OVO

Imagine a world in which art is forbidden! Art galleries would close. Books would vanish. Pop stars would shed their glamour overnight. Advertising would cease, television would die. We could refocus our vision not on a succession of false images but on the world as it is. A stillness would fill the air. Art has provided us with fantasy worlds, escapes from reality. For whatever else it is, art is not reality. Soap operas, novels, movies; concerts, the theatre, poetry. None of these are real as a starving child is real, as a town without water is real. Art is the glamorous escape, the transformation that shields us from the world we live in. Injustice, endemic disease, famine, war. Those are real. Art has replaced religion as the opiate of the people just as the artist has replaced the priest as the voice of the spirit. Once we reached inside ourselves to find God / truth /really / etc. Now we find only art. We are regulated by our addictions and art hm become an addiction. We struggle through life in a drugged dream, searching for escape, for brighter fantasies, longer voyages of the imagination, louder music. Another’s life is always more interesting than our own. It is only those who have given up art who can experience the true nature of creation. Now, a self-perpetuating elite sell art as a commodity for the wealthy who have everything while making the artists themselves rich beyond their wildest dreams. Art is money. It is ironic that the myth of the artist celebrates suffering while it is those who have never heard of art, the poor and wretched of our earth, who truly suffer. To call one person an artist is to deny another the equal right of vision. Paint all the paintings black and celebrate the dead art: there is no booze in hell. We tum away from mountains of food that rot in storage while acres the globe humans grow too weak to eat because it is time for our favorite TV program. We live up to our knees in blood, wasting not only hours but days – whole lifetimes – in the bind belief that art is good, art is pure, art is its own justification – and a nightmare scourges our planet. Until we end famine there will be no peace. Artists are murderers! Artists are murderers just as surely as is the soldier who sights down the barrel of a gun to shoot an unarmed civilian. Without art, life would be unendurable! We would have to transform this world. Overnight, one person’s dream can become a nation’s future – but we do not seize power because we are enchanted by art. Forbid art and revolution would follow: the withholding of creative action is the only weapon left. Seeing and creating are the same activity. Those who create art are also creating the starving. In a world in which art is forbidden the deserts would flower. Give up art. Save the starving.

(from OVO 14 Suffering March 1992)

Racoon. Portland Oregon USA. 1 August 2010.

Trevor Blake & OGRE collection (partial). Portland, Oregon USA. 30 July 2010.

Trevor Blake: Architecture. Digital image.  Portland Oregon USA. 23 July 2010.

Disability rally, Portland Oregon USA 15 July 2010.  More photographs.

From Protest the Cuts:

[Oregon Governor Kulongowski] passed these budget proposals with only 5 days for review, no modifications, and no opportunity for public response. The following cuts to human services started immediately on July 1:

* Elimination of meals programs for low-income seniors and people with disabilities (ie. Meals on Wheels)
* Elimination of in-home personal care services for low-income seniors and people with disabilities on Medicaid (i.e. help with bathing, eating, dressing, using the restroom, etc.)
* Reduce in-home services in the Medicaid system by 75% (i.e. meal preparation, chores, etc)
* Complete elimination of Oregon Project Independence
* Further cuts to community and county providers who are administering the state’s programs to serve these individuals.

Disability Rights advocates question whether the Governor’s decision stands in violation to the 11 year old Olmstead vs. State of Georgia Supreme Court ruling that affirmed the rights of individuals with disabilities to live in the least restrictive environment. Furthermore, the ‘integration mandate’ of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires public agencies to provide services “in the most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of qualified individuals with disabilities.”

The Governor’s decision almost certainly stands to adversely affect the lives of seniors, and adults with developmental and physical disabilities, resulting in potential declines in basic quality of life for all concerned. The elimination of Project Independence and further cuts to home health care and DHS services will also cause in thousands of caregivers and state employees to lose their jobs.

Lastly, the long-term effects of the loss of vital human services could result in greater expense to the state as sources estimate it costs about $2,000 a day to house a person in an assisted living facility as opposed to $200 per week to provide an in-home caregiver.

Please join us at 12 o’clock noon on Thursday July 15, 2010 for the first rally to protest these cuts. Meet us at Pioneer Square in downtown Portland.

P
The first photograph was made in 1826.  The first digital camera was the Dycam Model 1, available in 1990.  Some cell phones with digital cameras were available as early as 2001.  Digital cameras have outsold film cameras since 2002.  The low cost and ease of digital photography has led to more photographs being made.

S
Alfred Kinsey published his first Report on sexuality in 1948.  In 1960 “The Pill” was first offered for sale.  By the 1980s, pornography had been all-but normalized.  Clinical information on sex; safe, effective and convenient contraception for women; widely available pornography – these three forces combined into a sexual revolution that is still taking place.

I
In 1992, the long history of electronic distribution of information (telegraph, fax, radio, television, computers, internet) was complimented by the invention of the World Wide Web.

P + S + I = X
Digital cameras, the sexual revolution and the World Wide Web have resulted in sexting.  A 2008 study suggested a third of adults had digitally distributed sexually explicit images of themselves and nearly two-thirds had digitally distributed sexually explicit text or information.

B
Facial recognition systems were developed in the mid-1960s.  By the first decade of the 2000s, digital biometric systems were in use by governments and businesses.  Personal experience suggests most people have an inaccurate sense of how little information is required to correctly identify their camera, computer or internet access point.  What people distribute on the internet is less anonymous than they think.

A
Once fantastically large and expensive, digital data can now be stored in small areas and inexpensively.  Discretion in frequency and content is no longer emphasized in photography.  Instead of taking one careful photograph, a photographer can take hundreds of photographs and emphasize the ones they prefer.  Data is being stored without the permission or knowledge of those who generated it.  Communication venues that were thought to be ephemeral were instead secretly archived.  Usenet has folded into google, BBS’ are archived at textfiles.com, and the Web is mirrored at archive.org.

X + B + A = WHO’S THAT GIRL?
I predict that businesses exist right now that are quietly collecting millions of images of naked man and women distributed on the internet for the purpose of biometric identification.  Identifications will be established with information volunteered via social networking sites.  I predict that there will be false positive identifications.  I predict that there will be accurate identifications.  I predict the distribution or non-distribution of these identifications will generate revenue in the future and that is why the images are being archived right now.  I predict these identifications will result in misfortune or difficulties for some of those identified, but that the momentum of the sexual revolution will all-but normalize not-for-profit home-made sexually explicit images and text for the majority.

See also: Three Predictions Part Two, Same Sex Marriage

OVO at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon USA. 3 July 2010.

From 1990 until an undetermined point thereafter there will be an employment of the negation of all forms of work (and play).  This will be called The Artists Strike (1990 – ?).  Those participating will refuse to produce and/or consume artworks, creative acts,and political or philosophical activisms.  We aim to undermine existing western philosophical notions and ultimately push for the radical transformation of society.

By the refusal of creativity for the years following 1990, there will be a collapse in the capitalist system.  Art galleries will close.  Museums and cultural institutions will suffer monetary loss.  As the art world suffers everywhere, the inertia will collect on other elements of capitalism creating the desired push through, beyond the understood concepts of civilization.

Capitalism places an economic value on everything, including the mind.  It makes a commodity of the conscious reasoning and understanding society has shaped and mutated to call its own, then calls it “art.”  This exploitation is an integral part of the bourgeois capitalist formula for popularizing its banal ideologies.

Imagination, the tool of the acculturated mind, is no more authentic than its product.  Only the mind that conceives can be designated authentic.  Society has capitalized on the dull products of the imagination and through it has created the illusory reality.  In order to destroy society as it exists, we must destroy the imagination.  We can have no reform, for reform merely rearranges appearances.  Nothing changes.

Society creates a split of the established modes of reality and then offers the alternative.  The ameliorative can never be achieved since the entire affair exists in the imagination of a split mind.  Moreover, the established modes of reality are created by capitalist ideologies and philosophies which are the primary agents of repression.

Fear of cultural death commits society to an unavoidable mass suicide.  It limits primary processes (that distinguish the individual) to stratagems of unquestioned truth.  The reality consensus governs circumstantial response and thinking towards a detestable redundancy, yet dissents to its own plagiarism.  Individuality within society is a delusion.  Truth repudiates society as society negates truth.  Differentiation of the personality succeeds cultural death, the relation of cause and effect being inversely proportional.

Capitalist social relationships make desire the mechanism through which a nonexistent future prevails over the now.  It denies the present and focuses on the future.  Whatever one is, is incomplete and temporary, for only the future is significant.  Society markets destiny as a pursuit-to-become something, a means of being; without destiny one doesn’t exist.

Acting on can mutate or create new data.  Interacting with creates only the event of interaction.  After the event, all is as it was.  Noting changes.

TRUTH IS THE ILLUSORY TOOL OF THE SPECTACLE – NEGATE TRUTH.

ABOLISH PLEASURE – REFUSE CREATIVITY – SMASH THE IMAGINATION – DESIRE IN RUINS – THE PRESENT IS ABSOLUTE – EVERYTHING NOW!

(from OVO 3 1987).

Trevor Blake: The Invisibles. Pen. Based on The Invisibles by Grant Morrison. April 2010.

Trevor Blake: Victory. Pen. May 2010.

Trevor Blake: Rhino Beetle. From photograph. Pen. April 2010.

Trevor Blake: David. From photograph. Pen. May 2010.

Art:
Jack Bender: The Hatch Painting.
John Cabrera: Lost on the Subway.

Criticism:
Klint Finley: Hatch 23.
Jorje Garcia: Dispatches from the Island.
Jason Hunter: A Theory on Time Travel.
Various: Lostpedia.
Various: Lost Media.
Various: Lost Theories.

Video:
BBC Lost Experience.
John Lock and Dr. Pierre Chang Meet for the First Time.
LOST Opening Theme with Original Lyrics.
LOST Friends.
The Final Episode.

Trevor Blake: Moham(m)ed.  20 May 2010.  Portland Oregon.  Ink.  For “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.”

“I think that what is common to art, myth, science and even pseudo-science is that they all belong to something like a creative phase which allows us to see things in a new light, and seeks to explain the everyday world by reference to hidden worlds [...] These hypothetical worlds are, as in art, products of our imagination, our intuition. But in science they are controlled by criticism; scientific criticism, rational criticism, is guided by the regulative idea of truth. We can never justify our scientific theories, for we can never know whether they will not turn out to be false. But we can subject them to critical examination: rational criticism replaces justification. Criticism curbs the imagination, but does not put it in chains.” – Sir Karl Popper, In Search of a Better World

UniSci: Bacterium Can Alter Evolution Of Another Species

Scientists have found the most convincing evidence yet that a parasite can contribute to splitting a species in two, thanks to a phenomenon in which a wasp’s damaged sperm can be “rescued” or fixed only by mating with particular females.

Chemical & Engineering News: Chemotaxis

The droplet, composed of 2-hexyldecanoic acid in either dichloromethane or mineral oil, travels several centimeters through a maze with a pH gradient. The pH is high at the maze entrance and low at its exit. Once in the maze, the droplet travels toward the lower pH, and in doing so, Grzybowski notes, it always finds the shortest path through the maze.

BBC News: Sushi May ‘Transfer Genes’ to Gut

By eating sushi wrapped in the seaweed, people probably ingested these bacteria along with the genes coding for that digestive enzyme.

BBC News: Neanderthal Genes ‘Survive in Us’

The genomes of 1% to 4% of people in Eurasia come from Neanderthals.

The Guardian: Gene-Swap Plan to Thwart Diseases

Researchers from Newcastle University say their breakthrough will help women whose children are at risk of a range of mitochondrial diseases. These disorders can be mild or very severe, and can cause muscle weakness, blindness, heart and liver failure, diabetes and learning disabilities. They affect one child in every 6,500.

Mark Changizi: Turning Vision Into A Programmable Computer

Might it be possible to harness our visual computational powers for other tasks, perhaps for tasks cognition finds difficult?

BBC News: Singing ‘Rewires’ Damaged Brain

By singing, patients use a different area of the brain from the area involved in speech. If a person’s “speech centre” is damaged by a stroke, they can learn to use their “singing centre” instead.

Science Daily: Hand Gestures Linked To Better Speaking

New research at the University of Alberta suggests that gesturing while you talk may improve your access to language.

Maths.org: Maths and Hallucinations

So common are geometric hallucinations, that in the last century scientists began asking themselves if they couldn’t tell us something fundamental about how our brains are wired up. And it seems that they can.

Science Now: Researchers Turn Mosquitoes Into Flying Vaccinators

A group of Japanese researchers has developed a mosquito that spreads vaccine instead of disease. Even the researchers admit, however, that regulatory and ethical problems will prevent the critters from ever taking wing—at least for the delivery of human vaccines.

Washington Post: Somali Islamist Rebels Ban English, Science Lessons

Somalia’s hardline Islamists have banned English and science studies in schools in the southern Afmadow town after the education centers there ignored the rebels’ call for fighters, residents and teachers say.

First of a series that could end at any moment.

Estimated launch window for the Lemurian Flying Rocket Association: first week of July 2010.

Trevor Blake: Invisible. Portland, Oregon USA. 21 April 2010.

Trevor Blake: Quit While You Are A Head. Digital image. 1 April 2010.

Trevor Blake. Portland, Oregon USA. 1 March 2010.

Trevor Blake: Chatroulette Puppet. Online video performance. 18-19 February 2010.  Excerpt.  Silent, color, 1 minute 9 seconds.