The Fine Art and Design Blog of Darren Daz Cox

Here’s an idea that requires a small group of friends and two PCs with microphones and speakers. Expect this project to last several hours.

Set the PCs up in opposite areas near where you will be sitting, set the first PC to record all the conversations in the room and play a podcast on the other PC. Then talk amongst yourselves as you listen to the podcast. After 30 minutes (keep track of the time) turn off the podcast on PC#2 and start recording the room as you simultaniously stop recording on PC#1 and play back the audio you just recorded.

Now talk amongst yourselves while you listen to your friends and yourself talking over the podcast, after 30 minutes stop recording on PC#2 and playback what you just recorded as you press record on PC#1. Repeat the process every half hour, talking over the previous 30 minutes conversation.

The more layers of conversations you are hearing simultaniously the weirder things will get, well, it was pretty trippy when my friends and I first  tried this back in 1989.

We didn’t have PCs but we had two cassette decks and here’s the unedited recording of the final tape. Warning, this MP3 is for entertainment purposes only and in no way represents the people on the recording as they are today, fine upstanding citizens! Any references to things illegal and immoral are for historical reference and reflection and are not suggestions!

The Purple Mind Fungus Experiment recorded in 1989.

The people you are hearing include Freddy (the guy who says "but you were there!" all the time), Myself (the guy who says ‘man’ too many times), Jane (who left half an hour before this recording was made), Diamond Dave and then later, Lynn and Vik come in and we explain to them what we’re doing.  It starts off a little slow but then gets pretty funny!

~* all art and audio by Darren Daz Cox - mutant artist*~

Richard Florida was on Coast To Coast Am with George Noori last night and it was a great show as usual. He wrote a book defining the ‘creative class’, those people who change the paradigms in whatever field they end up in. He had another phrase to define a subset of people, those who are “open to experience” as opposed to introverts, extroverts etc. These people, as defined by Richard Florida, are the ones who build things in their garages and dress as they please rather than dressing to fit it. As cool as that sounds they are also the people who tend to not get hired and to be considered strange. I am the poster child of the "open to experience" class of people haha!

Coincidentally (or rather synchronously) the day before I heard the show with Richard Florida my "open to experience" bio on my About me page was chosen by a random surfer as "The best About me page on the internet".  I know, I know, it’s not a ‘real’ award but it was given out of the kindness of my new friend’s heart and proves what Richard Florida was saying, the creative class, especially those who fall into the "open to experience" catagory are the ones who can’t help but create something cool when they are given the time and space to express themselves.

Go B Zine, it’s my new take on the old fashioned idea of a xeroxed DIY (do it yourself) zine sent via old fashioned snail mail.  The idea I had was that people will read the zine when they are in the right place, stuck in traffic, on the toilet, in a waiting room, on the beach, somewhere where they aren’t bombarded by instant messages and email, and hey, I know I can’t compete with Dr. Horrible on the net but I can reach you in your home mail box. Since I’m not selling anything and the content is original, most people won’t deny themselves the joy of getting something for free, you have to be a real grouch to not want your stack of bills and credit card offers polluted with a home made art zine!

There is a quantum physics part to the zine experiment too. My intent is to send a wave of creative energy and inspiration into the world and because the readers are the ‘observer’ that energy will ‘collapse the wave’ - change from potential to actual.

While some of you know a few of the recipients, none of you know all of them, so the potential for seemingly random serendipity/synchronicity exists. The moment two of you zine readers ‘accidentally’ bump into each other will be the moment I consider this a total success! We are all connected, quantum physics proves this and therefore, as unlikely as it sounds, GO B Zine readers will been drawn together because of my intent. Muhahaha then I’ll take over the world! nah, I’ll have another project by then but one day you’ll remember I said it here first!

~** all art and plans of world domination by Darren Daz Cox <- creative strategist and mutant **~

 oh and join me on Chris Brogan’s new Social Networking and Marketing Event discussion site Project Dogfood (when you do what you tell others to do you are allegorically eating your own dogfood to see if it is good!)

This started as an abstract oil painting of a forest, I photographed the canvas and then mirrored the image in Photoshop until it became fractilized.

Suddenly I started seeing animals, woodland animals and swamp animals which lead to me realize that my subconscious did exactly what I asked it to do the other day when i was walking on the street looking at the reflections in the puddles.

I asked my mind to find a way to capture that magic of seeing the world reflected in the puddle, and these colors are exactly what i saw in that puddle, the trees the sky the shadows, wow! Tripping myself out is part of the magic of fine art.

A few hours ago this canvas was just another canvas i wasn’t sure what to do with, it felt that a good start of something but not done, now, after taking the chance to photograph it and bring it into Photoshop it manifested into a completed thought.

"Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things." Edgar Degas

I can see a bear, a deer, an alligator, a spider, plants etc and to me, this is proof that you should trust your subconscious to work for you, consider it a computer where you have to program it. I’m sure that this idea of asking your subconscious to do something is easier to see with somethings than with others but i swear this is a real phenomenon.

We are far greater, far more brilliant than we allow ourselves to believe, and we can tap into that brilliance if we can find techniques to bypass our inhibiting factors.  Meditation helps us tap into the spiritual side of things and it seems that if you trust your mind to create art and ask it to guide your hand then the art you asked for appears!

Below, the current stage in the Green Egg painting!

This post has nothing to do with sex, I’m just enjoying the band CSS today  and interpolated their song title ‘music is my hot hot sex’  to fit my life! CSS stands for Cansei De Ser Sexy which translated means "tired of being sexy" which is is what someone who got famous for being sexy once said .

Regardless of the honesty of that statement, at the end of the day you choose which path you take to get to where you want to be so if you don’t want to be a sex symbol then don’t shake your ass on the stage, at the very least, and this is probably Beyonce’s problem, know what you want first then find a way to do it where the ends don’t have to justify the means.

My goal is to be a great artist, but not to base that judgement on what you say, base it on how impressed I am with how a project turns out. How will I know I’m a great artist? When I’m an old old man, too old to be swayed by material rewards and  too old to give a crap what anyone else thinks. Too old to be anything but honest with what I became after choosing to be an artist at that pivital moment when I could have started any career in college in 1988.

I’m constantly fighting the part of my mind that says ‘just do art you know that people like then sell it so you can do the art you really want to do’, that thought is why I came back to my art zine idea after a long long time. The last time I made art zines was in 1996, right before I became joined at the hip to the internet and during one of the most wretched periods of my life, those zines gave me hope, made me proud.

The first group of people should have received their copy of my 2008 Go B Zine art zine by now and will receive the next one in a few weeks

Since this blog is so low traffic I can send you a copy too ,  send me an email with your snail mail address and I’ll pop one in the mail.  goBzine at gmail.com

I’ve been writing a line or two about my projects on Plurk and Twitter as I follow each path and have received some well meaning hints and advice on how to ‘grow’ the zine, thank you for that! The amount of readers isn’t as important as doing the project, as doing the project makes ME grow. The twenty odd people who are on my zine mailing list so far are incentive for me to push myself to stretch my creativity.

Thanks and hugs  to Pamster in Mississippi who was the first person to say that she received her copy of Go B Zine, she reminded me that I used to say "It’s my fantasy, don’t spoil it" when we were in college because a lot of the zine involves my daydreams.

I don’t expect everyone to jump and down with glee at my zines, art is subjective, but the fact that my stuff is flying off into the world inspires and motivates me. Being an artist is my fantasy but it’s not a game. I talk about being ‘famous’  but that’s just a mental technique to motivate me to stay on this path.

I Artist
 i sometimes wonder
if it is so
that I am an artist 
simply because i say so
was I born with talent
to write or to paint?
a prodigy perhaps?
there’s no doubt that I aint
not a leader or lackey
no big money schemes
but an artist 
resulting from having big dreams
they say visualise
what you want to be
regardless of what people say
and all will come true
quite possibly
maybe
some happy day!!

I started making zines in the late 1970’s, they were sci-fi war and superhero comics drawn with cheap ink pens (biros). It was at that moment in my life, right before puberty, that I really wanted to be a great artist. Money and fame don’t mean anything when they would just distract you from the mission. Being proud of what you’ve made was the goal, getting high from your own potential, tripping yourself out with your own coolness. You don’t have to be an artist to do that but I can see myself maintaining that goal my whole life.

If the internet suddenly petered out I will still be able to get my art out to you via my zines, if my computers break and i can’t afford to fix them, or if i become homeless I will still be able to send my art out!!!

I want to be, the best me I can be

with a pen and paper in front of me.

If all I own is a paper and pen

I’ll still be, your cool art friend

Intent is important, we know this from quantum physics, so knowing what your intent is can be an important thing. Why do you do what you do? What’s the long term plan for what you’re doing?

Above early early 1980’s I think it was ‘81 actually, below, 2008 art by Daz

"Shared my secret with a few of my friends, should have kept quiet ‘cos they’re laughing again" - Belly Jean by McRackins

Damn, I have to re-write this post from scratch because for the first time, ever, Wordpress didn’t save what I was writing and logged me off. It makes sense why that happened because what I’m going to share with you is a crack in the egg of reality, and the world will try to prevent me from sharing it with you. But sometimes life is one guy vs. the rest of the universe.

One of my favorite songs of all time is Belly Jean by McRackins. Official McRackins website here.

Wikipedia says about the McRackins

The McRackins are a Canadian pop punk band that was formed in 1994. Their song and album titles revolve around egg puns (i.e. "Bat Out of Shell") They have had approximately 70 releases from over 30 different record labels.

The McRackins nearly always play live in full costume and made up to look like two eggs and a dog. The band claims that they were transformed from men to two eggs and a dog and given super pop-punk powers as the result of a freak nuclear accident. Since then, twin eggs Bil (guitar, vocals), Fil (bass) and dog Spot (drums).

I noticed that this song didn’t make the McRackins top 100 list on last.fm, well, there are alot of great Mcrackins songs. But it looks like, other than me, no one has listened to the song at all! I know it’s a rarity but it’s not that rare! It’s on Amazon.com!!!

I did a Google search for "Belly jean" mcrackins and found two measly hits, one was the Amazon site for the CD that has Belly Jean by McRackins, Music To Listen To Music By (there’s a sample of the song on Amazon yea). the other hit was this site haha!

You might think, oh well maybe it’s a spelling mistake problem, but the search for "Belly Jeans" Mcrackins only gets three hits, all for listings for the CD and the song is Belly Jean not Belly Jeans.

last year I wrote Bil McRackin, the guy/egg who wrote the song, and even he didn’t consider it a ‘hit single’, he remembered writing it and quoted the lyrics, and while he had a sense of pride about it he considered it a rariety that didn’t make the cut for one of their regular albums but it might be included in a rarities CD one day.

"My Belly Jean she means the world to me, my Belly Jean if you could only see, could i be that lucky guy, you can’t say I never tried"

I loved this song the moment I heard it, it has all the elements of a perfect pop-punk song including the 5 second guitar solo and catchy chorus, even lalala’s hehe! and now it seems a miricle I ever found the MP3 in the first place, I downloaded the MP3 from Napster back before it was illegal to do so. Weirdly, some years later, I knew a girl called Jean who this song totally makes me think of, in some ways it’s the best memory I have of her, or rather it makes me remember her in the best possible way.

Do you ever get that feeling that the world makes things just for you? "a ten pin bowling ball, she threw a strike like it was nothing at all.."

Words can’t really describe how grateful I am for this song, even if I am literally the only person who has cared enough to write about it on the internet, I might not have seen a ufo or had any paranormal encounters but do I have a glimpse into the magical way this world works when you take the learned suggestions of Dannion Brinkley to heart, inspire, be inspired and appreciate (and you’ll understand the meaning of life a little more).

Anyway, my new zine Go B Zine, is a labor of love and while it’s slightly behind schedule and has an initial print run of less than a dozen, that doesn’t mean that it might not be the coolest art ‘zine ever! My goal is to do art that gets to the right person at the right time, like I discovered Belly Jean by McRackins I want someone to pick up my zine and get that feeling that I wrote it for them, that they are the reason I wrote it and while no one else seems to think much about it, they love it regardless of how obscure it might be.

The model for the girl on the horse in the upper left corner was Jean!