Thank you to everyone who loves comic books.
Growing up I was heckled and beaten up because I believed a man could fly.
My own teachers from elementary school up to college told me what I enjoyed was “childish fantasy” at best, “it’s not art, it’s shit” at worst. Even today I can kiss sex goodbye if I bring up Crisis, Mjolnir or the H-E-R-O dial (it happens).
I’ve never seen anything wrong with comic books, only positive. We all have our own reasons… to me it’s a different sense of amazement compared to motion pictures or traditional literature… elements that are highly influential on my life than just mere entertainment.
It’s mighty, spectacular, uncanny, astonishing, incredible… it’s fantastic.
Alex Ross described the symbols above based on what they meant to him.
That’s fucking cool.
Heartwarming
~Sam


![second installation piece for magical realism virtual reality class
ART PRETENSION BLAH BLAH BLAH:
The Biomechanical/Cultural Rorschach-Séance “Our goal was to incarnate the intercultural fantasies and nightmares of our audiences, refracting fetishized constructs of identity through the spectacle of our […] bodies on display.” Guillermo Gomez-PenaInfluence/Inspiration: The most important performance of Gomez-Pena’s work, to me, is The Temple of Confessions. The artist here uses his body as a canvas on to which the audience projects their cultural fears and desires. He uses allegory as an important part of these performances (each set piece is suggestive of something else), and incorporates high-technology into the interactive text. Gomez-Pena, throughout his work, combines science-fiction/cyberpunk and aboriginal or native aesthetics to create a bizarrely cohesive alternative world history. I was inspired by the combination of the technological and the mystical, and wanted to use my own superstition and my own heritage in an interactive piece; instead of creating a “religious meta-fiction,” I created a superstitious meta-fiction.Concept Statement: This piece appropriates a paranormal investigative technique called the Ganzfeld Effect. This experiment allows the participants to (supposedly) hear/see ghosts/spirits through/in the static of the TV screen. In this case, the static acts also as a sort of Rorschach test: the participant projects their fears and desires onto the static. The piece is set up in the basement of Piano Row, a supposedly haunted building. The American flag in the background is a sort of evocative trigger object, that is to say, the fears and desires of the participants become related to our notions of American identity, simply because of the presence of the flag. The flag is defamed/spray-painted with the image of a bee. The bee, in many superstitions, represents a visitor from afar. If you are kind to the bee, it brings good luck. If you kill it, bad luck. The bee here can be seen as any kind of intruder/immigrant/other. The victim outline evokes the various victims of American colonization; or, the evidence of the deceased that the participants are trying to come into contact with. The piece has an autobiographical element to it as well. I do not know my own lineage, other than that I am American. This is not because I was adopted, but because I am too afraid to ask about my father’s ancestry; I don’t want to upset any of my family who are still very touchy about his death. My mother often spends copious amounts of money on psychics to get into contact with various dead relatives. The entire project of understanding my own cultural identity is a sort of ominous séance, it brings up ghosts I don’t particularly want to deal with.
NOTE! sam and i came up with the idea of appropriating the ganzfeld effect a while ago, but it never came to fruition. i re-contextualized it with the flag, in order to make it more about a kind of “national character” or identity politic.
SPECIAL THANKS! to diana filar for helping me set up the installation and making the stencil with me!
-eric](http://6.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ktlg8gG1qO1qzbziwo1_400.jpg)



