Research

I'm very interested in the way space can be manipulated to result in different types of spaces. For example, this first photo is a simple water run-off that has been slightly modified to be far more fun to skate, it reminds me of the subversive art of Banksy where the more slight the modification in the piece, the more dramatic the effect is...


I recently spent time with Jeff King who stars in "Built to Shred" a tv show about spot-modification on Fuel TV. In the time I spent with Jeff I saw him transform junk metal into skate-obstacles, pouring concrete to permanently change a space, he even brought in snowblowers to turn his southern california home into a ski resort complete with jumps off of the roof. When Jeff or any other skater look at space, we look at it for potential in a way that someone who doesn't skateboard will never see. A simple swimming pool or jersey barrier between lanes on the freeway are pure potential...

skate runs

steepness of SF streets

One of my ideas for a mapping piece would be a type of map designed to look like a map of runs at a ski resort of steep hills in san francisco. this will require identifying "runs" through the city that link up (making runs that are MUNI-accessible would give the skater the opportunity to use the hill just like a ski run with a lift back to the top)

this is the steepness of one of the runs that I skate down often...

GPS Project progress

I've been continuing my exploration of the potential artwork to be found in GPS and skateboarding. I used the Garmin once while skating around my neighborhood, I really didn't mean to but my trace came out as kind of a phallic shape..

proposal still in progress...

At this point I'm still trying to figure out exactly where to focus on my project, at this point I know that I want it to involves either GPS or paint along with skateboarding, I'm interested in illustrating the motion of skating- the GPS tracking of someone skating a single spot going around certain obstacles in a smaller space like a skatepark. I'm also inerested in the physical tracks of motion such as the marks left behind from wheels and trucks wearing away at a certain obstacle, or the lines of dirt that are tracked on wood or walls similar to a car's skidmarks, I'd be interested to see what wheels covered in paint would create.

Research paper proposition

Since I began skateboarding I've been fascinated with the rise and fall in popularity that the sport has endured, from it's roots as a hobby alongside the hula hoop to it's rise and fall in the 60's and 70's then the revival in the early 80's, downfall in the late 80's, being re-defined in the early 90's then booming in popularity in 2000 to where it is at today. I'd like to find an artistic link between the fluctuation in it's popularity and it's saturation in the media now where lots of technology is involved in the indujsty.