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							<title>Bland Hoke</title>
							<link>http://www.blandhoke.com</link>
							<description>Recylced Art and Ramblings of Artist Bland Hoke</description>
							<language>eng</language><item>
						 <title>Thesis</title>

						 <link>http://www.blandhoke.com/blog.php?id=1019</link>
						 <description><![CDATA[It is getting quite close to graduation.  The work I am pursuing is focused on sidewalk scaffolding sheds, a unique construction element in the city. Here is a quick rendering of what might transpire. . .The issue at stake is diversifying the function of these structures. An omnipresent feature of the city, if you lined every sidewalk shed up, end to end, it would stretch from New York to Baltimore!]]></description>
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						 <title>Two Projects Two Weeks</title>

						 <link>http://www.blandhoke.com/blog.php?id=720</link>
						 <description><![CDATA[I have recently returned to Parsons in NYC to finish the last year of the Transdisciplinary Design Program. The previous two weeks have been a whirlwind of activity with the re-location of the Sheer Bliss sculpture in Snowmass and the completion of the Snake River Reverse. Here are some process shots.The Snake River Reverse project is installed at the Jackson Hole Center for the Arts, and uses the scrap material that would have been recycled from a public art project for the Jackson Hole Airport. ]]></description>
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						 <title>Golden Sea Squirts</title>

						 <link>http://www.blandhoke.com/blog.php?id=700</link>
						 <description><![CDATA[I am currently residing in Lake City Colorado, in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. The endeavor I am working on is called Hard Rock Revision, and consists of a team of 7 creative individuals developing a vision for an inactive hard rock mine called the Ute Ulay. For more information you can follow the blog, or check out Colorado Art Ranch.I am staying in Moose Cabin with the director of Colorado Art Ranch - Grant Pound. Moose Cabin is host to a constant flow of scientists over the course of the Hard Rock Revision project. Apart from the in-depth and engaging conversations that take place during the day, it is a treat to stay late into the evening to chat about miscellanea with intellectuals. Recently, the geologist Rob Blair stayed a night. By day the team learned about the geology of the San Juan’s on a micro and macro scale. By night, sitting under the placid stare of a mounted moose head above the fireplace, Rob opened up another avenue of thought to ponder – sea squirts. Apparently sea squirts are the only creature with vanadium coursing through their circulatory system. Vanadium as you might or might not know is a heavy metal, and in the ocean this element can only be detected using finely tuned scientific equipment. Somehow the feeble sea squirt has evolved as a magnet in a haystack, in some cases concentrating vanadium to a level one million times that of the surrounding sea water. Why should anyone care about the feeble sea squirt? In gold country I have learned about new technologies and methods to extract gold from ore. The latest strategy is cyanide heap leach mining, in which a large area is prepared with a liner, ore piled high inside, and cyanide pumped over the top of the pile to leach out the gold. In tragic instances, this method fails with grave environmental consequences. Back to the evening conversations - Rob Blair is describing in detail the sea squirt in all it’s glory and I am questioning where the conversation is going. He then began to describe how much gold is present in the ocean, suspended as microscopic particles. If the feeble sea squirt was capable of absorbing vanadium, perhaps a similar organism could be engineered to attract gold from its surrounding saline environment. Maybe it is a plant, or another type of organism. How much value would this creature capture? Gold is currently priced at $1,600/oz, while one square mile of ocean can contain as much as 25 tons of gold. The value of a miracle organism with an appetite for gold could yield almost 1.3 billion dollars, however the unintended consequences might be considerable, perhaps even comparable to dripping cyanide through ore.]]></description>
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						 <title>New Netting</title>

						 <link>http://www.blandhoke.com/blog.php?id=655</link>
						 <description><![CDATA[Olive Nets! Apparently in Italy olive harvesting is accomplished using nets, spread over the ground underneath olive trees. The olives fall, and are transported using the breathable material. Now, after a harvest what purpose do these nets have? Maybe a shade structure? I am excited to learn about olive nets to potentially tap into dormant material to facilitate massive hammock hangouts. In Italy. This is going to be exciting.The first time I heard the term decommissioned was at the Snake River Ranch, waltzing about with Ben Roth and Felicia Resor. We stumbled across sucker rod, and were intrigued by the flexible, 'ropey' quality the material had. But what was most amazing about this discovery wat the dormancy of the material. It was purchased and stocked for winter use. During the summer and fall,  the sucker rod wasn't needed, so we proposed to borrow and return eighty of the rods to make a long tunnel form. Farms and other larger businesses have a unique resource many times, whether it is old oil drilling equipment, or unused materials. The chance to borrow and imagine the unused and overlooked opportunities is empowering.]]></description>
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						 <title>It&#039;s all about the future.</title>

						 <link>http://www.blandhoke.com/blog.php?id=649</link>
						 <description><![CDATA[The summer schedule is shaping up nicely with a couple adventures in the works. The most promising and exciting opportunity is in the small Colorado town of Lake City, where I will be participating in a transdisciplinary collaboration. The project is administered by Colorado Art Ranch, a nomadic artist in residence organization. Titled 'Hard Rock Revision', the work will consist of envisioning future uses for the Ute Ulay Mine and town site in Lake City CO. The transdisciplinary team is an amazing lineup of talented individuals: Hannah Freis (Massachusetts poet and associate editor of Orion Magazine), Julia Lewandowski (Public historian, writer and musician), Anna Macleod (Irish sculptor, curator, and environmental artist), Lydia Moyer (Videographer, documentarian, and educator), Becky Sobell (Landscape architect from Manchester, England), and Linda Wysong (Oregon public artist and community collaborator). Additionally, 6 advisors will provide technical guidance for the project: Rob Blair (Ph.D.), Todd Bryan (Ph.D.), Ronald Cohen (Ph.D.), Jonathan Lovekin (MS), Chris Ray (Ph.D.) and Joseph Ryan (Ph.D.). For more information on the team visit this link. On a different but similar note, I am currently working on a final project for the first year at Parsons in the Transdisciplinary Design MFA Program. The project is very similar to the Hard Rock Revision project, and consists of envisioning new uses for the Hunts Point Produce Market. The lease for this property expires at the end of May, and a battle is brewing between New York and New Jersey for the Market infrastructure. The premise of our project is planning a scenario for Hunts Point, if the Market were to move to New Jersey, which by a reputable source has a 50/50 chance. Could the Market be part of a larger closed-loop food system, scaling Will Allen's Growing Power model to employ the community and serve New York City with produce?The Hunts Point Market is the largest food distribution center in the world, channeling 60% of New York City's food through a centralized distribution center, generating 2.3 billion dollars of revenue annually. The Hunts Point peninsula is literally at the bottom of the food chain as it is the poorest congressional district in the US. Due to the 60,000 trucks that traverse the community on a weekly basis, residents have the highest ashma rates in the country, as well as high obesity rates due to the lack of access to healthy food in the community. To read more about this project visit this link.Sandwiched between these projects is the installation of the Snake River Reverse project, pictured below, and the relocation of the Sheer Bliss sculpture on Snowmass Mountain. The mix between theoretical projects, and hand's on activities should make for a very diverse and expansive summer before entering the final year at Parsons. ]]></description>
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						 <title>Onward and So On</title>

						 <link>http://www.blandhoke.com/blog.php?id=626</link>
						 <description><![CDATA[In a couple weeks I will be flying off to Athens, Greece to participate in a project titled 'Against All Odds'. Very Exciting!Here is how it works: The team I am part of consists of a diverse crowd of students and faculty from Parsons, and the New School. The spread consists of: Transdisciplinarians, Design and Technology, Environmental Studies, Management and Urban Policy, Architecture, and History of Decorative Arts. We will be working with students from both the National Technical University and the Athens School of Fine Art. The goal is to tackle an urgent Athenian issue, which I can only guess at this point what we will uncover. As a boost of confidence, our group was informed that a troupe of parkour-ists will be engaged in the project as well. The challenge will be to soak up as much soci-spatial information to make informed ideas come to fruition in one week's time. Ready Set: Design!]]></description>
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						 <title>A Teaser!</title>

						 <link>http://www.blandhoke.com/blog.php?id=620</link>
						 <description><![CDATA[1/6 of the entire Snake River Reverse project for the Center for the Arts. The lighting is a test, using x-mas lights. The final work will be equipped with LED's, potentially emitting the color of the Snake River in late August- a beautiful deep green blue. The project has been an exciting endeavor in it's entirety. I convinced my family to snorkel the Snake one day. I used it as 'experiential research' and took note of the contours of the river bed while oogling the hundreds of fish and occasional stick. ]]></description>
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						 <title>Initial tests of texture</title>

						 <link>http://www.blandhoke.com/blog.php?id=599</link>
						 <description><![CDATA[I have begun work on testing visual textures for the Snake River Reverse project. The surface area is much larger than it's counterpart at the Jackson Hole Airport, and requires a slightly different approach.I began my research into flow patterns, and ran across the work of Jim Soliven. His flickr set is embedded in a folder titled, "Attempts at art, (I'm not an artist)." I would argue otherwise, as the flowing patterns generated by programming languages are inspiring and reveal his curiosity and interest in playing around with visuals. The image above is the entire mural for the Center for the Arts, measuring about 57' long. The highlighted section is pictured below in a test. One concept was to ignore the path of the river and grind in long flowing lines to provide two aspects. During the day, the long shiny lines would be more prominent, while at night the backlit river would take precedence. I made a test on one section of the mural, splitting the work in two with flowing lines on the right, and 'topographic' lines on the left that follow the path of the river. As of now, I am leaning towards the topographic lines as they are more fun to work on, and produce a painterly end result. If they are a bit busy, I may use an orbital sander with fine paper to buff out the surface to reduce the extravagance and subdue the work as a whole. ]]></description>
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						 <title></title>

						 <link>http://www.blandhoke.com/blog.php?id=594</link>
						 <description><![CDATA[The next step is here! After a successful installation of the Jackson Hole Airport's public art project by Custom Iron Design, the inverse cut-outs will begin their transformation into an additional work of art!



The inverse pieces were proposed as an innovative public art project for the Center for the Arts.
 The pieces would have otherwise been recycled, however their innate 
potential was recognized and capitalized on to create a cost effective 
derivative project. 



The surfaces of the work for the Center for the Arts will present a 
large canvass for creative patterns and textures. It will be an exciting
 adventure after learning so much from polishing the work for the 
Jackson Hole Airport. 

]]></description>
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						 <title>Opening Innovation</title>

						 <link>http://www.blandhoke.com/blog.php?id=580</link>
						 <description><![CDATA[Discovery: The Snowtorium is a thought shared by others!The internet reveals amazing characteristics of society. A friend sent me a link to the Freeze Project and more specifically the work of Molo Studio in their creation titled, 'Northern Sky Circle'. The work stirred some thoughts that when mixed with theories of Emergence, authored by Steven Johnson, are provoking to consider.The work is amazingly similar to the Snowtorium, and another project I collaborated on, and another a friend completed (independent of the previous, but within a time span of 1 month). The point is not to question originality, but rather why in the world this form pops up in artistic endeavors. Maybe Richard Serra has a better grip on everyone than we realize!Serra's 'Torqued Ellipses' most certainly inspired the development of the Snowtorium (as noted in this video). The work of James Turrell, whose interest in light frames it in poetic and captivating simplicity, was also a reference point. Alas, this is an interest shared in 'Northern Sky Circle', combining the framing device of a vertiginous hallway. So what's the big deal between people thinking in similar ways, or using styles that sing to each other across continents? The interesting point I want to draw is that the internet provides an aerial view of this creative aptitude, with surprising effectiveness, and much faster than any form of communication previously. The 'Northern Light Circle' project found me. A friend, through some mysterious perusing, found the project which had made it's way onto the web. The connection established itself, and I wonder if Moores law will eventually enable interests and ideas to congeal like oil on water. What will the effects of overlapping intrinsic motivations result in when the internet brings like minded people together to collaborate?]]></description>
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