a quiet magic. » wonder

like watching paint dry…

admin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:59:59 +0000

here’s a couple of peep-holes into the peripheral worlds that you may have been unintentionally overlooking lately, or rather, welcome to my choice of focus.

focussing in on the everyday…

admin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:11:11 +0000

…& finding new visual galaxies hidden in the most unexpected of objects.

making a loud place quiet, a fast place slow, and a busy mind empty…

admin — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 18:21:57 +0000

this winter, i set out to subvert my viewer’s perspective by encouraging them to dramatically reduce the speed at which they look at the most habitual of their surroundings. my hope was to perhaps rekindle the public’s love affair with daydreams and inspire them to actively seek them out on their own watch.

so i searched for the unfamiliar view within my own habitual challenging myself to further slow my own gaze and see what daydreams i might be missing — not looking merely at things but in things, not looking through things but at things, paying attention to unassuming beauty, noticing the visual poetry of secret serendipity, and documenting the intrigue of pure slowness. i documented my findings in photography and video.

these images and videos visually communicated my message; revealing the potential for rediscovery within the habitual, and the depth of experience found within the slow gaze. yet i was left with the question of how i can frame them in a way to allow the general public to receive my message?

i realized that in order to communicate the quiet and the slowness of my images and videos, i need to surround them with the opposite. i wanted to bring them to a public sphere: to make a loud place quiet, a fast place slow, and a busy mind empty. i decided to propose video installations in new york subway stations to encourage daydreams to the audience that has most forgotten them and do so in the setting where a reminder is most needed.

this is but a taste….

worlds trapped in windows…

admin — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:54:23 +0000

this winter, i’ve begun to re-route my investigation of unnoticed visual wonder by making an effort to shift my own perspective on my surroundings in a manner that allows me to meditate not merely on the object in my sight, but on what is/may be/appears to be contained within the object. i’m in love with windows…

exercising my perspective…

admin — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:43:12 +0000

in last week’s lecture at risd, john stilgoe preached to “bloom where you’re planted”. then during a phone chat on sunday, abe morell excitedly told me to remember that “fairly close by, there’s a lot of extraordinary stuff going on”.

& so on a particularly blustery fall morning, i sat inside my slightly warmer living room to put these ideas to work…

found inspiration.

admin — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 04:21:12 +0000

from sir albert einstein, of course:

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to WONDER and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.…To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms-this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.”