Daily Anthem

NUCIFERA means 'nut bearing.'

Memory is the song to listen to. It's an odd mixture of things coming from one dude. Obvious correlations, right?

Daily Anthem

Today's anthem is...Wherever I May Roam by Metallica. I said that I had decided against it, yesterday, but I looked at the lyrics and thought about it some. Even though I like Iron Maiden's The Nomad more and it has cooler lyrics, Metallica's song is actually more relevant to my situation. Maybe not too relevant when it really comes down to it, but more relevant than the undoubtedly more awesome 'Maiden.

See for your self,


And the road becomes my bride
I have stripped of all but pride
So in her I do confide
And she keeps me satisfied
Gives me all I need

And with dust in throat I crave
Only knowledge will I save
To the game you stay a slave

Roamer, wanderer
Nomad, vagabond
Call me what you will

But I'll take my time anywhere
Free to speak my mind anywhere
And I'll redefine anywhere

Anywhere I roam
Where I lay my head is home

(And the earth becomes my throne)

And the earth becomes my throne
I adapt to the unknown
Under wandering stars I've grown
By myself but not alone
I ask no one

And my ties are severed clean
Less I have the more I gain
Off the beaten path I reign

Roamer, wanderer
Nomad, vagabond
Call me what you will

But I'll take my time anywhere
I'm free to speak my mind anywhere
and I'll never mind anywhere

Anywhere I roam
Where I lay my head is home
YE' YEAH

But I'll take my time anywhere
I'm free to speak my mind
And I'll take my find anywhere

Anywhere I may roam
Where I lay my head is home
I say!

But I'll take my time anywhere
I'm free to speak my mind anywhere
And I'll redefine anywhere

Anywhere I may roam
Where I lay my head is home

Carved upon my stone
My body lies, but still I roam,
Yeah yeah!

Wherever I may roam
Wherever I may roam
Woah

Wherever I may roam
Wherever I may roam
Yeah!

Wherever I may wander, wander, wander
Wherever I may roam

Yeah, yeah, wherever I may roam

Yeah, yeah, wherever I may roam
Wherever I may roam
Wherever I may roam

Also, I couldn't decide if I wanted to post the 1992 version or the S&M version, when Metallica played with a full orchestra. Seeing as I can actually remember when the S & M concert first happened and that playing with a full orchestra might atcually be more Metal...I'm giong for the S & M,

2/27/08

Today I met with some Spurse dudes; Ian, Patrick and Matthew. They will be hosting a class this summer, during which Spurse and the students will do research and complete a project together that will be a component for their larger-scaleDeep Time + Rapid time project. I want to take it. They are working in town through Grand Arts, where I am working for now. I spoke with them shortly of my ramp.

Often, when I mention my plans to make a skate ramp as a work of art, Simparch is mentioned. Simparch built a Kidney Bowl, called Free Basin. Gallery goers were encouraged to view the bottom of the ramp sculpturally and those who skate could skate the ramp during gallery hours. Here is a video.













When Simparch showed Free Basin in Liverpool, they also built this amazing full pipe, I mean erected this humongous cylindrical minimalist sculpture being liberated from the elite cannotations of minimalism using unfinished, industrial lumber, or maybe it's a really rad Full Pipe.

I suggest checking out some of Simparch's other work. I am inspired by the direction they have taken functional art works.

Spurse.

Work.

Spurse.

That has been the bulk of my day today. Tommorow I will go on an adventure.

Excursions

As a part of my revised plan, Liesel and I will go some place we have never been before ATLEAST every other day, but will probably be keeping more of an every day pace.

Today we rode the bus out to the post office on 74th and Troost. First we walked to 41st and troost from school and caught the bus there. Liesel picked up an info packet about her trip to Europe this summer. I bought Star Wars stamps to send letters and art to people, probably people in the class when I'm away. We walked from Troost to the bus stop on Wornall road. We saw a block of houses that were inspired by dutch architecture is seemed. We saw a roof with some chairs that we anted to sit on if it were summer.

Waldo's pizza is right there and we visited them to see how much a vegan slice would cost us, only to find that they were really busy and didn't have a 'by-the-slice' option on their menu. I wdon't think we were going to buy anything anyway, but only saught to ease our hunger by being near some vegan pizza. The Red Bridge bus took us up to 81st where the DAV thrift store is.

We bought Two warm coats for Liesel and some thermal pants for me. We walked from there to Second Chance thrift store on 77th. There, we bought two warm coats for me, a towel to replace one that Grommit chewed and fouled, Spicy Peanuts, 2 bags of Mustard and onion pretzels, and a bag of mixed nuts (four snack for a dollar, a total that is less than what any one of those originally cost), and a book about Biosphere 2. There was a shiny, vinyl hoody lined with bright yellow fleece that I was really tempted by but had top pass up. They didn't have any gloves, for they all go to a Mission.

We took the Red Bridge back to the Waldo Pizza stop and caught the Max bus which took us all the way to the 3rd and grand. This is the entire Max route.
The China Market oriental foods store is right across the street from the stop, somewhere Liesel had never been. We looked at everything in the store and like kids at the toy shop, granted ourselves permission to each get a treat. We got some sesame mochi, a mung bean based sweet and some spicy fried gluten in a can.

If you are Jeni, go there soon, the Mochi is fresh! We also bought some noodles to eat later and some sweet chili sauce to gift to the residents of the Harrison Fort/Fjord. The gift was especially for Brent, who invented the Fort Special, a sandwich consisting of whole wheat bread, crunchy peanut butter, fresh sliced cucumber, and of course, sweet chili sauce. The whole sweet kaboodle gets tossed into the oven for a light toasting.

We rode back to the plaza, eating some mochi with Grommit, and got off at the Wild Oats stop. I'm guessing that many people call this the Berbiglia stop. We returned to the INDA dungeon where I posted the song of the day.

After some working, we ate Spicy fried gluten and peanut sandwiches with spring mix greens on sprouted sesame bread, the lettuce and bread being results of yesterday's traveling about. That same trip brought vegan sloppy joe mix into our loving arms. We were going to share such goodness with Kari who has a kitchen to cook in, but she went to go see Chip Kidd speak at Unity Temple. Here are all of our acquisitions:

Turning Point

One of the inspirations for my skate ramp/greenhouse project is the Turning Point ramp at Del Mar Skate park active in the lates seventies and early eighties. It's plexiglass and steel and transitions into a full pipe with a vertical bowl capping it off. It is shown here in the beginning of the 1980 skate film by Stacy Peralta, Skateboard Madness. The first part is a silly clay-mation short but past that are some examples of the ramp in use.


I can remember seeing pictures of this ramp when I first started skating at Gary Sullivan's Florida Ocean sports. It started as a Surf shop, then went into motor scooters and then peaked and earned fame for skateboards. Gary was an influential figure, always urging skaters to be positive and use the sport to do awesome things for the community. He also always urged skaters to be up on whatever was hot at the time, but to always take a look at where it all began and take advantage of being in the heart of it all, good ol' sunny Florida. (sidenote: It's like 80 degrees there right now. What i'm doing in the frozen Midwest?)

One More

...I kept watching Nomad videos and had to post this one. This makes me happy.

Daily Anthem

When I sat down to post this, I asked Kat what her favorite Metal song was. After the mentioning of Bon Jovi, we moved on to Metallica. I thought that perhaps Wherever I May Roam would be a good choice due to the nature of my study this semester( However I mistakenly recalled that song being named, the Nomad, which is actually a song by Iron Maiden. I wen t with this because that was Liesel's preference. That fact that my P.J. Harvey fan girlfriend has a preference between Metallica and Iron Maiden is pretty awesome, especially since that preference lands on Iron Maiden. The lyrics are cooler anyway. Which leads to another shift, when I searched for The Nomad on YouTube, I found this piano version posted by an amateur pianist which is the kind of thing YouTube was originally made for. So here is that video and the lyrics to Iron Maiden's The Nomad.



Iron Maiden - The Nomad


Like a mirage riding on the desert sand
Like a vision floating with the desert winds
Know the secret of the ancient desert lands
Your are the keeper of the mystery in your hands

Nomad, rider of the ancient east
Nomad, rider that men know the least
Nomad, where you come from no one knows
Nomad, where you go to no one tells

Undercover of the veil of your disguise
The men that fear you are the ones that you despise
No one's certain what you future will behold
You're a legend you own story will be told

Nomad, rider of the ancient east
Nomad, rider that men know the least
Nomad, where you come from no one knows
Nomad, where you go to no one tells

No one dares to even look or glance your way
Your reputation goes before you they all say
Like a spirit that can disappear at will
Many claim of things but no one's seen you kill

Nomad, you're the rider so mysterious
Nomad, you're the spirit that men fear in us
Nomad, you're the rider of the desert sands
No man's ever understood your genius

Those who see you in horizon desert sun
Those who fear your reputation hide or run
You send before you a mystique that's all your own
Your silhouette is like a statue carved in stone

Nomad, you're the rider so mysterious
Nomad, you're the spirit that men fear in us
Nomad, you're the rider of the desert sands
No man ever understood your genius

Legend has it that you speak an ancient tongue
But no one's spoke to you and lived to tell the tale
Some may say that you have killed a hundred men
Others say that you have died and live again

Nomad, you're the rider so mysterious
Nomad, you're the spirit that men fear in us
Nomad, you're the rider of the desert sands
No man ever understood your genius

Some 'Maiden Fans in Oxford circa '82:

Last week I:

Gesso-ed 12 blocks of wood and a wood panel on which I have begun a concept illustration for my ramp.

Spent a few hours on my rat cage, progressing and improving my welding skills considerably.

Realized that shorter, more regional excursions are more realistic.

Did some freelance work painting and moving.

updated my this blog and my collaboration with kurt mcrobert.

I drew and wrote almost everyday, particularly on saturday.

I went to the Flat Files show at Art Space and the Photo show at the Kemper and I hung out with Nancy for a bit.

I did KCAI tour guide training on thursday and friday.

I did some web input for the Communications Dept.

Ramp Schematic

Daily Anthem

Today we're pleasuring our ears to Flowers of Flesh and Blood by Skaven. You can listen to it here. The band takes their name from a race of Rat Men called the Skaven in the Warhammer Fantasy miniature war game. The Skaven maintain a secret existence beneath the world of men and await a time to overrun the lands above. A Definitely smart move on the part of the guys in Skaven to name themselves after such RAbiD horde, I mean, these dudes even harness the ability to mutate some of the race into brutal, weaponclad rat ogres and have overlords with demonic horns and shit!

Wow. Metal, Rats, Warhammer Models and even a nod to Utopian/Dystopian studies with the solemn, echoing guitar intro to Flowers of Flesh and Blood gradually being accompanied by sample from Jodorowski's Holy Mountain.

Revelation Station

Even though our van is still busted and we are still in Kansas City doesn't mean we can't still learn what it is to be transient. In a state of well supported homelessness, we are traveling from house to house, jumping from job to job, all the while meeting new peoploe, or redefining people previously known and seeing parts of town that are new to us. In response to this, we are increasing our journaling with hopes of compiling it narratively in the future. We are drawing, too. We can still embark on little trips, and meet people and visit places near by within our means that will develop my knowledge of environmental and social sustainability. There's a guy named Marty Kraft who does Cobb construction and a guy named Bo Miller that does veggie cars. Bad Seed isn't that far and neither is Dancing Rabbit for that matter.





...Moving a guy named Joe and his sister Donna with a couple of other guys named Fred and Pete. Fred used to weld and Pete is joining the army at nearly forty. Joe is moving in with Handyman and Donna, a security guard with back problems, is moving back to her parents' house. I met her father, Bob. I love his basement workshop and want to take pictures of it, I became acquainted with it when we moved donna's freezer filled with pork nto it. Joe is into music he makes on his computer.

Despite All My Rage...

My fancy rat, Grommit, is allergic to the lunch box that I've been keeping him and he chews himself out of it and it's really not a good place for a rat, so i am building him a cage. Here it is so far. Welding this cage is helping me brush up on my skills for the future construction of a model of my ramp.

New Addition.

From now on, this blog will feature daily a reccomended song to redevour to.

I'll dedicate the past few days with Voyage To Infinity by Bad Brains. I'm not a rastafarian, so in contradiction to the lyrics of the song, maybe Rasta may very well be a lie. However, I think it's bad ass that these dudes can tear up some skulls with their riffs like any other mess of miscreants despite the unlikeyhood presented by their being some black guys from jamaica who moved to D.C. in the eighties. Even subculture has too many white people in it sometimes, so thanks for the break, dudes.

TODAY'S song is courtesy of Kurt McRobert, who just sent this to me:

By the way, Kurt has done a good job with this Slayer inspired T-Shirt he convinced SVA to get printed, he saw some girl wearing it the other day:

Heading Changes

Because Redevour is only one part of my practice, i've changed my title image from this
one to something more descriptive of this blog's particular focus:

Location Profile 3

RURAL STUDIO

Rural Studio is a program out of Auburn University in Alabama, head-quatered in Newburn. The program was started in 1993 by Samuel Mockbee as a way to teach architecture students the importance of being responsible to the environment and inhabitants that their work affects. The program achieves this goal by using the projects of the students to provide housing for the impoverished and depressed communities of Hale, Perry, and Marengo counties, especially in the Mason's Bend
community.
Samuel Mockbee died in 2001 but the program still builds about five projects a year. I am interested in visiting this site as a means to see a good example of balancing aesthetic innovation with social and environmental responsibility. Rural Studio buildings almost always utilize local and recycled materials and are focused on a specific, need-based community. I wish to learn from researching this ongoing frame of projects how a need can be recognized and innovatively and successfully nurtured. It is the natural evolution of my quest for wrestling with bringing my many, layered concepts into realities. I am also interested in Mockbee's ability to develop Rural Studio in a way that didn't end the it's progress with his death.

HERE is a link to an account of an adventure looking for Rural Studio projects.
It is a good example of how I can go about seeing some of these works. What is interesting is that high architecture is often gawked at and traveled to, but many of these works are just for the people they are built for, private spaces for a very specific audience. When visiting these sites I must be just as respectflul and responsible to these communities as the 'Studio was in making them.

Let The Redevouring Begin

My first project for this semester is my Kompost Altar, a Black Metal themed compost receptacle. I made this is an attempt to prove that composting isn't just for hippies and that it's central purpose of mass decomposition is concurrent with the Metal ideology.


















This functional receptacle for storing food scraps in a classroom before they are composted also serves as an altar to Decomposition and Decay.





















The jar for the scraps is sandblasted minus a Black Metal styled logo that reads 'XkompostX.'
In addition, the visible accumulation of the human consumption of natural resources resonates well with many Metal themes.







I also printed my first batch of Redevour patches using a natural mulch/soil and wheat paste composite on dumpstered raw canvas. These were offered as gifts to my class, who will be the primary worshipers at my Altar. The piece will be properly initiated in the near future.

Location Profile 2

ARCOSANTI AND PAOLO SOLERI
Paulo Soleri is the pioneer of Arcology, the designing of architecture as human ecology. These arcologies are monumental cities that maintain human life while giving back much of the natural world to the earth to 'heal.'
He is known for developing techniques, materials, and building strategies that
meet attempt to meet the needs of the environment and of humans in the same form of architecture. His buildings aim to be symbiotic structures that flow into and out of a natural surrounding.

The construction of Arcosanti began in 1970. Arcosanti is Soleri's attempt to actualize his theory of arcology starting with grassroots strategies such as builder/resident simultaneity. Those who live in Arcosanti are those who are building it. Arcosanti is home to a ceramics studio and foundry that in addition to needed components for the construction of the city, fabricates fine crafts to raise money for further development. The most well known of these crafts are the Soleri Bells. Soleri's workshop have made much headway in the science of silt casting and have utilized this knowledge in the construction of Arcosanti. Arcosanti is 70 miles outside of Phoenix, Arizona. There's is a lot of research into building in the desert as a measure to preserve the woddlands and plains we still have.



This is a model of what Arcosanti could become. The smallest apse in the center is represents the size of the largest existing apse.

Location Profiles (part one)

RHIZOME COLLECTIVE
The Rhizome Collective of Austin, Texas operates a community center, a sustainability eduction grounds called the Rhizosphere, and the rehabilitation of a brownfield (retired landfill). The community center is home to a book project for the incarcerated
of Texas, the Austin Independent Media Center, a Bikes Across borders program, a puppet making workshop, A Food Not Bombs kitchen, a zine library http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifto name a few. They are also striving towards a free school. The Rhizosphere facilitates rainwater harvesting, closed loop waste processing (composting, vermi compost, constructed wetlands), urban food production, autonomous energy, bioremediation of contaminated soil, earth materials construction, and aquatic polyculture (edible water plants, algae cultures, green manure, fish, floating islands). The Rhizosphere and the brownfield are host to R.U.S.T. workshops, meaning Radical Urban Sustainability Training, throughout the year.
The Collective is a non-for-profit organization that is consensus run and strives toward cooperative social justice. The staff is well experienced and educated, check out the R.U.S.T. section on their site and scroll down to the teacher bios to learn more about them. They are publishing the R.U.S.T. Manual this summer, which also has a detailed section on their website.

Welcome!

The goals of this course are to travel to and research centers for environmental and social sustainability while developing models for to be executed this summer and next school year.