 3 hours there, and photographed about 15 trays of specimens - a small fraction of the ones I'd like to go through for this project... Apologies to Jim, who has to escort me to and from the space, for the upcoming pestering! :P


So here are the first photos I "processed" in Photoshop, taken with a nikon 60mm ("Bob" - no, I don't name all my lens, just this one, which started jokingly and stuck.)

One thing that struck me as I was looking at the trays is the incredible beauty and equal brutality of the pinned insects. It was almost surreal. (The other was how amazing these scientists' brains must be, to contain all "faces" and the strings of crazy long names.) With that in mind, I made the colors more vibrant, like how they would look when they were alive (some, over a hundred years ago). I'm fascinated by the pins and the patterns that showed obvious human arrangement. I like how they emphasize the beauty and brutality of life and death, and human's interaction with nature.





(dunno why this is underlined - technical glitch - not emphasizing content...)

Found an on-line site that sells live cocoons and eggs!! I wanted Ios (featured in this group of photos) but right now they only have luna moths. It seemed luna are easier to rear and possible to do so indoors anyway. So now I have to see if I can find sources of food nearby (which would be "fun", since I can only recognize gingko trees). My mom's promised to get me 7 cocoons for my birthday. The real gift is she's going to help me take care of them and manage the cats! Happy birthday to me!!