#it never fails to be amazing how much of an impact architecture and urban design

[marginal-notes]

“Navi, does this chapter really need repeated plot points just on water wells?”

Yes, absolutely, how the fuck do you think this village will run without clean water. These clans are absolutely going to argue over who has access to upstream vs downstream water. I’m absolutely going to use communal well placement as an architectural feature coercing these recently warring clans to have forced public interactions.

[callumskeltoneco]

Week 8 - Biomimicry

Nature as a primary reference 

 Bio-mimicry 

Bio-mimetics = Replicating the natural world within product design 

Bio-philia = Love for the natural or biological 

Bio-urbanism ( Green urbanism ) ( Climate urbanism ) 

= Science + Design + Technology + Art + Nature + Biology 

Urban design/Landscapes - Industrial designs = Artificial replica of the neutral. For example footwear using feet as their model.

Fibonacci series - Aloe/Semperisrens = Has influenced architectural sequences and structures.

RESEARCHING -  

Public Domain VS Scholar 

Google can be a good place to start for design and art researchers. 

( Climate urbanism summarises the “Green” strategies - the design has an actual biological impact on the environment. For example the idea of bringing plant life into buildings. ) Book - “Art and the Anthropocene”

Zoterobib - Used for citing

READINGS - https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/

https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/blog/2018/09/biophilic-design-just-plants/

https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/report/14-patterns/

Focus on a more narrow principle ( Hannover Principles )  “A photographer could look at the visual presence of waste”

BIOLIFIC DESIGNS 

“Our good friend David Gerson at Inscape has a Google alert for articles on biophilic design.  Lately these articles have been numerous. We feel honored that Terrapin’s work and publications have been featured in a number of these articles.  That said, there seems to be one point that we need to raise again and again. Biophilic design is more than just adding plants to a space, or to frame it another way, adding plants can be a strategy for implementing one pattern, a Visual Connection to Nature.  There are 13 other ways to connect with nature in the 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design, each with a unique scientific backing and each supporting different psychological or physiological outcomes. But before we get to those, let’s take a deeper look into that most common of biophilic design interventions: bringing live plants into the built environment.  Oh and fair warning, portions of this article are based on my speculation (with a hope that the science will catch up eventually).

Visual preference studies are used to track what people find more pleasing.  In the 1970s a study in an open office looked at which was more preferred, a row of the same ficus trees or a small cluster consisting of a ficus tree with several different plants of various heights. The cluster was more preferred. Our friend biologist, Janine Benyus has said that this response may be due the brain saying “Oh, look there is a little habitat, so this must be a good place to be”.

Similarly, we suspect that a small, beautifully designed biodiverse green wall may have more impact than a giant green wall planted as a monoculture. This might also explain the appeal of mini habitats.  An assemblage of small plants in a terrarium or a well-trained bonsai tree seems much more interesting than the same plant alone in a pot. This appeal may stem from the way a good terrarium or bonsai evokes a miniature landscape.   We can almost imagine being there.

A significant consideration of live plants is the maintenance they require. While some plants are hardier than others, all plants are susceptible to demise. And there is nothing more sad than a bunch of dead potted plants or a failed green wall.  So bite the bullet and commit to maintenance and make sure that you put plants in places where they have an opportunity to survive.

There may be situations where live plants won’t work.  In these cases consider preserved moss–done well it maintains the feel and look of live moss–or, if out range of touch, really good artificial plants.  Why out of our range of touch? Think about the experience of seeing some really beautiful flowers, walking up to them, touching them and discovering they were fake.  Notice how your hand jerked back, you felt disappointed. We know that the brain sorts between living and non-living motion almost instantaneously, that process may be happening here.  Your subconscious told you the plants were real. You are almost embarrassed to discover your subconscious was wrong. Another downside of artificial plants is that they are inherently static, there is no scent, no growth and change, both of which are really important characteristics of live plants.

While we are still on the topic of plants, it should be said that not all landscapes are equally effective.   Landscape geographer, Jay Appleton’s work pointed out that we can be looking in one direction and say the view is beautiful and turn 90 degrees and feel quite differently.  He noted that preferred views had the conditions he identified as prospect and refuge. These views also had semantic content, or elements that we find appealing.

A good explanation of those elements or semantic content comes from the work of our colleague and mentor, environmental psychologist, Judith Heerwagen along with Gordon Orlens.  They are responsible for the Savanna Hypothesis, the idea that since the best evidence is that our species arose on the savannas of Africa, it makes sense that we would have a strong preference for places that replicate some of those conditions.  Prospect views, streams, copses of shade trees, calm grazing animals, a predominance of low growing grasses and understory are all characteristics of the savanna, Now, we see these same design characteristics in our own landscape design, from parks and golf courses to campuses and suburban yards.  Human-made savannas are not just a western cultural artifact, good portions of the US landscape, pre-European contact, were savannas maintained by annual burning by the indigenous peoples. We love savannas.

A view of the Hudson River. Robert Havell Jr. 1866

A thicket edge or a deep dark forest, however, can elicit a fear response. This seems to sometimes be forgotten.  In one example, a linear rain garden using mostly native species was installed along a street in a medical campus.  It was quite successful, both functionally and aesthetically, except for one portion. Along the route there is a side garden with seating areas, which is almost never used.  The small rooms created in the garden have a nice tree canopy, but are surrounded by a tall understory that creates a thicket condition in which it is not possible to see in or out of the seating areas.  In a private garden, this might be okay. On an urban street it feels unsafe.

One last thought on landscape design, particularly around schools, office buildings, and other workplaces.  Most frequently landscapes are designed along the entrance or in locations visible from roads or parking lots, where. we get the best views on the way in and out of the buildings.  Since we spend much of our day inside the buildings, how about designing with a consideration of the view from inside as well?

So what about all those other Patterns of Biophilic Design?  The patterns that fall within the grouping of Nature in the Space are relatively obvious, although the second pattern, Non-Visual Connection to Nature, bears repeating.  As designers, we all too frequently default to how things look, which makes sense as vision is our primary sensory system, however experiences have more impact if they can trigger multiple senses. Most notably, nature sounds have an uncanny ability to calm occupants and draw attention away from other distracting noises rampant in many indoor environments. See our most recent report, An Ear for Nature, for a look at the fascinating sciences behind this response.

Image courtesy of Christian Battaglia

The second grouping, Natural Analogues is one that can support a lot of experimentation.  In particular, we believe there are many unexploited opportunities to use layered fractals in fabrics, wallpapers, flooring, and ornamentation. We are mesmerized by the balance of complexity and order in natural environments. Very few things can capture our attention as well as a roaring campfire. We can stare at it for hours. This is in-part due to the fractal patterns created as the fire rises. Researchers have found that our brains emit a pleasure response (in the form of dopamine) when we stare at fractals. As a design pattern, this condition can take many scales: from furniture and detailing patterns to spatial layout.

Inscape Booth. Image courtesy of Inscape

The patterns within the third grouping, Nature of the Space seem to be more frequently discussed and experimented with in recent years. As the shift to open offices with non-assigned work spaces is occurring, we are encountering more and more spaces that are prospect dominated. There seems to be evidence that these spaces help support collaboration.  However, the predominate problem in this type of office design (besides the noise issues) is the sore lack of refuge experiences. Spaces that provide a refuge condition can have an amazing variety, starting at the scale of a single high backed wing chair, to booths, small break rooms, all the way to outdoor courtyards. The question we frequently hear is, “what is the exact number of refuge spaces needed for a given number of workstations?” For that, we don’t have answer, the need for spaces for retreat and restoration is really dependent on the mixture of work types, tasks, stress level and introvert/extrovert balance of a population in a space.

One very important point about the 14 Patterns is that unlike a traditional pattern language, they are not describing specific design techniques or objects.  Rather, these are 14 different ways of experiencing nature. Each of these patterns can be achieved with multiple different strategies, which can and should be adapted based on the culture and ecology of a specific location. Most importantly, they warrant and celebrate interpretation, through the lens of the designer in response to place.

These different experiences can help support different outcomes. Some of the patterns support stress reduction, others improve cognitive function, and some help improve mood and preference.  A chart listing the differing outcomes can be found on page 12 of 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design. Creating a narrative about the needs of the users of a space can help you filter which of the patterns will be most valuable in a space.  We have learned that really good spaces might use 3, 4 or more patterns, but there is usually one strong pattern that most determines the outcomes for that place.  With limited budgets and space, this process can help to determine the most effect place and strategy for a design intervention helps to reconnect us to nature.”

“Biophilic design can reduce stress, enhance creativity and clarity of thought, improve our well-being and expedite healing; as the world population continues to urbanize, these qualities are ever more important. Theorists, research scientists, and design practitioners have been working for decades to define aspects of nature that most impact our satisfaction with the built environment. “14 Patterns of Biophilic Design” articulates the relationships between nature, human biology and the design of the built environment so that we may experience the human benefits of biophilia in our design applications.

Biophilia in Context looks at the evolution of biophilic design in architecture and planning and presents a framework for relating the human biological science and nature. Design Considerations explores a sampling of factors (e.g., scale, climate, user demographics) that may influence biophilic design decisions to bring greater clarity to why some interventions are replicable and why others may not be. The Patterns lays out a series of tools for understanding design opportunities, including the roots of the science behind each pattern, then metrics, strategies and considerations for how to use each pattern. This paper moves from research on biophilic responses to design application as a way to effectively enhance health and well-being for individuals and society.”

[loudgentlemenfire]

New Post has been published on https://www.hcdistro.com/store/notekillers-ny-times/

Notekillers in NY Times

Revival for the Notekillers, Still Noisy After All These Years

By SARAH GRANT APRIL 14, 2017

David First, in his Brooklyn apartment, led the noise-rock band the Notekillers, who played the New York music scene in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. Credit Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

  The student and the teacher faced each other on plain black foldout chairs. It was past 9 on a windy night, and this was David First’s last guitar lesson of the day. The student, Karen D’Ambrosi, a shy 28-year-old marketing manager at Etsy, began strumming one of Mr. First’s electric guitars. He joined in, gently plucking a melody over her chords.

In the next room, Mr. First’s wife, Mira Gwincinska Hirsch, listened in the dark, eating a piece of pumpkin pie. A small table lamp illuminated a jasmine flower in a red vase.

The scene was surprisingly tranquil considering that Mr. First, 63, is something of a lost noise-rock legend. In the late 1970s, his avant-rock band, the Notekillers, performed at clubs that now exist only as urban myths, like CBGB and Hurrah. Their songs were fast, jagged and wordless. They shared stages with volatile performers from Glenn Branca to the Misfits.

Before the lesson, Mr. First sat at his kitchen table with a mug of piping tea, clearly aware that his sedate appearance — cargo pants, button-down shirt, tea — belied his punk credentials.

But evidence of Mr. First’s rock ’n’ roll past abounds in his third-floor walk up in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Every wall seemed to be adorned with a Notekillers concert poster, and the group’s record covers were mounted on bookshelves. Their single, “The Zipper,” turned out to be pivotal for a band that went much further than the Notekillers.

“‘The Zipper’ was one of the Top 10 documents for me at the time,” Thurston Moore, singer and guitarist for Sonic Youth, said in an interview recently. “It was emblematic of the guitar music that inspired me. I mean, this guy was shredding like Hendrix.”

But in those pre-internet days, the Notekillers’ obscurity wasn’t a badge of honor. It was proof to the band that it had failed. One day in 1981, after four years together shuttling back and forth from the Lower East Side to their native Philadelphia, the trio (Mr. First, along with the bassist Stephen Bilenky and the drummer Barry Halkin) took the New Jersey Turnpike home and gave up on the New York music scene.

Photo

Mr. First performing at the Roulette in Brooklyn. “For 25 years, I just thought we had no impact,” he said of the Notekillers. “So to find out that we had a major influence — let alone on Sonic Youth — that was pretty huge.”CreditDemetrius Freeman for The New York Times

“We really weren’t connecting with people,” Mr. First said impassively.

Now, more than 30 years after inspiring Sonic Youth, the Notekillers are coming somewhat closer to having a moment.

The past 12 months have been a kind of renaissance for Mr. First, who released two solo records in addition to a new Notekillers album. He has just returned from performing at the Tate Modern in London as part of an exhibition of the experimental artist Phill Niblock. And he just released an album of pop songs, under the name Star Ballads.

“I’ve always thought David was one of the most underrated musicians,” said Kyle Gann, a Bard College professor and composer, who befriended Mr. First after years of covering his live performances for The Village Voice. Mr. Gann’s son, Bernard, formed the metal band Liturgy after taking guitar lessons from Mr. First. (He also plays bass on the Star Ballads record.)

“David’s music is amazing,” said Mr. Gann, who included Mr. First in his book, “American Music in the Twentieth Century.” “It’ll start strangely out of tune and then it just goes haywire in slow and gradual ways. He’s made the hair on the back of my neck stand up many times.”

Recognition was a long time coming, but one day Mr. First woke up and his fate changed.

About 15 years ago, Mr. First got a phone call from Barry Halkin, the drummer in the Notekillers. The glossy British music magazine Mojo published an article about the musicians who inspired the guitar innovations of Sonic Youth. Among more celebrated favorites, Mr. Moore singled out the Notekillers.

“Honestly, I assumed it was a mistake,” Mr. First said. But he sent a note to Mr. Moore, just to double-check.

The astonishment was mutual.

“I was blown away when David emailed me,” Mr. Moore, 58, said with boyish exuberance. Mr. Moore immediately wrote back and offered to release a Notekillers compilation on his own record label.

Photo

Notekillers circa 1979. From left: Stephen Bilenky, Barry Halkin and Mr. First. CreditBarry Halkin

“For 25 years, I just thought we had no impact,” Mr. First said. “So to find out that we had a major influence — let alone on Sonic Youth — that was pretty huge.”

Mr. First rang his former bandmates to gauge their interest in playing again. The drummer had become a successful architectural photographer. The bassist designed custom-made bicycles.

“I said to them, ‘Maybe the world’s finally ready for us.’”

The compilation Mr. Moore released in 2004 catalyzed the Notekillers’ reunion after 23 years. They released a record in 2010 (“We’re Here to Help”) and another last year, “Songs and Jams Vol. 1.”

The Notekillers — all of whom are 63 — now do gigs at Brooklyn sites with rock bands half their age.

“To think that we’re still doing this at all,” Mr. First said, his voice trailing off. “Not to mention doing it better than we did it the first time, is still unreal to me.”

Mr. First grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Philadelphia. His parents encouraged him creatively by letting his band, three Grateful Dead-worshiping teenagers (who later became the Notekillers), rehearse in their basement. By 1976, the Notekillers, already entrenched in Philadelphia punk clubs, were drawn by New York’s thriving avant-garde music scene.

But they found the downtown scene was difficult to crack.

“Back then, nobody really knew how to play guitar in a traditional sense,” Mr. Moore said. “And if you did, it was an anomaly.”

Photo

Mr. First giving lessons to Karen D’Ambrosi at his apartment. He has worked quietly as a guitar teacher since the Notekillers disbanded. CreditDemetrius Freeman for The New York Times

Before forming Sonic Youth, Mr. Moore said that his band, the Coachmen, also failed to emerge from the same scene.

By 1984, the Notekillers were over, and Mr. First relocated permanently to Manhattan, working part time as the manager of a cookie store in Midtown. He paid $75 a week to live in a transient hotel, chaining his guitar to his bed before going to work.

A year later, he was laid off from another job, as the manager of an ice cream shop. This was not a setback but a windfall. During six months of paid unemployment, Mr. First finally had time to do music full time, playing solo and with other ensembles he formed. And, critically, he amassed a cadre of students to teach guitar for extra cash when necessary. He never worked a 9-to-5 job again.

As a free musician, Mr. First has flourished. Now he is considered a beacon of futuristic sound among experimental composers.

Though much of his music is heavily electronic, at a recent performance at the Roulette theater in Downtown Brooklyn, Mr. First switched among very traditional acoustic instruments during a suite of improvisations: a crimson sitar, a scalloped-neck electric guitar from Vietnam and a harmonica (just the regular kind). His ensemble partners were equally diverse: a violist, a trombonist and a percussionist.

“People who know me in these contexts would be very surprised to find out I’d been in this crazy rock band,” Mr. First said.

As are his students. Today, Mr. First composes and records from his Greenpoint apartment thanks to an amalgam of creative grants and commissions. Through it all, he has maintained his side gig as a guitar teacher.

Ms. D’Ambrosi, the Etsy employee, asked Mr. First for guitar lessons through a mutual musician friend five years ago. “I remember seeing on Facebook that he was in this band, but we didn’t really discuss it,” she said. “We just play Bob Dylan and Neil Young.”

A version of this article appears in print on April 16, 2017, on Page MB1 of the New York edition with the headline: SNoisy After All These Years. Order Reprints

[nofomoartworld]

[Old/New] Psychedelic Providence: a Conversation with Curator Jamilee Lacy

By Kevin Blake

Images courtesy Providence College—Galleries and Tiger Strikes Asteroid. Photo by Jim Prinz.

Tiger Strikes Asteroid is a conglomeration of artist run exhibition spaces with independently operated locations in Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. [Old/New] Psychedelic Providence curated by Jamilee Lacy is the inaugural exhibition for the Chicago space. Jamilee Lacy is the Director and Curator of the Providence College Galleries in Providence, Rhode Island. The idea behind TSA is to showcase emerging and mid-career artists from other cities as to expand the dialogue in local communities. In this exhibition curator Jamilee Lacy brings Chicago an eclectic mix of artists from Providence whose work reflects and propagates psychedelic discourses and tangential ideas that have been part of the historical bedrock for artistic production in their community.

Kevin Blake: Just as a way of kicking things off, I was wondering if you could say something about Tiger Strikes Asteroid and how you came to be curating the inaugural show in its Chicago space.

Jamilee Lacy: Well, as you know, I previously lived in Chicago off and on for more than a decade. So, naturally, I’m committed to that city and the amazing artists who live there, even though I now live and work in New England running Providence College Galleries (PC-G). So, while I was in town over the summer, I did studio visits with both Anna Kunz and Michelle Wasson, who are all at once incredibly exciting painters, former professors of mine, and artists I’m planning on working with in the near future. They gave me a peek of their new project as co-founders and co-directors of TSA Chicago, and explained there ambitions: to make a space for high-quality exhibitions and international creative exchange among artists, especially those who are under-represented by exhibition institutions and/or art market forces. I realized that their mission to program the space in diverse ways (cultural, ethnic/racial, age, gender, geographic and more) corresponded quite well with a program that we’re getting off the ground at PC-G called Many Cities, One Providence. Basically, it’s an exhibition series in which we import to Providence thematic glimpses showing the diversity of the art and ideas of artists practicing in cities around the world, while exporting those of Providence-based artists to cities elsewhere. We’ve imported shows from Helsinki, Mexico City, Western Massachusetts and Central Spain, but we have just begun exporting shows… and Chicago is the first stop. (Next year we’ll ship out a show to San Francisco.) So, you could say it was a perfect symmetry to have PC-G’s inaugural exhibition export as the inaugural show at space with the central goal of serving the many needs of many different artist communities.

KB: One aspect of the field of Psychedelics that interests me is the great resistance to it from the scientific establishment and the art institution which manifests as a social stigma. It is considered passé to make paintings with the acid toned aesthetic of the counter culture era of the 1960’s and until only recently, it has been equally condemned to pursue any line of inquiry that suggested psychedelics as having any positive influence on the human mind. Resistance and/or aversion to ideas generally draws interest on the fringes, but this field seems to be picking up steam again. Why do you think there has been a recent resurgence in psychedelic research and tangentially, the inner gaze?

JL: Has there been resurgence in psychedelic research lately? To be perfectly honest, I don’t know too much about psychedelics. Really, I’m just an armchair expert, and my interests are very specific to psychedelia’s impact on visual art and aesthetics in Providence. A lot of curators don’t like to analyze artistic production based on place, especially now that the art world has become so fluidly global on many levels. Obviously, I’m not one of those curators! Over the past fifteen years of living with and visiting artists around the world, I’ve always found that place, especially the city, is profoundly impactful on artists and their work. I think this makes sense because artists, generally, are empaths; they’re vessels for the world around them. Providence is a small city which has historically embraced the outsider, the fringes, and thus artist culture, perhaps because it was founded in 17th century by the likes of Roger Williams, who was forced to flee Massachusetts because of religious and ideological persecution. With the [Old/New] Psychedelic Providenceexhibition, I wanted to show that Providence-based artists, of all backgrounds and ages and working today, are connected to that history, especially as it relates to the high and low aspects of subculture. Psychedelia, though we know it to have come out of 1960s drug culture, was a longtime coming in terms of its visual reflection of the experiences of altered consciousness. If you look back at the pre-1960s art history of Providence, you see highly distorted and surreal visuals, repetition and pattern, bright colors and full spectrums of kaleidoscopic imagery in Colonial and Victorian architecture, the development of botany and landscape design, fashion and jewelry, chemistry, photography and printing, meditation and new religions… And in poetry and fiction of the area, especially that by the infamous H.P. Lovecraft and his followers, you see experimental writers doing their best to evoke mind-bending scenarios and mystical states of being. Many of the creative people working in this vain were indeed outsiders who came to post-puritanical Providence to try out new things. Founded by a group of (mostly) women, Rhode Island School of Design is part of that history, too, and in many ways nurtures the community’s aesthetic sensibility by infusing a graphic, pop sensibility into a mixed tradition of outsider art and conceptual craft.

Images courtesy Providence College—Galleries and Tiger Strikes Asteroid. Photo by Jim Prinz.

KB:  It’s interesting to consider the rich history you mention in the context of geography and altered consciousness. It seems to me that place–obviously and not so obviously–play an important role in shaping our state of mind. It then follows that travel, emigration, and displacement act as a psychedelic experience in a way-forcing the mind to strategize ways of understanding the other. Humans are such chameleons too-we will pick up new languages, new customs, and adapt to localisms efficiently, and this all happens in the mind. As new geographies work to calcify one’s perspective considering the external, psychedelics (generally speaking), have been a pharmacological tool for forcing this issue internally; a way to have a confrontation with the other within the confines of the mind. How do the artists in this show confront the idea of the other?

JL: I don’t think that they necessarily confront the other. But to generalize, I would say all of these artists’ “otherness” resides in their choice not to live in NYC or Boston. Instead, they chose the other city, Providence. They chose it as a place where you can live and work on the fringes of the urban. The city has a care-free ease about it. Perhaps that’s because it’s a small city that’s kind of lawless, especially in terms of the public being okay with letting the academic and the creative and the weirdo types things out. I think that this is a longstanding quality of the city, which is why the occult, drug cultures and intellectual subcultures have long flourished in Providence. And because they can afford it and still have some proximity to the NYC art pulse and the New England ivory towers, artists continue to conduct real experiments with their ideas and work here. Most importantly, they can get as weird as possible and fail big time in Providence without worrying about it too much. In the case of these artists, they collectively embrace the aesthetics of psychedelia, which has never been art world trendy, while maintaining a commitment to pushing the boundaries of conceptual craft and design.

KB: As a generalization, the psychedelic aesthetic lingers today as a visual fallout of the counter culture movement and the early American psychedelic renaissance of the late 1950’s and 1960’s. I think a lot of work in this show diverges from this aesthetic platform while maintaining an essence of the ideas inherent in those tenants. Can you talk about how you see specific works in this exhibit as they relate to the psychedelic aesthetic? 

Images courtesy Providence College—Galleries and Tiger Strikes Asteroid. Photo by Jim Prinz.

JL: The preface to your question is totally accurate, hence the [Old/New] adjectives in the exhibition title. The artworks’ primary aesthetic ties to psychedelia are of course color and pattern, especially to kaleidoscopic abstraction and landscapes, which I previously mentioned were tied to American creative culture’s notion of ‘expanded consciousness’ long before the term psychedelia was coined in the 1950s. Artists in the show like Theresa Ganz, James Janecek and Nadia Haji Omar demonstrate that pendulous swing between Providence’s Victorian-era past—such as the infatuation with 19th century techniques of coloring landscapes ‘to make visible, and to reveal’ auras and other mystical properties of the natural environment—to the psychedelic landscape art inspired by visions due to mind-altering psychedelic substances of counter-culture movements of the last 50 or 60 years, some of which is more evident in the maybe abstracted portraiture, maybe abstracted landscapes of Heather Leigh McPherson.? Elizabeth Corkery, Graham McDougal and Bayne Peterson focus on those pop-art-esque kaleidoscopic elements we’re accustomed to seeing in psychedelic-driven work, emphasizing the longevity of psychedelic aesthetics’ influence on artists working across a spectrum of media.

KB: It seems to me that any given day in the life of a human being is filled with mind-altering substances and circumstances. From coffee and sugar to living in a place like Providence-our minds are constantly adapting to our chemical inputs, ever evolving conceptual rumination, and physical situational demands. I’m interested in how this show approached the idea of “mind-altering” as something that engages a scope of possibility that seems to have much more range than psychedelic substances alone. How do you consider the term “mind-altering” outside the domain of typical psychedelic discourse? 

JL: With this group of artworks, I’ve exemplified “mind-altering” as a series of visual alterations, amplifications, and, even better, enhancements. The enhancements range from updating the antique to retro-fitting the now. Additionally, I’d go so far as say each artist’s entire practice embodies the kind of mood changes undergone by Providence’s evolving creative and counter-cultural traditions.

Images courtesy Providence College—Galleries and Tiger Strikes Asteroid. Photo by Jim Prinz.

KB: “Counter culture” is another colloquialism that has been retrofitted to flow seamlessly into existing paradigms, but below the surface definition and history, was a moment of political, social, and environmental unrest. I then project this idea to the present moment, a time when information is suddenly at all of our fingertips. A time when huge festivals that encourage psychedelic exploration like Burning Man, are drawing its participants from the upper echelons of the social pyramid. A time when psychedelic research has exploded into the realm of mainstream medicine. However, simultaneously, our roots seem to also be calling us back to a more conservative, more close-minded, and more polarized past. How do you see psychedelics, and the psychedelic paradigm as an integral part of our social evolution and do you think we are experiencing a moment of counter cultural production in the art world and beyond?

JL: In Subculture: The Meaning of Style Dick Hebdige says (paraphrasing) counterculture is a subculture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, often in opposition to mainstream cultural mores. Though it’s not quite as tidy as Hebdige would have it, the creative community in Providence, as I understand its history, has always leaned toward so-called drop-out culture or the alternative (there’s a nice poetic symmetry to the origin story of Rhode Island’s founder Roger Williams). Artists thusly have come here to get away from one thing–cramped quarters, market forces, rigid thinking, etc.–and find another of their own making. As we see cities push more and more artists how by way of cramped quarters, market forces, rigid thinking, I think we’ll see more and more development of de-centralized subcultures. The “psychedelic paradigm” was and is part of that evolution. But do I think “we are experiencing a moment of counter cultural production in the art world and beyond”? I think that’s too big of a question for me, but I’ll briefly say yes and no. In many cases the alternative has become the mainstream. Sometimes that’s great, sometimes it’s annoying. Regardless, I enjoy wading through it.

KB:I can understand where that question may seem too big to tackle in this format. Or in any format for that matter. Do you believe that Providence, as an example of a place germinating decentralized subcultures, can be a model of sustainability in lieu of the equally powerful force of an ever-homogenizing mainstream? Tiger Strikes Asteroid seems like it could be representative of this very idea. Could you weigh in on how these ideas might be connected? 

JL: Yes, I think Providence could be a perfect model of this kind of sustainability. “Could,” however, being the operative word. Like in so many small cities, the eccentricity of Providence ebbs and flows. Sometimes the city is incredibly forward thinking about letting artists have a go at things, and at other (infrequent) times they try to mainstream and capitalize on quirkiness. For example, the state rebranded itself as the “Creative Capital” to emphasize its arts community. As part of this rebranding, they made all purchases of arts and crafts in the state tax free. Whatever, that’s great I guess, even there’s all of 30 people buying and selling art here. Regardless, what this kind of yucky marketing gloss-over does is to redirect resources (space, money, attention) away from the truly weird, experimentality of subculture and towards things like the development of a market and gentrification efforts. Basically, if some city officials had their way, the artists and their underground activities here would contribute to the city convincing the world that Providence is a whole city of the mall-like urbanisms of Wicker Park in Chicago or Williamsburg in Bushwick. Fortunately, these folks get distracted and this kind of muck is cultivated only intermittently because it really does matter. Artists thrive here and that model of sustainability could and would hold if market forces and tourism don’t usurp real alternative culture. Fingers crossed, right?

And yes, I think Tiger Strikes Asteroid is a fantastic example of against-the-grain organizing. Artists creating a platform and market model that actually meets their criteria and needs seems vitally important. It allows artists to develop a culture  around the artwork that isn’t then consistently groomed by the gallerist or overpowered by the likes of art fair or biennial standards. But don’t get me wrong, I think traditional galleries are an equally important platform, especially mid-sized galleries, ultimately because “ever-homogenizing mainstream” comes out of replication… the endless replication of the the alternative space loft is as bad as the constant re-creation the Chelsea gallery outside of NYC. I think everyone agrees that many voices are required. And Providence, though it’s continually on the cutting edge in terms of art-making and the really excellent cultural experimentation that comes with, lacks variation of voice on the non-artist level. There are too few opportunities for artists to reflect on their innovation. So much so that I think the really interesting histories of said subcultures dissipate from memory all too easily. By formalizing a small group of like-mind artists who straddle the art world’s many zones, Tiger Strikes Asteroid helps artists and cities avoid that which is truly a travesty. All this is to say, TSA Chicago was the perfect place for this little show. I’m so thrilled to have worked with co-directors Anna Kunz and Michelle Wasson, and members Meg Duguid, Holly Cahill, Esau McGhee and Justin Witte, among others, to join together the alterna-forces of Providence and Chicago.

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