Terms used to classify the work. They are not motifs. The longer account is on the Anatomy page.
Ad blocker. Permanent treatment of a posting wall. The surface is stripped to plywood, carbon bolts are set, the heads are ground, and timber is locked on with construction adhesive. The wall that accepted advertisements cannot accept them again.
Antigen. What the immune system locks onto. In this work it is often the figure, not the debris the figure was meant to mark.
Bars. The 2x4s that occupy a posting wall after the skin is gone. They are the visible graft.
Brain. City or national government. The organ that writes law, sells space, and decides what may remain in the vein.
Camouflage. Clothes and posture that let a figure pass as a cell. A logo, a caption, or a chaperone spends it.
Cell / blood cell. A person in the city, whether or not they are in a car.
Clotting. Rescue units. The body sealing a wound so the vein can keep running. A fire crew taking a figure off a roof is clotting. A stroke is clotting that goes too far and shuts the district.
Deposit. What plaque leaves on the vein wall. Advertising occupying a surface, authorized or not.
Cortisol. The chemistry of fear. It is what makes a body, or a city, overreact. The brain and the nervous system raise it so cells expect the worst: an unattended object becomes a device, a person on a ledge becomes an emergency. A hyper T-cell response is cortisol in uniform.
Embed Series. Dressed tape figures placed so they read as people rather than as art.
Endarterectomy. Surgical removal of the inner lining of an artery that has collected plaque. The Ad blocker is that procedure on a vein wall: the posting surface is taken off rather than painted over.
Face. The printable skin of an advertising wall or billboard. Fly posting uses it. An Ad blocker replaces it.
Fly posting. Unauthorized paper advertisements pasted to a wall. The deposit the Ad blocker is built to stop.
Flush. Two related operations. Informal: a cell treats a figure as waste and removes it. Civic: work that attacks plaque on the vein wall or marks stenosis in the lumen so the blockage can be seen and cleared.
Graft. The replacement surface after the lining is removed. In the Ad blocker it is the timber locked onto the plywood.
Hacking. Taking a repeating civic object and altering it so it is seen again. A stop sign that becomes a flowersign is still a stop sign. The repetition is broken. The cell has to look.
Humor. Not an extra joke. The sugar in the syrup that lets medication be taken instead of refused as another command.
Hyper T-cell. An official immune response out of scale with the object. A bomb technician sent to a sculpture is the type case.
Innervation / signage. Official commands fixed to the vein wall which restricts the cell’s movement. A stop sign, a crossing mark, a posted rule. Hacking a repeating sign — a flowersign — does not remove the command. It makes the nerve ending visible again.
Immune response. Police, rescue, sanitation, a bomb technician. The body extracting what it has decided is a threat or as waste.
Lab. The virus withdrawn from the vein and held in a closed volume — gallery, fair booth, museum. In vitro. The organism is the same. The available surfaces change.
Lumen. The open volume of the vein — the walking space. Work in the lumen does not strip the wall. It stains what already blocks the path: dumped furniture, carts, mattresses, gold trash. Attention is forced through the blockage. The lumen is cleared by the city, or it is not.
Medication. A change to official infrastructure that leaves the object in use. A stop sign that still stops. A meter that is still a meter.
Mystery. A figure found first without a claim. The claim comes after it has been seen. The opposite of a logo on the object.
Nervous system. Media. It carries an encounter from one site to other cells and to the brain.
Nutrition. Public work that asks nothing in return and sells nothing. Usually ephemeral.
Opsonin. A mark that flags a surface or object for clearance. Gold spray, a sleeper on a dead billboard, toilet paper on bronze: the stain that says look here.
Paste. Wheatpaste. The adhesive that holds a poster to the wall, and the act of putting it there.
Patch. The timber covering that closes the wall after the posting skin is gone. The graft, seen from the street.
Plaque. Two uses, kept distinct. In the body, plaque is the deposit on the arterial wall. On the street that deposit is advertising — the unauthorized occupancy of the vessel wall. Plaque is not the same as stenosis. Plaque is what sticks to the wall. Stenosis is the narrowing that follows.
Stain / staining. Marking an object already sitting in the lumen so it can be seen. Gold spray on uncollected trash, words on a mattress, a cart put in socks. The work does not excise the blockage. It dyes the specimen.
Stenosis. Narrowing of the lumen. Sidewalk dining that sprawls, dumped furniture, rental scooters, carts. The cells have less room to pass.
Stroke. Clotting so complete that a district shuts: street, Metro, school, businesses.
Surgery. Permanent treatment of the wall. Endarterectomy plus patch graft. The surface that accepted ads is removed and replaced with one that cannot. Medication is not this. Ad blocker is the type case.
T-cell. Police. Routine immune patrol, as distinct from a hyper T-cell.
Unsanctioned. Installed without permission. No chaperone, no nameplate, no festival watch. The experiment is set up without identifying the installer.
Vein. The street. The conduit the cells move through.
Vein wall. The vertical surface of that conduit. Billboards, plywood, stickered metal. Where plaque settles.
Vigilante. A blood cell that performs immune work without being a T-cell. Removing a figure from a median because it offends. Businesses and BIDs that police the sidewalk for commercial order belong here: they are not the brain and they are not police. They treat public space as their lumen and flush what they have not authorized.
Virus. A camouflaged figure introduced into the vein. It is a virus when it is seen: other cells stall and have to decide what they are looking at. (more)