Methyl Mercaptan

Artists like to use molecular models for making sculptures. This has already been covered on this blog, but I'd like to expand on the subject a little further in this post.
Molecules have certain stable configurations, which are governed by the distribution of their electrons. This is described by something called valence shell electron pair repulsion theory. It's somewhat complicated, but just imagine that electrons are magnets on a sphere that want to be as close to the centre as possible, while being as far apart from each other as possible. So while atoms are always in motion, this means that on average they are found in only a small number of configurations in molecules:

 

 

This kind of spatial configuration is correctly rendered in the large sculpture 'Gas Molecule' commissioned from Marc Ruygrok by the NAM:

This sculpture is supposed to depict methane, or CH₄, with a central carbon atom connected to four hydrogen atoms. Ruygrok has largely copied the common 'ball-and-stick' molecular model, only taking some liberty with the colour scheme.
Although molecules don't have a 'real' colour, there is a convention, called Corey-Pauling-Koltun colouring, for using certain colours for certain atoms. The central atom in Ruygrok's model is carbon, which in this convention is always associated with black, while blue is always associated with nitrogen. If the shiny purple-ish hue of the central atom is considered significant, then this is traditionally linked to phosphorous, but is today more commonly associated with potassium.
These colours are nothing but conventions, so it's not that Ruygrok's choice is wrong per se, but it also isn't 'right' to use blue in this case. Without any other information, any chemist will think this model represents ammonium, not the intended methane.

As already stated, this example uses the so-called ball and stick model, but a more realistic space filling model exists where atoms are depicted as overlapping spheres representing their Van der Waals surface. Molecules in this model consist of interconnected spheres, so that a good separation through size and colour becomes even more important than it is in the ball and stick model. With this in mind, let me present to you 'Calcium 4-[4-(2-methylaninlino)-2,4-dioxobutyl]diazenyl-3-nitrobenzenesulfonate (C.I.13940)' by Jean-Luc Moulène:

This is supposedly a model of the molecular structure of a pigment, Yellow 62, which is then painted in the colour of this pigment. I already pointed out that without adequate differentiation through colour, such a model is hardly able to serve its clarifying function.
It is however clear that Moulène didn't correctly render the molecule he meant to render. When I looked up and drew a model of the pigment, I came up with the following structure:

Even without knowing anything about chemistry, it's obvious that these are are two different structures. In the correct model, there are 41 spheres present, while in Moulène's sculpture one only counts 29 spheres. I did notice that in Moulène's sculpture no hydrogen atoms were depicted, which is somewhat common practice. I therefore counted the amount of hydrogen atoms that should be present, of which there are 15, so if the difference came from the absence of hydrogen, then the amount of spheres would be 26. I therefore have no explanation of where the artist went astray in rendering his model, but it is clear that the molecular model doesn't depict the pigment that he claims.

This could also already be gleaned from the inclusion of 'Calcium' in the sculpture's title. Organocalcium compounds are very uncommon and so the inclusion of calcium in the name most likely means that this is a salt. The SO₃^1- sulphonate group in the molecule, shown in yellow with red, is very reactive  and needs to be ionically bonded to a positively charged atom, Ca²⁺ in this case, to be stable. The double positive charge on the calcium ion is paired with two single negative charges on the other compound, which means that there must be two of the previously shown molecule in the following configuration:

This is of course looks nothing like the molecule in Moulène's sculpture and anybody with knowledge of chemistry could have spotted the error merely from the first word of the title. 

I then noticed the following drawing on the cover of Keith Tyson's publication 'Molecular Compound No 4.':

Comparing this image with the VSEPR models at the beginning of this post, it should be clear that this drawing is not based on any existing molecule. Upon consulting the book, it turned out to contain no further references to reality and consist only of the fantastical imaginings of the artist, so I won't make any further comment on this publication.

I could list more examples of artists that have attempted to employ molecular models, but in short all of these sculptures I've encountered forgone scientific accuracy in some way.
The only one I know of that isn't necessarily wrong was a sculpture that simply used nothing but a commercially available molecular modelling kit. So while this was possibly accurate, it's artistic value was also negligible.

And the reason I've written all this is because I researched the subject while making the following model of a molecule called methyl mercaptan:

Methyl mercaptan, or CH₃SH, is one of the molecules that make farts smell. This model is made of a tennis ball, a black golf ball and four small roulette balls. These generic, store bought, balls are both the right colour and approximately the right size for a CPK-model for a molecular structure, as can be seen in this rendering taken from a molecular drawing program:

This is thus an indication that it's possible to have a novel approach to creating a molecular model without necessarily having to significantly compromise its scientific accuracy.

Paper Plane

At Stephan Balkenhol's exhibiton 'Something is Happening' at the Kunsthal, Rotterdam, a sculpture was on show with the straightforward title 'Paper Plane'.
In this sculpture a man is holding a simple paper airplane above his head. This paper airplane has a bit of an unusual, squarish, shape, that's very different from the pointed darts one usually sees paper airplanes depicted like.
The shape of this airplane is however very similar to the design created by aeronautical engineer Ken Blackburn, which earned him the world record for the longest flight time from the 1980's until the early 2000's: 

 

If we believe that Balkenhol was aware of this airplane design, then the pose of the man in his sculpture becomes interesting. It's a relatively passive pose, vaguely reminiscent of how a child with a kite would stand, holding the thing that is supposed to 'fly' high up in the air. 

 

Yet part of the reason Blackburn held his record for so long was the combination of his throwing technique with the design of the plane. He threw the plane nearly vertically with a speed of close to 100 km/h to get it as high in the air as possible. From there the plane stabilised and had a slow descend.
This is no mean athletic feat and the intensity of the movement is of course very different from the idle attitude commonly associated with a paper airplane.
 

Philips Sport Vereniging

 

In 2008 Fred Smeijers and his company Type Tailors redesigned the logo of Dutch electronics brand Philips, as shown above. The differences are small, but impactful, and it was he first time the wordmark of Philips had been reconsidered since 1968.

At the time, the Philips logo was also featured prominently on the shirts of football club PSV, which was founded by Philips in 1913. As such, the company served as PSV's title sponsor from 1982 untill 2016, when under the leadership of CEO Frans van Houten a decision was made to instead promote the company through faulty health devices.

In either case, there was a brief eight year period during which the redesigned logo was featured on the shirts of the football club PSV. Football shirts are a lucurative market and for more than forty years the Philips logo on the front had been an icon for the succesful club.

It is therefore unsurprising to find that even today a number of shirts can be found that sport the Philips logo.
The above two shirts were Adidas-branded reissues of championship winning shirts from the 80's and 90's. Both these shirts were found on secondhand clothing websites, and what's interesting is that the logo used on both of them is the redesigned logo from 2008, as can be most easily recognised by the the slight slant at the end of the 'L'.
This makes me think that these shirts are counterfeit, given that the 'PSV retro shirt 88-89' that is sold directly from the PSV store today uses the old, period-accurate, logo, as can be seen in the bottom left. It seems hard to imagine that a company the size of Adidas would aquire a license to re-release such a shirt and not bother to consult the other major stakeholder about using the right logo.

As an interesting footnote, it must be mentioned that during the last matches that PSV played with Philips as their title sponsor, they used a kit with the first PSV logo and a 'retro' shape. The Philips logo however was the updated wordmark, keeping in line with other Philips branded products.

On the Scale of Movements

 These are some screengrabs from a video of me doing a skateboard trick I learned recently. It's not a particularly impressive trick, it's just something I hadn't learned in the twenty years prior. When I sent  the video to a friend he said that I was 'making it look easy'.
And the reason he said that was that my arms were very low and close to my body the entire time.
Skateboarding is a perilous activity where you are constantly searching for balance, so mostly you instinctively spread your arms out to find your balance, like a tightrope walker. Yet if you notice my posture, and especially the position of my arms, you'll see my arms are barely raised above my waist the entire time.
I've got a tendency to do things with very restrained movements, and if you think about it for a second, that is exactly what you don't want to do in any activity that involves balance.

 This is a photograph of professional skateboarder Daan van der Linden, and he displays how you do want to position your body while skating. He has his arms wide open and up in the air, with his gaze firmly aimed to where he is going. This is a good and effective mechanism to control your balance.

Yet when I did my skateboard trick, I was effectively walking a tight-rope with the posture of a flaneur. If successful it can be said that this is 'making it look easy', but in reality I have a bit of a reputation of comedically tipping over more often and on simpler tricks than my peers. It can thus be said that generally speaking, skateboarding is an activity that favours large and rapid coordinated movements of the entire body over small inhibited movements of the extremities.

So, you might be wondering, what does this have to do with art?

In art, and particularly in painting, there is also a large difference in those who use restrained movements of wrists and fingers and those who employ larger movements of the arms. Naively this difference can be seen most easily in the existence of large paintings and small paintings.

In much of the common perception, a large painting equals a better painting. Many of the most famous artworks are also among the artists' largest works, like Rembrandt's Nightwatch and Picasso's Guernica. This is probably because art is priced by the meter and thus larger paintings are more expensive. And we all know expensive things are always of higher quality.
Yet in reality I know of very few painters whose work got better when they worked on a large scale.
Although the Nightwatch is Rembrandt's most famous work, it is a fairly unremarkable work in everything but its size.

 If we compare a self-portrait from 1669 with a similarly sized section of the Nightwatch, then the quality difference in the brushstrokes is difficult to ignore.
Large paintings often lack detail and precision, quite simply because it's difficult to perform at a high level for a long amount of time. For example, the average speed of the current world-record for the 100 meter dash is 10,43 m/s, while for the marathon it is 5,84 m/s.
And while stamina is an obvious actor in why large paintings tend to be of lower quality, I also think that a more restrained movement in painting is a very clear indicator of skill. When you think of skilled people, do you see them making large, flailing movements, or do they make small, precise ones? This is also reflected in colloquial uses of 'brute force' versus skill and intelligence.

As I pointed out at the beginning of this post, I'm a person who is very restrained in his movements. I believe this is reflected in the kinds of work I make, but also in the kinds of work I like to see. Much of large scale painting quite frankly has always looked brute and unsophisticated to me and very likely this is because I don't relate, on a personal level, to the the large movements they require. I myself don't move about that way in the world, so it's unappealing to me when other people do.

When I think of other artists whose technical skill I admire, they all seem to work from the fingers, rather than the arm. 

One of the most skilled painters I can think of is Wayne Thibaud. His work is also, usually, relatively small in size. Fortunately there is video footage of him at work available on the internet:

 
Notice how his brushwork is done with small movements of the wrists and fingers.
Contrast this with David Hockney, who is known for his large paintings. His movements are all from the arm. Even when drawing on a small iPad, he draws by holding his wrist straight and moving his arm.

Although there are minor differences in the methods of each artist, generally speaking movements of the fingers are associated with work on small details. And the work of Vija Celmins is probably as detailed as contemporary painting gets.

I also noticed that Jean-Michel Basquiat mostly paints with his wrist, which is interesting cause he tends to work on a large scale.

There is a quick back and forth movement you can only do with your wrist. To do this precisely with your lower arm, or even your full arm, is close to impossible. And because this style of painting technique magnifies a small movement into a larger one, it requires a lot of precision and muscle control, which isn't easy to imitate. This perhaps helps to explain the distinctiveness of his work, despite his many imitators.

The above footage is of Matt Connors at work. He's an artist with technical knowledge of paint and materials, but it's clear that the brushwork itself is almost unskilled. His brushwork is then done with the entire arm, with the hand itself barely moving. As these are large, relatively uncoordinated movements, anybody can learn how to make brushstrokes like this, which isn't necessarily true for the previously mentioned artists.

It's a shame there is not more material available on the physical movements that happen when artists apply paint. There is limited video footage and I've certainly never encountered any text on the subject. Yet it's the essential aspect where the artist quite literally creates the work.

I'm personally partial to restrained and precise movements, which tends to result in small, detailed work. Yet I'm also aware that as a person I move through the world in a much more minute manner than most. It is thus likely that many people don't relate to my way of doing, and instead prefer the more coarse doings of many others.

The Kids Skated Great

This a short clip from a recent video titled JAX AND LUCAS by skateboard videographer William Strobeck. It's characteristic for a style of skateboard videography he developed while making the skateboard film "cherry", that was released in 2014 by the fashion brand Supreme.
This style has since become Strobeck's hallmark, where he focusses more on the skaters' face and feet, instead of on the larger environment in which the trick is done. In Bill's own words: 'That was like the whole thing with cherry, it's like, I wanted to make something that like, you know, not just skaters could watch and still have a feeling or understand that this is what we do every day. It isn't just trick, trick, trick, it's like, you get a sense of what's it's like to be out on the streets.'
While Strobeck has received praise for his novel approach, there are also many in the skateboarding community who don't appreciate the method he developed. As the top comment on YouTube states verbatim: 'kids skated gr8, bill its time to ZOOM TF OUT '.

The above clip was taken from the video Jante – 10:34 by film-maker Fritte Söderström. Fritte's camerawork is almost universally praised, even if both these clips are superficially very similar. The top comment on YouTube for this video says nothing but 'I was missing this type of filming'. Yet both of these clips are filmed from a static position, zoom in on the skaters' face and then switch to the skater's feet shortly before the skater does their trick. Why one of these filming styles is praised while the other is derided thus can't be a simple case of 'zooming tf out', as the previous YouTube user so eloquently phrased it.
Despite their similarities, these two clips are fundamentally different. In order to see why these two clips are so different from each other, we have to take a short lesson on the history of skateboard films.

Skateboard videos matured around the year 2000. During that time videographers were using professional handheld video equipment and were using it with enough skill to provide dynamic and exciting images that were without any technical detriments, such as camera shake. Probably the earliest example of this style was Menikmati, made by Fred Mortagne. This was followed up in 2003 by Sorry. The two clips below are both from Geoff Rowley's part in Sorry and they display the two hallmarks of the 'gold standard' of skateboard videography.

On the top is a clip shot with a fisheye lens. Held low to the ground and pointed up, this distorted wide angle lens allows the videographer to be close to the action and magnify it, while still showing the whole of the skaters' body and the surroundings. By following the subject closely on their own skateboard, the videographer is able to keep the attention on the skater while the surroundings rapidly change behind them.
On the bottom is a similar trick at the same location using a technique called 'rolling long lens' in skateboarding vocabulary. It is the skateboarders' version of a dolly shot, where the videographer rolls on their skateboard, often in opposite direction to the subject, and tracks their movement. This is commonly combined with zooming in or out and it requires considerable skill to keep everything in frame, in focus and moving at the right speed, while keeping balance on your skateboard. Yet if done successfully, it provides images with a lot of movement and action that make even simple tricks look dynamic and cool.

Hopefully this description gave you an impression of what skateboard films looked like at the beginning of the millennium. This style was a technological perfection of methods there were introduced in the early 1990's and very quickly became the norm in the early 2000's.
Towards the end of the 1980's, skateboarding moved out of purpose-built skateparks and into the streets. The attitude was a bit more raw, more 'punk', than it was before. The blood, sweat and tears image of skateboarding comes mostly out of this time. At the same time, video cameras were also getting smaller, cheaper and of higher quality. Notable are the introduction of Video8 and later DV, as well as the Sony DCR-VX1000 camera, which was introduced in 1995 and is still used to make skateboard films today.
The most influential video of this era was undoubtedly Blind skateboards' Video Days. Incidentally this was also the first movie directed by Spike Jonze, who has by now had a long and storied career that includes starting skateboarding brand 'Girl', creating tv-show Jackass and winning an Academy Award for best screenplay.

Mark Gonzales' part in Video Days starts with the following sequence which has since become an iconic reference point in the history of skateboarding:

Set to John Coltrane's Traneing In, the shaky and unsteady camera work seems to spontaneously react to the skaters' movements. Compare and contrast this with the clean and steady work of French Fred above, where the videographer becomes almost invisible. The premise of following the skaters' movements with dynamic camerawork has stayed the same, but between 1991 and 2003 the skills of the videographers have greatly improved.
This era also saw the the featured skateboarders themselves becoming very involved in the technical aspects of the videography, like in the provocatively titled film Jump Off A Building by Jamie Thomas and Ed Templeton.

Before this, the skateboard video as we know it today started with Stacy Peralta's The Bones Brigade Video Show and other videos that were produced by his company Powell-Peralta during the 1980's.

This is Ray Barbee in 1989's Ban This. Peralta's films are more cinematic compared to modern skateboard films. The pacing is a lot slower, there is less emphasis on individual tricks and there are often narrative elements present. A number of them were also shot on 16 or 35mm film, which becomes quite costly in the world of skateboarding, where a single trick often requires dozens of takes.
Although Peralta's films are still very watchable today, his style never found any imitators outside his own company.
The legendary Tony Hawk was sponsored by Powell-Peralta for a long time and when his own company Birdhouse first set out to make a film, he was influenced by Peralta and wanted it to be a full length (i.e. 30 minutes or longer) film that was entirely shot on 16 or 35mm film. It was released in 1998 and was aptly titled The End, as I believe it's the last skateboard film to attempt this. In Tony's own words: 'We decided to produce a video that would set us apart from other companies. The raw–and, in many cases, poorly shot–style of video had been the staple of the skate video market, but I thought it was time to step up and make a video that would have the longevity good Powell videos have had.'

So while a lot of things have changed and developed during those two decades, two things were established from the very beginning that make skateboarding look interesting and exciting, while still communicating the necessary details about the trick and the obstacle.
The first is that the camera itself should be in motion. This is pretty self-explanatory and the famous dolly-zoom technique used in regular cinema is a perfect example of this concept.
The second thing is that for communicating the trick accurately, you have to show the obstacle as well. This is a common mistake other sports journalists make when documenting skateboarding. They tend to focus too much on the person and not enough on their surroundings. To be even more specific, you need a strong connection to the ground in order to show skating well. Establishing the relationship of the skater to the ground they are on is of vital importance in giving your audience a feel for the trick the skateboarder is performing.

In 2007 we arguably saw the high watermark of the 'standard' skate video with Lakai footwear's Fully Flared. This film was a massive production and ran about an hour and a half in length, within an industry that usually measures its films' duration in minutes.
Between 2000 and 2007 the norm was definitely set for the making of a skateboard film, so it was only natural that after this time people started to appreciate various deviations from this norm.

Ty Evans, who made Fully Flared together with Spike Jonze, sought even greater technical perfection, with extremely high production values in his later videos. Through a collaboration with RED cinematic camera's, his modus operandi since the 2010's includes upgrading the rolling long-lens shot to a full camera vehicle with a € >50.000 camera strapped to the front.

On the other side we also have a group of people whose camera work got more slow, with more static shots that show the landscape, which in turn results in a more documentary feel. Jim Greco, a professional skateboarder with a long and prolific career, now focusses his attention on slower paced films showing much of what surrounds skateboarding. The plainly titled film The Skateboarding of Leandre Sanders And Ludvig Håkansson is a good example. Another example would be the land and island films by UK-based film-maker Jim Craven. Subtitled Tom Day and Zach Riley's journey from Land's End to John O'Groats, the film is exactly what it says it would be.

Besides a number of film-makers whove opted for a more static approach, there has been an even larger group that instead went with even more expressive and dynamic camera work, including the post-production, where the film-making itself becomes interwoven in the fabric of the film. This is mainly seen in films made outside the United States of America. Aforementioned Fritte Söderström is a perfect example of this, but also the Japan-based Far East Skate Network deserves to be mentioned, as well as the work of Zach Chamberlin, who rose to fame through Montreal-based skateboard brand Magenta. Independent film-maker Colin Read and his film Spirit Quest must also not be left out, as his evident proficiency in 'editing on the beat' has lead him to create music videos for bands like Radiohead.
A related phenomenon is that a lot of people who are simply really good skateboarders are using those skills on the board and are combining them with videography to create novel approaches. Gustav Tønnesen and Chris Gregson are extremely talented, sponsored, skateboarders, but these days they are probably equally famous for the film-making they have done.

In contrast to these various people who are all interested in pushing the envelope in their own way, we also have a group of people who instead go in the opposite direction. They take advantage of the abundant and cheap, if somewhat out-dated, technology that is available, by making lo-fi films that build upon the DIY and zine aesthetic that has been present throughout skateboarding's history.
The lowest of the lo-fi that still managed to achieve 'mainstream' recognition is probably skateboard company Fancy Lad. Their films are a glorious mess, incorporating camera glitches, scratches on the lenses, skaters that accidentally kick the camera, and wholly inadequate lighting. You name the imperfection and they proudly set it to some obnoxious musical arrangement for your viewing pleasure. The means by which some trick has been recorded seems of secondary, or even tertiary, importance in these videos and the tricks, which are equally out-of-the-box, are at the centre of attention.

Yet amidst all the chaos those videos bestow upon the viewer, they do stick to the two basic 'rules' outlined before; their camera is often physically in motion, and the ground is always visible. And as a result they're still quite palatable to your average skateboard audience.

Which brings us all the way back to Bill Strobeck and the beginning of this text. In his approach to filming skateboarding, Strobeck constantly breaks these rules of good taste by detaching the skateboarder from the ground, and filming from a static position, using an unusually long lens to counteract the lack of camera movement. In doing so, he flaunts the conventions of skateboard filming, which has provided him with equally as many supporters as detractors. In all likelihood Strobeck hasn't been the first to break these two basic 'rules', but he is definitely the first person to do so consistently and deliberately.
What is also telling as that these techniques were first introduced in "cherry", which is a film produced by a fashion brand. The style Strobeck developed is remarkably similar to the techniques employed by fashion brands creating videos from their runway shows. In those videos the film-makers naturally focus on the models and attempt to detach them from their immediate surroundings. 

This is an effective technique to highlight the models as well as the brand that creates the clothes they wear. Therefore this technique does make the skaters in Strobecks' film appealing to Supreme's target audience; an in-crowd of self-proclaimed cool and stylish individuals.
So while I see the value of Strobeck's methods as a technique with a singular purpose, the widespread use of similar styles by other people for projects that still wish to have skateboarding at their core has lead many to criticise Strobeck and his imitators by gently reminding them that it's time to zoom tf out.

Baker 4

A professional skateboarder can call himself a professional because he has sponsorship deals with some skateboarding related companies.

To become a professional skateboarder, one naturally has to posses some above-average abilities, but just as important is having something that sets you apart from the many others who posses similar abilities. It are these characteristics, such as a recognisable trick selection, a distinct fashion sense, some outspoken personality traits or even a noticeable name, that give a professional skater a marketability that leads consumers to identify with them and subsequently purchase the products they represent.

While most sports rely on the metrics of competition to display the notable characteristics of their athletes, skateboarding has found its own marketing medium for its more intangible traits. This medium is the skatevideo. 

Skateboarding brands commonly have about ten to twenty skaters on their 'team', much like the stable of an art gallery. Up until the 2010's and the advent of social media, the primary way a company would showcase this team was through videos of roughly 30 minutes to two hours in length. They were sold in stores on VHS or DVD and released every two to three years. 

In these videos each skateboarder on the team had a section for themselves. Such a section is also known as a 'video part' and they are the considered the primary achievement in a skateboarders' career. A video part is typically 3 to 5 minutes long and is a sort of highlight reel of what tricks the person has performed in the last few years. These parts are usually set to a piece of (popular) music and the song that accompanies a video part tend to become heavily associated with the skateboarder in question, as well as how their audience perceives them.

One of the professional skateboarders who posses a very recognisable image is Dustin Dollin.

Dollin came to prominence in the early 2000's, with video parts in the videos Baker Bootleg, Baker 2g and Baker 3. All these video were unsurprisingly produced by his board sponsor Baker. 

Dollin also had major parts in Chicagof from clothing brand Volcom and Sight Unseen, a video published by the now-defunt magazine Transworld Skateboarding.

With these parts Dollin became known for being somewhat of a powerhouse who knew no fear and could jump down the biggest gaps without flinching. At the same time, he cultivated somewhat of a rock'n'roll image, with alcohol use featuring prominently in this. 

 

This kind of behaviour isn't an uncommon sight in the skateboarding industry. There are numerous examples of famous skateboarders who are 'washed up' by the time they hit their thirties because of injuries or alcohol and drug abuse. 

The skateboarders in their forties who still work in the industry have almost always transitioned into other aspects of the business. There is of course the example of Tony Hawk and the famous video games named after him, but there are also people like Ed Templeton, who now entertains a successful art career with the same kind of photos he used to shoot for his skateboard company Toy Machine.

By the time Dustin Dollin hit his thirties, he was still 'just' a skateboarder, albeit a much less prolific one than he had been in the early 2000's. Occasionally he featured in videos published by his sponsors, but his contributions rarely consisted of anything more than a few unremarkable tricks.

Dollin's only genuine video part in the period between 2007 and 2019 was his part in Propeller. This was the first video released by Vans, a shoe company which has sponsored Dollin since 1999. This part however was only a minute long, versus an average length of three to five minutes.

In 2016 Dollin also had a part in Holy Stokes! produced by long-time clothing sponsor Volcom. This part is unique in the history of skateboarding in that it only showed Dollin's slams, with not a single successful trick being performed. While highlighting failure isn't unusual in the skateboarding world, it is uncommon that this isn't offset with a glorious triumph. It seemed as if Dollin was trying to bite off more than he could chew in the tricks he attempted and all he had to show for it were images of him choking on the pieces.

 

After an extended period of silence surrounding Dollin's skateboarding, we arrive in 2019.

It has been about twelve years since Dollin has produced a video part that adheres to the norms of the skateboard industry. At this point it can very well be argued that Dollin's recognisable public image is the only reason he still retains his sponsors. Yet this is an image of a heavy drinker, largely unable to perform the tricks that had made him famous. That his alcoholism hasn't landed him in jail or the morgue is seen as a positive and his only redeeming quality is that he's still featured regularly in promotional videos, even if he's often not skating in those videos. 

In the latter half of the 2010's, Dollin was considered somewhat of a court jester; entertaining to be around, but not to be taken too seriously.

It is in this climate that the long awaited Baker 4 is released. This video is the sequel to Baker 3, which was at that point 14 years old and can be considered the high-water mark of Dollin's skateboarding career.

In a brilliant move, the song chosen for Dollin's part in Baker 4 is 'The Comeback' by Alex Cameron.

The opening lines to that song are 'You been in showbiz long enough, you get a grip on how things work / But that don't mean it ain't a surprise when they come to take your show / I been in showbiz long enough / You need to wait your turn / wait your turn like me.'

The part starts with Dollin attempting a trick and breaking his board on the landing, before walking away unscathed and smiling to the camera. After a few other tricks at the same location, a harder fall is shown, but Dollin is still laughing and lands the trick immediately after. A contented Dollin is then seen petting a dog.

This cuts abruptly to Dollin mid-trick at a completely different location, falling to the ground. Sitting on the floor after his fall, he immediately reaches for his jacket pocket and takes out a cigarette. 'They say the kids don't wanna see / an old dog sing and dance' plays in the background. 

The whole part has a decidedly slower pace then most skateboarder's videoparts, with tricks being shown twice, many images of Dollin hanging out and longer than normal cuts of his run-ups and roll-aways, which are often accompanied by audible cries of celebration in the background. 

During the longest celebration scene, many of Dollin's friends can be seen hugging and cheering, while the song's lyrics go 'They ignored my lawyer / and they ignored my wife / and I just sat there thinking / I hate my god-damned life'. This cuts to the next clip, showing Dollin standing in the rain, amping himself up for yet another trick. 'I used to be the number one entertainer / now I'm bumpkin with a knife / I'll never get my show back' the song continues, as Dollin jumps down a wall and slams so hard he bounces back up from the concrete floor. For a whole 12 seconds, the camera slowly zooms in on Dollin lying stooped in pain while the rain continues to fall upon him. The cameraman asks him: 'Yeah Dustin! You alright?' and in response Dollin raises an index finger, telling us he's going to need a minute. 

After a friend puts his arm around his shoulder in support, Dollin is seen back up on the wall. It's a different day, with the rain no longer falling. He makes his trick, shouting 'Fuck yeah', while the song exclaims 'We're gonna get my show back'. The next clip comes and the song continues; 'Come on we're gonna get my show / I got too much love stored in me / I got a pain you'll never know / You'll never get my show' and it slowly fades out as Dollin lands his final trick, riding away with a somewhat pained expression on his face. 

The part ends with him walking and falling to the ground, seemingly exhausted.

What struck me about this videopart is that it was an honest portrait of Dustin Dollin at that point in his life and his career. He might even be shown as quite vulnerable and fragile, which is highly unusual for a skateboarder. A videopart is a showcase of abilities and challenges overcome. To emphasize the fact that despite his best efforts, Dollin has to take a step back from what he used to be able to accomplish doesn't sit well with the idea of a skatevideo as promotional material for a business.

What is also interesting about this part is that it's a cumulation of a development that lasted almost fifteen years. For this part to have any kind of impact on its audience, they have to be familiar with his achievements of more than a decade earlier, as well as his subsequent failures and shortcomings. Dollin has been successful at maintaining a career in skateboarding for over twenty years, but this rare feat has also come at a price and this videopart somehow manages to acknowledge both sides of that coin.

In the end Dollin's part is an honest celebration of an unusual life trajectory which one is hard-pressed to find anywhere else and for that it deserves to be highlighted far beyond its original context.

In Between the Sticks

In my younger years I used to play football competitively. I was a goalkeeper, in fact. Being a goalkeeper is an unenviable and oft berated position that nevertheless felt very natural and comfortable to me.

It wasn't until recently that I noticed the similarities between the goalkeeper's place in the game of football and my current position in relationship to art and its institutions.

 

A goalkeeper is a special kind of player, an outlier with an individual mentality, nested firmly in a team sport. Goalkeepers are allowed to do things the other players aren't allowed to do, but these special abilities confine them to a position that somewhat excludes them from the rest of the game.

The position they occupy nevertheless allows them great insight into the game as it unfolds in front of their eyes and it is worth noting that this game would be very different if the goalkeeper didn't hold this particular position. Without goalkeepers there would be no tactics, no depth, in football. A goalkeeper is the only thing that prevents the degenerate strategy of hucking the ball in the direction of the goal as soon as play commences. Many of the other rules in football are a consequence of this simple requirement and it is the clever manipulation of those rules that gives the game any kind of sophistication.

Although a goalkeeper is the only player whose presence is required in the rules of football, for most of the game they have little active participation in it. A goalkeeper spends much of his time waiting and watching the other players. As a goalkeeper you have to carefully observe how the others are playing, what decisions they make and how that affects the bigger game surrounding them.

Although you're reliant on yourself and yourself alone for much of the time, you can't afford to let your concentration slip and stop paying attention, because from one second to the next you can be asked to respond to an attack that is suddenly coming towards you.

When an attack is mounting, the odds are firmly stacked against you. There is nobody else defending the goal and you are solely responsible for keeping the ball out of a rectangle that at 2.44 meters is much taller than you are and at 7.32 meters is much more wide than you can jump.

Only by anticipating the actions of others can you provide any kind of defence. Based on your observations you can give your teammates directions on where they could be aiding the defence. It's therefore important that your judgement is always sound, as only a team that trusts and respects your assessment of the situation will follow those instructions.

Yet sometimes all the insight and anticipation in the world is not enough to prevent an opponent coming straight at you with the intention to kick the ball as hard as possible in your direction. As a goalkeeper your best chance of stopping this course of action is to move forward, straight into the path of your opponent. The fear of such a direct and forceful confrontation is something you will get used to, although it will never completely go away. It's unnatural to put yourself in harms way of a ball that's about to be launched at maximum force and at times this ball is directly followed by the full mass of the person kicking it. 

Pain is unavoidable for a goalkeeper and there is zero room for theatrics, because every moment you aren't upright and ready for action is an opportunity for the other team to score.

It requires courage to overcome the natural fear of such physical confrontations and it takes skill and precision to do so repeatedly without injury.

The physical skills required for goalkeeping are indeed manifold. You don't only need to catch and throw a ball, a goalkeeper also needs all the other skills a competent football player possesses. I would think that any good goalkeeper is automatically an above average football player, while a good football player doesn't necessarily have any talent as goalkeeper. 

A goalkeeper gets to use their hands to exert fine control over the ball, in contrast to the somewhat coarse but high-powered movements of a leg. This tactility tends to give goalkeepers a greater feeling for material aspects. Goalkeepers can obsess over their gloves, the ball, the condition of the pitch, the angle of the sun, the temperature of the air. All these things have influence on how a ball behaves on the field, so it's important to be in tune with the way those factors interact with each other. 

Even with the attention focussed on the more delicate movements, physical power is just as essential in goalkeeping and you need strong legs to quickly move your body to where it needs to be. I personally took great pride in being the fastest sprinter of my team during training sessions and if all you can do is dive towards the ball at the last possible instant, you're not going to last long as a goalkeeper.

 

While a goalkeeper trains to have the upper hand in a direct confrontation, it's always better to appease the situation before it becomes dangerous. That is a mental aspect to goalkeeping that presents itself in an odd duality. Goalkeeping simultaneously requires the ability to dominate others and claim a large space for yourself with your presence, yet also asks of you to make yourself subordinate to the bigger game. You have to be respected for your calm and integrity by your own team and feared for your uncompromising nature by your opponents. Because of your inability to actively influence a positive outcome of a game, you are also both the least and most crucial member of the team. 

Despite the many different skills and talents one must master, there is a Sisyphean aspect to goalkeeping. There is no such thing as winning for a goalkeeper and the best one can do is not to lose.

If you are faced with the impossible task of defending a penalty kick and by some extraordinary feat you managed to keep the ball out of the goal, all you have achieved is that you have kept the score from changing. 

At least for the moment, anyway.

Spectator Sport

It always confuses me when I see people trying to define art by examining how it affects the spectator.

It would seem naturally ludicrous if one were to attempt to describe the game of tennis by how the spectators behave, so why is this a common occurrence in art? 

 

 

Anticipation and Decision Making in Sport

Today marks the day that I will start reading the book Anticipation and Decision Making in Sport: Theories and Applications, edited by A. Mark Williams and Robin C. Jackson.

You might wonder what this has to do with art and to explain the connection let me give you a quote from the 2003 publication Action Science, edited by Wolfgang Prinz:
'Professional basketball players are better able to predict whether or not an observed basketball shot will be successful than are sports journalists, who have extensive experience observing, but not producing, basketball shots.'

I found this telling for the relationship between somebody who produces, say an artist, and somebody who perceives the produced, say a critic. I also expect to find more quotes like this one in this book and hope to amend to this post with whatever catches my interest in the coming weeks.

19-5-2020: '[...] much work is still needed to understand fully how visual information is perceived and how this interacts dynamically with other perceptual or cognitive sources to result in the skillful motor act performed by few but enjoyed by many.'
Granted, this one is a little bit suggestive and its associations with art fall away in proper context, but as the final sentence in the first article, I thought it deserved a place anyway.

20-5-2020: 'Lesser skilled performers, in contrast, have accumulated less practice hours and so they have less sophisticated knowledge structures to guide their perceptual and cognitive processes, such that they are less able to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information sources. Consequently, information is encoded inefficiently, or irrelevant information is encoded, and there are fewer previously encountered situations in memory against which to judge this information. The net result of such processing is that pattern recognition is impaired (i.e. slower and/or less accurate).'

21-5-2020: 'While objective probabilities may not always be available, researchers have suggested that through frequent/repeated exposure to an opponent, expert athletes develop expectations that accurately reflect the probabilities associated with that opponents playing tendencies.'
And from the same article on contextual information:
'While expert athletes have developed the ability to intentionally generate expectations of how an opponent is likely to behave in order to improve their chances of anticipating effectively, in certain situations acting in accordance with these expectations can have negative effects. Specifically, if the action outcome is incongruent with the information used to form these expectations, anticipation and/or performance can be impaired. Mann and colleagues (2014) observed that participants who had developed expectations reflecting an opponent's action preferences experienced superior performance only if the action preference continued. When the opponent did not display this action preference, these expectations led to decrements in performance. Furthermore, susceptibility to deception may be increased when the intention conveyed by the fake action is aligned with the performer's expectations.' 
Further: 'Research on the congruence effect suggests that expert athletes should avoid developing expectations of the upcoming event due to the detrimental effect of using this information when it is incongruent with the action outcome. However, this finding appears contradictory to the notion of that expertise is characterised by the more effective and efficient use of domain-specific information to anticipate the opponent's intentions.'

23-5-2020: 'In order to pick up meaningful information from an array of visual information, skilled athletes typically use structured and systematic visual search patterns rather than merely random strategies.'
'in one-on-one defensive scenarios in football, during the early movement phases, elite players fixate more frequently on the knee and hip regions of their opponent, whilst novices fixate more frequently on the ball' 'In addition to the analysis of gaze location, scientists have examined the rate at which the fixations transition between different locations. The key finding is that, when compared with less-skilled performers, skilled athletes often make fewer fixations of longer duration.'
'Research into sport performers has consistently demonstrated positive effects of physical exertion on the speed of performing visual search tasks, but this is moderated by factors including physical fitness and skill level.'

3-6-2020: 'In keeping with Sors et al., Canal-Bruland, Müller, Lach and Spence recently showed that the louder the sounds of the contact between the racket and ball in tennis, the longer experienced tennis players estimated the ball's trajectory to be. Notably, participants were not aware that the sound had been manipulated and hence the sound had implicitly biased their judgements.'
' The common coding theory predicts that the degree of overlap between perceptual and motor representations will determine the extent to which perception may be enhanced by motor expertise. It follows that humans should be perceptually more attuned to actions that match their own motor experience and skills.'

4-6-2020: 'expert athletes efficiently use gaze behaviours to extract important information from the visual scene, can ignore distractions and focus attention and posses the capability to integrate multiple sources of information with previous experiences to accurately anticipate opponents' movements.'
'Empirical evidence has established that state anxiety interferes with a variety of perceptual processes, such as visuospatial working memory and attentional shifting. Additionally, deficiencies in visual search behaviour have been documented under anxiety-inducing conditions, including decreased information extraction using foveal and peripheral vision, increased gaze time on task-irrelevant stimuli, increased visual search rates, decreased ability to detect targets, alterations in visual fixation duration and changes in the quiet-eye period. Deficits in the ability to effectively use contextual information to make accurate anticipatory judgements have also been reported.'

5-6-2020: 'Beyond the study of basic cognitive processes, such as perception, memory, and attention, research using neuroscience methods has led to the realisation that a large proportion of human brain circuitry is involved in understanding, predicting, and reacting to the actions of other people.'
'In a TMS study (Aglioti, Cesari, Romani, & Urgesi, 2008), basketball athletes predicted the outcome of shots at the basket earlier and more accurately than observers with relevant visual experience (coaches and sports journalists). TMS [Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation] applied to the motor cortex revealed facilitation of MEPs [Motor Evoked Potentials] that occurred only in the visual-motor experts (expert basketballers) and not in the visual experts (experienced coaches). This effect occurred only when participants viewed shots that were destined to miss, only at the point of release, and only in one hand muscle that is involved in controlling the ball's trajectory. This study provided evidence in favour of the finely tuned coupling of visual and motor experience (motor resonance) as the basis for anticipation in sport.'  This is about the same study that the citation at the beginning of this post relates to.

14-6-2020: 'an observer's motor abilities (such as their ability to kick or throw accurately) exert a direct effect on perceptual understanding of these actions in others. It is thought that the brain uses motor representations, based on past experiences, to internally simulate the actions observed in others to aid in the anticipation of action consequences.'
'In several studies, researchers have shown that people are better able to recognise and/or predict the consequences of their own actions, compared to those of others. For example, they were better able to predict the landing position of a dart thrown previously by themselves, rather than others, just by viewing body kinematics (i.e. no dart flight was shown).'
'Physically trained performers were better able to predict the trajectory of their own strokes than those of others, even though none of the ball flight was shown, and the athletes were shown only as moving points of light.'
'Both groups that received physical practice (with and without vision) improved at the prediction task in comparison to no-practice and observation-only groups, and improvements were seen in the early frames before dart release. These results confirmed the suggestion that motor experience is important for predictive accuracy, and at least for a task based on passive observation, visual experience was not.'

19-6-2020: 'Fajen proposed that the visual control of behaviour is predicated on a performer's information use which is calibrated to their own capabilities, which place an action boundary on the control of prospective actions.'

20-6-2020: 'It is predicted that the ability of performers to recognise advance cues in the environment, which enables them to anticipate what will happen next, will likely place them in a better position to make decisions that are unexpected and less easily predicted by their opponent(s), thereby facilitating tactical creativity.'
'A narrow breadth of attention limits the amount of stimuli and information that can be perceived and reduces the potential of discovering unique and original solutions. A wide breath of attention makes it possible to associate different stimuli that initially appear to be irrelevant. The findings by Memmert (2007) highlight the fact that using an attention-broadening programme can promote the development of creativity in children.'
'One of the assumptions of the common theory (discussed by Cropley, 1995) is confirmed; high intelligence is correlated with low to moderate levels of creativity, whilst higher levels of game intelligence are accompanied by higher tactical creativity.'
'Many researchers have shown that creativity must be learned and developed early in life.' 'Comparisons between age constellations show that creativity of performance in children and adolescents does not develop linearly. From 7 to 10 years of age, considerable increases in tactical creativity are evident. This can be connected to the fact that the absolute number of synapses and the synapse density reaches its maximum in this age range.'

23-6-2020: 'In particular, people tend to base their estimates on information from non-random samples and they are usually unaware that this is occurring and are thus unable to correct any biased samples. In addition, the environment can selectively provide relevant information to the decision maker. To all these factors, the influence of emotional and motivational processes must be added, which play a major role in judgement and decision making.'
'Within the heuristics and biases point of view, the most significant flaw of judgement by intuition is the inconsistency that people demonstrate. For example, information presented to human judges on several occasions leads them to different conclusions, although there is no change in the information itself.' 'Nevertheless, experts often overestimate the quality of their predictions and are usually convinced that their intuition, gut feelings and experience cannot mislead them.'
 'The judgement and decision making-based simple heuristic perspective of recognition relies on the fact that one decision option is recognised and the other is not. For instance, it has been show that when amateur tennis players are asked to predict the outcome of individual matches, in the majority of the cases (90%) in which the participants recognise only one of the players, they predicted the recognised player would win.'

27-6-2020: 'The research discussed here highlights that thinking too much, be it about the process of decision making or ruminating about poor past decisions, is detrimental to performance.'

6-7-2020: ' Gilis et al. showed that international-level football assistant referees were significantly more accurate than national-level assistant referees in recalling the spatial position of players in complex offside situations.' 'As with athletes, these findings show that the ability to process game information is a crucial component of expertise that contributes to better decision making.'
'When compared to sub-elite referees, elite referees spent significantly more time fixating on the most informative cues emerging from the attacking player (contact zone) and less time fixating on the body part that was not involved in the infringement (non-contact zone). It appears that elite-level referees are able to discern relevant from irrelevant information and their visual search behaviour appears to be primarily driven by acquired knowledge structures. In contrast, the sub-elite referees, having acquired less experience, are often misled by salient and irrelevant information.'
'In regard to perceiving the event, researchers have shown that viewing perspective is an essential factor that contributes to the accuracy of decisions. In association football, error rates for foul decisions are lowest when incidents are assessed from a distance of 11-15 metres.'
'Brand, Schmidt, and Schneeloch showed that basketball referees penalised contact situations differently when presented in the original match order compared to a random presentation order.' 'Moreover, other contextual information, such as a player's or a team's uniform, reputation, or physical appearance, can bias the decisions of officials.'
'Researchers have shown that experience from match competitions and play activities may contribute to individual performance differences. For example, the majority of elite officials were players prior to their officiating career. There are only limited data available in this regard; however, a link has been identified between the quality of sports officials' judgements and their motor and visual experiences. This is consistent with an embodied cognition viewpoint, which predicts that both motor and visual experience support perceptual expertise.' 

22-7-2020: 'Traditionally, this coach intervention involves subjective observations that can potentially be unreliable, inaccurate, or both because they are based on perceptions, biases, and previous experiences. For example, international-level football coaches could only recall 30% of the key variables that determined success and were less than 45% correct in a postgame assessment of what occurred during the game (Franks & Miller, 1991).
'The challenge in developing training interventions that facilitate the development of anticipation and decision making using video and other performance analysis methods is the near absence of any empirical work upon which to base such research, with the notable exception of the recent papers by García-González et al. (2013) and Gil-Arias et al. (2015). Yet, the area is ripe for well-conducted experimental work in order to shift the culture towards one driven by the need for evidence-based interventions rather than the current over-reliance on intuition, anecdote, and historical precedence.
We call for researchers to conduct more work in this area using traditional pre- to post-test research designs and measures of retention and transfer. Moreover, adequate control and placebo groups are needed to allow for better evaluation of the effectiveness of these types of interventions, and to determine the extent to which any improvements transfer to the field setting.'

On Skateboard Photography and a Way of Looking at Things

This is a story about artists and their ability to look.
Not too long ago, a friend showed me a number of photos another artist had collected. In these photos, a person was either jumping or falling and the artist noted that people were surprisingly bad at noticing the small differences in this ambiguity.
‘In this one, for example, do you think this girl is jumping or falling?’
‘Jumping’, I replied immediately.
He was surprised. ‘Most people think she’s falling’, he said.
I replied quite intuitively and without much thinking that there is no way she could have fallen because her arms were straight up in the air and very tense. Nobody falls like that, as you try to find your balance when you fall by redistributing your weight and the straight arms imply some amount of determination.

To me this was supposed to be common knowledge, available to everybody in the world, but I realised that even a simple thing such as inferring what happened right before a certain moment from the details in another person’s body is not something that is innate in us. It has to be learned. I took a second, and I realised I had learned this by looking at skateboard photography.

Skateboard photography is not like other sports photography. Sports photography hardly ever captures a crucial moment and tends to serve better as a sort of general illustration to a verbal description that accompanies it.
This is not the case with skateboard photography. A skateboard trick is often composed of a series of relatively small movements that when combined last about a second or two. Unlike something like a javelin throw, however, each skateboard trick is done in a different physical context. Even courses designed for competition change at every event and thus some amount of environmental detail is necessary for a photograph of a skateboard trick to make sense. Of course you can describe the surroundings in words, but as everybody knows, it’s much easier to show a space in a picture.
The goal in a skateboard photograph is thus to accurately convey the entire story of the trick. Where the skater comes from, what part he actually performs the trick on, what the trick is, sometimes even what trick the current trick is combined with, where he will ride away and how likely it is that the trick was successful on this particular attempt.
This seems like a lot of information to gather from a single moment that lasted less than 1/1000 of a second, yet after a bit of experience it becomes almost second nature. As a skateboarder who grew up with printed media, all this information is readily available to me and even other details such as whether the skateboarder is right- or left footed can be learned from a glance at a single still.

Though I must say that I had to learn to identify these subtleties and I remember eleven-year-old-me studying them very consciously, analysing the photographs that had presented me with the seeming impossibility of piecing together the entire story of what these skaters were doing.
There are two tricks in particular that stand out in my memory. The noseslide and tailslide. As the name implies, one of these is done on the front, or nose, of the board, the other on the tail.
So a noseslide looks like this:

While a tailslide looks like this:

If you know nothing about skateboarding you are probably looking at these pictures as if they were nearly identical and indeed, that’s the way I saw them when I was eleven years old. I knew, however, that there was supposed to be a difference and the difference lies in the way a skater approaches the object in each of the tricks. Riding up to slide on an obstacle a skaters' board is parallel to the obstacle, while the wanted end position is near-perpendicular to it. An ollie, the way to jump on a skateboard, works by tapping the back really hard and then moving your weight forward to drag the front up as it is suspended in the air. If one understands this correctly, it becomes obvious that a noseslide is a far easier trick, as it allows the person to move his weight towards the obstacle, while in a tailslide the weight of your upper body initially wants to moves away from it, before the lower half can make contact with the obstacle.

When you look at the previous to photographs closely, you can see how this is reflected in the positions of the body of both people. The guy doing the noseslide has his arms perpendicular to the obstacle and in a straight line with his board. This follows from him trying to guide his board nose first towards the obstacle.
The guy performing the tailslide, on the other hand, has his arms parallel to the obstacle and nearly perpendicular to his board. This also follows from the nature of the trick, where the position of his upper body guides his mass alongside the obstacle, while his board moves with the front away from the obstacle.
An observant reader may have also concluded that these two skaters are going in opposite directions. The guy performing the noseslide came from the left hand side and moves towards the right, while the guy performing the tailslide came from the right hand side and moves towards the left.
It thus seems that the basics of observing a single moment in order to understand what happened before and after are not that difficult to grasp, yet it tends to elude even the most accomplished sports photographers. To a skateboarder, the photographs professional sports photographers tend to make of skateboarding are laughable, as they say nothing about these existing contexts, often providing only a moment of ‘intensity’.
On the other hand, accomplished skate photographers have often gone on to make great careers in documenting other sports, such as Atiba Jefferson in the NBA and Chris Ray in the NHL. Their experience with constructing an entire story has given them considerable advantage to most other photographers that are merely trying to capture ‘the moment’.

Something comparable tends to happen in art. The ability to gather this kind of information from an image is often called visual knowledge and is supposed to be related to one’s ability to look. On the contrary, one’s ability to 'look' has nothing to do with your ability to recognise another person’s actions, as is exemplified in the anecdote that started this story. As artworks are the results of things done by people, being skilled in both telling the story of an action, as well as understanding its necessities, will be far more important than the way one looks at a sunset for its perceived beauty.

Made for Skateboarding

The relationship between skateboarding and art has always been a peculiar one.
As skateboarding is an activity related to the creativity and capabilities of individuals, skateboarders have many personality traits in common with artists.
However, generally speaking skateboarders are not artists. No matter what they do and no matter how far on the fringes of society they operate, everything that makes them skateboarders is related to the possibilities of a four-wheeled piece of wood. The notion of what could be art from a skateboarders perspective must thus be considered from within these possibilities, not with the mindset of someone outside the subculture.

There are a few archetypes of skateable objects; stairs, rails, ledges, banks and quarter-, half- or full-pipes, otherwise known as transition. The materials used for these are also somewhat predetermined. Slide- and grindable surfaces, like rails and ledges, are preferably in metal or hard stone like granite, for a minimum amount of friction. Banks and other kind of surfaces to ride upon are preferably even, so there are no obstructions for the small wheels of a skateboard. Wood and concrete are common materials. That the options in the level editor of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 were exactly these categories confirms these observations.

Furthermore, there exist a number of sculptures in public space that resemble those archetypes in some shape or form. These are often sought out by skateboarders as a kind of creative spot to skate on. A case in point is PJ Ladd's ghetto bird on Claes Oldenburg's Dropped Bowl With Scattered Slices and Peels.

In a kind of reverse analogy, skateboarders, companies and organisers of events often believe that making skateboarding obstacles that resemble sculptures will make them into art. More often than not, these are simply variations on the above mentioned archetypes which are then painted with varying degrees of inventiveness. Examples include Vans Downtown Showdown and Transworld's Skate and Create series, illustrated below.

Note how they are all just transitions and banks with perfectly grindable edges fabricated from angle iron. While probably fun to skate and mostly interesting in appearance, they add nothing to the basic vocabulary of what is possible for a skateboard.
Taking the cake on the complete lack of artistry is Red Bull's Skate Space in Jefferson Park, Seattle. It is nothing more than a round curb situated in front of some extremely large red circles. As one would expect from a company like Red Bull, its value in both the artistic realm as well as its skateability is next to nil.

More recently cities and museums have noticed skateboarders' interest in generic sculpture, commissioning artists to make skateable sculptures. This is partly in response to skateboarders indicating their dissatisfaction with prefabricated, uncreative, obstacles and partly as a way to integrate skateboarding better into public life.
The first example is A free ride by Raphaël Zarka. He remade Tony Smith's Free Ride in wood with angle iron, essentially creating a THPS2 level editor version of Smith's famous piece.
A similar strategy was employed by Jonathan Monk for the city of Philadelphia in 2015. With what undoubtedly must have been a much larger budget, Monk had some replicas made of two nearby Sol Lewitt sculptures. These were not constructed in the open concrete of the originals, instead they were constructed in wood clad with angle iron, the skateboarders building method of choice.

As you can see, the shapes and materials of 'sculptures' that are used by, made by or made for skateboarders all clearly fall within the expected possibilities of a skateboard. So when I was approached by the then-director of a skatepark to think about possibilities to integrate art into the operations of the skatepark, I very consciously avoided this approach.
Instead of making generic obstacles that were aesthetically pleasing, I set out to invent some new ways to skate or other materials to skate on.
One of my first ideas, and the only one that got built, was a short ledge with a slideable surface made from 108 billiard balls. This got approved right before the director left his post, leaving other projects unrealised. Nevertheless, I feel that I came up with some successful and some unsuccessful ideas that rethink some fundamentals of what a skateboarding obstacle can look like.

Some of these projects were more conventional than others. I for example drew a simple flat rail that split into two ends at about two thirds of its length. I also designed a grindable obstacle that went from having one corner to having two, three and four corners in succession, mimicking the strategy of Bruce Nauman's Model for Tunnels. There were various other formal experiments, including a joke proposal for a horizontal loop. Two months later and to my great surprise, I saw Tony Hawk perform an actual version of that on youtube.