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November 13, 2008
ideas
new, old, abandoned, in progress. in no particular order.
1: sweater recycling centre: set up a knitting machine in a gallery space. unravel discarded/secondhand sweaters directly into the machine and knit one long continuous panel (full needle bed width). cut and sew new sweaters from the panel. leave panel attached to machine, spread across the floor with garment shapes cut out. sort of like the study for a remnant factory installation/performance, only with knitting.
this one is a go just as soon as i get off my arse to find a space to do it in. right now it has to be a space that i don't have to pay for.
2: sarkasmatron: a giant box decorated like a carnival ride/vending machine, set up in a public space. sit inside and wait for people to put in a coin then dispense little slips of paper with handwritten sarcastic messages or insults.
this is something i've been talking about doing since ten years ago or more, back when i lived in london. i can't imagine it going over all that well in london. this project will probably never happen but it would be loads of fun.
3: listening project: listen to all of our records in chronological order. blog listening experience; host listening parties so others can join the conversation.
peter and i now have all of our records (587 as of last entry, not counting all the classical stuff which isn't being included in the project) entered into a database where we can organize them by release date. still working on expanding the collection but we should be ready to start listening soon.
4: waffle house north: buy the empty lot next to the mcdonalds at huron church road and college (or even better, buy the mcdonalds itself) and open a waffle house franchise. this will make waffle house the first thing travellers see when they enter canada via the ambassador bridge.
planning to start playing the lottery to fund this project; benefactors welcome.
5: wall of boggle: replace a wall in our house with stainless steel, then paint over it to match the other walls. glue magnets to the backs of thousands of scrabble tiles. fill the wall with scrabble tiles, randomly placed. play giant games of boggle.
peter and claire got bored one day and magnetized one set of scrabble tiles and stuck them on the fridge. i think peter has given up on the wall idea. not sure if i have but also not sure how to actually make this work in our 4-square craftsman house, which doesn't actually have many big walls.
6: footpath tapestry: have all of the people crossing a busy park or intersection carry a long (really long, skein long) ribbon, string, yarn, whatever. when two people meet one will pass his/her ribbon over, the other under. a weaving will be created across the space that draws its pattern from the way in which people move through it. kind of like a maypole dance only less uniform, stretched out over a broad public thoroughfare.
this too is something i wanted to do years ago, since my first year of university, inspired by jostling encounters with disconnected people hurrying across the space between university college and middlesex college on western's campus. after i moved to windsor i wanted to instead create a weaving (on a smaller scale) from patterns of traffic approaching and crossing the windsor-detroit border.
7: food spectrum: only eat red foods for one month. only eat orange foods for the next month. only eat yellow foods for the next month. and so on. see if my skin changes colour, or if certain colours cause me to lose/gain weight.
blue and indigo would have to be one colour or i might die from not getting enough to eat. i don't like blueberries.
8: wrapping: wrap all of my stuff with string or strips of cloth. or ask people to loan me things and then wrap the things i borrow in strings/strips of cloth. walk down my street and wrap all the things i see in cloth. maybe not people's cars.
i don't know what this is about, really, i just have been thinking a lot lately about wrapping things. i think my hands just want the feeling of wrapping things. i suppose if i just start wrapping things i'll figure out why i'm doing it eventually. anybody want to loan me some stuff?
Posted by jodi at November 13, 2008 11:06 AM | categories: projects
Comments
I love the Sarkasmatron. Actually, I love all of these project ideas.
Posted by: penandpaper at November 13, 2008 04:22 PM
I'm intrigued by the wall of Boggle! Actually, been having fun with magnetic stuff over the last year and a half of living in an apartment with steel doors throughout. Bedrooms and everything. Um, yeah, house was a former grouphome.
Been great for reminders. And magnetic poetry.
(sheesh, for this I have delurked. have been enjoying your wit and creativity for a couple years now. cheers from TO)
Posted by: Caitlin at November 13, 2008 05:40 PM
I taught one of my friends to spin, and she started making string from etchings and screenprints of hand-drawn tatting images on tissue paper. Lately she's been wrapping her string around all sorts of random objects. I'll send you a link when she gets some stuff online.
Also, have you seen Cornelia Parker's work? She once wrapped Rodin's 'The Kiss' in string — http://battle-of-life.blogspot.com/2007/05/discovering-cornelia-parker.html
Posted by: crumpet at November 13, 2008 07:32 PM
Be wary of orange foods like carrots. A co-worker once went on a juicing kick and was drinking Large Quantities of carrot juice. He turned orange. He looked like he'd used a bad self-tanning product.
Of course, when he cut back to normal levels of carrot juice, he returned to his normal shade.
Posted by: Janice in GA at November 14, 2008 03:34 PM
Oh, this is the weird and wonderful Jodi that we love!
Isn't it funny how ideas float around the universe?
I had a similar idea to the "Sarkasmatron" a while back. It was when I was pondering how to make little carnival games and was considering how you could combine Art with sort of a bubblegum machine loaded with little plastic bubbles that have messages in them so that what you get is completely random....
I saw a home-made game on Etsy - you should try searching those and see what other people have been inspired to do with this floating idea.
Posted by: Mary at November 14, 2008 09:11 PM
I love these. I totally owe you a real email anyway, and I'll throw in my $ .02 then (CDN!), but for now I like where these could go. I'd love to have Boggle or Scrabble so easily accessible all the time.
Posted by: njstacie at November 16, 2008 05:05 PM
For the wall of boggle, you could use some of the magnetic paint they sell at Lee Valley: http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=1&p=52114&cat=1,250,43298
We have a stainless steel fridge that is surrounded by wood, so we didn't have anywhere to put magnets. We painted one wood panel with the magnetic paint and now we have a cool wooden magnet wall. It works best with big flat magnets than small heavy magnets.
Posted by: Richard at November 20, 2008 11:42 AM
I don't know how much your ideas depend on them not having been done before ... but, #8, wrapping as you "walk down my street and wrap all the things i see".
This has already been done with knitted items.
The only ones I can remember right now are trees with little sweaters - body around the tree trunk and the arm around a branch. They last quite a long time, but get a bit ratty looking after a season or two (e.g. winter).
Posted by: Janey at November 30, 2008 08:36 PM