waste.

  Well this weekend was mostly wasted and so i have very little to talk about. Friday there was a transportation strike and so i was stuck at home. Saturday we had a Maya tutorial for about 7 hours. It was overwhelming. That evening we went dancing. It was delicious. (the dancing, not the salt from all the sweating we did) Today i took a nap, ate a doner, painted, played dota and blogged.

These are some images of my host families home.

mosaic on kitchen floor that Viola made. awesome.

typical breakfast.

kitchen.

Some technical difficulties resulted in kaputt pictures. oh noes.

I look to Richter for spiritual enlightenment.

    Today: Köln. quick tour through museum ludwig. curator yells at someone for yawning. george segal. andy warhol. artist whose name i didn't care to remember. did an environment about ww1/ww2 and how we sip our drinks under blue skies while things like war are soo far away from us that we don't even care. I'm guessing the group of 3rd graders that looked at it after we did had a strong connection with the piece. ha! I never went to a museum when i was that young. oh yah. lichtenstein. beckman. richter. leave museum. eat a döner. leave my backpack with camera/ipod in the restaurant. go to chocolate musuem. pay 6 euros for entrance or pay 5 euros for delish chocolate cake and hot chocolate. pick the latter. get massive chocolate/sugar high. bliss. leave choco museum to retrieve back pack. phew, still there. city tour. blah blah blah, lots of roman stuff underground. blah blah blah, church, city hall, church, blue pipe, subway construction: estimated completion 2010. Köln Cathedral tour. tallest cathedral i've been in so far. 3 massive organs. 2 soccer fields worth of stained glass. gerhard richter stained glass. woaha, what? really? yah, gothic meets richter. i like it. i don't think any of the locals like it. tour guide doesn't even mention it. walk outside church. wait for another tour guide for roof top tour of cathedral. find 4 euros on church statue. consider morale issues about taking money resting on church. decide to keep it. non-english speaking tour guide shows up. lars translates. sketchy elevator to the top of Köln Cathedral. scaffolding everywhere. view is splendid. cold. stand in rain while tour guide talks. stand in rain while lars translates. repeat 3-4 times. go inside. still cold. stand in the very top of the cathedral above all the vaults. looks nothing like a cathedral from here. watch everyone take pictures with massive wrench/nuts. wrench was about the size of me. go outside through small door. hobble around a perimeter walk way. barrett finds swastika. guide says they leave it there for historical reasons. toes are semi-numb. dead-leg sierra. listen to lars translate. something about a staff of a 100 working constantly to keep cathedral restored. another small door. bell tower. music to my ears. beautiful. another hall way. elevator. take it down to about midway. tiny hall way to awesome view. awesome. train leaves in 8 minutes. run. run. run. sleep on train. long day. before i peace out, here are pics from the niederlands. i couldn't take any pictures while i was in Köln because i forgot my memory card. ugh.

rotterdam / amsterdam.

red light distric. i tried to get pics of the prostitues. they were mean and didn't like being photographed.

best part of trip. amsterdam's public library.

street fight. alley art. che.

This is old but i'm finally posting it.

Video made by Barrett, Geoff and myself. Voilla.

Snow, bum fights and unsuccessful hawks at my door steps.

    Saturday i went out for some art supplies. As i walked in the bright sun, two dirty bums caught my attention. The two were arguing about something. It was loud enough that they were drawing quite a crowd. I watched for a few minutes, eating up the intensity. One middle-aged bum in the face of an old-wrinkled bum, both yelling and pointing at eachother. They looked like they would throw down at any minute. I could see it in their body language and so i continued to watch. As the bums continued to spew their nonsense without any physical contact i lost interest and turned toward the art supply store, which i was near. Three steps later i hear the bum crowd roar. I turn to look and see the old bum on his back, head against the pavement. The young bum was standing over his victim and still taunting him. An overdue, large onlooker grabbed the young bum from behind and "held him back". Ah...nothing like dirty bums knocking eachother out on a bright sunny day.
    After my aquisition of art supplies, i found myself in an 'art' bookstore. Huge collection of books. Everything from architecture to fasion photography to graphic design. I spent about 30-40 minutes browsing. I found about 28 books i need in the near future. I need to find a store like this in Texas. HAHAHA!
    After a relaxing train ride back to the Neuss HBF station, i came across another battle very near to my house. Once again a crowd had gathered, which is what first got my attention. A family, out for a walk, had also come upon this frightful scene. At first i was scared and wanted to run, but i didn't. I stood my ground. There before me, very near to the ground, was a hungry hawk*. The hawk was attached to a pigeon from behind via its large talons. Basically, the pigeon was giving the hawk a piggy-back ride, but i don't think the pigeon had a choice in the matter. The hawk was a bit smaller than the pigeon and so the pigeon stumbled about with the hawk clawing away. The hawk's wings stretched out for balance and the pigeon ran around, painfully looking at me for help. In response to these looks, i quickly went for my camera. Of course this took about five and a half minutes. never fails. Anyways, by the time i had my camera out, the pigeon had managed to manuever under a car. The low undercarriage must have been too much for the hawk, because he hopped off the pigeon shortly after. Then, I saw the hawk hop out from under the car. Just before it spread its wings to take off, it turned and looked at me. The look in its eyes was priceless. I practically heard it say, "Damnit! Dirty pigeon just owned me." or something along those lines.

*hawk because i thought it was a hawk but then i looked up birds typical for germany and it could have been one of like 20 birds of prey. so it may not be a hawk, but it was definitely a bird of prey. A sucky bird of prey.

Unfortuantely, the only picture i did manage to get sucks. If you look closely, you can see the pigeons tail underneath the hawk.

   

Lets Talk about...Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

This one was a little premature.

This is the crew. Geoff, Rachel, Sierra and myself. We shreaded the Alps in Germany and even slipped into Austria on day two. We left Dusseldorf Friday night, rode 11 hours through the night and landed in Garmisch in the morning. We rode all day, trecked across town with all our gear to the hostel. 11 euros for one night. The four of us shared a ten bedroom dorm. It couldn't have worked out better. That evening, we had a delish meal at a classic german restaurant. I had mushroom and pork in a magical sauce of wonder. It was amazing. Then we slept, like babies after a good poop. In the night we heard the Zugspitze call for us. The Zugspitze is a massive glacier sitting in the top of the mountains. We took a train for about 10 minutes to the gondala.

The gondala drove us strait up the mountain. It was intense. This is the view from the bottom, where we waited for our mountain taxi.

Inside the gondala. It was a tight fit.

End of the line.

On the observation deck.

Into the snow.

The group after a day of snowboarding.

oh my, what's this?! There isn't actually anything exciting about this video. I'm just carving around. I don't know why the quality blows.

So this is my update for last weekend. I'm still missing the week before that (paris) and the week after (amsterdam). oh yah...Today i went to the Ludwig Museum in Köln with Barrett to see the Mondrian Exhibit. It was beautiful. The museum was extremely overwhelming. Tons of art. My mind is still trying to digest it all. Guten nacht.

We dominated paris.

    Although the domination of Paris was successful I must hold off on the full report due to laziness. Look at Savannah's blog, she put some pictures up. I leave for the alps tomorrow. Snowboard for two days and then back to Düsseldorf on Monday and on Tuesday we leave for Amsterdam.
    The studio project was due 2 days after we got back from Paris. Which means i spent very little time on it. The professors said it was "beautiful" (which they said to each project), but that it looked unfinished. They were right... Paris > school. I did pull an all nighter on Tuesday which was painful during class on Wednesday.
    And now for the BS: The requirements are explained in a previous post. I began the project by researching deep sea creatures. Aside from the disturbing appearances, what attracted me most was the light sources. I took this idea and ran with it. My initial concepts ranged from organic light producing modules that resembled one of the deep sea fish to swarms of floating bulb like residential quarters that use light as a means of communication. After i cut out all the silliness i was left with light and communication. I then began thinking of light in painting and the interaction of color being mixed and moved around. So...color, light, painting, color communication(interaction). So i came up with a way to paint the inside or rather to create a sculpture of color and in doing so i found that the transformation was in the way the light and colors interacted with the properties of the water and glass. The reflections/refractions in the water, on the glass, on the plastic bottles and on the wall created the interaction i was looking for. The reflection on the wall became the transformation out of the water. It became almost a 4th dimension. As i "painted" the inside i was able to view the effect in the obvious three dimensions but then i was also able to see the effects on the wall near the tank. This became another view port. Instead of going from land to the water, my project started in the water and then became visible outside of the water when i introduced light. Here are a few of the Images. I did a stop animation as well. It more clearly illustrates the interactions, but it may be a while before i can get it online.