Final thesis for the art work.

It is displaying in the UICA during Art Prize.


The Final Thesis for the Art Work:

I burned and donated it all, the entirety of my art work. I burned it out of frustration, rage and sadness. I donated it out of guilt and resourcefulness.

Most of the world has lost the ability to understand pictures, expressions, forms, stories and words. We are no longer able to make connections between things, and through those connections, to find meanings. We have lost the ability to find meanings.

We have lost the hungry curiosities for meanings in the midst of the distractions that are bombarding our life, from the media to consumer culture. We have settled, content to be ignorant and clueless. We have traded what defines us as humans - curiosity and rationality - to exchange for the bliss of ignore. We have fallen.

So I burned and donated what I wished to show you, a summer long investigation and experiment on the theme, ”A Perfect Human in his Imperfect Habitat”, to beg for your curiosity. In our culture, where we exploit and take for granted all that we have gained and possess, what we have gained loses meaning as we lose interest in the connection we have to our possessions, the world, and each other.  Instead of asking you to find meaning through the numbing act of receiving, I hope that the painful act of losing will finally be able to make you care, make you curious, and make you search for the meanings.

About the red boxes...

Dear readers,

I am here to announce that the "True Grand Rapids Library Project" have been so very successful and I am so thankful for all your support and participation. I am also here to announce that the project is going to come to a close as the date of the Art Prize weeks are approaching. I need to gather the red boxes up and have them ready to be a part of the display which will be showing in the UICA (Urban Institution of Contemporary Art, the old building on Sheldon Av.) I am going to gather them all up on next Wednesday which is August 25. If you want to put few more of your thoughts in the books, please do so before it is all gathered back by me.

Thanks again for all the great entries that you all had contributed. It was a great success and it cannot had done so without each and every one of you.

Thank you so much.
and upon the gathering, I shall post all the entries on the blog so that you can read and learn it all.


Patrick

Sorry for the long period of no posting...

Dear Readers,

It had more than a week since I last posted anything... I been working hard and re-evaluating all aspect of the whole project from the thesis/ statement of the project to the lay out of the display... I been working hard to find the best direction for the project and I think I had come to a few directions that I am very excited to be marching on. I had been going over all my blog entries and all the notes that I had taken for this project; I been studying them one by one with great details. I cannot believe how much I had learned over this 2 and a half months of researching and experimenting. I think I am almost ready for the next step of the experiment and I cannot wait to share with you all.

I cannot wait to share it all, the whole presentation of this experiment with everyone of you during the art prize show time period in the UICA (Urban Institution of Contemporary Art). I cannot believe it is only 39 days until its opening day. There are still so much that I wish to experiment and present to you all; I got to work hard this few weeks. I am so excited to share with you all all the things that I had learned and came to experienced. I can not wait.

In the mean time, I shall continue to work hard.
I just want to drop in and say hi to you all and to show you all I am still alive and well.
I wish you all continue to follow this blog and the journey that I will be on.

Thanks for all your supports!!



Patrick

Plan had change...

Dear Readers,

The experiment had been stopped, I don't know yet will it be just be a small break and that it is finished and a new direction will be taken. There are a lot on my mind and I am trying to think through them and made the right decision. It had occur to me that the direction and the effectiveness of the project had not been what I expected and I am a bit disappointed at the result. So now I am in the process of reevaluating the project and trying to decide how can I improve it and what new direction I need to undertake.

Thanks for all your supports and interests.
All the best.



Patrick

Dear reader, The tool kit shall be with me in this journey!!!

Dear readers,

I had decided that I will be using my tool kit and the traveling manual on my journey. I was indeed worry about the disconnection between the people and I. I did not want to be seen as a performer and I did not want my neighbors to be my audiences. And that is why I decided to live in simplicity and through that hopefully I can connect my story to other's, for I believe that one's life story is the most compelling things for people. One's life story is the most powerful thing to compells people to change and to bring actions. But there is one thing that I forgot to think about... it is that the power of a life story is not resides in its power to act as an example to people's life, but it resides in the questions that it bring up within people. Those questions is the building block of people's believe and life. It is those questions that compells people to find the answer for themselves. It is those self discovered answers to life questions that people follow and live accordingly. A person can not give an idea to another person and expects that idea will last long, but an idea that is discovered by one's self, it will stay forever until another self discovered belief comes. So it is not my best interest to live a life that people can follow and copy, but instead to live in a way that bring questions to other's life so they can through this oppontunity and discover his or her own answer for life. So I had decdied to use my tool kit as it is surely a great way to bring out questions that I wish to bring out.

Thanks for your reading and support all these time.
Hope to see you all with my tool kit along my journey.

Please keep in touch!


Patrick

The journey will begin tomorrow, not with the tool kit... but just a backpack with 19 items.

Dear readers,

The journey will begin tomorrow, and the decision had been made... I am not going to be traveling and trying to live as a true human being with the tool kit that I had built and the "traveling manual" that I constructed, instead just a backpack with 19 items within.

You might be in shock and ask why, after all those works that I put in to that tool kits and the manual, I am not going to use any of it in my journey. I have been thinking long and hard and realized that the tool and the manual do not fit what I am trying to do. I am trying to live as a true human with the focus on sustainability, community, truth, creation, and the notion of progress... and the tool kits and the manual seem as they will become the wall between me and those 5 goals. it seem that if I travel with the tool kits and the manual, I would not able to fully experience and struggle with those 5 notion. It seem as I will be more a performer than anything else and the people around me cease to be just a neighbor of my community but become audiences. I don't want to be a performer and I don't want them to be my audiences, that is not what I had intended to do during my journey. I was meant to be a true human being living, breathing. So I had decided to go on the journey with the most minimal equipments. I want to live in such a way that is simple, so simple that I can truly focus, live with those 5 notions of true humanity that I want to explore. It is only when simplicity is achieve, that I can truly feel free and true to my human nature. I want to truly live in a way in which I only take what I need; The tool kit offers more than I need to survive in th city. I want to achieve the notion of only having what you need in order to discover what human truly need in life. i wonder to myself maybe after all,  the city around us can have no effect on us as long as we only take what we need and focus on what we need. And when our mind set is right, the environment around us might not able to affect us...  I don't know and I cannot wait to discover more along my journey.

More of the thoughts I have on the journey and the decision I had made about not using the tool kits will be continued to be in my personal journal. I hope to find a kind person everyday that will be willing to take my journal of the day and type it on this blog for me as a comment to this post. So all the news about me will be comments of this post... So please continue to follow this blog and this post.

I know that I might able to explain every thoughts and reasons well in this blog about the decision that I made about the tool kit, but it is not my intention to do so here. I just wanted to continue to inform you the process of self discovering and the progress of the experiment. Hope you understand.

Here is the what I am going to wear and the content of my backpacks:

My bandanna, to keep my crazy hair in control

2 T shirt

My journal and pen

My food

my blankets

Identification.

My rain shower wear.

So these is the thing that I will be living off of and the city itself. 

I cannot wait to start the journey! 

Please keep me in your thoughts as I will keep you in mine. 

Hope you keep coming back and check on this blog and the comments of this post as my daily journals might find their way here on the blog. 

Thanks for your supports all these time and I cannot tell you fully my appreciation for you all. 

Wish you all a blessed summer and I hope to see you all during my journey. 

Have a great day

Patrick

Here you are, my dear reader... the finished tool kit!!!

Dear readers,

It is finally finished! The tool kit! After 3 weeks worth of time and works, it is indeed finished and beautiful! It been an up and down journey but surely a fulfilling one. I am so happy with the result.

Here is some pictures:

The rain water collecting system

The water containers

I also been gathering all the tools that I will be needing for the experiment and continuing to work on my "Traveling Manual". There is this great concern that I have and it might lead to a great change in my project... But it is such a hard issue that I been debating within myself for a couple of weeks now... I don't know the what will come of it as outcome... so I won't tell you anything now until I had make a decision over it. Hopefully tonight there will be a decision made. 

Thanks for reading again. 

I am so very excited about the the project and I cannot wait to get out into the city! 

Hope all is well with you all! 

Patrick

The rain cover is finally done and ready!!! It was a great day in the studio!

Dear readers,

Wow, what a day! It was a long day but that it gone by in such a fast speed. I worked mainly on the rain cover and the rain water collector and they both finally finished. There were definitely times of today that was so very frustrated as I trying to get them right. But by the end of the day when I pour some water on the rain water collector, watching it drip and move to where I wish them to go, it was a joy, even though not all water was contained within the system and some did spilled and leaked everywhere... but the joy to see the progress that I made was priceless.

I also got done with other little small details here and there of the tool kit. Also, since probably the first day I set feet in my studio, I finally clean it for the first time. To be honest, it really was not that terribly dirty, but I did surely found a lot of useful trash laying around.

Here is some pictures of the improvements of the tool kit:

Today is actually the last day before the last week of preparation starts. I am so excited and a bit nervous. I cannot wait. Preparation had been in control and on time so far; I am so grateful for that.

Thanks for your reading again. 

I hope all is well with you all. 

Patrick

A little bump on the journey...

Dear readers,

Today was not a very productive day which is a bit troubling to me as I only have about 9 days to go until my experiment starts. The rain cover and the rain water collector that I had designed had proved to be not strong enough for a rain storm. I realized half way through the building of it that I have forgotten to account for the wind factor in a storm. The structures that I had built this morning and early afternoon is not strong enough to withstand the winds in a median rain storm. I was a bit discouraged and a bit worry since times is very valuable these day as the starting date is not far ahead.

I had redesigned the rain water collector and the rain cover and I am ready to build the structure tomorrow. Hopefully, I will be able to finish the whole rain cover and water collector tomorrow. If not, I will be a day late in my schedule.

The "Traveling Manual" been coming along very well with many of its components researched and ready. I am started to now putting things together, in order and assemble them all together in a book.

Here is some pictures of the fail attempts of the rain cover structure:

That is the structure that I discovered as not workable, the one on top of the tool kit.

 

Thanks for you reading. 

All the best

Patrick

The basic structure of the rain top/ rain water collector has been built and mounded!!!

Dear reader,

In the last 2 days, I been working mostly on the "Traveling manual" and it been going very well. The "Travel manual" is a book that I am preparing for the journey that I am going to undertake, the experiment. It is not really a manual in the sense that it tell me what to do every day of those 4 weeks but more like a hand book/ guide/ informational notebook that has all my researches and notes that I had gathered in the last 2 months in preparation for the experiment. It is going well and there are so many information all pack in that book. I cannot wait to use it on the street and share it with all of you!!!

Also whenever my good friend, Fernando, who is a great metal sculptor, is free, I will head to the studio and ask him to help me to weld the frame work for the rain water collector on top of my tool kit. But today he did not came and I thought to myself, why don't I just try it myself so I did. It turned out quite well, the joint is a bit messy but it is indeed jointed tightly, the joints. I was quite proud of myself when it was all finished!!! It was a lot of fun and surely an adventure.

A joint that my friend, Fernando welded, beautiful!

Also welded by Fernando!

The finished and mounded framework.

Thanks for your reading and supports again. 

10 more days until the day I leave for the city!!!

Patrick