ABANDONED!

My whole life, I have been fascinated by abandoned buildings. I so badly want to know what is inside them, the events that transpired there, and why they were abandoned to be overtaken by the whims of nature. I have always thought about buying an abandoned building or house and renovating it to turn it into a restaurant. I think it would create a really unique ambience. I like going up to abandoned buildings and looking in the windows. Seeing the objects that were left behind and wondering what purpose they served and whether they were left on purpose is always a provoking investigation. I think this fascination has a lot to do with my knowledge and interest in archaeology...

There is an old church by my grandfather's house in the country that has been abandoned for quite some time and I've been watching it become more decrepit through the years, succumbing to the changes of the season. I look in the windows every time I go there to see what sorts of animals have made it their resting place. I've never gone in, but it is a dream of mine. The doors are padlocked closed, and I don't want to destroy it any further by trying to break in. I hope it stands for a long while to come.

I decided to investigate into this fascination of mine on the internet, and I stumbled upon this website that documents all of these different abandoned wonders. Here are a few of my favorites that I took from this site:



This is an abandoned site in San Zhi, Taiwan. It was apparently being built as a unique vacation spot, however there were a number of accidents and deaths that occurred during its construction, and no one ever wanted to vacation there because it is said to be haunted now.


Craco, Italy is a town that sits precariously on the edge of a cliff. It's residents experienced a number of plagues (illness, drought, etc.) over the years that caused them to slowly filter out of the town. The last people left in the 1960s after an earthquake.

"Kowloon Walled City was a loophole, a glitch never meant to exist. It grew organically devoid of building codes and largely absent of legal oversight, a kind of organic tent city times one thousand. As it grew without rules some areas were cut off entirely from natural light and air, crime ebbed and flowed and everything grew densely packed until the government finally intervened - evacuating the city and demolishing what remained."


An entire city in Ukraine that was abandoned because of the tragedies and spill over of Chernobyl. Residents weren't able to take any of their possessions with them.

And I thought an old tiny church was impressive! I wish that more of these spaces could be reused...

http://www.weburbanist.com

PhilInTheCircle

A while back, a friend of mine showed me a video on youtube of the work that this guy does. He calls himself "PhilInTheCircle." Here is the first video I saw of his work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxabHg--WBE

I decided that this post would be a good time to mention his work, as it relates to the last post I did on the intricacies and time-consuming nature of Pooktre tree molding. What Philinthecircle does is extremely time-consuming and innovative, and the most striking this about his work, giving it the title "goodbye art" is the fact that he destroys most of his artwork moments after completing it. This also relates to a post that someone (I can't remember who!) did about the sidewalk chalk murals. The rain just washes it away. It may take him hours upon hours or even days or weeks to complete, but then it is destroyed in an instant. Here are some examples of his work:

This video shows a sequence of a year worth of "Goodbye Art. It shows clips of both its creation and its destruction.


I think the intricacy and the willingness to destroy is what is amazing and wonderful about this artist. I haven't heard of many artists who are willing to destroy their creation and their time in such a way. However, he is extremely popular for what he does so I guess he gets something out of it! I just can't conceive of having the patience to do things with this level of intricacy. I get impatient doing a paint by number. I couldn't imagine spending such long periods of time doing such detailed work. I think it would hurt my eyes and my brain. He doesn't destroy all of his artwork. Another aspect of his work are the different, funky, and non-conventional medium he uses in his pieces. Here are some of his other works that showcase his non-conventional mediums:



This painting of Lance Armstrong was done by dripping paint on the wheels of a tricycle and riding all over the canvas.


Graphite on Starbucks cups.

Made with peanut butter and jelly on bread.

Made of dandelions. He did each of the frames separately and then put them all together with 24 frames in all.

All of these examples and more can be found at http://www.philinthecircle.com

Pooktre

Pooktre <--- Click for more!

I stumbled across this website a few weeks ago... apparently this couple has figured out how to manipulate the growth of trees in order to create living sculptures; they call the art "Pooktre." They either keep them alive in their own garden or they "harvest" and finish them to sell. They make furniture (see pictures below), jewelry, and other items by "molding" the trees as they grow. Does this sound familiar? The Art of Bonsai uses similar methods but instead does a lot of pruning in order to give the tree its miniature size as well as molding the tree as it grows. My mom and I took up the Bonsai hobby for a while a couple years ago, but as it is a very tedious and time-consuming project, we were only able to come out with one completed bonsai... I will get her to take a picture of it and I will post it later... Pooktre is really fascinating because it is similar to Bonsai, but on a larger scale. With my experience in creating bonsai and my previous knowledge and interest in the subject, I have a deep appreciation for the kind of work that would need to be put into projects of this magnitude. This sort of goes along with the discussion we had in class last week about how interests and passions can coincide with the discovery of something new or a new idea and will make it that much more wonderful. The painstaking efforts that must go in to something like this are fascinating in and of themselves. This would take an enormous amount of patience, which is something that many artists need to have. Attention to detail is pertinent and difficult. This is something I admire greatly in artisans of different crafts, including those at Pooktre. Here are some more examples of their work:
http://www.pooktre.com

It's all about perspective

We have spent so much time focusing on the strange and shocking artifacts of wonder that are displayed by people through mediums such as the cabinets of wonder that I would like to delve into the exploration of everyday things throughout the world that can provoke wonder...In this instance, it's really all about perspective. Let's start close to home. Each of us are studying different specializations that are offered in the university. Even if some have the same major, it is most likely that they have a different focus. If you have chosen your major based on what you are passionate about, there are bound to be very particular things that may seem boring and insignificant to others that provoke wonder in you.

For example, I am a Spanish and Anthropology major. In Spanish, I have been very interested in the focus on spanish linguistics and the different phonetic alphabets of the very wide range of spanish dialects that exist. For this reason, this chart is wonderful to me:

.

In Anthropology, my focus is on cultural anthropology. So while this:



may be wonderful and fascinating to an archaeologist, it just bores me to tears. For me, I feel and experience wonder when I think about the world and the vastly different worldviews that each and every one of us have. We each see and experience the world in such uniquely different ways, and oftentimes assume that others see it the same way. Even the details such as where people call and feel to be their home is fascinating... While these places:


Cinque Terra, Italy



Plitvice Lakes, Croatia

Western Sahara, Morocco
(Photo credits: Jessie Krafft; Summer 2008)

are home to some, they are exotic to those who live here:



It's all relative. It's all about perspective. These things are wonderful to me because of their importance in this globalizing world, as shown to us by writers such as Thomas L. Friedman. We need to gain the ability to understand, take heed of everyone's different perspectives, and RESPECT that we all see the world, interpret current events, and believe in very different things. This is why anthropology is relevant and is wonderful to me. Some of these things may be wonderful to you, but if you were prompted to think of the very simplest things about what you study that provoke you, it is probable that they would be very different from mine. This makes me wonder.

Wonder, the Universe, and the WWW

I suppose it would be appropriate to begin my Art & Wonder blog by describing what wonder is to me at this point in the semester. Wonder is expressed through awe, astonishment and curiosity. It is provoked through the revelation of an item of knowledge, an image or some other medium that was unknown beforehand and is outside of the realm of what one believes to be normal, common knowledge, and oftentimes is labeled as bizarre. There is another side to this, however. It is also possible to wonder at things that you already know to be true and to exist but are nonetheless inconceivable. An example of this would be our universe--the vast expanse of existence beyond what we can see, even with telescopes, that we know to be there, but still cannot conceive of its grandiose nature. I think this site can explain what I mean. Each speck you see on this site is a galaxy... we hardly know all there is to know about our own.

http://www.aip.de/groups/galaxies/sw/udf/swudfV1.0.html

I think that the internet has had a very distinct impact on the expression and abilities of wonder. There are an enormous amount of websites that may produce wonder in the information they offer or the images they show. This is a phenomenon that is much akin to Wilson's cabinet of wonder, for information is very easily forged and images are very easily photo-shopped. While we can surf the internet and find wonder around every .com, we have to be skeptical as well. There is much to be learned and seen on the internet, and each thing we see will expand the boxes we live in as far as what we know and consider to be possible. There is so much to learn about the world, its people, and the universe that surrounds us that I don't think that the internet can have the effect of numbing us to the wonder we can experience, but rather allows us to experience more of it. I hope to cover many aspects of the wonder that we can experience through the internet and in our every day lives through this blog. I think the fact that we are using the internet as a portal to express our perceptions of wonder is a great idea; it is a very appropriate tool filled with wonder in and of itself.