2008 video loosely based on themes from Herman Hesse’s THE GLASS BEAD GAME. Shot in Michigan during the peak of last year’s financial crisis and just before the election of Barack...
Killin’ it! with Paul Crik
Goatsilk created the web series, Killin’ It with Paul Crik, in 2008, in collaboration with Paul Crik. It has been growing on a weekly basis since that time. Killin’ It is wireless motivation for a new generation. Killin’ It is a mantra. Its a philosophy that’s as simple or as complex as you like. When we say I’m Killin’ It we know the basic meaning of the phrase. Were on top of it, ready to meet life head on at work or play. Killin’ It doesn’t conform to social mores or expectations. The growing numbers of people who have succeeded at Killin’ It form social ties that don’t just...
Gootchie Goo
Gootchie Goo emerged as a fascination with the wild popularity of online videos portraying cuteness. “Adorable kitten” as a search string on Youtube yields countless videos with more than a million views. Further research into the theory of cute led to the discovery of two stimulating...
The Bowhead Project
The Bowhead Project emerged through an afternoon visit to Jo-ann Fabrics, where we found the discounted bulk bags of multi-colored gift bows intensely attractive. Our initial urge had been to make an entire body suit covered in glinting ribbons. But practical limitations led us to cover the...
SWAP
On October 22, 2009, an installation event called SWAP, by the New Genre Arts 280 class at Whitman College, opened its doors to the local community. Superficially, SWAP was not much more than a simple clothing exchange that took place inside the Fouts Art Gallery on campus, but the event also...
Daily Treasures: Living Off The Land!
For 20 working days in June 2008, Goatsilk excavated discarded objects, sites and histories from the lands around Earthquake Lake in southwest Montana. With a series of docu-dramas they envisioned the life of each item, subsequently placing them for auction on eBay. The project unfolded in real-time on their blog, eBay, Facebook and YouTube, creating a linked circuit between 3 of the Internet’s most visited sites and their own virtual outpost. Daily Treasures: Living off the Land! experiments with the possibilities for elevating the real value of these all but forgotten objects by restoring some significance to the reality of their loss...
Portraits from an Ark
Portraits From an Ark is comprised of 55 videos of different people being painted to look like animals. Halfway into each video, after the painting is finished – the sitter is told – for the first time – what animal they have been painted to look like. At this point, they’re asked to enact the creature using only their head, face and minor hand gestures. The transitions and transformations each person goes through—from their everyday selves to painted subject to their creative creature-product to, finally, themselves once again—has more to tell us about humans and human creativity than it does about animals. The...
Abe Lincoln Wants Yo...
Abe Lincoln Wants You to Crack Someone! featured in 1440 Minutes: An Evening of Installation and Performance Art at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs on April 11, 2008. Goatsilk created a scenario in which members of the viewing audience engaged in one on one live action battles...
Backdrop for an Engi...
Backdrop for an Engine: two new installations by Goatsilk Society and the mind are not so dissimilar from a lawnmower. When an engine is working, what it takes in is determined by need and function. Everything else is an enchanting backdrop 11 January to 15 February 2008 Sheehan Gallery,...
The eBay Show
The eBay Show uses artwork purchased on the internet to reveal the internet itself as a work of art. No other technology has comparable power to change the way we live or is so widely used as the internet, which is very young. The e-bay show introduces new possibilities for the dissemination...
Fill:Full
The title of this exhibition, Fill:Full, is the literal inverse of Fulfill and also seems to invert the meaning of the word. It reminds one of Seneca the Younger’s (Roman Philosopher, 4 B.C.-65 A.D.) quote: They vomit that they may eat, and eat that they may vomit. This...
The LED Sign
We ran across the LED sign on-line, where it was residing as a novelty in the living room of Canadian computer programmer Ian Mcghie. He and collaborator Dave Voorhis had connected the retro-style LED sign to an interface of their own design that registered messages from anybody who visited...
Collective Ring
Collective Ring was a large-scale collaborative art performance that took place on May 7, 2003 in Missoula, Montana. This SlideShowPro photo gallery requires the Flash Player plugin and a web browser with JavaScript enabled.
David Blaine Art His...
We’ve always loved David Blaine for the way he rides the fence between mass entertainment and performance art. What, after all, has performance art ever strived for, if not the provocation that Blaine achieves? He’s thought of by many as an egomaniacal attention seeker and a hack...
Slapbooth
May 7, 2004 • Higgens Avenue – Missoula, Montana Slap Booth was a project that gave the public a chance to experience the feelings of an intense and emotionally charged exchange without emotional investment. A twist on the traditional “kissing booth,” patrons paid $1 to enter into...
Bushwrapped
America Doesn’t Order Sausage and Send It Back by Ben Bloch and Caroline Peters Posted: November 1, 2004 We are two artists living in Montana. Some weeks ago, a friend asked us to come up with a creative way to participate in an anti-Bush rally being held in downtown...
Rubix
Giant Rubix Cube Projection on Ankeny Field–a project by Prof. Ben Bloch’s new genre arts class–at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.
You May Walk Through...
From October 22 – November 4, 2007, a high-traffic corridor connecting the arts and humanities at Whitman College was transformed into a hypo-/hyper-sensory interactive environment. Thirty percent of the hall was papered with heavy black stock, emptying it of light. The remaining seventy...
Agnes Ca$h
Agnes Ca$h employed a laptop, an amplifier, and the voice of Agnes (from a selection of voices in an Apple text to speech program) to engage random passerbys in the middle of Whitman College’s Ankeny field. From a second story vantage point in a nearby building, strangers were personally...
