Post nuclear apocalypse, the Cactoelho (Cacto = cactus, coelho = rabbit in Portuguese) is born from the fusion of a dessert jackrabbit and a cactus (the inspiration is the real cactus sitting on my desk). Cute, but spiny, he wanders the world looking for affection in the form of hugs. But that is alas, rather difficult.

Cactoelho is a new cartoon character work in progress.

My Halloween costume: a furry panda hat I bought from a street vendor in SoHo, and my plush velvet suit I bought in Reykjavík way back in 2000.

Ni Hao You Doin’? – A new Hepnova shirt on Zazzle in collaboration with Joey G.

We were hanging out in Little Italy/Chinatown tonight and Joe came up with this brilliant bilingual pun that celebrates the confluence of cultures in a pizza/scallion pancake slice of Lower Manhattan with classic New York wit and attitude.  Here’s to pasta and to potstickers and to Sino-Italian-American friendship! Ni hao you doin’?

Buy the Ni Hao You Doin’ shirt on Zazzle

Ni Hao You Doin’? by Hepnova in collaboration with Joey G

I am taking a pledge suggested by the film and now refraining from visiting aquariums and aquatic mammal shows.  I will also be sure to buy dolphin-safe seafood.  Here are some main points of the film:

• Over 23,000 dolphins are slaughtered in Taiji every year
• When the dolphins are caught, some are sold to aquariums and wildlife shows, while the rest are killed for meat
• Dolphin meat, as well as the meat of other whales, contains dangerous levels of mercury, but the mayor of Taiji has tried to give away the contaminated meat for school lunches
• Sometimes dolphin meat is deliberately mislabeled and sold as “cleaner” whale meat
• Mercury poisoning from eating contaminated seafood could result in symptoms similar to those of Minamata Disease

Towards the end of The Cove, former Flipper-trainer-turned-activist Ric O’Barry walks into an International Whaling Commission conference with a video monitor strapped to his chest playing graphic footage of the Taiji dolphin slaughter, exposing the international delegates to the horrors of whaling.  In another scene, O’Barry stands with the video monitor playing the same slaughter footage in the middle of Shibuya crossing, taking the message directly to the Japanese people.   But how can the filmmakers increase their impact among the Japanese public?

O’Barry’s SafeJapanDolphins.org is accepting donations to help with targeted media campaigns and screenings of the film in Japan, but I don’t think the movie is available in Japan yet.   I would suggest that the filmmakers release footage of the dolphin slaughter (or ideally, the entire film) under a Creative Commons or similar open license, that would allow the film to be freely shared on the internet, allowing people to see it even if it is not playing in their local cinema.  Certainly this would be a way to get around powerful government and business interests in Japan who do not want the film to be seen by the Japanese people.  Imagine of video of the slaugter “went viral” on the internet.  Imagine concerned Japanese people being able to view the footage on their cellphones and sharing the video with their family and friends.  That is when real change will begin.

I realize that documentary filmmaking is not cheap.  Indeed, I do believe that the heroic people who made the film possible should be financially supported for their work.  But we cannot let the complications of copyright stand in the way of promoting an important story and saving the dolphins.  Perhaps the film can be freely released online under a Creative Commons license after the theatrical run is completed, or when a donation threshold is reached.

Some have criticized The Cove’s filmmakers and the dolphin freedom activists for being racist or neo-colonialist against the Japanese.  Indeed, Japan is not the only country that hunts whales.  “White” countries like Iceland and Norway hunt whales too.  I think all countries should be held responsible.  I lived in Japan for three years, I love the country, but I disagree with the dolphin hunt, that hardly makes me a racist (in any case, I’m Asian too).  It is unfortunate though that the film did not give more of a voice to Japanese people opposed to the dolphin hunts.  They do interview a few Japanese people opposed to the slaughter, but these Japanese people are not the main protagonists in the film.

It is interesting to note that while whale hunting has been part of Japanese culture for hundreds of years, it was the Americans who occupied Japan after WWII who encouraged the resumption of whale hunting as a cheap source of protein to feed the war-torn country.  But today, Japan is a rich country and they don’t need to eat whale meat for protein any more.  In fact, most Japanese people do not eat whale meat, and do not consider dolphin to be food.  When filmmakers showed people on the streets of Tokyo and Osaka footage of the dolphin slaughter, they were surprised and horrified.  Hopefully, the film will be available in Japan soon to raise greater awareness.

Go see the movie and take action!

Links

• The Cove Official Site
• SaveJapanDolphins.org – Take Action
• TakePart.com/TheCove
• CNN – Dolphin slaughter brings charges from both sides
• YouTube – Dolphin Swim Programs & SLAUGHTER Linked!!!!
• YouTube – Dolphin Slaughter in Japan
• Petition – Help Save Japan’s Dolphins
• NY Magazine – The Cove’s Richard O’Barry on Secret Dolphin Slaughter — and Flipper’s Suicide
• NY Times – The Cove: From Flipper’s Trainer to Dolphin Defender
• CS Monitor – Review: ‘The Cove’
• Roger Ebert’s review of ‘The Cove’
• 日本でのイルカ保護にご協力ください
• Whale Love (日本語)

T-shirts available too!

Monkeys in the Mission, San Francisco

Monkeys near San Francisco Chinatown

Popular Monkey helmet, Taiwan

Monkeys in Shikoku, Japan

Kris and Monkeys, New York

ITP Spring Show 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2-6pm & Monday, May 11, 5-9 pm
A festival of interactive sight, sound and technology from the student artists and innovators at ITP
This event is free and open to the public. No need to RSVP
ITP @ 721 Broadway, 4th Floor

Here are a couple screenshots taken from my upcoming piece, ODI et AMO, a music video/karaoke performance piece I am working on as the final project for my Visual Music and Animals class.  JC Cassis will be doing some vocals for the piece, and she’ll be coming over later today to rehearse and record her parts.

I will be presenting the piece for my Animals class next Tuesday, and then to the general public at Issue Project Room on April 28, at 8 pm.

Also check out the ODI and AMO T-shirt I designed, and my original project proposal.

Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

English translation:

I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask.
I do not know, but I sense that it is happening and I am tortured.

Used in a different context, this could easily be the lyrics for an Emo track or a Britney Spears track penned by a Swede.

I will be creating an Avant-Pop deconstructed karaoke audio and video track based on the poem.  The video will feature AMO and ODI, two mascot characters I have created based on my exploration with Kaomoji (Japanese emoticons/ASCII art)  and The Cute (Kawaisa).  Together with vocalist JC Cassis, I will perform with the track at the Visual Music class show at ISSUE Project Room on April 28.

AMO

ODI

The Animal Subject

You will take your “Animal Object” character, and flip the script by investigating the subjective point of view of the animal you chose.

What is it like being inside this animal? What is its view point? How does it see– or experience –its environment? What – or how – is he/she reacting to the events surrounding him/her? How do those events appear, in terms of scale, form, size, sharpness, color, time?

Drawing on the writings of Üexkull (the idea of umwelt), and the readings on research into animal minds, and / or projected first-person narration (Haskell’s short story, Coe’s “Pitt’s Letter”), you may chose to be anthropomorphic, or you may NOT be, as you see fit.

The purpose of this assignment, coupled with the last one, is to explore how character is made from different points of view, and how your crafting of that character expresses your point of view.

Ruby’s Song from lee-sean on Vimeo.

Music and editing by Lee-Sean Huang.  Paintings by Ruby the Elephant.  Elephant sounds by Kris Hartley.

During our in-class crit, some people thought that the piece was two opaque, that I needed to move the titles to the front of the video, or in someway make it more explicit that the piece is about an elephant.  I’m still not sure how I feel about that.  I would definitely consider moving the “Ruby’s Song” titles to the beginning of the video, but I would also have to restructure the audio portion so everything still synchs up correctly.  My goal was to really get into Ruby’s head and create something based on established elephantine means of expression.  Even if wild elephants don’t paint and make music, they are ways in which elephants in captivity can “express themselves,” whatever that means, I still don’t know, so I’ll leave it up to interpretation.

See also:

Ruby’s Song on Blip.tv

Ruby’s Song on Vimeo

An Audio Portrait of the Life and Death of Ruby

Sketches of Ruby

Ruby Research Links

The original post below:

For my audio portrait of Ruby the Elephant, I sought to “paint” a portrait through sound in the same way Ruby painted her paintings with a brush and paint–using bold brushstrokes and vivid colors; abstract, yet struggling to communicate something deeper that cannot be easily expressed.  I cut up the narrative structure of Ruby’s backstory, interspersed it the Ruby Baby track, along with my interpretation of what it would have sounded like when Ruby played the xylophone.  Thus, cutting, pasting, and rearranging are my parallel techniques to Ruby’s paint splatters.  I wanted to honor Ruby by making my portrait of her to sound like how her paintings look.

The picture above is an image of a Ruby painting.

Ruby Baby by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, performed by Björk Guðmundsdóttir & Tríó Guðmundar Ingólfssonar.

See also: Sketches of Ruby and Ruby Research Links.

4. Animal Object
Due date: Mar 3
Format: pdf or other form (paper, film, web site) AND character model sheet (pdf)

This assignment is a combination of research, character development and implmentation of a documentary form.
You are going to make a piece about an animal as an object, depicted in the 3rd person.
The assignment is a combination of research and storytelling, with the goal of making a portrait.

You will:
a. Research a real animal
b. Do character studies (a character model sheet) and write backstory
c. create a storyboard or a short piece about the character

Ruby the Elephant (1973-1998)

Ruby was an Asian elephant who lived at the Phoenix Zoo.  When her trainers observed her making marks in the dirt with sticks (“drawing,” if you will), they decided to give her paint and brushes and teach her how to paint.  And paint she did.  Her canvas were shown around the world.  She was called “the biggest figure in Southwest art” by an Arizona art critic.  Ruby was probably the biggest name to come out of my hometown–Phoenix, a place with little culture and virtually no history–since Stevie Nicks.  The money from Ruby’s artwork helped to pay for elephant conservation and breeding work.  Her trainers also used Ruby’s painting as a way of doing research to find out whether or not elephants can see in color.

I remember Ruby from my visits to the Phoenix Zoo as a kid.  I also remember that my parents had a print of a Ruby painting on the wall in their office.  I loved going to the zoo because it was an exotic world apart from the homogeneous suburban sameness of Phoenix.  The zoo is located in a sparsely-populated part of town with weird rocky outcroppings that looked otherworldly.  Although in retropect, that “otherworldliness” was actually the more-or-less natural environment of the Arizona desert.  What was “unnatural” was intensively-irrigated green lawns carpeting the suburban landscape, more appropriate for Florida than a desert.

Not much is known about Ruby’s origins.  She was born in a logging camp in Thailand in 1973.  Her mother was probably a trained elephant that worked for people, her father was probably a wild elephant who lived in the jungle.  She was delivered in a crate to the Phoenix Zoo in 1974.  The only documentation of her origins was a paper receipt for her delivery.

It wasn’t that easy finding information about Ruby.  She lived and died before the Age of the Internets was in full swing.  I found a few pictures and scans of Ruby’s canvases.  I did get a hold of a children’s book about Ruby by Dick George, which had the most comprehensive story of her life.  I also found a few old news articles and some other stuff about other painting elephants.  Even my own memory is sketchy after all this time.  Yet somehow this process of research has triggered something in me, some sort of (latent) emotional affinity towards her?  Or just an invented nostalgia for my childhood in a hometown that becomes more and more unrecognizable due to rampant sprawl and development every time I go back to visit.

Ruby never seemed to fit in her surroundings.  (I didn’t really fit in in Arizona either, so maybe that’s why I feel a connection with her) She grew up in the company of humans.  She had a few elephant friends that came and went, but she never had the chance to fully bond with any of them.  Maybe painting was a way for her to express herself.  Maybe it made her more human?  Or less elephant?  What was Ruby trying to express?  Was she just documenting her surroundings?  Or was she trying to express a deep sadness that came from captivity and loneliness.  Was Ruby another tortured artist who died too young?  Despite the bold brushstrokes and vibrant colors of Ruby’s paintings, I can’t help but to see the melancholy in Ruby’s paintings.  The desire to communicate, yet a certain futility.  An inability to fully communicate and to be understood.

Some called Ruby “an ambassador for her species.”  But elephants don’t paint in the wild.  I doubt they aspire to be stars in the art world.  If anything, painting made Ruby more un-elephant-like.

In 1997, Ruby was sent to Tulsa to mate with a male elephant named Sneezy.  She came back to Phoenix with a big bun in the oven.  But there were complications towards the end of her pregnancy.  The zoo vets discovered that her fetal calf had died inside her womb.  They tried to remove the fetus via C-section, but they had to cut through 4-5 feet of skin and tissue to reach her uterus, which was the size of a small Volkswagen.  They discovered that the fetal calf weighed 320 pounds, twice the size of a normal elephant calf.  Ruby’s uterus had ripped open, and an infection had spread throughout her abdominal cavity.  The vets had no choice but to euthanize her immediately.  But is that what really killed her?  Or was it the captivity, the celebrity and the breeding that led to her early death?

At the time of her death, Ruby weighed 9,000 pounds.  One newspaper described the outpouring of grief in Arizona as “if Princess Diana had died again.”  (The Princess of Wales had passed away the year before) Ruby was buried on the grounds of the Phoenix Zoo.  Over 43,000 attended a free-admission day at the Zoo in Ruby’s memory.

Here are some sketches I drew of Ruby:

Download high resolution PDF of sketches.

See also: Ruby the Elephant Research Links

This assignment is a combination of research, character development and implmentation of a documentary form.
You are going to make a piece about an animal as an object, depicted in the 3rd person.
The assignment is a combination of research and storytelling, with the goal of making a portrait.

You will:
a. Research a real animal
b. Do character studies (a character model sheet) and write backstory
c. create a storyboard or a short piece about the character

I decided to choose Ruby the Elephant, who used to live at the Phoenix Zoo and became famous because she painted canvas that sometimes sold for thousands of dollars.  I have many fond memories of her from my childhood in Arizona.  I remember my parents had a print of one of Ruby’s paintings in their office.

Here is a list of links about Ruby.  I’ll make sense of everything and decide what I will do for the project later

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(elephant)

http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53264/

http://www.kidzworld.com/article/2096-elephants-painting-pictures

http://dommy.com/alan/nojava/ruby/remember.html

http://www.socialfiction.org/?tag=elephants

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/STYLE/arts/03/22/life.art.reut/

http://www.mahalo.com/Painting_Elephant

http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/elephant-drawing-elephant-with-flower/

http://www.cnn.com/US/9811/06/dead.elephant/

http://duenos.net/article/476/ElephantStoriesandPsychologyPart3

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1998-12-10/news/trunk-murder/

http://www.themanorvillemural.com/flushingclasses/ruby/ruby1.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/5203120.stm

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1991-06-26/news/brush-with-greatness-dick-george-s-job-is-to-publicize-ruby-the/

http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Painting-Pachyderm-Phoenix-Zoo/dp/0385321007

http://www.billjayonphotography.com/DickGeorge.html

A painting by Ruby, from Wikipedia

• Larger scale or “more real estate” as Marina put it.  We should think outside the limits of our original Photoshop file that was projected on a screen and think more in terms of a large-format high resolution printed work.  This would allow for more space to show the context and habitat that each of the animals inhabit.  It would also  allow us to depict more than one version of each of the animals, doing different things at different points in time, like a medieval painting or tapestry that shows the same characters at different points in time in the same frame.  In a way, we already did this with Jill’s character, the Swallow, which is only one character, but shows up many times in the scroll graphic.  With more room, we could do this with the other characters.
• Better integration of the narrative story with the graphic work.  More space and larger scale would definitely make this easier to pull off.  Or perhaps several different panels.  Instead of producing a taxonomy diagram like other groups, we decided to express the relationship of the four characters in the narrative, but we could perhaps integrate more elements of the story into the actual graphic.
• We wrote the story AFTER we made the Photoshop piece.  Perhaps we should have done things the other way around…

Here is the story we came up with for our characters:

My character’s name is Monktopus Octokey, so I just changed that in the story:

Somewhere after the beginning of things and well before the end of things, Polar Dragon Bear, Monktopus Octokey, Monkey Spider and Swallow arrived. No one remembers how, but that is unimportant. It’s a quiet place, and everyone minds their business… more or less.

From the start Polar Dragon Bear liked to travel, bringing home odd things he found discarded. That’s where he got his wings when he was young. Many of the things he brings are left behind and apparently they have a market because when he returns most of them are gone. His most precious treasures are kept in his cave.  He hasn’t found a princess, to keep captive in the cave yet. The fire-breathing he learned traveling with a circus of Geek Geese. Every time he lands all the leaves on the tree fall off making the fruit get all the sunlight they can get and the stomping makes the ground shake, giving the tree more air.

Even back then, Monktopus Octokey loved cooking. He’s usually busy down in the ocean making sushi for himself and his 8 arms.

Swallow was born in a lab but now she can’t find her way back.  She is of the air and spends most of her time in the tree.  She is very curious about the other animals and she likes to watch them from the safety of her tree.  She considers them to be friends and sometimes she will drop fruits on them as a gesture of goodwill.  But she knows that they would probably eat her too if she got too close.  Such is life.  Sometimes when they are away or sleeping she wanders through their homes and borrows small trinkets to hang in her tree.  Polar Dragon Bear has the best trinkets.  Spider monkey has strong string for hanging them.  She uses Monktopus Octokey’s knives to cut little pieces of string from spider monkey’s web when she needs them.  It doesn’t seem like any of them have noticed yet.

Monkey Spider is the most elusive of the four. He is fond of playing tricks and is very difficult to catch hold of (unless he wants to see you). Often, one can only see a trace of web to mark where he has been. When he delights in surprising whoever he shows himself to. No one really know why he has such a flip nature, but his tricks are rarely malicious. He has an odd sense of justice. If he thinks a fight is unfair he will always try to help out the underdog. But if the balance changes, he may end up switching sides.

Polar Dragon Bear’s one failing is that he finds it difficult to interact with the other animals in his kingdom. He sometimes catches a word or a plus with Bird in the tree. The branches are too thin and won’t hold his weight when he tries to hang out. He’s still trying to find a way to stay afloat without getting too tired too soon. Monktopus Octokey sometimes pops his head out of the water to chat, most often with Polar Dragon Bear, who can swim as well. Monkey Spider avoids water but he’ll stand at the water’s edge sometimes or climb the tree. He’s very whimsical in whom he talks to and why. Sometimes he’ll just sit in spider form and watch life go by.

Monktopus Octokey gives his sushi to whoever will eat it. The chopped heads cry out that it is quite good. Monkey Spider will eat, Bird will eat, but Polar Dragon Bear can never believe in what a talking chopped head has to say, until he actually tried the sushi that Monktopus Octokey prepared. it was delicious.

The climate is mild but Polar Dragon Bear is always comfortable. If it’s too cold he breathes fire. If it’s too hot his wings make wind. When he needs to, he hibernates. Monkey Spider sometimes makes clothes for himself and wears them, but it’s never because he is too hot or cold. He just likes the look of a dashing fedora, suspenders and pin-striped trousers

And here is a graphical representation of our ecosystem:

Click on image to view enlarged version

Monktopus Octokey lives in a cave in a post-apocalytic underwater world called the Corral Jungle somewhere in the Pacific.

Monktopus Octokey is sui generis, created from the primordial ooze left over from the Last World.

Monktopus Octokey reproduces assexually but still likes boobs.

Monktopus Octokey is like the naughty, politically incorrect version of a Sanrio character.  Those big inscrutable eyes, that shallow empty expression, blank yet expressive, like a Noh mask.

Monktopus Octokey is complicated on Facebook.

Monktopus Octokey is a sushi chef.

Monktopus Octokey is a shape-shifting polymorph.

Monktopus Octokey has a messy bedroom.

Monktopus Octokey lives alone.

Monktopus Octokey smokes, drinks and parties like it’s 3999.

Monktopus Octokey loves to Lock and LOL!

Click on images below to enlarge:

UPDATE!  Here is a sketch of the Monktopus Oktokey in color:

Our first assignment in Animals, People, and Those in Between with Marina Zurkow was to do a portrait of ourselves with our spirit animal.  I couldn’t choose between a monkey or an octopus, so I decided to hybridize the two and came up with the monktopus octokey. First, I sketched it out on the chalkboard wall in my kitchen, then I took a photo of myself in front of it.  Then I “painted” over the photo in Photoshop to produce the final portrait.

I like monkeys because of their agility and seemingly erratic behaviors, and because it is my Chinese/Japanese zodiac sign.  As for the octopus, I guess I kind of have a mild tentacle obsession, but not necessarily in the über-hentai way.  I created tentacled creatures for my presentation in Red Burns’ Applications class last semester.  Also, I like octopus because it tastes good.

[PDF]

Check out this very cool bilingual site from Greenpeace Japan.  このサイトは可愛くて面白い。ぜひ訪ねてね！