In his stacks of limitless square sheets of pale blue paper, which visitors were encouraged to take away, Gonzalez-Torres developed a practice of public participation, open interpretation, and mobile adaptation of the work of art, and evolved the cool, intellectual stances of minimalism into something infinitely more haunting, passionate, political, and humane.

In describing his practice, he said, “I need public interaction. Without the public these works are nothing. I need the public to complete the work. I ask the public to help me out, to take responsibility, to become part of my work, to join in.”

The Loverboy Project is an attempt to take Gonzalez-Torres up on his offer, “to complete the work” by adapting it and giving it away in the same spirit as his endlessly replaceable paper stacks. Just as the viewer of his physical work is encouraged to take the physical object away for her personal use, I have taken the form and the idea and the intent of it, to re-imagine and redistribute it in new ways.

This video is the digital equivalent of the paper stacks. An infinite number of viewers can take it with them, and it never diminishes. They can download it, embed it on their websites or Facebook pages, interpret and adapt it; they can complete it, they can join in, they can help.

The images that comprise the video are scans of stickers that I found at a yard sale, nearly the same pale blue as the Loverboy sheets. The box contained almost 2o,000 stickers, on long sheets. I am placing the stickers in public places as another extension of the original work, to bring it to new audiences outside of traditional art spaces.

If this video is shown in a museum or gallery setting, it should be shown in a live internet browser, on the video’s actual YouTube page, so that viewers may take it with them or otherwise distribute it by sharing, emailing, or embedding it in their web presences.

To participate in the Loverboy Project, simply watch this video, and, if you feel so moved, link to it, embed it on your site or Facebook page, download it, remix it. Complete it.

The image of the portrait is below, followed by the transcribed text.

A Map Transcending the Reading

Logic of:
or, style, or
generations of
spin, current
proximity relates
extremes, all
configurations
enter, balance
phenomena, skip
out of this
decision, the space
splitting thought, nice
already-there binary
dynamic, this sense
informs the body, worlds
around the form, reactions
before perspective’s push, let’s
do home again, picking
shared repeating application, retelling
setting, texts shaping texts, generating
community out of a certain reading

once again, a roster
of playing a space
very quickly with
little bits of
format
jog what’s happening
in a language
we don’t understand,
in so many ways
there, missing its
reflection, the
figures, or death,
construct
an intimate way,
reflect on
what’s happening
governed by
emphasis
mentioned,
form,
space,
push,
vehicle

One Hour Photo distills the photograph to the ultimate limited edition: 60 minutes. Photographic works will be projected for one hour each, after which they will never be seen again, by anyone, in any form. Each work will exist only in the limited moments of perception, in the individual and collective experience, then memory, of the observers. One Hour Photo complicates the myth of photography as preservation, manifests the tension between the permanence of the medium and the impermanence of time, and subverts the profit model of the edition and the print.

Learn more about the show

Meet my awesome co-curators, Chajana denHarder and Chandi Kelley.

Check out the video to see what I mean:

Or, download it at iTunes

Description:
Remixing is not just an art form: it is a fundamental method for understanding and interacting with what we know. We’ve realized the potential of remixing in music, literature, and art—we must now remix the entire spectrum of human thought. If we can remix songs, why not the encyclopedia? If we can mash-up Jay-Z and the Beatles, why not Einstein and Darwin, the Bible and Pythagoras, Isaac Newton and Lewis Carroll? Remixing “the stuff of thought” will yield not only compelling art, but, with the right understanding and appreciation, real insight and scientific advancement. The innovators of the future will be “DJs of Thought,” sampling, mixing, and spinning all existing ideas and thought-objects into ever-new structures. They will remix what we know into what we could know. They will show the Academy how to dance.

Robert Smithson

John Dewey

Crowdsourced music video for Choir of Young Believers’ “Action/Reaction.” from Booooooom.

Into Infinity: open source audio/visual interpretations of infinity from DubLab. An amazing variety of styles.

An image of infinity

Girl Talk creates a mash-up from “Radio, Radio” by Elvis Costello

How can we “scratch” our objects of thought? Texts, statements, definitions, theories?

(statements re-mixed from

Optical illusions may seem to deceive, but they actually reveal truths about how our brains construct reality)

In this approach, if we see something that might be data, we capture it, trusting our instincts in the hunt. Later, we look over the data with friends and colleagues from the full spectrum of fields. We discuss what the data might imply, how it might be used, new vectors of approach that it mysteriously suggests.

Such an approach favors suggestion and connection over proof and definition. It triggers ideas rather than solves problems.  An apple fell on Newton’s head, and we got gravity. This approach is like gathering all the varieties of apples (and any other thought-objects) into a massive room, setting them in motion, and sticking our heads in for a quick look around. The collisions that result will yield insight, if we free ourselves to this process, and create flexible structures for capturing the results.

The question, in other words, is not what does the data mean? but rather, what does the data make me think?

Below, we present some examples of such data. Remember that any individual sample is more powerful when added to a larger data set; therefore, in all of these instances one should imagine the potential in the data when gathered by every possible person on the planet (and perhaps processed by every possible person on the planet (via distributed qualitative computing)).

So, some examples:

• The keystrokes left on your computer by your wandering cat, cryptic messages from the worlds of feline psychology and the physics of independent bodies.
  • When writing a piece on Heisenberg’s dice, my cat walked on my laptop, leaving the intriguing equation:

Heisenberpppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp

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]=[

• The angles at which we tilt our heads when reading various materials (the newspaper, a movie poster, a postcard from a loved one).
• The captcha codes we fill out on web forms.
• The mishearing of phrases.
• Occurrences of a given number in all academic journals ever published.

We would not disagree with those who would argue that such data are simply random.

But to say that they are random is to miss the larger point.

By gathering and looking at the “random,” we build connections and spark insight, actions which are decidedly non-random, which stem from the all-important action of the observer.

Or, if we take the importance of the observer to its logical conclusion: if, via the random, the observer imagines some connections, ideas, concepts, or new vectors of approach, then there is no randomness in the elements at all. They were simply floating, full of potential semantic energy, until the observer observed them and transformed that potential into actuality.

Here’s a statement against the notion of randomness:

IF in relation THEN not random.

Do you have any “potential data” sets?