#literally i can talk through all my 63 slides in 14 minutes

[pumpking64]

i am going to talk at my very first conference tomorrow. am nervous much.

[gamedesignerben]

Baldessari’s (optional) assignments for his 1970 Post-Studio Art class at CalArts

I could only find abridged versions, or blurry photos of the original handouts, so I transcribed everything, and here it is.

1. Imitate Baldessari in actions and speech 2. Make up an art game. Structure a set of rules with which to play. A physical game is not necessary: more important are the rules and their structure. Do we in life operate by rules? Does all art? 3. How can we prevent art boredom? 4. Write a list of art lies, un-truths that might be truthful if we really thought about them. However consider this: Art truths that we have often are boring in their correctness. 5. How can plants be used in art. Problem becomes how can we really get people to look freshly at plants as if they've never noticed them before. A few possibilities: 1. Arrange them alphabetically like books on a shelf; 2. Plant them like popsicle trees (as in child art) perpendicular to line of hill; 3. Include object among plants that is camouflaged 6. How can gallery use be subverted, as in land art? Exchange locations with another business? Photo gallery sq. ft. for sq. ft. and paste up in another space? One way glass in front of gallery? 8. Give police artist verbal description of Baldessari and have him do drawing. Perhaps everyone in class do verbal description. 9. Describe a neutral object completely with fileand tape or video. Do it until you have fully translated all its qualities to the medium. Perhaps better a class project in that more insights would be available. 10. Create art from our procedures of learning. How does an infant learn? How do we continue to learn. How do we learn speech? To count? To know danger? Investigate Montessori methods, books and learning and perception. 11. Do a tape recording of raw sounds and edit into a composition. 12. Make up a list of sound as art projects (see example). 13. How can a gallery space be used rather than put art objects into it? 14. Two man film project. Each shoots up an amount of film. Each edits the others film. A film collage problem. Important that the footage be "found" 15. Given: The availability of an airplane or helicopter for a short time use i.e., an hour. What would you do? 16. Given: $1. What art can you do for that amount? 17. Cooking art. Invent recipee. They are organizations of parts, aren't they? 18. Subvert real systems. I.e., dial a number that records passages while the person is out and dial another number that gives recorded messages. Put the two phones together. Put a sigh that says "SLOW" in the middle of a street. Get it? 19. What art can arise from magic and myth. Or just a magic trick on video. 20. A sensory deprivation piece. A sensory overload piece. 21. Ecological guerilla art. 22. Disguise yourself as another object--a tree maybe. Or becoming a tree. A big bird? 23. What are the minute differences in things that are supposed to be the same? And vice versa. If you took 36 photos of a lawn, would they all be the same? Or of 36 sections of the same lawn? Or of a wall? Or 36 identical nails (either, finger or kind you hammer). 24. File loops of slides of all the objects one stares at in a given interval when in an arbitrarily chosen room. Or recorded on a tape recorder as one's eyes look on them. 25. 36 slides from start to finish of simple motion like picking your nose, scratching your ass and so on 26. Slides of #24 projected in correct places in another room. 27. Wet and dry. I.e., how does wet gravel in a parking lot look next to another dry area. Perhaps an actual situation, where something would be constantly wasted. 28. Recreate sculpturally with other materials in a magic realist approach any 12" sq area of earth land. Perhaps better yet to keep your own seeth out of it would be to have another choose it for you. 29. Have some take a photo portrait of you just before you go into a store to steal something. Have your portrait taken immediately after the act. Photo the object stolen. 30. Design and have printed your calling card. 31. Steal the trash from Pres. Corrigan's wastebasket and make a collage of it. 32. Have yourself photographed in act of insulting a person. To repeat each time insulting a new person. 33. Pay homage to a movie star, rock musician, etc. in form of a pilgrimage visit. Photograph is required of the two of you with a personalized signed greeting by the culture here. Or it could be a famous person's grave. In this case a photo of you at the grave. Person's name on the gravestone should be visible. No signiture necessary. 34. Defenestrate objects. Photo them in mid-air. 35. What kind of art can be done with real animals? 36. Record all actions, thoughts, for 1/2 hour on tape recorder. 37. What kind of works can be done literally under the earth. 38. Liquid works. 39. Chemical works. 40. Biological works. 41. Photograph landscape in color. Make 8x10 color print. Make some color changes. Color landscape to match retouched photo. Color landscape to match photo. Rephoto. 42. Class make up list for scavenger hunt. Exhibit works at end of day. 43. Forgeries. Each in class tries to forge my signature on a check by looking at an original. Or forgeries of forgeries of forgeries, etc. 44. Take any sentence of text to 6 signpainters to be lettered in letters of same style and height. Study differences. 45. Punishment. Write "I will not make any more art" "I will not make any more boring art" "I will not make make good art" (or something similar) 1000 times on wall. 46. One person copies or makes up random captions. Another person takes photos. Match photo to captions. 47. Serial TV works. 25 ways to fold a hat, to comb your hair, 25 different people spitting. 48. Develop a visual code. Give it to another student to crack. 49. Disguise an object to look like another object. 50. Do a film or TV script or scenario. Use TV layout paper. 51. A video tape that is a result of reading a book. You give book report in front of camera. 52. Smell pieces. 53. Touch pieces. 54. Art that you see by looking up or down 55. How do we get eyes off the visual and into experience. Rent a service rather than an object from Yellow Pages. 56. Take a canvas stretcher, size of your choice, to an upolsterer and have it upolstered with fabric of your choice. 57. A piece that deals with measurement--up, down, right, left, etc. and where spectator is located. 58. Make up list of distractions that often occur to you. Recreate on video tape 59. Make up art parables. 60. Edmund Scientific Catalog project. What art can you make my ordering from this catalog. Maybe grow plants chemically. 61. Hypnosis. Can art ideas be planted and removed in a mind? 62. A wall drawing based on numerous persons height--each marks his height on wall with line, signs name and date. 63. What art can arise from such phrases as: 1. Entasis. 2. Gestalt with some left over information. 3. Simple shape, simple experience. 4. Unitary form with reduced relationships. 5. Unitary form with line of fracture. Or can pure information be art? 64. The structural movement of cameras as subject matter. 65. Performance pieces. I.E. Speak thru your hand to your thigh but not with your head. Or talk with your knees t osomething knee-high. Or what are your dog-like traints without imitating a dog. Or the delivery of a speech to an imaginary person in different spaces in a room. Do a series of artificial voices. Can the various positions of the hand change the resonance of the voice? Say "good morning" every morning into a tape recorder for the length of the tape. See Growtowski, Towards Poor Theater. 66. A snapshot album of things to see in Los Angeles with exact locations so that others could locate sights (sites). 67. Document change, decay, metamorphosis, changes occuring in time. 67. Do good an bad compositions (by photo) of same scene, object. Frame a photo in viewfinder and move camera a foot to side before shooting. 68. Make up a list by looking at art books. Talking to artists on things to avoid in making art. Do them. Ask yourself if results are good or bad art. 69. What art can come from the use of a set of walkie-talkie radios? 70. By using movie camera to follow actions and by your observations into cassete recorder, document the movements of someone secretly for an entire day. Or have someone follow you. 71. Photos are flat. Photograph flat surfaces. Maybe exchange them. 72. Change, control, alter, arrange light in room environment. 73. Art Powers. How much and what kind of art can you make from kleenex and masking tape, for instance. 74. A film video tape etc that deals openly with a physical flaw of yours (in your estimation). A film called PIMPLE? 75. Information exchange. You writer letters to someone and they to you and so on. Framed letters of Refusal (I am sorry, but...) for instance. Or Thanks (That you for your ...blah blah etc). 76. Random photos. End of, beginning of, roll photos. Camera sent up with pidgeon, balloon, given to another person with shooting instructions, shooting from hip, etc. How do we avoid our good taste? 77. Using of time devices. Time clock (that prints time in and out), random time devices (red dot on cash register tape), a fuse, a candle 78. Large scale art that can be seen in its entirety. For instance, if you dyed sheets each a separate color and arranged them checkerboard like, say a hundred or more, they could only be experienced by walking through them, but the ycould be seen (also photoed) by helicopter or airplane. 79. Photograph backs of things, underneaths of things, extreme foreshortenings, uncharacteristic views. Or trace them. 80. Put labels on things that list their contents. 81. Design an art test. 82. Can one give and take away aesthetic content? 83. Street works, art determined by locaiton. What would you do on top of a 30 story building? What would you do under water? 84. Given $50, could you increase the sum in a period of time? 85. Describe the visual verbally and the verbal visually 86. Film of, or video of, children's play activities--walking on a ledge, drawing a line in the dirt, etc. 87. Do a work of art by telephone. Or use TBA (John Collins). 88. An all word TV tape. Or a single word. 89. A real time movie or video tape. A steaming cup of coffee. 90. If photos come from reality, what kind of reality comes from photos? Reconstruct a photo tree-dimensionally. 91. Scenarios. Do a movie for an existing, stock scenario. Or 1 person write scenario, another shoot movie. Or grabag scenario--everyone write 2-3 scenes, drop in box, someone pull out maybe 10 and they are shot in the order drawn out. Or everyone do their version of the grabag scenario. 92. Video tape of making sound effects. 93. Design a secret handshake (for our class members?) 94. Verbally describe a landscape instead of painting one 95. A distinctive work that is based on parts and not a whole, that is one see the parts and never teh whole 96. Prove a point as in a science fair diorama, display tableau such as, "How quickly does bread mould under certain conditions?", or "a plant growth hampered by use of conditioned water?", "The effect of colored lights on plants", "Is untreated seaweed useful as fertilizer", "What effect does ultra Sonic vibrations have on plants?", "The effect of asperin on potato plants", "Why is a rainbow round?", "Do race, color, texture affect the strength of hair?" and etc. 97. Take the titles of any amateur art exhibit and illustrate them. For instance much titles as, Ah, Toro!, Autumn Leaves, Mexican Patterns, Xenogeniala #2, Xanadu, Wharf Enchantments, French Restaurant, Boat Patterns, blah blah 98. Repaired or patched art. Recycled. Find something broken and discared. Perhaps in a thrift store. Mend it. 99. Art that requires the rental of a Service rather than an Object. 100. How does one react to a minor stress problem. Perhaps compare what he is thinking to his outward behavior. 101. Put new canvas over old paintings. 102. Composition based on the duration of say, one gal of paint. 103. A 30 day continuous line of adding machine tape. 104. The shapes of shadows of well known people (or well known artists for a specific example) 105. Reversals. Be black, say things backwards, all while standing upside down. 106. Put make-up on dogs and other animals. On trees and plants. 107. "If each of us were to confess his most secret desire, the one that inspires all his plans, all his actions, he would say: 'I want to be praised.'" (E.V. Cloran). Do a piece that deails with Praise as a theme. 108. Photograph of umbrella and sewing machine on an operating table. That's Surrealism isn't it? 109. Blow powdered color through straw on drawing made with fat on wall underground. That's cave art isn't it?