We think of the body as separate from the world – our skin as the limit of ourselves. This is the ego boundary – the point at which here is not there. Yet, the body is pierced with myriad openings. Each opening admits the world – stardust gathers in our lungs,gases exchange, viruses move through our blood vessels. We are continually linked to the world and other bodies by these strings of matter. We project our bodies into the world – we speak, we breathe, we write, we leave a trail of cells and absorb the trails of others. The body enfolds the world and the world enfolds the body – the notion of the skin as the boundary to the body falls apart.The body, as here not there, and its defining sense of the other is a mental construction – every perception of the other is a creation and every invocation a re-creation.

I made the piece below for a theory class titled “Light, Space, & Time”. I might try to get some funding to build it out (better sensors, wireless stations, etc); this is definitely a prototype, but you get the idea!

In Between Points is an installation that attempts to materially map the time spent at points on a path. A roll of paper inches forward via motors turning paper rollers. The motors only turn when small photo-resistors sense an object or a person in front of them. Individuals interacting with the piece move between platforms at their discretion, the accumulation of paper in between platforms maps the time they spend at each point.

In progress:

I gave all the pots I made (post below) to my mom.  She filled them with flowers, succulents, etc.  They look really cool littered around her house and garden.

[source: http://spacecollective.org/meganmay/4571/A-Mutant-Manifesto]

If we recognize that every society is a petri-dish with a particular set of parameters around which a given culture is organized, then its fair to assume that modifications to the parameters can and do produce entirely different cultures.

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Amongst the organisms that co-exist in each petri-dish we find the artist- philosopher-scientist (feel free to suggest coinage) – a genetic mutation in the colony mysteriously compelled to hijack the experiment by hacking the parameters and introducing novel feedback relationships.

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Considering the sequence of events that, through a continuous process of trial and error, gave rise to our current moment in time, and reading the newspaper today, with its constant updates on the state of humanity, it seems more and more evident that the whole shmear is indeed one giant experiment, and if we recognize ourselves as actors within it, we are fully capable of collapsing the distinction between what is and what could be, leaving us with nothing but incentive to imagine and enact the future.

When I set out to make my first coil pot I thought I would do something really nice and symmetrical, but then it turned out to be very difficult.  So I made something else, something that has been said to resemble an elephant turd.

The rotary dials I am using in my artworks related to rodents and science took on a whole new meaning for me recently, from Donna Haraway’s book Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience:

David Winter, the president of GenPharm, considers the technique of custom-making a rodent so routine that he calls it “dial-a-mouse”.

Below, a startlingly simple circuit connected to an Arduino lets me use the rotary dial as a controller for an arcade game I am working on.

I was driving to Target, changed lanes and turned, now going to the park. Silently hunting beavers in the park I sneezed, Plan B: take pictures.  The grass was excessively green, and up to my hips in some places.  The ground was soft, and there were flying bugs everywhere.  It smelled good too.  If it were not for the cars on the road nearby I might have been able to really get out of my head and into that place, but I just kept thinking about everything I think I know.

Spring by Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only under ground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself

Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

April

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

My video “Borderlines” to be shown in a student video/film screening at the OKC Museum of Modern Art later this month: