found

found
Originally uploaded by josh lyon.

FREE HUGS

the music may be a bit too sappy... but nice concept.


toying with public space/personal boundaries...

One by One art show

DSC03769.JPG
Originally uploaded by froesebydesign.

some buddies from Freedomize put on an art/fashion show to raise funds for some good cause and i missed it. but my wife got to go. and some of the art rocked. it was all formatted 1" x 1"... check out the lego ghandi too. and i can't find the website with all the details hence the sketchy 'for some good cause' line.

but i really like this piece of work and i have no idea who did it. if anyone knows, please leave a comment or email me... thanks.

here's the lego ghandi:


DSC03784.JPG
Originally uploaded by froesebydesign.

rockin' in the K-Town

Sick as a dog, playing bass at the Merchant Taphouse in Kingston during 'showcase' week with Colin Munroe.

I didn't pass out or fall over! yeah!

btw. we're playing the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto this week on Thursday opening for Ninja Tunes own Pop Levi. come on out and support local music!

rockin' the supermarket

IMGP2937
Originally uploaded by josh lyon.

on tour with colin, rockin the supermarket on sept 12th. thanks to everyone who came out - what an amazing audience for our third show ever! 150 people? and all cheering like banshees? you kids are too kind. check out colin on myspace (www.myspace.com/colinmunroe) if you want to hear the sort of thing we're rocking. i don't feel bad plugging him coz he rocks and i'm just the bass player. but yeah, i like to thing i help bring the rock to the live show... even from behind my dark curtain. yeah, that's me on the right of the shot.

"pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" - the wizard, from the wizard of Oz.

falling in love... with design

every now and then, i stumble accross someone or something so inspiring it winds up on this ol' blog... my poor, sad, neglected blog. i miss this thing.

but you can't/shouldn't miss this:



design, i love.
music, i love.

myspace, thankyou.

moremusic: Lots of upcoming shows!

So I'm playing bass with Colin Munroe and we're finally touring! check out http://myspace.com/colinmunroe for details... we'll be in Kingston, Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, London, etc. around the second week of sept. come out if you can - tell everyone else to come too! rockpoptacular!

Also, my other band (Entire Cities) has some Toronto area shows (ie next saturday - aug 26th)... check out http://myspace.com/entirecities for details... mmm... psychadelic alt-country mayhem!

come out and support live music... rock on.

with love from yer friendly neighbourhood rockstyle lifestar.

soldierman

soldierman
Originally uploaded by josh lyon.

found this little toy soldier beside this demolition site near our house... the elements of the picture just somehow seemed to fit together too well.

54cr3d 5p4c3?

everybody sing: summertime, and the blogger is lazy...

so, it's summer... i was hoping to keep this blog up more faithfully through the summer months but yet again sunshine calls and i have no internet at home and for some reason don't like spending my extra hours at work to keep this up. i have hundreds of things to post about 'coz i'm finally done school and out and about but don't really want to sit in front of the screen... apparently there's a way you can just call in yer blog posts on the phone - but only in the states. too bad.

anyway, latest news is that I'm touring with a band this summer and into the fall, as the bass player no less... (check out Colin Munroe on Myspace) so that should be fun - so glad to be playing music all the time finally! I'll try to keep updating the blog whenever I can and from the road but we'll see how that goes! anyway, i don't mind if y'all don't check back 'till the fall - i'm sure no one feels all that let down but apologies if you are... see you on the flipside!

4:30am - Shots fired...

Image from Toronto Star, basically taken from our front steps.

How you see the world is forever changed when you have a kid.

How you see the world the day that you are awoken at 4:30am by the sound of gunfire on the street in front of the house where you are trying to raise that child is a change that I had no pregnancy holding time during which I could at least grow acustomed to the idea.

Once before I was woken in the wee hours of the morning by what sounded like a round being fired out of some kind of handgun - exactly 6 bangs followed by a woman's scream. Of course that turned out to simply be an exploding power transformer the night the ice fell in the great ice storm that hit parts of Ontario and Quebec a few years back. And the screaming, no doubt someone surprised by the lights going out in a very dramatic fashion.

But Thursday morning was not like that. Although the sounds sounded a lot less like movie gunfire than the transformer did, as I leapt from my bed, I was greeted by the sight of a cop in the middle of the road holding a shotgun... I tried to convince my wife it was simply firecrackers but she didn't buy it. She was out of the bed before I was.

Having experienced firsthand cops firing weapons at citizens during the FTAA protests in Quebec, I have been wary of them ever since... Since Quebec City I have always felt somewhat betrayed by the police and our government - I thought we had a right to peaceful protest but the taste and sting of teargas had lead me to think otherwise.

For the first time in many years, as the cop with the shotgun glanced around nervously at the dark edges of the building across the street, I really understood that they do truly 'serve and protect' far more than I would ever be able to. That cops life was on the line to protect me and my little family - his very life... Obviously that was not his main concern, he was trying to round up a man on the loose, firing at cops and ambulances, having just shot a man a few blocks away. But as a citizen, I thanked God then and there for people who are willing to take on the task of trying to make our streets safe, whether or not i always agree with their methods, attitudes and tactics.

And I prayed for courage in those officers to do their job nobly and peacefully, even in the face of this awful situation. You could see in their stance and hear in their voices that they were afraid (probably as much of simply having to wield deadly force as the potential threat on their own lives) and yet they faced what they had to, thank God...

In Canada, we're the lucky ones. We rarely wake to such things, rarely live in such proximity to threats like that (although it seems, sadly, to be coming more common in Toronto)... I don't think living on our street will ever seem quite so safe. Even last night the darkness brought chills and that funny feeling - peering a little harder into those shadows... looking a little more cautiously at those passing on the street...

(Although yesterday morning I also finally got to talk to neighbours we've been saying hi to for a few months and haven't yet had a good excuse to converse with - funny how crisis bonds people. One of them quipped that, like the house that Garp buys in the John Irving novel "The World according to Garp", our house had been pre-disastered now, less likely for something like that to occur again!)

I don't really know how to sum this all up in the context of this blog... and yet, like most things for me it connects. Violation of the safety of my family in the little space we call home... somehow in some way I don't understand... things have changed... I have changed...

weird days man, weird days.

read the news story here...

pentecost recycling

so last year i posted a flash piece for pentecost (posted here) and just recieved some fresh comments... for those of you interested in using the piece tommorow if it's not too late, simply click on the link in the other post and exchange the '.html' extension in the address bar with '.swf'

(this is usually the easiest way of stealing/using/borrowing flash files. if the naming system is not so straight forward you can always go to VIEW SOURCE and search for '.swf' and then copy the address from the html. while some people may not like you stealing their flash, feel free to borrow mine any time, just let me know it's being used - i always like to hear about and support other peoples creative ventures!)

now that you've learned something, here's the shortcut anyway to save you the trouble: pentecost flash file. of course you'll still need to right click or control click and save target as... as well as having a flash player installed on yer church's computer.

josh lyon remixed by josh lyon

so i discovered another josh lyon on the interweb (owner of joshlyon.com) and was much amused to find out that he also makes music (posted on sparklyfresh.com). so i decided to take one of his tracks (called 'future' as i recall) and remix it. go look for the original on his site and check out my remix here: future remixed (josh lyon vs josh lyon).

lamb in the city

hannah-lamb
Originally uploaded by josh lyon.

these lambs are all over our neighborhood (east side of downtown toronto)... i really like spotting them hiding under bridges, sheltering from the weather.

felted womb

womb-hannah
Originally uploaded by josh lyon.

my wife made this beautiful art piece over an excersize ball out of a whole lot of raw and died wool - mostly shaped in the shower due to the need for a lot of hot water in the felting process!

labyrinth coffee table

labyrinth
Originally uploaded by josh lyon.

this labyrinth table is in the window of a design store called 'space' on queen street east right near our house... i really like this table though it does remind me of the ikea labyrinth rug that i'm not so sure about.

prayer/wish forward

i got this prayer in an email forward explaining that you are to make a wish, prayer the prayer and then pass it on... why a prayer for contentment would be accompanied with 'wishing' is beyond me - but here's the prayer anyway:

St. Theresa's Prayer:

May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that
has been given to you....
May you be content knowing you are a child of God....
Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom
to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of us.

NT Wright Revival (updated)

IMG_0127
Originally uploaded by nathancolquhoun.

last night in toronto, 'the bish' kak NT Wright spoke at a club called revival... at an event organized by Empire Remixed. so when I arrived someone asked me if I was a big NT fan. I admitted that I'd never read anything of his and that I was really there mostly coz cool people told me about it and that I should probably go (thanks mr. rennie).

anyway, having attended and not really liking the idea of being a fan, I'd have to say I'm on my way to being converted... really appreciated his thoughts and theology, certainly a cat worth looking up and reading more of. I have a few questions regarding his answer to a question (asked by John Franklin of Imago) about the role of art in the church which I guess I'll have to email 'the Bish' about after I get a hold of and read the chapter entitled 'Beauty' from his new book. Anyone got a copy they want to lend me?

see more pics from the event here: nathan's flickr pics and/or read more about it here on nathan's blog.

woodland labyrinth

woodland labyrinth
Originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

jonny baker posted this to flickr... maybe a design i might imitate at the in-laws farm where I promised to help them build a labyrinth on their property sometime... don't know the location but it looks loverly!

He is risen!

Happy Easter yo.

Spent good friday eve at the Labyrinth at the eaton centre... beautiful time with 8 other freedomizers and simon. we shared communion and prayerwalked meditating on Gethsemene on the way in - praying with Christ in the garden, and on the way out prayed with peter in the courtyard facing the questions of the world acknowledging or denying christ, feeling betrayed and facing his own betrayal... based on a short reflection I wrote for the event. Thick fog descended on us during the walk (which took the better part of 1.5 hours for everyone to complete) and even thunder, lightning and a brief but heavy downpour - and no one quit or walked away despite the rain. amazing and powerful. many thanks to those who came out.

Easter sunday we joined the Catholic worker community in toronto for their easter dawn celebration. we biked down to the waterfront east of toronto, leaving our house at 4am and packing up little Hannah in a borrowed bike trailer. the ride took the better part of an hour and the service was beautiful and refreshing... the sun rise was glorious too! what a way to celebrate! after breakfast we recovered with an extended nap before heading to freedomize for the evening service... which was also a lovely celebration. I finally broke lent post-church with some fine white wine I got as a Christmas present... (thanks val) and shared it with the in-laws who arrived to visit.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

It's OVER!

well, i handed it in. i am now forever 'ficially done at OCAD. yea!

i am excited; one new thing and one old thing.

two things i am very excited about: an event in toronto called NIDUS

AND

tommorow at noon I hand in my final assignment for OCAD and then graduate... after 5 long years IT'S OVER!!!

okay THREE THINGS:

I can't wait 'till easter... don't tell anyone but today I was playing piano and singing easter hymns... bellowing "up from the grave he arose" at the top of my little lungs - my favourite easter-only-song as a small child.

temptation in the brewery

I gave up alcohol for lent and then was scheduled to work st paddy's day at a local brewery. i thought that was pretty funny until it was one of the most stressful days of my life (due to the work, not the abundance of drinking, yeasty smells, and free beer potentially available to me!)

thanks to jonny for posting this lenten meditation which I love...

yesterday birds... (spring sprung?)

yesterday i heard the craziest sound from within our apartment... i went to investigate and opened the back porch door to see thousands of starlings in the tree above my head... it was such a fantastic cacophony i went to get my minidisc recorder immediately: and now i share the sound of spring with you, my friend, the internet.

many birds tweeting

I also am currently working on a new song. It's my best ever. Let me know what you think internet?

new ambient track

breakfast, haircuts and sunglasses

breakfast2
Originally uploaded by josh lyon.

last night we cut our hair off... cork and i. needless to say, hannah was a little surprised this morning... so we celebrated at breakfast

another pic of our haircuts...

videoblog - hannah's entry

my digital still camera (christmas yay!) does video... my daughter wanted to see herself blinking so we shot this video... she also dressed up as a bird one morning (or rather, it was the only way I could get clothes on her - playing dressup). this may seem tangential - i have no real justification for posting it here - other than an interest in videoblogging and the potential thereof.

postsecret blog

postsecret is a collection of mailed in handmade postcards revealing untold secrets anonymously to the world.

looking for collaborators/co-conspirators

here is my latest musical offering to the world accompanied by an offer/request: anyone looking for soundtrack/backing track/ambient music/custom built electronica? i post what i can and what I like to my myspace account, but i make all sorts for all sorts. I'm up for the challenge: are you?

beautiful Lent illustrations/reflections by Si Smith

from 40 by Si Smith.

church 2.0 - same ol' deal?

in response to a post by jonny baker about church 2.0 I wrote the following:

i've been thinking a lot about this idea of community/people as content and something just struck me: in the wikipedia of the world, we christians are the definition of christianity and who christ is. constantly updated and morphing - many voices changing it all the time, but ultimately the world's understanding of christ is framed through us.

not a new concept, but new terminology.


which is simultaneously a scary and reassuring point - get your voice out there! contribute - if you don't like the cultural understanding of Christianity, help bring it back!

ex-building in toronto

ghosthouse
Originally uploaded by josh lyon.

i've always loved ex-buildings, and the stains they leave, expecially when they were built first and added on to, then removed leaving scars in the newer building's side. the sun was in the perfect spot the other day to describe the dimension of a possible foundation...

words made from flickr pics

code auto generated at http://metaatem.net/words/

love in the face of violence

After having seen Paradise Now and feeling very ignorant in my understanding of the Palestine/Israel conflict, I am trying to do as much reading and research as I can on what seems like a very devicive issue - especially in Christian circles... I'm currently reading a book by a Palestinian Melkite Christian Priest, Abuna Elias Chacour, entitled We belong to the land about his experiences in Israel. Just wanted to share the following quote which I found so simple yet so striking:

"The answer to hatred and violence is a genuine, personal initiative completely independent from the reaction to violence. Respecting human rights and protecting human life should never be a reaction to violence, but should arise out of one's love for human beings, for life.

This is the message of the man from Galilee. Jesus Christ teaches us today, as he did two thousand years ago in this very place, that we are not to love people out of charity or for Jesus' sake, as if others were a tool, an instrument, or a tunnel to pass through to reach the goal. Rather, the other - the Jew, the Palestinian, the American, the Muslim, the Christian - is to be loved becauase that person is loveable as who he or she is. We are to love as God loves. God's love is unconditional and sacrificial. God is love."

sheer volume (of sites unseen)

Sites Unseen has the most incredible list - so vast! - of christian related anything. found some cool bands, still browsing the rest. I had to post it, not so much for the content as the connectivity - this is the web after all... I'd love to see a map of the interconnectivity of all these links as a tagcloud or like something from visualcomplexity which is a network of maps of networks.

stillnotstill - beautiful meditative video art

still not still by Sue Costabile is one of the most beautiful pieces of video art I have seen in a long time... paired with lovely audio work by AGF. She does most of her work live using Jitter (part of Max/MSP). check out minimoviemovement too for more of their collaborations... inspiring lovely stuff.

freedom toaster - vending machine for free open source software

The Freedom Toaster project puts free open source software (including operating systems) on the streetcorner. Simply bring a CD to burn, click and go.
In South Africa, it is often hard to gain access to Ye Olde Interwebbe, especially to download large files/software. Problem no more. Just go find a toaster!

the cyborg identification quiz

fill in the blank in the following statement:

_____________ is a crutch for the weak.

a) religion
b) alcohol
c) blogging
d) a bicycle
e) a car
f) love
g) power
h) community
i) literacy
j) television
k) a crutch
l) all of the above

snowsuit photoblog

Snowsuit.net - an amazing photoblog.

$100 laptop plan - save the interweb!

I've been thinking about the $100 laptop and enjoyed the Banksy style take on it that Jonny Baker posted about (from gizmondo: a moment of perspective).

One of my favourite quotes from the $100 laptop website FAQ is the following:

"In one Cambodian village where we have been working, there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the home."

#$%&*%^@$%^$*!!!!

as my sister and wife just pointed out, why not just buy them $10 windup lamps? better yet (i suggested) if they need information too, give them a book to read and then burn for light...

This technotopic vision seems to me to really be about not saving the word (as if) but about saving cyberspace. The biggest problem (as I see it) with the Internet saving us (humankind) is the issue of access. How can we claim it is the great democratic and freespeech leveler unless everyone has one? so save the internet and give everyone a laptop. they wouldn't even dream of selling it to buy food... unless of course they access the internet and start getting ideas...

Paradise Now

Saw this film (Paradise Now, 2005) last night with my dad at Cinema Kingston... Aside from being a really well made film (good drama/suspence, maintains tension and interest level throughout) it really brings to the forefront the humanity of Palestinian suicide bombers. I found myself very ignorant of many factors involved in the occupation/conflict and this movie really drove me to want to know more... While the movie does have a focus (humanizing people who are constantly dehumanized by the western media), it also presents a wide variety of viewpoints on what sort of response/protest is worthwhile - debates relevant to any situation not just the one depicted in the film. I'm somewhat nervous about displaying my ignorance in this obviously heated topic, but wanted to reccomend seeing this film - which I think is a really important voice that needs to be heard in the ongoing hope for some sort of peace.

new musical tracks posted

my my myspace page now has three tracks for your listening pleasure - new since the christmas private release of the flk ep. name changed to akaflk (adding more redundant letters!) because some lousy punkband in the states used the name already... check out myspace akaflk page

my[54cr3d]space

hideleho! I've joined the ranks of myspace... (on forbes' suggestion). see myspace here... you can listen to one track on the page... my shareware mp3 converter ran out of trial conversions. pah. more tracks to come when i sort that out.

easter art

my friend andrew and i have been having a really interesting dialogue as he has recently started curating art/worship events at the church he works at in waterdown. It thrills me that he is involved in such things, many years after we had conversations about new possibilities of melding of art and church... way to go mr. hyde! the following is from an email he sent out... i urge you to check it out if you are in the area around easter - i probably won't be able to make it as i'll be involved with Freedomize's easter thing... which is still in the 'works in progress' catagory! Not sure if this is actually an open call for submissions, but if you comment here, i'll forward ideas to mister hyde.

link to his church blog to see more pictures from Encarna

Easter Art Show 2006
Grindstone Valley Bible Church & St. James United Church – Waterdown

As a follow-up to the ENCARNA worship installation at Christmas, St. James and Grindstone are teaming up to put on an Easter Art Show during Holy Week.
The art show will take place on Palm Sunday, April 9, at the old St. Thomas Church in Waterdown (44 Flamboro St.). This is a really great space for the art show, as all the pews and fixtures in the old church have been removed, leaving an open and majestic space. The exhibit will be open from 9am to 9pm, with a culminating worship service taking place at 8pm.
Currently, we are looking for artists to showcase their art in this exhibit.
The aim of this art show is to prepare people for the special celebration of Easter – the Christian understanding of our redemption through Christ’s death and resurrection. Therefore we are looking for art that draws people into the Easter story in a profound way.
The art in this art show will be divided into two major categories (along with their subsequent themes).
GOOD FRIDAY – depicting themes of sacrifice, injustice, pain, separation from God, sin, etc.
EASTER – depicting themes of resurrection, new life, victory over death, hope, holiness, purity, etc.
Have you made any art, or would you like to create a new piece, that we could exhibit in this art show? If so, please contact either Jeff or Andrew as soon as possible, giving a brief description of the piece and why you’d like to exhibit it. If you can, it would be great to email a picture of the piece, so the organizers can plan ahead.
We are really excited about this event. It should prove to be a profound and meaningful way to move into Holy Week and the life-giving celebration of Easter.

pandora

multiple people seem to have caught on to this simultaneously... so good. pandora.com allows you to type in a song or an artist and get a sweet playlist of similar tracks streamed to your 'puter... ANY MUSIC OF ANY KIND. genius. refine the list and add other artists or start a new playlist - register to have and save multiple stations. sweet.

I have a sweet little F.S. Blumm/Tin Hat Trio/Christian Wallumrod Ensemble list going on right now... try it and see beautiful musics!

vinebranches

vinebranches
Originally uploaded by josh lyon.

more flickr pics added... trying to set up a myspace band page so those of you in webland can hear my latest audio experiments/play. throw me an email if you want a demo disc and we'll make plans... or wait for updates re:my myspace page.

pics on flickr

I got a digital camera for christmas - yay! - and I'm uploading to Flickr like a fiend. I find their 'organize' tool to be really slow or entirely unresponsive, so I haven't yet sorted them all out. see my pics here: my Flickr pics. So excited to complete so many photo projects I've had in mind for so long! So excited to be able to take so many pictures! Recent uploads include: the Freedomize going away party for Todd (our now-former-senior-pastor-all-on-good-terms-!), and 'arty' stuff I took playing around with my little camera just after I got it.

Bono icon

Not sure where this originated but my friend andrew sent it to me in response to my contemporary icons...

Happy New Year!

creative sound play

Creative sound play with bunch o' guys jumping and stomping and making noise... flashtastic.

"How Great Thou Art"

How Great Thou Art is a videoart piece currently on exhibition at invisiblevenue.com. The piece is by Melissa Day who is the sister of a girl in my "Art, Faith and Postmodern Culture" class at ICS. The class is amazing and has been slowly undoing all that OCAD has taught me (!) over the last four-and-a-bit years. The artwork in question is also quite stunning and worth a watch. To see the other work in the current show, click this.

updated icons

inspired by jonny baker's post about banksy's madonna with ipod...
some illustrations for a lecture series my dad (David Lyon) is doing called "Devices and Desires: living with everyday technologies." He's talking this week in toronto at Tyndale college & seminary on: Messianic Microwaves, Cellphones and Sabbaths, Spirit of the SUV, and Laptop Love... tuesday, wednesday and thurday at 11:45am and wednesday night. if you're in toronto, check it out!

SPAM

i didn't know there was such thing as blog spam... now i do. i'm getting overrun by moles! in celebration of all the new spam on my blog, let's all sing together...

rusty, i know...

i never wanted to become this to become another blogsolete obs. so i'm going to keep trying... thanks for the continued comments even in my silence! no internet at home means rare blogging. but i love this picture so i couldn't help myself. thanks to freewayblogger.com

A is for Apple

A is for Apple... haven't got a chance to explore the whole site yet... all concepts connect back to the concept of 'apple'... nice art...

my goodness...

well, our internet computer is down at home so hence, no blogging for me. it's too silly doing this remotely so it'll be a while (sadly) till i'm back on top of the blog thing. strangely, i just got a job at the AGO working in a room full of computers but have no internet connection there either... so i'm at OCAD writing this and i'd rather not be at school in the summer! anyway, it's really nice being in the sunshine and less time online so it's probably good and timely that i have an enforced digi-fast. hope everyone's summers are going well and happily... peace...

wedding pics... for family and friends

the cake decorations corky and i made for chris and my sister's wedding...
see also: Photos of my sister's wedding - by Tim Forbes.

sue-per fast throwing

just for fun, i thought i'd do a little elapsed time video of the wheel process - one 6 minutes shot reduced to 15 seconds. Click here for Sue-per fast pottery!

both videos (this one and the one below) are also posted on ZeD...

new pottery video

my mum and dad are doing a series of performances of dad's song "watch the wheel spin" which is about mum (the potter) making pots on the wheel but also about God's creativity and continual shaping of us... for the performances of the song, they wanted to project a video of mum throwing at the wheel... well, with the trip to kingston, i quickly recorded a few angles of mum and whipped this vid off for them... see it now online, or at regent college later in the summer with the song!

kingston

well, i'm away from the bigsmoke (tdot) for the week - in kingston for my sister's wedding on the weekend. very much looking forward to another great party in the woods and square dance (!) to celebrate with her... my gran's here from the UK and my mum's dad is on his way over. it's weird how little time i've got to spend with my grandparents in the last bunch of years. i really wish they were closer so i could hang out with them more often. just as the baby changes me in her littlechildlike way, hanging out with granny has been a real eye opener - seeing the world in a whole different way.

with school crap out of the way (they gave me an award for my audio work!!!) i've been spending a whole lot more time out of doors - especially while we're in kingston. it's just so nice to be outside - sunshine or otherwise... how i miss it in the midst of the grey of the city. my eyes feel like they're tingling with the sensation of colours i've never seen before, or at least haven't seen for a long time... creation - so fantastic - thank God.

pentecost flash fix

i can't seem to get the flash file to work from ZeD and jonny had troubles too... not sure what the issue is.

so i posted it here as a backup option. i have a limited monthly bandwidth on that site (it's free!) so it may expire and you'll have to come back next month... silly? yes. it's all i can afford: free.

sorry to anyone who tried and waited for it NOT to load... i've never had this trouble with the ZeD site before... it's probably my fault. o well.

CLICK ON THE OPENING SCREEN TO RUN THE FILE... WHY AM I YELLING? I DON'T KNOW.

Love Will Remain

for some reason this really struck me today...

Hope and faith will both come to an end when we die. But love will remain. Love is eternal. Love comes from God and returns to God. When we die, we will lose everything that life gave us except love. The love with which we lived our lives is the life of God within us. It is the divine, indestructible core of our being. This love not only will remain but will also bear fruit from generation to generation. - Henri Nouwen

(I receive these daily Henri Nouwen meditations in my email inbox - just another attempt to poke myself in the eye daily with Godstuff...)

join the rebellion

best star wars spoof i've seen yet - and for a good cause:

(organic) Store Wars!

cultural creative

found this quiz link on mike todd's blog, although these are my results:

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational. Cultural Creative 88% Fundamentalist 75% Idealist 75% Postmodernist 50% Romanticist 44% Modernist 19% Materialist 19% Existentialist 13% What is Your World View? (corrected...hopefully) created with QuizFarm.com

plus, i may have posted this before but if you haven't yet, check out the Belief-O-Matic quiz to find out what religion you are!

pentecost :: grid blog, part III

i just posted a flash animation of pentecost to ZeD under my page. we used it as the invocation tonight at church. check it out...

=> under Content click on Pentecost Flash.
and then click on the opening image to start once it loads...

*edit: I just tried connecting directly to the content page but the link wouldn't work... does that mean any media i've ever posted a link to here hasn't come up? someone let me know! anyway, if you follow the instructions now, you should get to the file. or search ZeD for squish or pentecost

pentecost :: grid blog part II

"line of fire" - Kristen Ankiewicz

what is: "pentecost :: grid blog"?

check out the details here and see who else is on board.

pentecost :: grid blog (early bird!)

a little digital pentecostal flame... one day early in case anyone wants to borrow the image for their blog/site.

pentecost/babel

so one day i thought i was a genius when i made the connection between pentecost and babel... apparently though, it's already been discovered. not sure why/how i thought no one else had come up with this, but it continues to fascinate me nonetheless.

see an interesting take/debate on the idea here at theognome.blogspot.com.

hummingbird chick

i think this speaks for itself - 54cr3d 5p4c3 indeed!

labyrinth in the shopping mall

so i finally got a chance to walk the labyrinth in the middle of the eaton centre in downtown T-dot. having lived here for 4 years and known about it for a good chunk of time that's kind of silly i guess. for those who don't live in toronto, there's a big mall in the middle of our downtown and there's a full size chartres catherdral style labyrinth in an open space in the middle of the mall. it's often closed for the season, or i'm passing by in a hurry or stopping (God help me) to get something at the mall in a hurry! but today, i had a job interview at the AGO at 8:15 am and nothing to hurry home to. so i stopped to walk the path.
each labyrinth i have walked (in many parts of the world) have such a different setting which really shape the experience. being in the middle of the mall, i had a crowd of onlookers who were out for a morning coffee/smoke break. so they sat around the edge. other than that, a lot of people pass through the square and one guy walked part of the path briefly. being on display was a little intimidating but ended up being a really interesting part of the walk as i tried to figure out how to pray and contemplate and walk the path publicly in the midst of a crowd in the midst of the city. i felt like this was some sort of life lesson! i'm so used to labyrinths in secluded nature spots or church halls where the only people around are participants.
in addition, the path is worn in but also worn out (unlike the picture!). it is a grass labyrinth with no other markers. the new growth of grass on the path muddled me a few times. it was really interesting trying to walk an almost hidden obscure path - my past experience walking, making and drawing labyrinths was the only thing that kept me going in the right direction a lot of the time. this also provided an interesting thing to contemplate: not only was the path twisty and turny, and labyrinths generally tend to be about not walking straight lines but a turning path.... this one had the additional challenge of uncertainty and vagueness. kind of where i'm at right now with God and life plans. I know there is a path but i can't really see it, so i just have to walk where i think the path is and trust that i'm still on it and that at some point i'll make it to where i'm supposed to be going.
weird how the space itself was the thing that brought to light issues that i am working through and thinking about... primarily: how to boldly live out my faith in midst of the city and where my life is going...!

re:dvd

just so you know, those of you on the other side of the ocean, my dvd is in NTSC format so it will only play on computers or NTSC compatible dvd players - not the british PAL systems. for some reason we decided in N.America to have a few less lines of resolution on our screens.

the email link was missing from below... thanks for the interest! if you would like a copy email me here and we'll make arrangements.

skating video

i just posted a video to ZeD where I have a bunch of media online. My profile and other junk is under the moniker Squish. I realised after making my DVD that somehow this one got left out. I'll have to make another version of it (the dvd) at some point to complete my portfolio, but I guess at this point it'll have to stand as a part of my famous "lost tapes." as in, stuff i forgot to put on the dvd.

Check it out! The soundtrack is mostly derived from the sound of skating... plus a little rhodes on the side to sweeten the deal. It was minus 25 when i shot it and it still gives me chills in my fingertips! Also, if you sign up to ZeD you can post your own content and vote for other people's stuff (ie. me! :P ).

art for christ's sake!

I just read a really great article on the Ooze.com about art and potential controversy that arises with certain content (piss christ of course - it came up during my thesis defence too - in relation to my reified deity piece). I posted a while ago about seeing art as a way of loving... and this article articulates a similar line of thought really well. Loving the artist by loving what you see of God in what they do... Our view of God and our ability to love increased by viewing someone else's creativity.

oh yeah, speaking of which, i just made a DVD of most of my video work from the past two years... email me or get in touch somehow if you're interested in a copy.

A single heaven...

"A single heaven wraps around
this whirling, watered stone,
and every place is sacred ground
where God is loved and known."

from the hymn 'Seek not in ancient, distant hills' by Thomas Troeger, courtesy of my dad.

It ain't over till...

To all extents and purposes, this site should now be done... I only set it up for my thesis... but I don't really want to let go. So here's the deal: I'll just have to keep going with projects and ideas and keep posting them here.

Summer project #1: I've been asked to be the speaker at Golden Lake United Church Youth Camp again this year (first time around was last year)... which is very exciting. I have to come up with a plan and a curriculum outline in the next little while and while I'm supposed to be the "speaker" I'm going to try and work myself out of that job by attempting to come up with an interactive/experiential/artistic rendition of the curriculum. Basically, I have to tell the gospel story over the course of a week to a group of 15-18 yr olds... The weird part is that a lot of these kids have never heard the story, while others have been overchurched. The challenge is to, well... challenge both groups.

Summer project #2: A collaboration with a friend of mine who is both a writer and a assistant pastor of my church in Toronto (freedomize)... we've been wanting to work together for some time on a binaural experiential recording of a re-telling of the gospel, set in the context of downtown Toronto. So far, we've location scouted and had some dream sessions but haven't actually written the thing. We haven't yet quite resolved the thing but we'll certainly be borrowing some ideas from Janet Cardiff for this one - if you haven't experienced one of her audio walks yet you should - they're all over the world by now. We've also been talking of late of putting together some flash thingies... check out Born Magazine and Horizon Zero for some interesting examples of artist/writer/flash collaborations. embody also has some really interesting faithbased stuff to check out... So what are we actually doing? collaborating. Making what? we'll see.

I'll add more soon... I figure if i post my goals here, at some point someone will ask me: hey how's that thing going? and i'll be like: what thing? and they'll be like: that thing you said you were going to do, on yer blog? and i'll be like: crap! i'd better get on with it, seen as i told the (cyber-)world i would! thanks for reminding me!

destroy this site... destroy the internet!

web-rage getting you down? sick of my little rants and random theologizing?
can one "theologize"? well, they can now!
destroy it all in a plethora of ways at potatoland.org! try out Shredder if you just want to destroy one site, but use Riot to mash a bunch of sites together. You think your browser knows how to read HTML? Not until you've seen one that can't! Feed is nicely analytical (seeming) and Black and White re-reads CNN.com in a whole new way.

run an image database site like Flickr.com through Riot for a lot o laughs...

attention journalists, bloggers, anyone!

the way we are heading, according to a future transmission, is the end of news as we know it. Of course this should be obvious to anyone who knows of 10x10, but check out this eight minute video (EPIC 2014) sent from the future to reveal the truth of what the internet will one day accomplish! serious genius.

J.A.F. - the full deal

To see the full object analysis project of the Jesus action figure with text and all, click here. This project is based on the Prown Methodology for object analysis.
By "full" of course, I don't really mean full. You could (or I could, if you'd prefer) write a whole book on just that little plastic man. But that's the "full" project for now.

Material Culture Woooooo!

tiredness update

I'm exhausted after a beautiful dawn easter service that saw my whole family up at 4am to get to the 5am service at the lake/waterfront, put on by the Catholic Worker (a toronto group/organisation/something), followed by a massive feast and then playing piano at church (freedomize) at the evening service, that plus family visits and don't forget the good friday installation... - a big weekend all in all. Plus this is the busiest week of the year for me schoolwise... everything is due. If you're the praying type... put in a good word for me!

Now that the artschool stuff is winding down this is turning into a personal diary blog? whoa, get me out of here!

jesus action figure object analysis

A while back I posted about a Jesus action figure and Jesus Kitsch in general. see "parable of the lost jesus". I am still looking at such ideas and this is a continuation/expansion along the theme of the Jesus action figure and Jesus kitsch in general. For my material culture class at OCAD, we had to produce an object analysis - i did mine in flash. If you are easily offended, please play carefully. It may seem a tad abrasive at points but... well... that's all I have to say about that.

Jesus Action Figure Object Analysis

It is kind of a bigish flash file (3megs+), with no loader bar (still working on that concept!) so have patience while it loads on slower machines or dialup!

shine like stars - part II

hooray!!!

i'm handing in my finished thesis paper in 15 minutes. for anyone who wants to see it, here it is. I'd still love comments - its done but its still a work in progress.

shine like stars

I took a full-page printout of the above image and used a thumb-tack to prick tiny holes which fill in all the black spaces. In the white spaces where the body should be but is not shaded, I added a few more scattered holes to suggest the missing bits. When placed on an overhead projector it projects a beautiful image of Christ crucified in what appears to be a constellation of stars. I had to do a few of these until I came up with one that I liked - slight variation in hole size helps it have some depth. I call it Shine like Stars in reference to one of my favourite bible verses. For easter sunday, I intend to project this piece on a wall in the church with a cross made out of caution tape in front of it in the same way as in my God is in here piece. Except in this case, it will just be striped black and yellow tape, without the added text.

It seems kind of strange in the context of art school to be giving away ideas like this but it's fine with me if anyone wants to duplicate/remix said project for their own use - as long as God gets the credit ultimately! Click on the picture above to download the full size jpeg image ready to print...

an end in sight?

After a weekend of blogging silence and much much much writing, i have just finished the first draft of my thesis paper! i am absolutely thrilled as it seemed for some time that i would never get passed all the problems i had set up for myself along the way. It is basically an attempt to resolve everything i have blogged about here and all the art i have been making and all my theology into one paper for an art school that tends to reject even spirituality let alone Christianity! So that was insane.

It's not done by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a great relief to have finished the first draft! God is indeed good!

transgressing into theology

i apologise for the theological sidetrack... but this seems like a question worth consideration. When Jesus said "Love your neighbour as yourself" was he simply saying the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Or was there something more to what he was saying? I don't speak any ancient languages but perhaps someone can help me with this. Every translation that I could find reads "Love your neighbour as yourself" - Not "love your neighbour as you love yourself." which is the common understanding: "do unto others...", or even "be willing to do the same for you neighbour as you would do for yourself."

Could it in fact mean that you are to identify yourself collectively with your neighbour? That you are to love him/her not as much as you love yourself but to see your identity as intrinsically connected? Loving your neighbour as a part of your self - non individualistic, but collective/communal?

simulacra and original sin

my brother and I were just talking on the phone and he mentioned that people are "Imago Dei" - made in the image of God.

"Original Sin" is us replacing God, trying to become God ourselves. The Image replacing the prototype? sound familiar? Simulacra!

learning to see, learning to love

i don't remember the quote properly but it ran something like "love is the crazy act of admitting someone else actually exists..." who said it? i don't know. what did they actually say? i don't know.

art is someone communicating, showing us a new way to see...
christian art could be as simple as showing how to look redemptively at the world...

and if we see from that perspective, we have not only learned a new way to look at the world redemptively but also have seen something from someone else's perspective... which is part of learning how to love?

worship - collective creativity?

i've been trying to figure out the place of images/art in church all this time.
Biblically it seems that art (craft) was used for glorifying God by the construction of the temple. There is also prophets (performance artists?) and musicians (psalms). Then there are stories/parables told by Jesus - but this was unique to Him - was it not? The disciples did not do the same... they tried to clarify in simple language the things Jesus conveyed, so maybe we can't look to that example. (And we're still trying to make sense of what they were on about!)

At what point does art cross the line into advertising? If it is to make us 'relevant' to the culture around us... then it is not an act of worship but of fitting in. Like making church 'cool' or 'relevant'... thereby implying that the Christian gospel is uncool or irrelevant. This is not to hold any version of church over another... different forms of church in different eras made their attempts to be relevant and then clung to them for many years after the fad had past.

in fact... the thing Jesus did do to bring personal relevance to was to talk to individuals. He was relevant not to their lifestyle but to their life, and radically redefined their lifestyle by his words and example. Relationship = relevancy.

so where does that leave us with the art? in the old testament?

worship is showing worth.
worship is creative response to creator - a showing of gratitude?
so we all sing together. collective creative act.

what about alt.worship? is it temple adornment?
coz the temple seems to have passed when the curtain tore... God "released" into the world, not pop culture brought into church...

is it for the experience?
as we know, the experience of a rave/concert/museum/art gallery can be an ecstatic experience.
and experience is the hottest commodity right now.
All these things, as well as the charismatic/spiritual/transcendant can all be simulated.
Image becomes simulation becomes simulacra. Replacement of God by the images.
God doesn't exist... only the images ever existed.

the burning man strategy:
build something huge and then burn it.
the act of creativity is the act of worship.
The thing at the end can become an object of worship,
so it must not exist.
the moment has passed. no time for attachment, sentimentality or idolatry.
the sacrifice...
I'm not pretending that burning man is Christian,
but that the basic idea of what they do seems like a good idea.
(without the over the top hedonism)
Completely unrestrained creativity... Glorifying God.
Imagine if our Christian festivals/lives were as free as that... (but redemptively).

this is by no means a complete picture, or argument... just what's going on in my head right now.

thou shalt not let the simulacra take hold...

Could the second commandment read "when it comes to me [God], thou shalt not let the simulacra take hold"?
for a brief [non] explanation of simulacra see this little flash thingy i made today. It's a flash version the photo project i proposed regarding tourist icons.
If you want a real explanation of what I'm going on about and why... read this or this. Or, if you prefer to read from the man himself (Baudrillard) this should do. I should never have even considered these things this late in the game, but it seems inevitable now to go down this road a little way. He's all about disproving God by way of images... And yet God warned about this very thing so long ago... although his argument is quite dismantling.

my own little 'worship trick'

Jonny Baker posts 'worship tricks' on his blog to inspire and be used by anyone doing creative-worshipy-type-thingies. I thought I'd send him a 'thingy' that I did a few years back in case anyone else wants to use/redo/ignore it... however, i then also decided to post it here.

with 6 tv's and a shelving unit or two barstools, you can set up a cross shape made of tv's - four tv's stacked and one tv on each side (on the stools) for the crossbar. i played footage recorded off the current news and some from movies (with recognisable faces of celebs left out of course!) (mostly footage of war, poverty, etc.) on the screens. for a nice aesthetic look, i videotaped the footage right off the screen instead of taping it with a vcr - some up really close and some whole screen - either way it degrades nicely. in my version, each tv had its own vcr so the tapes were intentionally out of synch. however, to simplify, you can get a video splitter from radio shack (i believe the equivelant shop is called 'tandy' in the uk and australia) and have one tape running synchronised footage on all 6 screens. or even easier [read: less hauling of gear], use editing software to create the image of a tv cross and project it...

ideas, thrown in to the cyber-void... like a message in a bottle... to what shore will it float and by what hands be picked up and read?

i should be a photo major...

yet another idea that i've been kicking around for a while... just thought i'd throw these up here as part of the creative process and ongoing dialogue of ideas... someone may offer to help or even better them... ideas are free... (as long as God gets the glory, i don't really mind)

so anyway: famous landmarks (eiffel tower, pyramids... etc.) illustrated as a photo collage of people looking at them, taking pictures of them, ignoring them, posing in front of them.... except that the landmark itself is missing - the shape of it is cut out of the middle of the collage.

another photo idea

Sierra Club: Material World: a Global Family Portrait by Peter Menzel is an amazing book of photographs of people around the world who are asked to take all their worldly possesions and arrange them, however they want, outside their houses. Each photo shows the whole family and all their stuff, and their house.

As a riff on this idea, I would like to take a polaroid photo series. Each person in the series would take their 5 most important possessions (for either their actual value to the person or metaphorical/metonymic value), and arrange them in a pile, in order of importance. Then the Jesus action figure would be added to the equation. The person could place it where they felt it fit best.

if i was a photo major...

i would go around taking pictures of the sides of buildings where another building used to be attached and has since been demolished. the edges of tar in the shape of the roof, or the clumsy brickwork of the still-standing building, where it could not be fixed because the now-demolished building was in the way... a whole show of them...

maybe i'll do it anyway.

final project

my final project for thesis is taking shape... i am taking what I consider a bit of a ballsy move -especially at OCAD, where we don't even touch on notions of spirituality in art, let alone (dare I utter it?) Christianity (except as an outdated system of power and control). The piece is basically a reflection on communion and the last supper: a video of bread that is broken and then bleeds... played slightly out of sync on 12 TV screens. I am thinking that each video will have identical images so that each one fades in and out at slightly different times... but have a seperate sound track, or rather split a single audio piece into 12 seperate layers that will sound as one but actually come from 12 seperate Tv's. I'll try to post the video somewhere so people can see it... I'd love feedback on the idea and the images... curious to see how this will go over! If I don't ever post again after my final presentation, send a search party...

links for the collective

so, in the last post i mentioned this group of people getting together to dream artwise and well, we seem to dream well together... i posted a bunch of links related to art and church connections for that group but if anyone else is interested... it's not so much a definitive list, or a complete one by any means... more of a sampler, a taster, a starting point for exploration... and if anyone thinks i should add to it let me know.

faithful i am not...

...to this blog. i find that in the midst of the madness (of thesis & research)i am less and less inclined to post... or at least not very often, because i may change everything tommorow! but i will not yet concede defeat (in blogging or art).
however, i am in a spot right now where i have (at least) 2 new projects underway and an exciting new venture outside of my thesis. as to the two projects, they must still be kept underwraps... i find that if i say too much, i do too little because the creative/communicative (?) urge is satisfied already to some extent. but soon i will post pics.
the other exciting thing is that i got together the other day with an artist's collective that is in formation stage. we mostly just discussed how we (as christians also) can encourage and support each other and what our dreams are. I think all in attendance were much encouraged by the simple act of gathering together in physical space as much as by sharing our grand dreams! very exciting!

censorship in japan

In Chris Marker's brilliant poetic film Sans Soleil, he makes the following claim while talking about censorship in Japan (specifically black bars and fuzzed out bits on TV).

"It points to the absolute by obscurring it. . . That's what religions have always done."

And it got me to thinking... Is that bad...? "pointing to the absolute by obscurring it..." maybe that's all we can ever really do... admit that we cannot know and cannot absolutely resemble -- or is that terrible? Shouldn't we be making straight the way, clearing the path, not doing what 'religions' have done in obscurring the truth? But if obscurring illuminates?. . .

back on track...

Well, after much fiddling around and uncertainty, I guess I'm going to carry on in the same vein... I attended a very crazy conference a few weekends back and while most of it was just wierd, there was one speaker (by the name of bruxy) who really said some great things which motivated me to not only get back on track but also back to Jesus as the core motivation of what I'm doing. It's amazing that in the midst of a project about religiosity and human quantification etc. and how we miss the point of God in all that crap, I got distracted by the project itself in much the same way! the nice part is, he preaches what he refers to as "the gospel of the irreligious Christ." I don't know if he was quoting someone when he said: "The trouble with organised religion is not that it's organised but that it's religion." yeah man.
I also received much encouragement after Jonny Baker posted about this blog... thanks y'all.
And then... just to top it all off: I found a book in our school library called Material Christianity. Now, as far as OCAD goes, this is a pretty pleasant surprise!!! I kept looking in our library for related things but never dreamed that there would be something so specific to what I'm doing. Anyway, I have only just begun reading it but it's all about reading the cultural artifacts of christianity as a way of understanding the state of christianity today. Fantastic.