Goatsilk

Shit People Ask at Cocktail Parties – “What Do You Do?”

B Bloch — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:48:39 +0000

After a barrage of holiday encounters with friends and acquaintances, the question “so what do you do?” starts to sound silly. The older I get, the less willing I am to spend time engaging in smalltalk. After all, isn’t it mostly just about comparisons and “keeping up with the Joneses?” At the same time, this [...]

Tim Tebow The Thinker

B Bloch — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:28:38 +0000

Whether or not you’re a Bronco’s fan, or just a football fan, you’ve probably heard of Tim Tebow‘s “Tebowing.” After a successful touchdown, he’ll put his elbow to his knee, fist to forehead, and take a specially postured moment to thank God. We’re all are familiar with how sports takes on the meanings and vocabulary [...]

The Glass Bead Game

B Bloch — Thu, 19 May 2011 23:12:29 +0000

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 Obama.

The Kate Middleton Jellybean

B Bloch — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:37:39 +0000

A British couple has discovered the uncanny likeness of Kate Middleton, prince William’s bride to be, in an orange colored mango jellybean they almost ate. It’s another one of these stories that captures the world’s imagination. The tiny image is so accurate and compelling that it seems nothing short of miraculous, and of course, when [...]

Killin’ it! with Paul Crik

admin — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 22:45:30 +0000

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 [...]

Conservative Prankster James O’Keefe: Political Activist, Journalist, or Artist?

B Bloch — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 03:19:04 +0000

Recently the 26 year old Rutgers graduate and prankster “journalist” James O’Keefe has been in the news for masterminding a damning hidden camera taping of Ron Schiller, the now former director of NPR. The sting operation, and subsequent manipulation of the tape, produced a video document which made Schiller look like yet another corrupt man [...]

Does Steve Jobs Have Just Six Weeks Left to Live?

B Bloch — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 23:07:45 +0000

The National Enquirer is reporting that Steve Jobs, the genius tech guru and CEO of Apple, has only approximately six weeks to live. Many people are dubious of stories that appear in The Enquirer, but in fact their reporting tends to have some validity. I’ve found that often times they report news which a couple [...]

When Having a Stroke is Perceived by the Internet as Funny. Plus, Killin’ It with Paul Crik on Being Borderline Retarded

B Bloch — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 22:50:58 +0000

The first thing I saw when I checked in on facebook today was this video featuring Los Angeles reporter Serene Branson losing all verbal faculties while trying to deliver some news on last night’s Grammys. I thought it was strange and hilarious. Some people were saying she was drunk, others were saying she had a [...]

Killin’ It with Paul Crik – TRAIN YOURSELF (2011 Dance Video)

admin — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 20:46:02 +0000

In a brand new dance video for 2011, Paul talks about how to train yourself, and reflects on the most influential advertising campaign of all time: Nike’s JUST DO IT.

Killin’ It with Paul Crik – HYGIENE OVERKILL

admin — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 20:43:21 +0000

Paul explains why you have to be careful not to be overly hygienic with yourself or your children. You can’t sterilize everything or you’ll end up sterilizing your soul.

Killin’ It with Paul Crik – SNAILMAIL vs. E-MAIL

admin — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 20:41:01 +0000

Paul reminisces about the days before e-mail, when mail came in limited quantities depending on the the size of your mailbox.

Gootchie Goo

admin — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 03:20:49 +0000

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 essays on the topic: “Cuties in Japan” by Sharon [...]

The Bowhead Project

admin — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 01:46:39 +0000

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 head alone by pinning hundreds of bows to [...]

Killin’ It with Paul Crik – THE BIGGEST MISTAKE I’VE EVER MADE

B Bloch — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 20:48:38 +0000

Paul examines one of his own shortcomings and suggests that taking ownership of our mistakes is a critical step on the path to a more fulfiulling life.

Killin’ It with Paul Crik – FULL FORCE ATTITUDE

B Bloch — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 20:42:49 +0000

Paul emphasizes the power of adopting a FULL FORCE ATTITUDE with everything you do in life. Killin' It is wireless motivation for a new generation.

Killin’ It with Paul Crik – DRINKING IS NICE

B Bloch — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 20:38:21 +0000

Paul discusses his appreciation of moderate drinking. Liquor is a nice vice, but you have to know how much of a thing you can do before it starts to do you.

Killin’ It with Paul Crik – WHEN TO LET THE STORM IN

B Bloch — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 20:33:51 +0000

Paul explains why sometimes, when a storm is brewing around you, you have to simply open up and let it come in.

SWAP

admin — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 22:47:44 +0000

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 provided the strange experience [...]

Killin’ It with Paul Crik: RENAMING THINGS FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH

admin — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 21:29:38 +0000

Paul demonstrates the simple mental exercise of renaming everyday objects. Forcing yourself to do this is not only fun, but the drill actually exercises the parts of your brain that you need to stay creatively fit. Join Paul in discovering that a toothbrush is a dental guitar, and much more. http://www.paulcrik.com/

Daily Treasures: Living Off The Land!

admin — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 03:31:06 +0000

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 [...]

Portraits from an Ark

admin — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 01:43:54 +0000

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 [...]

iClaw: Goatsilk at Brink Gallery

admin — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 19:43:48 +0000

iClaw celebrates the bizarreness of life with an exploration of desire, interactivity, economy, art, technology, and marketing. Anyone who buys one of the 4 paintings on display painting will receive a free iPad. Additional works include and/or require audience use of concert lasers, puppets, and an air compressor.

Abe Lincoln Wants You to Crack Someone!

admin — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 01:40:59 +0000

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 to make a stranger laugh via video [...]

The Beast of Caricature

admin — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 03:37:50 +0000

Backdrop for an Engine

admin — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 01:46:20 +0000

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, Whitman College, Washington 17 January to [...]

The eBay Show

admin — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 01:45:15 +0000

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 of art and [...]

Fill:Full

admin — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 01:44:16 +0000

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. First, there is the notion of vomit as a [...]

The LED Sign

admin — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 01:38:00 +0000

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 the LED site and wished to [...]

Collective Ring

admin — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 03:33:34 +0000

Collective Ring was a large-scale collaborative art performance that took place on May 7, 2003 in Missoula, Montana.

David Blaine Art History

admin — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 01:45:32 +0000

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 illusionist. He’s puzzled over, and he inspires. When [...]

Slapbooth

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 01:42:09 +0000

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 a contract with a “slapper” who would publicly slap [...]

Bushwrapped

admin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 01:41:39 +0000

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 Missoula. The event, [...]

Goatsilk in ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art

admin — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:43:29 +0000

Three videos by Goatsilk–Gargoyling, Pressing the Vessel, and Liberation of the Paranoid World–were included in the Fall 2008 issue of ASPECT magazine, a biannual DVD publication showcasing contemporary work in new and experimental media. The videos are accompanied by commentary by Ricardo De Mambro Santos. Volume 12: Vital presents nine artists exploring that which [...]

Rubix

admin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:43:29 +0000

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.

Goatsilk introduces “Killin’ It with Paul Crik”

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:08:05 +0000

Over the last year, Goatsilk (www.goatsilk.com) has been collaborating with Paul Crik to produce a new motivational and life skills program called “Killin’ It.” “Killin’ It” is a lifestyle approach for the 21st century. It’s a philosophy of living that transcends theory, eschews dogma, and avoids cliche. To join the growing group of people that [...]

You May Walk Through the Breezeway

admin — Sun, 24 May 2009 01:38:35 +0000

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 percent of the breezeway interior was enveloped in bright, handmade wallpaper, aerated [...]

Agnes Ca$h

admin — Wed, 20 May 2009 03:31:35 +0000

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 addressed and asked to perform a [...]

Tyvek Drawing

admin — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 03:31:13 +0000

Tyvek Drawing took advantage of the renovation of the Sherwood gymnasium when it was covered in Tyvek paper, in preparation for being bricked over. The mostly white surface served as an effective screen from our projection vantage point on the roof of a building across the street. Using a projector, amplifier, microphone, blackberry, ipod, and [...]

Ad a Friend

admin — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 03:42:42 +0000

The exhibit “ad a friend” is a playful way to make make known the fact (see copied terms of use below) that facebook actually owns and can use – for most any purpose- an individual’s pictures once they’ re uploaded to the site. In compiling the images for “ad a friend,” the Art 280 class [...]

Facebooking

admin — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 03:30:52 +0000

In this performance, students from Ben Bloch’s new genre arts class set up an 8′ x 8′ projection screen on the side of Penrose Library on the campus of Whitman College, where they projected a live voyeuristic websurf across parts of the popular social networking site, Facebook. Only their real-time voices could be herd over [...]

Machine Being Machine

admin — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:30:35 +0000

The large drawings in this room were created by a LEGO Mindstorms robot. The robot was programmed to turn left randomly when sensing changes from dark to light on the paper. By attaching pens or brushes with pivotal arms, we were able to engineer a certain amount of “play” in the robots marks, resulting in [...]

Get Cloned

admin — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:29:51 +0000

March 19, 2007 • Colorado State University • Pueblo, Colorado Get Cloned was a live interactive webchat performance broadcast from the Colorado State University Pueblo Fine Art Gallery to a remote location on the CSU campus. In the gallery was a large-scale rasterized photograph of the exact physical area of the campus landscape that [...]

Head Nobody

admin — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:29:39 +0000

Head Nobody emerged as a final project in Ben Bloch’s new genre arts class at Whitman College, in Fall 2006. In the project, we created a large-scale public webchat in which passerbys could interact with a head that was detached from its own body, but whose body was still residing in the same room with [...]

Goatsilk Introduces Killin’ it! with Paul Crik

admin — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:37:38 +0000

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 dont just land them a network-based glad-handed favor, they make friends for life; an extended family of some of the most entertaining, good-hearted, humble, and successful people currently alive.

1000 Crickets, Do Not Open

admin — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 01:45:56 +0000

1000 Crickets, Do Not Open was a two channel live video feed installation in which wireless security cameras, monitors, mechanical insects and 1000 live crickets were placed inside two clear vitrines for viewing. A viewer at one end saw what the security camera was trained on just around the corner, and vice versa. The contrasts [...]

The Wages of Glory

admin — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:40:01 +0000

Wow. The images combined with the music in this video make it weirdly emotionally charged, and give it some unique artistic flare. Check it out…if bone-breaking ski jump falls don’t make you too queezy. [See post to watch Flash video]

Gnarly Fun Surprise

admin — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:07:59 +0000

At first you’ll be like “what the hell is going on here!?” especially if you don’t speak spanish, but wait until halfway through for a surprise.

A Bolt of Lightning!

admin — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:38:35 +0000

Here is a 12 second clip of a magnificent bolt of lightning I happened to catch yesterday while out doing some filming. [See post to watch Flash video]

Grizzly Bear – KNIFE

admin — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:19:33 +0000

This is a cool song and video. Bizarre and delightfully so.

Fantastic Flying Dildo!

admin — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:26:21 +0000

This is just an amazing little piece of footage. Absolutely Brilliant.