h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

sounds interesting and curious enough to try! but what if cockroaches decide to view your creation during the night?

Well, they'll eat all the bits of food, won't they?

don't forget, with the addition of time the sculpture takes on some beautiful colours. i once had a fluorescent pink mold develop on one of my sculptures.@

I have one of these wonderful creations in progress at the moment. It consists of: a blue plastic salad bowl filled with water and a few cups, a metal stock pot on top (w/ lid), two large steak knives and a smaller knife propped against the side, and a few artfully arranged glasses as well.

I'm trying to figure out how I can work two glass dinner plates into this affair as well, and I'm not exactly sure it would last to see mold of any kind even if I did get these plates away from my computer and into the sink.

Oh well, such is life.

It is very important when creating dish sculptures to be wary of the safety hazards involved; the main one being that an artistically stacked sculpture of food-related items is not the most stable of constructions.

I found this out for myself when, tackling a dish sculpture that had been forming for not a few hours, the removal of a plate from one side caused a glass to roll from the other into the sink, whereupon it smashed. (Okay, I admit, this particular dish sculpture was not the variety described above, rather it was the type which forms on the draining rack after one of the more normal dish sculptures has been washed.)

Just be careful out there, okay?! *grin*

Our sculptures have attracted an audience of ants, which, after viewing our work, decide to snack in our cupboards.
Any suggestions for getting rid of unwanted audiences?

i usually enlist the help of spiders.@

I wonder if anyone has done a study on the longevity of such works. It would seem logical perhaps that in habitations occupied primarily by females that they would be less spectacular and staggering in their gravity-defying elegance, however I believe that houses inhabited in the main by males would give rise, with a few noteworthy exceptions, to the lesser sculptures.

My reasoning is simple. Houses occupied by males tend to have a not unrelated creativity in the bathroom. When this becomes too much even for the artists to look at, they may wish to change the function of the kitchen sink. Most blokes I know usually remove the dishes before using the sink in this way. I know of very few women capable of taking advantage of this dual function of the kitchen sink. Hence their sculpture is longer lived.

The exceptions are of course the most artistically talented and slovenly of the males, whose sculptures truly beggar belief.

ewww grossed myself out

I try not to create dish sculptures in my kitchen sink. Since I live in a rather popular (read: roach infested) artsy hang-out (read: apartment building) in the Big Apple (read: New York City) and I am a very shy artist and not up to great hordes of hungry gawkers at my work (read: insects), I try my best to use clean pots, pans, dishes and cutlery to create dish scuptures in my drainer. It works very well. I must wash, but do I have to dry and put away? Nay!

if God had wanted us to dry, She wouldn't have given us dish racks.@

I once took place in a collaborative effort of an epic scale. Ou sink was enormous, as was our collection of dishes. Myself and my other three roomates each bringing to the apartment a large collection of dishes. From previous experience the four of us realized that in order for us to have clean stoneware we would have to have lots and lots of dishes. When visiting anothers home I would generally leave with two items. Usually a plate and bowl. However I once liberated a tea-cup with accompanying saucer. A nice addition.

Our masterpiee of physics-defying wonder was created over, approximately, one month. Yes we had the flourescent mold. How the hell does that come to exist? We also had some in the green variety. Though not as abundant as the pink. We occasionaly would encounter a curious ant who would view our work and march on to what was always a tragic end.

We named the mound of kitchenware "Olympus". "Olympus" stood for just over a month and then it began to stink.

After returning from an afternoon anatomy class I was greeted by an unbelievable funk. Pulling on yellow rubber gloves, I promptly loaded the dishes into a cardboard box and lugged them out to the curb. They vanished before the Trash Man came the next morning. Probably snagged by other needy college students.

I wish i had taken a picture......

So do i......but if you want to guarentee a perfect sculpture of epic size and form..live in a student house and DEMAND a room clearance....from an empty sink when all the lights go up..things breed in the sink and by day break you have a tower of swaying and frankly dubious looking plates and cutlery and toe nail clippinds.....much like the one in our Kitchen right now....i believe my flat mates are preying to it to beg it's forgiveness as it seems to filling the entire work surface...OMG it's growing!!!!!!!!

The stink is almost always the downfall of a truly great work of art. (Or a visit from parents, whichever comes first!)

A good way to secure a wide range of colours and odors is to get a dishwasher (i.e. machine) which breaks down somewhere along the line. Then take the half washed dishes, cutlery, glasses etc. and most but by no means all of the water out of the machine. Spend the next weeks arguing about whether to buy a new machine or try to get the old one fixed with the result of nothing happening as no result could be reached. Keep this state up for a total of two and a half month.
Then open machine and ... enjoy.
Actually we rather spontaneously decided to get a new one.

While in college we had a rather large kitchen with lots and lots of counter space, so naturally our sculptures extend beyond the sink and covered every available surface.

Now that I think about it, perhaps that does explain all the ants, roaches, mice, and so on........

It is for this very reason that sculptures in thr tropics don't last as long as those in cooler / dryer climes. They tend to become kinetic. even performance art, rather too quickly for proper artistic appreciation.

You know, I haven't even bothered to look in our year-or-more dead dishwasher. I think I'll go do that right now and report my findings if I return.

Wish me luck.

I think I awoke an angery civilization. help.

proof that something can come of nothing. @

~bows and worships the counterspace god!~

agreed parents do put a limit on artistic tendancies