Mongo Deco (’Mongo’ from the New York slang for “any discarded object that is retrieved”) is an interior design practice that began as an offshoot of my personal salvage/junking/thrifting hobby and my part-time hauling job. Mongo Deco is based on the simple requirement that everything used to build, renovate, or furnish a space be reused in some way - salvaged on its way to the landfill, reclaimed from demolition, re-purposed from onsite, purchased secondhand, found on the side of the road, etc. Where reuse is impossible or impractical, Mongo Deco combine the most eco-friendly, locally-sourced materials with energy-saving technologies to arrive at a balance between ecology and economy.

More information will be available soon at the official Mongo Deco site.

with:
Andrea Steves (partner)

The Shadow Art Fair is a biannual event that takes place at the Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti, MI.  Originally begun as a compliment to the Ann Arbor art fairs featuring all local artists, it has become somewhat of an institution in its own right.  Its location at a brewery and its one-day 12-hour format gives it a feel that is different from many fairs.

In addition to being a place where objects are bought and sold, the Fair strives to be a place where artists can meet each other and share resources, present work that isn’t necessarily intended for sale, advance their own projects using our venue, or propose site-specific installations or performances.  From the website:

We strongly encourage applications that propose imaginative or non-traditional use of our event. In past fairs, we’ve had a shadow puppet show, a monster full of surprises, photographs with a creepy Santa, a foot foto booth, and a giant pooping cat, an animation station, and video portraiture.  Anything that can fit into the space that a table would take up or be integrated unobtrusively into the architecture of the Brewery. Think of the most outlandish idea you’ve had for an installation or performance that doesn’t quite fit anywhere. The Shadow Art Fair is the place to give it a try! The Shadow will always be a place to find interesting gifts and meet local artists. Help us make it more than that!

The Shadow is  organized by the Michigan Design Militia, which is composed of myself, Melissa Detloff, Mark Maynard, Jennifer Albaum, and Molly Mast.  More information is available at shadowartfair.com.

early crowds at the first fair in 2006

In the Summer of 2007, I invited saxophonist/composer/girlfriend Andrea Steves to do something dangerous with me. Bravely, she accepted. So we packed our car full of instruments and drove to an old one-room schoolhouse nestled in a remote corner of South Dakota’s Black Hills to spend a week recording music. We had never even talked about making music together before. The noises we couldn’t make with what we brought were provided to us – by the curiosities buried in local secondhand shops and the howls echoing across the valley at night. And thus began a tradition, of thrusting two people together into a confined space in a remote location for one week and forcing them to record an album together using what little instruments they can bring from home or improvise from their surroundings. An intensive, immersive, experimental music retreat.

Below are some pictures and some mp3s of tracks from the first installment of the project. Click the mp3 link to listen or right-click/Ctrl-click and ‘Save As’ to download. More of both will be posted here, from this and future installments, as they become available.

it-gets-much-worse
fire
your-money-or-your-life
down-the-drain

During the XXX annual Ann Arbor Film Festival, festival organizers asked University of Michigan Art and Design MFA students to create installations at some of the festival’s spaces. My collaborator and friend Forest Bright was given access to the famous marquee for three days, and he graciously agreed to let me install some text pieces on it for one of those days. When asked for a quick description of my plans, I emailed the following little blurb:

I’ll be treating the marquee – with its three lines of up to twenty characters each, its place in the city landscape – as a distinct socio-textual genre, with its own forms and conventions. My textual arrangements will take on a range of tones from advertising slogans and self-help motivational-speak to stereotypical urban signage and haiku, emphasizing the subjects of film, the event/location of the festival/theater, and the politics of public display. Some of them will be obvious, others cryptic. All of them will be playful and will draw attention. I’ll be wearing a nice suit and making a somewhat understated performance of the installation. (…in anticipation of Forest’s “15 Minutes” piece on Sunday, which I’ll tell curious passers-by about….)

I was assisted with the installation by Forest Bright and Ted Christensen. Below are some photos from the project.

'Keep ‘em smiling' was the American Motion Picture Industry’s ‘job’ during WWII, according to 1942 ads

David Manning was a fictitious film critic invented by Sony to give positive reviews to its films

For two years I rented a room at a house on Fifth Avenue in Ann Arbor that came to be known the “Bluish Barn”. What started as a series of semi-public movie screenings turned into an ongoing experiment in collaborative living exploring the boundaries between public/private space as we hosted traveling artists, thesis presentations, improvisational theater, performances by local musicians, craft nights, bike races, and more. In my opinion, the experiment reached some sort of apogee when a blogger who was unkown to myself and my housemates, in one of many online debates about renting versus owning in Ann Arbor, cited the Bluish Barn as an example of renters doing something good for the community. Shortly after that, I moved to another house nearby to begin the experiment anew. Bluishbarn.com still exists as an archive of the house’s past and a template for its future.

with:
Mikey Barringer (roommate)
Michelle Winkfield (roommate)
Eric Adams (roommate)
Christina DeAngelo (roommate)
the tenants of 716 (neighbors)

Vita Brevis (from one half of the Latin aphorism ars longa, vita brevis, “life is short, art long”) was a short-lived semi-mock-advocacy group advocating eventual death. That is, all of us as human beings wanted to die…eventually. (Another point of the project may have been to think critically about certain issues being raised by advances in the life sciences.) The activity of our group peaked when we organized a small demonstration for a semi-mock-transhumanist lecture by Tim Flood entitled “Transhumanism and You” [see pictures below]. I took upon myself the task of composing simple one-line slogans and chants for writing on signs and shouting at the demonstration.  These included the following:

learn to live with death
all’s well that ends
ageing is not a disease
long live no one
quality of life, not quantity
STOP postponing the inevitable
immortality: a fate worse than death
all good things must come to an end
stop hogging our children’s biomass
out out brief candle!
curtains, please

“Hell No!  We WILL go!”
“What do we want?  Death!  When do we want it?  Eventually!”
call: “Out with the old!” response: “In with the new!”
Hey hey, ho ho, transhumanists have got to go!
“Vi-ta Bre-vis”, [clap, clap, clap-clap-clap]

Shortly thereafter, one of our members traveled to England and had an awkward dinner with Aubrey DeGrey at some Chinese restaurant. The group has since dissolved, as member have gone our separate ways, each of us working individually toward eventual death.

with:
Zack Denfeld
Forest Bright

For ebayaday, a serial exhibit using ebay as a venue for art, I offered up an auction titled “map to my buried treasure – NO RESERVE!” with the following item description:

Up for auction is the only existing map to my buried treasure.

Actually, you’ll get a map to a map to a map to my buried treasure. One map leading you to a second map leading you to a third and final map which leads ultimately to the location of my buried treasure. That’s three maps for the price of one. Plus the treasure.

I cannot disclose the nature of the treasure nor estimate its value. But the maps are each original handmade drawings, limited editions of one, signed by the author. They may not be ‘buried’ in the literal sense, but they will be hidden in secret locations known only to me. The first of the three will be mailed via USPS to the address you provide.

As for the treasure, I buried it myself, on a deserted island-like place in a remote corner of the world.

NOTE: All items included in this auction are located within walking distance of that remote corner of the world called downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.

If no one wins this auction, no action will be taken. I will take the knowledge of the treasure’s location to my grave. My friends and enemies will continue to press me to reveal some clues - to no avail. The item will not be reposted, and the items will remain where they are until some lucky soul chances upon them years from now - or never.

If for some reason a fissure opens in the Earth or the forces of industry decide to change the landscape in a way that prevents you from following the course laid out by my maps, I will happily consider refunding part or all of your payment. The winning bidder is invited to email me with reports of any disasters that may hinder your progress.

The winning bidder is instructed to pay within 3 days of the close of this auction with Paypal. Furthermore, you will promise to make no mention of this auction whatsoever to anyone inquiring about the origin of the treasure you will soon possess.

Please leave positive feedback after you have found the treasure. Anyone who chooses not to follow these rules will forfeit their right to refund in case of fissures, etc. [see above] and will recieve negative feedback.

I reserve the right not to sell the map to my buried treasure to anyone with eBay scores of less than 10 or excessive negative feedback.

The winning bidder will embark on an adventure of considerable proportions, traversing unkown lands and encountering many strange and wonderful things along the way to my buried treasure. Your endurance will be tested. Serious bidders only please.

Please email me with any questions.

The item sold for $10.

screenshot from my ebay notification email

Prefab Domains was an online domain name redistribution operation specializing in word-phrase domains I stumbled upon while compiling research for a dictionary of English “prefabrications” (idioms, clichés, catch phrases, collocations, and other multi-word strings that some linguists group as “prefabricated linguistic units”.) A few of the scores of domains I bought, sold, or gave away over a period of about six months, until the hassle of online auctions and domain transfers with flaky customers made me tired of the project, were the following:

• ALITTLEOFBOTH.COM
• ANDTHEWOMENWHOLOVETHEM.COM
• ARMPITOFTHEWORLD.COM
• ATLENGTH.COM
• CONSIDERYOURSELFLUCKY.COM
• CRITICSRAVE.COM
• EASYFORYOUTOSAY.COM
• FOLLOWSIGNS.COM
• FORHEREORTOGO.COM
• FUNWHILEITLASTED.COM
• HAMMERINGAWAY.COM
• KINDNESSOFMYHEART.COM
• LIFTWITHTHELEGS.COM
• MAKENOSECRET.COM
• NOSUDDENMOVEMENTS.COM
• OLDBUDDYOLDPAL.COM
• PERSONALREASONS.COM
• PROMISENOTTOLAUGH.COM
• RUNNINGTHESHOW.COM
• THINKINGTOOMUCH.COM

While doing this project, I learned a lot and earned a small reputation as a domain name speculator, sloganeer, and namer/brand developer for online projects. Some of my collaborators still email me requesting ideas for names/urls of projects they’re planning. I invite anyone to contact me and make your own request.

Below I have archived the Prefab Domains FAQ for those who want to learn more about the logistics of the project.

How do you think of these domain names?

Most of my domains are what linguists sometimes call “prefab(rication)s”, phrases which are more or less lexicalized, or stored in the brain and recalled easily like single words. People in advertising and PR love them for this very reason and use them all the time as titles, taglines, and slogans. I love them because they say something about the way language really works, and how it’s really used by real people. And for a few years now I’ve been compiling them into a massive dictionary that fills in the gaps of many other dictionaries.

Isn’t this cybersquatting?

I don’t think so. Depends on your definition. Read Wikipedia’s cybersquatting entry. Or see the answers to the next few questions below and judge for yourself…

Why the $8.95 starting price?

All of the domains I put up for auction are registered with GoDaddy. You may have noticed that my starting price of $8.95 is the same as the cost of their year-long domain registration. That’s intentional. It’s no secret that $8.95 is what I paid for each domain. Since my auctions have no reserve price, this means that the winning bidding price (minus $8.95) is all the compensation I get for the time and effort it takes me to find and register the domain, create the auction, and manually initiate electronic transfer of the domain to the winning bidder. The auctions are set up this way to protect myself from LOSING money while allowing for the possibility of making VERY LITTLE money and guaranteeing that the winning bidder will walk away with a good domain name for a reasonable price.

Why eBay?

Ebay is where normal people shop for all kinds of interesting and unusual things like my domain names. Ebay is not a specialized market where cybersquatters gather and try to realize their get-rich-quick dreams. So when I sell a domain name on eBay, the buyer is more likely to be someone who will hold on to the domain and use it for their own unique project rather than park it on some generic ‘For Sale’ page with a ridiculous asking price.

Why so cheap? (Or, why so expensive?)

Finding and snatching up interesting prefab domain names is my hobby. It’s satisfying for me to sell them for reasonable prices to people who are happy to have a catchy name for their website. And to hear their surprise at the fact that such familiar phrases haven’t “already been taken”. And sometimes even to keep in contact with them after the sale to see what creative uses they’ve put the name to.

Whatever I get out of this hobby I put right back into it. So the little money I (might) make enables me to find and sell more (and better) domains. I hope it will remain self-sustaining at least. But if it comes to the point where I don’t make any money, I’ll simply stop selling and keep the best names for myself and my friends, for whatever projects we might envision in the future.

How do you transfer ownership of domains?

With full cooperation of the winning bidder, that’s how. After an auction ends, I will ask the winning bidder for the information GoDaddy requires. I will do nothing more with this information than initiate safe and secure transfer of the domain. Once the winning bidder has paid, I will submit this information to GoDaddy, and the winning bidder will be notified by email with instructions on how to complete the process and assume registration of the domain name. I try to be as upfront and on-the-table as possible with the entire auction and domain transfer process. If you cooperate fully, it really should not be complicated at all.

How long will I own my domain?

All of these domains names were purchased for year-long registrations within three months of their being put up for auction. That means that upon successful transfer of the domain to you, you will own if for 9-12 months before GoDaddy asks you to renew at their yearly rate (around $9/year for top-level .com domains).

Can you find a domain name for my website?

I can try. (I can try harder for non-profits and projects I like.) Contact me and let me know what you have in mind.

Everyone Does started as a poem loosely based on a list that anthropologist Donald Brown compiled - in his book Human Universals – of behavioral traits common to every human culture.  The text adopts a tone of exhortation, advising or commanding readers to do things that in all likelihood they’ve already done. The style here is similar to my “You’re Going to Die” text in that it attempts to make a grand statement by exploring all the implications and logical conclusions of one simple idea to the point of exhaustion.

A poster version of Everyone Does was included in the 2006 exhibition Endless Forms: Engaging Evolution at the WORK gallery in Ann Arbor.

Since 2003, I have operated a successful business writing and designing an ongoing series of all-occasion, non-traditonal, brutally honest, highly recycled, limited edition greeting cards for wholesale and consignment at various boutiques, galleries, museums, and fairs across the country and online.

On a basic level, if one is willing to see through some cultural baggage, the greeting card – a piece of paper, maybe folded into a front and an inside, with words on each, etc. – can be seen as a medium or genre like any other, with its own set of formal conventions and expectations, the modifying or disrupting of which similarly mirrors the histories of other media like painting, music, video, etc.  On another level, Sappycards is a demonstration of the amazing ease with which capitalism recuperates oppositional postures: in an industry that gives itself the appropriately Orwellian name “social expression industry” – greeting cards – commonly regarded as unadventurous and associated with the most thoughtless social rituals…it is not uncommon for me to witness a someone browsing through a rack of cards with profanity-laden, anti-capitalist ‘messages’, laughing agreeably with these messages and then underscoring the status of the pieces of paper bearing these messages as commodities - by buying them.  (And later, putting them in envelopes and addressing them to their recipients, literally ‘stamping’ this status.)

Almost every Sappycard is printed with vegetable inks on 100% Post-Consumer recycled paper that is processed mostly chlorine-free, making Sappycards THE MOST RECYCLED LINE available. (More recycled even than some large companies whose reputations depend more on the appearance of ecological responsibility.) I haven’t done all the research to back this up, but I’m confident enough to put it in print, and I challenge anyone to prove me wrong.

More information is available at the official Sappycards site.