Galaxy Tea

So I was making tea the other day and found that the bubbles and foam swirled to look like a galactic disk. So I gave Deanna her tea and the next day I broke out the star and moon mug and made myself a cup of tea. And then I photoed it. I drank it before it got to be too cold, I promise.

Outside

Outside
A Mural Print by Daniel James Clark

Through my artistic development, my work has drawn from a common theme: the blending of reality and fantasy. I’ve made the association between childhood fantasies, and the adult need for wonder, excitement, and adventure. My thesis is that as we age, our thirst for the magical, the fantastic, and the “otherworld” just out of sight does not diminish. As adults we still need to believe that anything is possible. I feel that the way we can satisfy this need is through exploration: going “outside”. Whether exploring takes us just outside our comfort zone, or thrusts us into something wholly immersive does not matter, so long as we are outside.

“Outside” examines that conclusion by drawing the character, and thereby the viewer to peer outside through the window into a universe of possibility. Printed as a 40x26 inch piece, “Outside” is intended to place the viewer in front of a scene they can immerse themselves in more effectively than a smaller print would allow.

Wishes on stars.

Here are the promised photos of the astronomy class. It was a fantastic experience. I hope the photos do it justice.

Because there's always more.

There are moments where you realize there are thousands, millions, billions of things you've yet to do.

One of these things is stargazing on a rooftop. I covered an astronomy class tonight and have since vowed to buy myself a telescope.

Now for a pretty rectangle to tide you over

Question.

A prize for the person that can find the pholosophy/religion/belief structure/whatever that combines the following principles/ideas:

- An ultimate relative point where all things become objective and thus knowable (not nessicarily known though).
- The cyclical nature of all things.
- Collective unconscious.

Musings on myself

I've always found a deep and troubling connection with those characters you see in movies that coat the walls of one room with their thoughts. I've always had the urge to do that. To lock myself in a room with reams of paper, a computer and a printer. The end result of which I believe would be an astounding piece of artwork. I want to map out my ideas on massive walls. Start in the center and let it grow like some virus upon the wall.

I also want to do this in three dimensions. start with a room the size of an airplane hangar and employ dozens of people to help me build wonderland. Where sketches of domed shaped rooms with mirror floors and starry skies could be just one of the hundreds of other rooms. Mobius strips the size of a BMW bus.

On a much more attainable level I want to make a book. A book of paper models. Each page would be made of cardstock, and have shapes that you would pop out of their perforation that when put together would make paper models of the universe. And not just the ones I think are real. These models would bring abstract notions into a visual corporeal existence. So people would then see just how the universe ticks. And "tick" is kind of exactly the right word. I want people to construct these simple white models and see the metaphorical gears behind the white clock face.

Why I'm not an atheist or a theist.

Forget the Bible, the Koran, the cathedrals, the mosques, the temples, the priests, and forget the doctrines. Instead, think about the central question.

Given what has been proven by science and reasoning, does there still exist the possibility of a "god"?

There are those who say that yes, a god does indeed exist because a book said so. If that were all we needed to prove something, I'd leap from a building and fly. For as the great and powerful Douglas Adams once wrote in his text "There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that provides the difficulties."
But we all know that doesn't quite work (Because some of us have tried).

So books aren't proof.

However! If you ask a scientist why there isn't a god you're bound to either get an opinion or the honest 'Well, I can't say there isn't a god. But I can say that there isn't sufficient proof for the existence of a god.'

Okay so orthodox religion isn't reliable and science is working on something else entirely.

But! There is some circumstantial evidence that points to a god! Evidence that wouldn't stand up in the court of law, like hearsay (the Bible) or something that looks like there may have been someone here potentially sometime in the past but maybe not (the supposed "fine tuning" of the universe. The very concept of "fine tuning" implies that there was a tuner, therefore the name gives the theists an advantage. They do have the handicap of the burden of proof, so we'll let them have this one.)
Moving on, this fine tuning refers to the balances in the universe that led to the formations of stars, galaxies, planets, nebulae, black holes and sandwiches. A nice list of them appears on a website ridiculously biased and untrustworthy. (But they cite sources. That makes it just a little bit more okay to take them seriously.) Fine tuning refers to the scientifically verified fact that if certain constants in the universe like gravity and such were slightly off, the universe would be an inhospitable expanse of space. Here's a quote I found that adequately explains how exact these things must be to maintain life:

"One part in 10 to the 37 is such an incredibly sensitive balance that it is hard to visualize. The following analogy might help: Cover the entire North American continent in dimes all the way up to the moon, a height of about 239,000 miles..." "Next, pile dimes from here to the moon on a billion other continents the same size as North America. Paint one dime red and mix it into the billions of piles of dimes. Blindfold a friend and ask him to pick out one dime. The odds that he will pick the red dime are one in 10 to the 37." - Dr. Hugh Ross

Shit, right? But that still doesn't prove there is a god. It's pretty convincing though.

Another fact in regards to the structure of the universe is just how well things seem to work with numbers. In essence there is nothing that says 2+2 should equal 4. Humanity has assigned number values to things and found that certain things are always true no matter how many times you try. This is true for ridiculously complex mathematics. The fact that the universe adheres to these mathematical concepts and theories sometimes boggles my mind. This language which we created ourselves (mathematics) accurately fits inside the universe like it was meant to be there. Most of the time I think, well that's not really a surprise, we built mathematics to explain things so it does what we want it to. But math isn't just a set of bendable rules. It's a ridiculously complex and rigid set of rules that tends to know things before we do. And that, my friends makes no sense. The fact that a mathematical theory can describe things we've never seen before and then turn out to be true implies that math is something central to the universe. The core of what I'm saying is that the math was always in the universe even before we discovered it. It has it's own laws. And I wonder why it does.

But. All rants about math being the "language of god" aside, These are the reasons I cannot accept atheism or theism. Neither side has a bit of real proof.

If science is right, everything is predictable, and if enough mathematical equations were crunched, I could predict the future based on all the atoms positions in the universe, and how they are slated to interact, right down to the atoms in my mind.

If religion is right, everything is predictable because god has the ultimate say in what happens. God is all knowing and all present. Therefore, when the universe began, god knew the end. And that means god knew how the universe would unfold and did it. Therefore god chose how we would act billions of yeas before we were born.

(Come to think of it, science and religion agree on some things.)

Tune in next time when I'll talk about something else.

I want...

I want to create a piece of artwork that causes people to be removed from reality. I believe that this has been my goal all along. I want viewers to enter into my piece and suddenly know that they are somewhere else. I want to play with perception, twist the idea of reality. I want the "viewers" (it would be a multisensory expirence actually) to enter and become something else. They will leave my art with knoeledge they hadn't thought they would ever posess. I don't want them to be able to express it in words.

I want to explore what is real.
What defines art.
How far I can push the liminal idea of space and time.
I want them to forget they are looking at a piece of artwork.
I want them to expirence it alone.
Trip the mind and have it fall into place somewhere else.
I want it to make them think they are dreaming.
I want them to faint inside it.
I want them to feel both small and infinite.
Expirence nothing and everything in one moment.
Find their senses incapable of comprehending.