Experiences/Observations of Owen Smith OFSMITH@maine.maine.edu

Flux Shoe Traces
- Copy 
- Mark 
- Count

Well the weather here has turned cold again, so as I thought about 
making a copy of my shoe, I decieded to not to copy the winter boots 
that I am now wearing, but a pair of my summer sandals. When I put 
the shoe on the copier I was not sure what I would get because the 
sole is dark colored - what came out was dark image of the sole on a 
black background with a white halo demarking the edge of the sole and 
the treds of it as well. As I stood pondering the black on blackness 
of the image I looked outside and it had strated to snow again and it 
all seemed to fit - the black on white of the page and the black on 
white of the image on the snow. I decieded to mark my walk from the 
art building where I had been working to my car. I was not sure how 
many steps it would take so I made 100 copies to make sure that I 
would have enough.

As I exited the building I put one copy down prior to each step and 
then stood on the copy till I had placed the next copy and then stood 
on that one and so on till I reached my car. It took 39 steps/copies 
to reach my car. As I looked back at the trail of copies it was a 
wonderful sight - these black images on the new white snow. I sat in 
my car for about 20 minutes and watched the snow slowly cover all of 
the balck rectangles. When the snow had covered them all I drove off.

When I reached my house I decided to mark my steps from the car to 
the house itself since I had a number of copies left from the first 
marking event. It took fourty three steps/copies to travel from my 
car to the steps of the house. It had stoped snowing so the copies 
were not covered but the new wet snow caused the paper to curl up to 
form what seemed to be little boats on the white snow.

What the piece focused on the most for me was the process of walking 
as single steps that in total caused a greater movement. I had never 
really been so conscious of walking as individual steps. So I 
extended the piece for the rest of the evening counting every step I 
took from about 5:45 to 1:30 when I went to bed. Even though I spent 
a good deal of that time sitting and reading, or eating, or in front 
of the computer, I still counted 2165 steps in that period of time.


Experiences/Observations of Owen Smith OFSMITH@maine.maine.edu