She explains how she remembered the hours she spent with Waldo books, searching endlessly for his image, and made the connection between her childhood pastime and the delight she takes looking through Google Earth.
It is a brilliant connection. Coles creates a remarkably effective translation of a familiar, well-loved, print-based activity into the endlessly complex realities of the virtual world, adding a new layer of fun to our global vision.
We begin our exploration of the practice of Aesthletics with an brief critique of one of their sport-arts, StraightJacket Baseball. In the words of Warren Fry, of the Brooklyn Rail "In this softball variant invented by Tom Russotti, founder of Aesthletics, the bases are actually members of the fielding team in arm restrictive garments. The player has a ten-yard circle within which to dodge opposing players trying to make it on base. Other than this, normal softball rules applied. It was decided, after a mid-game argument, that infielders couldn’t block runners as they tried to catch the base. Bases were allowed, however, to wear out opposing players by running in circles. Improvised strategies and sudden rule changes are part of the Aesthletic treatment of the sporting act—which stresses socio-creative dynamics over competitiveness and athletic virtuosity."
Though we may not have heard of Aaesthletics, StraitJacket Softball, and Bosch on Ice, we are more than passing familiar with that other example of Aesthletic socio-creativity, by that, I mean, of course, no less than the now classic sport of Whiffle Hurling.
And then there's Hoop Gardens, yet another manifestation of joyfully athletic irreverence from your local Aesthletician, something that appears to be a basketball game, played on the grass, with three basketball hoops, and, of course, two balls.
I would like, if I may, add my personal side note to all this:
Aesthletics is very much like a joke because the fun it is creating is funny. It is nonetheless to be taken quite seriously in deed, this intermingling of art and sport, this work of socio-creativity.
The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra exemplifies at least 5 flavors of fun: cooperative, sensual, serious, silly, and transforming. Allow them to explain:
"The Vegetable Orchestra performs music solely on instruments made of vegetables. Using carrot flutes, pumpkin basses, leek violins, leek-zucchini-vibrators, cucumberophones and celery bongos, the orchestra creates its own extraordinary and vegetabile sound universe. The ensemble overcomes preserved and marinated sound conceptions or tirelessly re-stewed listening habits, putting its focus on expanding the variety of vegetable instruments, developing novel musical ideas and exploring fresh vegetable sound gardens."
Transforming fun, because they are playing on vegetables, for godsake. Silly fun, for pretty much the same reason. Serious fun, because these are serious musicians, and the music they are making is actually musical. Sensual fun because they clearly are enjoying the vegetables as much as the music - the color, texture, smell, feel.... Cooperative, because they are an orchestra, and it's about what they are creating together.
"This series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 410,000 paper cups used every fifteen minutes. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. The underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming."
Part of the power of this work, aside from the sheer massiveness of effort and vision, is its playfulness. There is something fun here, despite the sobriety of the message. Transforming fun, one might call it.
Here's a moment of inspiration as seen on a Backyard TV. I quote:
"Daniel took the TV outside and smashed it in. Then we all got out the paints and started making the TV beautiful. What a great family project. I don't think I need to explain why we did it. Most of you already know how we feel about media and advertising. I believe we waste way too much time with it on. It's so tempting to plop down in front of it when you are tired from life. But why are we so tired? Why don't we have the energy to do the things we really want to do? Maybe if we weren't staying up late watching the tv we wouldn't be tired the next day:)"
"We know you've covered our previous work on your website so we thought we'd send you some info about our new publication and, if you're in London at the time, we'd like to invite you to the launch of 'A Mis-Guide To Anywhere', a playful handbook for exploring cities. The book will be launched at the ICA, The Mall, London, on the 8th April, 6pm till 8pm, following an afternoon of walks, each based on a page from 'A Mis-guide To Anywhere' and each 'led' by one of us.
"Numbers for the launch are strictly limited so let us know if you want to come so we can put you on the guest list.
"If you would like to come on one of the mis-guided walks in the afternoon then let us know or contact the ICA direct (places are limited). The walks will each last about 90 minutes and will set off from the ICA: 12.30pm 'The problem of shopping' (Cathy), 12.45pm 'Out of place' (Stephen), 1pm 'Scales' (Simon), 1.15pm 'Masses' (Phil).
"Walking?" I respond, querulously. Phil elucidates:
We have been three years in making the new book, including walks in Shanghai, rural Zambia, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Manchester, Paris, the island of Herm… 'A Mis-Guide To Anywhere' is our new guide to seeking out places of change in the city, the Anywhere that anyone can find. When we published 'An Exeter Mis-Guide' three years ago we were very surprised that it attracted an international readership - it's now taught in numerous theatre, fine art and geography departments in universities around the world. The fact that a guidebook designed for use in a small provincial English city could be used in cities like Bangalore, Melbourne and Washington, inspired the making of 'A Mis-Guide To Anywhere'.
"If you can't join us in London we will be having a local launch in Exeter as part of the Exeter tEXt Festival on Saturday May 13th, 12.30pm at the Phoenix.
"This is a quick stitched together note to let you have some information about various walk-orientated performances, events and objects.
"First of all the show I have written based on my Easter 2007 walk following the route of acorn-planting Charles Hurst a hundred years before will be performed by New Perspectives from mid-February and the tour schedule is here.
Dee Heddon's new book on 'Autobiography and Performance' is now out from Palgrave and has a section on Place and Self which includes material on 'the art of walking' including Crab Walks.
John Davies has published an instant book on his walk alongside and around the M62 at the end of last year called 'Walking The M62' and you can get that as a hard copy or a download.
Alyson Hallett, who has an ongoing project – the migration habits of stones – in which she carries stones around the world – has a new volume of mostly landscape poetry out ‘The Stone Library’ – I loved it and recommend it. You can get it here, or at all good libraries.
walkwalkwalk, based in London, are building up a network around 'walking as art' and are holding regular meetings.
See also some of the lectures and workshops offered by Propeller including lectures on 'Rain' and 'The Look of Things' and a workshop on 'Performing Landscapes.'
Finally, MPA are holding a four day 'Territories Re-Imagined' festival of psychogeography in Manchester in June, details .
Checking out walkwalkwalk, I learn:
"Walk walk walk: an archaeology of the familiar and the forgotten is a participatory live art event, with a walk at its core. The project begins with an exploration of urban routine. Starting from the routes we take to and from work and home, part time jobs and friends houses, we established a methodology for the systematic exploration of the areas in and around Bethnal Green, Spitalfields and Whitechapel. Stepping outside, or aside from the absorption of the day to day in order to examine the places that we pass through and the narrative of pathways afresh.
"Drawing on precedents and ideas ranging from the never performed Dada walks in the 'terrains vagues' of 1920s Paris, to Iain Sinclair’s investigation of Rodinsky’s London walks in the late 1990s, we began to re-explore our walks through and across the east end. Creating a new routine: meeting at the same time and place each week to walk and work we have exhaustively researched this locale. Walking individually, then walking one anothers’ routes has shown us each new spaces, sights and places that alone we might never have encountered.
"Collecting and collating artefacts and anecdotes from our research walks has been the starting point for the ‘archaeology’ of the subtitle. Objects, images and descriptions from the route speak of the real physicality of the city fringe – the places where it extends out into the edge and vice-versa. The walk we have created will take you to the cut off spaces trapped between railway and road, down alleyways that block the less-than-determined from pursuing a route through, past ‘fine art’ graffiti, a Hawksmoor church, numerous taxi garages and abandoned pubs in a continuously evolving cityscape."
I mean, who knew? Walking as art? I mean like a Dada kind of thing even?
Optical illusions are what you might call "visual puns." They tickle the same funny bone - confusing us in a most delicious way. They are, however, far more difficult to create, and require something on the order of the visual equivalent of the humor of Gilbert and Sullivan and the drafting skill of an M. C. Escher.
Dark Roasted Blend has recently released the third in its wonderfully comprehensive series on optical illusions, demonstrating, and demonstrating again the wealth of the connections between art and play.
In September of 1936, a man named "Red Jones," whose claim to fame was manifest in the variously lovely musical instruments he made and played - out of pipe tools and fittings - managed to attract the attention of no less a publication than Modern Mechanics.
And it made me think about how old of a tradition this thing is, this art, one must call it, of repurposing, of playing with, of finding and creating and sharing delight - with, junk.
Artist Melanie Coles has constructed a 2300-square-foot image of Waldo, of Where's Waldo fame. 
The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra
This
Here's a moment of inspiration as seen on a 
whose claim to fame was manifest in the variously lovely musical instruments he made and played - out of pipe tools and fittings - managed to attract the attention of no less a publication than 
Modern Mechanics.