Shay wrote:
> "Txemi Jendrix" <tji### [at] euskalnetnet> wrote in message
> news:3f536f23@news.povray.org...
> 
> I'm surprised that more people aren't expressing some enthusiasm about
> this topic. I'm really interested because for the first time in a while,
> we couldn't all guess what the winning entry will look like from day
> one. I guess there's a decent chance that it will be a flower or small
> tree growing amongst rubble, but there's also a very good chance that it
> will be something which we have never seen in the IRTC before.
> 
> The commenting in this forum has revealed some really interesting
> aspects of seemingly ordinary pictures, and there is usually at least
> one picture in each round which I find extremely impressive, but I'd
> like to see a round with pictures the very concepts of which make me
> think "whoa...what the f***?" instead of "what a well done variation of
> that theme."
> 
> That being said, I doubt that I will be able to come up with anything
> for the decay round. When I see something decayed, I am usually struck
> more by the resilience of what remains or the strength of whatever force
> is causing something to decay rather than the actual decay itself. I
> guess I'm too optimistic for this one.
> 
>  -Shay
> 
>
Okay, since you ask ...

Decay is a subject I have circled around and toyed with over the years 
but never actually confronted.  I was mostly intriqued by the question 
of whether the processes of decay, in say a human corpse, would be equal 
in complexity to the processes of life in the same body.  This was when 
I was about 33 or 34 and living an irresponsible, unemployed painter's 
life in Toronto.  At the time I was working in a number styles, one of 
which was painting on rattan mats, putting a separate paint stroke on 
each thatch. I thought about decay and painted each thatch.  I 
considered encrypting the chemical formulas of the byproducts of decay 
into the patterns I was painting, but rejected the idea.  The painting 
was about 6x9 feet, (several mats) and took me over two years to 
complete.  Eventually I brought it over the border
to New York and sold it to an interior design firm who used it in 
decorating a bank.  Meanwhile, back in NY, I met up again with a 
beautiful young woman who had been a student of mine at Ohio State.  She 
had gone to grad school at Yale and was in a show at White Columns here 
in NY.  Her paintings, were still lifes of fruit, where the fruits were 
assembled into molecular models of the chemicals which are the products 
of organic decay.  Oh brother! Back in the OSU days I had tried to 
seduce her but she was stiff as a board. In New York we somehow got in a 
fight and parted as enemies.  Still, I think "decay" can be one of the 
great themes of life.  I am going to be thinking about processes where 
humans could be considered the agents of decay.  The beaches of Southern 
India come to mind, where I believe huge cargo ships are taken apart for 
scrap by armies of barefoot laborers.  That was my first idea anyway, 
when I saw the topic.

-Jim

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