Systems + other
sprawling projects
Auxiliary Documents
My systems projects give rise to discursive commentary, speculative proposals, and accountability documents. I share some here, in no particular order. I will add more as I stumble across them in my file—the archive is a bit messy.
Laying out business projects to interfere with rampant over production. Ends with the suggestion to monetize dematerialization. 2014
[Note from 2020: nevermind monetization. Let's just radically reconfigure culture so no one wants much of anything. See: punks, anarchists, hippies, visionaries, etc. ]
Written three years into the block printing project, noticing all sorts of things arising.
"Designing while printing. Traditionally, [master / artist ] works out a pattern using a selection of blocks, some or all of which have been crafted for use with a particular pattern family. [...] The requirement goal is to create exact repeats within a length of yardage, from end to end; the reason is a requirement to demonstrate mastery of the craft..." 2015
Ymy Sfumato, aging punk troll, stars in her first fully inked comic story. 2019 See full pdf.
A grumpy set of proposals, flailing attempts to make material reality visible through "live manufacturing." In North America, many of us never see the inside of factories. But we sure know how to shop and how to throw things out, because our economy requires these behaviors. 2014
A system for archiving, including nomenclature, all the work finished before I stopped making things. So far, I haven't succeeded in stopping. 2006
Frequently Unasked Questions is a separate document, to accompany the performance described in Changing Patterns / Manufacturing Performance (above). Answers not included.
As part of Use It All Up, annotated compendium of waste materials on hand. Snapshots in time, as new waste flowed in regularly, and some materials were used up. (Though, conservation of mass and all that, the materials were really just shifted about.)
Incomplete compendium of four letter words that are both nouns and verbs, with a separate list sorted by type. 2011 See full pdf.
Two series of drawings became sprawling (that word again!) and required a spreadsheet to track both what I'd done and what I believed I'd do. 2002