If you don’t change something gradually, it changes ALL AT ONCE like so many balls in a Pachinko machine.

Such is the case with Spillway. I believe this to be the 11th version of the site. The back-end and database has been tediously rebuilt for image tagging and now utilizes both WordPress and Flickr.
Past comments will be added back in shortly. Some go back over a decade at this point. They need to be untangled manually from a few old databases.

For the uninitiated, Spillway is an archive of FOUND SERENDIPITOUS GARBAGE WITH MEANING. A CHANNEL FOR RESERVOIR OVERFLOW if you will.

Comments can be left for each item but you need a Flickr account. It’s the only way to manage the madness.

For a more in depth history of the site SEE HERE.

Submissions, comments or cross-link submissions can be made HERE.

Until next time,

X.F. Pine

Hello:

I was born in 1969 and I grew up in Adrian, Michigan. My father used to own a reputable furniture store near Adrian, and I used to work there on weekends and for a while when I dropped out of college. I always found the used furniture section of the store to be far more interesting than the new products section. I dropped out of Michigan State because I didn’t like the people. I also started to DJ at parties and didn’t care too much about getting up early for classes. My mother is a nurse. I had an older brother who died of leukemia when he was young. I have a vague notion of he and I watching TV together. I don’t remember much more. I must have been three or four. I got arrested for stealing at the local thrift store when I was seventeen, and knew it was time to leave Michigan. My parents could have given up on my ass but they didn’t. They are good Midwestern people.

I got my first name from my Father’s mother who was Greek. It was apparently her father’s name. I have never been to Greece, but would really like to.

I arrived in New York City in the early 90s after living in Seattle (4 months), Austin (not sure how long) and Boston (1 year). I was going to go back to college in Boston (BU) but suffered a broken leg in a dumb car accident which really messed things up because I was in a cast for three months with no insurance. I moved to NYC then because a friend of mine from Michigan lived there. I had all kinds of jobs when I first moved to NYC. I was an apartment painter, a waiter, and a bookstore clerk. I attempted a brief sojourn as a limo driver but couldn’t stand the hours and people’s attitudes. All these things were better than being a janitor in Boston however.
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This document is an explanation of the methods and theory behind SPILLWAY.

It functions as a simple white paper to define the transformative system of the website. Within the document, items that are commonly referred to as SUBJECTS (SBJ) are elements passing through the system and the process.

Diagram 1 represents a simple to understand explanation of a SPILLWAY in graphic form. A SPILLWAY is traditionally defined as a “channel for reservoir overflow”. In this case the overall flowing river is KNOWLEDGE and the dam structure which blocks that flow will be interpreted as modern IGNORANCE. The associated power mechanizations from that ignorance represent COMMERCIALIZATION. There are dynamos located at the base of the BARRIER OF IGNORANCE which are corporate entities, whose waste water is CULTURE.

spillway diagram 1

If you examine the diagram closely you’ll notice that the SPILLWAY is set apart and circumnavigates the normal commercial system. Its existence is not defined by the constraints of the commercial system, but by the unregulated randomness of what floats to the top of the KNOWLEDGE RESERVOIR which lies behind the dam. Also realize that the SPILLWAY and the dam itself are co-dependent upon the each other to exist. The SPILLWAY ceases to have information traveling through it if the dam did not overflow, and the mechanization of commercialism would not survive if the SPILLWAY did not alleviate the pressure on the dam. On some occasions the SPILLWAY does become dry and without knowledge if there is not enough random information which requires circumnavigation. The flow though the SPILLWAY is not constant, but dependent upon natural forces. The knowledge that flows through the spillway is in pure form by being commercially unexploited and totally unpredictable. The products of the SPILLWAY are considered FOUND items/places or subjects because they are not being analyzed by COMMERCIALIZATION. They need to be re-assessed and re-associated as they are all mixed together and deposited back in the river of knowledge to continue flowing.

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This is meant to be a process document on the concepts that evolved out of the People’s Photos Found Photo archive on Spillway.com.

The Archive began on Bayard St. in Brooklyn, New York which was the most amazing magnet for strange obscure materials. Brooklyn in general seems to be guilty of this as it is somewhat caught in the past and present simultaneously. Odd things would perpetually get dumped on Bayard St.

Originally, the archive was kept in a various photo albums that belonged to Comic Artist Sam Henderson. People brought and sent him photos from all over as he was connected to the Small Press Comics circuit.The flavor of Bayard street seemed to enhance this.

The albums were particularly interesting at parties where people would make their comments and reach their own conclusions about these mysterious worlds. This interesting human reaction of interaction seemed to perpetuate the albums further, as people who found out about the albums brought more finds, and these in turn would cause more reactions. The albums were like looking at some world that wanted to be forgotten, but then the reasons for forgetting that world could not be imagined.

After figuring out a structure and naming system, we decided we would set up a website as an experiment to see if the reaction would carry over to the internet. We scanned in and posted approximately eighty or so in various categories I pulled from an old thesaurus. We titled the photos the best we could, only to identify them. The categorization was really just an over-important parody of a real archive. We listed all the information we knew about the photo, like the date, the initials of the finder, and the circumstances by which it was found.  We decided that what identified a found photo, was that it had to be completely detached from anyone who knew the elements or persons within the picture.

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