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Go to: http://web.mac.com/sandysampson/Parallel_University/Welcome.html
for all the latest and greatest news!

The Future of Food

Just saw this movie and thought I should post it here so that more people have access to it.

Happyslip.com

So I came across this girl who posts on Youtube named Christine who goes by the alias of Happyslip. Most of her videos are satires of Filipino family dynamics. She plays all of her family members in the videos. Its both entertaining and also gives pretty detailed insight on what its like to be part of a Filipino family. Check it out!

Recycle Reuse Regift!

Hi All! We gave away free gifts today! We will be at it again on Sunday the 23rd at 28th and South East Stark, come "shop" and or bring something nice to give away! The only cost is, you have to sign the gift book, and let us wrap up your gift for you! Look at the slide show to see some of our happy customers!

Happy Holidays!

OK the holidays are over now, and this project is sitting back with brandy and cigars as it were just musing on the experience.

Some of those musings according to me have to do with how uncomfortable people are with getting something for free, there is a distrust. This is interesting to me for two main reasons, one, it implies that people's experience tells them that nothing is free (there is always fine print), and two that by being more giving (providing more experiences where things really are free as one example) we could shift the paradigm of expectation so that people might feel justified and natural in expressing their outrage at small print and false promise. I see this as being completely in line with the goals of Parallel University, because it is not only our institutions we create, but also our social environment via our expectations.

A couple of things that happened with this project: As I alluded to above, people in general were suspicious of "free", but many of the people we met "got it" in short order, and immediately looked at it as a call to "pay forward". I don't really know the history of that term, or its meaning, but I think it means that one accepts a gift gracefully and then pays back the generosity to someone else in the future. (I don't know and I'm not Jewish, but I think this a a big part of that tradition) Some people took very small gifts from us and brought back more valuable things to give away to others. For example an amp, a cd player, and some hand made glass dishes. To my way of thinking this shows how much people really do want to engage, and to give, but are not encountering situations that allow them to offer just what they happen to have, and offer it in the spirit they want to give it.

One of the other things I noticed was that people asked "who are you with", it seems that a give away needs a sponsor (institution?)to be validated . The second day we did this we had fliers from Parallel University, and when we said "we are with PU" that put people at ease.

I am happy to say that those who read the flier (which was most everyone) seemed really happy about the whole affair. The bottom line seems to me that we all tend to be really uncomfortable with the idea of "something for nothing". This implies a real lack of creativity/ownership (pun not intended but helpful) and insight about what is something and what is nothing in the first place.

Artist Talk!

Please join us at Basta's Trattoria (410 NW 21st) Thursday Dec. 6th, after the galleries close.
Lawrence Abrahamson, and Susanne Galligan will be talking about their recent work:

OUT–LINES: Drawing in Space

(The talk starts at 8:30 plan to come a few minutes early if you'd like to get a drink or a snack to enjoy during the talk.)

Read on for more information:

Utilizing commonplace items such as flagging tape and sewing thread Lawrence Abrahamson and Susanne Galligan create site-specific objects and spaces from the surrounding environment. Using a formless, linear material, the artists “outline” negative spaces already existing in the setting. The resulting tensile structures are inseparable from their locations, literally knitting the works into the context.


BIO:

Lawrence Abrahamson is a designer with an architectural background that explores the boundaries of space, art and experience. With the results of such explorations including sculpture, photography and mailart, Lawrence demonstrates his interests in the interaction of the public realm with that of visual constructs.

Lawrence has worked in Portland OR, Washington DC and New York City focusing on strategic planning and conceptual development for various clients including Pokemon USA, Reebok, Weight Watchers, ING Direct and Marc Ecko.

Currently living in Singapore, he has established a design and experience consulting firm, Smartsmart. His inaugural project was the development of an art and design opportunities study encompassing interactive public installations and space planning alterations such as art placement, environmental wayfinding and conceptual paint schemes. Most notably, Lawrence proposed “Mirror Pixels” a site-specific installation utilizing a grid of round mirrors to animate a large concrete expanse by breaking down the wall into points of reflective movement and activity.

This spring Lawrence has been invited to be a Research Fellow in the Center for Digital Creativity where he will research the Fundamental Elements of Asian Design.

Susanne Galligan is a current Portland State University art student with a DIY bent. She honored women of a certain age by exhibiting 100 vintage full slips on a clothesline in Provincetown, MA (“Your slip is showing”), participated in The Kitchen Summer Intensive with Harrell Fletcher, New York (2006), and most recently “Sleep Tight America,” a social practice/sculpture exhibition exploring the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Her earlier forays into the art world include a fabric collage on Elvis Presley’s career as exemplified by his pants (“Panting for Elvis”) at an Indianapolis gallery (1988), and ,coincidentally, a string art portrait of the sun with peace signs in high school (1971).

Before “OUT–LINES”, Lawrence and Susanne have collaborated on many artistic endeavors including mail art pieces, “Book of Stamps” and “Expressive Letters” and a public leave-behind, “Raymond”.

OUT-LINES the beginnings

“Space is experienced as the given which precedes the objects in it, in the absence of such objects, (it is assumed) space would still exist, as an empty boundless container.”
Rudolph Arnheim

“It is not about indiscriminately weaving sites of interim use into a context but about making these gaps visible and activating them by means of freeing them.” Barbara Holub and Paul Rajakovics Temporary Urban Spaces

Harold and the Purple Crayon
“Harold also does not know what it is he will create – though the landscape and everything in it is his own mental space he has the capacity to be surprised by his work. His tree “turns out to be” an apple tree, and he is frightened by his own dragon; he draws an ocean without realizing it and falls in. His imagination is both his, and something external (as "genius," in the ancient world, was a kind of daemon who followed us around)” Geoff Klock geoffklock.blogspot.com



Harold creates things out of thin air, he outlines objects and places, and then is able to occupy them. Out of nothing, he uses the purple crayon to divide up the infinite white space into visible territories.

We plan to use white flagging tape as my crayon. View it as white out. A white out scribble that attempts to create spaces within a field of elements. We attempt to circle, highlight, and connect elements, to wall them off creating spontaneous spaces. Spaces out of thin air.

Word find puzzle. Select out of a field of letters specific words. By circling these letters the words become apparent, the answer is revealed. Someone creates a word find puzzle; it is a hunt to find planted, “hidden” words. There is a finite answer; there is an answer key.



We propose finding spaces in settings that do not have an answer key. These spaces, while made by humans, are not planned spaces. We endeavor to find the hidden spaces, encircling them to make then noticeable, to make them obvious.



To support the idea that spaces can be truly discovered and are not just places that have been hidden by a designer or architect, We will also work in a natural environment not planned by anyone.

World hunger

This link will take you to a website where there is a vocabulary game and each time you get a word right the advertisers of the site will donate 10 grains of rice to a third world country.
Free Rice