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http://01sj.org/content/view/181/49/

I hope to collect and compare anecdotes of Mrs. Ba from the Vietnamese diaspora in Vancouver and San Jose and transcribe these oral tales to one cohesive history in Vietnamese and English. This record will be a part of the shrines/installations to be installed in Vietnamese noodle restaurants in San Jose.
Ba Ba is a woman who sells noodle soup at Bai Sau Beach in Qui Nhon, the town in Vietnam where I was born. Many tragedies befell Ba Ba including the suicide drowning in 1971 of her son who had refused to enlist. In 1972 she was gunned down when Bai Sau Beach became a battlefield; while operating on her wounds, the surgeon notes that she was shot by an AK 47, the Soviet-made gun of the advancing North Vietnamese Army - and as well as by an M-16 supplied to the retreating South Vietnamese Armies by the Americans. Betrayed by her two daughters, who had married American soldiers, she was left outside the American embassy in Saigon on that fateful day in June of 1975. Ba Ba returned to Bai Sau Beach and amid accusations from her friends and neighbours of working for the enemy she planned her escape and left Vietnam by boat in the fall of 1976 in search of her daughters. She was never seen again. These tales of Ba Ba's indomitable spirit were invoked by many Vietnamese boat people during the exodus by sea throughout the eighties and early nineties.

Vietnamese altars and shrines are dedicated to many contemporary personages whose stories and deeds are often passed on as shining examples of the human spirit and as well as what to do in such situations. These stories of Ba Ba resonate with many Vietnamese restaurant workers whose struggles mirror her own. Although it is an important and relevant tale, it is gradually fading. The last known shrine to Ba Ba in Vancouver was at Little Saigon Restaurant, which closed in 2003.

My work has always drawn inspiration and clarity from Vietnamese stories and rituals. Many of my works are anchored by personal stories from my mother and her friends, such as recent installations highlighting Lao Noi Kieu (Ancient Citizen) a spirit whose influence includes matters of nation and citizenship. Lao shrines were installed at Banff Centre in 2004 and at the Glenbow Museum in Alberta in 2005. Calling for Ba Ba is an important and necessary extension of my particular interest in creating installations to figures whose deeds inspired and galvanized the Vietnamese community in Canada during its early struggle.

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http://01sj.org/content/view/182/49/
http://www.breadboardband.org/
Shosei Oishi, Masayuki Akamatsu, Kazuki Saita, Yosuke Hayashi, and Katsuhiko Harada

[Live at IAMAS (10.18.2005)]

The Breadboard Band is a performing band that uses breadboards made of freely constructed electronic circuits to play music. We produce audio and visual expression through the most minimal, fundamental elements in the form of showing the electronic components of an instrument while directly touching and forming the electronic circuit by hand. The electric signals released from hand-made electronic circuits releases extremely rough and ferocious wave patterns. This performance is based on improvisational interplay, and we pull powerful music into shape through each member's operation, while discovering new sounds by hand.

The Breadboard Band is one that uses a breadboard to perform music. A breadboard is a board that is perforated with connector holes into a grid-shape, to which electronic components are inserted in order to build a prototype of an electronic circuit. The electronic components can be inserted or removed with ease, making it simple to change the wiring with jumper cables. Utilizing the features of the breadboard, The Breadboard Band creates audio and visual circuits on the board, and modifies them during performance.

Today, 100 years from the public performance in 1906 of the Telharmonium, the first electronic musical instrument, The Breadboard Band raises objections toward black-box electronic musical instruments and computers. This objection is raised in the form of showing the electronic components of an instrument, directly touching and forming the electric circuit by hand, and producing audio and visual expression through the most minimal, fundamental elements. This can be considered the hardware version of software programming. The circuit change during a performance is called "On-the-fly Wiring".

The performance of the circuits on the breadboard is less than 0.1% of that of electronic audio and video devices offered commercially. The electric signals released from hand-made electronic circuits releases extremely rough and ferocious wave patterns that might destroy a commercial instrument. However, the primal screams of ecstasy released from the electric circuits surge from the depths of modern society that is surrounded by sophisticated information technology, and stirs us with emotion.

The Breadboard Band's performances based on improvisational interplay, and we pull powerful music into shape through each member's operation, while discovering new sounds by hand. Various elements blend together, becoming one from beats made through analog oscillation circuits, riffs made through programmable chips, noises made through magnetic head, scratches made through a hacked iPod, and the videos of changing audio signals. It may be quite humorous to see the serious expressions of the performers as they grapple with small electronic components, but they match any band in vigor and potency.

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http://www.scrapyardchallenge.com/

ABOUT SCRAPYARD CHALLENGE WORKSHOPS
The Scrapyard Challenge Workshops are intensive workshops where participants build simple electronic projects (both digital and analog inputs) out of found or discarded "junk" (old electronics, clothing, furniture, outdated computer equipment, appliances, turntables, monitors, gadgets, etc..). So far the workshops have been held 14 times in 6 countries with 3 different themes including the MIDI Scrapyard Challenge where participants build simple musical controllers from discarded objects and "junk", DIY Wearable Challenge where they create wearable tech projects from used clothing, and the DIY Urban Challenge where they work on public space interventions and other projects. The MIDI Scrapyard version includes a mini workshop where participants build simple drawing robots or "DrawBots" with small, inexpensive motors, batteries, and drawing markers that can also be connected to Serial or MIDI interface. At the end of the day or evening, the workshop participants have a small performance, concert, or fashion show (depending on the workshop theme) where they demonstrate and preent their creations together as a group. No electronics skills or any experience with technology is necessary to participate in the workshops.

OPEN AND COLLABORATIVE SPACE
The Scrapyard Challenge Workshops are built on the premise of encouraging an open and collaborative space for creative ideas and hands-on prototyping. Workshop attendees learn how to build simple instruments from found and/or discarded objects. We encourage attendance from visitors from multiple backgrounds and all skill levels.

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http://www.temporaryservices.org/pi_overview.html
Prisoners' Inventions by Angelo and Temporary Services

chess set

salt and pepper shaker

This project was a collaboration with Angelo, an incarcerated artist. He illustrated many incredible inventions made by prisoners to fill needs that the restrictive environment of the prison tries to supress. The inventions cover everything from homemade sex dolls, condoms, salt and peper shakers to chess sets. We collaborated on this project with Angelo for over two years. We had many additional collaborators who made a book, exhibition of re-created inventions and a prison cell possible. This page offers an overview of the project thus far.

"When first approached with the idea of illustrating examples of inmate inventiveness, I was skeptical, thinking that there would be little of real interest to depict. When I set my mind to the task, though, I recognized the surprising range of inventions and innovations that I had witnessed. I had just become so used to it all that the uniqueness no longer registered."

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African wax print fabric with pattern of electric shavers

How a Dutch company's batik textiles became the basis of "traditional" West African culture.
By Matt Steinglass, Metropolis Magazine

"Vlisco was founded in 1846 by a famous Dutch merchant family called the van Vlissingens," explains Joop van der Meij, the company's CEO. "One of the van Vlissingen sons had been in Indonesia, where he discovered the batik method of dying cloth. He had the idea that maybe this method could be industrialized in Europe." By the late 1800s Dutch factories were supplying the bulk of the Indonesian batik market, and as Dutch freighters stopped at various African ports on their way over, the fabrics began to gain an African clientele. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when measures were taken to protect domestic Indonesian batik production, the market for imports there slumped. Africa gradually became the exclusive market for Dutch batik, and by the 1960s Vlisco, having merged with all its rivals, had become the exclusive supplier.

In an industry where the reverse is more common, Vlisco is an anomaly: a European-based textile company whose market is in the third world. Almost none of Vlisco's product is bought in Europe or North America. ...

The patterns on the imitation fabrics, meanwhile, are often nearly identical to those on Real Dutch Wax, because the competitors steal them. Van der Meij claims that 80 percent of the designs one sees on wax-print fabrics in Africa started out on Vlisco drawing boards. The company has fought several successful legal actions, but the Asians are not to be deterred. Lately Nigerian textile makers have also been getting in on the act. "We can put the new fabrics out on the market as soon as the containers arrive from Holland," says Agbobli Médémé, service representative of Vlisco's Togolese partner company, V.A.C.-Togo. "The Nigerian copies start showing up eight days later."

So the authentic traditional West African fabrics are the ones produced in Holland, and the stuff made in West Africa is fake? Can this be right?

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http://www.bigboxreuse.com/

The Sugar Creek Charter Elementary School
Charlotte, NC
Renovated K-Mart

As superstores abandon buildings in order to move into bigger stores, what will become of the walls that they leave behind? It is within the answer to this question that we are seeing the resourcefulness and creativity of communities dealing with a situation that is happening all over the country: the empty big box. Through travel and the study of buildings, Julia is researching the way people build their towns, creating the context for their own lives.

Julia Christensen began investigating How Communities are Re-Using the Big Box in January of 2004. Since then, she has been traveling around the country in her car, visiting the sites and meeting the people who are making these transformations possible. She has been collecting a growing collection of photographs, interviews, stories, and documents relating to the renovations, and has been giving presentations in these communities about how other towns are dealing with this common situation. While exhibiting photographs and installing video and sound work generated from her travels, she is currently working on a book documenting her research. Julia continues to develop her traveling exhibit of artifacts exploring How Communities are Re-Using the Big Box.

The term "big box" refers to a large, free-standing building with one major room. This model was made very popular by the corporations that created stores with minimal storage space, the stock items simply coming in off the truck and on to the shelves. Because "big box" is a fairly new term, and since there are variations on the concept, there have been several occasions upon which Julia has arrived at a site and the "big box" was not quite what she thought it was going to be. Nevertheless, there has been something important to be learned at each of this locations. Her research has led her down many side streets, as she has learned about the choices people make in order to shape their town in order to accommodate their community.

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http://www.warrug.com

The Art of Making Their Voices Heard
For thousands of years, the woman of nomadic tribes in what is now Afghanistan and its environs have been weaving rugs by hand. The oldest known and intact example of these rugs in the world is the "Pazyryk" rug dating from the 4th century B.C. (currently housed in the St. Petersburg Museum). These traditional pieces of folk art have long depicted the same deeply rooted motifs and patterns, with occasional images derived from the artist's everyday experiences. However, about 25 years ago, all that suddenly changed. Following the 1979 Soviet invasion into Afghanistan, rug dealers began seeing drastic alterations in the content of Afghani rugs. Tanks replaced flowers, rocket launchers replaced vases and airplanes replaced abstract borders!

After the Soviet departure from Afghanistan the new ruling power instituted the strict Muslim Sharia law which governs the religious, political, social, domestic and private life. This law stripped many Afghani women of basic rights including banning them from talking to men outside of their family, walking outside alone, or working. Women were also made to abide by the practice of purdah which is the seclusion of women from public observation by having them wear concealing clothing from head to toe, like a burka, and by the use of high walls, curtains and screens erected within the home. This separates the women from learning about the outside world in order to make them ignorant of the practicalities of life and deprives the woman of economic independence by not allowing them to work outside the home. In order to keep females submissive, women know only what their fathers, husbands, and sons want them to know. The women who practice purdah have no voice or free will.

For women who break the fatwas, or edicts, associated with Sharia law, including purdah, there are dire consequences including harsh beatings or even death. Additionally, since Sharia law dictates that it is taboo to represent animate subjects in art; weavers were no longer allowed to portray images of birds, animals or people.

Thus as the artists iconography changed so did their outlets for expressing it. Those living outside of the war-torn Afghanistan can't comprehend the reality of living in a world where the images depicted through the rugs are a part of everyday life. To the women of Afghanistan the rugs have become a way to make their voices heard and to communicate to the rest of the world what they live with everyday.

This new category of rugs has been termed "war rugs" and has sparked an underground movement in the art world. Many collectors see the rugs not only as art, but also as historical documents and a testament to the times.

from http://www.warrug.com

Afghan War Rugs: A Sub-group With Iranian Influence, An Exhibition of a Variant Type
by Ron O'Callaghan,

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Recycled Re-Seen: Folk Art from the Global Scrap Heap
by Charlene Cerny

From Library Journal
The focus of this volume (and the associated traveling exhibition) is the increasing tendency of the world's folk artists to utilize the discards of our industrial and postindustrial consumer world as materials for their creations. In 11 essays, various scholars discuss topics ranging from the renowned history of the development of steel drum bands in the Caribbean to lesser-known examples of "recycled" art from India, Africa, Latin America, and the United States. The whimsical nature and surprising practicality of many of the objects depicted make the accompanying photos a visual delight. Highly recommended for academic collections, but the charm of the objects should make this appealing to the general audience served by public libraries as well.?Eugene C. Burt, Art Inst. of Seattle Lib.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

review

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Imbenge Telephone Wire Baskets
For centuries South Africa's Zulu people have been famous for the sturdy and beautiful baskets they weave from grasses and palm leaf. The weaving was so tight that the best ukhamba baskets were actually used to store beer! Today these baskets are still woven in the countryside, but the Zulus living in urban area have invented a new kind of basket, the imbenge basket woven entirely of recycled telephone wire. The baskets are as bright and colorful as the telephone wire, and very sturdy. They are also completely washable! In recent years people in craft cooperatives in the the neighboring nation of Zimbabwe have developed their own distinct style of telephone wire basket,

Detail of Jaheni Mkhize at work on a"soft basket".

Woven Telephone Wire-covered Bottle
Unknown artist - Zulu people, South Africa
Recycled telephone wire on glass bottle
(11 1/2" h. x 3 1/2" w.)

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http://www.myspace.com/knittaplease
bombing the neighborhood with fresh, aerosol-free knit graff!
Music: juice newton, knitta!
Movies colors
Television: who has time with all the tagging?
Books: new york subway cozies for the soul
Groups: Graffiti Artists , Rebel Art Grrrlz , Purl and Hurl , Stitchin' Bitches , Rubber Coin Purse Group , buy adrian landon brooks art , MARFA or BUST ! , Revolution Grrrl Style Now

article in the Houston Press, 12/15/05

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knit bricks

hosted by supernaturale.com

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Papa Wemba

Born: 1953, Kasai, Congo

Wemba gets credit for launching the Zaiko clan's trademark use of high fashion as a form of social rebellion. Wemba's dashing self-styled look-a 1930s throwback featuring baggy, pleated trousers hemmed above shiny brogues and hair clipped close at the sides-soon earned him the title Pope of the Sapeurs: Society of Ambianceurs and Persons of Elegance. The Sapeurs elevate a clothing fetish to a spiritual level to the extent of boasting their own "religion" called Katinda, which means cloth. The wildness of soukous and the excesses of the Sapeurs can be seen as channeled expressions of free spirits in an environment of political oppression and relentless conformity. During three decades of iron-fisted rule, Mobutu stifled all criticism of his government, and even enforced a national dress code for bureaucrats and businessmen.

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The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs

"Streets in cities serve many purposes besides carrying vehicles, and city sidewalks-the pedestrian parts of the streets-serve many purposes besides carrying pedestrians..."

Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
perpetual slum, cataclysmic use, unslumming slum, high ground coverages, planning for vitality, secondary diversity, border vacuums, fashionable pocket, mixed primary uses, involuntary subsidies, myths about diversity, cataclysmic money, street interruptions, disorganized complexity, orthodox planning, dwelling densities, incidental play, city diversity, primary diversity, sidewalk life, primary mixture, visual interruptions, gray belts, net acre, effective district

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How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand

From Kirkus Reviews
Brand founder of The Whole Earth Catalog and CoEvolution Quarterly, launches a populist attack on rarefied architectural conventions. A hippy elder statesman (once one of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters), Brand argues that a building can ``grow'' and should be treated as a ``Darwinian mechanism,'' something that adapts over time to meet certain changing needs. His humanistic insights grew out of a university seminar he taught in 1988. Catchy anti- establishment phrases abound: ``Function reforms form, perpetually,'' or ``Form follows funding.'' Thomas Jefferson, a ``high road'' builder, is shown to have tinkered his Monticello into a masterpiece over a lifetime. Commercial structures, Brand says, are ``forever metamorphic,'' as a garage-turned-boutique demonstrates. Photo spreads with smart and chatty captions trace the evolutions of buildings as they adopt new ``skins.'' Pointedly, architects Sir Richard Rogers (designer of the Pompidou Centre in Paris) and I.M. Pei (the Wiesner Building, aka the Media Lab at MIT) are taken to task for designing monumental flops that deny occupants' needs. Later sections track the social meanings of preservationism and celebrate vernacular traditions worldwide (e.g., the Malay house of Malaysia; pueblo architecture; the 18th- century Cape Cod House). Brand also documents his own unique habitats. He lives with his wife in a converted tugboat and houses his library in a metal self-storage container. Here, as throughout, Brand's self-reliant voice rings true--that of an engaging, intellectual crank. Brand makes a case for letting people shape their own environments. His crunchy-granola insights bristle with an undeniable pragmatism. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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http://www.ruralstudio.com

Mission
The mission of the Rural Studio is to enable each participating student to cross the threshold of misconceived opinions to create/design/build and to allow students to put their educational values to work as citizens of a community. The Rural Studio seeks solutions to the needs of the community within the community's own context, not from outside it. Abstract ideas based upon knowledge and study are transformed into workable solutions forged by real human contact, personal realization, and a gained appreciation for the culture.

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