Thoughts on IRL. Let yourself become pieces of other people. /  by Mirena Rhee

I spent a lifetime behind the keyboard, and my machines were my best friend. I used to work on five screens, two consoles and a PC simultaneously.

From video games, I became a hands-on installation and performance artist working in public spaces.

I believe IRL is very important, while we invade our personal spaces we reinforce togetherness by exchanging electrons atoms, and molecules, we exchange energy, and pieces of us become other people.

Working remotely is like sunbathing to a beach video.

Prisons when they want to punish someone they put them in isolation.

I believe in standing among people, it helps us build a tolerance to humanity and its errors, we become more empathetic and we let pieces of other people become us.

Rebel! Trolling Google A.I. Quick, Draw with Star Wars characters /  by Mirena Rhee

It is a Game you said..

This is a game built with machine learning. You draw, and a neural network tries to guess what you’re drawing. Of course, it doesn’t always work. But the more you play with it, the more it will learn. So far we have trained it on a few hundred concepts, and we hope to add more over time. We made this as an example of how you can use machine learning in fun ways. Watch the video below to learn about how it works, and …

Make your own experiments here:

https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/

See more AI Experiments:

https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/ai

Friday Flash - Dune, possessions, pumpkins, road ahead, my personal hypocrisy /  by Mirena Rhee

I remember reading a science fiction short story I think a novel where you could put on glasses and read an entire planet. I think to be an artist is to somehow gradually put these glasses on and once you have that Vision it's impossible to unsee it. Where there are objects like apples or paintings or buildings or people you see primordial soup and electric storms, and some abysses and heavens.

Holiday gift guide:



Make your loved ones an installation. Food installation, spell there name with cucumbers and bananas. Spell their name with clothes, make art piles in the hallway.

Let your kids and your spouse draw on the walls, convert your kitchen cabinets to library and art closets, curiosity cabinets and mystery storage.

Road to New Minimalism

The ultimate goal is to build a space fairing creative civilization.

We have to be very careful with what we create, because I believe we're Gods and this is why I think that handbags and cutting up diamonds is not really our job anymore. Don't get me wrong I absolutely love fashion I love people who are nicely beautiful dressed but I can't justify in my mind digging up crystals from the ground, cutting them up and decorating ourselves with it, and conditioning young people to also be into cut up crystals, they do not need body decoration to feel self-worth. A well disciplined body is beautiful, but diamonds are ugly. Handbags are even more trashes than actual garbage, and even less useful. Don't get me started on weddings, bonding ceremonies are fine, I just can't think of a reason why so much energy is expended to create one of a kind throw away objects.

Whenever I look at bonding ceremonies and all kinds of other activities I always use first principles and try to look objectively at the activity and reason.

We need to really carefully rethink our values as a civilization, it seems to me that the media promotes the values that promote the agenda of their advertisers of course.

The media never promotes what is valuable to humankind science learning well-being of the body and mind, creative and forward thinking.

We are virtually mind slaves on the advertising industry which perpetually produces ever more crap for us to desire.

I am actively trying to unsee most of the stuff that is on the internet

Google was something useful and beautiful now I have to hunt for technology to block me seeing all the ads, I have several ad blocking add-ons on my browsers otherwise I cannot stand looking at anything on youtube or websites. I refuse to look at ads and frankly i’ll boycott anything that I see advertised on anything. If I am not bying it already - I don’t need it, period.

I have resorted to Android as I cannot find anything reasonable to bloc ads with on iPhone, although the iPhone takes beautiful pictures. My mind’s space is just too valuable.

I gave up television for the same reason, I can’t stand looking at ads, cannot imagine something less useful to our civilization and refuse to accept the digital landscape as it is evolving into adscape today.


I believe one day artists will spin neutron stars and draw in gas clouds

Video games are very very successful because they combine art and technology, computing and creativity.

I just realized that paintings with text were the first memes

Art offers a profound experience that just can't be compared to anything else. Art is not trivial it is profound.

I spent my entire life sharpening my ability to see, all my realizations about the material world have come from placing intense gaze on things.

Have just binged on Dune, I thought we are all Pre-born through reading

Art is basically like tasting melange and feeding on melange everyday. I was also born pre-spiced, with blue eyes.

But I can live the rest of my life without seeing another pumpkin

Own a Giant Hand /  by Mirena Rhee

Own a Giant Hand

and help support my next mass public performance art project coming up in 2022.

The Giant Hands are One of A Kind heroes of many art installations. They've graced Central Park bridges, footpaths and lakes, and famous places like Strawberry Fields. They hung on Broadway, been on Times Square and the East Village.

Each hand is approximately 10 feet tall and 2-3 feet wide at the palm. The hands are double sided and can be hung either side facing up. The hands are ready to hang with a wired, small wooden dowel at the top. The hands ship free to your home rolled in a tube.

The Giant Hands were lovingly cleaned of dirt but not of their soul. They were carefully repaired, repainted and glazed. To make an unique art object.

Click on any hand to see a super high-resolution image.
See scale of the hands at Artist for Scale.

Own a Giant Hand

Distributed, DIY performance art /  by Mirena Rhee

I was walking down 5th avenue reading about the global goals, and I read that one of them is light bulbs. I'm like this is not a chicken coop to benefit from light bulbs, the world needs dreams, a common dream for humanity. Of course number one is getting rid of guns, how about we decide that all guns go.

My way to do it is my proposal and framework for Distributed, DIY performance art. More soon.

Giant Hand - artist for scale /  by Mirena Rhee

Last year as I was walking through the dark Manhattan toward the hospital and choking a bit from Covid - I am like, man i won’t get to finish these and no Mars for me. Damn. Now i am like - I want them at least 150 feet and I want to die on Mars, it will be the ultimate adventure. My molecules will seed another planet and my eyes will last gaze the stars. Or maybe i should be shot out of a Martian cannon and my body will become and interstellar artifact. I want this to be my last performance. If the Universe permits of course.

The Giant Hands are veterans of so many escapades, they've been in ditches, hung on Broadway, drugged through footpaths, they have been walked on, biked on, torn to pieces and put back together again. Painted, cleaned and painted again.

Giant Hand with artist for scale

Little girl painting on Memory Replacement - Election Day /  by Mirena Rhee

I don't think there's anything more awesome than creating and sharing the circle of light right here on the streets of New York City.

I also know that it is a difficult realization to share, but possessions unfortunately, according to Warren Buffet’s value system, have zero value. The genius of man, however, is priceless, any amount of money I can give this little girl will be of no value to her compare to just letting her being creative right here, on the sidewalk.

This little girl spent maybe three or more hours painting on the installation and had paint on her clothes and hair, sorry about it. But I remember she was ecstatic to do it, because art elevates us humans.

I believe art elevates humankind, art comes from the same place the universe comes from. A burst.

Little girl painting on Memory Replacement - Election Day, November 2020 on Union Square

Little girl painting on Memory Replacement - Election Day, November 2020 on Union Square

The Road to New Minimalism /  by Mirena Rhee

One of my favorite quotes came randomly to me while listening to an audiobook from one of the great financiers of our time. I remembered it vaguely and tried to find the exact wording and ended up formulating my own quote:

The value of anything is its value between now and eternity

I've backtracked many times trying to find the source for the quote, I thought that I read it in Charlie Munger's book, but it turned out it's a Warren Buffett quote based on a Spinoza quote, and there was another investor guy squeezed in between.


“In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.”
― Baruch de Spinoza, Spinoza in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte

When he said that, I nearly jumped out of my course. What? I suddenly look up, and he said, and I remember exactly what he said: 'Spinoza said you must look at things in the aspect of eternity.' And that’s what suddenly hooked me on Ben Graham."

— Marshall Weinberg

“People always want a formula-but it doesn't work that way. You have to estimate total cash generated from now to eternity, and discount it back to today. Yardsticks such as P/Es are not enough by themselves." -Buffett ”

Excerpt From: Charles T. Munger, Peter D. Kaufman, Ed Wexler, Warren E. Buffett. “Poor Charlie's Almanack_ The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition.” iBooks.

Every single object you buy will cost you hundreds if not thousands of dollars and actually possibly millions of dollars over your lifetime. It will cost you your time, attention and care. Every single one of your possessions will end up in the dumpster, and the landfill.

This is why, using the above quoted estimations, between and and eternity, most possessions will not only cost you $0, they will have a negative value, with a minus in the font. All the stuff you own is literally penny on the dollar worth.

Perhaps it's time for me to define the framework of New Minimalism a bit better and put it out there.

My own brand of minimalism started with myself and my personal insights, but the design of it started in Japan. I saw with my eyes the enormous worth of, hold your breath, rocks and sand. And dirt, sprinkled with moss here and there. You have to give it to the genius of the Japanese Zen monk who managed to get a staggering value out of simple dirt.

I made my realization, from what I do know of myself, if I had stayed in the field of money and silicon valley I would have never done any art. I would have gone on vacations and I would have had a great time spending money. I just know myself very well.

I knew that the cost of me traveling around the world having fun and not doing art is very very high. I would just not pick the brush or the pen and I would dabble here and there. Actually the most important aspect of it is that none of the ideas that I've ever come up with about work, none of these ideas came on beaches. The ideas came while I was among people in New York City, and its underbelly. I got ideas for work on the subway, and while cleaning the local park.

New Minimalism is a framework for living in the new millennium, where we will need to do great things so we have to come up with ideas of how to produce great things, and not dabble in small things. Small things are just not worth the great human mind. It's a framework where I hope the production of goods is replaced with production of a great space fairing civilization.

New Minimalism is a framework for the betterment of you , the betterment of human kind, and the betterment of the environment.
It's a all win framework.

New Minimalism encompasses all areas of life and not just your immediate environment at home.

Art for the betterment of humankind /  by Mirena Rhee

Art is really difficult to make. Especially making difficult art. I see a lot of people around me making very pretty doodles, so I've taken it upon myself to make not doodles but things that can't be easily reproduced. Because I will live long after I die I feel responsibility to take it upon myself to do what no one else will do, to take on certain tasks and projects.

The truth is I don't want to Doodle myself into tiny tiny Doodles, I don't want to box myself into icosahedrons, I don't want to sell coloring books of intersecting lines that doesn't speak to any purpose.

I see art as elevating human kind from the everyday purpose, so I take it upon myself to create art that just appears suddenly and crosses your path.

I read somewhere that the cost of anything is its cost between now and eternity, when I think about my art projects and just art in general and the kind of things I'd like to create these would be things that project ideas into the future.

And Memory Replacement New York City will be a project that projects into the future.


9/11 installation in Strawberry Fields in Central Park - Strawberry Fields Flower Forever - photographs by Larry Cross /  by Mirena Rhee

9/11 installation in Strawberry Fields in Central Park with photographs by Larry Cross.

I named the piece Strawberry Fields Flower Forever, and the hands stand in for oversized flowers.

Especially knowing that John Lennon was also a victim of hate. We have to take care of hate, I recently watched a very old video of John and Yoko and in it they were terrorized by mass opinion.

We have to make sure that our civilization doesn't oppress in the name of any purpose. No purpose justifies oppression and terror. Peace forever.

Mirena Rhee with her 9/11 installation in Strawberry Fields in Central Park - Strawberry Fields Flower Forever - photograph by Larry Cross

9/11 installation in Strawberry Fields in Central Park - Strawberry Fields Flower Forever - photograph by Larry Cross

9/11 installation in Strawberry Fields in Central Park - Strawberry Fields Flower Forever - photograph by Larry Cross

9/11 installation in Strawberry Fields in Central Park - Strawberry Fields Flower Forever - photograph by Larry Cross

9/11 installation in Strawberry Fields in Central Park - Strawberry Fields Flower Forever - photograph by Larry Cross