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[The accompanying text for my first assignment in George Legrady's Art 410.1 course at San Francisco State University in the Conceptual Design/Information Arts Department. The reproduced page at bottom has the classic Chicago default sans serif font for the Macintosh. The top image is a DDR worker finishing work on a typewriter, circa 1987, source unknown. Drexel, Burnham Lambert was a investment bank forced into bankruptcy in 1990 and was associated with junk bonds and Michael Milken.]
Description
Three US pennies and a five gallon plastic 'bladder' partially filled with water. Objects related by color: "transparent." A collection (of coins) and a body (of water). The discrete and the continuous. A soukous guitar solo by Franco. Chords versus marimba, rhumba! A string of readings; a rigged wishing well for corrupt travelers with car phone, a late 20th century cargo cult wristwatch (digital works and liquid crystal display), a chance operated processing device (I Ching with monitor cube), obvious (cash flow), less obvious (cold fusion), government agency ad for peace corps and conservation (the collected water vapor of a Peace Corp volunteer and his/her contribution to world understanding/national security measured in GNP units), etc.
Evaluation
A simple opening statement of interests. The quantitative is a fast lane to God. 320 shot glasses of water, 3 gallons, water gathered from the shores of an ancient (dry) lake in the Mojave (Trona). Pennies from a collection approaching the weight of a human body. Cerebral and computer-aided modelling proliferates in the masses, common objects are reassembled into machine/models appropriate for the task at hand. The "Romanian Model" running simultaneously at Los Alamos National Laboratories and across the squares and airwaves of a distant land. "We almost lost Detroit": "one of our algorithms got loose and it may be in enemy hands."
References
"The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins, subtited "Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design."
Two five gallon water bottles, one full and the other an inch deep in pennies.
"One Human Minute" by Stanislaw Lem, an essay/review of tomorrow's almanac.
Final scene of the "Creeping Unknown" (Hammer 1954) where Professor Quatermas leaves the scene of disaster averted to "start over" in the morning!
Ken Sitz
Art 410.1 (George Legrady, SFSU)
2/15/1990
