Came home to London for the weekend to see my pretty girl. The girl doesn’t scare me (*cough* alright, maybe sometimes she can), the city did though!

I went to her classes with her on Monday, I was really interested in seeing where she went everyday, and also seeing what she does. I like her, so I want to see little bits of her life.
I respect her for being able to consume and memorize such shear volumes of information. It’s quite different

From what I do. The thing that scared me though were the white people! They were everywhere! UWO scares me. Even those not white, dressed white. Everyone in gap (or old navy) quite literally. After being in a culturally diverse city like Toronto it was a shock, it was odd (VERY) to look at, and I also felt less important. I was just one of them, part of the mass. I was white, V was White, we were all white. Except I was dressed in my Toronto fashion as V had fun pointing out. She didn’t fit in either in her black leather jacket, thank god.
It’s an odd thing to think of, but I’m a visual person, and the 2 places are just SO freaking different. Even the buildings match at UWO, all just borning grey. There’s no diversity anywhere. (sorry for insulting your school… ya.. I’m a prick).

The rest of the weekend was spent with Homework, snuggling and talking. We watched Gattaca. Both of us have apparently been wanting to see it. And it deals with some of the issues in my thesis, so I was all for it. We also watched the Craft and shut it off near the end because we both hate the ending.

Also got more inspiration for thesis, and got most of the rough draft of my interim Report completed ahead of time.

Got my circuit schematics done for my media installation piece involving ‘space’. (As in volume). Now I just need to build, solder and pay for the $60 worth of materials; Cables, photo-resisters, etc. (I built the metal pillars on Friday morning, just need to pour the cement bases next Thursday. The room is lighted and the lights react with interaction of the user. Dimming or brightening with the motion of the users hands. More later…

Today I started my job as mould-making monitor. Thursday 6-9. I gotta be down there sculpting for business and thesis, so hell, I get paid !! how can I argue. And I get to make sure no one kills themselves. Hmm, hope I don’t look after the youngins the way I look after food I cook…

Water flooding. Twice. Yay. Water shut off in the apartment today. When it came back on, the toilet overflowed, I managed to save lauras room, but some of my art books aren’t happy with me now :( . Manafs room was unaffected because apparently we’re on a slight slant. Lucky me. It took me a few seconds of standing and watching the water rush over and past my feet. I was a little shocked (and alone in the apartment, knowing Laura was gonna freak).

And then Laura (later, after my 9 hour day) started talking about Noah. Which annoyed me (mom, dad, thank you for not forcing me to read the bible and lose half my IQ). Lets compare Adam, to Noah. When times got hard what did he do? He built a boat (ya, lets all cheer) so he could run away like a stupid sissy.

What’s that teaching our kids?! I’ll tell you. If I’d of been a bible thumper I’m sure I would have just ran to school to give my presentation (I was late for), instead I stayed an extra 40minutes and cleaned up. I was a big boy and fixed the problem and dealt with it. I didn’t build a boat and run away crying. Nice one Noah.
(ya, and then Mould-making flooded too)

oh, and my presentation went fine I think. I made it up on the spot. Not too hard when you’re spossed to talk about yourself and your work.

Then Ben & Casey dropped by and asked me to go out (but I’m leaving for London tomo, so I have to look anti-social and get good sleep and work, sorry again Ben. Me love you long time! V yelled at me for not being social and said I’m not going to have any friends if I keep this up. But little does she and Casey (Ben’s gal) know the spark of love that’s growing between me and Ben.. he’ll never get rid of me) (that’s what you get for telling me you read this sometimes. Ass.)

But Kasey was funny and noticed Stanley (fish) playing. Yes, playing. He was making bubbles, then spitting them and chasing them to eat them. It was funny and cute. He’s official insane. But apparently healthy and energetic. I told Laura (by jumping and impersonating the fish) but she didn’t seem to share my enthiuasm for the fact that our goldfish invented a game.

Prototype packaging. Rough layout. Text will be added, graphics will change.



A more finalized rough draft of the box. Still adding text and stuff. Lots to do, lots will change, the name and company for sure. But I have to be planning and working.

(Also bought the domain and web hosting package for I and josh’s sculpture company.. Lisa got me a deal. Thanks Lisa! More info later when I have time to work on it.)

>>>Research
so I was doing research and what came of it to put in my journal?

I’m fairly strong in my opinions about outsourcing. And it enrages a lot of people who feel attacked and insulted by me. Well rightly so, you should feel insulted, you’re dirty.

Sometimes artists make what appears to be cool stuff. I won't name any names, but I came accross one artist in particular that deals in bioengineering. My problem with her latest series is that she didn’t do it! The works were sculpted and moulded by someone else!

This is very common. And makes me question whether or not the art is hers. How can you call something yours when you didn’t create it? The work was sculpted by someone else, and unless she planned the work down to every last hair, the sculptors style would have greatly influenced the work and changed it. While she goes around having gallery shows and posting her name on someone else’s sculpture.

Not cool.

>Got my flu shot

> election. Ya, so I prefer to look at the positive. Bush got elected. What’s the postoves? Well it proves America is stupid. But other than that, kerry prob wouldn’t finish what bush started in Iraq. I could see him just blaming it on bush and backing out, so atleast this doesn’t allow for excuses. Also it does WONDERS for the Canadian dollar!! Bush is an idiot, and our dollar went fro .71-> .85 (for my euro friends) so with another 4 years of bush I bet we can hit .93!!

>Martial arts has been on my mind lately.
Haven’t done it for a few years. But running into my old instructor Jamie while me and V were shopping in London reminded me I should start up again.
There’s a small club at OCAD. Maybe it’ll fit my schedule and give me a place to work off steam. I miss kicking peoples heads. (I think I’ll get my old foot pads from home first, you know, don’t want to bruise my foot or anything… hehehe)

I know, I’ve been neglecting the site. I’ve just been working on personal projects as well as school projects, as well as OTHER PEOPLES school projects. *cough*. Maybe one day I’ll update the portfolio with my new stuff… one day..

Also! Sorry to my friends, I know I’ve been neglecting you all as of late, declining party requests and hang outs, especially joni (sorry) I’m just busy…


(Very_slop py_image of what I envision for thesis. See Oct 13th for text)

//V didn’t come this weekend as planned. I was sad. She thought she’d get more work done without me distracting her. Hah. She was wrong.

Servo programming. I like doing things with ghetto electronics. But servos have their purpose and have more torque than what I’m used to using. Enough to move latex skins. Let’s all breath in a sigh of relief.

Research. Been in research mode and I’ve been researching latex, latex moulding and a lot of other things to do with sculpture and the SFX industry. It’s amazing how much you can find online if you look. Lucky me.

Thus, solved some problems with latex shrinkage and slush casting. Yay for that one! About freakin time.

I’ve been reading a lot of stuff on the FX industry. It just comes as a side effect of looking through THEIR specific moulding practices. I cam across this, which confirmed to me something I’ve been suspecting.

LMC: How is CGI affecting the creature shops?

VH: In the last couple of years CG has really taken a bite out of what FX shops used to do. I think CG will take care of more of the creature stuff now. FX shops won’t be doing as many creatures as they used to (i.e. suits and puppets). I don’t think makeups on actors will be affected for a while, but who knows…? This past year and a half has been the worst ever for makeup effects. There’s very little work out there. Lots of people have been out of work for a long, long time.…

This is mostly why I want to do creepy sculpture for more commercial purposes, such as creepy toys and Halloween gear. Halloween stuff will never go out, and it’s still undominated. What’s out there right now isn’t too impressive as the best of the best are too busy working for Hollywood and wouldn’t drop to that level.

You’ll be hearing more opinions about this later, but talk is cheap, so I can bore you to death, and you can roll your eyes and think to yourself I have crazy ideas, or I can just build my own massive company and smile to myself.

Thesis ideas have come together! I was on a quest, not only to figure out a concrete idea, but also how I could adapt animatronics and use it for more of an artistic purpose and pull it out from it’s theme park dinosaur context.

I’ve been surprised actually, I haven’t been able to find all that many artists using animatronics as a medium,.. Which holds potential, there’s so many people saying you can’t do anything new in art.
It doesn’t surprise me all that much, how many people can sculpt, program and build robotics. Not a widely occurring theme in for one singualr person. Lucky me. Still, means I have to build ground to stand on, and everything I’ve ever built has at some point set on fire… no that wasn’t a metaphor.

So how do I tie all these thoughts and skills into an art piece? I’ve had lots of ideas, but the final one became concrete while I was starring out the window on the train back to London (God I hate London). Leather notebook in hand I began to sketch.

Here’s an excerpt from my write-up (I actually wrote two), for everyone that’s been asking, without all the anti-consumerism and technical mombo jumbo.

“--a sculpture, probably in a gallery. The sculpture is a mock store display with action figure like packaging (20 or so units). There are small LCD display screens showing information and cheesy video clips about the products nearby, but you don’t look at the video, something else catches your eye… movement. The packages are moving…

Inside the packaging are squirrel sized animatrons. Strange animals, not totally recognizable, not totally flesh, they seem odd and adapted. More so, they are twitching, shaking, clawing, head butting their packaging, and generally, look to be in absolute pain. These are not plastic toys made in china. These are mass produced, copyrighted life; modified for consumption, as toys, cell phones, and light sources. Life wired up to serve. Racks of it.
Some of the animals though seem not willing to serve, one animal is crawling across the floor having escaped it’s packaging; unfortunately it’s legs broke in the fall, so it hasn’t gone to far. Another animal didn’t even make it to the floor, it has become impaled on the hook 2 rows down.”

It should be a fairly large undertaking and worthy of thesis. It’ll also be twisted as hell…

So,I_had a psych exam to study for, and you know what that means! Procrastination time! Any way I could think of!
So! For a new REAL Adam, we need a new Digital Adam. So these are

= Pixel Adam V2!! =

Upgraded and higher resolution! (get it?) they’re inspired by Capcom Cards. Collect all the Pixels kids!

I feel so omm(d) out... type type type. what can I say? type type type.

I was a bit let down and for awhile I wasn't enjoying myself. OM was exactly as advertised, but I still went in expecting something a bit different. I suppose the problem lied with me. I had fun, I want to go again, I just feel, next year it’ll be better as I’ll know what to expect.

Night shifts sucked, so that definitely added to the problem, though I met a nice girl from OCAD that was working the night shift with me (Riki) and we made a fire (no fires allowed) and got yelled at by our boss.. it was a bonding experience. Haha.

Gotta love the peace, love, respect everywhere. It was a total little tent society of it's own, everyone sharing food, alcohol, drugs, ideas, and everywhere a smile. You could honestly just stop someone and start talking to them, no weirdness, try that in the streets of Toronto... mmm and yet, I didn’t total enjoy. Weird. I must be messed up. Or just, not shallow enough to believe it was reality, in any way, sense, or form. Ya, I guess I was looking to escape the media culture for some good old nature and truth and real people, and instead just got one more fabricated reality. So I felt gypped. Ya.

And we’re off! Me and Eddy shopped for the food, etc, we’re loaded on water, and we’re on our way to OM!
4 Days of hippie Camping goodness! Sidenote; funny visual image of the day? Eddy while he’s driving with 3inches of deep fried squid hanging out of his mouth… ya..

On a side note, my stomach is telling me right now that the hot dogs I ate went bad..
I said this to manaf and he replied “yeah, I thought they smelled strange”.
I have no sense of smell! He knew this! A**hole! I’m going to make you eat your parents.

Also saw the Rodney graham (BC Artist) exhibit today at the AGO. It was cool. Nice abstract new wave art stuff. Video and audio mostly. His music is hard to explain, but I would assume after listening to it that he was the rheostatics inspiration. Must download UJ3RK5.. (U jerks)

Yes I’m an official volunteer at the 2004 OM festival!
www.om festival.ca
What’s the OM festival? Hmmm. How do I explain that.

Well, it’s 4 day of camping up north, with about 4000 people from all over north America.
Everyones real friendly, and just looking to meet new people and have a good time. There’s also a lot of talk about our place in the environment and things we can do to help. Lost of bongos and mellowness..
By volunteering I don’t have to pay $100, just $30. Which is great for 4 days of camping plus food (vegan food no less).
I’ll be volunteering at the art gallery tent thing, 2 shifts of 4 hours and by volunteer I mean, sitting around meeting and talking to people. :). Plus I get a free HEMP shirt! Yay!