Stephanie Barber, Corruptible, 2014 
Stephanie Barber is a writer-in-residence at M|I|C/A. 
For this project she paired fragmented musings on the human condition with a pile of found photographs.

..."[O]h the pleasure of feeling, privately. The singularity and specificity of the way we experience our senses are the carpets and cushions of our internal landscapes. This is one of our few possessions, this way we experience our senses. (Set aside for a moment the way the word “possess” flips backward and forward in this usage.) The way we think we own these experiences, these feelings.

"The conceptual dissonance of the prideful/shameful coveting we engage in when feeling… is weighed against the intense desire we have to share and trade, unite, and transcend the intensity that privacy exacerbates. This is why the humans try. And why there is a word lonesome. And also why there is such a thing as a camera. The way it seems to promise a pause or the miracle of another’s perspective... With its so many metaphors and its dangerous and tantalizing suggestion that experience can be shared, made public.  “Remember it was sort of sunny? Remember you turned away and at just that moment Suzie saw the bird fly through the rainbow? Remember how sad and angry you were at having missed it? See how sad and angry you were? Look.'"

Read more here. A cool blog with more found photos. And another. And another.

A historical precedent for found objects as art was set by artists like Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso, 
among many, many others.

Marcel Duchamp and one of his Readymades

Picasso Bull's Head, 1942

William Christenberry, Building with False Brick Siding, Warsaw, Alabama (1974, 1982, 1994)

Alexander Graham Bell (Inventor of the telephone) dabbled in aeronautics, 
and these tetrahedral kites are a few of his experiments.

Task Parties, How to Task.

JOHN CAGE

4'33"

"Water Walk"
"About Silence"

BICYCLE BUILT FOR 2,000 *
In 1961, "Daisy Bell" was the first song ever sung by a computer (as later referenced in 2001: A Space Odyssey). In this project, 2,088 voice recordings were collected via Amazon's Mechanical Turk web service. Workers were prompted to listen to a short sound clip, then record themselves imitating what they heard. The sounds were harvested and compiled to sing "Daisy Bell." 

THE SPACE PROJECT
A multi-artist sound collaboration using found sounds from outer space.

Learn more about the pedagogical components here.

SOUND/MOTION STUDIES BY MEMO AKTEN:
Simple Harmonic Motion #5 Excerpt
Simple Harmonic Motion #3a

PUBLIC SOUND PIECES:
Sea Organ: Zadar, Croatia
A Salute to the Sun: Zadar, Croatia
Singing, Ringing Tree: English

(see also: SYNESTHESIA)

Doug Aitken, Song #1, Hirshorn Museum, Washington DC, 2012
Inspired covers of "I Only Have Eyes For You" by Beck, No Age, High Places, Lucky Dragons, etc.
New York Times
Pitchfork (Live feed, Happening)
Washington Post (includes diagrams and how-to)
Smithsonian (article about Aitken) (and article about Song#1)

Other project(ion)s by Doug Aitken:
Sleepwalkers, 2007

Jim Sanborn, Topographic Projections and Implied Geometries, 1995-97

"These images were produced by direct, large format, light projection. The projector, powered by a mobile generator, was moved from site to site. All of the pieces were photographed at night using long exposures. On moonless nights, the landscape was lit with searchlights. The landforms themselves are quite large, requiring the projector and camera to be, on average, 1/2 mile away from the subject landscape."

Ross Ashton, Glass House, 2012

Nick Tory, Lead Designer for Electric Canvas. Customs House, Sydney, Australia, 2011

PROJECTION-BOMBING

Street Projections, Homeless, Animation, Brazil
- - -
Shopping List, Andrew McWilliams
Instructables *

rel·i·quar·y
ˈreləˌkwerē/
noun
plural noun: reliquaries

1. a container for holy relics...

rel·ic
ˈrelik/
noun

1. an object surviving from an earlier time, especially one of historical or sentimental interest.
   
   • a part of a deceased holy person's body or belongings kept as an object of reverence.
     
   • an object, custom, or belief that has survived from an earlier time.
     
   
   

British Museum, Treasures of Heaven, The Holy Thorn Reliquary.

Antique Shops and Boutiques inspired by Reliquaries: 
Modern Relics, Alix Bluh
Reliquary, San Fransisco

Reliquary variation by Katie Hudnall. Wonderful opening / closing mechanism.

films:
FEAR OF FLYING. Short film about a bird who tries to avoid flying South for the winter.

FEAR / LOVE. Three lives, three identities, three points of view. Set against the harsh backdrop of inner city London, Fear/Love interweaves the lives of three adolescents as they struggle with who they are, who they want to be and who they are becoming.

FIGHT OR FLIGHT OR WHATEVER * Story by Rob Norman

Some nice quotes about fear from artists:

I am the first to be surprised and often terrified by the images that I see appear on my canvas. (Salvador Dali)

The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive. (Carlos Castaneda)

Fear is very often a part of the spiritual path. When people sit down and meditate, it's not at all uncommon for fear to arise at some point. (Adyashanti)

There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart's controls. (Aeschylus)

Fear melts when you take action toward a goal you really want. (Robert G. Allen)

If you think too much and fail to take action, fear makes its home within you. (Anonymous)

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. 
(Marcus Aurelius)

Sometimes being naked with fear is a good experience. It teaches us a lot about ourselves and about life. It is scary but it awakens us. (Leo Babauta) 

It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear. 
(Francis Bacon)

There's a terror in knowing what the world is about. (David Bowie)

Wash your hands in dreams and lightning, cut your hair, and whatever is frightening. 
(Paul Simon)

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. (Edmund Burke) 

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. (Joseph Campbell)

One has a prejudice wherever one fears a transformation. (Elias Canetti)

You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind. (Dale Carnegie)

Don't give in to your fears. If you do, you won't be able to talk to your heart.
(Paulo Coelho)

The death of fear is in doing what you fear to do. (Sequichie Comingdeer)

Stop being afraid of the fear and, instead, use it as a motivator, the same way you use joy. Grab hold of it, look it in the face and conquer it. Put it on canvas. (Sharon Cory)

Everybody in their own imagination decides what scary is. (Yvonne Craig)

Creative action plays with the unknown. But as the child fears the dark... the adult child will be fearful too, faced with the dark world of the unknown mind, with vast concepts looking enormous just beyond the front yard. (Arthur Deikman)

Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what people fear most. (Fyodor Dostoevski)

He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

The two terrors that discourage originality and creative living are fear of public opinion and undue reverence for one's own consistency. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Only the unknown frightens men. (Antoine de Saint Exupery)

Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear of competition... Fear of being an imposter. Fear of not being paid. Fear of being paid... Fear of the unknown. Fear of commitment... Fear of wasting time. Fear of irrelevance. Fear of fear itself. Pop, pop, pop. (Robert Genn)

Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they feel they were put on this Earth to do? (Elizabeth Gilbert)

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. (Hermann Hesse) 

Even when I have to write a simple letter I'm scared stiff, as if faced with looming seasickness. (Gustav Klimt)

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you Not to be? (Nelson Mandela)

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves. (Abraham Maslow)

Love is full of anxious fears. (Ovid)

Courage is knowing what not to fear. (Plato)

To fear to face an issue is to believe the worst is true. (Ayn Rand)

Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Every day do something that frightens you. (Eleanor Roosevelt)

I died as a mineral, and became a plant. I died as plant and rose to animal. I died as animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? (Rumi)

You have to learn how to be in scary areas, make those comfortable, then go to the next scary area and make it comfortable... (Linda Seger)

There is no good product of fear. (John Steinbeck)

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm. (Robert Louis Stevenson)    

MARK DION.
via ART21 *

Thames Dig, 1999.

Tate Modern / ART21

Landfill, 2000.

Neukom Vivarium, 2006.

WARHOL'S TIME CAPSULES via NPR.
Art v. Artifacts, Newcastle.

AI WEIWEI.

BBC Interview
NEVER SORRY trailer & film 

PEDRO REYES.

JAMES NACHTWEY.

WAR PHOTOGRAPHER film.

DOROTHEA LANGE.

ED BURTYNSKY.

SEBASTIAO SALGADO.

ALLORA Y CALZDILLA.

WARNER HERZOG.

LIVING AS FORM by Nato Thompson.
CREATIVE TIME — A Public Art Movement
A SUBTLETY by Kara Walker
HUFFINGTON POST article, "The Self-Fulfillment of Socially Engaged Art"