super stuck -- > unstuck

i became too rational in my approach.

and afraid of making art that sucks.

so did a series of very simple chance experiments.
dropping feathers onto construction paper and taping them down with silver tape
tearing all the wrappers off crayons and dropping those on paper, spinning in circles after each release. taping those down.
asking pam to list the first thirty animals that came to mind. backwards though, she had to write the 30th one first. asking her to assign them numbers as she wished, between 1-156 (the #of pages in a national geographic magazine)
then i drew each animal haphazardly and she cut out a small image from each corresponding page in the national geographic. i taped the image in the stomach of the animal (sort of chance-y mostly because i didn't know what she would do)

you can't really be blamed for chance experiments sucking... thats the beauty.

and then

i pulled up video that I had taken over the summer. interviews with southern humboldt residents and static shots of the landscape.

and i treated it as one would treat a 30 second sketch.

pushing things around here and there. cutting clips, moving them, layering them, unlinking sound from video, moving that around, going all together crazy with things in the spirit of a quick sketch.

and it was liberating.

because i couldn't and wouldn't blame myself much for these sketches going awry either ,or not looking perfect, because they weren't ever supposed to. that was built into the approach.

and doing these things brought up other ideas in my mind and got my thoughts spinning around and about. odd pairings brought up third ideas that would most likely not have occurred to me otherwise.

they got things rolling, started a rather nice momentum.

ideas surfaced. the fountain animation. and others too.