Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

A useful graphic.

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Slightly adobed to compensate for washout of colors, with mixed success. The redness of the second building from the left has been exaggerated (unintentionally), but the buildings on the end look as I remember them.

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Photo of permit inside the door of the Scottish Rite Cathedral, Chicago.

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Would you say this looks a little like a demolition?

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

... of the Scottish Cathedral near the site of the old "Bughouse Square", by the Newberry Library.



See: Scottish Rite Cathedral

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

From the White Dove of the Desert mission church near Tucson, Arizona. I seem to recall that that this piece was something called a "monstrance", whose significance might be explained here. Disclaimer: Not being a Christian, myself, I bring something less than total expertise to my choice of references on this subject.



Note the use of Tohono O’Odham (Papago) basketwork in the decoration of the item, and in the vessel to the right. This was a recurring them in the small museum found within this mission, the pre-Christian artistic tradition of the Native people finding expression in the ceremonial objects.



See: the introductory page for my Southwestern Photo gallery.

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

.





Picture is my Tribe icon, which I assembled on the South Park Studios site. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ... I know ... prepackaged software ...







.

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Are they kidding? This is what we've been waiting for?

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

.



Relates to a site review on The Abyss (my Stumbleupon blog). Menu of posts on said blog can be found on this page.





.

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Photomanipulation of an image I took of this structure during the summer of 2008, at a time when a vaguely worded demolition notice had been posted, and I feared the worst. The good news, at present, is that scaffolding is up, and what is going on appears to be repair work.



See: this discussion on Chicago Photography

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

One of the first photos I ever posted online, this appears on a photographic walking tour through the Gold Coast neighborhood on Chicago's Near North Side I set up and with which I have experienced some productive frustration. Being much too poor to afford my own dark room, I found myself at the mercy of Osco and ended up with, in most cases, truly horrible machine done developing jobs that forced me to explore the possibilities of surrealism in photo manipulation.



This photo, taken on Astor just north of Division, was one of the exceptions, appearing on the screen very much like the scene appeared before my eyes, at least on my screen. It serves as the graphic for the Unofficial, Alternative Burning Man Chicago group on Google.













.

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Used in the code fragment for my homegroup.

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

For one of my homerings, the one my flickr profile belongs to.

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

This is the same building seen in Say Goodbye, viewed from a different angle. You may have seen a photoshopped version of this on my homepage. As this is intended for documentary purposes, as unhappy as I am with the developing job I got out of Osco, I'm presenting this image to you unaltered by Adobe in any way, aside from it being resized.



What's interesting about this photo is that it's a picture of an illegal demolition. I had noticed this building for years, in part because of the unbelievable neglect of its owner. A piece of the frieze on the north (left) wing of the building had come loose during the mid 1990s, and some years later, still hung there. One morning, the dangling ornamentation, clearly a danger to people on the ground, was gone, having either been removed or having fallen off during the night, but a few years into the 21st century, still had not been replaced, leaving the underside of the cornice to the tender mercy of the elements in Chicago. Then one day, much to the surprise of many, demolition began on this vintage structure in a historic neighborhood. As somebody elsewhere called it, "demolition by neglect", or in this case, "demolition rationalised by neglect"; what does one expect to see happen when one lets the freeze thaw cycle do its work on damaged masonry?



When I first snapped and posted this unphotoshopped version of this picture to my Geocities page, I offered a little snark about the absence of a publicly visible demolition permit and hinted at a suspicion that money had changed hands, and what do you know? A few days later, a stop work order was slapped on the front of the site. It seems that no permit had been granted for demolition; the developer had applied for permission to do some repairs on the very building he was now destroying, and the city didn't want to seem amused by this. "Seemed" is the key word in this case, as Burton Natarus, the alderman for the area at the time, was well known for his anti-architectural preservation views, but this made his office look bad. Being bad is just fine in Chicago, but looking bad sometimes isn't, and so the work stoppage began, and somebody got to go in for a hearing. For now, the building was saved, sort of.



Only sort of, as there is no such thing as a lasting victory when dealing with developers in any place as casually corrupt as Chicago. About a week later, one could hear loud banging coming from inside the work site, the one where under court order nobody was supposed to be, as if somebody were taking a sledgehammer to a support and wonder of wonders, after a few days of late night pounding, one of the sides of the building collapsed, resulting in the developer's previously blocked demolition suddenly being green lighted. Even at that, supposedly he was only supposed to demolish those portions of the building that had truly become unsound. How much could that be?







Next Image

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

If you wish you can take a look at my current photoshopped version of this image, which is due for replacement; I am not at all happy with it, but my best suggestion as of today is to head straight back to Brazen Disregard and that discussion of the demolition.

Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

We approach the structure on Dearborn from the South, coming up from Shiller. Remember that supposedly, the developer is only rehabilitating and restoring this structure, not demolishing it. He has already been subjected to a stop work order, one which as has been mentioned, he had his men ignore, but be that as it may, this is what the permit says he is supposed to be doing.



Let's see what he does, instead.











Next Image



First Image

Where the name of this blog comes from ...



Some years ago, I attended an interactive festival of the arts in which the amateur participants, as a collective performance piece, created a temporary city in the most featureless and least welcoming parts of a desert in Nevada. The bad memories my encounter with that festival and those who devote their lives to it have long since come to outweigh the good, which is why I leave it unnamed, but it remains as source of many interesting concepts - and even more dull ones, but those we can forget. By their own account, back when their company was perhaps still worth seeking, some in the community observed that this festival was a place where one could go to see a thousand grand ideas executed poorly - an honest assessment, but not really a damning one, under the circumstances.



Many of those creating work for the festival each seemed to feel the need to create something completely original, beginning each project from scratch, after learning of the theme for the year, whose announcement was often delayed for months, perhaps to build up suspense, or perhaps because even by San Francisco standards, the organizers were really full of themselves. This limited preparation time, which busy people had to squeeze into their schedules, were they lucky enough to be gainfully employed enough to afford some of the grand projects they planned. This meant that when some of the experiments went wrong, as any sort of engineering project will tend to, at first, those working on the projects would find themselves without the time needed to work the bugs out of what they were doing. They sometimes failed where nobody could have succeeded, without incredibly good luck.



Thus the Time Warp Cafe, a project I considered, but eventually decided to not try to bring to that desert. The "time warp" alluded to wasn't going to be one to eras past, but to events past. We'd find camp or project ideas that others had worked on, and build on what they did, openly acknowledging our debt to them. One would walk in, perhaps in 2007, and find that in our camp, the 2004 theme was being followed in the newer work, with the themes of years before showing up in pieces that would recall the fictional history of the camp; doing the pieces we might have created, had we been there for the years we missed, working with those present - or something vaguely reminiscent of that. Walking into the camp would be like stepping into that time warp, going back in time and maybe slightly sideways.



The festival, as I said, is perhaps best avoided this year, the community having been ruined in part by the substance abuse of many of those present, and the ambitions of a group of organizers who thought that they could turn rebellion into a commodity - but interactive art and community as ideas, are bigger than any one group or event. My lingering thought is that if I found participants, we might create smaller events here at home - deliberately not going off into any wildernesses. Keep it at home, maybe in a county forest preserve or a city park accessible using public transportation, so that nobody who comes by feels free to go all "Lord of the Flies" on us, as these predecessors did at their event.



No admission cost, no conspicuous consumption, just humble little things that we can afford in these downsized and downscaled times, made with love and without the thought that we might build a following or an income out of this. What would be the name of this event? Why would it need one? Name it, and you make the intangible concrete and waiting to be taken by those with a misplaced sense of ambition. Just make it into "that thing we did last year", however, and you leave any would-be entrepeneur with nothing to take over. The gathering disperses at the end, and is over, and as for which gathering in the future could be seen as its continuation - who can say?



















What is the purpose of this blog? I am well aware of Yahoo's past and its history of abandoning projects. Yahoo 360 could transition its way into oblivion with little notice, so what I'm not going to do on 360 is create posts that I would want others to link to, or would be heartbroken to lose. That eliminates a lot of possibilities in blogging, but not all of them.



360, even in mismanaged decline, sees a lot of traffic. If I'm planning an event and want people to come and maybe give feedback on the plans, I want them to see the notice. The traffic will help. I might not be so concerned with whether or not anybody can see it after the event is over, so the life expectancy of the blog is less of an issue. If I'm giving out updates on what I'm doing on a few different sites, so that those following me know where on earth I am, in virtual terms, and where they might look for new material without wading through a lot they've already seen - again, we have something useful at the time, that won't be so useful, later.



This kind of time specific material will be what this blog will be used for, serving as a companion to "En Transit" - hence the tagline - and will be associated with my Upcoming profile. Assuming either see real use. I still don't know if there is interest in what I'm proposing, any group to be found.



















Using the form to request to become my contact would, at this moment, probably be a waste of your time, because I'm spending most of my time online away from Yahoo. Your request would probably expire before I ever saw it. However, I do have a homegroup located at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Joseph_Dunphy/

which you can post to, once you join, in order to get into contact with me. It's a moderated list, so don't worry that you'll be spamming it. I'll see your message, copy it for my records, delete it and then get in touch with you. If there ever is a "you", which, when one writes a blog, is usually the question on one's mind, isn't it? Is the counter being run up by humans, by the spiders or is Yahoo fibbing to us? I don't know.



But maybe I'll find out.

A few comments from a user who had been considering installing Disqus on one of his blogs, until recently - and I think you'll find that I speak for many who stay quiet because they don't want to be bothered with the usual flamewars that arise when fanboys hear what they don't want to hear ...



1. I notice that the link to my homepage has vanished from my Disqus profile. Is this a change in Disqus policy, or just a temporary malfunction? If we're looking at the former, and Disqus isn't going to be providing commenters with the chance to get that homepage link, then I would consider this to be a deal breaker.



As a commenter, I am not going to agree to link to a service that isn't willing to link back to me, nor am I going to spend my time writing comments for a blog configured to force me to use such a service. As a blogger, I'm not going to ask my visitors to make use of such a service, themselves. I appreciate the time and trouble that goes into crafting a well thought out response, some of which (on some blogs) have almost become posts in their own right, and see the link I give back to somebody who has positively contributed to the content on my blog as being the very least that I should even think of offering in return.





2. I notice that the buttons have failed to work in some places in our account managers, including, in an almost amusing way, the button on the form for contacting support. Trying to report a problem, and finding oneself stopped by yet another problem, is not an experience that is going to build much confidence in the service.





So far, so bad. I think the staff is slowly destroying what was once an excellent service offering intriguing possibilities, under what I take to be the theory that any attempt to combat spam is, by definition, good, whether it works or not, and whether or not the collateral damage it causes could have been reasonably avoided. I think we've all seen spammers continue to post urls where homepage links have been absent; this isn't going to slow them down one bit. But the honest site owner who wants to build up a web presence by doing exactly what he's supposed to be doing - by posting content that others want to see - stands to get really hurt by this nonsense, and I see little evidence that Disqus cares about that problem at all.

They fly into O'Hare instead of Midway at midweek, and we're supposed to believe that they're intelligent?

Addis clearly needs to be put away. The criminal code hands us two obvious charges:



The premature burning of the man - reckless endangerment. What if somebody had been in the base of the man when it was set on fire?



The rifle incident - assault (a man in the clerk's position could be put in reasonable fear of imminent bodily harm)



I'm sure that there are more, but given that he has threatened to put bullets in the backs of the heads of the students at that school, I would think that one has the basis for a psychiatric commitment: "poses a threat to himself or others". Of course, the local authorities can always wait until he actually shoots up a school, and then try to explain to the national media why they ignored the danger signs.



Yes, that would do wonderful things for San Francisco's reputation.

"Hopefully it won’t be neccesary. Its fairly ridiculous that Paul would be charged with felony arson for burning “property” that was intended to be burnt anyway, albeit a few days later."



When those who came to see that fire and had helped bankroll it through their ticket purchases would know to be there; igniting it early cheated them out of the enjoyment of their purchase. Another point that you seem to be missing is that the Man does not exist in isolation. There were booths at the pedestal and, I am told, damage to the exhibits there. Those exhibits has not been intended for the fire. By acting as he did, Addis deprived the exhibitors of the opportunity to move their items out of harm's way before the (very premature) burn.



Worst of all, though, with Addis' unsanctioned burning of that which did not belong to him, is the issue of what happens if somebody is inside the Man when some yahoo decides to reschedule the Burn in that way. One should know not to be inside the Man on the night of the burn, but for some time now, the base of the Man has been a structure intended for entry by visitors, who would have no reason to expect that it might become a flaming death trap so many days before the scheduled burn. Addis ran the risk of roasting one or more of his fellow burners alive, and then snickered about it on tape.



To call him a "selfish asshole" would be to praise him too highly. He's a sociopath and needs to be put where society will be kept safe from him, albeit not for as long as one might sensibly wish.

To read this, one would think that nobody had ever tried to start up an alternative Burning Man forum until recently.



I took a look at the site and saw what I expected - just a small handful of posts, no real energy. Chicken and egg - nobody's posting, so the place feels dead, so nobody feels like posting.

I don't know ... the waffle looks interesting, I can't deny that, BUT ... am I the only one who sees an unhappy irony in the fact that the most iconic image to come out of a supposedly noncommercial event is a $400,000 corporate sponsored timber burn that I'm now hearing was used in a TV commercial?



Doesn't this kind of thing tend to move those who aren't in a position to hook up to that kind of cash more back in the direction of becoming spectators? If the residents of a community gather around while a commercial is being shot, does the fact that they gathered transform the shooting into folk art, or does it just remain a spectacle that distracts the man on the street without really engaging him?

"wow. this is fucking HIGH-LARIOUS. high comedy from the inestimable mike tattoo. your impression, whether you know it as an impression or not, of a sanctimonious douchenozzle is top ‘o the pops. bravo."





Oh, yes, I've heard from our Mike Bolger before and he can be a very *ahem* interesting person. However, on this one he has you nailed dead to rights.





"but, you know, even if you make it, art is not yours. the only way to control your “art” is to keep it in your basement and never show it to anyone, ever. once you make it in any way public, it belongs to the world, to reinterpret, to malign, to praise, and to destroy. "





Really. To destroy? Try walking into a gallery when security is on duty and acting on that belief and see what happens. This is bizarre, maybe even beyond satire.

How much of that were we expected to keep a straight face through?



OK, let's cut straight to the point. Let's say that a large bonfire was being set up for an event. Let's say that somebody torched it in advance. This would be punished as vandalism, at the very least, even though the wood was going to be burned eventually, because in triggering an early fire, the person burning it would deny the owner of the wood the full use and enjoyment of his own property. If we were to accept Addis' argument, we would be left with the absurdity of having to legalize the act of sneaking into a restaurant kitchen and gulping food down on the sly, because what one ate would have been eaten and digested eventually, even were one to have not acted.



Yes, it would have been, but not by the intruder. The same concept applies here - a fire that is set off while one is away, and has no reason to expect that one shouldn't be away, is a fire that one doesn't get to enjoy, just as the meal our hypothetical restaurant thief gulped down is a meal that those who owned the food or those who would have purchased it wouldn't get to eat. Property, in being ephermal, does not cease to be property.



As for the comments about the war, this is the most transparent attempt to change the subject imaginable. While I'm no fan of BMORG, on this I'd have to go along with them - throw the book at this creep. He has acted lawlessly and with something so far from remorse as to render forgiveness a bad joke.