Sculptures, prints, games and an interactive video installation by Nina Waisman
Buddy first showed up as a calligraphic painting, but that 2-d, on-the-wall gig got tight. Butting into the 3d world, Buddy has been done up in day-glo acrylic as part of the Buddy-to-Buddha I Ching Game*, traveled to Iraq, to Target, to murder scenes, to beds and to baths. Buddy has been worshipped, hidden, carved in wood, cast in aluminum, sewn up as soft-sculpture in leatherette and silk, and might appear in bubblegum-form some day soon. Some Buddies are mass-produced, some are virtual, and some are handmade limited editions, painstakingly created one-by-one. You can make Buddy into whatever you want: Buddy is easy.
Buddy:
*The Buddy-to-Buddha I Ching Game
(10th image from left) allows the user to answer deep questions about her life while making pleasing arrangements of small sculptural objects. The game-piece forms map out Buddy's transition into the Buddha's form - is Buddy an art-toy or is he truly in-the-know?
A player may randomly arrange the transparent acrylic figures with a particular question in mind. Oracular characters marked on each sculpture's base will thus be configured randomly when the player finishes arranging the sculptures. This configuration can be easily interpreted with the I Ching reader, pointing a player to the oracle's ultimate answer to her question. Alternatively, a player might throw the I Ching first (using pennies or her favorite method). The player could then arrange the sculptures so that the symbols marked on the sculpture-bases align with those of the I Ching reading. The I Ching thus determines an aesthetic arrangement of the figures.
