Virtual Art

(Ideas for Artworks)

. . . that I may or may not ever actually produce; this art is “virtual” in the old-fashioned way. The most recent ideas are described first; new ideas will be added at the top.

If you're interested in making, commissioning, or helping to finance any of these works, please e-mail me at carolyn(a)c-cyte.com. Or (except as may be otherwise noted below) just USE the ideas, and maybe mention me.

The year stated in parentheses is the year of the idea, not realization, which unless otherwise indicated has yet to occur.

120.MFA-OFF (2015). Live performance to determine whether I’m ready to graduate myself from the theory-reading portion of my “artificial MFA” (see # 113 below): I challenge those having a “real” MFA to a theory-off (I should line up in advance at least a few people I respect and would enjoy debating/talking with about this stuff. In fairness to me, they should either be people who got their MFA within the last 12 mos. or who have not studied or read any significant amount of theory since they got their MFA {for better or worse, most of the artists I know who I feel I could benefit from discussing things with probably have continued to teach or read theory to some degree, but}) – at least 3 and probably not more than 5 previously lined-up discusser/debater co-participants.
I and other lined-up participants each develop our own questions for the other PLUS supporting materials (ALL media and modes of presentation encouraged, which will make things more helpful/entertaining for the audience as well as participants); w/ the questions and supporting materials being as impt. as any answers, of course). For my purposes, the emphasis should be on new media, esp. video; but no media (esp. including performance and conceptual) off-bounds.
We can each use the internet real-time to question or respond (w/ commensurable or appropriately handicapped equipment, and we must each use the same net connections, which must be consistent in speed); and we can each have a designated emergency person/ringer available to consult; but we have a set time within which to respond. (Alternatively, we could each designate a “real” human “avatar” who could actually speak for us – I like this, since I’m a nervous performer – they could use their own words and knowledge, but have to closely follow our whispered or ‘net-sent instructions; or maybe there should be more than one incarnation of this whole exercise . . . . )
After getting through the lined-up people to debate/discuss with, the challenge is opened to those in the audience.
The whole thing shd probably be done within 1.5 hours max., bec. I’ll be lucky if I can keep my nerve that long. At the end, the audience votes on whether they think I should graduate myself from that portion of my MFA. I’m not bound by it but will consider it very seriously.
The object is not to win/defeat or lose/be defeated (so any “cheating” wouldn’t matter, substantively, though it would certainly be painful for the cheat-ee), but rather to educate me and possibly others and help me figure out anything I might have missed that I’d like to look into further before graduating myself. It should be recorded so I can learn from it afterward, since there’s a great chance I’ll be too freaked out at the time to take in most of what might be helpful.
I like the name, MFA-OFF because to me it connotes competition; off-ness meaning non-MFA and non-competition, etc.; off as an abbrev. for official and thus also offness re- officialness; throwing off the chains of the traditional MFA (see, e.g., http://supercommunity.e-flux.com/texts/shiny/ ); etc.
An associated exhibition could feature the documentation of my purchase from Ben Barnes Britt of the BFA he earned from U.T. Austin in 1983, together with any other purchased or ersatz BFA’s. (I could curate/create that.) (Note to self: http://www.diplomamakers.com/fast/BFA.html ).

119.Being Seen (2014). Performance. Kiss your partner on every square inch of their body (including, e.g., between their toes); then they do the same to you.

118.Fakes (2014). A series of replicas or modified versions of works I love by other visual and other artists.

117.Limbic Glasses (2013). Sculpture/pair of eyeglasses. The frames are silver-colored metal wire frames with octagonal lenses; but most of the surface of the lenses is covered up with pavé diamonds, leaving only tiny, horizontal slits to see through. Each slit is ca. 1/2" wide x 1/8" high. The lenses bulge out polygonally though shallowly from their octagonal rims; the effect is somewhat faceted-looking but also a bit like lizard eyes.

116.Art Borrowed from the DMA that I Need to Return, but Where Are the Packing Materials? (an Incomplete Series) (2013). An incomplete series of paintings/pieces, of which I can now remember only four, preferably installed as described below. The title of the first piece is Partly for F.C. [Fran Colpitt, but I won't tell anyone that anywhere but here; let's see if anyone finds this or figures it out], the second is Partly Re- C.S. (not me) and O.H. [Cam Schoepp and Oded Hirsch – see Hirsch's video, Tochka], the third Partly Re- P.B. [Paul Booker] and Star Trek [The Original Series, Episode 29: Operation-Annihilate!], and the fourth From Before Freud Had a Romance (Partly Re- J.C.) [John Chamberlain]. All four of the pieces recalled are basically modifications of abstract paintings in pastels of flesh tone, beige, pink, mauve, & cream, w/ accents of bright, street-stripe yellow and maybe a little mint or darker green, sparsely painted in softly rectangular shapes on canvas that's ungessoed but has a more or less smooth coating of clear acrylic or varnish on it that slightly deepens the natural color of the canvas and gives it a bit of a sheen. The areas of color are applied in ways that are varied but not wildly so: some rectangles look built up through repeated application with a soft, medium-width roller; some brushed on; and some lines (of the yellow) apparently applied directly from the tube but in narrow strands with little clumps at the ends (kind of like stretched strings of mozzarella). There's occasional, minor layering of the shapes of color; they might be described as floating in the picture space. But there should be a lot of varnished canvas showing, and the painting should be sparse enough to straddle Minimalism as well as Ab Ex, if that's possible? Each canvas is at least 2" deep, maybe a bit more. More particulars regarding each piece below:
Partly for F.C. has a projection onto it of descriptions of political art projects, slowly (haltingly) being typed in black courier font, including projects by the Situationists, Fluxus artists, Jenny Holzer, Temporary Services, the Yes Men, etc. There's never more than one art project, never too much text, being projected onto the canvas at any one time – no more than a paragraph or maybe two short ones; and once the description of one project is finished, the text disappears and the next one starts being typed in. The canvas being projected on is ca. 50" square or maybe a little bit taller than wide, a more or less a basic abstract painting with shapes of color as described above. There's audio with the video, which plays a uniform, low-ish -pitched hum or roar, kind of like a distant air conditioner or other machine.
Partly Re- C.S. (not me) and O.H. This is a painting similar to the first canvas, but there's no projection onto it. Instad, in paint layered toward the front are several softly conical-looking hat shapes in a related but unique, somewhat darker and/or more saturated color – probably a mauvish color, although maybe greenish. The hat shapes are a little like a short gnome's hat, or a sailor's hat with the brim turned down and the crown a bit pointier than a sailor's. The hat shapes do not particularly stick out from the painting, since they are just paint; but they do have a slight bas relief-ness to them, and the paint is very smooth, so that from the right angle, there's a slight sheen of light on each "hat" in a columnar shape, a bit the way there might be on a 3D cone. This canvas is otherwise similar in style, size, and shape to the first one.
Partly Re- P.B. and Star Trek. This and the next piece are free-standing on the floor – I'd say this one has an easel-like, tripod-type 3rd leg in back, so the canvas leans backward at an angle, I'd say about 15 to 30 degrees back from vertical. And this and the next piece, looked at from the "front," are less than half as wide as the first two pieces (so this piece is kind of human-sized, or a bit shorter). This canvas is painted in a manner similar to the first one, but sticking out from the front of it is at least one small, rectangular shelf, probably more like two of them, one smaller than the other. The larger shelf is about 10' wide, maybe 3.5" deep, and 3/8" thick; and it seems to be covered in canvas painted in more or less the same way, but very neatly covered, so there are no noticeable thick folds or ragged edges. Loosely tacked onto and around the shelves are some objects that remind me a little of elements in Paul Booker's work. The shapes are made of a flat, more or less clear, rubbery stuff – maybe 1/6th" thick or could be a little thicker. They're all roughly the same in shape. The "bottom" half is shaped a lot like a breast cancer awareness ribbon, if the "ribbon" were maybe two to 2.5" wide. The "top" half is like a loose cone shape made from the same "ribbon." The two halves are joined center-back, sort of as if the two ribbons were originally cut, side-by-side, from a larger sheet, but not completely cut apart toward the center. The Booker-ish aspects are not just that they're made from flat, rectangular-ish, clear things, but also that each has a thin black outline at or near the edge. These ribbon-y objects are clustered mainly on or near the shelves, but a few are scattered farther; and they're tacked on in various, random-looking positions or attitudes. Because of the rubbery quality of the material, they move readily in air currents or if the piece is jostled.
From Before Freud Had a Romance (Partly Re- J.C.). This piece is perhaps smaller than the previous one, and although it involves a similarly-painted canvas, it is more sculptural than painting-like in shape. And there is a scrunched-together aspect to it, à la John Chamberlain. I have the feeling maybe there are some parts of it that are made of harder stuff, like plastic or even metal.
Installation. Although each piece stands (figuratively) on its own, ideally the four would be shown together near a room-sized wall covered with a rich, reddish-brown wood panelling and with beige, wall-to-wall carpet on the floor. The other three walls of the room would be off-white. There would not be other significant art visible, but there could be some tasteful furnishings – maybe a bedroom suite; but the room would be larger than the average bedroom. The first two pieces would be hung on the wood wall. The other two, free-standing pieces would stand near and sort of in front of them, but staggered a bit so that if you were in the middle of the room looking at that wall, they would not particularly block the view of the pieces on the wall. The "fronts" of the free-standing pieces would not face the viewer, but would be angled more toward the wall on which the first two pieces hang.

115.Hardware (Excluding Backup Drives) and Software Used to Convert Video on DVCam Videotape to Editable Digital File, then to Edit the File; then to Export, Compress, Format, and Burn the File to Disk for Use in a DVD Player (2013). Sculpture with related text. This title and the text set out below describe one example of a network of hardware and software used for a particular task, but other sculptures could be made incorporating different hardware and software used for other tasks.
Put together a network of hardware and cords used for a particular media-based art task, make sure the connections can't come apart, and suspend all in a gallery or other space using fishing line and spreading the hardware components as far apart as the cords will allow, making their interrelations as clear as possible, as in a flow chart. Then paint all the same color as the background (in a gallery, white; but maybe more interesting if in another kind of space, so the intentionality of the camouflage is clearer). Consider labelling all components with what they are. Also, create a text listing the components and also the software used, together with their replacement cost as of the time of completion of the task. [Inspired by an image of a sculpture by Ruben Ochoa, seen at a talk by Jeremy Strick of the Nasher Sculpture Center, showing slabs of concrete elevated on long "legs" of exposed rebar.]
E.g., for a piece with the title above, the related text would read (although I think I'd leave off the brands?):

Hardware:
Apple MacPro tower with 3TB startup drive
Western Digital 2TB Raid external drive
Hewlett-Packard HP LP3065 monitor
Apple keyboard
Kensington mouse
Sony DSR-11 DVCam Recorder
Pyro AVLink (analogue to digital converter)
Pioneer DVD Player
Firewire cables
RCA patch cables
Power cords with and without "bricks" (built-in transformers or inverters)
Power strip with surge protection
Sony headphones

Software:
Mac OSX, version 10.7.5
Final Cut Pro 7, version 7.0.3
Compressor, version 3.5.3
DVD Studio Pro, version 4.2.2

Replacement Cost for Hardware and Software as of Creation of DVD:
$_[fill in amount]_

114.Artist's Rights Project (2012). Conceptual-relational work. With thanks and apologies to Seth Siegelaub and Robert Projansky, my own version of their Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement (1971). I would keep many similar provisions, especially the one for the artist to receive a percentage of any appreciation realized on subsequent sales; but I think the guts of the contract must be reduced to a single page in order for its use to become accepted practice, and I'd add a grant to the artist of a security interest to secure payment of the artist's percentage (which the artist could perfect by a filing in the public U.C.C. records. A virtue of such a recorded lien is that it incentivizes any purchaser on resale to pay the prescribed percentage directly to the artist, or risk failing to gain clear title to the work, thus at least partly relieving the artist of the burden of enforcement.)
I would also encourage artists to try to make their version of the agreement an artwork in its own right; for example, by modifying the document's appearance or embodying all or part of it in audio or video.
I'd previously been thinking this type of effort should be undertaken by an artists' union or at least as a group effort, but I've decided I'll just require use of the contract as a condition to any sale of my own work, and offer the form to other artists.

113. Artificial MFA (2012). Conceptual-relational work. A follow-on to Third Degree (2003) (see # 47 below). In this project I'd design and arrange my own, completely unaccredited, low-residency M.F.A. program. I'd start by looking at other M.F.A. or art-educational programs but tailor mine to my own needs, and then organize the components, including periods of study with some of the artists I most admire, wherever in the world they may be, to the extent I can talk them into it and afford it, as well as one or more reading groups with other artists willing to serve one another as fellow students (and various other components of the program could include other students to the extent of their interest) (I'm thinking I'm well-positioned, aesthetically if not practically, for an art career without "real" credentials.).
(Note: Part of the program has been realized in the form of the art as social wormhole "Artificial MFA" course/reading group.)

112.Dead Wood (2012). Multi-media. Do a residency with The Dallas Morning News or other major print newspaper – before they abandon print – shooting video and creating an art work/installation. If the paper printing part is actually being shut down, maybe make the work so as to be exhibited in the space vacated when the presses or whatever have been removed and before the space has been filled with something else.

111.The OccuLibrary Project (2012). Conceptual-relational-multimedia work. An aesthetically-oriented reincarnation of the Dallas Occupy Camp Library. The project would initially involve creating one or two "bookmobile" carts (one of which could live in a gallery or other space, while the other hits the streets), possibly called a "People's Occupy Pop-up Library All-terrain Book-buggy" ("POPLAB") and consisting of a all-weather laundry or other cart w/ excessive tires and an eye-catching sign, which could perambulate populated public areas in an amusing/alluring manner. Additional evolutions could include a pop-up library installation (the "People's Occupy Pretty-big Top Education + Networking Tent" ("POPTENT")) that could wander among available gallery spaces, school campuses, community centers, etc. It could take the form of a large tent made from sheer, re-cycled material printed with a graphic derived from the NY OWS newspaper and taking up most of the space in the gallery room (so that visitors couldn't easily avoid entering it), and it could host performances, art talks, screenings, readings, or the like, as well as library books, videos + other materials. The installation could also be accompanied by an open-call, blind-curated art show, etc.
[This project is being realized: as of Dec. 31, 2013, incarnations have included the GlamROccuLibrarymentary Trailer 1 Shoot 1 (2012) by me and Lizzy Wetzel; the Yankee Doodles children's program by Danette Dufilho, Anne Lawrence, et al.; the Werkberg (2013) mobile library/projection unit; and the Co- Re-Creating Spaces exhibition at CentralTrak; click here for more info.]

110.Audial/Visual (2011). Video. Make two short videos based on a script in which a politician behaves hypocritically, saying things that makes her/him sound as if he cares about the weak but behaving as if s/he doesn't. In one of the videos, have the visuals show that s/he cares while the audio describes the things s/he's done that show s/he doesn't really care; in the other video, do the opposite – have the visuals show that s/he doesn't care while the audio describes the things s/he's done that show s/he really does care. The point would be to explore the extent to which we register or rely to different degrees on info received through different senses or in different ways. Another variation could involve info read from a crawl along the bottom of the visuals.
This idea is inspired by the "Nobody Heard What You Said" story (in brief, as told by Bob Somerby, Lesley Stahl at CBS did a hard-hitting report on Pres. Reagan. The video showed him visiting the disabled, while the audio reported his cuts to programs helping them, making plain his hypocrisy. Stahl worried the White House would be so angry that she'd be frozen out; instead, Dick Darman called to thank her for the story: "Nobody heard what you said . . . . When the pictures are powerful and emotional, they override if not completely drown out the sound. I mean it, Lesley. Nobody heard you" {details here}).

109.Infostorm (2011). Sculpture with metal, printed texts laminated onto mirrored glass or plastic, and other media. For approximately three weeks beginning on September 7, 2005, I worked with a small group on democraticunderground.com to compile information found online about the Katrina disaster and various responses to it; see the Katrina Research info/thread here or here. As you know, online information has a way of disappearing. We managed to save links to and at least partial content from some interesting items that may not have been preserved elsewhere, including info from government sources, the news media, and survivors.
This art project would create physical and/or virtual visualizations of this info, arranged roughly in the shape of the storm itself.
For the physical version, the 550-some posts shown in the DU thread would be printed on white paper, laminated onto a mirrored backing, cut into separate pieces, and suspended from a horizontal disc with a hole in its center (perhaps also mirrored, or if not, silver in color), so as to create a "hurricane" shape; the disc itself would also be suspended so that the whole piece could rotate. Some of the pieces bearing individual posts would face inward and others outward, so their mirrored backs would reflect one another and the ambient light. All of those posts containing items that were no longer found at the links indicated would be in a different color from those still found online – perhaps the missing items would be highlighted in gray (i.e., the text would have a gray background instead of white). The color of the missing items should be sufficiently different from that of the others that a viewer of the whole piece should get a sense of the rough proportion of missing to not-missing info. The piece would thus be a visualization not only of Katrina but of the virtual storm of destruction of online information that occurred concurrently and following the physical storm.
The virtual version of this piece would be an interactive, 3D animation that would function somewhat like a tag cloud, i.e., the individual info items would be seen revolving in "hurricane" shape, and as viewers rolled over them, the storm would pause and the nearest item would enlarge, and if the viewer clicked on the link, it would take the viewer to the original item or to what ever error page has since replaced it.

108.Jumping Off Point (2011). Sculpture made of solid lucite or other durable yet preferably translucent substance, with the words, "JUMPINGOFF POINT" relatively deeply inscribed on it. The piece would be a seven-sided polyhedron just big enough for two people to stand on while holding hands. The lettering would be on two abutting sides, so that when you stand on the piece facing toward the corner between those two sides and look down toward your feet, the face of the piece that you're standing on is a level, five-sided, "house"-shaped polygon; that is, three corners of the polygon would be 45-degree angles, while the two other corners would be obtuse angles, equal to each other and located on each side of the point between the two sides bearing the words. (There could be a step added to the side farthest from the sides with the words carved on them, to make it easier to climb on top of the piece; but the piece should be low enough so that there's no significant risk of injury to anyone jumping off it – probably not more than about 12".)
Part of the idea behind this piece is that, whether we recognize it or not, every location in time or space is a jumping-off point (including home, wherever we make it). This piece makes one such point official. It's intended for use in connection with weddings, graduations, before embarking on travel, or any other time anyone wanted to formally recognize that they were starting something. It could be used by individuals, couples, or any larger group of people; e.g., a larger group could hold hands in a line and climb up and jump off the piece one or two at a time without letting go. The words should be arranged so that they can also be read as, "JumpingOff-point," as in diverging from where you thought you were going.
This piece was dreamed as a wedding gift from me to myself, Ben, and everyone else. It would be best located in a public park, pointing toward a running body of water. It would be great to use a material such as lucite or another substance that would be durable yet translucent, so the object might be attractive and somewhat monument-like yet also sort of not-there.

107.Ten Things You Need to Know About the Infowar (2011). Sculpture with microwave, tin foil, plate, pliers, monkey wrench, and scrolled paper bearing eponymous text written by moi. The internet is, by a magnitude of order, the most powerful tool for sharing information ever invented and the most powerful machine for "public relations" a.k.a. public manipulation (the internet also being, to appropriate Julian Assange's phrase re- Facebook to a slightly different purpose, "the most appalling spying machine") yet invented. The sculpture would consist of a microwave with the door open (to be displayed on a pedestal the height of a kitchen counter-top, preferably with such a top) with the door open, lined with tin foil. The foil is somewhat crumpled – maybe a bit less than half-way between what it's like when you first pull it off the roll and what it's like when smushed into a ball. The plate is centered on the interior floor of the microwave, and the pliers and wrench are nested left of it, somewhat like silverware next to the plate. The pliers and wrench should look fully serviceable but not new. The scrolled paper is on the plate, its placement casual but more or less centered, the way you might place food you planned to heat.

106.The Pls, I'm Tryin' to Think Institute and sub-projects, including the New History Street Project, the [Not Yet Titled Virtually 3-D Sculpture], and other projects (2010). Website begun, with descriptions of sub-projects, here; all are in indefinite suspense. (Conceptual-relational-multimedia work.)

105.Struggles from Prior to My Current State of Illumination (2010). Installation in a room with evenly-spaced fluorescent lighting pretty much blanketing the ceiling. Add a drop-ceiling of white, opaque but translucent plastic. Under the plastic (i.e., on the side facing down into the room), install a layer of text(s) printed on clear plastic (like might have been used on an opaque projector, or on clear mylar, or whatever, but otherwise clear, so the text shows but there's nothing more blocking the light. Text should be just big enough so people with very good eyesight have to strain to read it, and maybe still can't read some of it. Give people binoculars as they enter the room. Alternatively, make the text big enough to be read without binocs, and don't give them binocs. The texts could be of the type I contemplated laminating to the ceiling of Helen's Cell in The Cressida Project, or could be a complete repro of the Quarto of Hamlet, or might best be selections from my journals through the years culminating with Diary of the Dead.

104.Painted Dress (2010). Edition of initially identical dresses each to be completed and, if desired, modified from time to time by the purchaser. Each dress would comprise a black slip and a semi-sheer, parchment-colored outer dress, both in a plain classic cut. Each purchaser could use water-soluble paint to paint the outer dress with any color(s) or design(s) they liked. So long as they wanted to keep a design, they could have the outer dress spot- or dry-cleaned; when they wanted to change it, they could machine-wash the outer dress. (If the water-soluble paint system wouldn't work well enough, substitute some other kind of paint that can be washed out using a reasonably safe, inexpensive solvent, without harming the fabric.)

103.Streaming (2010). Video. Shoot a conversation in slo-mo. Add subtitles crawling slowly by in accordance with the words. Replace the soundtrack with a voiceover in normal time expressing their (much faster, more voluminous) thoughts.

102.Mourning Me (2010). Conceptual work. Mourn my own death in advance and document the process.

101.Minimal/Subliminal (2009). Series of paintings. Buy a bunch of inexpensive minimalist paintings or reproductions. Paint the backs maximally with images referring to the info either implied or omitted by the minimalist images on the front.

100.Asymptote (2009). Video. Appropriate a YouTube or other appropriate video and set it to Loop. Make a copy and slow it down by, say, 11.11%. Make a copy of that and slow it down by, say, another 11.11%, and so on, 'til you've got 9 of them, and make a grid. Make a movie of it.

99.Race (2009). Video. Upload a short vidi to YouTube. Video it, then take 16 pixels off the top (the height of the control bar). Upload that vidi to YouTube. Video it and take another 16 pixels off the top. Repeat until the entire picture expect for a strip at the top shows nothing but a stack of control bars (re- the title, what's the name for the control button on the control bar?)

98.Waiting (2009). Series of photographs of audiences just before the show or whatever starts.

97.Contexts (2009). Series of photographs of me and my camera in a mirror or other reflective surface, with various backgrounds but with me and my camera surgically erased.

96.2,160 Colors I Liked From the Internet (2009). Print on aluminum or plexi. Using screen grab or a color meter, sample colors you like and paste 1/2" squares of them into a 54 x 40" Photoshop doc in order as you encounter them on the 'net.

95.You (2009). Define yourself. Define "the public." Define yourself as part of the public. Please send me your results.

94.Post-Mortem Treasure Hunt (2009). All rights to this are reserved 'til I die; after that, anyone willing, pls do it.
I create a treasure hunt through my earthly effects, to be commenced after I die, with a trail of clues leading to particular items of value or significance that might otherwise be overlooked, which may include files on my computer as well as tangible or other property.  A cadre of team captains are invited to participate, who are directed that they may (but are not required to) invite others to be on their teams. In case I don't get around to it later or elsewhere, I hereby name Ben Britt, Isabelle Carolyn Lofquist, Robin Sortor Lofquist, Danette Dufilho, Cris Worley, Claudia Levine, Wandy Miezio Chapman, Karen Erxleben Weiner, and Christina Matthews + Paul Miller as team captains; but none of them should feel obligated (consider revising this to include some of my other favorite more or less local artists, with the request that they revise the project in any way they think would make it more interesting or workable. Right now, such artists would include Celia Eberle, Jeff Gibbons, Sally Glass, Jesse Morgan Barnett, Bradly Brown, Morehshin Allahyari, Darryl Ratcliff, Heyd Fontenot, and Tom Sale). Notwithstanding anything including my will to the contrary, all team captains are hereby granted all possible copyrights and other rights to whatever designated "treasures" their team finds first (but not to any other property, except as may be provided in my will).
(As of 2015, I have not actually created any clues, other than a few my cat found and destroyed; so I think I need to re-form this as a Post-Mortem Free-for-All. I hereby urge everyone who loved me to try to take part, 'cuz otherwise a lot of stuff''s going to strangers or the junk yard.)

93.Art Sauna (2009). Sauna in which viewers are invited to sweat and talk about art, or not. (Inspired by Liam Gillick's remark during his lecture at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, February 12, 2009 {at http://vernissage.tv/blog/hd ; sorry, they don't seem to afford a hard link, so you may have to search}, that, "[i]f you emerged during a period of difference, like I did, of revised forms of identity, and new understandings about relativism in relation to cultural meaning and social structure, then you must also dissolve a little bit, as an author.")

92.Backgrounds (2009). The initial, original concept was of a screening of a video consisting of clips from older, famous or historically important video art pieces, but the clips would be not from the main action of those pieces but rather from any "dead" spaces in between. I'd have to look at this stuff to see what's there that's usable, but I'm hoping there'd be something, esp. from works before digital editing: slugs or other spaces in which there's nothing on the screen but black, gray, or white, preferably with a bit of audial as well as visual noise or texture; hopefully, at minimum, there'd be something usable between the action and the title or credits at beginning or end. These clips would have been recorded and edited together -- it might be best for the individual clips to have been recorded by a camera focused on a screening of them -- then edited together and be projected on a screen, in turn recorded. In the initial, original concept, there's an audience in the room watching this screening, which is part of the final recording. I actually dreamed the screening with theatrical curtains visible around the edges, but that might be too much; but I find it hard to give up the idea of having the camera zoom out at the end to show the backs of the heads of the audience, and shooting that level in the typically echo-y gallery or museum space, with minor noise audible from the audience -- but again, that might be too much, esp. the curtains. I'm thinking the clips should be from, e.g., works by Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, the Vasulkas, Kenneth Anger, George Kuchar, Valie Export, Peter Campus, Peter Callas, Dan Graham, Ant Farm, Dara Birnbaum, Sadie Benning, etc. . . . (some of the background in video art that have influenced me and others interested in it).
[Work that's as much about what you know about what's in it as it is about what's in it. -- this sounds to me like a whole separate project.]
The immediately next idea was to print stills of the clips on cloth and stitch them together as a quilt; but the next thought was to stitch them together as a fitted (bottom) bed sheet and make love on it.
It seems to me that the subject of "backgrounds" comprises many branches for exploration at many levels, both conceptually and in terms of realizations as artworks in a multitude of media. E.g., one of my last thoughts would be to see if I could persuade a medical school or research facility, as a final step once they're through using donated cadavers, to cut out the eyelids of the cadavers and let me shoot the insides, because this background we look at perhaps more than any other in our entire lives -- every time we blink, every time we sleep or close our eyes while there's the tiniest bit of light in the room -- this same palette of colors, pattern of veins, etc. -- who knows what messages are imprinted there?
There are so many kinds of background noise that influence us without our noticing, unless conscious efforts are made . . . .

91.Talking (2009). Ideally, shoot various people in real life, like, on the street, talking to themselves. Failing that, shoot re-enactments of real incidents of same.
Came to me while parked at a red light. A tall, pretty-good-looking young black woman in a pretty cute yellow, knit shirt and jeans and with a short 'fro crossed the street just in front of my car, looking ahead of her and talking to herself.

90.Museum of One Things (2009). This would be a repository that anyone could contribute to. The requirements are, they have to pick just one thing from all their dead family members' possessions that they think should not be lost for whatever reason, and they have to provide a written or other recorded explanation as to why they consider it meaningful. Potential contributors could include but would not be limited to people whose parents are dead and who don't themselves have kids to whom they could pass on significant relics.

89.Hands (2009). Short video. Take a photograph of my hands in the exact same position, with the camera in the exact same position, with the exact same lighting (high contrast), and with an automated date stamp, every week 'til I die; then animate the image by stringing the photos together. Voiceover: When I was a kid, I felt trapped. But I could usually pretend-draw: whatever was in front of me, I'd be drawing with my right index finger. This helped me see and translate better. When I was forty-something and still trying to figure out what I should do with my life, I took some aptitude tests. They told me that most people like me fail because they have high aptitudes in many areas and can't commit to doing any one thing. One of my aptitudes was finger dexterity. Even then, however, benign but painful bumps had begun growing on my finger joints that, as time went by, made it difficult to move my fingers. Surgeries to remove three of the bumps were only partially successful. I've started trying to sleep with my hands clenched in tight fists, to try to keep stretching the tendons out so as to keep some mobility despite the bumps; nonetheless, my hands are freezing into claws faster than I expected. Not only are my hard drives my brain prostheses, but my keyboard and mouse are becoming my hand prostheses (if I didn't have the prostheses, would the original organs atrophy more slowly?).

88.White-Out (2008). Painting(s). Create a replica of one of the more intense or interesting pages from my journals, with every other line being photocopied and with the intervening lines being blank. In the blank lines, hand-write the missing lines in ink. Turn the page sideways and use white-out all-purpose liquid correction fluid to paint in large letters across the page, "white-out." Let dry and repeat, painting over the same "white-out" letters enough times so they're raised as far above the surface of the paper as possible without cracking off, up to about an inch. Consider creating a companion piece with a similarly-painted "white-out" on plain white paper.

87.Violation (2007). Find a bunch of art you really like w.r.t. to which you'd like to violate the copyrights in certain ways. Contact the owners of the copyrights and try to get them to agree that whatever you do, they will not sue you or press any charges -- but they'll retain whatever rights they might otherwise have to try to retaliate or respond in any way other than through the courts. Commit your desired violations w.r.t. to which you got such agreements. See what happens.

86.Urgent (2007). Pick a sculptural form -- an adult male or female mannequin would work -- and determine how many post-its would be required to cover it in a uniform paper "mail" (as in, a suit of armor. Maybe I should just say body suit, but armor is what I have in mind, and I like the pun on mail). Then google (or if you prefer, as I do, that one's keystrokes not be recorded, use startpage rather than google) "urgent." Look at the top hits up to the number of the number of post-its required to cover your figure, plus a few, in case you need extras, and select short quotes from each. Format them to be placed (glued or whatever) onto the post-its. Then superimpose "Swiss"-style red crosses with maximum dimensions equal to the margins for the quotes (partially obscuring the texts, but keep the crosses on a separate Photoshop or whatever layer, so the the original texts are still at least theoretically retrievable). Print them (I'd try to match the background color to that of the post-its {I'm assuming it wouldn't be feasible to actually print this stuff directly onto post-its, although an alternative might be to create convincing fake post-its}), get them onto the post-its, and attach the post-its to the mannequin or whatever, or maybe just to the wall next to the mannequin -- voilà!

85.Link Sculpture (2007). Online project. I've read that M. Barney views his films as sculptural. I relate strongly to this idea. I wrote a paper in college concluding in part that Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn is essentially a sculpture: that the interrelations among expressions within the text in some sense defeat what might otherwise have been expected to be the ineluctable sequentiality (two-dimensionality; or three, if you count time) of text as a medium (images and vidis of course being subject to a similarly apparently ineluctable sequentiality); so that Keats' poem, in the process of describing the timeless truth and beauty embodied in the urn, itself becomes a figurative "object" expressing timeless truth and beauty on a "meta" level in relation to the urn. I wonder if all great art does this -- creates interrelations within itself so substantial and meaningful that the work somehow escapes or transcends the limitations of the dimensions within which it would otherwise seem to exist.
Doubtless a too-long preface. The project is: create such a "sculpture" online using nothing but links. One could create the pages linked, or link to pages created by others, although one might want to ensure that the pages linked to in turn incorporated other links that one intended to be part of the "sculpture" -- but all that could be interpreted very broadly; e.g., if one wanted, as I probably would, to challenge the supposed (art-ificial) boundaries between art and non-art, one might want the distinction between intentionally and accidentally -incorporated links to be indiscernible . . . .
This could of course be a collaborative project . . . the internet of course is this collaborative project . . .

83.Überpants (2007). Wearable sculpture. I like Andrea Zittel's idea of having a uniform; I think of this project as related (and, perhaps not completely randomly, I also really like this from Cory Arcangel's blog dated 03/26/2007, under "Offline Artshow" at http://www.beigerecords.com/cory/ : ". . . I do not distinguish between art and non art. We are past that moment so lets all please get over it. (The internet even makes this easier for us because everything is presented on an equal plane. A YouTube movie of a dog skateboarding, has no visual or contextual difference from an artwork by some fancy artist)." There's just one context, we're all in it, and nothing has any meaning except within it. Besides, I can no longer tell what's cool and what's not, what's fashionable and what's not, what's beautiful and what's not. I can only tell you (1) what I find funny or yummy (including in awful or even horrific ways), both of which I suspect may be dictated mostly by what I happen to have had too much of lately; (2) what I think is true; (3) what appears to me to be fair and just; and (4) where I see possibilities for greater long-term [to be strongly distinguished short-term] efficiency [i.e., dharma].) Anyway, mon idée is: pick one pair of jeans and modify it as needed or desired for various occasions, more or less eternally. E.g., I have a pair of low-waisted, skinny jeans that could become such überpants. I've been kind of wishing I had some high-waisted jeans that were slim through the torso and hips but with legs that got wide toward the ankles, like tall triangles. So, modify the überjeans by adding fabric to the top of the waist and inserting tall triangles of fabric into the legs. The triangles could be shiny lining fabric, perhaps with fusible interfacing to give them crinkles and body; and maybe I'd like cuffs, maybe made of thick bands of the hook-y side of velcro, so they'd constantly be picking shit up. (Another idea: a whole jumpsuit made of the hook-y side of velcro.) On the next round, the pants could be dyed, embroidered, stuffed, wired for media, etc.; a pair of überpants could constitute a career. Note, this idea transforms the notion of überness from one in which a prototype is preserved from change, formerly presumed to involve degeneration, into one in which mutation is the defining virtue. So, for more than one reason, pants is the appropriate item of clothing: it's often our crotches, or the mental equivalent thereof, that lure us beyond our usual boundaries.

82.If I Were More Paranoid, It Would Not Be OK (2007). Survey of a number of individual subjects. As a control, keep half of them identifiable (to keep them honest), and the other half non-identifiable (to free them to be honest). Possibly best done by e-mail. The questionnaire should describe various potentially worrisome scenarios and interpretations, and have the respondent answer the questions, "If I were a little MORE anxious/depressed/paranoid than I usually am these days, I'd consider the situation described to be / not be OK" [choose one], and "If I were a little LESS anxious/depressed/paranoid than I usually am these days, I'd consider the situation described to be / not be OK" [choose one]. The scenarios described should include a range of potentially problematic situations; e.g., hints that a friend might have revealed embarrassing information about one; suggestions of back-stabbing by a fellow-employee; clues to possible double-dealing by a business associate; a mate acting suspiciously; conflicts of interest in news-media ownership coupled with reported news that omits everything consequential; conflicting historical accounts; evidence of global warming; etc. The final question should ask whether the respondent is on antidepressants or other psychotropic drugs.
I have to wonder if my interest in conducting studies like this isn't partly a reaction to the circumstances that we seem now so close to understanding so much, but big corporations are the only ones funding research, which it seems to me has strongly channelled and severely limited what research is done.

81.Social and Cultural Experiments (2007). This would be a series of projects designed by artists. Reality t.v. is already doing some of the kinds of experiments I have in mind (Survivor, Wife Swap), though under conditions severely distorted in favor of the producers' notion of what will draw the biggest audience.
One project I have in mind would be to live for one year as far as possible as if there were no holidays at all other than a few I might make up. I would tell my family and friends what I was doing, so they wouldn't take it personally if they didn't get any gifts from me, and they could choose not to give me any, and understand that if they did receive or give any, I would treat them as being for no particular occasion, and that if I attended or hosted any parties I would also treat those as being for no particular occasion.
Part of my interest in this particular project is that it seems that a huge portion of what little leisure time I have from my day job is taken up with holidays -- birthdays, anniversary of getting together with significant other, Valentine's Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, etc. For most of these, we're expected to buy gifts, host or attend one or more parties or family gatherings, overeat, and sometimes decorate the house or devise costumes. If you neglect these activities, others' feelings can be hurt. Each of these holidays easily consumes the better part of a weekend or even weeks of time and attention, not to mention money.
Obviously, most of these holidays are also fun or satisfying in some way, but the money expenditures benefit commercial interests, and other interests may also be served by keeping the general population busy and distracted. It would be interesting to observe the effects of deleting them from one's calendar.

80.Frito-Lay (2007). I recently learned there's a major Frito-Lay factory not far from where I live. Tour it with a camera or video camera, and make something from it. For info about touring the factory, call 1-800-352-4477 Monday – Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM, CST.

79.Ben's Diary (2007). In 2000, I found a small spiral notebook lying on the desk of my boyfriend, Ben, with all its pages still blank. On a page in the middle of the notebook, I wrote, "Have a great day! Love, Carolyn," and left it for him to find at some point in the future. Seven years later, on January 12, 2007, I picked up the same notebook, still lying on his desk. Except for my seven-year-old message, the notebook remained completely blank.
So, the idea is, everyone who wants to participate should pick a date some time during 2000 through January 12, 2007, and write, draw, or otherwise create something, in any medium that will fit into the notebook, to fill in a day in Ben's life. Could be long or short; could be realistic or fantastical; could consist merely of receipts for kinky video rentals, Rogaine, etc.

78.Still Life (2007). Buy some fruit and the like, and peel them. An apple, orange (leaving the whitish pulp on), pear, banana, strawberries, a cucumber, some garlic cloves, a pomegranate (but without showing the seeds, or maybe just one seed -- whatever would look interesting without disrupting the intelligibility of the subject-matter), etc. Think about things that might look evocative once peeled, perhaps items that will look pale and rather fleshy, in varied shapes, with bits of red. Arrange in a bowl as a still-life, and photograph them. Photograph the arrangement or videotape it using a still video camera.

77.Dies Like Truth (2006-?). Conceptual art piece. Pull the Huck Finn trick: put the word out that you've died, then record the funeral. I think I should really do this, but wait 'til I'm about as old as can be while my most eloquent friends still live. The experience might brighten my last years, though I couldn't blame my friends if they couldn't forgive me; and it would be interesting to discover if any of them have read this. But how awful if I found the elegies disappointing -- but then, better to find out while there's still time for me to offer editorial assistance.

76.Instruments of Knowledge: Hands (2006). Series of gloves. The premise has to do with the fact that everything we know or perceive, we experience through instruments of some kind -- surveillance devices, satellites, stethoscopes, our sensory organs, our internal maps of reality, whatever physical, conceptual, or emotional modes of exploration and interaction we've developed, etc. -- what Michael Polanyi called the "tacit dimension". The initial idea is to do a series of gloves that are to be tried on or worn, each of which represents a sort of disguise or alternative mode both of presenting or thinking about oneself and of experiencing the world outside of ourselves. The gloves would be various sizes, shapes, and styles; they should be interesting to look at and should also feel different ways inside (e.g., some could be silky, some sandpapery, some slimy, some could be thin and flexible, some like steel armor, etc.) Or not. It might be important to ward off too-facile interpretations by not looking too colorful or crafts-y.
Other kinds of items could compose other series, but I esp. like the idea of gloves because hands are our instruments not only of perception but of doing and making, and because of the connotation of getting inside the skins of alternate identities.
Include at the end of the series a pair of gloves designed primarily to record data about the hands that were inserted inside them throughout the history of the gloves' exhibition (perhaps some light color sensitive to hands' oils and secretions?), the gloves ultimately to be displayed inside out.

75.Fifty Questions About When Life is Worth Living (2006). Conceptual art piece. Develop a survey of fifty questions. Include questions such as, to what degree would life be worth living if . . . and then pose various scenarios, such as, what if you were the last human on Earth and could freely enjoy all the material goods on the planet, but there would never be anyone else to care what you did? Or what if everyone else were autistic or something, and your actions would affect them, but they'd never react emotionally? Etc. (Groundhog Day and Wings of Desire each explore questions in the vein I have in mind.) The questions should be framed to admit answers in degrees; i.e., rather than asking whether life would be worth living if the respondent were a vegetable, yes or no, the questions should ask if life would be worth living not at all, just a tiny bit, a moderate amount, or totally. The survey should include some questions designed to elicit the answerers' assumptions; i.e., respondents who believe in one or more gods might be expected to answer many questions differently than those who don't or who are unsure. I'd also like to afford respondents an opportunity to elaborate on any aspects of the issues raised that interest them. Some of the questions should of course also aim to elicit ideas for better, future questions. Administer the survey to a random population; compile and analyze the results; develop the survey further and re-administer; etc.

74.Pilgrim's Progress (2006). Conceptual art piece. Re- the trend lately of making all phases of the production process into part of the artwork (e.g., I got this idea while reading a notice about Hammer Projects: Walead Beshty at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, April 20 – July 23, 2006, which includes as part of the work a library of materials read as part of the research for the work) . . . the idea here is for an art consumer to have her or his "revenge" by presenting as an "artwork" all of the documentation, artifacts, accidents, detritus etc. generated or gathered in the course of the consumer's approach to and consumption of artwork made by another (whether such consumption be in the form of purchase or merely perceiving or experiencing such work).  Try to work in a reference to the "enchanted gourd [sic]."
Could do a similar project in which an art critic does the same.
The reality is, such works would not be so different from the kinds of works consumed or reviewed, insofar as artists' work is itself also a mode of consumption and review of others' work, esp. nowadays.

73.Woven and Cut (2006). Painting made of cloth. Select one or more photos of significant, at least marginally-recognizable events from current affairs; e.g., possibly, the press conference earlier this year with Bush and Blair at twin podia à la Tweedle-Dee-ums. Trace lighter-shaded areas so as to create an intelligible image, onto cocoa-brown, somewhat-loosely-woven cloth at least 6 x 4'. Cut out "lighter" areas. Machine wash. Edges should fray, somewhat obscuring the image. If the fraying is excessive (e.g., if you can't even tell anymore that the holes create an image that may have been based on a photo), then re-do all, but zig-zag stitch the edges of the holes before machine-washing, to control the fraying. Press (iron) the cloth to remove wrinkles. Behind the brown cloth, spread a piece of white or off-white velveteen of the same size (I picture this of a color that's exceedingly faintly green). Stretch both like canvas over wooden frame to create painting.

72.Raise the Penis (2006). Short video. Either use a real penis and tiny chains and pulleys, or make a very realistic giant penis and use real, giant chains and pulleys. The penis should look absolutely real but gargantuan and extremely heavy. Show apparent, though off-screen collaboration with many chains, pulleys, perhaps winches, etc. used to raise the penis into an erect position.
The point is how we all collaborate on what has at least historically been our least dispensable project, to raise the penis.

71.Earth to Travellers: (2006). From an airplane, take reasonably-absorbing photos of ground. Photoshop the topography to subtly spell messages.

70.Elimination (2006). A project based on recordings made in public and private bathrooms/restrooms. We all spend at least a few hours there per week; I'm sure there are interesting possibilities.

69.Positioning II (Curation) (2006). Conceptual art piece. Art is, in large part, curation (as is intellection in general). At present, Google may be our most important curator. (By the way, although Google's great up to a point, they retain a record of your every keystroke, which record is at best subject to governmental subpoena. Try startpage.) So, the artwork = to rig Google for artistic purposes (i.e., to create links etc. so as to artificially boost one or more particular pages for artistic purposes.) I realize many commercial marketing departments are already dedicated to doing this for commercial purposes, but is anyone doing it for purely aesthetic purposes? High time. Note that this strategy could be deployed in many ways: from, v. simply, to promote good, old art at the Louvre or elsewhere -- to, more complexly, to create, e.g., a virtual sculpture: a set of links defining a virtual, conceptual object.

68.Positioning (2006). Conceptual art piece. Minimalism is the new Impressionism. (I just had to say that; it's out of my system now. Genuine apologies to my minimalist friends; pls see # 58 below.)
Anyway . . . I'm interested in video and other technology-based media because they've just begun to be explored, so there are lots of fun new things to do with them . . . but maybe an even newer medium is p.r. -- the idea here is to use p.r. for purely artistic purposes.
The first, obvious piece is: record every significant act I (or you) do during some significant portion of my (or your) art career in hopes of furthering same. Maybe undertake market surveys, focus groups? (Maybe I could actually get groups to read some of these virtual art ideas -- I'm not sure anyone else besides me ever has, but people like to be asked their opinions -- and pick their favorites.)
But the possibilities are infinite.

67.The Sortor Foundation (2006). Conceptual art piece. Set up a tax-exempt foundation more or less mimicking those of wealthy art collectors. Research the requirements and do all according to law, including transferring to the Foundation title to any and all artworks or other property I care to donate to the Foundation. Not yet having done the research, I'm not sure what all the benefits of Foundation status might be, but perhaps I can write off my donations and Foundation operating expenses (including my rent or mortgage payments to the extent of portions of my space used for Foundation purposes), receive a salary as the Director of the Foundation (although I'd probably have to give up more direct profits from the Foundation's operations or property--but then, if such profits materialized, I'd arguably have earned a raise), and continue to enjoy the artworks donated while (like at least some collectors who set up foundations) affording relatively limited public access to them.

66.God's Fingerprints (2006). Very large print. Create in Illustrator (1) a tilable image of all ten of the artist's finger prints, and (2) an Islamic screen design utilizing five or ten -pointed stars. Layer them.

65.Explosion (Looping, Large, and Small) (2006). This would be three separate works including one looping video and two very large prints. In Illustrator, make simplified virii with black shading on white background. Create a smattering of them that can be repeated and spiralled to create a piled tunnel of them (smaller virii toward the center, larger toward the periphery) of potentially limitless size, on a white background. Animate it to explode from size zero to the largest possible size, and loop the animation forward and backward, so the pile-tunnel seems to grow from an insignificant speck to the largest possible size and then shrink back, over and over. Also create extremely large print of the image at both extremes, i.e., a huge print with nothing in it but an almost speck-like pile in the center (perhaps 1/2" in diameter) and another extremely large print with the pile-tunnel full-blown. It's important that these two images actually be printed on a single canvas or tarp of some kind, and that the pieces be hung in spaces that can barely contain them (so they dwarf rather than being dwarfed by the space).

64.Alignment (2005). Short video. Find an expanse of tweedy-colored, wall-to-wall carpet near a long window in a setting such as an airport. The carpet should be fairly even in apparent tone, with no visible areas of fading, stains, or even shadows (or, if these cannot be avoided, they will need to be matched in the printed photos described next). Photograph sections of this carpet to create 24 different, life-size prints of it, each 8.5 x 11"; I'm guessing a matte finish would be best (this number being chosen for several reasons, including that there are 24 vertebrae in the human spine). The color and tones must exactly match the original carpet.
The video will be shot near the same window where the photos of the carpet were taken and will require 24 volunteers in addition to the artist. The artist should dress as a yogi, all in white, with hair covered by a white turban. The video will open with the 24 volunteers simultaneous converging from all directions to place 24 sheets of white, 8.5 x 11" paper on the carpet in a row parallel to the long window, about three feet from the window. The volunteers promptly withdraw. The "yogi" approaches the far end of the column and, squatting in the three-foot area between the column and the window, with her or his back to the window, straightens and evens the spacing of each piece of white paper, one by one -- but after straightening each one, s/he reaches just beyond it to also straighten one of the photo prints of the carpet, which the viewers now realize were there from the beginning but were invisible to the viewers, camouflaged by their resemblance to the carpet (as the yogi picks up each print, enough of a shadow should be created to make the print clearly distinguishable from the carpet beneath). Before the videotaping began, these photo prints were placed in position in a column about four feet from the window (it may be necessary to put something slightly sticky along their corners or edges to help the prints visually blend into the carpet yet be readily movable by the yogi, and it might be best if the video is NOT too hi-res). The yogi proceeds methodically to straighten each piece of white paper and its camouflage counterpart, in a manner that's quick and smooth yet not rushed. The video can end as soon as the yogi's gotten far enough for the viewers to get the idea.

63.Research Project 1 (2005). Performance and related artifacts. Develop, conduct, and analyze the results of a fake research project. E.g., I'd be interested in testing for correlations in sensitivity to: emotional or psychological nuances in interactions (e.g., videotape a job interviewer who subtly signals various emotions and ask subjects to describe their impressions from the point of view of an interviewee); scratchiness (which of the following feel itchy to you: cashmere, merino wool, angora, lambs' wool, etc.); gradations of color shade and hue; and general levels of anxiety or depression.

62.Transcryption (2005). Musical recording. Transcribe Mahavishnu Orchestra's Inner Mounting Flame for multiple human voices and bodies (try here for an excerpt from the first cut, "Meeting of the Spirits"). Have it performed by some amazingly talented singers, a cappella except that they are permitted to use their hands and other body parts to make percussive and other sounds. They may or may not be able to hit every note; most important is that the rendition be no less soul-destroying-and-creating than M.O.'s recording.

61.Regression (2005). Video loop displayed on a large-screen t.v. We see one or more people in a room in which a t.v. is on. Some or all of the people are watching the t.v. most of the time, but others may be engaged in other activities. There is interplay of various kinds between what's being shown on the t.v. and what's "actually" happening in the room, although the people in the room do not appear aware of it. The interplay could, e.g., implicate social issues, could be directly ironic or satiric, could evoke perceptual or cognitive issues. Then the camera appears to recede, and we discover that the room itself is a projection on a t.v. screen in another, larger room. Again, there is interplay between what's happening on the screen and what's going on the room. Then again, the camera recedes. The process should repeat several times, until we loop back--i.e., the larger room we've receded to turns out to be the same room we began in.
It would be great if some or all of the footage screened were excerpted from actual t.v. programs or commercials.

60.My Life (2004). Write the story of my life. Create an artwork relating to each episode, choosing not only media and form but epoch or style to suit the particular incident as well as the narrative arc; e.g., in the manner of Manet, or Pre-Columbian sculpture, or Dada-esque, or Flavin-esque, whatever. In the writing, similarly, employ styles from different eras or authors as appropriate.

59.Present Fears (2004). Line up the longest possible row of t.v.'s, all with same-sized screens, close together, evenly-spaced, at the same height, and each with its own VCR or DVD player. Ideally, the line of screens should circle the viewer. On each screen, play the exact same loop from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. However, the loop on each consecutive screen should be started one or two seconds after the previous one. Ideally, with enough t.v.'s, at every instant, virtually the entire film would be being screened simultaneously, with the arc of each gesture and camera-movement fully visible. (Cf. Macbeth, Act I, scene iii: "Present fears/ Are less than horrible imaginings:/ My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,/ Shakes so my single state of man that function/ Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is,/ But what is not."

58.Minimalist Sculpture (2004). Fishing line and small, clear, uncolored beads, in largest possible exhibition space. Along the longest wall, run line from floor to ceiling at intervals barely wider than the width of your beads. Beads can be glass, plastic, whatever looks good and is cheap; but all perfectly clear. Stack beads floor to ceiling on the first line, and count. You want the last line to have just one bead, so you count the number of beads per line between here and there to get an even declension. Hopefully end up with a good-looking wedge. Lighting crucial, and best if natural. (This, like other good minimalism, isn't; natural lighting would help supply crucial contaminants.)
Has to do with my love-hate relationship with minimalism. I love the way it helps us see the skeletons of beauty, perception, conception; I don't love that it's so often dull, or quickly over (i.e., when it's most successful, it's only superficially minimal -- of course, that's the challenge; but we've got that concept now . . . ).

57.Bowls for the Dead (2004). An ongoing memorial to all who have died and continue to die in the war in Iraq. Locate or build a very large room or enclosure that's open to the public. It probably should be at least mostly enclosed and should have a high ceiling. The visual field should be uncluttered (i.e., plain, neutral-colored floor, white or light-colored walls, little else in the room). Find the best available estimates of the numbers of people who have died or disappeared in this conflict, on a month-by-month basis since the invasion began, and categorized as follows: (a) U.S. soldiers; (b) employees of U.S. contractors or other U.S. non-military personnel; (c) Iraqis and other nationals. Make a ceramic bowl for each month, each uniform in size, at least 18" in diameter and 6" deep, and with a pedestal bringing the bottom an inch or two off the floor. The bowls should be stable and sturdy, but graceful in shape. The bowl for each month should be inscribed with the month and year it represents and with the number of estimated dead for each of the categories mentioned above for that month. The inside of each bowl should be glazed with colors in patches roughly proportional to the estimates for that month, using (a) a dull, dark blue for U.S. soldiers; (b) a dark, charcoal gray for non-military U.S. personnel; (c) a dark, dull red for Iraqis and others. I envision three solid areas of color with each estimate number inscribed somewhere within the appropriate patch. E.g., if in a given month, 10 U.S. soldiers died, 5 non-military U.S. people died, and 85 Iraqis died, then the patch of blue inside the bowl would cover about 10% of that surface, charcoal gray would cover about 5%, and red would cover about 85%. Add a new bowl every month until the war is really over.
I would be open to input about whether the non-U.S. category should be broken down somehow—I don’t want the mentality to be overly U.S.-centric. On the other hand, there may be an important point made as one color accumulates and dominates, showing how many non-U.S. relative to U.S. people are being killed.
I think the bowls need to be lined up in rows, in order, with room for people to walk beside them, and with space in the room for more bowls, and with a commitment from the landlord to keep the installation open until the war is over (I’m afraid we won’t be out of Iraq before 2009 or later). The rows could start out widely-spaced and be re-arranged periodically as the floor fills.

56.Framed Nos. 1, 2, et seq. (2004). Series of "paintings" in which the frames are as important as the framed, contrasting with or "spinning" the framed. E.g., No. 1 might be as follows: you know how certain fake paintings are printed onto a brushstroke-textured surface? Well, first create an EXCESSIVELY brushstroke-textured surface, the kind with thick gobs of paint, so heavy you can't help but think of shit. And then print onto it, with visible microdots, the kind of image that would never be rendered with such a thick-gobbed technique--perhaps an excerpt from an Ingres showing one of his cone-fingered female hands and a decolletage. Then frame it in an airy, spectacularly filigreed frame, the delicate filigree contrasting with both the crude texture of the painting surface and the creamy solidity of Ingres' flesh. No. 2 might be, select a segment from a t.v. show I liked (cancelled a few years ago), the eerily prescient La Femme Nikita, about a secret anti-terror agency whose tactics seem nearly as evil as those of the terrorists. Select a segment that's at least somewhat suggestive of the foregoing subject-matter and that includes the star, Peta Wilson. Darken the clip, and layer over the Eastern half of it still cut-outs of my driver's license and Social Security card, replacing my name, address and other textual info with, say, Donald H. Rumsfeld's as far as possible (as of this writing, his address is, Secretary of Defense,1000 Defense Pentagon, Washington, DC 20301-1000). Make a loop of the video clip with the i.d. card overlay, and project the loop onto the actual face of the painting, which would itself just be blank white. Frame to be rather large and upholstered in pink, anti-static bubble-wrap, or fake cake frosting, or maybe white plaster casting (like for a broken arm). In No. 3, the painting should be flat, matte, medium gray. ALL of the action should be in or on the frame. Etc.

55.Keyboard (2004). Print and frame the document reached by clicking here.

54.Urgent Theater (2004). Identify a number of people who are diverse, intelligent, articulate and interesting. Ask them each to write out a fantasy role--whatever role each want to play, in a theater, video, or in their own imagination--what kind of character, in what kind of context--plot and setting. They should be encouraged to imagine something different from their real, daily lives. Then meld these writings into a single play that weaves together the various plots and characters. Produce the play with each character played by the person who conceived it.

53.Certified (2004). Compose a certificate stating that Carolyn Sortor is one of the greatest artists who's ever lived. Collect specimens of the signatures of as many prominent contemporary artists, curators, and collectors as possible. Create the certificate as an imposing-looking document along the lines of the Declaration of Independence, forging the collected signatures at the bottom (or maybe some could be real, to the extent of cooperative signers). Present in a half-dark room, in a museum-type display case with lighting suitable for valuable, old documents (i.e., designed to minimize deleterious effects of light).

52.Curtain (2004). Hanging on wall or, in cylinder-form, from ceiling. Scan onto computer all the pages from my journals (please see No. 31 below for description of journal pages). Scan so that each resulting scanned doc can be life-size (i.e., 8-1/2 x 11") at 250 dpi. Scan them in order and add a number in parentheses (in red?) in the upper left corner of each image, so all images are labelled consecutively from beginning to end (so that there will only be one Page 1 [or any other page number] among all the pages from all the journals). Print all with consistent color.
The prints are all to be pinned together to make a hanging, but use some kind of tape, ribbon, or something to pin them to and to serve as vertical support (right now I'm picturing red ribbon), instead of just pinning them to each other, so there won't be too much stress on the pages at the top from the weight of the pages below them. May or may not need horizontal tape, ribbon, or struts between the vertical ribbon-pieces--depending on how the whole thing is hung.
The prints could be hung in order, or better if NOT. In the latter case, viewers would still have the option of re-constructing the original of this version of my history by finding the consecutive numbers in the upper left corners of the prints so as to read them in chronological order; or alternatively, they could read the prints in a random order, thus encountering a different story and implicitly inviting them to imagine the prints in yet other orders so as to create their own versions.
The piece could be hung flat against a wall, in which case the top edges could be affixed to the wall or to a pole hung on the wall; or could be used to form a cylinder with the faces of the prints facing inside, which viewers could enter, and with a strong light inside and toward the top of the cylinder, so that the images would partially show through to viewers outside the cylinder, in which case the top edges could be affixed to a hoop hung from the ceiling. Best: affix top edges to a strong yet flexible pole that can be hung either way.

51.Rising Sun (2004). This installation/sculpture needs a whole room, preferably rectangular, the bigger the better. If you were looking at it from the ceiling downward, it would resemble the Japanese flag during WWII (see http://www.japanorama.com/hinomaru.html as of 3/12/04), with the main difference being that the central circle would be cut out. Ideally, as in the Japanese flag, looking down from the ceiling, the central area would be off-center.
There would be beams extending from the walks toward the central, circular, open area, which would be maybe 10' in diameter--big enough for more than one person at a time to stand in without feeling overly crowded. At the center, the top of each beam would be about 6' off the floor and the bottom about a yard off the floor, so that the vertical height of each beam would be about three feet. The beams would be made of steel or, more likely on my budget, plastic or styrofoam; but in any event, they would strong (or short) enough relative to their weight to need no suspension or support, apart from being anchored to the walls. They could be hollow but shouldn't look it. As in the Japanese flag, each beam would be bigger at its base against the wall of the room than at the center. The width at the base of each beam vs. the width at center would be such that, looking from central area down each beam toward its base, the visual apparent width of each beam would remain constant from the beginning to the end of each beam (i.e., the base of the beam would take up no greater width in the visual field than the end of the beam). The height of the base of each beam would be proportionate.
Where the beams converge at the perimeter of the central, circular area, they should be separated by cracks maybe 1/2" wide. You'd enter the gallery room between the bases of two beams, not necessarily (depending on your height and whether you happened to stoop down) noticing any of the other beams 'til you got to the center, where you could glimpse them through the cracks. Of course, by crouching at any point you could go anywhere else in the room.
The whole plane or orbit of beams should be slanted so as, at some point, to afford view of tops of beams to short as well as tall people. Or better, if possible, have the floor of the whole room slanted, and have two openings to/from the central area, one leading in the direction of the downward slope of the door, that leads to the entry door of the room, and the other leading in the direction of the upward slope of the floor, at the end of which even short people could see the tops of the beams.
The walls of the room should be pure white; and the beams should be painted pure white, except the colors should be adjusted so that, e.g., the tops are darker, the sides somewhat lighter, the bottoms lighter still, so that visually, the beams will kinda-sorta (but not completely) seem to disappear.
On the ends of the beams facing the central circle there should be partially-mirroring surfaces--basically mirror-surfaces with images on them that partially interfere with true reflection. The images could be ripped off from professionally produced porn video, amateur exhibitionism from the internet, images from the latest-greatest cartoons for adults or children, images from t.v. commercials deploying soft porn, images from t.v. commercials aimed at children, images of spam, images from t.v. shows that are clearly the products of megacorp directives, etc.

50.From Both Sides Now (2004). This is basically a fake cloud with objects embedded in it. Find some of that expanding spray foam stuff that handymen use to fill holes--white, if possible; or will have to paint it; pearly white preferred. Spread thick layer of vaseline over floor area a little greater than size and shape of the "cloud." Maybe add a bit of vertical texture or shapes to cloud floor, using some kind of dough or other material; but coat all well with vaseline and/or plastic wrap. Go shopping at flea markets, a Dollar Store, a giant drug store, a Ricky's NY, in Matamoros, etc. for--or otherwise acquire--objects to be embedded in the cloud. E.g., an old microscope, a full-face mask of a generic female face, a TV Guide, a pair of shoes--but reality will provide better alternatives; choose whatever will be most fun, weird, and meaningful. Cover with vaseline or plastic wrap that side of each such object which you want to remain visible. Embed in the vaseline in the floor, or save to be embedded on top or sides of cloud. Spray cloud on. Embed any additional objects. When foam has dried, wash off vaseline and, if necessary, paint cloud (and, maybe-maybe not, the objects) pearly white.
Hang in a decent-sized room with high ceilings, just safely above tops of tall persons' heads. Would be esp. good if could hang in a two-story space with a mezzanine or balcony level, so that from different levels both top and bottom of cloud could be viewed.
The objects embedded in the bottom should include at least one or two that should make one beneath feel possibly watched.

49.Reading (2004). The artist displayed in a gallery, reading. In a glass enclosure, à la Leigh Bowery in the Anthony d'Offay Gallery, with good light within the cell and minimal light without. The cell contains the kind of chair in which you can sit in at least four completely different ways and still reach a safely-ensconced beverage, a straight-back chair and small writing table, and a twin bed with headboard and pillows, all suitable for marathon reading. The artist must spend as much time as possible in there, doing nothing but reading. Taking notes on the reading would be ok. Possibly mount outside the enclosure a suggestion box for viewers to suggest additional reading material.

48.Sponge (2003). Live and videotaped performance involving one or more giant “sponges”, each made of foam-backed fabric, velcro, flexible plastic scaffolding, and people, with plastic tubing, empty plastic milk jugs, some kind of tape that doesn’t hurt too much when it’s ripped off skin, and colored water in a pool. Get bolts of foam-backed fabric, preferably cobalt (Yves Klein) blue. The dimensions of one "sponge” to be made should be at least, say, 27 x 18 x 3’. Sew top and sides of sponge, with velcro along bottom edges to attach a panel for the bottom of the sponge (and sew bottom, which will remain separate, with the complementary kind of velcro along edges). May need to tack in some flexible scaffolding, esp. in and around corners. Cut holes in top for ca. 54 heads, and in bottom, for 108 legs. (The sponges probably could and might better be made of other materials; the important thing is that the material should give the appearance of a whole, hide people's torsos, and be flexible.) Recruit 54 people of various heights, shapes, sexes, and colors and tell them to wear bathing suits and sneakers, so all appendages sticking outside the sponge epidermis will be naked except for the sneakers.
Find an empty swimming pool, preferably one with a relatively shallow, uniform depth, and clean it. Fill it with non-chlorinated, colored water--let’s say yellowy-chartreuse or peachy-orange, or possibly blood-red--should contrast well with the blue. Fill the just enough to get the color and a reflective surface; just past one's ankles should do it.
Rig all the people up with two jugs each at their waists, with tubing that runs from an ankle to their mouth, then another tube that runs from their mouth into one of the jugs at their waist. Then have them don the sponge.
First, videotape one sponge trotting hither and thither through the streets. Pre-choreograph, but it's fine if people sometimes seem to be trying to go in somewhat different directions or even stumble. The movements of the sponge should appear somewhat jittery and purposeless. Write a few ambiguous lines for the sponge and have a minority of the people in the sponge speak or shout the lines for that sponge more or less together, but without much if any rehearsal, so that each person is shouting out the lines with somewhat different intonation and timing--so that the resulting, heard interpretation of the lines will be an aggregate, net effect. Other people should be talking a bit to each other or to themselves, with much or even most of the talk having nothing to do with anything else going on. Not all the people should be talking all the time; there should be lulls. All the talk needs to be spoken or shouted and recorded in such a way that, even though it's somewhat cacophonous, esp. on first hearing, the words are mostly intelligible.
Then the sponge discovers the pool and runs to stand in it. All the people stop talking and suck up all the water and spit it into their jugs as fast as they can. (Everyone should thoroughly wash their feet and shoes before this scene.) The sponge rapidly drains the pool--if necessary, cheat by draining the water elsewhere simultaneously. The sponge lumbers away from the pool.
Then the sponge encounters another sponge of slightly different size or shape, and the two sponges start talking or shouting to or at each other. Again, write ambiguous dialogue for the two sponges and again have some of the people in each sponge shout the lines for that sponge. Better if more than one dialogue is taking place between various sub-groups within the two (e.g., one sub-group within Sponge A could be flirting with a sub-group within Sponge B, while a different sub-group within Sponge A is engaging in more threatened/threatening dialogue with its counterpart within Sponge B) and if some people within each sponge are also talking among or to themselves.

47.Third Degree (2003). Conceptual art work. I have no fine arts degree and feel a need for credentials; my boyfriend, a commercial artist, has a BFA from the U. of Texas, Austin that he doesn't need. I make him an offer.
[This project was completed January 1, 2004; you can view the documentation here. Scott Barber subsequently offered me his MFA; I probably should have taken him up on it, but felt in need of some actual edu; see Artificial MFA (#113 above).]

46.The Only Constant (2003). Video. Put the video camera on a tripod at eye-level before the check-in counter of an old or small hotel (maybe à la Leo House in NYC). The boxes for messages and keys should be in view behind the clerk attending the counter. The script is as follows. We hear a voice speaking from the point of view of the camera, saying, "Hi, I'm John Smith, and I have a reservation for tonight." The clerk scrutinizes a ledger on the counter and answers, "I'm sorry, but I don't seem to have anything for you; and I'm afraid we're full." Mr. Smith says, "But I called just a little while ago; could I have spoken with someone else?" The clerk roots around a bit behind the counter; "I don't think so, sir; I've been here all day; are you sure you called here?" "Is there another Midtown Hotel in the city?" "Not as far as I know. Again, sir, I'm sorry but we're completely full."
Recruit about a dozen actors to play the clerk and then shoot each of them acting out this same scene, saying the exact same words and making the exact same gestures, speaking with similar but not necessarily the exact same intonation, and dressed similarly but not necessarily exactly the same. Then edit the takes together so that the scene is played through just once as scripted and at a natural tempo, but so that the identity of the clerk appears to be constantly changing, with each segment of one of the actors' performances in the clerk's role appearing for just a fraction of a second--I expect no more than four or five segments per second--each segment to be just long enough for the viewer's eye to register the change. (Thus, if the video is 50 seconds long, it might be necessary to edit together 250 segments, each 1/5th of a second long.)
The actors should be of various sizes, shapes, ages, genders, so long as it's possible to edit them together in such a way that the visual outline of the clerk remains fairly smooth, i.e., presenting an intelligible gestalt for the clerk as a continuous being. However, the general size and shape of the ever-changing clerk could trend larger or smaller or back and forth, as long as the change in general outline isn't too abrupt.
I'm not yet sure whether it will be possible or desirable to edit the clerk's voices together; I expect it will need to be dubbed. I'm considering using an elderly black woman's voice for Mr. Smith (but still have her identify herself as "Mr. Smith").

45.Insides (2003). Video. Videotape a series of different kinds of individuals including a very young infant. Somehow affix a microphone to their bellies; the sound recorded through this mike should be used instead of any other sound. If the person is talking, that should be picked up, but the goal would be to pick up as much noise as possible from inside the person, so that digestive gurglings, heart beat, and breathing would be louder than any talking. Consider opening the video with no visual image, just blackness and sound. Experiment with asking the individuals to talk about how they feel or think about their (perhaps psychological as well as physiological) insides, the fact that most of us will never directly see our physical insides, and what kinds of exchanges occur between our insides and what's outside of us, including other people's insides; some of this talk could be scripted. However, there should probably be footage of two or three people not talking, before any talk begins, to give the audience a chance to focus on the interior noises alone, and the talking should be no louder than needed to be barely intelligible. Experiment with different camera viewpoints, including from behind the individuals' backs. Would like to try for a range of configurations, from segments in which there is little or no distraction from the internal noise, to others in which the audience has the chance to clearly observe any correlations between internal noise events and the words or external demeanor of the person being taped (the infant would probably provide an interesting instance of the latter).

44.Memory (2003). Quest yielding modified photo with brief text. One day when I was four, I wondered if I could make myself remember a moment, for no particular reason, but just through an act of will. I decided to try to remember the scene that happened to be before me.
It worked. I sat on the front porch of our house in a suburb of Detroit. Our neighborhood looked as described in the song about "little boxes . . . all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same." It was day, but the sky glowered with storm clouds. Near the top of a wooden telephone pole across the street, a strip of red cloth fluttered; I wondered who had put it there and why.
This piece might involve actually going back to that particular neighborhood and trying to make a photograph similar to that scene. It might prove necessary or useful to shoot both that address and, if that neighborhood has changed much, another that perhaps looks more like what I remember; and I assume it would be necessary to photoshop the red flag in. The photo might be accompanied by an explanation similar to this one, documenting that the photo is an "authentic" re-creation of a long-held, deliberately created memory of a scene that was randomly selected and held no particular emotional or other import.

43.Failed Fotos (2003). Series of verbal descriptions of favorite photographs taken that, whether because of loss of destruction or film, photographer error, technological limits, or other reasons, did not came out; e.g., “PHOTO OF ME, BEN, DAN, AND AMY THE LAST TIME WE HUNG OUT TOGETHER BEFORE DAN AND AMY BROKE UP. WE WERE WERE TRYING TO SNEAK IN TO SWIM IN THE POOL AT THE TOP OF THE WYNDHAM. THE ELEVATOR HAD A MIRRORED CEILING, AND AS IT ROSE, I POINTED MY CAMERA UP, AND WE ALL SANK ONTO THE FLOOR IN A PILE, LAUGHING UP AT OURSELVES. IF I HADN’T BEEN SO WASTED, I’D HAVE REALIZED THE REFLECTED FLASH WOULD BLOW OUT THE PICTURE. THE DOOR TO THE ROOF WAS LOCKED.”

42.Growth vs. Stability (2003). Sculpture of a city with “Jetsons”-like skyscrapers, all made entirely of hair fixed in place with hair spray and other hair products, barrettes, etc. (get help from one or more professional hairstylists).

41.Genetic Quilt (2003). Quilt or digital artwork. I’ve used images of biological cells in creating a number of digital tiles, some of which appear on this website. This artwork would be a quilt using the traditional “wedding ring” pattern, but the pieces for the quilt should be cut from these cell tilings, instead of using the usual calico. Ideally, the tiles would be used to actually print the cell patterns on fabric to be used to make a real quilt; but if that were cost-prohibitive, the piece could be created digitally and ink-jetted onto cloth or paper.

40.Mono Macbeth (2003). Videotaped performance of Macbeth, with characters visually played by a variety of different people or objects, and with me doing all or many of the voices (I'm rather deeply interested in Shakespeare and, like his character, Bottom, would love to play all the parts.) E.g., could use Xena doll as Lady Macbeth, maybe giving her a white streak, like Cruella DeVille; could use paper dolls, if they still exist, magazine cut-outs, stuffed animals or other toys; even objects, perhaps a can-opener as Macbeth (who “unseamed [an adversary] from the nave to the chops”), Banquo as Mr. Clean (painted blood dripping down his bald head when appearing as a ghost), packs of Salem cigarettes as a witches (alight and emitting smoke); Duncan as a bar of Ivory soap (gentle and pure), etc.

39.Content to Stick Out (2003). Painting-sculpture, about 4x4x18”. To be mounted on the wall so that the longest dimension sticks directly out from the wall. The 4x4” face is covered in a fine canvas; the sides of the piece should be smooth and white (possibly covered with the same canvas; in any case, the finish should be very smooth and neat, almost creamy). On the 4x4” face should be ink-jetted or painted a tight close-up of an almost swooningly beatific face, in a sort of ambiguously religious-sexual ecstasy, more feminine than not, but also sort of childlike and androgynous, bathed in very cold light from above, and with eyes heavy-lidded but bright and unmistakably looking directly into those of the viewer.

38.Warrior (2003). Painting. Get hold of or create image of a samurai warrior, standing facing or at a slight angle to the viewer, lit from the side, against a bright background. Manipulate image so that the brightness pretty much blasts the image out into white except for the dark, longitudinal half of the warrior, which should be in shades of lavender-gray. The warrior should be shown from about mid-thigh up, he should take up about half the picture-space, he should be standing right of center, with the shaded half near the right side of the picture. The final picture should be about 3.5 x 5’, with the warrior life-size. The image should be ink-jetted, printed, or painted with minimal texture to the paint, onto a smooth wooden or similar surface. Then, there should be three rounded but slightly irregularly-shaped cut-out “spots” ranging in diameter from about 2 to 4”, cut into the surface of the picture board to a depth of about 3/4”. The cut edges of the cut-outs should be fairly clean and smooth. The bottom surface of each “spot” (i.e., the recessed surface parallel to the picture plane) should be painted salmon pink. The upper rim or edge of each cut-out should be slightly blackened, with maybe some blackening along the inside sides of the cut-outs; but mostly, the raw wood should be left to show in the sides of the cut-outs.

37.Dry Cleaning (2003). Series of photos shot in one or more large dry-cleaning plants.

36.Unstuffed (2003). Installation. Hang my entire wardrobe flat against the walls of the largest possible gallery room so as to cover the walls completely. Hang the clothes upside down, with legs and skirts pinned up but not shut, and with arms hanging down.

35.Annotated New Yorker (2002). Sculpture or whatever you want to call it consisting of an issue of The New Yorker magazine (my journals contain more than one heartfelt thank-you to Hendrik Hertzberg for his essays), filled with notations, drawings, paintings, etc. expressing my responses to the issue’s content.

34.Better Plaid (2002). Use Lucite or other transparent, colored rectangular bars to create a three-dimensionally plaid cube. Better yet, make something like three-dimensional M.C. Eschers.

33.My Cup (2002). Next time it rains, bring a complete dinner- and silverware place-setting outside. The dishes should be plain white. Set them up in running water in a drainage channel, with lighting such that the water is clearly visible though not particularly muddy, and shoot video and stills. Want to see water running through and over the dishware, possibly depositing occasional sediment.

32.Leave Me (2002). Installation to be located in a tall, preferably narrow room or a hall with white walls, consisting of pages torn out of my journals, pinned to the walls along only the top edges of the pages, and covering the walls. Begin from first anniversary of my mom’s death, i.e., 1/29/03, and work back toward beginning; would be great if also included my divorce. I have at least seven volumes, each an 8-1/2” x 11” spiral notebook containing approximately 300 sheets of paper, for a total of about 2,100 sheets, with writing on both sides. In my journals, I make periodic stabs at noting major occurrences in my life, but I find that kind of writing dull to do, so in most of it I’m venting or excavating emotions, trying to understand current difficulties, or recording dreams and ideas. The pages are white with blue lines, pretty densely written on by hand in blue ink blotted with erasures and occasional poems or drawings. The paper is thin enough that even without light from behind, you can almost read the writing on the reverse. The room should be at least 15 - 18’ tall, and there should be white light from the ceiling, maybe track lighting, and a slow fan from below, to keep the pages riffling and floating up from the walls. Could experiment with different patterns or arrangements of the pages (i.e., should they overlap at all, vertically or horizontally?), but should completely coat all walls, floor to ceiling.

31.Untitled Installation II (2002). Installation consisting of what appear to be four to six trophy human heads, taxidermed like animal trophies. Setting, etc. similar to installation described immediately below, except trophies need not be located high up on walls.

30.Untitled Installation (2002). Installation consisting of four to six trophy animal heads, mounted on plaques and hung rather high on the longer two walls of a hall or room with high ceilings. Everything about the trophies should be completely normal, except the hide or skin of each should be dyed an intense, bright color, one fiery red, another kelly green, another orange, another royal or deep cerulean blue. If there are six heads, add purple and yellow. The horns, eyes, lips, etc. should retain their original color. Ideally, the original color of the fur or skin should show through a bit, but the color should not to be too dark, but should be intense and almost fluorescent. The animals should probably be ones whose fur isn’t too dark to begin with, such as deer, elk, Dahl sheep, antelope, and it would be best if the fur were properly dyed and not matted down. The room should not be empty of other art or furnishings. Rather, it would be best if, as you enter the room, the heads are placed rather high up on the walls and your eyes don’t immediately focus solely on the animal heads, but rather the heads should seem to preside less obtrusively over other contents and activities in the room, like deacons or like those portraits of former officials that often line the halls of government buildings.

29.Untitled Creatures (2002). This is in response to a photo of a rat with a human ear growing out of its back. The project is to use controlled breeding and/or genetic modification to produce living animals with desired aesthetic characteristics. Better yet, get an article published in a scientific journal plausibly falsifying such results.

28.No Body Noses (2002). Ransack archives of head-shots--from schools, clubs, whatever--for photos of faces, and make a whole figure out of cut-out noses. Maybe checker-board them with cut-out photos of assholes.

27.Goodbye, Mom (2002). Installation using folding tables, cheap plastic party trays, Styrofoam or other molded forms, lettuce, cold cuts, condiments, garnish and decorative toothpicks. Use as many tables as will fit in the gallery and still leave sufficient room for viewers, placed so as to create a contiguous, irregularly-shaped surface with at least one peninsula located so as to disrupt traffic-flow but without blocking or unduly isolating any portion of the gallery space. Cover table tops with party trays in various shapes and sizes. Arrange Styrofoam forms on trays to create topography, with at least one hyperbolic peak centered away from the perimeter of the table surface (I'm picturing a peak rising at least 2' higher than the table surface). Ideally, shapes should be reminiscent of Dr. Seuss’s landscapes. Layer trays and the Styrofoam forms first with some lettuce, then lots of cold cuts. Cold cuts should be placed so as to overlap one another in dense, very regular patterns, like on professionally-prepared party trays. Use toothpicks and add small quantities of garnish and little pots of condiments and toothpicks-in particular, I picture a large olive or two like a nipples at the tip of the hyperbolic peak--but the spectacle should be overwhelmingly dominated by meat.
Eating should be encouraged and the whole reception videotaped. Good in combination with exhibition of other artwork on walls.

26.Mom Money (2001). Cut large, profile silhouette of Mom’s head out of wall-to-wall carpeting in a vintage medium blue, not shag, but that sort of textured, mossy, variegated stuff. Should be cut as if set in a circle, like a head on a coin. Glue onto a large, circular piece of brown, fake wood paneling like we had in our “family room.” Add blue lettering, etc. to complete “coin” appearance.

25.Untitled Painting (2001). Get a board, maybe 3 x 3'. Get some old-fashioned, cotton tampons with strings. Saturate tampons in some substance (glue?) that will have some volume after it's dried-so the tampons won't return completely to pre-saturation size when dry. Glue them on the board in a more or less random arrangement, the way sperm or other cells might appear on a slide. Spray-paint the whole thing a matte, charcoal gray. Then spray-paint again from one direction at a low angle relative to the surface with a matte, pale gray (make sure air currents minimized). Effect desired is as if a light were shining from a low angle, leaving charcoal gray "shadows". Overall effect should be similar to some electron microscope photographs.

24.Suspense (2001). Large room, at least 24’ ceiling, with a lot of bright light, preferable natural, from ceiling or high in room, and with a large entryway. Get very sheer, luminous polyester organza fabric in creamy yellow color(s) reminiscent of healthy mucus. Sew to the fabric at odd intervals of space bits of clear, very bright green or red Mylar or other clear plastic wrap. Layers of fabric to be suspended within the room so as to give visitors the sensation of being suspended within a viscous fluid. Experiment re- the spacing of the bits of Mylar; they probably should be at least a few feet apart, since they’ll be partly visible through the layers. The layer closest to visitors should be a very sheer chiffon in the same creamy-yellow. Toward the entry way, fabric should leave a fairly wide “mouth” through which visitors enter, but the space within the fabric should narrow as visitors proceed into room until it engulfs and touches them on all sides, ending in a cone-shaped concavity at the floor. It would be great if the room from which visitors enter into this one were relatively dark, so that this room seemed to glow.

23.Judge Me (2001). This would be a website or page on which I offer to pass judgment on and sentence all who care to ask for it. Applicants would be invited to e-mail to me a description of the specific events and circumstances with respect to which judgment is sought. I would respond by asking further questions if necessary and ultimately render judgment and a sentence. Any applicant must be seeking judgment on himself or herself personally, not on others, and the applicant and any other individuals involved must be personally unknown to me. I would decline to pass judgment on entire lives and would reserve the right also to decline to pass judgment as to any other matters.
With respect to applicants found “guilty,” I’d try to concoct sentences that accomplish two objectives: (1) restitution to any victims and (2) enlightenment of the applicant. I’d also try to concoct rewards for any applicants found to deserve them. Most if not all sentences and rewards would have to be self-administered by the applicants.
The title of the piece both states my title, as in "Judge Carolyn", invites others to judge me in turn, and less directly suggests that my judgment on others may constitute a judgment on myself and that conversely, others may judge themselves in the process of being judged by me.
Many of us judge far more than is really necessary, yet judging is almost always required to some extent, at least insofar as implicated in the interpretation of our perceptions and the formation of our preferences, which some might say define us.

22.Halos (2001). Use Photoshop to create collage of images of halos, without the heads or anything else.

21.Other (2001). Sculpture parodying the frozen-blood sculpture, “Self,” by Marc Quinn. Would be exactly the same thing except the head would be female and made of frozen margaritas.

20.Us (2001). Series of life-size sculptures of human figures, each made of a different medium, such as little balls of Wonder bread, foam and/or bristled hair-curling rollers, single-serving saccharine packets, remote controls, flattened fast-food containers, legal documents, dirty underwear, nuts and bolts, dead animals, etc.

19.Half the Population of [to Be Determined] (2001). Calculate approximately how much sperm would be needed in order to have the number of spermatozoa equal to the population of a large country or urban center (the name of which is to be inserted into the title). Get a sufficient number of small, clear, lidded, specimen sample jars and fill them with that amount of sperm. Place the jars on top of as large a table as needed to support them.

18.Myself (2001). Shoot video of me or another person nicely dressed and made up, seated and talking in a cheerful, animated manner. Shoot more video of the same person in other dress, modes, but always sitting in roughly the same position. Then project the video life-size and shoot new video of the “real” person in a t-shirt, without make-up, silent and expressionless, entering the projected, moving video and assuming the position of the projected image of the person. Then try making the projected image slightly larger and then smaller than the “real” person and shoot that as well. Shoot from straight on and from various angles; also take stills.

17.Toes (2001). Series of close-up photographs of various individuals’ toes.

16.Fog (2000). 2-D piece at least 3 x 3’ consisting of opaque gray (dyed, not painted) fabric stretched on a frame, completely covered with cross-stitch (i.e., x’s) embroidery in thread that’s the exact same shade of gray. The background fabric should have a slight sheen more or less similar to that of the thread.

15.Pay Per View (2000). Installation consisting basically of a small pedestal with a tiny sculpture on it, in the center of a large area fenced off with the kind of low fencing that museums use to keep you from getting too close to the art. Here, the sculpture is so tiny and the fence so far from it that you really can’t see the sculpture at all. Ideally, the fenced-off area should take up most of a rather large room, leaving only a narrow walk way through which visitors can squeeze around the perimeter of the room. There should be other art on the walls of the room. Then, at the only entrance through the fence, have an enclosed booth through which those who want to see the sculpture must pass, one at a time, in which they find the artist or perhaps a homeless person. This gatekeeper should assess a variable charge for entry, customized based on conversation/negotiation with the would-be entrant and the gatekeeper's estimate of what the aspiring entrant can afford to pay. Price should occasionally be high enough to provoke a would-be entrant to decline, but should generally be low enough to guarantee a steady stream of entrants, who should each be sworn to secrecy, and who should be admitted to view the sculpture no more than one at a time. The sculpture on the pedestal should be some tiny, enigmatic figure or object, perhaps with the same slyly shallow appeal as most t.v.

14.Untitled Sculpture (2000). Large sculpture made of thick, strong metal wire or slim tubing. The wire should bend and curve back and forth, up, down, and diagonally--ideally, the sculpture should fill most of the gallery room, but with open spaces within, so visitors can walk into interior areas of the sculpture. The ends of the wire should connect to form an endless, convoluted loop. Fishing line should be used to the minimal extent necessary to securely suspend the wire; or perhaps thin, strong wire that enters the larger tubing through a small hole and is secured inside, or is otherwise attached without making a lump where the thin wire connects to the tubing. There should be several sliding beads threaded onto the thick wire or tubing, large enough to be readily noticeable but small enough to slide easily around the curves and bends. The beads will need to have a slot big enough to permit them to slide smoothly past the suspending fishing lines or thin wire, but too narrow to permit them to fall off the larger wire or tubing. The beads should be smoothly rounded inside to help them slide and should probably be weighted so the slots will always remain at the top (again, to help the beads slide past the suspending fishing lines or wires). One or more soft, rubbery sticks should be provided, and there should be a sign instructing viewers to use the sticks to move the beads wherever they like along the wire.

13.(The Unconscious Doesn’t Read the Negative) (1999). Painting approx. 5 x 6’, with accouterments. Canvas should be thickly encrusted with several layers of paint with a lot of crud in it. Once done, the top layer should be slightly variegated scab-browns, with “DON’T PICK ON ME” centered in block letters in a somewhat contrasting color. On a stand placed prominently next to the painting, a sign should state, “[Viewers Are Invited to Pick.]” There should be a piece of canvas or something along the wall under the painting to catch the pickings.
To encourage viewers go ahead and pick, the artist and friends would do enough initial picking to make a noticeable little pile beneath the painting.
As the picking proceeds, the next layer revealed is in fresher, blood-reds. The “DON’T PICK ON ME” lettering continues to be visible at all layers, and the pickings should be allowed to accumulate. The last layer is a painting or photos (perhaps laminated?) of lots of mouths in various bright reds, pinks, and flesh-tones.
The picking process could be documented by taking a photo once a day every day from the same position in front of the painting; or better, a video camera could be set up with a motion detector trigger.

12.Sonny (1999). Photograph of a room with numerous, variously-sized and -framed photos scattered not-too-obtrusively on tables, shelves, walls. The exact same photo of a young man appears in every single frame.

11.Choice (1999). Vending machine containing (what appear to be) frozen human embryos, all far enough along in their development so that viewers can guess what they are by looking at them. Incorporate various visual or verbal jokes in signage, packaging, labelling. Possibly dress them to indicate “desirable” future positions such as doctor, investment banker, fashion model, etc.

10.The Deal (1999). Document in the form of a bona fide, binding legal agreement. “For all purposes of this Agreement, the terms listed below shall have the following meanings:
“Adjusting Investor Member”: Collectively, your reproductive organs.
“Cash”: Semen or ova, as applicable.
“Divestment Event”: Your insolvency or your pissing off your significant
other.
“Dollar”: If you are male, one teaspoon of your semen; if you are female,
one of your ova.
“Lender”: Your boss.
“Managing Member”: Your mother-in-law.
“Project”: Your personal I.P.O.
“Special Equity Investor”: Your significant other.
Etc. The result would be, for example, provisions such as the following:
“(a) If no work has commenced on [your personal I.P.O.] as of the occurrence of [your insolvency or your pissing off your significant other], then [your reproductive organs’] Percentage Interest shall be subject to liquidation, and you shall be entitled to receive from the Company, in exchange for [your reproductive organs’] interest in the Company, an amount [of semen or ova] equal to (i) the full amount of [your reproductive organs’] contribution [in semen or ova] to the Company; plus (ii) the fair market value of [your reproductive organs’] percentage interest in the Company immediately before [your insolvency or your pissing off your significant other] (excluding, however, the amount of your contribution in [semen or ova] to the Company), as determined, at the date of adjustment in good faith by [your mother-in-law]. Upon receipt of such payment, [your reproductive organs] shall withdraw from the Company and shall have no further right or interest in or to the Company or its assets.” (Basic concept provided by Randy Reeves.)
Or define "Dollar" as your artistic talent, "Lender" as your patrons, "Special Equity Investor" as your gallery, etc.
Or, incorporate yourself and have your own IPO or private offering, with full disclosure that shares of you will be completely unmarketable, irredeemable, unconvertible, and subject to dilution at any time and from time to time, that you have and expect to have no material income or assets, and that even if you ever acquire any material income or assets, you will never pay any dividends. Could provide that any shareholder who acquires more than, say 70% of the then-issued and -outstanding shares of you would have the right to require you to do a certain amount of sucking up, provided that you had received proceeds from such acquisition in an amount not less than, say, $1.5 million. (Do NOT attempt this without the assistance of a lawyer).

9.Untitled Painting (1999). Procure a small (maybe about 8 x 11”), conventional oil or acrylic landscape painting from my parents’ walls or a flea market. Frame it with a gigantic, rather amorphous frame-the frame should be at least 6 x 9 feet, i.e., each side of the frame would be at least 2-1/2 to 4’ thick; the bigger the better. Frame should be made of some sculptable, not-too-heavy plastic foam or other material and should have a lot of weird stuff sculpted/painted into it--too obscure or chaotic to be easily readable, as the painting is, but more interesting.

8.Omnichrome (1999). Painting with mechanism; approx. 6 x 6’. Stretched canvas on wood frame, pump set up to slowly, continually spill paint along top edge of canvas to eventually over the canvas. There should be a collection trough at the bottom rigged so that the paint is continually re-cycled. As the paint evaporates (or is emptied by possessor of the piece), new, different-colored paint can be added. Inspired by show of contemporary monochrome paintings. Basic concept provided by Ben Britt.

7.Untitled Installation (1999). Installation covering approx. 8 x 8’ of floor space; needs a back wall of the same dimensions, which may be free-standing. Purchase used fifties-modern end table, lamp and credenza and a female mannequin as cheaply as possible. Mannequin should be bald and her face may be relatively featureless. The table I’m picturing has a circular top with a smoothly graduated cylindrical pedestal-the pedestal stem is very slim, but widens smoothly into the top and base, with the shape of the table being somewhat vertically symmetrical, so that you could stand the table on its top. The lamp should have a harmonizing, smoothly curved shape. The mannequin and furnishings should all be painted white, preferably with a smooth, even shiny (plastic-looking) finish.
Within the installation space, position the credenza against the wall. Table with lamp on it should be slightly off-center within the space. Mannequin should be seated on floor next to table, same distance as if she were in a chair next to the table, facing the viewer at an angle. Her pose is partially reclining with one or both knees lifted, as if she were in a chaise longue. She should have something supporting her back, ideally one of those sling-like back-support rigs for campers that just have a few bars of metal and a canvas seat and back, with a canvas “sling” that keeps the back up. This or any other support should also be painted white.
Use a computer or other accurate means to create a sine-wave patterned transparency that can be projected onto the scene using an opaque projector. The wave pattern looks like this: [Insert drawing of wave pattern with double large-small sine-wave pattern that produces what looks sort of like a string of alternating large and small 8’s on their sides - under construction] There are numerous rows of this pattern, filling the whole transparency. Must be small enough so that when projected onto the installation, the largest 8’s on the mannequin looking straight on at her will appear no bigger than about 2” square.
Project the transparency onto the installation from a single vantage point centered in front of the installation where a viewer might stand. Trace the lines of the pattern onto the installation objects, walls, etc. with pencil or something that won’t add color, won’t show up much from a distance, but won’t rub off. The pattern will distort and fade along the sides and curves of the objects and will disappear completely on the backs.
Then paint in the pattern on the installation. The spaces outside of the 8’s should be painted in a sort of khaki-ish-mustard color, with the spaces inside the big 8’s left white, to make over-all a sort of checkerboard effect. The spaces within the loops in the small eights should be painted alternating turquoise and magenta. The colors will have to be blended with white to fade toward the backs of the objects.
Once completed, when viewed from the same point in front of the installation where the projector was located, the installation should more or less “disappear” into the projected pattern, which should appear pretty much the same as if you were just looking at the transparency. From any other angle, the pattern will appear “off” or even wildly distorted; from the sides, the pattern will look like a strange sort of shading on the fronts of the objects.

6.Tree (1998). Enlarged photo approx. 7 x 5’, with attached objects. Take a photo of a “real” (pine), classically-shaped Christmas tree and blow up via computer print-out or photocopies to life-size.
Make a printing stamp out of a medium-to-large potato as follows. Cut the potato in half lengthwise. Carve a very simple Christmas tree shape into face of one half, to make a stamp that could be used to print little tree-shapes on paper or elsewhere. Stamp tree shape should echo shape of photographed tree. Press the tree-shape on the face of the stamp into kelly-green paint and stamp a piece of paper once. Take one or more photos of the used stamp to memorialize the colors and look of it.
Then make a mold of the stamp and use it to make a number of similar-shaped stamps out of some kind of not-too-heavy plastic or other material. Paint the stamps to look like the original.
Mount the photo of the “real” tree on the wall. Hang the plastic stamps on the “branches” from little ornament hooks, with the green tree-shapes facing the viewer.

5.Globe of Fortune (1996). Start with a second-hand globe of the world that spins on two axes (i.e., with one half-ring that turns on another), on a pedestal, with colors and text showing countries, cities and other geography (can be obsolete) and preferably with bas-relief topography. Modify surfaces of globe as well as pedestal and half-ring by gouging or gluing on additional features and decoration, painting with bright metallic gold and vivid colors, predominantly yellow and gold, and adding various brief texts, including the one quoted below. One side of each of the rings on which the globe turns should be altered to indicate positions in time rather than space.
The image of this piece occurred to me some time before I understood much about what it meant. It has partly to do with ideas about the “wheel of fortune” and that, at any given moment, we are usually confronted with more alternatives than we realize, including “golden opportunities.” If at any given time, good possibilities are in fact too few, we can usually take ourselves to another place. As Lady Macbeth chides Macbeth, “Nor time nor place/ Did then adhere, and yet you would make both./ They have made themselves; and that, their fitness now,/ Doth unmake you!” (Act I, scene vii, http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/macbeth/macbeth.1.7.html <http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/macbeth/macbeth.1.7.html> , edited by me.) Most often, at least in the developed world, it’s our own lack of courage and imagination that prevents us from making better choices. For me, this piece goes beyond questions of personal satisfaction, since I view the informed and imaginative exercise of choice by individuals as crucial in the evolution of a better world.

4.Repetition (1995). Short video. Open with apparent “time lapse” footage of a stop-watch or other clock with a second hand but no minute or hour hand. But instead of the second hand moving around the dial, have the dial seem to move while the second hand remains still, pointing straight up. Close this sequence when the dial returns so that the second hand is pointing at 12.
Next, incorporate or explore the following elements (not necessarily in this order; and needs work--this might be as much a research project as an artwork):
Someone practicing scales on a piano.
“In dreams, the unconscious sometimes represents repetition in time by
showing repetition in space. That is, two experiences involving
something represented by a rose that occurred at two different times
might be referred to through a single image of two roses.”
Two little girls chant to their father (quoting what they expect him to say
next): “Repetition is sometimes necessary in order to
make the proper impression.”
The Goldberg Variations.
The recording from my old high school “Language Lab”:
“Écoutez et repetez.”
A dripping faucet; the concentric waves that drops make in water.
Excerpts from Emerson’s essay, Circles.
Close-up of someone fingering a rosary while saying “hail Mary”’s.
Chinese water torture on a bald head.
Macbeth’s “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow/
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day . . . “
“Does repetition exist in reality, or is it merely a failure to see?”
Footage of white-tailed deer in flight.
Repetitive patterns in decor (Islamic, East and West Indian, etc.) and in
drug-induced hallucinations.
Close-up of an insect’s compound eye.
Footage from a factory showing mass production of a commercial product.
Bilateral symmetry: redundancy as a survival strategy; for most people,
there is a positive correlation between symmetry and attractiveness
in others.
“What makes something unique?”
Pictures of human twins, triplets, etc.
Images of meiosis and mitosis.
"What's the difference between an original and a copy?"
The repeat-dial button on a telephone.
Plato’s Myth of Er:
The idea that cognition is really a re-cognition of what we’ve seen
before, based on vestigial memories.
“Does repetition exist in reality, or is it something we see because we can’t
see without it?”
Excerpts from Kierkegaard’s Repetition.
Music by Philip Glass.
“If there were no repetition, could there be time? Or would we just be unable
to measure it?”
Close with video sequence looking straight down at a standing human figure, best if nude. Spaced evenly around the figure like points on a dial and pointing at the figure should be twelve spot lights in various colors. Begin this sequence with all twelve lights turned on; the figure should throw twelve shadows in different colors and directions. Then have the lights switched off one by one in clockwise direction, ending with the one that throws the shadow toward the 12 o’clock position. End in total darkness. The tempo should be similar to that of the opening, stop-watch sequence.

3.Untitled Sculpture (1994) [a.k.a. God’s Daughter]. Sculpture; could be good either Barbie-sized or live-human-sized. Crucifixion of Barbie, only instead of being nailed to the cross in the traditional manner, Barbie is upside-down, and the wooden cross (which is right side up) is plunged down through her vagina and all the way through her body, exiting through her mouth, which is stretched grotesquely to accommodate the cross. Her feet are nailed, spread-eagled, to the ends of the cross where the crucified’s hands would traditionally be affixed.

2.Untitled Video (1992). Video showing woman outdoors, viewing her from behind as she walks purposefully toward the edge of a cliff. It is sunny with a relatively empty blue sky, and not much in the background view. The woman has longish hair worn down her back and wears a dark, conservative (corporate) suit jacket. She is naked from the waist down. The video should last only a few seconds. Color should be relatively good, in airy, Monet-ish hues; focus should be a bit off, with a bit of wobble in the view; soundtrack should be the actual sound, but muffled and somewhat “dirty” with static or white noise. The surface of the video should be similar in effect to that of an Impressionist painting.

1.Untitled Installation (?) [a.k.a. Fundamentalisms]. Installation consisting of a room that looks like a something between a locker room and a lavatory, with concrete or tile floors and white walls, together with fixtures as follows. There are a series of six or eight white porcelain fixtures that look very much like toilets, bidets or urinals. Each is shaped distinctly differently, contain some water or (except as described below) an outlet for water; each appears intended for human waste disposal or cleansing; but each is configured sufficiently oddly that it’s difficult to be sure or to see quite how the thing could actually be used properly. One fixture would seem to require the user to actually sit in a puddle, so that if you pissed or shat, it would either splash all over or you’d be sitting in it; on another, the opening of the receptacle would be so small that it would be extremely difficult to actually get your urine or feces into it without either missing or inserting yourself into it in an uncomfortable or unhygienic way; on another, the opening would be at an extremely awkward angle, so that the user’s urine or feces would more or less have to defy gravity; another might seem fine, except for very obviously lacking any outlet through which any urine or feces might be flushed away. There should also be a couple of fixtures that look more usable but that are already near-overflowing with urine, feces, and toilet paper.