Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

being so close to the end of the semester always wears us out. even when only one of us is in school.

and being worn down means that we are more vulnerable to sickness. which is what we had most of this week.

sickness aside, we still managed to get out a bit this week. we even stayed out until two in the morning working on a show friday evening, which probably wasn't such a smart idea for our already weak bodies.

Rebecca's father was in town again this week, which was nice. He helped quite a bit with my show that we put up this weekend, between fixing our excel sheet data mining and organizing the physical order of the receipts. We took him for fun over to Kate and Robi's place one night so he could chat and play games with the Masleids. that was fun.

and on saturday, we took a break to go christmas shopping. even though it seems early, if we don't get our gifts mailed soon, they'll never get the places that we need them to.

but mostly this week was just exhausting. all my projects and presentations are due this coming week so once that is over with, it will be a relief to finally be done with this semester. then we can rest and get healthy again.

These are images from a show in the White Gallery. I worked with six other artists in collecting all the receipts from every transaction we made. This show was an analysis of that experiment and the resulting data.

Artist Statement:
The process of a transaction, in America, usually involves the transfer of currency for goods or services. These transactions are then logged in small pieces of paper called receipts. Most receipts come with specific data printed on them, commonly including the value of the goods transferred and the time and location where these goods exchanged hands. More often than not, a receipt will include sensitive data of the two parties involved.

The process of collecting receipts results in a system of data which can be mined for information about the transactions taking place. Often economic analysts will collect immeasurable amounts of data from a producer to evaluate the demographics of spending within a company. Although most people no longer collect receipts in an age of digital monetary transactions, for every physical transfer of goods or services for money, a receipt is still provided as proof of that transaction. It is this proof which I have collected during the past three months from six consenting artists.

This installation space is documentation of the artwork of collecting receipts and mining the data from these receipts in order to show the spending trends of the six artists involved. Through this collection, I am showing a system of data and order made from six separate expenditures. Systems are created from labels and the organization of data. As an archivist, I searched through the data and have investigated our spending habits through an analysis of this benign object, the receipt.

These receipts mark our experience within a currency economy. As artist we have spent the past several months collecting the receipts in this room.

• View album

Oh the wind is lashing lustily
And the trees are thrashing thrustily
And the leaves are rustling gustily
So it's rather safe to say
That it seems that it may turn out to be
It feels that it will undoubtedly
It looks like a rather blustery day, today

-Winnie the Pooh

I had a great idea this week. Christmas is my favorite holiday of all, mostly because we have such great traditions that we enjoy and look forward to. Some holidays (like the 4th of July) we end up doing something different all the time so it's just...different. There's something to be said for persistent traditions. That said, we started off the holiday season with our advent calendar (with little chocolate pieces in each day) and reading a story and singing a Christmas song and reading a scripture about the Savior every day until Christmas. I've really enjoyed it, even if some of the stories are...better than others. :) And for St. Nick's day on the 6th, we had a special dinner.

We took care of most of our Christmas shopping this week as well. We talked about present ideas, we went out and about, we browsed online, we made purchases... it's fun to have a good excuse to try and think of what people might like. And Friday we went to the Christmas party at Church and hung out with friends afterwards.

Wayne had quite a busy week with final projects and presentations and critiques all week long. Saturday started off relaxing, because Wayne has finished most of his school projects, but it gained momentum unexpectedly throughout the day. We ended up having to miss a friend's party in the evening so Wayne could finish his last project, and drove to campus twice - once to take down his art show, and a second time to retrieve his artist statement from the trash so he could use it for the documentation of the project he has to turn in tomorrow. But then he'll be all done until the end of January. He has a nice long break to look forward to, and will be able to work on his work nonstop.

We've started having "winter" weather here. It has been raining the last few days; yesterday was so windy, a tree branch landed on our balcony, the power was out for a few hours, and someone else in our complex said a tree fell and made a hole in their roof. Quite the blustery day.

Today has been good so far. Wayne was set apart as the 1st counselor in the Sunday School presidency, and I had a really fun lesson on animals. The five year-olds had lots of fun telling me about pets they love and how we can be nice to animals, and then we all got messy with some homemade play-doh that was probably a bit too wet...but we had fun. I let them wipe their hands on my bag instead of wiping them on their clothes. :)

Naan Bread
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Scant 4 cups white bread flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
water to mix
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp caraway seeds
olive oil for frying

Put the flour, salt, and yeast into a bowl with enough water to make a soft, but not sloppy dough. Add the seeds, then divide the dough into three pieces. Let rest of 1 hour.

Divide the dough once more, making six pieces (you can divide it further if you desire, but optimal is six from this recipe). Using a rolling pin, flatten each piece into a circle and let rest for 5 more minutes.

Heat a skillet to medium heat and add a splash of olive oil. Shallow fry each naan until browned on both sides, then set aside to cool before serving.

Makes six pieces (one per person).

Apple Walnut Salad
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2 cups ciabatta bread, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 TBS olive oil
1 cup celeriac (celery root), thinly sliced
1/2 cup seedless grapes (green), halved
1/2 cup walnuts, toasted, slightly crushed
1 apple, cored, quartered and thinly sliced
1/2 cup creamy salad dressing (recommended: blue cheese, asiago caesar, or plain mayo)
2 TBS fresh chives

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss the ciabatta in 1 TBS olive oil. Place the bread cubes in a single layer and toast them in the oven until browned (approximately 7 minutes). Remove from oven and let cool. After bread is cooled, place into a large bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Season with some salt and pepper.

Serves 4 people (for a side dish).

Aigo Bouido
(Garlic and Sage Soup)
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6-8 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 tsp sage
2 tsp thyme
4 cups water
1 TBS butter
6 oz vermicelli (any broken noodles do great)
2 TBS lemon juice
6 egg yolks lightly beaten
salt and pepper
3 TBS extra virgin olive oil
6 TBS shredded Parmesan cheese

In a large saucepan over high heat, combine the garlic, sage, thyme and water and bring to a boil. Reduce the head to low and simmer, uncovered for 20 minutes.

Add the vermicell and butter and cook until the noodles are tender. Mix lemon juice and egg yolks separately. Bring the egg yolks up to temperature by adding some of the hot water mixture until properly diluted. Simmer on low for 2 minutes, stirring constantly - make sure the egg doesn't separate. Season with salt and pepper, stir in oil and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Pour over a slice of toasted bread.

Serves 6.

Rebecca and I have decided that this year was a terrible year for movies. After eight months since we've last been to the theaters, we rented Pirates of the Caribbean 2, to see if it was worth it. And I think the first time we watched it we were just as confused as the first time we watched Master and Servant -- totally lost. Not only could we not understand what half the characters were saying, but the plot made no sense. So we watched it again. The next day. And then I think I can reconcile it as being an "alright" film.

The only reason we could fit that film in was because this week was the last of finals for me. Monday, to be precise. And so now I am finished with school until late January; but not finished with readings. I am far behind in theoretical texts, so it looks like I will be reading a large stack of books over the break to catch up. But this week, I relaxed (and took care of errands around the house). We mailed the last of our Christmas presents and did the last of our Christmas shopping. Target lied to me twice this season and a couple other places were out of the thing I wanted as well. I had to change my mind about which gift to give a few times. The most interesting task was trying to figure out what had happened wrong with our State Farm insurance. When we moved in August, we tried to transfer our insurance to a local insurance representative. The guy at the office who handled our case was a disaster and had us close our previous account and open a new account and had really made a mess of our insurance. But we didn't find this out until recently when the bills we received were showing very bizarre amounts -- every bill was different. After talking on the phone with a different representative, I found out that they had fired the guy who had helped us because ... well, because he was a bad rep. And the nice lady on the phone kept repeating that to me. Just so I would know.

But I think we have it all worked out. Not that this was the highlight of our week. No, that was our cook-off.

We decided with some friends of ours at church to have an ol' fashion cook-off -- everyone makes something nice and fancy and we all sit down to eat some good eats. Despite not having a theme (we did a nice southern cook-off with Karl and Angela last year), everything turned out to have fall colors and looked really well together. It was a nice night of good food, good friends, and fun games. We need to do another cook-off soon, but this time we might try to do a themed cook-off, perhaps with one specific ingredient that must be included in all the dishes. Who knows?

Both Rebecca and I are really excited for Christmas. We leave this Wednesday for Michigan to spend the holidays with my parents in Ypsilanti. We've been really good at remembering to read stories and sing songs and read Christmas scriptures from our daily advent book. And this year we even customized the book to include all our favorite Christmas stories. Merry Christmas to everyone, have a great week and we're hoping for smooth travel!

The only thing bad about a holiday is it is followed by a non-holiday.

-Anonymous

The following text is taken from a presentation I gave on my work up to the end of my first semester in graduate school. It follows a powerpoint presentation.

My name is Wayne Madsen and I am a cross platform artist and this is my first semester in the graduate program here at San Jose State. In this class I have previously discussed my primary work in oil paintings. Today, I will be encompassing the entire perspective of my work, dealing with my investigations into language, the philosophical differences between culture systems and the transversal of the out-group to the in-group.

Language can be defined as a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition. Language traditionally consists of two sub-set groups: speech and a set a pictorial symbols which convey constructs. The principle use of language is debated over continually, but for the sake of understanding my work, we will be evaluating language as a system used for the conveyance of thought.

I became interested in language after reading one of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s seminal works: Philosophical Grammar, translated into English. Wittgenstein was a philosopher from the early 20th century generally accredited with the foundations of the philosophy of language and the ontological approach to literature and language. In response to Wittgenstein’s work, there necessitated in the philosophical community an evolution on the philosophy of language and there emerged two schools of thought on the matter. The first approach to language is that language precedes conscious thought and that thought can’t be formed without language. The opposing school on language and thought is that thought doesn’t require language. I am, along with Wittgenstein, a believer in the former school – the school of continental philosophy – rather than the latter. Language is not only a tool for conveying thought, but also its fundamental medium. By using language, we transmit ideas between parties and the ideas are thus limited by the language used.

Language, as I have investigated it, is interwoven with the culture which uses it. In 2002, Jacques Derrida, a more contemporary philosopher, gave one of his final addresses to UNESCO about the language basis for a culture’s philosophical thought. UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Its duties are to set up programs to sponsor international collaboration between the scientific and cultural communities in order to preserve human rights and the “fundamental freedoms” proclaimed in the UN Charter. Jacques Derrida, in his address to UNESCO, attacked the blanket belief that a world-wide universal philosophy could be attained, due to language systems. Since each language comes with a set group of parameters, albeit one which evolves over time by introducing new words and eliminating others, Derrida argued that due to the western civilization’s root in Greco-Roman language, we also share a communal bond in Greco-Roman philosophy because of the features and constraints of our language, excluding those societies which root in different language traditions. This creates cultural in-groups and out-groups with other societies which have distinct properties due to their language.

Within a social stratosphere, there exists in-groups and out-groups. Within our in-group of inner social confidants, we usually have our intimate family members – perhaps not those people we like best but with whom we share an intimate bond that has been created because of time and proximity. Outside this group, usually lies the second tier of intimacy – often times this is our relationship partners and closest friends. Usually this includes the people with whom we share everything but who don’t know us as long or as well as our families do. Next we approach the close friends group, then possibly good co-workers, colleagues, fellow graduate students, and as we go out from our inner group we reach professors, acquaintances, and finally the people who you see around and you only connect to them through eye contact (commonly known as familiar faces). This sphere consists of our social in-group. Within the out-group, lies everyone else, commonly referred to as “The Public.” The distinct division of communication between the out-group and the in-group is one of the primary investigations I’m interested in. In order for communication to happen between these two groups, a vast library of information must be translated from one culture system to the next. Although the language divide between these systems can easily be breached, as a system becomes more specialized, it distances itself further from being understood.

One important influence for my work is the theorist and clinical psychologist Dr. Brent Slife. Dr. Slife’s main work is centered on questioning the psychological emphasis of using quantitative research for assessing qualitative non-objective values. Through the past century and a half, psychology has attempted to place itself as being a hard science through fundamentally altering its language and philosophical approach to evaluating constructs. Non-objective constructs, such as love, are thus quantified in order to put this discipline into the scientific community. As specialization occurs within a discipline, the outsiders from that community understand less and less of what that community is talking about, ostracizing them. For example, my wife got her master’s degree in computer science and I have realized that, despite my technical skill, I understand little of what she says about her work anymore.

I began, in the summer of 2005, to access a database of codified graphic symbols used throughout all walks of life called the Symbol Sourcebook by Henry Dreyfuss. This book was compiled in order to “identify symbols out of context and to aide designers in developing new symbols.” As I was fascinated by the miscommunication between disciplines, I wanted to create a set of paintings which used these coded messages which couldn’t be read except by the individuals within that walk of life – disciplines outside of the art community.

Although I felt these coded messages questioned the narrative nature of painting and the codified presence of language, the visual quality of the paintings felt hollow.

I explored my other personal interests and found the image of the “cute” robot surfacing in free form image paintings I did.

Cute imagery, along with the pop-art tradition it follows, comes from a history of looking at the popular vernacular of a culture. By touching the vein of a culture’s iconographic media, something can be shown about our culture in the language of the banal.

My imagery comes from the reproduction of a cartoon-like quality, appropriating style and characters from contemporary so-called digital popular artists.

I have been highly influenced by Jeff Koons’ contemporary approach to the disgusting nature of kitsch and questioning its place within high art.

Many of the images I use are those which are welcomed by popular digital culture – such as Pokemon, Nintendo style video game imagery, and artists who only display their work through internet sites, often reminiscent of physical graffiti. The vocabulary of popular culture is obviously vast and often unintelligible. The overpowering nature of such kitsch becomes more potent with the over stimulative nature of the artwork.

The more I saturated my works with individual cute characters, the more I realized my affinity for the horrific qualities these characters have. I do appreciate their cuteness, but I also appreciate these works for the horrific nature of the cute characters. The increase of size of the canvas and figures emulates the way our culture glorifies these icons. I worry about a culture which glorifies something so innocent and naïve. But at the same time, I find myself glorifying these characters and being pulled in by their seductive qualities.

Earlier this year, I had a show where the audience misread the meanings in many of these pieces, causing me to end my show early. This experience made me reflect more on the medium I was using to investigate the border between the out-group and the in-group. Oil painting was obviously limited in its ability to investigate this phenomenon on the transversal from the out-group to the in-group.

One of the in-groups my wife and I have considered entering is parenthood. My wife and I have recently been discussing having children. The idea of becoming a parent is a great fear of mine because I don’t know how to be a good parent. I realized that an enormous part of my identity stems from the experiences I had as a child with my family and this is the only perspective I have on childrearing.

In order to vicariously experience myself as a parent, I inserted my adult self into almost a hundred digitized slides which were taken of me as a young child. Becoming a parent includes learning things and language about that experience which changes your identity.

By becoming a parent, I would be crossing the boundary of the out-group (non-parents) into the in-group (parents).

I had hoped that these visual images would give me a comforting sense of myself in the role of parenthood, almost as if looking into a future mirror. At that time, my professor wanted to see a working installation using the images from this project. Despite my hesitations to make an installation space, I created a slide show presentation with couches and ambient sound including the display of this set of images. And I hated it. The question of medium tying integrally to presentation is at the heart of the questions I ask myself about my work. I couldn’t justify the installation I made because it had nothing to do with the experience of being a parent or trying to learn how to be a parent. Instead, it was only a heartless attempt to make an object out of a non-objectified construct.

If my previous project taught me one thing, it was how I needed to adopt more than a visual persona in order to understand the new social group. My next social experiment involved a group of medieval fighting enthusiasts. Some friends of mine and I would drive by a local park every Thursday evening and see, to our surprise, a group of grown adults fighting each other with foam swords while dressed in tunics and armor. Stunned by the unique nature of their club, I concluded that the experience of becoming one of the members of this club would be my next project.

We began our journey by reading the group rule books in order to assimilate ourselves to the language and society’s social norms. What we found out was that not only did we need to understand the rules of the “sport”, but we needed to look like the others within the group by dressing in medieval clothing, carrying weapons. But most importantly developing a backhistory for the character we acted out. Over several months, we assimilated ourselves in this group, fighting alongside people with character names such as “Gobo,” “Andric the King,” “Thornbrier,” and “Bacchaus, Rider of Rohan.”

We created character names and came to identify ourselves in relationship to this fighting society because we had taken upon ourselves the language and norms of this culture. What evolved from this set of experiences was documentation on film of the art project. Beyond this single documentation, though, unfortunately not much exists as evidence of this passing from the out-group into the in-group of this strange group.

I have recently become interested in “Do It Yourself” online cultures. Over the past several years, there has been a sharp increase in the number of online website communities which purport to instruct how to do things – all sorts of things, from computer hacking to knitting. What I noticed with many of these “so-called” Do-It-Yourself sites is there are necessary preconditions which are required in order to understand anything they are saying.

I am not able to go into Hack-a-Day.com and know how to recover my mp3 flash data without obvious experience in electrical engineering, not to mention programming abilities. As I stated before, my wife finished her master’s degree in computer science. I don’t understand what she is telling me anymore about her work.

I am currently attempting to go from the out-group to the in-group of computer programmers who write in java. It is fascinating that in the computer sciences, there is a distinct emphasis on the communication of language, between man and machine, as one of the essential processes behind this discipline. Much of what my wife does is a translation between English language ideas into a language which the computer can read and understand. The other half is a logical deduction of structures and open systems, much like what I have been interested in investigating through my work.

So, my wife is teaching me the java programming language. In order to maintain documentation of this work as it progresses, and especially to document my frustration in learning the language and symbols of programming, I have attempted to document as much valid data as I can while experiencing this project. Each session that my wife sits down and explains things to me, I document the session on film. These hour long sessions are then posted on a weblog I am maintaining for this project.

Every java file that I create, the code and the instructions for how to recreate it are also posted on this blog. My wife has even taken to giving me homework, where most of my time for this project is spent. In response to these homework readings, I write lengthy entries about what I understand of the terms used in the text. This project is currently in progress and will continue until I am acclimated into the java programming community experience.

In conclusion, my artwork investigates the experiences of language, and the effects it has on the individual. I have attempted to examine my experience in crossing the bridge between being apart of one cultural group and entering into a new one.

The Chronicles of Prydain
-----------------------------
The Book of Three
The Black Cauldron
The Castle of Llyr
Taran Wanderer
The High King
---------------------------
Warning: Spoilers
We read The Book of Three and The Black Cauldron to each other a year and a half ago when we moved to Seattle for the summer, but didn't get around until this month to reading the remaining three books; which we would have read out loud to each other, but our public library has a shorter check-out time than any other library we've had - so we had a deadline.

I remember that Martin and Melissa both read this series when I was younger, but for some reason I never picked up Lloyd Alexander's books for youth until now. We really enjoyed all the books. Personally, I can see why The High King won the Newbery Award; I felt it was the strongest written in the series. It did happen to be my favorite, although there were some poignant points when reading Taran Wanderer.

These books were written during a terrible time in human history during the late 1960's when morality was at an all time low and responsible authority figures were no where to be found. In such a fascinating point in history, I found it amazing that Alexander would write a story about a boy who learned to face his inner demons of being a nobody, but not acting like a nobody because that was his station in life. What a fantastic and marvelous tale which so many people forget because they are so concerned about what their station in life is - there is a NEED for good assistant pig keepers in the world. Although, if I'm going to be blatant about writing a review of a book (and in the process spoil it for everyone), why did Taran have to become the High King?

I understand that it was a good conclusion to the story and if anyone could appropriately rule over the characters (in as much disarray as the commots were in) of Prydain, it would be Taran. But I liked Taran as an assistant pig-keeper and in the fourth book when I realized that he was only an assistant pig-keeper, it made who he really is stand out all the more.

Still, these books were wonderful to read and are definitely going to be a part of our collection.

Victor: Every time I eat bleu cheese dressing I remember the time I first had it in Vegas.

Mom Madsen: It's the same thing every time I take a shower.

*End with Camilla on the floor and Rebecca's water every where except in her mouth.*

What a fun week. We spent the first half of the week getting ready for our trip. I made sure I could connect to work remotely, since we were planning on having me work remotely a couple of days so I didn't have to dip into negative PTO hours. We packed and cleaned out our fridge of almost all our food. We took our keys to Star's sitters (and enjoyed a silly, fun movie called Shaolin Soccer with Chris and Alyssa). We arranged for the taxi to come pick us up. And then we laid low until Wednesday morning.

Wednesday we woke bright and early (well, it was still quite dark out, so "bright" isn't exactly the right descriptor) and sat on our curb waiting for the taxi. It was our first time in a cab, so we were excited. Since buses don't run that early in the morning and long term parking would have been insanely expensive, we thought we'd try out a taxi ride. It was less exciting than I anticipated, but that's probably good. How many people have positive stereotypes of cabs? :) We were happy to board the plane on time and settle in for a good nap. My only concern the whole trip was that I kept feeling like we were forgetting things. We don't often check luggage when we travel so we can get out of the airport that much quicker and so we can be sure our belongings are handled with care. We made an exception this year because of new restrictions on what you can bring aboard. I was just pleased when I thought up a way to bring our bottle for water on board with us (it's bigger than the 3 ounce limit they have)...we brought it empty and filled it up at the water fountain after passing through security. Yay for plenty of hydration!

We've enjoyed our visit in Michigan so far. It is a bit colder than CA, but not much. We celebrated the winter solstice Thursday with good food and good company (yay for days getting longer again!). We played some fun games with Wayne's family and with his friend Dave. We've enjoyed sleeping in later and staying up later, going for walks in the morning and reading books under a blanket. Saturday Camilla and Victor invited us to their house for dinner, and we all tried our hands at their nintendo and went pew-pew with their controllers. It was funniest watching Wayne's dad play the game. Though I did flip Wayne's little boat over three times, and that was fun too. :)

Now Christmas eve is finally here, without snow, even if Wayne isn't ready, and even if some of us are sickie-poo-poos. There's only one more sleep till Christmas day!