Urbio is a recently conceived product that makes use of vertical gardening techniques. Now before we begin, I must warn you, that the urbio product should never be mistaken for Surbio. Surbio is a man that I owe money to. He is involved in what he calls “urban vertical garden marketing”
It’s important that we discern between these two separate concepts. Where urbio makes use of white tiles, very similar to lego blocks, to a arrange potted plants in pleasing variations, Surbio is interested in organizing what he calls “slave-nodes” into groups of sweat shops, for reasons that are unclear to me.
More than this, the Gardens that Surbio has proposed to vertically market to me are highly spurious. They include furious greens, devilish browns, and yeti oranges.
I’m sure lots of people have heard the acoustic version of the Super Mario Brothers soundtrack by now. I mean, at this point it’s considered mildly uncouth to not accept the semi-transient mario brothers soundtrack fiber optic brain link into the upper third of your vertebrae.
There is an interesting story behind the origin of this soundtrack, however, that most people are unaware of. This soundtrack, after first listen, appears to be made by a group of dixie-land type musicians. This is actually false. In truth, the music is created by a single organism that resembles a genetically modified oak tree.
The creature’s dna has been massaged in such a way that it is capable of simulating intricate tactile movements that closely resemble a human hand. It’s six lower limbs are then made up of various modified acoustic instruments, such as the banjo, mandolin, acoustic guitar, and clarinet. Using these fast moving branches, it can strum all of the instruments in tandem, creating the music you hear on the video. There is still a lot of debate concerning the oak creature’s ability to play the clarinet.
Most people would imagine that such a talented creature would lead a benign and happy existence. But this is unfortunately not the case. Because of the creature’s superior limb dexterity, it is often blacklisted from any mario brother video game parties, because the dominant players are jealous of the oak tree’s ease at which he beats all challengers. Plus, the creature emits such clamorously dissonant sounds when he becomes excited, that it is often uncomfortable to share small spaces with such a noisy companion.
Because of this, the oak tree creature often appears sullen and withdrawn when you meet him in real life. Listen carefully, and you can hear the sadness it feels in each note played by the lower third mandolin dorsal.
From time to time, your soul will cry out for automated bacon. For those of you who are not in the know, automated bacon is a meat form substitute manifested entirely from grey goo and fictional hacker movie algorithms. It is often served by unfolding giant light prisms in massive heated aluminum “cookhouses”. Although, to be honest there isn’t very much cooking going on in these giant cylinders, as much as there is an arbitrage of light from non-light.
Unfortunately, on a middle class budget, especially in an urban environment, giant prisms of light are just not financially or logistically feasible.
Coming to the rescue is a wonderful tool by the name of “AUTOKITCHEN“. Autokitchen is a valuable piece of kit, that makes light based food de-folding a dream. There are two separate “flavours” of autokitchen to choose from: Studio and Pro. The main difference between the two is that the studio version will cause a momentary wrinkle in reality based vision, to create a valid architecture in which to manifest your automatic meat based products, whereas the pro version will make use of black hole paradoxes to maintain your kitchen in alternate dimensions permanently!
To learn more about autokitchen, and autokicthen techniques, please visit an autokitchen representative:
Introduction: Manifest-it-yourself
Everybody knows that the easy way to procure a FROODUS is to summon one, via the typical psycho-kinetic injunction method. This, however, can be deceptively time-consuming and requires, among other diversions, a lengthy application process followed by excruciating paperwork and bloodletting. If your trans-material fax service provider offers long distance FROODUS-tunnel carving services as part of a pre-paid bundle, this method may prove economical, however, connecting to these networks without having invested in the HARVEST infrastructure can be expensive and dangerous. Ultimately, your specific needs will dictate the type of connection you choose, but for the hobbyist, we usually recommend simply making your own FROODUS shell and then compelling the spirit of FROODUS to enter it, using a combination of gin and Gloria Estefan impersonations.
Here’s what you’re going to need:
MATERIALS
Newspaper
If you live in a city, walk out to the corner of any major thoroughfare where culture exists. If you are in the suburbs, you may have to look much harder for culture. Anyway, if your area has some type of culture, you should find on the corner a metal box containing hundreds of sheets of newsprint stapled together with cultural information printed on them. Do not try to decipher the complex codes of your culture. Instead, take about 10 of these free newspapers home with you and tear them (lengthwise, after removing the staples – culture actually has a ‘grain’ and you may find it difficult to tear vertically) into roughly 1-inch strips.
Flour
Wheat flour is made from ground sparrows’ skulls and can be purchased from any Thaumaturge supply dungeon.
Styrofoam
Styrofoam typically comes in a box along with electronics. Purchase electronics. Open box. Discard electronics. Harvest styrofoam.
Acrylic and Spray paints
Close your eyes after looking into the sun, or similar luminous orb (such as a 40 watt incandescent bulb) for about 40 minutes. Make note of the 40 colours you see. DO NOT USE THESE COLOURS. Any other palette will be acceptable for this project.
The sale of aerosol paint, due to its association with ‘coolness’ and ‘rebellion,’ is often restricted to persons over the age of 18 who work full-time desk jobs. Please read my detailed article here.
***A note on spray paint: Paint can get very expensive so I recommend sourcing house paint from your local landfill. The savings, however, will only begin to address the hole inside you where the thrill of spraying pressurized freedom out of a plastic nozzle should have been***
Acrylic Gel Medium (gloss)
Found in Artist Supply shoppes. This is basically acrylic paint without the pigment. For a comprehensive list of Michael Jackson jokes, please stay on the line.
Aerosol Varnish
I don’t know a whole lot about this product. I purchased 3M brand gloss aerosol varnish. The cap was very difficult to remove, even with the use of a screwdriver. Even after breaking the cap with a screwdriver.
Adhesive Tape
Aerosol Insulating Foam
Available from most hardware shoppes. This stuff is typically used to fill all types of gaps, cracks, slits, chasms, holes, chinks, apertures, fissures, crevices, crevasses, crannies, and cleavages.
Beeswax
Beeswax is secreted by orphans. Being that beeswax is one of Canada’s leading exports, (next to the comedy of Ruselle Patters and Brentois Buttridge) our government has invested millions in massive parent-killing initiatives. If you, or anyone you know, has lost their parents to the wax companies, please sign a petition. Otherwise, please proceed to your local Artist supply shop to purchase beeswax.
Plasticine
Comes in bricks. Unlike cocaine, it canot be cut with baking soda and re-sold for broken dreams.
Oven-bake Polymer clay
I used Sculpey brand “super sculpey” product to make the eye of the FROODUS. Available from artist supply shoppes and craft retailers. Typically used in the manufacture of tiny penises. Polymer clays won’t dry out until you bake them and once hardened you can sand/drill/carve them. They do end up being sort of heavy and it gets pretty expensive/impractical if you’re making anything large.
Things to cover in Paper mache
You’ll need some things, or objects, to use as the armature (or frame) for the paper mache. For my FROODUS, I used an inflatable exercise ball, a lampshade and a red bowl. Large spherical objects make great FROODUS parts.
TOOLS
Scissors
Box cutters/exacto knives, various sizes
Hot glue gun/glue
Hands (by which I mean, the hands of your Chinese slaves – more on this later)
STAY TUNED FOR PART II: “Monster Mache, for Beginners”
We are really looking forward to playing tomorrow night with my friend Tim Comrie (whose first name I always mis-type as “Time” – probably because his rhymes are circular and never-ending, and because that is a cooler name.)
This is actually the most serious project I’ve ever attempted to draw others into and it has certainly been more rewarding than awkward. Time is a really dedicated artist who has really clamped down on the fibrous tissue of his creativity gland to extract nearly as much as humanly possible (about 7 fluid ounces) for this event. He has a really natural way of being absolutely serious and absorbed in everything he does. We were able to get together for a couple of ‘parallel play’ sessions and I ended up more or less copying everything he did, but adding guts and vomit.
Here is a little bit of Time’s visual work (You can see that, while technically amazing, it is staggeringly deficient in guts and vomit)
We are also awkwardly relating to Cameron Lee for this event. He is going to contribute some of his cheap objects and hardware materials and ability to re-constitute them as absurd art pieces. We would love to pay him to do whatever he wants. It is our hope that upon entering the venue, you will feel a little bit like you are inside one of these:
We are experimenting with lots of new art and music for this show and we are really happy about these new art and music alliances.
Two monks in brown robes pull the opposing ends of a giant cello string with a winch. It is the lenght of several football fields, and as thick as a human torso. It is hanging above a bottomless pit inside a windowless brick monastery. Small pieces of the string unravel as it becomes more taut and slack. The string vibrates while becoming illuminated with a pleasing aura of green, blue, and pink light.
The two men gradually reel in the string as if they are pulling up an anchor in slow motion. They are both standing on ledges that jut out from the endless monastery walls. Above and below them, the walls reach into visionless shadows. As the men rotate the cranks, the ledges crawl closer together like they are unattached to friction or architecture.
The walls of the pit get closer to each other, a translucent blue blob squeezes out of the black abyss. It floats above the monks and smiling faces begin to manifest on the surface of the blob. It looks like a giant raindrop with pleasant children faces encased inside. The raindrop hovers and twists. More and more smiling human faces begin to appear in the watery cocoon. some of the younger faces begin to twist and contort, making comical puffing motions with their cheeks and scrunching their noses while pouting their lips.
Slowly, like a cloud of mist, the giant rain drop evaporates into the air and the faces break apart into ether. The walls recede to their original position and the monks remain standing on guard, no longer pulling the winch.
