User:Bruce mclachlan

bio
Bruce is an urban tumbleweed that sprouted in Hornchurch, Essex, England, and has rolled comprehensively through London, San Francisco, and Seattle. He’s been a Royal Marine Cadet, has worked in demolition and kidney dialysis, for the Ministry of Defence, McDonalds, Harvey Nichols, Texaco Oil, Cupmark Meats, Fords, and Selfridges on Oxford Street. He acquired a BTEC National Diploma (Associate degree) in Display Design from Havering Technical College UK which he put to use for ADIG studios and as an assistant for Lloyd Hryciw Photography (the guy who did the Visa dove). On the trumpet he achieved grade 3 and 4, the former with merit, and played in several orchestras including one for the YMCA. He held membership in the Killerwhales Swimming Club and competed in a oodles of competitions (even winning a few). He founded several guilds and organizations in the live role-play organization Labyrinthe where he also worked in their armory making replica fantasy weapons and equipment as well as freelance manufacture. He was a volunteer for the Evergreen Trustand assisted in their fundraising efforts for environmental preservation and the alleviation of poverty in Africa.

Extensively published both as a writer and an artist under various pseudonyms he may well be a figment of his own imagination.

assignments
1: Art Walk

- What was the least ‘public’ piece of art you saw today, and why?

Tom Wesselman’s Seattle Tulip. I think because I’ve walked that street so often, and passed it so many times, just going somewhere, that to my eye it’s like any other lamp post or road sign or fountain. So when I was actually required to view it, for some reason I just couldn’t notice a humungous metal flower dominating a street corner.

- Did you see anything you would not define as art? Why?

The Garden of Remembrance. I’m not convinced that art should serve an actual physical purpose, hence why old clock towers, bridges, and other intricately and thoughtfully planned and executed items, while historical and impressive are not really quantifiable as art. The garden, while excellently evocative, thought provoking and masterfully presented, serves as potent reminder that these are not just names on a roster but people who died, who had families, who had dreams, hopes, and things they wanted other than to die in battle in a land they probably hadn’t heard of until they were sent there. It stirs emotion as art should, but it serves a material purpose as a focus for grief, like a gravestone, hence why I personally would disqualify it or at least question its status as art.

- What was something interesting you saw that was not officially on the tour?

I went into the antique store on the waterfront for the first time and marveled at many a long lost piece and item.

“Brewing Storm, pacific coast, stand of firs, Cumberland”, a photo by Glenn J Rudolph etched into granite.

The climbing/falling men on the garage at Jefferson and 6th.

The frieze on the Pacific Northwest Title Company, 215 Columbia street.

The metal fountain outside the ferry terminal.

The big orange metal thing on the corner of Yres and South Washington Street.

Some nice Susanne Kelly woodcuts in the windows of the unfortunately closed Gallery 110.

(I was also amazed that just by holding a piece of paper and looking from it, to the surrounding area, you seemingly emit the 'I have spare cash, booze, and fags' mating cry for every bum, slob, junkie, and drunk within ten blocks.)

midterm
3. Self Portrait.

 Born in 1945 in Washington, D.C. His father was a print maker and the Director of Exhibitions at the Library of Congress for 30 years. His mother was a pianist and photo researcher. Sanborn grew up in Alexandria, Virginia He has a Bachelors in paleontology, fine arts, and social anthropology and a Masters in sculpture

4. Trinity

 During a trip to White Sands, Sanborn encountered a booklet entitled ‘the Trinity Experiments’ which led to a five year investigation into the Manhattan Project. He found numerous inspirational photographs, and was awed by the paradox where the most devastating scientific invention in human history looked as though it was being cobbled together in his grandfathers basement.  State of the art destructive devices were held together with cheap fasteners, secured with duct tape, thrown together like sculptures rather than technology.  Finally, he visited the laboratories and much to his surprise found that everything was for sale to any wishing to buy it.

5. Critical Assembly  Sanborns early work took the material that was used to step into the atomic age and made an artistic re-interpretation of the Trinity lab. The only non-authentic item is the precise replica of the disassembled physics package or inner core. 

6. More

 This led to further works which explored his fascination with scientific material. As artist/engineer he became a master arranger of found objects from a pivotal moment in history.

7. Kryptos

In the late eighties, Sanborn parked an antidote to hubris right outside the CIA headquarters in Langley. Sanborn chided the CIA for failing to break the code, and refused to hand over his secret until it was demanded by the Director himself. Only a section was handed over, but to this day the CIA still hasn’t broken the code. 

8. More Code

This led to several other public works of a similar style. Again, despite exhaustive attempts, no one has cracked the Cyrillic code Sanborn created for this work at the University of North Carolina.  

9. India Run Park

 The cylinder in India Run Park is perforated with text from the Iroquois Book of the Great Law and at night projects over the entire site. The park was also seeded with 10,000 arrowheads provided by Sanborn and these will be recoverable by visitors for many years 

10. Autoradiographs

Inspired by Marie Curie’s first autoradiographs, he then began to work with Uranium as his medium. These images are created when he departed from the usual artist’s tools and employed beta and gamma radiation bombardment.  

11. Radium Clock

At 5:30 am when the bomb exploded, July 16, 1945, it lit up the sky as though it were day. Awoken by the blast, New Mexico looked to their clocks and wondered what happened. The fact that these clocks glowed with the same radioactivity that had dispelled the night, resulted in Sanborn working with a substance that is lethal for up to 15,000 years and creating a series of radium clock pieces out of it. The material was gathered by wandering Mexican flea markets with a Geiger counter. 

12. Dormant Core and Thunder

He then became interested the invisible forces of nature, which led to works such as these, dealing with the raw power exhibited in something as swift as a lightning strike, or as lengthy as the rise of a mountain.  

13. Code room listening post

Evoking the Cold War mentality, half of the code deals with CIA documents, the other half KGB. Like medusa’s gaze, when people stare at these works they are petrified as they try to decipher what they are reading, in fact, ‘medusa’ is the one word that has thus far been decoded both on these works, and on Kryptos.  

14. Oregon

Sanborn then returned to the public space with greater scale, working with projections such as this two mile wide piece in Oregon. 

15. Ireland

As part of a residency with the Sirius Project, he also travelled to Ireland to work on the famous cliffs of Kilkee County Clare. 

16. Nevada

And to avoid light pollution from settlement or car, he did several pieces deep in the Utah desert. These final pieces are perhaps the most evocative of Sanborns journey because they warp and deform the landscape but unlike the atomic blasts that first intrigued him, they do not leave a single trace. 

17. End

Sanborn continues creating requiems for machines and monuments to obsolete tradecraft such as atomic weaponry and cold war cryptography. As he himself states “The tradecraft continues, the machines continue, the science continues, and it continues to get us into trouble”.     

final
Brandalism  

Idea 1: Begging for Business

Inspired by this picture, to use a skeleton and a suit, a starbucks cup, and a sign, and set this up outside Starbucks or another location, pose as tramps, and loiter across the street taking pictures as people walk past and enter the building.

Idea 2: Skin Deep

Add these over trash can signs

Idea 3: Trashing

Over this, slap this

Idea 4: Equations for Joy

Have these printed as stickers and add them around town

Idea 5: Idea Pay Attention

This sticker was employed in San Francisco by Stevie Hryciw (one of the orchestrators of the Dolores park gathering video)     

Idea 6: Overlord

We all bitch and moan and cuss the corporate machine, but how many of us will toss those vaulted principles aside when we see how many zeros are being offered on a salary, how cool the health insurance is, with dental, and the other perks that might be thrown at us to make us give up our soul?

Love your corporate overlord. Give the guy a hug as he eats you alive.



Posters put up, and removed almost instantly, but not binned. The ebay thing of ‘you never know what’s gonna be worth hundreds of dollars on ebay’? These things seem trivial, but what if they’re from someone famous, or someone becomes famous from them? I think everyones items were taken on the hope that they’ll be worth something.      

reflective assessment
Week 1

It’s strange how different one can be perceived so differently just through the addition of a piece of paper and by looking around. What would ordinarily be a normal pedestrian, a denizen of Seattle is turned into a bumbling tourist just because they don’t look like they know where they are. Confidence. It’s a powerful currency. Just by looking like you know what’s going on, by moving with determination in an unwavering path, people seem to know not to trifle with you. Pause, look bewildered, show doubt and uncertainty, and those who would exploit and make use of it flock to you like vultures over a recent kill.

Week 2

The vehemence with which Christo addresses his art is both inspirational and well, kind of unnerving, it made me consider being more passionate about my own work, but to keep an eye on the gauge lest it wander into the red. One of the most interesting aspects of the umbrellas project was to see the contrast between the two cultures. Not just the usual superficialities, but the more unexpected facets. When the Japanese talked of only being able to eat hamburgers should they be in America was expected, but the steak and oranges comment was not so easily anticipated. Where the woman was just too intimidated to even say hello, because Christo was clearly so important, this could not have been a more radical contrast to the fans who mob stars in the States.

It was strange that the same number of umbrellas, in the same sort of valleys, on two different countries, claimed the same number of lives each.

I was also miffed that we will cover Banksey next week because, being a fan, I picked up ‘Wall and Piece’ over the break and when the mid term was brought up, I instantly thought of him. I enjoy his ‘rats’ period, and his brandalism, and his work on the illegal wall in Palestine shows true determination, commitment, and flare. My interest in him was also rekindled when I ran into an entire tunnel of Banksey or Banksey-esque art when I visited home during the summer break.

Pictures of the art:

Week 3

Ah the wonders of YouTube. The most potent weapon of free speech ever conceived. That which would be oppressed is everywhere – unstoppable and magnificent.

YouTube is like a mine. You dig relentlessly through piles and piles of dull rocks and stone, there’s occasional stinking methane pockets or other noxious fluids and deposits, but then there’s the coal that makes you smirk or intrigues, providing fuel for thought, and then there are the gems that dazzle and make you want to show them off to everyone you know.

Never underestimate the power of a viral video. Something you haven’t seen since you were a child, something precious, something trivial to others is almost certainly on YouTube, preserved for all time. To quote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle “The small things are infinitely the most important”.

Looking at the day, I see that YouTube reminds me that small victories in your life are not just extinguished, they live on, they spread, others tell the tale, they pass it on. The past lives, and like with youtube, we can visualize it, and remind ourselves that our lives may be fleeting and finite, but the smallest deed can leave a legacy we would never have even considered.

Week 4

- Thoth

My reflective? -- Envisage your future and it will be so. I watched a man create his own world and then act as a sort of emissary/minstrel, bringing the sung tales of that land to ours, in the language of those people.

I have found myself wincing at words of intolerance towards other countries because they are not as ‘enlightened’ as America. “They don’t let women drive”. “They don’t allow free democracy”. “They persecute and oppress”. Now I know why I cringe.

Upon seeing what was levied against Thoth, and a man and a woman whose only crime was to fall in love and be of different skin color makes me furious, more so because this was not some old man retelling this sorry chapter in U.S history on grainy black and white film or on parchment rather these were home movies -- this was less than half a century ago.

No matter how well you are doing, or how far you think you’ve come, never become complacent because in the end, all your ‘advances’ are ant tracks in the dirt.

Don’t judge other cultures because they don’t have the same ‘freedoms’ or ‘values’ as you do because those freedoms you’re so proud of came about in the last few nanoseconds of human existence, before that, this land was just as crap to people as those authorities it would condemn.

I’m going to try and remember that humanity is on a journey and all of the crowd is in motion. Some dawdle, some stomp forward, some run, some fall. Just because one member of the Earth crowd had this neat idea while they were beating the shit out of someone because they had different skin, different genitalia, different beliefs, and suddenly realized that perhaps that’s not nice, don’t then call everyone else in the crowd a violent thug and an ignorant bastard when your knuckles are still bruised and bleeding.

- Style Wars

One mans art is anothers god awful visual pox.

From this week I assimilated this -- Never underestimate the power of herd mentality. Tell people trains are supposed to be white and shiny, make it so for a few decades, and anyone who says different, or tries to do different is scum to be reviled, and mobs will form to undo what they have wrought.

Trouble is, those dissenting voices, lashing out, creating at 2.a.m left a mark as indelible as any architectural marvel. Who can picture NY without the graf covered trains? Even though they lost, even though the artists are gone, they burned their tags into our minds eye and we can’t picture the Big Apple without them.

The victory of the authorities was hollow.

Imagination. Creativity. Energy. Passion.

They win every time.

Week 5

There is a reason so many stories evolve from techno fear, it’s because we are becoming increasingly reliant on something that is utterly unpredictable and fails without warning or reason.

From this class I learned to work on the premise that anything involving technology will screw up, and the more high tech it is, the more screwed up it can get. Power point may seem simple and even banal, but well, it’s near certain to work.

Simple slides may not have the impact or glitz of a streaming video or swanky graphic effect, but when the power point works and the ‘cool’ thing is a blank screen? I don’t think ‘honest, it was REALLY cool, I swear it!’ will work on client or fellow professional.

If I have any media to show, I now know to download in advance, onto a thumbdrive, and possibly with a CD as a backup incase that goes wrong somehow (dies, explodes, become self aware and wipes out the human race with thumb-inators).

My self assessment?

“Hope for the Best. Prepare for the Worst”

Week 6

I found the David Lynch cow. 

Watched a bunch of clips that were quite entertaining and generally worth forwarding to mates, but other than that, not much to reflect on, except that I still don’t know why people are afraid of clowns. Bugs, the dark, heights, I can understand, but clowns? Is it the makeup, or that they’re always cheery?

Although I did find this…

“Some theorize that clown phobia is caused by a negative childhood experience with a clown. This is understandable when you think of clowns from a child's point of view. A clown's appearance is extremely unfamiliar - even freakish - to a child, and most kids would be apprehensive based on that fact alone. Add to that the strange behavior of clowns, and you begin to get a clearer picture of why kids shy away from clowns. It's purely the oddness of it all.

In a recent study reported by the BBC in London, 250 hospitalized children were asked how they felt about clowns. Virtually every single one of those kids said they didn't like clowns. That may not officially qualify as a clown phobia, but it sure doesn't say much about clowns bringing a smile to the face of a sad or sick little kid.” I guess I find the attempts to make clowns scary just laughable - ‘It’ (with a silent ‘sh’ at the start) and ‘Insane Clown Posse’, and so forth.

Week 7

Les Demoiselles D’Avignon: The work of art that while a disaster, is the moment when something new is starting.

William S. Burroughs's: Just because it didn’t work right first time, doesn’t mean you’re not heading towards something excellent, and one is just as likely to find beauty in an exquisite mistake as a purposeful endeavor.

Week 8

Again, interesting stuff, especially the Cage material which showed real courage and commitment to art. I guess the major reflective moment here is to stay locked onto what you want to do, but then again, anything truly important has to make money here in the US. What could have been a new Bauhaus was shut down because it didn’t make enough dosh.

I was also inspired by the belief that one needs to be able to explain ones art articulately in order to qualify for the title. The comparison of Ross in ‘friends’ and his ‘music’ compared to Cage all comes down to the fact that Cage was smart, urbane, and could explain and entice ‘I prefer laughter to tears’.

I have been told many times that 90% of my chosen field is sales, and after today I feel more dedicated to being able to explain effectively what the purpose of an endeavor is.

As to the commons shrinking due to copyright, I’m glad. For too long sham wannabes and other detriments to the art field have been simply trying to cause offence and prompt outrage in order to acquire noterity and thus an ‘artist’ label.

As Orson Welles said “A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.” Like plastic punk and trust fund gutter punk, too many ‘artists’ of recent times have been far too comfortable in the spotlight, and indeed, the spotlight is all they are after, their feeble ‘art’ is just the means to claw their way into it without any work or effort or insight or goal.

I’d like to see some real hardship for the art community, so that only those with the genuine drive, the passion, the need to make art will endure the duress. Adversity does not build character, it reveals it. If artists had to justify their art, had to suffer for it, then maybe it’d be less banal.

"The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists.. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little." - Banksey, 'adbusters' magazine

Oh yeah, and God I hate Harry Potter. If I have to have another fucking English housewife deem to dictate what occurs in a boys brain and have it be swallowed hook line and sinker by every mother in the cosmos I'm going to jam pencils, point first, up each nose and headbutt the table.

I lived through this nightmare of every speck of minutae in my life being compared to a fictitious character written by a mum because of Adrain Mole. I pity the poor saps who'll have to live through it on an even more massive scale.

Week 9

Self assessment? Health, love, and wealth. To be truly appreciated, need to be interrupted.

Health is most definitely appreciated now.

I haven’t been this ill in years and this is the first time I’ve missed class since starting at AiS a year and a half ago. There’s something so unsettling about coughing up blood because it begs the question, is it just me employing too much effort to get this crap out of lungs so I can breath and tore something, or have I just ruptured something in a serious way?

Still it was interesting to contemplate what color would emerge during a debilitating hacking episode – yellow, green, grey, or red.

The fever and having lost my voice also factored into not attending, as did the field trip, because wandering around in the cold would just about finish me off.

As to serious self assessment, this was the first time I’ve relaxed, and by that, I mean sat on my arse and did nothing for days straight. Normally there’s tutorials, books to read, things to do, stuff to practice, sort out, prepare, organize, but being this ill, I literally couldn’t do anything.

It was pretty freaky

I need to try and just do this without the burden of pestilence eating me from within. Try and focus on not focusing (sounds very Bruce Lee), just kick back, not stress about exams, finals, projects, doing this, doing that, just collapse and chill for an hour or two.

Week 10

My assessment is that I really need to focus on getting citizenship. It’s frustrating to see things that I took for granted making me shudder. Something as simple as a prank, some silly indulgence, is beyond me because of the INS. Fear of having my green card revoked in the xenophobic atmosphere that has prevailed since 9/11.

The busking, the posters, the toilet paper, I’ve seen people deported for less and while I enjoy this class, I’m not willing to risk my residency for it. Free speech doesn't apply to me, only citizens. According to the consitution, I'm not even eligible for due process. The bit about not being deprived of life, liberty or property? Citizens only I'm afraid.

Granted the odds may well be extremely small, but when someone offers you a deck of cards and says “Pick four cards and I’ll give you a buck. But if you pick four aces, I’m going to shoot you right in the face”, the wise action is to just not play.

I had some ideas, but can’t risk them, or risk hanging around to gauge public reaction in case some spanker get’s miffed over nothing or I get spotted (won’t need a very large lineup to ferret me out).

As a citizen I can just face the fine or community service and such for protesting, for messing around, for small acts of disobedience, fun, and malice. Until then I'll have to continue cringing.

Week 11

The presentation went well. Assessment wise I think I did okay. Images of people reacting to the works might have helped, but not when the result was so lacklustre, so perhaps it worked better without them.

What sums up this class for me? I think these sayings have become close to my heart and my final self assessment is that these have become important from what I've seen here.

"Procrastination is no substitute for preparation."

"Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one."

"Hope for the Best. Prepare for the worst."

"Art is a lie which makes us realize the truth."

"Speak your mind even if your voice shakes"