i found this short article on Media Art Net! today.

"Cory Arcangel
«Super Mario Clouds»
«Super Mario Clouds» is based on the «Super Mario» game for Nintendo’s NES game console. Cory Arcangel hacked the game and modified it so that all that remains of the game are the white clouds on a blue sky. Gone is the main character, Super Mario, who the player had to guide through a labyrinth in the original jump and run game, just like the obstacles, landscapes and opponents that lend the game its narrative structure. Those people who are familiar with the game can imagine them on the empty background, everyone else will just see the cartoon-like display of a sky. The work was created on the basis of a manipulation of the hardware and software. Cory Arcangel had to open the cartridge, on which the game was stored, and replace the Nintendo graphics chip with a chip on which he had burned a program he had written himself."

yep, thought it was pretty interesting and might interest a few people. i checked out his web log as well, he goes through a much more thorough explaination of his piece ->right here<-

it's been interesting to compare my PLANT! site and my garden at home. i definitely have spent more time on my garden at home and it's sad because my site is only a few blocks away but it still shows how lazy or how much of a procrastinator i am. anyways. it's been interesting for a few reasons.

my home garden has a form of security for the plants and my PLANT! site does not. i would visit the SECA site periodically, plants have been trampled upon and have died and the spot that i had cleared is slowing disappearing it's being overrun by weeds. it was interesting, because i still visited but didn't do anything to stop the destruction, it was almost like i wanted to see how far it would go on it's own, if my site would be swallowed up again by the nature of the place it was forcefully born into. i'm not saying that it couldn't have survived, but watching it change naturally like this has become just as interesting as watching it grow in the first place. it's become harder and harder to spot the plants that i put there and the part that nellie did is drastically different now for similar reasons. my garden at home has suffered something similar this past week.

i was visiting my sister in New York City and when i returned, i saw that our humongous pumpkin plants had been trampled upon as well. i'm not reacting to it in the same way as my PLANT! site though. i'm really distraught and don't understand how it could have happened. i have suspects:

1) Bill, our next door neighbor who shares the same concrete slab behind our houses, which is where the garden is located. it's not very likely though, considering his is like 93 years old. i don't think he could have driven over them either because of where and how they are situated. he would have taken out a lot more of the garden if his car was to blame.

2) Random kids?...i don't think so. it's in the back, they wouldn't venture there. plus they would have destroyed more than the pumpkins, we have four or five huge sunflowers growing there too, like 7 feet tall and i'm sure they would have enjoyed destroying those.

3) finally, the most likely. my landlords. they are really nice people though, so it's hard to think that they would do it. i know that we never really discussed having a garden with them before we went ahead and planted stuff. this is the second year we've had one, so i don't really think it's a problem. the only other think i can think of is that they were back there and saw these gigantic plants going everywhere and thought it was a weed instead of a precious pumpkin plant...

dude! these pumpkin seeds were from our neighbor, lou, who had a 70 lb-er later year! yeah...well, i'm sad but life goes on. i know one of the two is already dead, the bigger of the two is still fighting, but i don't think it's going to make it. pray for it.

-Brad

yep, weeds suck. but alas, i am apathetic and end up just tearing up the weeds in the areas i wish to transplant my sprouts. oh well.

so we now have 8 pumpkin plants and 3 maple sprouts. i'm not sure what kind of pumpkins they are but the seeds are from the 70 lb. pumpkin our neighbor had last year. the variety of maple i am unsure of as well as i just picked up a few "helicopter" seeds and planted those, and i'm also growing a few others that my housemate, aaron, and i found already growing in our garden at home. yep.

the sunflowers around the rock formation have for the most part been knocked down or trampled on, not really sure which. hopefully a one or two of them will survive. but the ones on the other side of the plot are doing well. soon the SECA site will also have cucumber bushes and peas growing because yesterday...aaron and i left the seeds we bought out in the rain so we pretty much have to plant all of them soon or else they will be no good. yep.

good-day,
-Brad

this has to be short because the library is closing in a few min. but!

i transplanted two pumpkins and another red sunflower to the site. i have 4 tree saplings and 8 more pumpkins still in trays at my house so eventually those we'll go in as well. as of right now, there are far too many weeds at the site so this weekend i plan on going back and taking care of business. yep.

cheese

well all of the rain we've gotten lately has really perked things up. when i got to our garden today, i found that it has been TAKEN OVER by mushrooms. i dug up a ton while i was planting pansies...

a guy walked through the garden and said "HEY! don't eat the mushrooms!" and then he just kept walking. so that was interesting. i don't TYPICALLY eat mysterious fungi though.

here are some of the pansies i planted today...they look blurry because it was so windy

my most exciting achievement today was integrating a mosaic sculptural element to the lilac/pansy bed. i used all of the tile and broken glass that i gathered and placed them strategically around the trees and plants. i also think that the mosaic will double as a nice weed guard.

this is my favorite part of the mosaic...a tree surrounded by glass pieces

and this is me watering my trees and plants

so to summarize...the garden is looking perky after all the rain, we have a lot of mushrooms and apparently should NOT eat them, i planted pansies, and mosaic-ed the bed. i think it looks pretty.

nellie

i have some more pictures of the site and all the progress we've made.

these are the lilac trees that brad and i planted


brad mentioned our abundance of worms...here is one of many i found while planting mums

and brad is correct, i am working on a sculptural piece for our garden with the broken tile and glass

well thats all for now!
nellie

i've been putting off this post for a long time and i'm not really sure why. but a lot has happened at the SECA site even though it may no look like it.

here's the deal: i've got red and yellow sunflowers growing in trays at my house and i'll probably be about another 8 or 9 days till they germinate. i just planted the pumpkin seeds in trays as well, and there's not telling when they'll start to show up.

this weekend at the francis house, my house, we started up our garden again. what's amazing to me is that there were many sprouts from last years garden coming up among the weeds and it was exciting to be able to point out the different vegetables we had growing when we didn't even realize it.

as far as we know (what we've saved before preparing the soil), we have one sunflower, a bunch of lettuce (probably 30 or so sprouts), one radish, and about 5 carrots. the carrots are probably the most impressive because there was just one little patch of tiny carrots sticking out of the ground, bright orange carrots! yep.

well, in addition to the garden. nellie and i transplanted some lilacs and mums around the perimeter of the site which yes, have needed quite a bit of water. i've been going to water everyday since thursday and we've gotten some rain too, so that's good. i wish there was a better way to collect rain water because i want to make an apparatus to come off the roof but i'm pretty sure the owner would not approve. it's worth a try though.

i've also been using the space like a studio. when i got sick of working the ground i got out the paper and ink i brought and taped it to the side of the building. i used some violets and dandilions to color it. i also made a rock pit where an old burrow was. whenever i would find an earthworm while tilling the soil, i would take it over and place it on the gigantic rock in the center of the pit, it would eventually make it's way down into the surrounding ground. so pretty soon that place will be an earthworm city instead of a rock pit...

i've also been interested in all the footprints i've made across the dirt. just seeing how many times i'd walked back and forth and around in circles doing various things was an interesting site because i had a record of it on the ground.

nellie has collected a bunch of pieces of tile and glass from the building the used to stand next to the site and plans on making something scupltural out of it i believe. there are pieces of broken bottles everywhere, including in the soil. sure enough, i managed to cut myself on one while weeding, oh well. i also have a nice pile of glass that's constantly growing. i'm not quite sure what i'm going to do with it yet, we'll see.

anyways, this is really long and there's a lot more to talk about so it'll just have to wait until next time.

goodbye,
Brad

brad explained the goings-on of the SECA site

i really liked seeing some drawings there

- Splinters

my roommate lance and i talked to our neighbor, lou, about gardening here in michigan. he's best described as an old hippie who is...well, awesome? yeah, he's pretty cool. dreads and a scarf, real soft spoken. his wife is exactly how you'd expect. long flowing earthy skirts and beads.

anyways, he described his crazy pumpkins he had, and was nice enough to give us some seeds from his 70 lb pumpkin that grew last year. crazy. anyways. we're gonna start growing the seeds in plastic cups in our house for the time being. lou told us what he used for fertilizer and the best time to plant so nellie and i are gonna hold off for now.

we have a site!

its a lovely little area on a private lot. after several conversations with owners, we gained permission to use it. they seem enthusiastic about our plan.

while exploring the site i found piles of broken pieces of tile that are left from a building that collapsed on the site last year. i would like to make a mosaic bench or stepping stones for our garden

nellie

two potential spots, both on jefferson. one is at the jefferson and fair location which i mentioned earlier, the other is a few blocks south next to Bur Mar Manufacturing Inc. I wrote down their address and if we want to us that spot i decided i'd call them tomorrow. all in all, walking around my neighborhood i had some friendly encounters and some not so friendly. everyone was out on their porches, blaring hip hop and having a good time on a sunday afternoon. so it was easy to stick out. but overall i felt comfortable, especially seeing all the kids out playing. except this one brother and sister got in a fight as i was walking by over a bike and he punched her in the face and ran into the house...

nellie and i have yet to find out plot. i've been looking over other people's posts and it's really encouraging and makes me want to get started even more. hmmm, i don't think either of us have a digital camera but we'll work it out somehow i suppose. maybe we'll just do it the old fashioned way and take em analogue and then scan them in...

i'm about to go check out a spot on jefferson and fair. i'm pumped. ok go!