digitaldeities

artists who have recieved MacArthur Fellows (2006-2009)

As I spend time here at the Watermill Center in long Island, I was inspired tonight to read about artists that have received MacArthur Fellowships.  I was curious to research the last three years of artists who received this honor..  I love and have previously posted about Tara Donovan's work, which is amazing.  I have posted below about a few others - the ones that are starred.  I had heard of Camille Utterback from my Parson's coursework.

2006

**Josiah McElheny, sculptor

Anna Schuleit, commemorative artist

Shahzia Sikander, painter

2007

Joan Snyder, painter

Whitfield Lovell, painter/installation artist

2008

Tara Donovan, artist

Mary Jackson, weaver and sculptor

2009

**Camille Utterback, digital artist

**Mark Bradford, mixed media artist

wikipedia says this, for those not familiar with the award:

The MacArthur Fellows Program or MacArthur Fellowship (nicknamed the Genius Award) is an award given by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation each year to typically 20 to 40 United States citizens or residents, of any age and working in any field, who "show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work."

According to the Foundation's website, "the fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person's originality, insight, and potential." The current amount of the award is $500,000, paid as quarterly installments over five years. As of 2007, there have been 756 recipients who have received a total of more than $350 million.^[update]

The Fellowship has no application. People are nominated anonymously by a body of nominators who submit recommendations to a small selection committee of about a dozen people, also anonymous.

Camille Utterback, digital artist

I first heard about her from my second year thesis class with yury gitman - computation08.  we learned processing and heard about camille's work.

Text Rain Camille Utterback & Romy Achituv, 1999

Text Rain is a playful interactive installation that blurs the boundary between the familiar and the magical. Participants in the Text Rain installation use the familiar instrument of their bodies, to do what seems magical - to lift and play with falling letters that do not really exist. In the Text Rain installation participants stand or move in front of a large projection screen. On the screen they see a mirrored video projection of themselves in black and white, combined with a color animation of falling text. Like rain or snow, the text appears to land on participants' heads and arms. The text responds to the participants' motions and can be caught, lifted, and then let fall again. The falling text will land on anything darker than a certain threshold, and "fall" whenever that obstacle is removed. more>

Quicktime Documentation

Abundance Camille Utterback, 2007
Abundance is a temporary public installation commissioned for the City of San Jose, California by ZER01 – the Art and Technology Network. At night, Abundace transforms the city hall plaza into an interactive social space. A video camera mounted on the City Hall captures the movements of people in the plaza below. A dynamic animation generated in response to this movement is projected onto the 3-story cylindrical rotunda. Utterback’s colorful, fluid and delicate imagery creates a subtle subversion of the bold geometry of architect Richard Meier’s building – warming and humanizing its surface. more>	Quicktime Documentation
Alluvial Camille Utterback, 2007
Alluvial is a dual-channel interactive installation commissioned for a private home. Two overhead video cameras track people’s movements in the entryway below while Utterback’s software outputs two dynamic animations to the projection screens. A person’s body adds visual information to one screen, while subtracting from the other, and this interplay of positive and negative, additive and subtractive qualities builds as more and more people enter the space. This process of simultaneous accumulation and disintegration creates a temporary beauty, where the buildup of delicate grains of sand (or points of light), can easily be disturbed by the bolder graphics indicating another person’s presence in the space.
Untitled 6 Camille Utterback, 2005
Untitled 6 is the sixth piece in Utterback’s External Measures Series. The series began with Utterback’s attempts to create interactive paintings, and has evolved as she continues to experiment with the possibilities for hinging digital aesthetic systems to human movement. Utterback’s installations are generated by a set of software rules she writes. These rules react visually to movement in the installation space, and interact with each other to create dynamic live animations. While Utterback’s work is computer generated and detects movement in the space via a video camera, it shares a lineage with analog works like mobiles and kinetic sculptures, where artists create a framework for various possibilities to occur through the physical relationships between parts of the sculpture. more>	Quicktime Documentation

Mark Bradford The Devil Is Beating His Wife (and detail) 2003 endpapers, billboard remnants and stencils on plywood 335.3 x 609.6 cm
Mark Bradford’s abstractions unite high art and popular culture as unorthodox tableaux of unequivocal beauty. Working in both paint and collage, Bradford incorporates elements from his daily life into his canvases: remnants of found posters and billboards, graffitied stencils and logos, and hairdresser’s permanent endpapers he’s collected from his other profession as a stylist. In The Devil is Beating His Wife, Bradford consolidates all these materials into a pixelised eruption of cultural cross-referencing. Built up on plywood in sensuous layers ranging from silky and skin-like to oily and singed, Bradford offers abstraction with an urban flair that’s explosively contemporary.
Mark Bradford Kryptonite 2006 mixed media collage on paper 249 x 301 cm
Using collage and paint on paper, Mark Bradford’s Kryptonite possesses an organic quality in its grid-like composition. Its convoluted architecture and overlapping details radiate as a megalopolissprawl, a seething microcosm of activity. Often compared to Piet Mondrian, Bradford gives modernism’s vision of an ordered utopia a lethal reality check as hard-edged borders and harmonious planes are exchanged for independent non-defined forms engaging in unruly turf-war. Evolving his surface as a highly textured topography, Bradford uses gesture and mark-making to encapsulate the dissonance and excitement of a metropolitan landscape. Josiah McElheny, sculptor www.andrearosengallery.com An End to Modernity 2005 Nickel plated aluminum, electric lighting, hand-blown glass, steel cable and rigging Approximately 180 x 180 x 150 inches Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror 30 1/2 h. x 56 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror ©Josiah McElheny Extended Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects 24h. x 108 x 92 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects ©Josiah McElheny The Metal Party: Reconstructing a Party held in Dessau on February 9, 1929 2001 A Project of the Public Art Fund, New York and Yerba Buena Center for the ARts, San Francisco, CA ©Josiah McElheny From an Historical Anecdote about Fashion 2000 Blown glass objects, display case, five framed digital prints case dimensions: 18 h. 25 1/2 inches, each installation view at Donald Young Gallery, Chicago ©Josiah McElheny Island Universe 2008 Chromed aluminum, handblown glass, electric lights. Consisting of five elements arranged in a grid at specific heights Dimensions variable, largest element is approximately 12' in diameter, smallest is approximately 7' in diameter Installation view: White Cube, London "Island Universe" October 14 - November 15, 2008 Island Universe 2008 Detail Chromed aluminum, handblown glass, electric lights. Consisting of five elements arranged in a grid at specific heights Dimensions variable, largest element is approximately 12' in diameter, smallest is approximately 7' in diameter ARG# MJ2008-004 © Josiah McElheny Model for a Film Set (The Light Spa at the Bottom of a Mine) 2008 Colored glass modules, cement, wood 37 x 37 1/2 x 68 inches (94 x 95.3 x 172.7 cm) ARG# MJ2008-001 © Josiah McElheny Endless Repeating Twentieth Century Modernism 2007 Hand-blown mirrored glass, low-iron and transparent mirror, metal, wood, electric lighting 94 1/2 x 92 3/4 x 92 3/4 in (240 x 235.6 x 235.6 cm) ARG# MJ2007-004 © Josiah McElheny Twentieth Century Modernism, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2006 Hand blown mirrored glass, display structure, transparent mirror and electric lighting 31 1/4 x 188 x 18 3/4 inches (79.4 x 477.5 x 47.6 cm) ARG# MJ2006-002 © Josiah McElheny Twentieth Century Modernism, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2006 Detail Hand blown mirrored glass, display structure, transparent mirror and electric lighting 31 1/4 x 188 x 18 3/4 inches (79.4 x 477.5 x 47.6 cm) ARG# MJ2006-002 © Josiah McElheny Scale Model for a Totally Reflective Landscape (Expo) 2007 Hand blown mirrored glass, industrial mirror and wood 14 7/8 x 43 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches ARG# MJ2007-002 © Josiah McElheny Scale Model for a Totally Reflective Landscape (Expo) 2007 Detail Hand blown mirrored glass, industrial mirror and wood 14 7/8 x 43 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches ARG# MJ2007-002 © Josiah McElheny An End to Modernity 2005 Nickel plated aluminum, electric lighting, hand-blown glass, steel cable and rigging Approximately 180 x 180 x 150 inches ARG#MJ2006-001 Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror 30 1/2 h. x 56 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror ©Josiah McElheny Extended Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects 24h. x 108 x 92 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects ©Josiah McElheny The Metal Party: Reconstructing a Party held in Dessau on February 9, 1929 2001 A Project of the Public Art Fund, New York and Yerba Buena Center for the ARts, San Francisco, CA ©Josiah McElheny From an Historical Anecdote about Fashion 2000 Blown glass objects, display case, five framed digital prints case dimensions: 18 h. 25 1/2 inches, each installation view at Donald Young Gallery, Chicago ©Josiah McElheny Twentieth Century Modernism, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2006 Detail Hand blown mirrored glass, display structure, transparent mirror and electric lighting 31 1/4 x 188 x 18 3/4 inches (79.4 x 477.5 x 47.6 cm) Scale Model for a Totally Reflective Landscape (Expo) 2007 Hand blown mirrored glass, industrial mirror and wood 14 7/8 x 43 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches ARG# MJ2007-002 © Josiah McElheny Scale Model for a Totally Reflective Landscape (Expo) 2007 Detail Hand blown mirrored glass, industrial mirror and wood 14 7/8 x 43 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches ARG# MJ2007-002 © Josiah McElheny An End to Modernity 2005 Nickel plated aluminum, electric lighting, hand-blown glass, steel cable and rigging Approximately 180 x 180 x 150 inches ARG#MJ2006-001 Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror 30 1/2 h. x 56 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror ©Josiah McElheny Extended Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects 24h. x 108 x 92 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects ©Josiah McElheny The Metal Party: Reconstructing a Party held in Dessau on February 9, 1929 2001 A Project of the Public Art Fund, New York and Yerba Buena Center for the ARts, San Francisco, CA ©Josiah McElheny From an Historical Anecdote about Fashion 2000 Blown glass objects, display case, five framed digital prints case dimensions: 18 h. 25 1/2 inches, each installation view at Donald Young Gallery, Chicago ©Josiah McElheny Twentieth Century Modernism, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2006 Hand blown mirrored glass, display structure, transparent mirror and electric lighting 31 1/4 x 188 x 18 3/4 inches Twentieth Century Modernism, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2006 Detail Hand blown mirrored glass, display structure, transparent mirror and electric lighting 31 1/4 x 188 x 18 3/4 inches (79.4 x 477.5 x 47.6 cm) ARG# MJ2006-002 © Josiah McElheny Scale Model for a Totally Reflective Landscape (Expo) 2007 Hand blown mirrored glass, industrial mirror and wood 14 7/8 x 43 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches ARG# MJ2007-002 © Josiah McElheny Scale Model for a Totally Reflective Landscape (Expo) 2007 Detail Hand blown mirrored glass, industrial mirror and wood 14 7/8 x 43 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches ARG# MJ2007-002 © Josiah McElheny An End to Modernity 2005 Nickel plated aluminum, electric lighting, hand-blown glass, steel cable and rigging Approximately 180 x 180 x 150 inches ARG#MJ2006-001 Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror 30 1/2 h. x 56 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror ©Josiah McElheny Extended Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects 24h. x 108 x 92 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects ©Josiah McElheny The Metal Party: Reconstructing a Party held in Dessau on February 9, 1929 2001 A Project of the Public Art Fund, New York and Yerba Buena Center for the ARts, San Francisco, CA ©Josiah McElheny From an Historical Anecdote about Fashion 2000 Blown glass objects, display case, five framed digital prints case dimensions: 18 h. 25 1/2 inches, each installation view at Donald Young Gallery, Chicago ©Josiah McElheny

mine-sniffing plant (inspiration)

I would like to sketch and make some graphics about this idea of BioSensor plants that change color when they grow over buried land mines.

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Aresa – changing the strategic focus to investments in and development of mine-affected land - still with a humanitarian scope - read the press release

Aresa has been working within plant biotechnology. The company was founded in 2001 by Carsten Meier, who is presently the Chief Scientific Officer. Aresa has its scientific outset from the Institute of Molecular Biology and Physiology, Copenhagen University, that has supported the company since its foundation with consulting, facilities and scientific staff.

By February 2006, Aresa was listed on the First North listing of the Copenhagen Stock Exchange (currently Nasdaq/OMX-group).

Aresa A/S is situated in Symbion Science Park in Copenhagen. This Science Park houses approx. 100 small companies primarily within Biotechnology and IT.

As of January 2008, Aresa has 11 employees.

Aresa has been working on the BioSensor patent protected technology
Since its establishment Aresa has developed plant based technology platforms, and in 2002 we filed two international patent applications. 

The use of the the Company’s BioSensor technology, in the shape of the product candidates RedDetect, RedDetect UXO and RedScreen have been selected to be among the most innovative ideas in the World in 2004, by the New York Times. In 2005, the Company’s Chief Scientific Officer, Carsten Meier was awarded the Annual Innovation Price of the Carl Bro Group (Danish Consultancy Firm) for the efforts in developing the Company’s technology.
For a description af the Mine Action Plant and the technology behind it, please see the Landmine Plant section.

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the first article about this subject found here

XM Satellite Radio: 4/30/06
The Osgood File (CBS Radio Network)

Scientists are engineering plants to change color when they grow over buried land mines.

Left-behind landmines kill or injure about 10,000 people per year world wide, according to U.S. State Department estimates. Landmines also keep people from using large expanses of arable land. The United Nations estimates that nations spend $200 - $300 million each year on de-mining efforts. Getting rid of the mines is dangerous work; some crews probe the ground with sticks or rely on metal detectors or dogs to find the buried mines. A Danish biotech company may have a better solution: a plant that changes color when it grows over buried mines.

The plant in question is a small weed called Arabidopsis thaliana or thale cress. One of the most-studied plants on Earth, it is a member of the mustard family and grows wild everywhere in the world except the poles. It's an annual plant and a thale cress seed can sprout and grow into a mature plant in just six weeks. In some regions, there can be two or three generations in a single summer. In nature the green leaves turn red in autumn, or when the plant is subjected to stress such as cold or drought.

Danish biologists Carsten Meier and Simon Østergaard, co-founders of Aresa Biodetection in Copenhagen, are re-engineering thale cress to turn red when exposed to the presence of a land-mine in the soil. Researchers chose natural mutants of the plant that do not turn red in response to these natural stimuli and then re-engineered the mutant's genetic make-up so that it turns red only when the roots come in contact with NO2 (nitrous oxide)—a compound that leaks out of buried land mines.

So far, the team reports they have produced a plant that changes color in greenhouse lab experiments where NO2 is applied to the soil in solution. Aresa says this may be too general a signal (NO2 is often naturally present in the soil), which means there might be the risk of false positives, so they are working to make it more selective in its responses. The next step will be more realistic field trials with actual land mines (mines that lack detonators, however). In actual de-mining applications, researchers anticipate that seeds could be sown over a suspected minefield from an airplane, or spread with a handheld seed sprayer as workers walk along in de-mined corridors

Sean Burke, Program Manager at the U.S. Humanitarian Demining Research and Development Program, says the challenge is how high the stakes are. You have to have a hundred percent detection with the lowest possible false alarms. He says if you miss one mine that could be somebody's life.

Some scientists are also concerned that bioengineered plants could "escape" into the wild and confer undesirable traits on wild plants. In response Aresa has taken these concerns into consideration and has manipulated their plants so they can't sprout unless a growth factor has been applied to the seeds. In addition, they have created plants can’t set seeds unless supplied with another growth hormone. In addition, this plant naturally is a self-pollinator, so it doesn't cross-pollinate with plants growing wild nearby.

emotional garbage needed for digital landfill

I like this project!

http://www.soulrecoverysystems.com

Soul Recovery Systems is an interactive, creative and free “emotional garbage” service providing people with an opportunity to rid themselves of objects that hinder their lives. SRS accepts objects in any form as long as there are sincere emotional connections attached to them. That said, all objects given to SRS must include an object release form: http://www.soulrecoverysystems.com where the releaser must enter their reason for desired disposal. Once objects and reasons for disposal have been received, they are put under intense observation for SRS to determine the best possible method of release.

In the end, a photograph of each object, reasons for release, and videos of each object release are uploaded to the digital landfill where the less burdened can view their once hindering objects in digital form.

Here is the link to the SRS website: www.soulrecoverysystems.com/

And make sure to check out the digital landfill:

http://www.soulrecoverysystems.com/landfill (more release videos and objects will be uploaded daily).

costume ideas for next year

I will be gum... if I remember.

Gum under the Table: Wear all pink and balance a table on your head. You'll be instantly recognizable as gum!

Leaf Blower: Wear regular clothes. Wear a hat with a leaf hanging down from the rim so that the leaf is in front of your face. When people ask what you are blow on the leaf and make them guess.

Sunny Side up Eggs: Wear all white. Attach a piece of yellow felt to your derriere. When people ask what you are bend over and say “sunny side up.”

Matchstick: Wear all white clothing with a red stocking cap. (could add flames)

Web Surfer: Wear a wetsuit like surfers wear, then drape yourself with fake cobwebs.

Time is on my side: Wear regular clothes. Attach watches or clocks to one side of your outfit; wear a bunch of wristwatches on only one wrist.

A Highway: Wear all black sweat suit, stick on white or yellow tape on your legs and chest to resemble lines in a road.

final countdown

this weekend (march 27-29):
GRANT PROPOSALS:

The Chinati Foundation Marfa, Texas  artist residency - April 1
Grand Canyon Park artist residency - April 1
Rhizome - April 2
LMCC workspce residency NYC - April 9

studio time designing 3 pieces for symposium installation

visit St. John of the Divine in NYC

compare airport architecture vs. temple architecture

email:  marina, dustin yellin, asha kaufman, katherine morawaki

next week (march 30-april 5):

golden spiral digital images
GOLDEN SPIRAL TEST SCULPTURE
proposal images of SFO airport + jetBlue
research into airport contacts and proposals
mini temple drawings - 
Nepal Fulbright Research direction,
sweat lodges, min-temples in many cultures..

the week after next (april 6-13):

interviews with artists

pieces for larger installation
3 small pieces and attachments

Final Thesis Studio presentations - April 14th + 16th

the week of (April 20- 26):

rolling admissions - exploratorium, ISCP Residencies

PRINTWORK - postcards + website

Parsons symposium May 1st, 2nd, 3rd

Stadium Reviews May 16th + 17th

Graduation May 21st + 22nd

progress ... the Van Alen Fellowship project proposal

Tying together many of my previous posts and research .. I was able to complete and send off a Fellowship Grant to Van Alen Institute on March 6, 2009.  We will see.. what opportunities my future holds!

The project area I focused on was CULTURE AND POLITICS here is what questions they ask.. that I tried my very best to explain below in my proposal!

This project area refers broadly to the ways social forms, norms, identities and institutions are constituted by and through spatial practices in the public realm. The Institute seeks a range of investigations that engage the following questions:

How is public architecture alternately constructed and occupied as a site of freedom, exclusion, resistance, control and uncertainty? How are public spaces made and unmade through social struggles over rights and access? How are they shaped by cultural conflict and political debate over representation? How does design in the public realm variously operate as a vehicle for historical, social, cultural and political meanings and values? What space do different kinds of bodies, behaviors and emotions take up in public? How do they belong or not belong in public life and how might we imagine alternative forms of belonging?

Topics in this project area may include monumentality, collective memory, propriety, property rights, everyday urbanism, identity politics, biopower, homeland security, defensible space, civil liberties, citizenship, geopolitics, multiculturalism, spectatorship and tourism.

Project Proposal – Culture and Politics - Carrie Mae Kreyche

Confiscated Weapons of Mass Construction is an installation of large Yantra symbols, geometrical combination's of circular diagrams used in meditative practice, made with thousands of recycled scissors confiscated from airport security procedures. Constructing these Yantras out of confiscated airport items and placing them back into public spaces, blends together the layers of ancient ritual and modern culture, bringing to the public realm reflections on safety, protection and the role of security measures.  This proposal illuminates how valuable the visual environment is to either soothe or disrupt the emotional and spiritual state of a viewer.     

Public spaces such as shopping malls, airports and motorways are what author Marc Augé calls ‘non-spaces’.  They are public space where individuality is left behind and everyone, especially after passing through security procedures at airports, is on the same level of identity because these public spaces are both everywhere and nowhere.  The public spaces of airports were redefined when the FAA began searching people in airports in 1972 and since 9/11, security measures have been tightened even more thoroughly.  The need for security and the public’s fear of attack makes current airport spaces fertile ground for stringent rules and regulations.  The accessibility and process of national and international travel has become an uncomfortable inconvenience or struggle for many passengers.  The lines are often long and personal space is invaded with random body searches and the confiscation of personal items.  

Most airports are built as spacious urban palaces, with high ceilings, modern materials and cutting edge architecture.  Many cities take pride in the architecture of these high traffic centers and more and more, numerous airports have also begun to hold art exhibitions and rotating shows in glass cases around the terminals.  John F. Kennedy, San Francisco and many other smaller city airports have commissioned artists to build provocative installations in the spaces.  Design in this public arena can operate as a vehicle for social and cultural dialogue. Whether immigration law, ecology or reflection on security regulation, the topic of an installation can bring cultural values to the forefront.  Barbara Kingsolver once wrote that the artists’ role is to be the canary in the coalmine, and when art is silent it means trouble. It is my goal to design an art installation for these public ‘non-spaces’ that will engage people in a deeply moving way. 

When people travel through airports and other busy public urban environments, they are often rushed and stressed.  In a group discussion about airport security lines, my research discovered the metaphorical comparison that the ritual many current day passengers experience while preparing for traveling is similar to the spiritual and cultural rituals that some ascetics have.  As an example, Gandhi owned only 12 items when he died.  (See Image 1 below).

Image 2 – The twelve items Gandhi owned before he died and a modern day suitcase 

The mental process of getting ready for a flight can parallel the preparation for your own spiritual journey (special packing, special clothes/shoes). There are also many traditions of ancient cultures that send deceased ones to the grave with special swords, weapons and other sacred items to ward of evil spirits. Our culture would strip away everyone’s ability to hold these items sacred.  We have even taken it to the absurd extreme as to take away craft and cuticle scissors. Blending the common set of scissors into ancient symbolism offers a playful and provocative (upon closer inspection) visual cue piquing the viewer’s awareness of modern rituals and rules, while offering a moment of harmony to a busy public space.  This project engages one to see and possibly imagine a myriad of other alternative forms to help feel a sense of belonging and to reclaim the materials they once lost in a security search. 

Placing a large symbol that is an archetype of unity in the collective memory of most cultures, touches people on a subconscious level.   Just like a pure resonant note can shatter a glass, the imprint of the beauty of perfection changes the mind and thoughts of a viewer.  Buddhist monks create large sand Mandalas, sacred geometric circular patterns, believing that as a result of viewing them, an imprint will be left that may help one to find greater compassion, awareness, and a greater sense of well being.  These symbols hold the essence of the macrocosm and microcosm, taking the viewer both inside themselves and outside to the world at large.  Circles bring harmony on an intuitive primal level and this is the language and depth this project speaks and creates from. 

The Confiscated Security Symbols Project uses scissors that were confiscated from passengers and then sold at auction to sellers who re-sell them on e-bay (See Image 2 below).  Currently, seventy-five pounds of recycled scissors from airport excess were purchased for this project from e-bay sellers and it is planned to attend an airport auction for direct purchase of larger quantities of thousands more scissors.  

Image 2 – Bulk confiscated scissors purchased from e-bay 

The two main goals of this fellowship are to complete a solid body of work to exhibit in the gallery during the final weeks and to complete more research about sonic theology, historical use of sound with Yantras and in sacred temples, from both the use of Mantras and older temples designed as acoustic resonators.   I would also continue researching the reoccurrence of sacred geometry and circle shapes in ancient cultures versus and today.  Advertising, pop culture and modern political times have changed the spiritual and ritual value of art.  In Walter Benjamin’s famous essay ‘The Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ he speaks of this shift where ‘mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.’  Today, modern art critique’s first evaluate the quality of a piece of art on its exhibition value.  My project hope to reverse this function back to Walter Benjamin’s observations and first view the role of art as an instrument of magic and second as an work of art with high exhibition value. 

A larger collection of scissors will be purchased with part of the stipend, along with other materials used to build smaller prototype sculptures.  Gallery size sculptures and installations, which will test and explore different materials, attachments and styles.  These sculptures will be exhibited in the Van Alen exhibition gallery.  Below are some of the current prototypes of construction I have worked on this year. (See image 3 below).

The long-term goal of this project is to build a large-scale installation of thirty feet or more for an airport commission, an airline terminal or another public space.  Building these installations and eventually installing them in modern public spaces, such as airports, would allow a visual dialogue with the symbols that could touch thousands of people.  The result of this fellowship would also allow me to present my iterations, ideas, and prototypes to architects and engineers for collaboration to seamlessly install these works into a final chosen space.   Included below are some digital sketches I drew in 3D with the modeling program SolidWorks and a diagrams to scale in Adobe Illustrator. (See Image 4 below). 

 

My own artistic exploration began with creating mandalas out of found objects and sculptures that reflected my own personal need for boundaries and self-protection.  This focus has shifted away from my personal needs and now looks at these issues on a much broader scale - the scale of our entire nation and even our collective world memory. The concept of how protection has infiltrated our culture now interests me. What makes people feel safe? Security measures at airports? Spiritual support? Something else? What service do physical boundaries provide? 

My research answers this question: What brings a feeling of safety or protection? My own meditation practice profoundly changed me, giving me the ability to heal and to create my own personal definition of protection and boundaries.  Bringing these symbols to the public has a healing affect and helps people feel more uplifted, safe and centered in public spaces.   

Another deliverable, besides the scissor sculptures, is a well-formatted talk or panel discussion.  This discussion covers the historical uses of Sacred Geometry in temple building, Yantras, Mandalas, visual meditation tools and how symmetrical forms in nature all touch upon the universal mystery of perfection. A concept that recently inspires me is how the architecture from the Cistercian Order achieved its visual beauty through designs that conform to the proportional system of musical harmony.  These churches were acoustical resonators that transformed a human choir into celestial music and the founder St Bernard of Clairvaux said of their design, ‘There must be no decoration, only proportion.’  As much of my artistic pursuits have been about decoration, discovering the fundamental template with which the building of temples and Yantra symbols are organized, brings me a new level of understanding of their depth of perfection.

The Yantra comes from Vedic and Hindu cosmology and signifies the cyclical forces in nature, astronomy, and the worship of deities that are given abstract forms.  These forms and their meanings center and ground my current research and life work.  I am passionately drawn to the symmetry and perfection that the circles visual offer. 

Image 5 – Picture 1, Sri Ganash Yantra from http://www.artoflegendindia.com/details/HJAAB003_Shri_Ganesh_Yantra – Picture 2, Mark Pottenger’s planetary mandalas made by tracking with computer algorithm the planetary movement of Jupiter and Uranus from http://www.ccrsdodona.org/m_dilemma/mandalas.html - Picture 3, a diagram of the true stars which are aligned within the Jewish symbol titled ‘Star of David’ from http://www.jesus-kashmir-tomb.com/YantraStarofDavid.html. 

The studio space, publicity, and support of the Van Alen Fellowship would bring the artistic advantage of focus, clarity, and freedom.  A twelve-week residency would allow the necessary space and time to experiment further with different materials and construction options.  This experimental freedom is the foundation for the further success of this project. Through giving a workshop or public talk about this project, the public would be invited to look at the work in progress and dialogue about these important topics of homeland security, monumentality, and collective memory.  The publicity through Van Alen would bring valuable attention to this project to help me reach my professional goal of future collaboration and installation.

titles?

what oh, what do I call this project?

Scissor Circle Project

Organized Confiscation

Secure Yantras (in the age of technological reproduction)

Confiscated Security Symbols

CWoMC confiscated weapons of mass construction

golden ratio (up and coming fibonacci scissor series)

My goal this next few weeks is to draw a diagram in 3D (in solidWorks) of a sculpture I will build out of scissors ...  purposefully, this next concept needs to be at a level of complexity that is beyond the scope, time and measurement of my pen and paper skills.  Drawing a logarithmic spiral that has 55 clockwise spirals overlaed on top of either 34 or 89 counterclockwise spirals will give me a GOLDEN SPIRAL OF SCISSORS.  This I will build out of my confiscated recycled airport scissors.  I will use computer aided design and technology to envision and enable me to build quickly what would have previously taken months and months to calculate and create.

example of fibonacci numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 601

1 + 1 =2,  2 + 1 =3, 2 + 3 =5, 3 + 5 = 8, 5 + 8 =13, 8 + 13 =21, 13 + 21 =34, 21 + 34 =55, 34 + 55 =89

Here are some of the many patterns of the golden spiral that are all around us... macrocosm to microcosm.

inside of the ear 

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/gen/page954.html

The Fibonacci numbers are Nature's numbering system. They appear everywhere in Nature, from the leaf arrangement in plants, to the pattern of the florets of a flower, the bracts of a pinecone, or the scales of a pineapple. The Fibonacci numbers are therefore applicable to the growth of every living thing, including a single cell, a grain of wheat, a hive of bees, and even all of mankind.

Stan Grist
 http://www.stangrist.com/fibonacci.htm (E)

The sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers is known as the Fibonacci series: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, ...  (each number is the sum of the previous two).

The ratio of successive pairs tends to the so-called golden section  (GS) - 1.618033989 . . . . . whose reciprocal is 0.618033989 . . . . . so that we have 1/GS = 1 + GS.

The Fibonacci sequence, generated by the rule f1 = f2 = 1 , fn+1 = fn + fn-1, is well known in many different areas of mathematics and science.   However, it is quite amazing that the Fibonacci number patterns occur so frequently in nature ( flowers, shells, plants, leaves, to name a few) that this phenomenon appears to be one of the principal "laws of nature".

text above from: http://www.world-mysteries.com/sci_17.htm

Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Yury Gitman recommended I read this article and consider naming my thesis project along these lines -

Secure Yantra's in the 'Age of Mechanical Reproduction'

I went and read the entire article online and here below are the snippets that most resonated with me ... it is a lot of words to post, but worth the read.  He speaks about the transition from art being made as ritual and magic to art being made as politics and for monetary function.  It is my personal goal to bring the Sacred back into the making of fine art.

Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Walter Benjamin (1936)

An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the “authentic” print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.

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Works of art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out; with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work. Artistic production begins with ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult. One may assume that what mattered was their existence, not their being on view. The elk portrayed by the man of the Stone Age on the walls of his cave was an instrument of magic. He did expose it to his fellow men, but in the main it was meant for the spirits. Today the cult value would seem to demand that the work of art remain hidden. Certain statues of gods are accessible only to the priest in the cellar ; certain Madonnas remain covered nearly all year round; certain sculptures on medieval cathedrals are invisible to the spectator on ground level. With the emancipation of the various art practices from ritual go increasing opportunities for the exhibition of their products. It is easier to exhibit a portrait bust that can be sent here and there than to exhibit the statue of a divinity that has its fixed place in the interior of a temple.

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This is comparable to the situation of the work of art in prehistoric times when, by the absolute emphasis on its cult value, it was, first and foremost, an instrument of magic. Only later did it come to be recognized as a work of art. In the same way today, by the absolute emphasis on its exhibition value the work of art becomes a creation with entirely new functions, among which the one we are conscious of, the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental. This much is certain: today photography and the film are the most serviceable exemplifications of this new function.

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Magician and surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web. There is a tremendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law. Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art.

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from this website: http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

after after revisions

What brings a feeling of safety or protection?  What service do physical boundaries provide? My own meditation practice has profoundly changed me, giving me the ability to heal and to create my own personal definition of protection and boundaries. The yantra -- geometrical combinations of circular diagrams used in meditative practice -- signifies perfection and the cyclical forces in nature. Focus on this form and it’s meaning centers and grounds my artistic exploration.
    My work is made with found objects, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. The agave plant became my initial point of reference, as it survives under extreme circumstances and protects itself with radial pointed leaves. Its shape first inspired me to make circular forms with its dried leaves. This practice evolved into creating miniature suits of armor – a personal boundary – from the agave’s dried leaves, but adding in found elements such as wire and thistle heads and embellishing the form with traditional material such as gold leaf.
    Moving out from my personal experience, the way the concept of protection has infiltrated our culture now interests me. This past year I have been sculpting ancient meditation symbols with recycled, confiscated scissors from airport excess. Ideally, these large-scale mandalas will be installed around airport security checkpoints, offering traveling passengers a moment of reflection. What makes them feel safe? Do security measures at airports? Spiritual support? Something else?  Blending the common set of scissors into ancient symbolism offers a playful and provocative (upon closer inspection) visual cue piquing the viewer’s awareness of modern rituals and rules, while offering a moment of harmony to a busy public space. The following images illustrate my past work and my recent foray into working with confiscated and recycled scissors.

swing swing swing SPACE

words for my Swing Space application that is going out tomorrow via FED EX after final revisions from my helpful teacher, chris prentice.  definitely getting easier to talk about my stuff...
This is one of the the questions below that I am answering and then attaching my 10 images along side for a 3 month work space grant... it will be their first intro to my work. 249 words

Swing Space is a space grant program that connects artists and arts organizations with vacant commercial space downtown. Studio, rehearsal, office, installation, and exhibition space awards are typically for two to four months and are accompanied by a project stipend of $300-$3,000.

WORK SAMPLE DESCRIPTION
Please provide a brief description of the images, introducing the works and providing context for the panel.
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My work is made with found objects, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. My recurrent themes and explorations ask the question - What brings a feeling of safety or protection?  I first began exploring the physical side of boundaries with a miniature suit of armor inspired by the agave plant.  This desert plant survives under extreme circumstances and protects itself with radial pointed leaves.  The shape of the agave inspired me to begin making mandalas, circular forms, with the dried leaves.  The circle signifies perfection and the cyclical forces in nature and many Yantras, geometrical diagrams used in meditation, are made with a combination of circles.  My meditation practice has profoundly changed me, giving me the ability to heal and to focus on the notion of protection on a much larger than personal scale.  I now am working with recycled, confiscated scissors from airport excess and building ancient meditation symbols of them to place into modern airports.  My vision is to place these large-scale installations behind security checkpoints to give a moment of reflection to traveling passengers.  This offers the audience an opportunity to contemplate upon what makes them feel safe, the security measures at airports or spiritual support.  The blending together of scissors and symbols offers a playful and provoking visual cue that brings awareness to modern rituals and rules, while offering a centering solution and harmony to a busy public space.  These images show my past work and a few beginning explorations of my work with scissors. 

.guest3 .guest4 .guest5 .guest6 .guest7

Number3 and final post about the different guest lecturers that Zach Lieberman brought into our Algorithmic Animation course- aka: makingthingsmove.org/blog this last semester at Parsons.  An amazing and inspiring selection of his friends and colleagues.  Zach was a fellow at EYEBEAM this last year and a creator of OF openFrameworks and regularly travels the world sharing his coding and artistic skills with the world.  He is an excellent teacher and mentor... and his guests re-inspired me each week.   awesome awesome awesome.

joel gathein lewis .guest3

www.joelgethinlewis.com

daito manabe .guest4

www.daito.ws
face sensors
I posted all his way cool videos earlier.. I couldn't wait until now. I was too excited about them.  search for daito in my search box.. you will find them all.. okay here are two other ones of daito's ..one that I did not post before and one that I did... he is worth sharing again.  he is even my facebook friend!

I used electric stimulus generators and myoelectric sensors. I tried to control my friends' face by using my face. I need more practice ,devices and time..

新しい楽器みたいなものだと思って下さい。 Experiment with myoelectric sensor.

theo watson & emily gobeille .guest5
funky forest 2007

Working together with the amazing Emily Gobeille, we created the interactive installation, 'Funky Forest' which premiered at the 2007 Cinekid festival in the Netherlands. 'Funky Forest' is an interactive ecosystem where children create trees with their body and then divert the water flowing from the waterfall to the trees to keep them alive. The health of the trees contributes to the overall health of the forest and the types of creatures that inhabit it. Made with openFrameworks.

videos and info here http://muonics.net

don paluska .guest6
absolut quartet

ABSOLUT QUARTET  (2008)
Jeff Lieberman and Dan Paluska
Part of the Absolut Machines campaign.

 As seen in the beginning of the video, the visitor enters a melody on their computer keyboard. The machine then uses this melody to generate an original and unique 2 1/2 minute piece of music.
Find more information at http://bea.st/sight/absolutQuartet

You will see this melody played by three instruments. The main instrument is a ballistic marimba, which launches rubber balls roughly 2m into the air, precisely aimed to bounce off of 42 chromatic wooden keys. The second instrument is an array of 35 custom-tuned wine glasses, played by robotic fingers. Finally, an array of 9 ethnic percussion instruments rounds out the ensemble.

Jeff's Site: http://bea.st .
Dan's Site: http://plainfront.com

 Fotron2000, A robotic sketch artist/photobooth [Fototron2000]
www.fotron2000.com
The Fotron2000 is currently installed at Christopher Henry Gallery in New York City.
127 Elizabeth St (Soho/Nolita)
11-6pm, Wednesday - Sunday.

from the fotron website:
ABOUT: The Fotron2000 is tomorrow's answer to today's mall photo booth. At its heart is a robotic sketch artist whose medium is LED light and whose canvas is long exposed Polaroid film. The robot draws quickly, rendering a line drawing of its subject which he or she gets to keep. This work was inspired by the classic time-lapse nighttime highway photography, the Photoshop "glowing edges" filter, and "drawing" with sparklers. The piece is a simple exploration of the ability of a robot and a computer to automate the creation of art. We are interested in the ability to provide visitors with a permanent record of their experience and engage robotic technology in an impractical way. The robot provides us with precision capabilities beyond our own, allowing us to create in ways not possible without technological assistance.

he also recommended us all to go see arthur gansen's sculptures exhibited at MIT museum

amrit pitaru .guest7

he created a digital drawing tool/musical instrument that is beyond an easy description.  this video might tell more.. but not much.  he was a very inspiring guy.  I will take a class him and zach lieberman will co-teach this spring about audio-visual systems.

milk scanner .guest1

Now that I am on break (kind of) I have a tiny bit more time to make some interesting posts.  The expansion and amount of information that has been poured into me from graduate school is astounding!!  It has fully changed my life and it will take the next few years to full absorb, integrate and regurgitate all the ideas and creative juice that I have been given.. and paid well for!!

I am going to make a series of posts about the different guest lecturers that Zach Lieberman brought into our Algorithmic Animation course- aka: makingthingsmove.org/blog this last semester at Parsons.  An amazing and inspiring selection of his friends and colleagues.  Zach was a fellow at EYEBEAM this last year and a creator of OF openFrameworks and regularly travels the world sharing his coding and artistic skills with the world.  He is an excellent teacher and mentor.

The first week guest lecturer was Friedrich Kirschner .. this is what the eyebeam website says about him:

Friedrich joins Eyebeam as a fellow in the Production Lab. He is also a filmmaker, visual artist and board member of the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences, and re-purposes computer games to create animated narratives and interactive performances. Friedrich’s work has been shown and performed at various international animation festivals and it occasionally spreads into the physical realm as well, where he investigates the impact of milk and other liquids on computer graphics.

http://www.zeitbrand.de

What inspired me most was his MILK SCANNER idea:

The Milkscanner is an easy way to scan 3D Objects using household devices like Milk, a tupperware bowl and some LEGO.  For more information on how to build one yourself, please visit the Milkscanner instructable!

Freidrich mentioned that he is not a great illustrator and needed a way to create digital 3D objects and so he took a long walk and came up with the idea of the MILK SCANNER.. quite brilliant.  The video shows the basics below. 

Friedrich also has created a tool that is a bit over my head.. but very interesting non-the-less.

The other project he presented is a drawing tool that gamers can use to create their own 3D characters and scenes in UNREAL:

Moviesandbox

Moviesandbox is a graphical filmmaking tool in progress for the Unreal Tournament engine. It allows you to easily create your own characters, sets and poses and direct them in the way you imagine.
Please visit the Moviesandbox webpage for more information, downloads, news, video tutorials and the development wiki!

Moviesandbox is an Open-Source graphical filmmaking tool in progress, formerly developed for the Unreal Tournament engine and now based on C++ and OpenGL.

It allows you to easily create your own characters, sets and poses and direct them in the way you imagine. It is also an open project, which means that all the code and tools are free and open for people to change or add to, and, where possible, licensed under the lesser GPL. Development started in early 2006.

notes from colleen

I just found the email from colleen about our reviews.. she took good notes. Here they are...

Carrie Mae 

Colleen: Very clear and interesting concept! Focus on the site. Instead or before going phys/comp, really go for and investigate the site, how to make a proposal for an airport or respond to an RFP, and make many many mandalas to really work with the material and mounting. (studio time, yay!) 

Eric: Art making background -- is user surveys/design process all new to you? How has it influenced your work? (a project that could relate to more people, larger scale). Large-scale public installations are on the border between design and art. Need to think about a commission of people who are not artists, look at how to make a big commission to work. Not one to undermine the security apparatus. Need to think about the viewers and the people with the $. Christo, ephemera, to be in galleries. Maquettes, prototypes, sketches. Better when the scissors carry the aesthetic weight of the piece. Choose your battles. 

Bobby: on board with the physical manifestation of protection in the yantra with the confiscated objects, think it is smart and very clear. Use of technology feels like a veneer. Like there's expectation of this here. How does tech relate to your idea? Number of scissors in a work could relate to the amount of scissors confiscated in a year, etc... use statistics. Terrorism is the anomaly. Don't do it in a gallery. Do it in the hyper-protected airport space. To put sacredness in a non-place is a really nice move. Christopher Janney.  

Zach: Agree with reviewers about technology. Not to think about tech in the final output, but in the in-between point. Coding, interaction, etc. to produce the visual output. Interested in the context. the interaction is asking the question of the person in the airport. What are you asking the person in the airport to do? Meditate? Specific meaning to the interaction and installation. What is it that you ask of people?

TANTRA, MANTRA, YANTRA

from the glossary of Art of Tantra:

Tantra - a text embodying Tantrik tradition, many Hindu examples being in the form of a dialogue between the ultimate Divine Couple, Siva and Sakti.  (Siva: the most important High God of Hinduism, Sakti: 'power', the great Goddess as supreme power)

Mantra - a Sanskrit syllable or group of syllables, used to concentrate cosmic and psychic energies

Yantra - a diagrammatic symbol for a field of energy

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Art of Tantra by Philip Rawson

Here are the most relevant quoted sections I found from Art of Tantra today

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page 64

Related to mantra is 'yantra', a word for which there is not even the remotest parallel in English.  The function of yantra in the sphere of the visible is analogous to that of mantra in the sphere of sound.    

As mantra is a nucleus of sound by means of which cosmic and bodily forces are concentrated into ritual, so yantra is nucleus of the visible and knowable, a linked diagram of lines by means of which visualized energies are concentrated.

Mantra and yantra complement each other, and are used in conjunction.  A yantra may look at first sight like an abstract design.  But what we may call its 'abstraction' is not the effect of its indicating an abstract concept for a mental class-relationship, but of its concentrating concrete, formulated energy.  Its 'patternness', like the stylized syllable of mantra, is the essential  element of its force; its spareness is not the result of generality, but of condensation of energy and content.  IT PROVIDES THE FOCAL FRAMEWORK FOR ACTS OF MEDITATIVE VISUALIZATION.

All Tantra art thus has in it a special element of yantra.  It provides the relatively 'gross' forms which point forwards and evoke the 'subtle' forms of mental imagery, and cannot be mistaken for anything but what they are.  

To use yantra thus involves a continuous meditative dialectic in which content and concentration drive each other to a higher pitch of intensity.  This is one of the ways in which the psyco-cosmic mechanism is worked.

AND IT IS ALSO ONE OF THE ASPECTS OF TANTRA ART WHICH APPEALS MOST TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE BECOME DISILLUSIONED WITH VAPID CONCEPTUALISM OF MUCH MODERN ART.  Tantra knows, and has long used, reductive methods and optical effects.  But it has used them synthetically, to concentrate an emotive and psychic content, not analytically, to refine abstractions whose only meaning is their relation to other abstractions.

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page 69

    definitions from Glossary in Art of Tantra : 

        Devata - Tantrik divine principles (cf. Deva)

        Deva - a divine figure; the root (div) means 'shrine'

        Sadhaka - one who performs acts of ritual, worship and meditation

        Puja - practical worship-cum-ritual

        Subtle body - the structure of channels and knots parallel to but not identical with the human body through which the latter is imbued with its sense of reality

Diagrammatic yantras are usually centered on a single point, the point upon which meditative concentration can gradually gather and fix itself.  'One-pointedness' of concentration is a necessary achievement of any sadhaka before he can even begin to make any progress.  But the yantras illustrated here are also icons, subtle bodies of devatas, bodies from which the gross physical resemblances have been eliminated in favour of the higher, more inclusive imagery of linked energies.  When the mantra-utterances of power inscribed on it are correctly recited the yantra itself becomes infused with the actual presence of devata; its own physical nature lost; the devata, so to speak, floats up to the surface of the physical object and expands within the mind of the sadhaka as a dense complex identity, the presence of which alters his whole nature.

Such yantras may be used alone on single occasions or in series during prolonged meditative rites.  They may be used to invoke the subtle bodies of devatas to receive puja, as an intermediate step between using the gross representational images of male and female and using purely internal images.  In practice, only extremely advanced sadhakas can grasp the true forms implicit in yantra and mantra.  For this reason most ordinary Westerners will not be able to grasp them intellectually; even in India the true nature of yantra is normally kept as a secret which can only be indicated verbally between sadhakas, and is never written down.  Perhaps the most subtle yantras of all are those which provide only a blank space on to which the meditaor has to project his own familiar yantra.

**this last underlined statement reminds me of something I read yesterday in We Make Money Not Art blog that I re-post here:  Once is Nothing, made of 'physically absent' artworks. Once is Nothing is based on a previous show, 'Individual Systems' part of the 2003 edition of the Venice Biennale . Devoid of any art piece, the room is nevertheless supposed to be 'full of memories and history.' The exhibition is a pertinent comment on the impossibility to replicate exactly one exhibition and on the pointless demand for innovation that characterizes most art biennials.  

Once is Nothing
Brussels Biennial 1
19.10.2008-04.01.2009

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page 70

There are, however, certain things which can be explained.  First is the obvious fact that it takes a great deal of time and effort to build up the content of the imagery stored in any yantra-mantra complex.  The realities referred to in condensed patterns of sight and sound can become readily available to the mind only after long practice.  To simplify, it is, in a way like learning an extraordinary complicated alphabet and vocabulary at once.  Then again when a yantra is to be used on any given occasion it takes extreme concentration over a long period of time to build up the presence of the devata by means of the mantra-schemes which are its subtle anatomy.  The subtle devata present in the sadhaka's body may be persuaded by a long yogic process to emerge in subtle form from his nostril, and take up residence in the yantra. 

Second, the general pattern followed by most, if not all, yantras tends to be constant.  Around the perimeters a square pattern of re-entrant 'gates'.  This represents the 'enclosure' within which the meditating self is shut (what Jung called the 'tenemos');  the successive 'sheaths' or stages of inwardness, the multiple outer petals or triangles being occupied by 'grosser' forms of energy, which are absorbed and further concentrated in the less multiplied inner circuits.  The centre is the point where all the original radiating energies are finally focused, usually in a single mantra such as 'Om' or "Klim'.  The mantra-identities in all the basic circuits may also be represented in anthropomorphic shape, as devatas.  In the great Sri Yantra, the most important of all Tantrik yantras, each of the outer triangles is occupied by the devatas, which represent the subdivided energy-self of the Goddess. 

Images from Art of Tantra