Atoms for Art

This is Ivy Mike, the world's first full scale hydrogen bomb.  A true miracle of modern science.  One of the most powerful, and expensive things ever made my human hands.  Mike was detonated on November 1st 1952 with a yield equal to 10.4 million tons of TNT.  When the mushroom cloud stabilized it was 23 miles tall and 100 miles across.  Over a thousand times bigger than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mike would have vaporized all five boroughs of New York City.  But really, what for?

People may say a contraption like this is stupid and useless.  They would be right in one sense, it didn't do anything.  Or at least it never did what it was meant to do, kill people.  In fact no human being has ever been killed my by a thermonuclear weapon, so what's the story here, what will this insane chapter in human history be remembered as?  The answer...art.

I recently went back to my mother's house in Mercerville NJ.  She had just cleaned out 25 years worth of garbage that had been collecting in her basement.  Luckily a box was set aside for me with some of my more valuable things in it.  One was a bundle of notebooks that represented most of my education.

Notebooks from fourth grade all the way to my last year at NYU film school.  Each notebook had two notable and hilarious characteristics.  First, no more than 10 pages had been used in any of them.  Secondly, almost every page had a drawing of an explosion on it somewhere.  Everything from a firecracker to a Mikelike mushroom.  It was an obsession.  A little disturbing that it lasted until college, but what the hell, I didn't have a lot of girlfriends perhaps that had something to do with it.  But the fact remains I was artistically inspired by these images, and I have chosen to pursue art as a career.  

Think about it, these monuments to man's desire to destroy itself live on in some of the most dramatic films and photographs ever taken.  The clouds themselves are beautiful.  Watch some of the tests if you can, the colors produced by the blasts drift down the spectrum like a rainbow being poured out of a cup.  Each one has its own characteristics and personality.  And the titles are genius:  Jangle, Teapot, Sunbeam, Roller Coaster, Zuni, Tumbler, Apple...it goes on like this.  Imagine a sculpture 23 miles tall and 100 wide fashioned from the energy that lies hidden in the very fabric of matter!  Its like lifting the curtain on the universe and getting a glimpse of what's inside.

They're only pictures, they can't hurt you, but they can still scare the living shit out of you.  Make you think about your place in this world.  How long will it be here?  How long will I be here?  The cold glare of reality bears down on you from these images and makes you think, makes you act out in some way.  And isn't that what good art should do?

An Introduction

That picture to the left is me.  It doesn't look a damn thing like me but, I'm an American living in Japan, I'm invisible.  It doesn't matter what I look like, I look like a foreigner and we all look the same, even I have come to believe that.  It's a truly liberating feeling.

I remember when I lived in NYC, I actually cared what people thought of my T-Shirt, my hair, or taste in music.  I sought the approval of people I didn't know and they were seeking the approval of people they didn't know.  Perhaps in a weird way the responsibility of approval fell to me, but i had no way of knowing that at the time, and I was in no condition for that kind of work, I had no stomach for it.  I was drunken, drugged and sleeping on a couch.  Spending my time thinking up clever band names instead of learning how to play the guitar.  Thinking of art projects that I would like to see and then waiting for someone else to do it.  But of course putting yourself out there exposes you to people like you.  The prospect is terrifying.

Yes, my twenties were a waste of time, or at least a lot of wasted time.  Some good images came from it though.  They trickle down from the back of the brain and sometimes drip out of the mouth, or fingertips and are exposed to the light.  Things like, peeling off a layer of brain cells like an onion and flinging it across the room.  Throwing a roast beef dinner out the window.  Attacking a chair with a knife.  A pillow stained with headaches.  Rinsing your eyeballs off with cold water in a dirty sink.  Stomping on a mouse in a paper bag.  A trash can filled with human hair and broken glass.  Garbage flowing though your veins.  A gut full of gummy worms.  A wispy skeleton being blown around the streets, down the alleyways, through the park, getting caught in a tree.  Choking on candy, and other delightful deaths.