Inventions that I wish someone could make for me:

• A 4 mm thick see-through plastic ruler that had a metal edge for cutting with an exacto knife, where the numbers are printed backwards to be seen through onto the other side and the metal strip on the edge has a nice lip making it less easy for the blade to slip onto the ruler...
• A scanner that's as thin as the iPad that can slip between the pages in a book without having to bend down its spine that can scan in detail two opposite pages at the same time clearly. Flatbed scanners would be a thing of the past.
• You know how you can rent a tux for a nice event, what if you could rent beautiful art frames that would cost too much to own for a month and a half, the length of a show, I don't even mind if it has fake pockets, but I'd love if I could walk into a store, get it sized and walk out with a tailored wooden frame.
• A DIY kit for making a steadycam holder for an iphone to take video
• Pants with built in or insert-able wool leg warmers near your ankles
• This isn't so much an invention as a business plan, but what if there were bars (restaurants would be pushing it) where you could only stand, but booths and everything else was still the same? As annoying as it may seem, most of us do that in crowded bars anyways.

Yeah, I just want stuff that will help me do other stuff.

Also, I just learned about the Xcode environment that uses PhoneGap to make my own apps, both are free!
But you may just need a developer account for $100 a year.

More wishful thinking, what if there was a reference guide for MFAs?

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Teachers-Book-Lists-J-B/dp/0787974242

I think I love making lists, something to represent the opposite of how my mind actually works, tangible, orderly, something I can reference.

So just like the list of lectures that I wish existed, here are chapters for a book I wish existed and some of the people, places and things that might be listed in them. Seriously look through the Artists Book of Lists if you ever get a chance, it's fascinating to see all of that information in one place.

Main chapters:

• Getting rid of baggage and pushing new boundaries for yourself
• Top twenty-five of the most radical and experimental art programs (including graduate schools, low-residencies and others)
• All of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies
• Constraints that artists use to distill or direct work
• Oubapo
• Top art libraries and resource centers by country
• List of Experimental Films from 1920 - 1980 by country
• Archives/museums that allow artists to interpret their collection
• 50 myths of the lives of artists as portrayed in popular culture
• Artists and their alter-egos/pen names
• A list of all the people who were involved with Black Mountain College
• Important writing reflecting on having the confidence to make art
• Letter to a Young Artist
• Sustainable practices
• The different types of artists and their different audiences/venues
• The wheel of diversifying the ways of supporting the production of work
• grants
• residencies
• low-overhead
• fiscal sponsorship
• Top 50 most prestigious artist collections private and corporate
• List of artists who died young due to their materials
•  
• List of artists who quit going to college and started a band or another interesting field of work 
• History of artist lawsuits
• Shepard Fairey
• Whistler
• Concepts
• Books and quotes that reference how fictional memories are as important as notated history in getting the feel just right (and reference it directly by breaking the narrative while telling the story)
• The Things They Carried
• Girl Interrupted
• Artworks and quotes that references the infinite or feedback loops
• Different ways that artists understand and use the term "The Body"
• Names of philosophers and philosophical ideas important to the changes and development in art
• Artworks referenced in philosophy or by scholars
• Walter Benjamin referencing Paul Klee's Angelus Novus to describe history's relationship to progress.
• Materials and Techniques
• List of painters who became installation artists
• As of 2011 a list of most useful and newest manufacturing techniques and mediums 
• Companies that hire artists to promote their new art products
• 50 different ways to frame a single work of art
• Art materials that are banned in California but not yet in other places
• List of resources to fair use free archived sounds
• List of historical and non-graffiti forms of defacement
• Artists who use humans as a medium
• Works where the medium was the message
• Attaching art to other causes, issues and topics
• List of TED talks that combine art with another social science or hard science
• Artists who started off at a high level in another profession before turning to the arts
• Anthropologists who wrote fictional novels
• Names of artists who engage in a social practice
• Organizations/Residencies that seek artists for creating social works
• Artists who have been censored and the list of the institutions that censored them 
• Scientists and mathematicians who collaborated with artists or did art themselves
• Buckminster Fuller

That would be a start...

Possible newspaper headlines if Dads wrote the news:

My Son is Awesome! (Probably Because I Helped Him Out Quite a Bit)

The Government is Stupid and Inefficient and Doomed Because of This One Thing They Did Wrong In My Opinion

I Know She Just Said She'd Leave You Out in the Street to Die, but You Know, Your Mom is Sensitive

This Just In: Everything Will Work Out in the End

My fears and my ideals

A theme in my work:

Tension between optimism and my observation of the inherent flaws in how we have tried to move forward so far…

I seem to employ 2 natural modes working that produce something naturally, organically:

1. Pointing out/investigating the inherent philosophical and rhetorical flaws in education because we know that there’s a problem, we know the problems in addressing that problem and given the ability to have a kind of clarity we might actually just have a chance at changing something in our lifetime.

2. Producing an art object that has no purpose than to be enjoyed for its aesthetic value.

I am interested in making a kind of “activist art” or even “utopian art” (for lack of a better word) that questions, makes someone reflect, and is possibly a catalyst for change, a la Mel Chin.

Right now I can image a body of works titled "The Best Education" all based on my distaste for what's called "The Mcdonaldization of Education" There is my one digital poster and then there's the book that counts everyone that opens the book (currently having a mockup finished) and then there's the idea at the bottom... But I feel like this is the start of my series of works about this topic.

Healthy skepticism of my own practice (similar to my agnosticism in life) My Fears:

·      I do believe that there is a right way as long as you don’t imagine that there’s one right way, but that’s a kind of utopian paradox…

·      I fear that everything might collapse because of the nature that I do believe in a kind of utopia, I have faith in a better society (I’m a big believe and staunch advocate of “fake it until you make it”)

·      I have fear of being caught for doing the “fake it until you make it” tactic, because I am in a graduate program for making art, am I still faking it? (My art definitely fakes something, but reveals a kind of reflection that changes how we might see reality, but doesn’t faking something to reveal the truth debunk conflict with my other sentiments, that trying to exercise our "truth" onto others is problematic?)

·      Much of my confidence comes from “fake it until you make it”, what if this is taken away from me? It's the only practice that has ever worked for me!

·      I fear that I will be lost trying using my “fake it until you make it method” if I compare myself to others (just had 3 anxiety dreams last night about other people in my program making really interesting work and feeling excited for them but also feeling extremely intimidated)

·      I fear being misguiding or misguided

·      I fear producing quantity over quality throughout my art practice 

·      I fear getting caught up in trying to make a statement will create disappointing results that no one will care about

·      I fear being discounted for having more privileges than others

"What do you fear?" - Sarah Tripp

The art concept that launched the thinking process:

(I woke up this morning from a dream that I was struggling to pay attention to a movie that was being screened in Detroit, it was very important and it had everyone's attention, but I kept meandering around, trying to find something to eat or drink, casually talking with whoever wasn't paying attention to the movie. When I woke up I realized that whenever I create a social critique, it starts with imagining the ways that I am part of the problem.)

The work would be people sitting in a room watching themselves sitting in a room watching a documentary about global warming. Titled “Living with our investment in the environment”

This work is about questioning, if environmentalism was so important to people, why is this the way that most of us become aware that there’s a problem? Why aren’t we taking field trips to dumps, questioning the censorship of these kinds of field trips? Why are we distancing ourselves from seeing the trash in the landscape and opting for a stroll through a park to “get it”? We are constantly mediating our experience of what is truly important to us rather than coming up with ways to have more one on one experiences with each other and with an issue, if something is deeply personal it needs to be addressed this way. Americans show how much they care through their actions, this applies to a lot of other issues, from consumption to relationships between us and other people.

(I would probably use that technology that superimposes images inside of a video, but is there something like a live Adobe after effects to do this?)

Following Radical thoughts to radical conclusions.

I have been having flashbacks now and then to Dr. Puhek's courses including Society and the Individual and War and Revolution.

Here's an excerpt:
"It is through this intelligence that the god of religions is present to and in us. The error of religions is to conceptualize god as an external object that directs life from the outside. God is not an alien being who rules on lives.  God is not a thing to us and we are not a thing to god.  This false image of estrangement is implicit in any and every positive concept of god. No concept can capture god for god is infinite and must remain ultimately nameless, but so is the second side of the universal intelligence we possess. At our core is the chaos of our nothingness and god is the Nothingness it knows. This infinite divine is the ground that all life rests on – the source of inspiration and the heart of what we humans take to be our individual and personal self."

Those are the beginning and last paragraphs of a short essay: Life, Intelligence, & Fringe Ideas

But I was just thinking about his talk about Justice, law and order...

"Just as physics is under the illusion that the opposite of matter is anti-matter, so we are under the illusion that the opposite of law and order is lawlessness and disorder. Nothingness as the ground of being is neither law and order nor lawlessness and disorder. It is, indeed, the source of both. Singularity and nothingness are that out of which all things their order and disorder arise. It is the greatest of the errors to think that something cannot come from nothing; there is nowhere else from which something could arise.

Let us learn how we can about life from physics. But let physics learn what it can only learn from the direct experience of life."

I agreed with Puhek on almost everything, with the exception of his take on art, but I kept thinking about his way of debunking how we go from A to B, or specifically how good intentions paved the road to hell so to speak. I've always wondered what kind of conclusion I could draw theoretically if I followed my own thoughts about certain topics. Justice is definitely one that I think is particularly revealing. Here are some of the truth that I hold evident that dictates the following thoughts:

1. Every moment is a good moment to face yourself, and to learn. (this comes from a kind of philosophy that my dad espouses, his other ones I'm not to keen on such as "it always works out in the end")

2. Choices are easier to make when there are less of them, unless it's down to two which in reality is extremely rare compared to how often we're told that something is binary, only this or that.

3. "Terrible or not, difficult or not, the only thing that is beautiful, noble, religious, and mystical is to be happy." - Arnaud Desjardins

4. "We work to become not to acquire" - Elbert Hubbard (or at least this should be the point)

5. You can't force anyone to learn anything, you can only present models, opportunities, support, structure, placebos, expectations, and feedback.

So I'm going to throw out 5 examples of according to my logic, what would be my idea of appropriate Justice having the kinds of assumptions that I have.

Serial Killer or school shooter: Confinement away from people and psychological treatment with loss of having media attention privileges. Their access to having their words or viewpoints published in the media would be abolished for their own privacy. The death penalty only ensures that their idea of immortality will last forever, all theatrics would be stripped down to highlighting moments when this person was considered well, and not sick.

Running a red light: Work as paid traffic police for a week for the minimum wage with a vest that distinguishes this person from a cop as a person who ran a red light.

Accidental killing: Depending on the ability of the victim's family, the accused would be enforced to produce a gesture of good will (such as making dinner) and live with the family for the period of a month to help with errands and attend grief counsels. 

Taking bribes: Besides a fine in the exact amount accepted, paid every 5 years, the funds would be transferred to a charity/non-profit whose mission matches the victim of what went unregulated. On top of this, like a hacker, this person would lose all privileges to use a computer for a year.

Corporate Greed: Death Penalty. Due to the nature of a global economy where money can be moved or  extracted at an astonishing rate, this crime must have a consequence that deters mass stealing over 500,000 dollars. It will send the message that acquiring this much wealth illegally is not worth your life. Those who are accomplices in the crime but may not have made this much money will have to watch the proceedings. There would be no warnings if the amount stolen is over five million dollars, the death penalty would be scheduled within the year. Money that is among family and friends can be raised to delay the death penalty, but the same amount considered stolen would have to be raised every year to put it off a year. The money raised would also go to a charity/non-profit whose mission matches the victim of what went unregulated.

In a sense reading back over these, I can tell that I believe that consequences should highlight experiencing something from another perspective, and that somehow what I would consider fair deals with distributing the money to where it belongs not to the agency enforcing the laws but to people and organizations that may have been wronged. It's also seems to touch on cultural ideas of what is taboo or moral and how societies might account to preventing such actions in the future... I think my conclusions are interesting, but difficult to implement, but only possibly because they don't fit today's idea of what is culturally acceptable.