mcglone digital archives project

this entry--though devoid of any digital archive related content--serves the purpose of an apology for a (s)lack of additions to this archive. its not that the archive is full, or abandoned, or forgotten. rather, it in itself as a project has been put to the side as i try to make money.

alas, the truth: worthy efforts--perhaps things that are more important and significant--often lose out to those that some deem less worthy or significant or bound to have an impact on our daily life; making websites for small businesses and earning little money or promotional videos for non-profits earning even littler money.

but--do know this. although the project hasn't had an update in over two months, all is not lost. strange how the instantness and everydayness of the web makes us feel as if two months without an update is a sign of authorship abandonment, too much time away, and perphaps many other nuanced and subtle cognitive processes? for those readers and watchers that actually care (only a few i myself can name--mostly those that have bothered me about the sillyness of the last and what seemed final entry on tenacity) here is a brief look at some things to come, eventually:



regardless of how the mcglone digital archives project pans out, this entry is nothing more than a long winded apology. perhaps a defence, but more so a response to a guilt brought on by myself and the strange disease that infects creativity that makes it difficult to finish (...is there a finish on the web?--for instance if you leave a comment, this entry in fact is added to and begins to take on a new narrative twist...) or at least commit to what i start. perhaps it is a symptom that stems from the photograph itself. in a bit of a correlation, surrealist manifesto (1924) author andre breton (pictured above with microscope) wrote this long ago on his own moviegoing habits:


this fragmented and magnetic charge breton writes about in a rather blogesque prose, is what i feel quite often when creating; being present, yet somehow remaining absent.

(#0007) back in high school donnie warner, craig mckey and i, amongst others, got into the art of freestyle rap. well, maybe not the art, but we did freestyle, donnie being the most gifted in my own opinion. senior year donnie entered himself in a battle which took place at the youth center, the neutral zone, in ann arbor, mi. so we all showed up in support, and watched donnie do well, but get knocked out by a horrible ypsilanti rapper who went by the name, of all things, tenacity. besides being not so gifted in recognizing what hip hop is all about (donnie made a point to draw the crowd's attention to this fact in his rap), tenactiy has to be one of the worst emcee names i have ever heard, to date.
more than a year later, after high school and now at calvin college, i was back in ann arbor for a visit. walking around town with old friend karen holmes with no particular destination intended, we stumbled upon a lively freestyle session. i had thankfully brought my camera with me and was excited at this fact because most of the other events in ann arbor were pretty boring that day. as we moved closer i noticed tenacity was there, with bandana tied round head and all, now a part of a rap crew who called themselves the abolitionists. at this particular moment, they featured a beatbox (who was one of the judges of donnie's battle loss to tenacity) and a couple other emcees milling around freestyling, one of them named kadence. they even had a digital camcorder there recording the session, as the crowd grew larger and larger, which you can see in the right side of the photograph if you look close enough.
i snapped these pictures for donnie (there are two others in a flickr photoset), because he should of won that battle on that day back in high school. i never thought i would have to see tenacity again. but, i did, so this time i took at as a sign and captured him in my camera so i would never forget that sometimes the worse of the two ends up winning in some of life's most competitive moments. tenacity, is of course still rapping five years later and has now ventured off into beatmaking with his group the abolitionists projects. donnie has since graduated from depaul university and teaches in new mexico. photo was a glossy photo, a bit beat up, but raw, and digitally scanned for the archive.

(#0006) before google maps, mapquest, web mashups or any of the other wonderful mapping tools we have at our disposal in today's digital world, people (of course) still had to get directions, look at maps and find their way to a particular destination. some even drew their own maps. my grandfather was one to always draw the most detailed and to scale maps i have ever seen by one who is not a professional cartographer. of course, map making by hand is a trait many grandfather's carry with them, or so i've heard, its just that the way some interpret the land before them is better than others.
this particular map is one i found in the basement of my house, my grandparents giving directions to their son on how to get to one of their many post-retirement residences. in particular this map is to their home in keowee key, south carolina, just south of salem, sc. they didn't live here very long, and i remember our family visit there--but not as clearly as i would like to--we only visited this residence once.
to the left is my grandmother's handwriting, probably dictating my grandfather's directions because he was too tired to continue with the pencil (he always had those green artist pencils without erasers that varied in hardness, blackness and fine point lying around). in intricate detail, my grandfather goes to the great lengths to include an enlargement of the entrance into their development in the upper right hand corner. his ability to scale and give detailed directions (and have an abundance of those wonderful artist pencils) probably reflects a bit on his 30 plus years spent at general motors as an engineer. i can imagine the life of an engineer in a pre-PC generation to be one with lots of slide rules and human mistakes in process of designing a new technology; to be an engineer at those times was something completely different than what it is today.
over the course of my own life, he has drawn me maps, my father plenty more maps, and countless others i am sure of, for friends and other family. this map was originally on 8" x 10" single sheet paper and digitally scanned for the archive.

(#0005) my father coached my brother's soccer team for a number of years in the canton soccer club. this picture is at a post-season team party in 1993 at 'kid kingdom,' now closed down. in the lower corner is one of his more animated players, todd, who is reacting to a sweet shot his coach just made playing skee ball.
i remember this team party quite well. i was there even though i was not young enough to be a 'true' member, but for a few seasons i was an assistant coach which actually just meant demonstrating drills that my father couldn't do at all. my father, being coach, would--as this picture demonstrates--go around helping each of his players maximize their ticket output, increasing their chances at prize acquisition when the party ended.
i have been a fan of this picture for quite sometime: for its early 90s nostalgia, todd's facial expression of excitement and awe next to my father's superb concentration, the prize tickets in his left hand, kids in socks in the background. my mother typically wasn't the one to take photos of events, but in this case she did a superb job filling in as 'event photographer.' the human face can transmit all sorts of signals that can affect a viewer, but thats for a different post so i won't get into it here. what i truly wonder is if this picture was taken after my father had made a succession of high point scores, or if todd was just thinking about how many tickets he was going to get at the end of the game. was originally a glossy photograph digitally scanned for the archives project.

(#0004) remember popular music of the year 2000? boy/girl bands, three doors down, sisqo and the happy end of limp bizkit but continuation of rap/rock had reached all new heights, and christopher and i could no longer let it just sit there--we had to poke fun at it as obscurely as possible. so it was one of those nights during christmas break, and christopher and i were feeling a bit 'funny' because MTV was on and everything was excessively bad.
rockmaninov was the idea for a movie, or script--neither were ever created--about a band travelling from the year 8004 to the year 2000 to change the face of pop music. the premise was that by improving pop music by directly contributing to pop music, rockmaninov hoped that all pop music which followed the year 2000 would be good or at least better, thus making themselves even better in the year 8004. follow? that's why this was never written by neither christopher (as far as i know) or myself. eventually, none of this works out, rockmaninov realizes that nothing can change the flow of popular culture, so they leave the year 2000 to rot.
this particular scan is a portrait i drew that dreadful night of rockmaninov playing on dec. 12 8004; as you can see the instruments of rock music have remained unchanged for 6000 years, and people still go to rock concerts. left to right were characters that chris and i created: eric watts (keys/vox), colin stravinov (bass), ryan marks (drums), and frank o'delhi (guitar/vox). see the subsequent pages that i scanned on the flickr account that give a youthful picture of our creative minds by clicking here and navigating your way thru the flickr photoset. there you'll find character backstories, more sketches and brainstorming activity. all pages were written on december 28, 2000, making christopher and i both 18 years of age and senior's in high school. sketches were originally found in my 8" x 10" journal and scanned for the archive records.

(#0003) my father's mother, ann wagenvoord mcglone, passed this glass negative (along with fifty others) down, much like those generations did her prior. they now rest in our house, collecting dust, deteriorating, remaining sorely neglected. i'm under firm belief that each photograph's meaning has changed numerous times since first captured, or at least is welcoming to re-interpretation with each generation.
this particular photograph, titled by its creator as M.A.C., was captured by my great grandfather elliott wagenvoord on september 17, 1904 in east lansing, mi. it appears that the men in the photograph are part of a team that is constructing part of the sewage system for the michigan agricultural college (MAC) in east lansing. at that particular frozen moment, rather than working, they were posing for my great grandfather's camera. eventually, the MAC would go on to become the largest university in michigan--michigan state university--which still boasts one of the top agricultural schools in the nation.
i contacted the MSU archives and historical collections this afternoon, and it seems as if they are willing to digitally scan and help long-term preserve all the photographs, as well as provide as much historical knowledge they have of each photograph's contents.
one bone chilling (to me at least) thought that continues to run through my mind and body is that my family has always had roots in photographic representations, and my own fascination with visual media begins to appear biological. we are a family obsessed with mummification. to note, many people didn't have personal cameras around 1904, so aside from the biological theory, we can also assume that elliott wagenvoord was a "real" photographer as opposed to hobbiest, with a significant amount of money to spend on equipment and development. these are the kinds of things i'm hoping to discuss with the people at MSU, as well as the history of the contents of this and other glass negatives i have. photograph was originally a 8.25" x 6.25" negative developed on glass, digitally scanned, and turned into a positive for the digital archive.

(#0002) another slide (as i am rapidly sifting thru hundreds of them) this time one that dates back to bill (william) and fred's childhood. i was very unsure of the date, am awaiting verification, but of now i am going to say that this particular photograph was taken on easter around 1957 making bill 7 and fred 10 or 11.
years and years later, my grandparents (nana and papa) would take photos of their grandchildren--me, my sister and brother--in the same fashion on easters. these surburban memories, built by my grandfather in east lansing and okemos shortly after world war II, would trickle down into my generation and basically erupt. now we must foot the bill as the middle class dwindles, easter still happens, and as long as the dream is still progressing, more photographs like these will be taken each year of subsequent generations. photograph was originally a slide, then scanned for the digital archive.