Jay Bundy Johnson

steamplant residency

2011-11-27T09:43:00.001-08:00

via the shadbolt centre for the arts

sound installation: machine peace

tree talk

interior steamplant

machine dream

ongoing works:

2011-11-26T17:38:00.001-08:00

limited edition album

drONEseed
music for kilns

part of steamplant residency
summer 2011

one thousand four

2011-11-20T09:20:00.000-08:00

a compression of individual moments
one thousand four (to be exact)

compression being finite
moments (ultimately) disperse

long sunny day

2010-04-16T10:22:00.000-07:00

http://vimeo.com/20420354

at the RAG

2009-07-18T18:57:00.000-07:00

Mary's Room (Conditions for Qualia)

Imagine Mary; brought up from birth in a black and white room.

First presented by esteemed philosopher Frank Jackson, the Mary's Room hypothesis remains a focal point for discussion of the sensory packet known as "Qualia".

Throughout her life in this colourless environment, Mary reads many (black and white) books and learns all the laws of physics. She becomes a super-scientist: expert in the functional roles that the brain plays in the process of colour vision. Her knowledge of the physical and functional organization of the brain becomes complete to the point that there is nothing that she does not know.

When Mary finally leaves her room and experiences her first colour, would she learn anything new about the world?

In an attempt to capture the type of experience Mary might have when encountering her first colour, I've abandoned previous strategies of generating sculpture fashioned to suggest knowledge of specific themes; instead I consider the motive of this work to be experiential.

http://vimeo.com/20654028

come back (to me)

2008-07-05T18:19:00.000-07:00

with a rock in the right shoe
limp
dinner begs

with a rock in the left shoe
gimp
gamey leg

2007-12-28T19:55:00.001-08:00

gazer

2007-12-15T10:13:00.001-08:00

exercising the right
to choose a few things
that make sense

2007-12-15T09:53:00.001-08:00

tin can man

2007-11-15T19:11:00.000-08:00

tin can man
tin can man
all you need is a
tin can man

2007-09-13T10:57:00.000-07:00

detail of operation

2007-09-06T22:07:00.000-07:00

a car smashed into me

a buick they said
I landed on my head

whatever

the size of things

2007-09-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

If the earth were a peppercorn and the sun a bowling ball, they would be 78 feet apart.

Pluto, smaller than a pinhead is nearly half a mile away.

2007-09-02T13:37:00.000-07:00

2007-08-30T11:47:00.000-07:00

2007-08-30T11:46:00.000-07:00

2007-08-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

2007-08-29T11:48:00.000-07:00

dark dark dark

2007-08-29T11:42:00.000-07:00

not always but today, yes.

2007-08-29T11:39:00.000-07:00

2007-08-29T11:29:00.000-07:00

spokesman

2007-08-28T23:50:00.000-07:00

held together by spokes
the space in between
a kind of comfort

now cowboy buddha
point to the centre
axle rotator array

and holy jesus
the damn thing's
in motion

2007-08-28T11:54:00.001-07:00

2007-08-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

2007-08-28T00:36:00.000-07:00

the long wait

2007-08-27T23:49:00.000-07:00

i've been delayed
it couldn't have come at a
better time

now shoes off
and chest bare
pick up
from where we left off

2006-01-22T20:49:00.000-08:00

another morning

2005-10-29T17:47:00.000-07:00

on my knees
pulling hair and thread
out of the wheels of an office chair

running fine now
patented 1967

2005-10-28T18:45:00.000-07:00

the wonder hotel

2005-10-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

is the rooming house my studio was under

once a vibrant machine of creation
it waits empty;
gutted by a greedy slumlord

2005-10-21T18:07:00.000-07:00

everything must go

2005-10-20T10:58:00.000-07:00

It’s getting futuristic out there.

Arthur C. Clark’s dictum: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” becomes more salient in the early days of the 21st century. I’m here to remind you, the information age rides like a giddy child on the shoulders of the machine.

In a day, industry might stamp out a million new techno-things. Yet, trucks, all iron piston and gear, drag them to dock. Heavy cranes lever loads onto rusty ships. Giant props screw through ancient seas.

Oblivious, shiny thing in hand, we are the pettiest of gods: broadcasting nonsense over great distances, inputting self-absorbed minutia through tiny keypads, replicating image after empty image. Our powers are so amplified the twitch of a finger might access an seemingly infinite pool of data, or with as much effort, put a bullet through someone.

Perhaps this lopsided relationship between the mechanical and the technological is analogous to our body’s reflexive enslavement to a relentless brain. Lately, the brain seems to want to bully the body about; diet, exercise, fear of diseases and distorted self-image push us to be something we are not.

But, just as harnessing all of our mechanical muscle cannot magically place us in some kind holy tech-heaven where our creations are always liberating and benign; our ideas of transcending our physicality (humanity) contain the inevitable germ of fantasy. We eat, we shit, we sleep, we fuck.

Duchamp said (to Noguchi) “Don’t do anything that pleases you – only do that which you dislike and cannot help but do. This is the way to find yourself.”

He’s suggesting instinct over information. Substance over surface.
A petition for compulsion.

My work is about compulsion; it's about having a body. A wet, messy, cranky, smelly, easily punctured body (something I dislike, but cannot help).

I make objects designed to trap the eye.
The trap always malfunctions. You can go anytime.