Six Grandfathers

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THE GUILTY PARTY ^


TO BEGIN.

"My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes, too."
~Chief Henry Standing Bear in the year 1939, to the architects responsible for the construction of the Mt. Rushmore.


It is a challenge to think of an American Monument with more sorted connotations than this:

Mount Rushmore National Memorial

• Near Keystone, South Dakota
• Monumental granite structure by Gutzon Borglum
• (left to right): George Washington (1732–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
• The entire memorial covers 1,278.45 acres
• The memorial attracts approximately two million people per year
• Construction of the monument started in 1927 and ended in 1941

It's like, sure, there ARE probably some to someone that are more controversial. Show this image to a fifth grader and they'd probably tell you it is "a monument to great leaders from history." No contraversy there. Was named by a lawyer from New York, for god's sake.

Alas.

To a great many people, this monument is more than just a monument to great American leaders.

It is a symbol of the oppression of the native people of the land. It is a symbol that causes much sadness to some who once called the mountain the "Six Grandfathers." It is a symbol of the conduct of the American Government towards the American Indian- a government that breaks it's promises unflinchingly and repeatedly.

The land was taken from the Lakota tribe after the Great Sioux War of 1876-77.

The Treaty of Fort Laramie from 1868 had previously granted the Black Hills to the Lakota permanently.

Whell Naow, yousee here? That juss don't sit right with us art students. And when somethin' Don' sit right, whell, that's why we have photoshop, now, aint it?

And then a man dressed as a BEE whips out a sharpie:

What we need now? Some REAL american heroes. And because this land belongs to the Lakota, well, goddamn it if each of those heroes ought to be Real Lakota Heroes:

Red Cloud (1822 - 1909)

Red Cloud was a war leader of the Oglala Lakota, and one of the most capable Native American opponents the United States Army ever faced.

Red Cloud's warriors made a statement by slaughtering the entire detachment of 81 cavalry and infantrymen and only suffering 14 casualties th

emselves. Following this battle, a peace commission toured the plains in 1867 and was able to determine that most of the Indian violence had in fact been provoked by the whites. This discovery led to the ending of the war in 1868, in a victory by the Lakota as the US signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie and agreed to withdraw completely from Lakota territory.

Red Cloud became an important leader of the Lakota as they transitioned from the freedom of the plains to the confinement of the reservation system. He outlived the other major Sioux leaders of the Indian wars and died in 1909 at the age of 87.

Crazy Horse (1840 – September 5, 1877)

Crazy Horse was a respected war leader of the Oglala Lakota, who

fought against the U.S. federal government in an effort to preserve the traditions and values of the Lakota way of life. He is most generally known for his participation in the Battle of little Bighorn in Jun

e, 1876.

Sitting Bull (1831 – 1890)

Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Soix holy man, killed by reservation police on the Standing Rock Res. during an attempt to arrest him and prevent him from supporting the Ghost Dance movement. He is noted for his role in the major victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Black Elk (1863 -1950)

Black Elk served as a Wichasha Wakan, or spiritual leader

among his people in the later years of his life.

One of the first of he Lakota tribe to document stories of

his tribe, as both an interpreter and a self published novelist.

Was the second cousin of Crazy Horse.

4 TOTALLY Bossy Soiux Leaders, all of them recognised and loved by thier people, especially the Oglala Lakota.








AND

...
All of them depicted in this REDUX, Which is the next best thing to just dynamiting the mountainside away as a bad memory.

Naturally, the google EARTH thingy is still pending.

As a delightful side note,

• Crazy horse monument is currently being constructed in the Black Hills to honor the famous Native American leader; Crazy Horse, as a response to Mount Rushmore.
• Supposed to be larger than Mount Rushmore and has the support of the Lakota Chiefs.
• The monument has rejected offers of federal funds.

Please Visit the website at http://www.crazyhorsememorial.org/

Antwerp Station Magic

It's funny, we were just talking about intervention in class, when my ma sent me this.

Except for the techno remix part, I was pretty blown away. what a cute thing to find.

TACO HELL

As a regular MTG player and therefore person who is looking for food at 1-2 AM periodically, I can't help but sometimes visit the ol' Taco bell. I can remember as a kid, when fast food was an acceptable place to eat, oh, once a month, taco bell was like, a rung up on the ladder of shitty food. Like, I'd eat at jack in the box, and the taco bell across the street would be leering at me like the forbidden cheap Americanized Mexican food that it is.

Of course, now I KNOW better. And living in the city means that if I want real mexican food at 2 AM, I can take a nite owl over to the mission and Feast like a monkey god in India for under 10$.

Still. there is no such luxury where I play MTG. So, once or twice a year, I find myself gobbling down tacos from the 10 tacos for 7$ steal. If i'm feeling feisty, I get 20 and see how far I can go.

And one thing never fails. The next day, I always pay more. Taco Bell for me has become synonymous with "gastro-intestinal hell".

Here's a skip thru history from the good ol' wikipedia:



^The original Logo, once taco bell branched out to the chains of history. Circa 1985.




^I guess the original location was called "Belle's" in California. This is the first to be called "taco Bell, in Wausau, Wisconsin. I mean, look at it. I'D eat there RIGHT now, and I just had breakfast.



^ And here we see the modernized, hermetically sealed looking allure of corporate sponsorship. There's no contraversy there. No humor. A shameless display of processed mediocrity. This is the version of the latter 1980s. And below the version we are used to, circa 2005:












And so, as part of this assignment, I decided to illustrate the legendary gastrointestinal travesty of taco bell with my own twist. Here is a version I live traced, and opposite it the drawing I turned into a more accurate representation of what I think when I see that sickly colored bell.



STUNG, BUGGERS. Stung.
~Bee

Future Thoughts and counting sheep

When I'm 90, there will be no more printed newspapers. The internet will have stolen all of the advertising dollars. For news, people will have the internet and the self updating DVR feature on their televisions for local and world news from a variety of different sources. Television advertising will be based on product placement, and on some stations it will also appear as a crawl on the bottom of the screen all the time, to combat this new DVR function. Advanced DVR systems will be able to zoom into the program, cropping the crawl away. The crawl will likely not just happen through the bottom of the screen.
When I'm 90, we will know as much about the human brain as we do the heart. Replacement limbs and other brain controlled functions will be connected to the nerves in the brain, negating complete disability. This will change the way we view disability and the concept of handicapped.
When I'm 90, the typewriter and keyboard will be considered old fassioned. There will be two primary methods of inputting information we used to type- using a lingual interperiting machine, and using a synapse interperiting machine. The lingual interperiter will record clearly dictated words and have a number of shift keys for special commands (a shift key for letter/number mode and others for more advanced parameters). The synapse interperiting machine will attach to the head and recognise intentions based on brain waves. This will primarily be used to spell (letters will be thought), but some more advanced machines will be in development that can recognise most words of a language.

I'd like to share something very interesting now. You simply need to see this.

The Scores! :p

To begin, here is Patricia and my correspondence:
RE: The Chance Project‏

From Me
To Patricia
That's great! Here's my recipe:

1. Write the first 10 kinds of restaurant (Chinese, Italian, Mexican, you get the idea)that come to mind on piece of paper, numbered 0 to 9.
2. Open a phone book and note the first number that you see.
3. Look up the names and numbers of 12 different restaurants of that type.
4. Call each restaurant and ask the first person you speak to for a letter out of A, B, C, D, E, F, or G.
5. Write all the letters on the paper. If the person is more than friendly, write "major". If the person is mean, write "minor." If the person does not give you an answer (or there is no answer), write nothing, but circle it.
6. Cut each letter/circle out along with whatever notes there are on the answer.
7. Choose 4 without looking and arrange them in a straight line. Write this down and underline this part, "1".
8. Choose another 4 without looking and arrange them as "2". Arrange and label the last as "3".
9. Now write a song by copying the 4 note sequences, "1-1-2-1 2-2-1-1 3-3-2-2 1-1-2-1"
10. Title it, "____ Food Shuffle" and leave it on or near the next piano you see.

> From: patriciatorres47@gmail.com
> To: rednecter@hotmail.com
> Subject: The Chance Project
> Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:25:38 -0700
> CC: patriciatorres47@hotmail.com
>
> Dear Brenden,
>
> I am sending you the recipe for the chance project. Please let me
> know if this is clear for you. I thought about creating music because
> I'm pretty sure you are going to enjoy it! Anything related to music
> seems enjoyable for you.
>
> Thanks,
> Patricia
>
>
>
> The Grant Project

1. Using the White Pages (phonebook), look for the last name of Grant in the area code (415).
2. Find a row with the last name of Grant.
3. Select 10 people, at random, with the name Grant. Avoid businesses.
4. Call these 10 people on the telephone and ask them for their favorite. Write down their responses.
5. Search the songs for the music (score) and write down the first measure or phrase of each song.
6. Then, using Audacity (- download it for free @ http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/mac), record into the program each (first) measure/phrase of each song, either by humming or by playing an instrument.
7. Edit these first measures/phrases, using filters, and create a piece of music.

Naturally, After completing Patricia's task to the best of my ability, most Chinese places were closed. I have class for 10 hours on Wednesdays :(, so for the meantime, no chinese food shuffle for you.

However!

The Grant Project was successful! Of the ten people I randomly selected, 5 answered and 4 gave songs.

1. Laura's Theme, from Dr. Zhivago
2. Fast Car, by Tracey Chapman
3. Rhapsody in Blue, by Gershwin
4. Glass, Concrete and Stone by David Byrne

After tooling around on Audacity for what seemed like forever, I ended up with something that would probably be best served as the soundtrack for "SAW VI" or perhaps an interpretative dance by midgets for the torment of an un-anesthetized root canal. This is mostly thanks to the reverse and pitch change tools :)

I can get it out of my safe if people want to visit me at 31st and Taraval!

Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think"

Please read the article here.

And the second page, after detailing the advents to the camera and then the voice recorder, the author alludes to a machine that can transcribe language by intention. He then writes, "For mature thought there is no mechanical substitute."

I can't help but wonder if he only says this to dispel the rising suspicion from his colleges that this is where he's heading. Of course this is what he's thinking- that mature thought will eventually be simulated. And that's the end of humanity as we know it... Strange he would straight deny something so plainly obvious.

End of page 2, "One of them will take instructions and data from a whole roomful of girls armed with simple key board punches, and will deliver sheets of computed results every few minutes." NERD PORN ALERT!!

I mean, heh. jeez. I guess this is where we can tell that this was written by a guy.

Page 4, section 6: "Selection by association, rather than indexing, may yet be mechanized. "

God this guy called it. in 1945. Jeeeeez.

The Horned Wyvwern

"I twas on the thirde night we sawe it;
lurking in the first chambere all ripled and blacke
It's eyes were as deep as pittes,
it's fangs stained and silente
Uncoiled it did, from the wall
where it had perched most like a stalactite,
and milled through the pile of corpses
we had left of the kobolds.
Every so often we could hear it's mighty antlers
click wetly against the roof
The bravest of us dare not move
before it's grim noises had long since passed."
~Craig Islin, The Northwatch

Chimeric properties-

1. Eyes of a spider.
2. Maw of a Leapord.
3. Antlers of an Elk.
4. Wings of a bat.
5. Body of a Caiman.

SYSTEMATIC PROCESS:

1. Used clone tool to erase bat's body
2. Used reshape tool to double the size of the spectacled caiman's legs
3. Layered the caiman over the wings
4. Layered the antlers over the caiman's head
   
5. layered the spider's eyes over the top of the caiman/antlers
6. layered the maw over the head
7. used opaque erase tool to clean up the edges
8. fooled with saturation and hue to match the peices
   
9. flattened image
10. used smudge tool to blend.
11. added flying squirrels!!
    

FINAL PRODUCT: