Mimetes

Color Samples #3

Another set of color samples with dramatic names, though some of them not more dramatic than actual commercial color names ("This is it!" by Sherwin-Williams, for example). To be left in the hardware store.

Very enthusiastic wine review

(Click to read)

Is the rise of connoisseurship a mass attempt to penetrate the purely symbolic experience of something like a bottle of nice wine? To begin, by careful training, to respond viscerally to our food instead of accounting abstract gratification from the knowledge of having consumed it?  Like a character in Anna Karenina says, a cigar... there is pleasure... no, not pleasure, but the mark of pleasure. Writings such as the wine review above suggest that we are unfeeling towards good wine et cetera not because we have yet to cultivate our tastes (we would have too far to go, unless they're faking it), but because there is something wrong with us. We are simply not of the species who live with such intensity. Though I have never read a wine review with this sort of frantic zeal, in a way they all sound like this to me.

 

Posted in the Whole Foods wine section, above the Prima Toro. Tex submitted to various wine review publications.

New business moving in

(Click picture to enlarge)

An imaginary leather shop advertising its opening on the real window of what used to be a restaurant. I doubt the town of Amherst would actually allow this type of place to move in, if it can be judged by its neighbor Northampton, where last year a group successfully campaigned to prevent a porn shop from opening. Until the sign is taken down, passersby might think things about the possibility of a change in the atmosphere of the downtown area.

Color Samples #2

Four more colors from imaginary color-namers with poor commercial sense. This time the commentary note explains very little. Printed on heavy resume paper. I left it in the public library. Click for closeup.

Legislative Condiment Sign

I left this red folder in the middle of a street in Northampton. The packet contains a note from 'Francois' to 'Joseph', proprietors of an unnamed coffeehouse, complaining that a customer used too much sugar in his coffee: "Joseph- I saw some guy pour sugar into his coffee for like ten seconds! Doesn't he know it's bad for him?! He won't even be able to taste his coffee! I'm making a new sign. -Francois". I imagine Francois paying sixty cents for his new red folder in order to get it together, get more organized, for his new coffeehouse business venture. His disorderly nature prevails despite this rebellion: Francois loses the folder in the street. The new sign (above) is laminated, cheesily colored, and containing the quotation marks of mysterious purpose one often sees in public:  we're "open"! Tips "please"!

Various anxieties are encouraged.

Note that "is for the convenience of" has grammaticalized (the process in linguistic history through which a word changes from conveyor of meaning to a grammatical function) into meaning just, "exists," thanks to obsequious commercial language.

 

Fungal Object

I left this jug of Kambucha fungi under a thorn bush in the woods last Spring. Before that it sat for almost a year in the room of a friend of mine, who had lost interest in it and stowed it behind something after breaking up with the DIY enthusiast who gifted it to him (Kambucha being used for the creation of a certain kind of tea). The original was the size of the disc that you can see hanging at the bottom. Now there are 5 or 6 of them. It is a bit outside the 'mimetes' category, since most of these items are crafted so that someone will find them and feel they have gained pure access to a stranger who does not actually exist. But, since these awful creatures (who I have returned to their thorn bush since shooting this video) are not going to offer any explanations to anybody, I bet that whoever eventually does find them will still have to invent scenarios to explain to themselves how they got there.

Color Samples #1

The names of commercial colors are often very flowery. A few I found just now on the Sherwin-Williams site: Impressive Ivory, Echelon Ecru, Cork Wedge, Earthen Jug, and Wheat Penny. This sample sheet may be suspect to the discerning finder, since most bear the company name and are printed on cardboard.  Notice the exuberant handwriting and message contrasts with the atmosphere of the rest of the page.

"Anagrammatic Space": one page from an imaginary paper on architecture

(Click to read)

A fragment of a nonexistent academic paper on the architecture of a housing village on my college campus. As far as I know, it is not true that its buildings could be reassembled to form a cube. There are many factual errors in this paper fragment and have pretty much nothing to do with anything the actual architects have written.

Prescott is a group of tall buildings which I think resemble paper milk cartons. The crimson metal fire-escape style walkways, crimson doors, reflective rooftops and tar balconies are repeated throughout space in various arrangements. It can be disorienting to visitors. People delivering food always ask for directions.

I made a few pen edits to the page, stapled it and removed the staple, folded it in places, and have left two copies on campus and several others in town and nearby campuses.

If this page appeals to you, I encourage you to print it out and leave it somewhere. In case you would prefer it, here is a copy without line edits: Download anagrammatic_space.doc.

   

The geometry of Prescott Village's architecture evokes a fractured continuity, longing to be reassembled.