Wednesday, June 13, 2012

The Puzzlement Laboratory Debut!

So this is just the second blog about The Puzzlement Laboratory. Well it finally made its debut within the Gypsy TransTemporalis Encampment as a part of The Figment Art Event last weekend on Governors Island here in NYC.

It was quite extraordinary and lovely though a lot of work.  Friends had been working on putting the Gypsy Camp together for a while and Ahnika got me to share about The Puzzlement Laboratory and asked my to make it a part of the Encampment.

i worked on creating 3 different puzzlements and ended up just using one of them.  The two i didn't use were the Inter-dimensional Giant Cross Stitch Project and Paint By Numbers Puzzle.

What did get worked was the Puzzlement Map Cubes.  i made 3" cubes and affixed sections of NYC Subway maps in the different sides and then encouraged people to figure out where they are coming from.

This was all done while in character (as per the Gypsy theme).  So i created Tuchi. Tuchi used the name "Mary Smith" when out in public working as the spokesmodel for the Laboratory.  She is the cousin of the Laboratory Overseer, Nown Variously. The story got more complicated and crazy as more people come through and interacted. Talking about Dr. Ramus who runs the Lab.  Have you heard of him?  Dr. Igno Ramus?  Very famous man he is.  And the Lab assistants Juan and Dan Udder. They are twins, cannot tell them apart until they speak which isn't often.  Very strong boys they are though and observant.

On Saturday, interestingly, there were more than a few people who ended up identifying themselves as soldiers. And so Tuchi engaged them in dialogue about the differences between soldiers and warriors.

"Soldiers are working for other powers, for the state or whatever. But Warriors fight for their cause, their people."  She encouraged the soldiers to find their way to being a Warrior. A Warrior for their Tribe for Good.

Sunday was much mellower. We were i think more comfortable in our Encampment and so it was wild to see folks come in and just accept us a Gypsy. Trying to differentiate between our take on being Time Travelling Trans Temporal Gypsies and Romani was at times not the point.  Though i did speak with someone who was aware that there ancestors where Romanian Gypsies.

i did get a chance to explore a bit the rest of Figment and got to see Jason's (from the Hungry March Band) sound piece of News Sound Bits from 2008.  An 8 hour segment of an 18 hour piece.  People could just listen and react and walk on or stop and talk or write and draw their reactions to the piece.

And then there was the Plastic Bag piece. Encouraging people to think twice or thrice about plastic bag use and reuse and also the Puzzle Guy. He had giant jugsaw puzzle pieces that he had people draw/paint on.  It was lovely.  He had problems overnight with rain so many of the pieces got damaged.

Oh i got to see and hear Reverend Billy and The Church Of Stop Shopping Choir and hold their Revival.  They are sounding GOOOD.. Haven't heard then live since seeing them in Chicago almost 10 years ago when Morgan Spurlock was following them around.

So i was fried and am still tired though that has to do with other things also.

More to come!