Paul Ramirez Jonas, midterms...

Paul Ramirez Jonas' top of the world.


Paul Ramirez Jonas gave an artist presentation last week at RISD. He's quite the lecturer, interweaving jokes, movies, audio, work sources and artwork into a whirlwind of a talk. His artistic output ranges immensely, going from huge, city-wide public art projects, to smaller works, from performances, to solid sculptures.

I had seen his commission for Cambridge, Mass. Before which was a public art project consisting of building a small park (barely large enough for a bench) which was placed on the Y of a busy intersection. Once built, the park got a fence which was lockable, and he distributed keys to the members of the community. Other notable projects included going to the highest point in 50 states (documented in photographs), and a prototype satellite which has been covered in flags of all the nations without space programs of their own.

A one on one crit the next day was worthwhile, but extremely short. He picked up on small things in the work and was able to critique the work in the truest sense of the term, giving positive and negative feedbacks for all shown works. I showed him a sound piece which he encouraged me to show for mid-terms (the following day) so upon his departure I had to procure the materials for the presentation of a sound work (headphones, shelf, hooks, 80s style boombox, etc.).



My mid term crit was productive, but had the feeling that what was being talked about the most was what was not there (we've all had crits like this before), not because the work was not up to par or poorly crafted, but because of the infinite options involved in the sampling of music and the presentation of the sound. In retrospect, the loud, monotonous musical conglomerate I had constructed would not likely be listened to in its entirety by almost any gallery viewer, seeing the sound was to be emitted through headphones. Needless to say I spent much of this weekend attempting to clean the track up and trying different variations and options for my concept to exist. Just a week ago I had never worked with sound and I spent this weekend tweaking noise art, go figure...