Ted Serios' thought-o-photographs

Ted Serios was a regular guy, an alcoholic, a doorman at a local Chicago hotel.

He claimed to be able to create photographs on Polaroid film using his thoughts.

His claims were heard and then supported by psychiatrist Jule Eisenbud.

There were hundreds of strange gatherings that lasted all night.
Eisenbud would ply Ted Serios with liquor.
Sometimes physical acts of violence to property would ensue.
People invited to watch the process would find themselves harrangued.

But inevitably, several photgraphs would come out of the nights process, evidently made by Serios' thoughts, his grimaces towards the camera, and his gestures towards the lense with a small tube he called his Gizmo.
The Gizmo was shown to all as an empty metal tube.





These events came on the distant heels of a turn-of-the-century phenomenon known as the Spiritualist movement:
Ghosts, visits from the dead, automatic writing, ectoplasmic photography, knocking and tapping messages from Beyond.

The gap in those 40 or so years was capped by Ted Serios' thought photography.
Although much of the evidence that came out of the Spiritualist movement was proven to be fabrications, and there were many of the same claims toward Mr. Serios' work-
there has never been a succesful disprovement of the claims and the result of his work.
What is the story here?

eyrie

Sometimes its not the voyage that is perilous but the home port.

We build on unstable ground, take into our hearts unstable people, grow up in homes that have no foundation.

Occasionally our tenous homes are tolerated by those surrounding us.

Really, one can live in remarkable difficulty and get used to it: the man I see sleeping under an overpass in the middle of a ten lane highway.

My grandmother used to say, "if you are tired enough, you can sleep hanging on a nail"




There is more to say

amanita amanita amanita

Amanita Muscaria

Poisonous

I have been taking photographs of mushrooms. I am lucky to live in a place that is damp, wet, organic.
This year I have collected photographs of over 30 different species. I have followed the fruiting and life cycle of a patch of amanita muscarias. First they push up through dirt looking almost obscene- thick white bulb thrusting up to breaking the surface. This is the mushroom with its "universal veil". The bulb begins to change color and open its cap shortly afterwards, shedding the spores that were tightly kept inside. The cap opens and lifts- becoming an umbrella shape. The small white spots are what is left of the veil attachments. This amanita- in the photograph- was uprooted early, and lay on the ground exactly as I found it.

The mushroom glossary of J. Lindgren reads like a poem. Imagine someone reading aloud these
sensous and beautiful words.

Amanita muscaria- mysterious, veiled, beautiful, poisonous, potent....

GLOSSARY
abruptly bulbous - top of bulb flattened, sides and bottom rounded
adnate - gills which are broadly attached to the stipe
adnexed - gills narrowly attached to the stipe
amyloid - spores which stain bluish in Melzer’s reagent or iodine
annulus - a ring of tissue around the stipe
appendiculate - margin of cap fringed or adorned with fragments of the veil
areolae, areolate - spaces marked out on the surface, separated by cracks
attenuate - gradually narrowed
clavate - base thickened like a club
convex - regularly rounded, domed
disc - center of the cap

ellipsoid - spores with rounded ends and slightly curved sides
evanescent - slightly developed and soon disappearing
farinaceous - mealy to powdery particles on the cap or stipe; may also refer to the odor of fresh meal
fimbriate - gill edges finely fringed by cells
floccose - loose cottony or soft tufts of tissue
free - gills that are not attached to the stipe
fusiform - spindle shaped, tapering in both directions from an enlarged part
gills - the knife-blade-like structures on the underside of the cap
globose - spherical, like a globe
habit - the general, external, and characteristic appearance, or manner of growth

habitat - the natural place of growth
lamellulae - the short gills that do not span the whole distance from margin to stipe
limbate volva - membranous, attached closely around the bulb and with an open, free margin
marginate bulb - with circular ridge around top edge of bulb; in age it may flatten to look like wide shoulders on a rounded bulb
Melzer’s reagent - an iodine solution used to test for an amyloid reaction of the spore wall
membranous - like a membrane or skinlike
obtusely conic - rounded or blunt cone-shaped
plane - having a flat surface
pruinose - finely powdered

saccate volva - one shaped like a sack, cup or sheath
spores - the reproductive units of a fungus
stipe - the correct term for the "stem" of a mushroom
striate, striations - radiating grooves or lines on cap margin
subglobose - almost spherical
subumbonate - center of cap slightly or broadly raised truncate - appearing chopped off or abruptly ending
umbo, umbonate - having a raised knob or mound at center of cap
universal veil - the enveloping veil that covers an immature amanita and which breaks to form a volva at the base, and often leaving remnants on the cap
volva - the remains of the universal veil; usually refers to the structure found at the base of the stipe

wax and lead, straw and pitch

"The transformation of waste"

http://www.pattismith.net/

When we walk in the dark land, where nails and blood and he hard screams of others scrape along our minds, we are in the Nigredo.

Alchemists said you needed pig iron and scrap in order to make gold.

Pig iron and scrap was what they called the Nigredo.

Jung said we needed to wade through the wastelands of our dreams in order to step up into the transformation.

The transformation of self.

As Patti Smith says- "the transformation of waste".

Anselm Kiefer paints in wax and lead, straw and pitch. His pieces are enormous- they span museum walls.

His lead books are gigantic. Some you may don white gloves and look into- but the pages quickly turn them black.

What is in these books?

The words of our death or of our transforming?

http://www.artchive.com

peering in with my giant eye

http://www.garde-rail.com/artists/jtaylor.html

If there ever was a portal to New Crobuzon, John Taylor's vessels will take you through.

Each ship carefully made of pieces of scrap metal, wires, weathered bits of wood.
These are the artworks I'd fill my place with, if I could.

If for nothing else than to lie on the floor with, peering into the
windows with my big eye, imagining the voyage.

Reclusive, or perhaps simply quiet and without interest of public scrutiny,

John Taylor's works are sold out of Garde Rail Gallery.

New Crobuzon and the pirate vessels in The Scar, are in books written by China Mieville.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Mi%C3%A9ville

the icon and its maker

In the 1970's, a piece of land art was constructed that spiraled off the Great Salt Lake.

The image and the memory, even if second hand, is pretty indelibly marked on several different groups and generations.

Understand, artist Robert Smithson has made no noises about claiming, in fact he is rather quiet.

So the questions here are rhetorical and meant to stretch to other iconographic works as well.

Is the artist responsible now for the archetypal quality, the coil of dense projection that has happened to this work?

Did he simply create the work and the interaction with the environment- and now should not accept the mastery or ownership-

I DID IT I DID IT I DID IT

Let go let go Let go

rascals

simonbellphotography.com

There are rascals in the world, and some of them are blue. Blue, with articulated eyebrows and feather capes.

When they first arrived, I had a misguided thought that I could train them to come to a command or clap.

I would match a clap with food.

But I was very very eager, and would find myself jumping up from my work when I heard them in the trees, stick my head out the window, and clap.

It wasn't long before I realized that they had trained me.

Trained me to pop out of the window at the sounds they made, sitting in the woods.

They can't clap, they have wings.

It doesn't matter, the rascals had won.