Things that I want to deal with in my art making...

I decided to keep some of my notes in my blog.

Things that I want to deal with in my art making...

Who I am/what I like and why/what interests me and why/
question of what is private and public
my identity within the context of 'public'
my identity as a Japanese
question of ethnicity
analysis and breaking-down of ideological ideas
my idea of art as a life style
act of eating
idea of 'right' 'normal' 'good' and 'beauty'
sense of touch
internet and mutiple identities

connection in between people and the separation in between people
and how the use of language plays out

The fact that English thinking process makes me feel like I have another identity

The limitation of language

the idea of sharing/unifying

responsibility as an artist in a society - connection maker/confronting of every single aspect of life = how honest one can be to heself or himself / bringing of questions by engaging with the viewers through my work /


The power of mass media as a strong social ideology generator. I fear it for making people more and more regressive of themselves.


What can a person do within a life time?



more to be added ...>

thinking of public art...#1

I intend to execute several projects, which takes the context of 'public' for this semester.
I will decide what I will be doing for my final project before this Thursday.
Those are some of my projects that I am considering to do in the future, whether I will do them this semeter or in the future.


Floating Somen Needle Poject (Performance/Video)
short description:
I would like to eat floating somen needles, which would be floating on a pvc pipe that is cut in half vertically, possiblly at the end of Ballona Creek where the creek and the ocean meat. This is a project that I thought of when thinking more about Ballona Creek project, and thinking about my relationship with the context.
There is a Japanese seasonal custom for summer, where people get together and sit around a bumboo that is cut in half verticaly, and have a constant flow of small amount of water and float somen needles (really thin Japanese needles) from one end to the other, so that the people can catch them as the needles go by with chopsticks.

"Akai-ito" Project ~ continued
I intend to go to many other places to do my "Akai-ito" (A Red String) Project.
Considering places in America : Las Vegas, Hollywood Blvd, Desneyland, 3rd Street in Santa Monica, The Getty Museum, Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills...
I will be doing this project in Japan also this summer, probably in May or June.


Wrong Number Project
I would like to call random people and try to have a conversation with total straingers.

Trip to Nowhere Project
Derived from the idea of chance operation which John Cage dealt with in his practice, I would like to have no aimed arrival point and take a road trip. Turns will be decided by a rolled pencil which has 'left', 'right', and 'U-turn' on its sides, at any point that I have to stop. The duration of the project is ideally one week, but I would like to at least try a day.



more ideas will be posted....

Project ; "Ma" 2005

I have posted some of the picture of my fabric-architectural sculpture that I made last year on my home page.


>> http://homepage.mac.com/mikanorange

I greatly welcome any kind of commets and feedbacks on any of my projects.



Thank you***

A Red String Project #2 >> @ a Beach

A Red String Project #2 >> @ a Beach

My brother wanted to run with the 30 foot-long scarf on, fast enough, so that the other end of the scarf wouldn't touch the ground.
He and I decided to go to the beach near LAX and run while the sun is rising.


I am currently working on edditing the footage.

"Akai-ito" >>A Red String Project @ Little Tokyo

“ Akai-ito” (A Red String) 2006 :
Knitted scarf/Performance/Video



“To be conected by Akai-ito” is an idiom in Japanese language, which means an invisible line that ties and holds a couple together. It indicates love and affection. In Japan, people rarely say, “I love you” among family members unlike here in America. It is even rare for a couple to say, “I love you” to each other as well. From my personal observation, comparing Japanese people and American people, Japanese people tend not to verbalize and express our feelings as much. People might be too shy to tell people what they are thinking about, and some people might be too scared. To me, the sound “I love you”, or “ai-shite-ru”, does not feel enough, or it is too borrowed from a ‘language’, especially when I cannot define the meaning of the word, “love” through language. You probably have experienced as some point in your life that your extreme feelings of happiness, sadness, madness, sympathy, are so indescribable that sometimes you don’t even know what kind of feeling you are experiencing and you can’t categorize it in words. But whether it is “love” or something else, I know when I like someone. To me, it’s the feeling of unity that I seek in relationships with people.

I made a red 30 feet long hand knitted scarf last year to share it with people, to be connected with them. It was based on the fact that I used to share my favorite red scarf that my grandmother made for me with my brother when we were little. Then my brother came to America 9 months ago. Growing up together though, we did not talk to each other very much until last year, and I did not know my brother very well. After realizing so, I wanted to know more about him.

I decided to share my red scarf with my brother again. I chose Little Tokyo as our spot because I am interested in its historical and social context. Now it is one of Los Angeles tourist spots, and it is nothing like Tokyo. I was very much interested in what my brother would say about the place also.

My brother and I walked round Little Tokyo with the scarf and a video camera for about an hour around noon on a weekend. There was a fair amount of people on the streets. We were connected with a visible line attempting to generate invisible connections with our encounters, while this physical connection constantly challenged our mental connection. Many people smiled at us and talked to us, while some people (mainly Japanese people) tried to ignore us completely.

This is an ongoing experimental project, which deals with the issue of language, personal/social relations, and what it means to be in Los Angeles-America as Japanese.

Ballona Creek Info#1.

The site picked for the project is Ballona Creek. The Ballona Creek Watershed totals about 130 square miles, draining the Los Angeles basin from the Santa Monica Mountains on the north, the Harbor Freeway (110) on the east, and the Baldwin Hills on the south.







The major tributaries to the Ballona Creek include Centinela Creek, Sepulveda Canyon Channel, Benedict Canyon Channel, and numerous storm drains.









Maps borrowed from http://www.ballonacreek.org/creek.shtml

Public Art Projects

I am working on a collaborative public art project with Erin Apreston, Esther Feldman, and Chih Yu Lin. This is going to be my second art project in a public setting.




>>In 2004, I went into Ralphs and I picked a customer to follow around, and I bought every single item that she purchased. I had all of my classmates wandering around us (the lady that I picked and myself) , and they had 4 video cameras and 3 digital cameras to document the event. I also had a video camera on my shopping curt. Later of the day, I went home and video taped myself cooking a dinner using all of the items that I purchased.<<<>



Mika Soma Jan. 27. 2006