The ZERO1 SJ festival is over. There were some really great things and there were some things that I'm going to do everything I can to get Joel Slayton to recognize needs to be fixed for 2010. As bienniale festivals go, it was a success, and I'm not just saying that because I was heavily invested in this offering.
Graham Harwood has to be one of the smartest people I've ever met. We sat around Thursday afternoon and talked for hours about the boundaries between code based art and utility: when does the piece cross into software and when does it expose a social design beyond function? This was after I had spent several hours convincing strangers on the street to let us take a photograph of them in front of a banner Sam Gould had printed of Joe's Bay.
This residency had some great aspects and some really hard aspects. Working with Sam was a delight and hopefully I have forged a friendship which we can continue to collaborate on projects beyond this moment. As Sam states, "We've hopefully made these tools that people can now use to make something more with it that what we did." The ugly part of the residency? Well, that my friends has everything to do with how this graduate program has evolved under a poorly funded state school program. It seems that everything is volunteer basis in graduate school at this program. There is no compensation. Granted, I understand that schools are very poorly funded and that as a graduate student your aim is to figure out a place in the community beyond monetary compensation; but it's not entirely money I'm talking about. It's the connection between recognition and commitment which makes compensation important. There are some of us in this program who are dedicated to being "suckers" and giving up all our free time and more to helping out the program. But I no longer question why my remaining colleagues don't take advantage of these "opportunities." This kind of investment of time should require some sort of reason to commit yourself. What lacks, in my opinion, is the ability or concern from the professors to secure sufficient research funds to proceed with a proper system for graduate students. Returning to Graham Harwood, his school is able to secure sufficient funds for all their graduate students through research funding.
What was the best part of the residency? Telling random strangers on the street that I was a part of the project in the festival and MY team put together the commissioned work in the San Jose Museum exhibition. Woot.
This brings me to tell you how awesome Eddo Stern is. No lie, the guy is awesome.
Highlights of the festival: Eddo's portal was worth seeing. It should become a static feature of the campus. Paul D. Miller's Antarctic suite was worth seeing, although not as amazing as I had hoped. Paela liked dancing to the smooth beats (what other kid do you know that goes to DJ Spooky events at her age?). All my colleages who had pieces in the festival did fantastic work and I couldn't congratulate them more. Especially since that kind of behavior really makes me realize how much harder I need to work to catch up.
If you missed the monkey zoetrope, you missed a lot.
Paela spent evenings with Rebecca (and days, too) while I was all over San Jose. Events from her days: she learned to flush the toilet. Better yet, she learned to flush the toilet while we're in the shower. Good job!
Also: we're trying to get her to say bwha-ha-ha (which she says, just not on demand -- yet). Granted, it is meaningless to her, but still, when she starts her evil laugh while walking on the grass and her cousin is scared of being on the grass -- that's cool.
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