Tube Installation

I hinted via Twitter that I was working on something, and here it is. I was filling our main room and dining room with a lattice-work of cardboard tubes.

This is what happens when your partner leaves you alone in the house for three weeks. Those little ideas in the back of your head leave the back of your head, and you spend your evenings doing this.

M was, of course, thrilled to see it when she got home. We think alike.

The installation is made from 1" diameter, 24" long cardboard tubes, and stretches from floor to ceiling in a space of roughly 25' x 15' x 10'. It is free-standing, held together only by the strength of the tubes, and hot glue.

The tubes were rescued from a recycling dumpster. I used about 500. The hot glue was bought in a late night frenzy when I first had the idea, but was unable to find our own hot glue stash. Sometimes, inspiration won't wait.

I've made other tube sculptures by cutting the tubes to the right length, but for this I left all tubes at their 24" length, flatting the edges to make bevels where necessary.

This gave the it a strange 3D geometrical shape, proportional, and yet warped. I remembered the studies where honeybees are given LSD, and then produce warped honeycomb. The tubes are geodesic domes under a similar treatment. Not LSD, just warped, home-industrial boredom. An excess of raw material leads to products of irrational design.

But at the same time, it isn't irrational. There are pathways of open space leading from the front door, to the couch, to the kitchen. From the couch to the stereo. This was the only space I was using in the room; the tube occupy unused space.

In some ways, its an externalization of things I was feeling. I was lonely, a little bored. I was feeling frustrated that many creative ideas I have are put off, due to insufficient resources or time. This idea then launched out of me, in an aggressive reaction against the sort of conservative thought that lead one to, say, not fill one's living room with tubes. A rejection of all the reasons why not.

M, upon arriving home, was inspired with ideas to augment and add to the lattice work. In this way, she is rejoining my space, and adding to it, as she always does. It's now our space again, full parts, empty parts, and all the angles in between.

The video will probably give you the best overall picture. My camera with a wide-angle lens is not working.

Let My Boxcutter Be My Guide

One of the bizarre things that interests me is the symbols printed on boxes. In various jobs I've had, I've spent a good deal of time staring at the underside of boxes. There's a lot more information there than one would think. Such as crush weight parameters. How about that?

There are also some esoteric symbols printed onto various cartons, for the purpose of telling warehouse personnel how to treat the boxes, given the contents. Some of these are obvious, others are not. Some of my favorites are the stacking diagrams--drawings of how to palletize the boxes for maximum strength, product capacity, and all while keeping the product safe.

For those of you interested in "architectural fiction", and such things, we might think of these as visual-commodity-infrastructure-planning-geometries. Or, for those of you interested in "architectural fantasy", these are packgnosis-mobiscriptural-palletamulet-mandalas.

Materials handling to Third Bardo, man!

I believe these is the old packaging of digital printer developer. Most of these are from digital printing supplies of some sort. Even from looking at the box, I have no idea what this is supposed to symbolize, other than not to stack more than ten layers deep.


Toner, I think. The far left means stack no more than 25 high. The far right means the toner's holy halo will be visible when glorified with rays of the one true god.


Boxes of bottles of fuser oil. Also, the blueprints for "the endless staircase of holy knowledge."


This is also from the fuser oil box. To me, it evokes twisted intestines, and the dark voids that lie within us all.


More from the toner cartridge box. The cartridges come two to a box; and somehow, in the way they fit, they easily slide out of the box, but when they are empty and I am ready to take them out to the trash, I can never fit two back in the box. Maybe I don't pay enough attention in the first place. Or maybe, just maybe, this diagram depicts the boxes shrinking once the cartridges are removed.


This is actually from a box of instant Thai soups. Which is a printing supply to me, in an abstract way. Note, first of all, the mystic hand symbol on the left, which I'm sure I saw in one of the seizure-inducing gnosis scenes in Lawnmower Man. You might also notice how they managed to fit "protect from rain and sun" into one symbol, which is more efficient than another example above. Then, although I can easily figure out that the far right symbol means, "this soup is not for peasants who still use archaic and symbolic tools," I am at a complete lost as to what the bottle means. I thought the whole point of these things was to symbolize a message understandable in any language! Does it mean, "do not consume with pure whiskey?" Or, "Made with 100% Not Holy Water?" Maybe, "Only serve in Eylermeyer Flasks?"

Anybody who speaks Thai is more than invited to ellucidate in the comments.

All Hail Buult and Nuut, Protectors of Our Finest Creations!

Uploaded a new set of photos. Not quite as good, photographically, as the Sea Cake photos in my opinion, but I had some fun with the captions. Also, unless you're me, you probably don't get underneath the Fremont Bridge very often.

The captions get a bit more "fiction-fun" as they progress. It's funny how easy it is to proceed down a line like this once its in your head.

Check out the whole gallery here.



This cathedral was finished in 1973.




Some believe it is an ugly structure, symbolic of the dirt and decay of the time period.




Inside the structure itself we find the reliquary, which gives power to the structure and all who pass through it.