Mysteriamaker

Hilarious and Disturbing

2009-11-21T10:02:00.002-06:00

This is bizarre. This is hilarious. This is tender and helpful and threatening all at the same time. This is Jawbone Radley. This is my brother.

MAKE Mystery Noise Box

2008-04-27T11:44:00.000-06:00

Noise Box from Collin Cunningham on Vimeo.

Starting a New Business

2008-04-08T13:45:00.000-06:00

Grace and I are starting a new company! Green Dream Group, a consulting firm connecting homeowners in the Chicago area with products and contractors that will make home a more energy-efficient, eco-friendly place. We're very excited to launch in September.

The Non-Christian's Collaboration in the Cosmic Struggle Against the Devil

2007-09-09T10:59:00.000-06:00

Theosophy, Pierre Abelard, and Koreshanity!
Immortality! Love! And Despair!
If you didn't grow up growing to church, and sometimes if you did, you have a hard time feeling comfortable in one. The coolest woman in the world, whom I married, is an Episcopalian who's made me feel right at home with Christians, and whereas my struggle had been to distance myself from what I viewed as superstitious brainwashing, I now can let down my defenses and see Biblical truth and beauty.

Scriptural ideas often have to be modified to fit my world-view before I can agree with some of the premises, however. One thing I've always had a hard time with is the character of Satan. Most scientific-minded people have a hard time believing there's an evil entity trying to torture you.
But I realized recently that if you think of the Devil as just negative energy, as fear which leads to anger, spite, etc., then I can agree that the way that energy spreads in a community is exactly like a lifeform. It can reproduce itself and even self-perpetuate within one person, and it does so faster and more insidiously than happy friendliness. In this way, if we consciously block the tendency to pay it forward, we are essentially fighting against the Devil.

Fit and Freaky Onscreen and Ingame

2007-05-13T16:48:00.000-06:00

All this girl wants is to be a prostitute and take drugs, and instead she gets lectured about nutrition and fitness. You can just see her dreams sink into the murk. ("Ich betäube mich" by Deichkind featuring Sarah Walker)

If you'd like to have your own meaningless noisy fitness experience, play a million simple video games at www.addictinggames.com. Be your own personal trainer and monitor your timewasting with rigor.

Simple Pleasures #2

2007-05-06T14:50:00.000-06:00

The disorders are all around us, and they are us. Look at these symptoms of two diagnosed mental wrongnesses, and ask yourself why it sounds so right. BECAUSE THIS IS YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY. THIS IS ME. THIS IS YOU.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder:
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
(2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
(3) believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
(4) requires excessive admiration
(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

Histrionic Personality Disorder:
A pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
(1) is uncomfortable in situations in which he or she is not the center of attention
(2) interaction with others is often characterized by inappropriate sexually seductive or provocative behavior
(3) displays rapidly shifting and shallow expression of emotions
(4) consistently uses physical appearance to draw attention to self
(5) has a style of speech that is excessively impressionistic and lacking in detail
(6) shows self-dramatization, theatricality, and exaggerated expression of emotion
(7) is suggestible, i.e., easily influenced by others or circumstances
(8) considers relationships to be more intimate than they actually are

Don't fret! Tao demonstrates that all things are Cyclical, Progressive, and Exponential.
http://www.cfcl.com/ching/
We will all be better tomorrow. Or at least different.

Artifacts #2: This Becomes That

2007-05-06T05:48:00.000-06:00

At the band's first rehearsal in February 2007, Matt Cordier, now an indispensable partner, announced he'd bought a drumset especially for the Mysteriam project. He'd decided it would be very Mysteriam to put lights inside the drums. They make equipment for this, but it's all very manufactured, shiny, symmetrical; the Mysteriam aesthetic requires a certain amount of encrusted organic messiness.

We realized we needed to meet an electronics designer with a passion for pushing limits. Enter Charles J. Aldous, practically the next day, with a vision and the skills to pull off an efficient installation of some custom pieces of delicate equipment inside our transparent acrylic drumset, where it will be rattled and jogged mercilessly during performance. They are elegant and tough as nails, and they worked brilliantly the first go round!

The LEDs are from Hong Kong, and they are huge- like the last joint of your pinky finger. The circuitry they run through, magically, started interacting with itself, against the plans of any of us. Now we have a new toy to collaborate with.

Marketplace Madness

2007-04-30T19:33:00.000-06:00

Placing an order for takeout, clothing, vacation packages, and robots over the internet is passe. Welcome to the post-modern market, where individuals pay money for things no one would think of actually using.

This person wants to exchange your green for an empty box that smells like candy, and she's very very excited about it.

Or, for $10,000 you could buy this person's last name. The ultimate display of wealth is in spending on impracticality, the useless expenditures of a culture that is simply crazy about wonderfulness and singularity.

: Simple Pleasures :

2007-03-27T18:49:00.000-06:00

Kleptomania, Pyromania, Trichotillomania, etc. the goal is not to have, to earn, or to vandalize. It is a more direct pursuit of the one thing that compels you. A focus on action, not reward.

The individual feels an increased sense of tension before committing the act. For some, the tension does not necessarily precede the act as much as it is associated with attempts to resist the urge.

www.psychcentral.com/disorders/

Miracle of Miracles

2007-01-30T21:15:00.000-06:00

Those looking for what they love without understanding will find it in this video.

You may enjoy or choose to skip the introductory first five minutes, which will bring you slowly down from a new-age normalcy to where you need to be for the rest of the program, which is a berserk wilderness of an elderly man's hypnotic mannerisms.

We cannot stop watching.

If this was all there was, the world would be as mysterious as could be.

ThaiPost2: Where Are You Going?

2007-01-17T08:19:00.000-06:00

One of the first cautions we received in Thailand was not to stop and ask for directions, because the people are so polite they will pretend they know where you're headed, even if they have no idea. Do not ask directions from strangers. A simple rule. Except that the cities are developing so fast that roads are magically created and walled off all the time, as you can see at GoogleMaps. The structure of the system changes so often that you must regularly stop and ask for directions.

You get used to perfection in design when you live in Chicago. Clean lines, alleys behind every street, and a grid system that tells you where you are if you have an address. The Mysteriam body of work is generated with the assistance of rules and guidelines which make creativity thrive (we may think firm rules are necessary, but it turns out there are wildly different ways to utilize them.)

Cultures and languages here morph from mountain to mountain. There is no standardization as an American would know it. There is, of course, a tradition of alienness and unbalance in art, as a stay in HOTEL will demonstrate perfectly.

ThaiPost1: Who Are You?

2007-01-14T21:44:00.000-06:00

Chiang Mai and the outlying mountain villages have become the fuel and backdrop for the stories we've been told; it makes a person realize that although there are universal truths, there are ways to experience them that we would never have imagined. These people's lives are not anything like ours. Thank you, thank you to our hosts and interpreters, the Sanborns, who have allowed us to hear the fringest of foreign thoughts and histories, and realize how completely our American worldview is imperfect.

On the shuttle bus, there was a man from Cambodia who became a commercial pilot, a proud father of 2, happily married and very giggly when asked about his wife, though when he was 10, of course, his parents and 4 brothers and sisters were all executed by the Khmer Rouge. In the tiny mountain village of Musikee, the chief authority is a soldier named Haan, married seven times, no children, once severed his own finger to accompany a family-less fallen friend into the afterlife, and is now considering becoming a monk. You, too, can interact with your body parts and see what we can live without!

Every house has a spirit house beside it, a dollhouse they make very cozy and fill with food to keep the evil spirits from living in their house with them. There are spiky ornaments along the rooftops, as well, to keep them away.

You take your shoes off. You bow and smile. You do not ask for chop sticks- if you need them, you will be given them. You don't touch another person's head, laugh hysterically, get upset, or cry, in public. How many people have seen mysterious and otherworldly things in their lives? (a majority raise their hands) We are interacting, sharing, watching, and listening, and collecting a mountain of material that will assemble itself when the time comes.

On the Eve of International Collaboration

2007-01-06T12:10:00.000-06:00

We are flying to Thailand tomorrow. In the mountains around Chiang Mai, the DV camera and sound recorder will collect two and a half week's worth of material to be assimilated into the Mysteriam body of work. There is no clear indication of what will happen, although we will be relatively safe, guided by family of ours that have been Christian missionaries there for thirty years.

The goal is to interact with orphans and educators in remote villages. We're taking singing, clapping, theatre games, and recording devices with us to facilitate the moments of uncomprehending fascination (of which I hope they will experience as many as I expect we will), and there will be artwork generated from the results this spring.

To learn more about how far we can go in engaging such a foreign community, we visit the Interactive Institute.

To prepare for the unpredictability of our own reactions in an exotic culture, we take the Invisible Bias Tests, and you should too.

To practice the acceptance of absurdity, we use the Translator from English to another language, then back again, and what we have is perverse, just like we will be. Good to be prepared to look ridiculous for awhile.

Make cartoons and robot lingo

2006-12-12T22:45:00.000-06:00

These are the coolest and simplest internet toys we've found lately. One is for animated-movie making, the other is a simulated voice that will tell you whatever you want to hear.

MovieMaker is a simple, speedy way to make something hilarious or profound out of basic cartoon settings, characters, and scenarios. Write your own dialogue, add music, and make animated movies out of one scene, or as many as you like. From SubmarineChannel.com, which offers a wealth of interactive work such as this.

Text-To-Speech (TTS): AT&T Labs has presented the online public with speech simulations a la Stephen Hawking, and although the voices here are more advanced and less Swedish-sounding (they even have English, Indian, or French accents and can translate into other languages), they retain a stilted roboticness that can be so, so amusing and pregnant with potential.

Collaborating: long-distance or with the deceased

2006-12-10T23:07:00.000-06:00

One hurtle that must be faced early in making Mysteriam is trust in the confluence of separate events. The idea that things that happen at different times or in different places can be of a piece, that if we refrain from forcing and monitoring, events will coincide of their own accord. One way to demonstrate this is collaborating long-distance, which we've done in past years with dance companies in Colorado and Mexico.

Generating one media to be presented alongside another media that you have only had fragmented glimpses of is certainly a challenge, and a risk, but it seems that if the two disparate streams are made from the same seed ideas, and in the same spirit, they always marry beautifully when put together.

A more exotic option is to work with someone who died before you were born. GlassMask Nos. 1-5 (see No.2 below) is a series of short video artworks that traces the rise and fall of a tiny metal action figure with a marble head, through the rearrangement of a lecture of the Rev. James A. Pike, Episcopal Bishop of California until 1966. Before I began researching his fascinating life, I had used his voice in the music for No.1, which was made in 2002, and is taken from his introduction of Vince Guaraldi at Grace Cathedral in 1965. A minister friend of ours related that Pike had died wandering the desert outside Jerusalem, and had led a famously influential and perverse life prior to that; I was hooked, and began reading his biography.

The only other speech to be found on the Web is here, "Today's Crisis in Religion," a speech at Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at UC Santa Barbara, Nov. 7, 1966. I proceeded to select the strangest parts of his lecture, transcribe them, rearrange them into a script, and put the recordings in their new order, which told a very weird story of the excitement and disillusionment of a philosopher. I did not know this was going to be the story before Pike revealed it, honestly. It was there, perfectly clear in the phrases of his 40-minute lecture. What makes this possible, I think, is that whenever we say anything, we give ourselves away-- Pike himself had followed this exact path of rise and fall in his life, and by the time he composed and delivered this speech, his son had committed suicide and Pike had begun holding seances to reach him, and the Rev. died in the desert, lost and overheated, three years later.

We listen for what is being murmured at us by the universe, we look at the materials at hand, and trust that everything we need in order to play and make art is already there. To find out more about Pike, go here.
Watch the result of this collaborative process in GlassMask No.2, below.

Artifacts #1

2006-11-14T18:43:00.000-06:00

Everything can be played with. That is Mysteriam.
These are MS Excel spreadsheets.
Please try at home.

Webspace playgrounds #1

2006-11-13T11:51:00.001-06:00

No practical application allowed at these addresses. Each one has interactive programming that is in turns beautiful and primitive, each more one than the other. There is more to these entertainments than I can explain here, go and play for yourself.

POTATOLAND
Generate music and images with lines and colors that have a mind of their own, and break corporate sites into tiny pieces at www.potatoland.org

NORM
Pure art in digital form, simple shapes, and an ingenious navigation system of multiple windows at www.norm.to

SODAPLAY
Construct rolling, jumping, living scaffolding at www.sodaplay.com

TYPORGANISM
Program music with a step sequencer and set it to fireworks, upload images to convert to ASCII code, explore the weight and three-dimensionality of fonts, and play in general with language and programming at www.typorganism.com

RANDOMWEBSITE
Find sites you'd never know about, and maybe wouldn't visit on purpose (family-friendly though it is), through www. randomwebsite.com