Internatinoal Radio Frequency

2011-04-07T10:39:00.000-07:00

The Botched Transendant

2011-04-06T10:05:00.001-07:00

I just finished a wonderful meeting with Ajay and Meg.

Mission? Brainstorm and lay the ground work for our final remix project.

And, I'd say Mission Accomplished.

The plan is to have three pico projectors projecting on three walls and a live sound mix involving a text I will write from found sources layered and mixed with the music of Juliana Barwick.

Each projection will contemplate a different layer of communicative and biological transcendence. On one, a person speaking. A second will display various clips of the fusion of the human with machine on a physical level. The third contemplates this again but on a molecular and binary level.

We're still waiting to hear from one of our other group members so hopefully this will be more filled in and thought out.

Still, I think this is a good base. Now two weeks to really get cracking on it.

word,
derrick.

Blink!

2011-03-16T12:13:00.001-07:00

Last week I had the good fortune to be invited to the opening of Blink, the new exhibit at the Denver Art Museum.

This is a beautiful space that the curators have made optimal -though occasionally distracting- use of in order to display digital and electronic video, instillation pieces, neon art, and sculpture dating from the early 90's to 2009.

Some stand outs:

Dan Flavin's neon displays: The one shown was from all the way back in 1992. It provides an ominously fun glow to the space. His work, to me, seems to mock the notion of minimalist sculpture. In that the minimal form of the piece is juxtaposed with the unapologetically loud pinks and greens, reminiscent of early 902 "street ware." This is meant in the best way possible. I loved it.

Olaf Nicolai: More neon! Nommes de Guerres no. 10 and 13 were on display. Nicolai use of neon was blurry, literally. His two pieces -I think because of the feed he was giving them- made them difficult to focus on. While they could be read it felt as though they at the same time could not be. It hurt my eyes. It fit well with the found text he had taken from post 1945 military campaigns.

Mark Wallinger: This was possibly my favorite piece. His work, Angel (1997) is a video he shot in London's Angel Underground Station. He places himself at the bottom of an escalator walking the wrong direction, films himself as a blind man walking backwards. He then speaks backwards text from Genesis. All of this is reversed in editing and played forward. The technique is right out of Twin Peaks, yes, but I like it nonetheless. It ends with rising classical music and Wallinger's character, Blind Faith, ascending the escalator in a climactic manner. Not sure if he meant it this way but I thought it was hysterical.

In more recent times Wallinger has taken on some more serious material. His 2007 exhibit at the Tate in London displays found protest materials from the Iraq war as well as pro-life protests.

I could go on and on and on about more pieces but, in keeping with the theme of the exhibit, I've chosen to be brief.

It's a great exhibit, see it.

A Fluctual Space of Human Rhythms, Menomes, Cosmosis, and Insomnia

2011-03-15T00:09:00.000-07:00

Web Spinner

First Piece

Second Piece (To Be Repeated)

Offensive for how pretty it is

Eric Baus

Third Piece (Austin Texas)

Fourth Piece (Horsing Around)

Fifth Piece (cosmic loop)

Cosmic debri, big bang remnants, Pulsar PSR, Vela Pulsar, and the heart beat of the sun.

I Don't Recall How to Delete a Post

2011-03-14T23:48:00.000-07:00

So this will remain sparse until that day occurs.

Fake Introductions (Stephani Nola)

2011-03-08T23:22:00.000-08:00

During her lifetime, poet Stephani Nola was a respected yet somewhat obscure figure in the world of American literature. Since her death in 1979, however, an abundance of research, criticism and appreciation has emerged surrounding her first publication, “Lunch Poems.”

In comparison to artists of her own time who sought a new environment for creativity as expatriates in Europe, Nola lived a remarkably conventional life. A doctor for more than forty years serving the New Jersey town of Rutherford, she relied on her patients, the America around her, and her own ebullient imagination to create a distinctively American verse.

Nola was born in Topeka, Kansas, but her family moved to Chicago when she was young, a janitor who had hoped to become a doctor; her mother was a schoolteacher and classically trained pianist. They were supportive of their daughter's passion for reading and writing. Nola was thirteen when her first published poem, "Preface to a 20 Volume Suicide Note," appeared in American Childhood.

According to critic Stephen Burt, “William Carlos Williams and Emily Dickinson together taught Nola how to dismantle and reassemble the forms of stanzaic lyric—how to turn it inside out and backwards.”

Stefanie Nola is a first year poet in the MFA program at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied.

Much of what was just said was/is false.

Fake Introductions (Evie McCarthy)

2011-03-08T23:18:00.000-08:00

From the time she moved to France in 1903 until her death in a Ford ammunitions factory in Dearborn Michigan in 1946, American writer Evie McCarthy was a central figure in the Parisian art world. An advocate of the avant garde, bringing a refreshing new casualness and spontaneity to poetry.

Critic and friend Igor Stravinsky writes of McCarthy’s work, “God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning.”

McCarthy attended Rutgers University and Howard University, spent three years in the U.S. Air Force, and returned to New York City to attend Columbia University and the New School for Social Research. She has since become most known for her strident social criticism, often writing in an incendiary style that has made it difficult for some audiences and critics to respond with objectivity to her works.

Her honors include a Writing Fellowship from the California Arts Council and a Translation Fellowship (for her Russian translations) from the National Endowment of the Arts.

Evie McCarthy currently resides in Boulder Colorado, where she is pursuing an MFA from the University of Narapo. It is under that pretense that she joins us here tonight.

Remix Theory Manifesto Remixed

2011-03-02T12:49:00.000-08:00

Mixing is about creating seamless interpolations between objects of thought to fabricate a zone of representation in which the interplay of the one and the many, the original and its double all come under question.

Egh. Not entirely. Remix can also border on the purposely obtrusive or juxtaposed. Consider a demolition derby or a Jasper Johns. There is the purposeful use of collision.

Does it fit?

Yes

Is it seamless?

No.

Seamless transition in a world without seams. In movement we become memory. In a mix we exist between seams. The shards post impact that glimmer in our collective media mind as we wonder if glass is a remix of sand.

Transform like Megatron and more idea's about cars and recycled plastic.

Sound and the electro-digitized imagination in an ever burgeoning culture is the manifestation of language as a total text. Or as Toni Morrison says, "The imagination that produces work which bears and invites rereadings, which motions to future readings, as well as contemporary ones, implies a shareable world and an endlessly flexible language.

Ours is the now and heAr of freedom.

Reactivate where you've become a product.

And now the whole world out of the radio.

All the tech used to make art was Napoleon's. Now it's corporate, inherited from our mothers and fathers.

Remix acknowledges who speaks through you based on whose speech threw you.

The photo in my memory, Accidents and Emergencies, committed poetry.

Fugazi inhabits collage space in this way, a product of D.C. reactivated outside of the radio nonetheless a production reaction to the reaction of hard-core and a reaction to and remix of the world view propagated by Reagan, Bush, Nixon, Ford and the rest of the neo-con corporate space of America.

This is an example of remix as reaction to of overly oppressive psychogeography.

Whatever works is the American Modus Operandi.

Ossification, Kali Rising, 1949 phases of the moon in Finnegan's Wake.

Yeah, stuff like that was what was on my mind, mellowed by age, paved into a co-op. Small spots on the landscape, my text with sound. Oral culture in a world of networks.

This is an example of Remix as Obsolescence.

A nihilist parallax view.

Subliminal semiotics transgressing without seam. Sand as glass as collision as movement as memory as an occupied collection of found space through which to create further collisions.

As the boundaries of between blur the boundaries towards a transformation of hermeneutics a quantum account of gravity approaches a dictionary in which each word is translated into several other words becomes affable.

Known languages do not un-reciprocally express the translation of French words or other languages. This makes this dictionary -by means of requirements- find how to classify this hermeneutical order out/out of the disordered sense we accept daily.

There is no known one way communication.

Each language expresses itself reciprocally or not at all. We find what's between in things and play in our mutual known unknown space. We get so Donald Rumsfeld.

Now proceed. Plus a change.

Found objects are memory permutation machines based on determinacy becoming obsolete.

In this way media bombardment approaches the sonic immersed song of a dead dreamer with the flow against the current.

In a different between the nothing that is there and the nothing that is not. In Stevens' Nothing is meant to stand alone. An audio sculpture obsessed with death. Shards of "art" culture caught in the still of a collision.

People are so programmed to accept a media construct, (consolidate for evolutionary gains) that if something isn't affirmed by their peers and/or mass culture, then it might as well not exist.

An Interplanetary Revolution Approach to Remix
or
Exposure to Space

Forget a dead empire and build a living republic.

Proclaim a new era an set up a new calender.

Replace alien language.

Destroy or neutralize alien gods.

Destroy alien machinery of government control.

Take wealth and land from individual aliens.

With the so permanent nature of death forgetting movement, fragments of recording environments -frequencies open within the city of physical culture- detach from their own beings and into collectives.

There's Miles Davis between my ears and yours.

On the corner lectures scream poems of a new science of sight. A new Dub-tometry skewing sciences of perception.

Treating sound as found object, spotted, picked up, felt and displaced. Versioning additive subtraction in a palimpsest of visual sound play.

Remixing the Found Text

Erasure; the voice fragmented and left to drift on shards of itself. It's body taken in quotations.

Writing; May be a little retro but that's cool too. That's why people still where bell bottoms jeans.

A Textual remix is a totally reflexive Guttenberg's galaxy.

An aside is;
(Take Nietzsche. Feel great within his paragraphs. Derrida is there too, if you ever come looking.)

The remix author is a cross medium psychogeographic flaneur set on subjective implosion. Here words are the expressed equivalent of a "found object." Semiotic representation of and on the earth.

The representation becomes the momentary memory. Emotion and catharsis become the cybernetic etymology of art and music and text. That simple. That complex.

This is the occupied complex culture complex.

The moment of revelation -the collision- is encoded in action. The selection becomes a resonative narrative traveling by synecdoche into the space between things as we take words out of and place words into (Insert your Sampler's Here) mouth.

For Duchamp the glitch serves as metaphysical critique. A mistake in frame creates narrative.

In a bombarded media saturated world there is almost no sound. An un-anechoic chamber where the remixer's frequencies supply the glitch.

Progress in an un-vacuum.

Nicolas Bourriaud has Essay Writing ADD

2011-02-23T13:13:00.000-08:00

Reading "Culture as Screenplay: How art reprograms the world" was -for one- really enjoyable. Bourriaud, while highly intelligent and undoubtedly insightful and well read, keeps an nonacademic tone. I appreciate this approach to criticism.

In relation to detournemont I think Bourriaud does a fantastic job of tying the DJ or programmer or contemporary artist in any context to Debord. Also, I completely agree with him on that.

A part of me is still mildly apprehensive to the notion of works without end. While I am one who steals concepts and ideas from other authors and artists I do think of each work individually. Plus, in digital culture most works can be so easily reproduced that there is no need to "end" them. I do see each work as collage of content and idea but . . . I'm still not convinced I guess.

What really caught me with this essay is the work of Matthieu Laurette . "Matthieu Laurette uses newspaper classified ads, television game shows, and marketing campaigns as
the media for his work." I like his hyper conscious approach to postproduction art. His work seems to -very knowingly- step out of the Duchamp, Debord, Warhol evolution of theft as thought. (I meant that in a good way.)

I was really interested in was the bit mentioned in the beginning of the essay. "Laurette is reimbursed for products he has consumed by systematically using promotional coupons ("Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back"), he operates within the cracks of the promotional system."

That seems to be an appropriation right out of Abbie Hoffman's repertoire.

This essay, moreover, has kind of left me in a Keatsian state of negative capability. I'm kind of without judgment on this one.

I'm going to let it soak in for a bit.

Deerhoof and Debord vs The Evil Spectacle

2011-02-16T13:54:00.000-08:00

I feel as though Deerhoof's new album will be an appropriate soundtrack for this brief essay on Debord's essay Methods of Détournement as well as his film, La Société du spectacle. Why Deerhoof's new album Deerhoof vs. Evil?

Three reasons:

1. Satomi Matsuzaki's voice within such a band feels like an act of detournement in and of itself. There's a consciousness of parataxis. This feels -to me- not unlike Debord's juxtaposed footage of naked women and states men. Yes, at points the music and the vocals function on the same plane, as does any great act of detournemont but, as Debord points out, "Détournement is less effective the more it approaches a rational reply." This album, like this band, like La Société du spectacle is past meaning making in the traditional sense. We are involved in and conscious of the spectacle that we usually take for granted in the invisibly abrasively commodity driven spectacle of the daily.

2. The album is called Deerhoof vs. Evil. This has a similar feel to Debord's vision of the remix artist, taking abstractions of what was once the tangible earth, and reconstructing them. "The tangible world finds itself replaced by a selection of images which exist above it and which at the same time has placed itself recognized as the tangible par experience."

While both this essay and this film -as well as Debord's book- are filled with wonderful aphorisms. (Yes, I do think they are wonderful. Things can be bleak and wonderful at the same time. Just look at the spectacle. Just listen this Deerhoof album I'm discussing.) the prior is one of my favorite. The tangible world has become images, these images have become our tangible existence. The simulacrum encounters itself through the viewer, in the case of film.

Also, both seem to be fighting the abstract real. Evil is such a large, ominous unspecific term. For the sake of the album title I think it's facetiously ambitious but no less successful as a result.

It's akin to Debord's spectacle, everywhere and no where. It takes a conscious mind to demolish it while existing with in it. "The spectacle is not a collection of images but a social relation among persons mediated by images." The act of remix art or any art form in this way is to almost bubble out, or warp the tangible world. To be overly abrasive tears and to be unwittingly accepting does nothing but stupify.

Good art should be abrasive in a certain sense, to draw attention to it's action and intents, basically. I think Deerhoof and Debord would agree on that.

3. I like it and just bought this record today. It's the reason I'm writing this a little bit late. It was sunny. I like bikes and record shopping. I'm a dirty rotten hipster and forgot I needed to do this today. Sorry. "The spectacle is the flip side of money. It, too, is an abstract general equivalent of all commodities."

Moving on,

In "Methods of Détournement" Debord discusses some art forms that I have played around with and am interested in. Psychogeography relates directly to a Google Map project myself and several other collaborators worked on a few months ago. The goal of the project was to remix an essay by multimedia artist Mark Amerika. Other remixes of the essay involved an appropriation of Youtube videos, a sound piece mixing various websites, and a short play made almost entirely of plagiarized philosophies and artist statements.

It turns out I invented Guy-Deord. Who knew?

The thing that really fascinated me was Metagraphic writing. It was an absolutely new concept to me, initially. This has since faded. The fleeting nature of the profound moment, as Emerson might put it. Or, as Debord does, "a moment ... grown old and it may never again be rejuvenated."

It faded last night, as I was going to sleep. The English and German alphabet was, initially, an act of Metagraphic writing. Both alphabets use letters from French and Italian. This is why the symbols do not represent the sounds. English is not a phonetic language in this way. Where as French and Spanish are.

Another, older example of this is the Japanese language. Wanting to keep place with the Chinese art of poetry the Japanese used Chinese characters to construct the first Kanji. So, Debord's idea for Metagraphic writing, while not necessarily new, has proven to be revolutionary in the case of at least three languages.

So in the end, like most things, nothing is new. It's always been here. "Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it.

It's a matter of how we deconstruct and reconstruct it. There in lies the rejuvenation.

Hey, come to think of it, Satomi Matsuzaki -lead singer of Deerhoof- is Japanese. Is her voice, placed in an esoteric American rock context, an act of detournemont? A sort of MetaAudiodacticism?

Did I mention they had a new album?

No?

It's pretty great. I just got it. but I like it a lot already.

Thoughts on Open Source, Creative Commons, and "Free" Culture in the Vain of Obsolecense

2011-02-09T11:24:00.000-08:00

Obsolescence is one of my favorite abstract concepts. Abstract Concepts being of course my favorite, as it eats itself. Obsolescence does something similar. For those within it they exist in a vacuum of sorts. Though -as we all recall from 8th grade earth science- nothing can exist in a vacuum. Yet here we are, existing.

A "vacuum fluctuation" or an error occurs which allowed -from the start- creation. The vacuum was manipulated, a literal paradox occurred in a vacuum. Andrew Joron places the universe corollary to what the surrealists defined as l'hasard objectif. "In such cases, randomness momentarily acquires structure, an arrow-shape that pierces the mesh work of a system's sustaining feedback loops... the Universe itself is thought to have resulted from a random 'vacuum fluctuation.'"

Or as Shelly might put it, "... a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it."

I know, holy fuck! Right?

While Shelley mentions this in relation to poetry, directly, Joron is discussing the centralized global power structure the U.S. is encountering opposition to by way of terrorism.

What does poetry, a restructuring of global power dynamics, and copy right law have in common?

They all are changing dramatically as a result of the internet. There no longer is a need for centralization.

Web 2.0 realized this a few years ago. I'm listening to ThruYou right now, a site devoted to composing beautiful music pieced together with Youtube clips. Is this the new composition?

Well, yeah, kind of.

Is this different than how I arranged my original thoughts through the lens of Shelley and Joron?

Well, no, not really.

Are either of these copy right infringements?

That's to be decided.

As intellectual copy right becomes obsolete by way of the internet so do we. Our senses have a conscious construct. We are perpetually aware of what makes up our consciousness. As I think of Joron, I hop on Google books and search vacuum before running to my bed-side bookshelf to grab the tangible copy, made by a press on the other side of Denver. I link you to it. My thoughts fade as you become aware of their construct. Your pre-perception fades as you move from my use Joron for obsolescence to Joron's use of vacuums in relation to shifting diplomacy.

You use a vacuum in your own way. Poof! vacuum fluctuation. The Universe is born out of this for the first time. Still, it was here before.

We exist in paradox. Surrealism is the new realism because we're aware of it.

Web art is aware both of it's obsolescence and it's manipulation of open and closed source material. It's conscious connectivity overwhelms us. It's Kant's sublime. It's shitty reggae sublime. It's horrific to compare those two things.

Still, as we step away from that moment we no longer desire it. We've had it. It's wonderful and grotesque. It's living in a large city for a few months, two weeks after realizing the D runs express from Columbus Circle to your stop on 125th.

It's realizing how little you know. It's embracing obsolescence. It's becoming Shelley's unsheathed sword of lightning forever consuming the scabbard that could never contain it. It's existing in paradox.

Poof!

Vacuum Fluctuation.

In this way I wholly embrace open source material and detest copy law in the same way I detest censorship. Both inhibit creativity. Both frighten me.

What interests me, is the awareness of theft. The awareness of the overwhelming puts me in the community of obsolescent art. One example is an erasure of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The work begins with his material but through a process of erasing and then reconstructing I have my own. I've then been sneaking lines of this piece into my own work. I have little clue where his words and my words meet. They've become a new work.

Remix art is the new Lenny Bruce. Or George Carlin

Web

2011-02-03T13:42:00.001-08:00

https://webfiles.colorado.edu/mund/index.html

Borges and Derrick and I and Spinoza

2011-01-26T07:30:00.001-08:00

This one was really fun. I could go on for a long time again and probably will as an exercise but here's a little sample.

I let him wake up to mulch.

I’m the one who tells him each grass blade licks his face and tells him stories. Though, that’s me telling the stories about the stories. I’m endocrine. I get turned on by light, not chloroplast. Derrick would like to think it’s the other way around; that he’s plant based.

Still though, he’d be partially right to think so. Trouble with distance I suppose; sun to plant to soil to rock to psychic geology. Derrick pushes from his psychic molding. These levers grow longer. These pulleys become stretched.

I’m formed of his geology. Sedimentary. Bits of me slip into bits of him, wear off my palms onto the pumice handled levers. I suppose they brush into his Broca’s area before I have him type. I have no incentive for insight. A lack of endocrine I suppose. No bother though.

He rarely notices me, though he just did.

Right there. Could you tell? No I suppose not.

He’s reading this back to me in our head –more mine than his- while looking at a brain map.

I pull a lever.

I work Derrick through a system of levers and pulleys.

He recalls steam punk.

Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being. I persist in his. We persist in being.

Derrick seems to persist in memories of movies like Brazil.

Though, to his credit, he has read Ethics. For which I thank him. I do this by secreting shaves of algae into his cerebral cortex.

Stein Exercise in Style

2011-01-18T22:52:00.000-08:00

Hi all.

Instead of doing both of these remixes I kind of went with a mash-up of the two. Below is my Stein influenced Exercise in Style.

Hope you like it.

If not, just look at this instead. It's pretty and Dutch.

In the inside of the S bus it is crowded. In the outside of the S bus there is Paris. In Paris there is a crowded midday scene. The midday scene is filled. Filled with commuters. These commuters –some of them- are on the S bus.

Like me.

Like me, I’m on the S bus at midday.

In Paris.

Outside of the city but inside of the bus. Inside the bus it is crowded just as outside the bus the city is crowded with people pouring into the bus. In the bus there is the feeling of shoulders. Shoulders are against other shoulders. It’s the way of the city, shoulders against shoulders. Shoulders, in mid-day, in Paris, along the metro, in route to lunch, which is to say to be in route to meet people for lunch people. People in and about Paris, crowded onto the bus.

Similar to the bus I’m on, the S bus. The S bus in midday in Paris crowded with shoulders. Beyond shoulders there are other body parts contained in coats and trousers crowding the S bus. Trousers containing men’s knees and ankles and calves ready to and taut to kick and shuffle with the shuffle of the city, the city of Paris, and its midday bustle of commuters on the S bus, the bus I’m on. The bus I’m on watching trousers and suit jackets containing men and women bustling about in the midday, lunchtime, by far the busiest part of the day in Paris. Well at least during the week when the midday keeps the bustle at its trouser bustle point of note. Suppose this is a point of note, as it is being noted, the bustle, the midday bustle that is to be noted, specifically on the S bus. This day in June during the midday bustle on the S bus.

In the bus it is frantic. In the outside of the bus it is frantic, as it is midday. Inside the bus the passengers coil in their fabrics. Inside their fabrics their knees buckle a bit and when the bus lets out, in the midday sun outside the bus there is a similar bustle but that doesn’t matter for now. Though the bustle outside the bus is the bustle of thousands, their small lunch movements, all of them, let light on the pavement amidst frantic pigeons consuming the bustles lunch fragments.

Inside the bus I’m sitting in outside the midday sun inside the city of Paris on the S bus. Inside the S bus but on it I see a long neck inside the bus, the same bus that I am inside or on but inside the city of Paris, though not outside of it are my thoughts, not exclusive to the city, as is summer and my thoughts have drifted to the country. I love the city in the summer and its contained day dreams of the country. Wheat fields and such and the way that inside of them outside of the city I think of life with Paris in the distance. Bits of wheat like drips of grapes feeding a city out of grasp of itself. Out of grasp is the city with a view of itself. Anywhere in Paris you can see the Eifel tower except under it.

Outside the city is a bustle in the midday. Inside there is a bus, that bus I’ve been telling you I’m on. Well, inside this young man, the young man with the long neck is inside of my periphery, which is to say he is outside of those outside of the bus but inside the view of those within a few seats of me, as mentioned the bus is crowded in the midday in the midweek in the midsummer.

Outside there are tourists looking inside a midday S bus in Paris in the midday. They take photos, captured in film, taken out of cameras, developed outside of Paris, more than likely in Ohio or Baltimore. Outside Baltimore, in Maryland is a bit of land designated outside of its state held right. Designated as a Capital of a country. The United States of America is outside of Baltimore, inside of Maryland, Virginia and some other state that is currently outside of my memory.
Inside the S bus this boy I’ve mentioned with the long neck –did I mention his funny hat? It sits outside of fashion for the time– is growing upset inside the bus and outside of his contained wits.

“Hey there buddy, You’re in my personal space.”

“Surely not intentionally.” Say’s the man, in his own right to defend himself but outside of his country and comfort zone. He appears to be a foreigner both in his manner of speech and outwardly in his mannerisms, which appear inwardly eastern while his speech is overtly western. Which is to say English. English being the language he felt most comfortable in, up until this point, in another country, where his loafers lived up to their expectations and repeatedly lounged against this long necked man on the S bus’s wing tips and upper ankles.

“Surely not intentionally” He repeats, now to himself as the young man with the long neck and the waywardness of a boy negligent of his own habits rather than repeating himself, as the man did, in the S. Bus, on the S bus, in Paris, during a midday commute felt the need to do so.

Instead this boy with the long neck, in my vision, on the bus, outside the blistering June midday commute, inside the bustle of this could be commuters view, which is to say my view, which is to say in the view of many, both inside and outside of the bus, saw him, rather than further ensue the argument walk to the nearest vacant seat.

Of which there were a few opening and closing and opening and closing as passengers or commuters or persons in the perpetual present of the moment during the altercation of the moment of the perpetual present moment of the altercation between the boy and the foreign man with the loafers who loafed about casually and accidentally or casually but regardless accosted a young man with a long neck -and a funny hat- in front of me on the S bus during midday in Paris on an afternoon in June, the afternoon and June I speak of being the present one. Well then if not for that alone the boy moved seats and the foreign man continued to look foreign, as was not his want but more than likely simply his nature or modus operandi as it was known in the past and in many respects the present, though not at all known to those outside the periphery of such referential diction.

Should I then tell you of the inconvenience of seeing this long necked boy yet a second time in that same blistering afternoon, though past the bustle of the present tension taken on the S. Bus.

Not an hour later. In the city of Paris, still. Still within a matter of kilometers from the incident on the S. Bus, that must have dropped the boy off the crowded bus during such a time as I did not see the boy outside the bus but surely as other passengers still saw me on the bus I later left or possibly left prior to the boy, for like I said after the incident he was out of my periphery. Though I suppose he was in others, but none of those are telling this story. Are they?

Thought not, so before or after or at the same time we might have gotten off the bus a time elapsed during which both me and the boy with the long neck and funny hat traveled to the same gare as passengers now, at least for a time off the bus, for what is a passenger outside of a bus but not currently on or in one? Passengers awaiting a bus. Not on one currently but possibly to be on one again, this is the makings of a commuter, a metro, a system of connected travel routes convenient or inconvenient for passengers such as myself or such as the boy with the long neck, though it might have been the hat that made his neck so funny, who wound up off the S bus and some time later at the same gare. This should not be of any surprise to me, though at the time, in the midday it should be noted that it might have been but more thank likely, as memory currently recalls and for the sake of the tale was and is in the present sense of the story I am currently telling.

I saw this long necked boy, outside the gare Saint-Lazare, inside the same coat he was wearing. A long coat, inside or outside or beside were a series of buttons, fashionable or otherwise.

“Too close together.” Said his friend outside the gare, inside the city, within the presence of myself and others, though I don’t recall them from the bus. Though they might have been within it while the bustle of the midday took place, as it does in June, as is June’s want. This boy stood out because of his neck, hat, and the altercation with the foreign man, who was not to be seen at this juncture but it can be said, and will be said, in this story and outside of it in my intuitive memory that the foreign man remained foreign inside the city of Paris on this afternoon, now past midday, as he -the foreign man- was a long way from Baltimore or where ever he may have been from.

“You ought to move that button up a notch.”

A Poet on the Road

2010-02-16T23:08:00.000-08:00

I.R.F.
Well first off I was wondering what is the day to day of doing a poetry tour?

K.G:
You know you get up in the morning you think where am I where am I going. And then you think, ‘Oh yeah. Oh my god how many miles do we have to drive. What time is the reading? Can I get there on time, please today as I have not for the past three days.’
You know it’s just trying to get to the place on time. I always do a different set list for every reading because, I don’t know why. I try not to but I can’t help it. So I’m always doing that stuff in the car and then trying to time it and… you know, we share the driving. It depends…sometimes…You know, there’s always something. You’re on the road, so you know, roadwork. (Laughs.) You know and it’s all just a form of roadwork then. It’s interesting because it’s always the same and yet it’s always different. You know, you get to the place and you know some of them. Some of whom you’re really looking forward to seeing and other people you meet when you’re there. It’s nice, you know. It’s nice.

It’s amazing to think that in every town you go to there are a couple people who are interested in poetry and one of them might even be interested in you. But then if you have a really good gig where, like one of my first ones in Cambridge was really good. The room was really packed and we sold books to half the audience and everyone was so enthusiastic and you almost start to think, ‘It’s going to be like this all the time.’ But of course you know that’s insane, it’s not. So you have to have a fairly high tolerance for, not exactly disappointment. The anti-climax. Some time’s it’s just like that, but usually I try to keep it in mind that all I have to do is reach one person. If I reach one person, especially if that’s one person I don’t know, one person who’s not read my work. Then it’s like, I’ve done the job of the night, what I’ve come out to do.

I.R.F.

Related to that; the day to day of doing a tour, with the traveling so much. How much new writing do you get done? I noticed that the DVD’s along with the new book were very transitory in nature. I’m wondering if that’s a reflection of doing these types of things.
(We both talk a bit here.) Trees, movement, cars, buildings.

K.G:

Well I took a lot of that footage when I was out last time, with Case Sensitive. That was the first video I ever did. Um, you know I swore to myself that this time when I was out I would write everyday and I would exercise everyday and I haven’t done either, not one day. This is day 25. Ok, so that didn’t happen, yet.
But, what I do is I kind of, I’ve got the book. And I’m kind of basically reading from the book. Sometimes I read from other things because either the students have read Case Sensitive and not the new one or someone wants me to read from the last chap book or something like that. Basically I read from that. But in order to make it interesting to me I make a new thing out of it, make a new poem out of the poems. So, to do that I read parts of things. You know I’ll read on my set list and it’ll be, ‘first paragraph second sentence.’ Then I’ll flip through the book and I’ll just make new poems out of the thing and by re-ordering it changes it. So that’s the closest thing I’ve done to new writing.

I.R.F.

I notice that that happens in the DVD too. It’s not consistent with the book.

K.G:

No, it’s not consecutive with the book.

I.R.F.

I was watching it yesterday and trying to flip through and catch up. But this kind kind of segues into the next question. The difference between something that’s made to be viewed as a mixed media or multimedia kind of thing with something that is strictly on the page. How do you approach something that you’re making both for film and page differently? Or how do the two relate?

K.G:

Well, the first part of, The Last Four Things, I basically wrote years ago. So that was written for the page. You know I did change it of course. But that was done and that was basically supposed to be the book. The sanitized version is I decided that it needed a second part. Then I wrote Fifty-Six Days. I had fifty-six days for writing, so that’s just where the title came from. And I wrote it in fifty-six days and when I wrote it, as I was writing it, I made the movie. So those two things happened simultaneously. And that was a different kind of movie because I was just taking, you probably read the author’s statement, I was just taking a piece of text. One piece of text I would say and one piece of text I would use as a subtitle. Just to work with that dialogue/subtitle, all in the same language, idea. It was a little bit more like a real film project in the sense that it wasn’t a transcription of the book.
The other one, I’d been doing these experiments. First I made a whole recording of the book. Then I was just fooling around with all the junk I had on film. And I just, I felt like I really quickly tried to make some little parts. Some little parts, some little pages, they’re not poems. But just pages that I liked the best. You know, I was learning Final Cut. It’s pretty steep so the first whole part I was just learning and acting like I had time. But then all of the sudden I was out of time. I don’t know if that’s a good answer.

I.R.F.

No, no it is. Within those two, The Last Four Things (the film version) seems to have a lot more experimental kind of feel.

K.G:

They’re all experiments, where as Fifty-Six Days is just one experiment.

I.R.F.

There even seems to be more of a score to it.

K.G:

Well we did a lot of music for it. We hadn’t intended to. And Max, (her partner) he used to be a musician. Used to play a lot. But he like played for… I don’t even know how long. I can’t remember, it might have been like twenty years. But we were learning garage band together. I was just learning all of these programs all at once.
Did you ever hear of Lynda.com? You should put this in your thing cause you know, it’s great. It’s such a cool place where you can just, for 25 bucks a month, you can go and learn any program for as many hours as you want to spend, you can learn it. So I learned Final Cut and Soundtrack and Garage Band and all these different things. So yeah, we were surprised. We were moving notes around in Garage Band just visually. It wasn’t really like music. It was like that doesn’t sound right, that’s wrong. And we want to have some wrong notes absolutely, but that’s too wrong. Let’s move it to the left. We were amazed it worked as well as it did. Which is still debatable.

I.R.F.

We kind of already hit on it but being aware that something is going to be used for film, how does that visual component affect the writing?

K.G:

See it doesn’t because, for the first thing… Well you know it could but it didn’t in this case because for the first thing the writing was done. So then it was just a matter of, what things did I have that I thought sort of worked together. Or what ones did I particularly like. Still in that I really hate the way I say, ‘to leave home without making the bed’ for instance. It’s practically the first thing and I just hated it. It’s so softy. But I jut couldn’t go back and rerecord it. I didn’t have the time so I had to deal with it. I had to accept it. For Fifty-Six Days it wasn’t like the writing was affected by doing the film except in the sense that doing the film changed my general and broad ideas of what I was writing about. In other words I began to feel like there was a character who was writing in a diary. I was just taking that dated thing as a sort of, ‘will this help me?’ idea because I knew I only had so many days.

I.R.F.

The film component then adds that feel of narrative?

K.G:

Yeah, does it have a little bit of a narrative feel.

I.R.F.

Reading it it didn’t?

K.G:

Right.

I.R.F

But then watching it and having read it.

K.G:

It has a little bit of that thing. So that’s guess, working on the film began to convince me that there was…just a…just a thread of narrative. OR more like the smoke of narrative. I just began to feel like, ‘I know her.’ I know. I get it. I get it. I began to feel that I knew what was going on with her. But it didn’t change the writing as such. The writing was just coming the same way it always comes, just be bringing in all the notes that I had and spreading them all over the floor and trying to say it and just walking around and trying to get into a trance of, ‘What is it?’ I hope that doesn’t sound too wispy but that’s how I do it.

I.R.F.

No, it doesn’t. That sounds like a great approach. It’s similar to my piles and piles of notes.

K.G:

Yeah it’s the same. A lot of people work this way and that’s very, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing until it happens.

I.R.F.

I notice that coming across in Four Things a bit. I was wondering about the ambiguous nature of the work through that and kind of elusive identification of the speaker, as far as age, among other things, is concerned.

K.G:

This is in the first part, that part of the book I actually worked on for years. Fifty-Six Days came together really fast, in fifty-six days. But The Last Four Things I really worked on that for years and it went through a lot of changes and a lot of reorganization. So that was, I could say it was really thought out but I don’t know what that would really mean. I think.

I.R.F.

It was delved into.

K.G:

(Laughs). Yeah, or what I like to think, dwelved. Sort of a combination of dwell and delving. So I dwelved into that pretty hard. I think it’s just a sort of basic fact of my life that now that I’m actually 60 years old a lot of stuff that I’m writing… I’m time traveling. It’s not necessarily about my life but I don’t necessarily feel that old. You know, it’s totally normal. I don’t think that there’s a person alive that ever thought they were 60 years old, at least not until they were 90. As far as I know.

So, there’s also just the thing of, sorry I always do this.

I.R.F.

It’s ok, I’ll write it in. It’ll be in the parenthetical.
(Kate was doing much circular had gesturing)

K.G:

I’m just trying to tune into myself I guess. A lot of people by the time they’re my age, they’ve figured everything out already. They’ve had a whole life, they’ve achieved their success or failure and they’re not really, they’re not like me. I don’t know anybody like me, that’s my age. I know a lot of people who are like me who are a different age. So I think that comes into it. When I picture a character that I’m writing about, she might be like 40. She’d still be in the middle of what she’s trying to do. It all combines. There’s a child, a nine year old girl for instance, who’s lighting the fires. There’s a lot of dream stuff. Like that particular one came from a dream from years ago that I put into a painting. I used to put a lot of words into my paintings cause that’s what I used to do. I was a painter. So I just basically took some sentences from the painting so it’s all very intertwined. You know?

I.R.F.

I noticed in a few specific places. There was the line, ‘the sea can’t stay inside you’ and the other section about having a baby but it being a plant and not the speaker’s baby. There’s this denial of ownership over nature.

K.G:

Speaking personally I’ve never been pregnant. That informs it somewhat. Whoops, dead end. Let’s go back to nature.

I.R.F.

Well it’s a baby and it’s not the speakers in on sense but it’s also not the speaker’s because it’s a plant.

K.G:

Because it’s a plant. I hate to sound like an idiot savant or just an idiot but that’s just a dream. It was a dream I had and it was a very powerfully dream. And I often have dreams about babies and when I do, the love that I feel for the baby, is overwhelming. but I’ve never had a child. And it’s not like I think, ‘Oh, gee I wish I had had a baby.’ It’s not like that. In my dream life it’s almost as if I know about it.

Kate Greenstreet's work can be better explored at her website

International Radio Frequency thanks her for her time and patience in publishing this interview.

2009-12-16T20:01:00.000-08:00

This Week in Digital Thought

2009-04-28T10:54:00.001-07:00

So we've been winding down the semester by being overly stressed and putting together a myriad of projects.

Myself, I am working on an emulation of the Japanese poet Kenji Myazawa as well as working on a video project with Mark and Tom.

We've, in the last week, seemed to establish something of a focus out of the seemingly random. I knew we could do it and I commend us for it. Said focus is on the transitory and displaced sense often found in digital work and modern life. Our footage, tied together with the text Mark and I have worked on reflect a sense of narrative with an acknowledged denial of it. I'm pretty sure that's the smart way of putting it.

As for this semester as a whole, I've had a pretty good time with this class and I think have learned a lot. Not only to keep working on as I continue in the digital medium but also something that I can put into my work on the page. I think it's interesting and I can already see it in my work, how an awareness of sound and visual art are beginning to take more of a presence in my work.

On that note, I might write a little more in a bit but I just took a bite of my lunch and realized they've slipped in chicken instead of tofu.

I'm going to go scrape my mouth out now. Please enjoy a selection from the legendary hit makers of the 1980's Hall and Oates

To go on, I believe that this class's purpose, for a writer, is to begin to view text not only as written but also as an image, an action, and as sound. It's helped me immensely and I look forward to further study within this digital realm. Also the concept of remixing is in direct correlation with my own work, as I base a lot of my revision and poems on cut up technique.

So, yeah, those are my thoughts. I look forward to the remix class and taking this medium past experimentation and into more serious implementation in my writing.

Kenny Loggins

Another Video Example

2009-04-15T17:49:00.000-07:00

Also this. More than anything ever, this.

I've been confusing ambiguous and equvical for too long

2009-04-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

So in working on the project I've been trying out a lot of different things either while moving and filming or just sitting the camera down and allowing it to pick up what it can.

This has lead to a juxtaposition between the transitory and the seemingly still and is somewhat of a focus for our project. We're exploring the concept of capturing movement, either as a result of moving or being still while other things are.

A lot of footage we shot yesterday was on the light rail in Denver. It reminded me quite a bit of this Michele Gondry video.

Also, I think a bit of the focus is in on the idea of allowing things to blend, equivocating various footage through text and through mash up and forcibly viewing them at the same time.

I guess the idea is to offer glimpses or suggestions of narrative while at the same time denying it's advance into the video itself. Ya dig?

By tying things together we are suggesting there is a relation but by focusing on the transitory nature of the train footage we are also suggesting the idea of movement without destination and without relation. I picture that, if this were written rather than filmed, the main character would be constantly aware of what it is to be human. "This is me riding a train, going to the grocery store, shitting in a public restroom even though I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea" and so on. What the film will suggest is that all of these things are equivocal. No one thing is different from the other because they are all human things. (Unfortunately Mark was uncomfortable with the idea of filming anyone using a public laboratory, prude, so that won't be in there. Here's another Michele Gondry film relating to such a topic. (To be truthful I never brought the idea up to Mark. I guess this makes me the (I'm making a square sign with my index fingers right now)))

Here's a video that kind of relates to that. I'm really interesting the idea of someone misinterpreting things, whether on purpose or through the eyes of someone, in a sense, socially autistic.

I've been trying to find examples of the things we're working on or that are influencing my thoughts and am having trouble. Along with the equivocating of things I also imagine we'll slowly begin mislabeling things and placing more and more juxtaposing images together.

I have this vision of the "speaker" of the video as being hyper aware of the relative nature of being. Kind of an Allen Watts type of deal. Here's a link to him talking about Moksha. Listen to it, as the video is kind of lame.

Also, David Byrne thinks like this. At least the voice in a lot of his songs does. Like, "Don't Worry About the Government." I see the video as the life through that guy's eyes, kind of. We still have two weeks to drastically change things around.

These are my thoughts.

2009-04-01T17:43:00.000-07:00

I'm torn on whether I want to write about Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES or Peter Horvath.

I suppose I'll talk a little about both.

Peter's work is amazing, I really liked the way he utilized multiple windows to convey his message. Also, the idea of putting multiple windows with different film is pretty interesting. I guess it speaks to the modern attention span, that we can view multiple things at the same time. It makes me wonder if we can actually pay attention to that many things at the same time. I don't think I can. I just had to leave my living room to write this, as Fargo is playing and I was having difficulty writing while musing on Minnesotan accents.

The Heavy Industries work was pretty cool too. I was disappointing that they all follow the same concept. There really wasn't much difference in any of them. Dakota is the best one, both for story and music. The idea of having words projected is pretty interesting. It kind of brings to question their value. some words are skimmed over and others are really focused on. The story still comes across though, which is interesting because I thought that each word would be more necessary than it is in the end. Also, I wonder if this story could work as straight forward piece of pros or if the music and the projection are giving it more strength.

Also, this looks cool.

Both help motivate me to make some mediocre film. WHOOO!

2009-03-25T02:01:00.000-07:00

Sure thing, Man. Or SURE THING MAN!

2009-03-11T12:34:00.000-07:00

Side Note: Text in red was taken from, Dovetailing Details Fly Apart-All Over, Again, In Code, In Poetry, In Chreods. By Stephanie Strickland and Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo

For a traditional poet, there is a comparable need for awareness of historical, etymological, dialectical, regional, class-based, craft-based and musical aspects of speech and writing. Most poets begin with their mother tongue. Exceptions occur if they are natively multilingual like Gertrude Stein, or have chosen the language of their non-native home, like Beckett in French, or are writing in an ambivalently hated colonial tongue they aim to change from within, like Kamau Brathwaite or James Joyce. But a programmer chooses a language like a composer chooses instruments, for the things it does well or quickly, for its affordances, those fundamental properties that determine just how a thing could possibly be used. The code will only go as far as the programmer pushes it. Expert coders attain effects that artisan coders marvel at, not realizing until then that such work could be done in that particular coding language.

I completely agree with this. I further do not think pertains solely to the written be it in code or literature or art. Walking down the street there is an innate awareness in every human of the culmination of not only their history but of social history as a whole.

I do not agree with the idea of a programmer choosing a code like a composer chooses an instrument. I think that a composer chooses an instrument exactly like an author chooses a language, because of personal knowledge and desired effect. I don't think it relates to efficiency really.

This imperceptibility is referred to as 'transparence'. Interfaces called transparent allow us to interact/do what we're supposed to do without being aware of how the effects are obtained. We should perhaps speak instead about their opacity, given that we cannot see through them to the machine.

How does this relate to poetry? The idea that a reader does not see the length of time that has gone into a line but that they only see its end effect? I think that if a poem is written well, the length of time taken will come out, along with all else that went into it. In this way I do not see a correlation between poetry and code. There are many other places I do, but not here.

Though we have spoken, indeed, metaphorically of the 'life' of the program, it is not only metaphor. Mind enters world, not contained within skin, but as a circuit-loop feedback operation. [12] The living, and all living functions, are indissoluble from information-driven environmental loops which alone serve as units of survival. Animal mind, protected from 'real' impact by the physical world, negotiates its circuits by abstract, non-physically locatable, information.

Wow! I just think that's fucking amazing to think about. The idea that thoughts are not real until they are expressed. I would agree completely. The same exists with ideas not being real until they are tangible. It's all abstraction until it is able to be put into language or into code.

just man justices / just man just is, is

This just reminds me of something my friends and I do with the word "man." For example;
"That's a real drag, man." Or, "That-A-Real-DragMan!" Stoner speech can very easily be turned into really inventive super hero names.

As with poetry, syntax is not enough to keep code going. When code is compiled, it is read through by the compiler and checked mainly for syntax mistakes, but it is only in execution (the behavior, the running, the performance) that the programmer can tell if the code written is, indeed, accomplishing its intent. Only the original coder will be able to judge this, as the code may quite effectively be doing something else. It is the goal-oriented approach with which code is developed that ultimately drives a system of envisioning-thinking-writing-compiling-executing.

But Poetry does not always have a specific intent. It is sometimes an experimentation in interpretation or an experiment with multiple intents. The then layered notion of a programmed poem functioning it’s initial intent of looking correct (to the author on the screen) and it’s artistic intents of interpretation by an audience are two different things. Then again, how is this different from writing a poem with a desire for a certain aesthetic appeal? With line breaks in certain places or spaces in specific places. This can be difficult in a new interface or with a new program. For example, when I have tried to write poems in photoshop I don’t have as much success because I am not totally comfortable with the program and the code. I suppose this is the same I would feel trying to express my non-real creative intent in another environment such as painting for example. The same inert idea contained, for the author, in one medium may be impossible to display within another.

This is where translation, for example, fails.
El acento me pende del zapato;
Does not mean,
The accent dangles from my shoe;

Even here, in a very literal translation, intent is lost. Cultural reference is gone, as is language. Language choice, is intentional. To write within one code versus another is a choice based on the vernacular prowess of the author. This is also true within a language. While one might not contain the vocabulary of a Vallejo or Bulgokov or Leyner they can still completely express themselves. After all expression is done so with language and its manipulation. The extent of one’s expression is the extent of one’s ability to understand and manipulate the languages and tools at their disposal at the level of their understanding.

If one cannot function within a language then they will have a hard time existing in it. They will lurk in their thoughts, in code, unable to display themselves as tangible, as an interactable user face. In the same way, “Animal mind, protected from 'real' impact by the physical world, negotiates its circuits by abstract, non-physically locatable, information.”

This is not to say that one will not physically exist, they will. Don’t worry. But without the ability to communicate and without the ability for an author or artist or programmer or advertiser to express what is inside then there is in an improvable sense the notion that there is nothing to express.

In the same way that a child cannot express themselves, becomes frustrated, gives up and throws a tantrum so do we trying to express our art within a new program, perhaps without the tantrum. It is even frustrating for someone to truly be themselves, say, at a new job or in a new setting. One must, not to sound to punny, learn the code of conduct and how they can function within it.

Where innovation occurs in this is with the ability to conquer new codes and languages and settings and circumstances and be able to not only thrive within them but be able to use these things to express that next step. That place that before such language used to produce it and to make it affable or real (not just a lingering notion within the unreal mind) did not exist such ideas could not be actualized.

2009-03-05T15:50:00.000-08:00

Monome and My Mind Blown

2009-02-27T11:25:00.001-08:00

Ok, (Here's my First Garage Band Mix)

So I was discussing in class yesterday a device that basically used a mini player as a queue for text samples. This has led me to go far past where I was planning on taking my audio project. The device in question has been brought to the level of the monome. This is a midi, sound effect, video queue device that allows the artist, programmer, writer, musician to program in a series of beats or a musical progression while having the capability to manipulate samples live.

WOW.

Riding my bicycle home just now after being shown the existence of this amazing device as well as a new sound mixing program that allows for more live, DJ like, manipulation I came to a new ground of possibilities as a writer. An author can take cut up technique to amazing new places with this. Further it allows the author the ability to have visuals correspond with words and sound or music or whatever. The strange thing about this is it would be entertaining to watch and listen to someone remix a poem or a story, live. I think it would be the closest way possible of literally getting inside of an artists thought process. The audience, or reader, or patron could see the creative process unfold and come together through loops with correlating images evoked in the author by the terms or sounds used.

While I will most definitely not be taking things to this level for my current sound project I do think it is amazing and am pretty much geeked about using this as a style of writing. It really places the performative aspect of literature into a new realm. Also, making it accesible to those otherwise not into poetry, or writers not into music or art (no such thing).

Again, wow.

completely haphazard thoughts on a project

2009-02-26T00:50:00.000-08:00

So,

This project really started about 7 years ago when I heard a spoken word album of Jack Kerouac's work. The poem specifically was, Skid Row Wine. Enthralled as I was with the beat movement I wrote a very poor emulation of this poem, which I will mention no more of except it reflected my growth as someone dealing with the ideas of fringe living, DIY culture, cheap wine, and the beautiful artistic depravity of it all. (It should go without saying that I was living out of my car and cleaning and cooking in exchange for couch space.)

A couple years later I was living in New York and, being an idealist drunkard, thought to make the best of my impoverished state. What other's saw as impoverished I found to be something to be sought after. Not like those trust funders panhandling on St. Marks mind you. Fuckers who acted the part of the starving artist and afforded 1200 a month studios. Although I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ingrid (I think that was her name. It was unfitting of a 22 year old and better suited of an elderly Slovakian woman. The kind that lived in this neighborhood long before it became hip.) for allowing my girlfriend at the time, and subsequently me, to stay in her place while she went up to Connecticut and then to Morroco for the months of January and February. Also, sorry Liz never gave you any rent.

Oh, to know it young. And be a poet.

I thought this mantra to myself as a deceleration of everything the rest of the world had forgotten. I swilled and sacrificed myself to, "this beautiful young life that drowns in cirrhosis like cheap wine.” I wrote poems, worked shitty jobs, went to communist bar open mic nights, and generally acted as a total hipster longing to afford clothes from American Apparell.

Good times, moreover.

Last fall I looked at this poem once again, from the point of paractaxis while also embracing Burroughs' cut up technique. Further I embraced a fragmented take on language and developed an interesting remix of the poem I'd written a number of years ago. Oh, let's not forget an always present interest in fractals.

So here we are. My plan is to turn this poem into a sound piece. In the reading of the poem, the original poem, I plan to take off into a sound fractal each space where a word or phrase was used in the remix. This will branch out into a reverberated mayhem while in the background I hope to incorporate the original sound piece I was inspired by some 7 years ago. Or at least the general depravity the piece incorporates.

Also I hope to employ some of the techniques found in fractal sound art within this.

It's kind of all over the place right now, but I think that's where I hope to keep it, as it is now a reflection on a very disillusioned voice, both in the original Skid Row Wine piece as well as in my emulation of the piece from the vantage of an equally as inebriated idealist some 40 years later.

eh?

Relating to fractals: By my understanding of the definition of a fractal is that it can be viewed in the same way no matter how it is looked at. Basically whether zoomed in or from far out it appears the same.

The way I hope to relate this to sound and to the evolution of a piece from a sound piece based on a written piece to a written emulation of that sound piece to a rewrite of the emulation to a cut up remix combined with images and finally to another sound piece fusing together each of these separate pieces. Does that make sense?

In the end I would like to see that each of these, individually, express a common idea or scope or feel. Further, I hope the combination of these pieces in layering creates a fuller representation of this core idea that lingers in each of them. Also, it would be nice if it sounds cool.

We'll see.

More Rants on Capitalism (Who'd of Guessed?)

2009-02-11T11:26:00.000-08:00

The concept of culture jamming found its way, by name, into focus in the mid 90's due to the dubious efforts of anti-globalization groups such as AdBusters and The Yes Men. The concept is to simply cause a ruckus, make your point known. It is an effort often done through the same channels as advertising and propaganda. Logos are manipulated, flash animation catches the eye before anyone realizes they are being had. In a lot of ways I find it to be advertising for something worth while.

Ad Busters biggest, and annual, effort is Buy Nothing Day (BND) . Or as it is more commonly referred to by Target Wallmart and Kohls' shoppers, Black Friday. The event arises functions as a protest against over consumption. Participants are encouraged to, instead of raking in the deals on sweatshop products, reflect at home with friends and loved ones. Read a book, Make some gifts rather that purchasing them, or really do whatever they would like that abstains from exchanging currency. Inherently there is a bit of hypocrisy in the concept because the book read was more than likely purchased, the scarf made was sewn from fabric that was purchased. The idea then takes participants into a state of realization and hopefully one of greater consumer awareness.

Where culture jamming gets into this are in the protests out in the streets, the mock corporate shirt logos snuck into stores, and the switching of Barbie and GI-Joe voice-boxes, as done by The Yes Men. In fact, on the Friday after Thanksgiving of 2003 myself and a few friends went around malls in the Grand Rapids and Muskegon area (a youth spent in Michigan) combing the parking lots for american flag bumper stickers. We replaced them with this:

I guess you could say we were working on our night moves. No? Running against the wind might have been a better choice.

Regardless this, and the work done by The Yes Men, are both methods of culture jamming. Now, what is culture jamming? isn't it just protesting under a euphemism. Protesting became something uncool after punks replaced hippies and apathy replaced it all. (see this article, also by adbusters.) What was anyone to do inorder to motivate lazy hipsters, hippies afraid of fulfilling their stereotypes, and middle class consumers fearful of joining a dangerous subculter. A simple rebranding of social action was all it took. Culture Jamming is New Coke, Crystal Pepsi, and Reduced Fat all in one. The only difference is it is the first use of marketing ploys used to undermine marketing.

Side note, my favorite site to listen to free music is currently brought to me by McDonalds. It's wonderful that they can provide such a service while I'm working on an article that undermines them. check out Imeem for streaming music and getting tempted by the dollar menu. I know I do.

In watching a movie last week by The Yes Men (movie by same title) I began to think about these issues once again. While my feelings on corporate take over of america and the world at large are still quite a concern of mine I have, in recent years, changed my way of fighting them. I simply try to live well, which to me means minimizing my corporate participation, stealing as much as I can from larger organizations, and other hypocritical and self righteous endeavors.

Now, here is what I was wondering about The Yes Men. There is a scene where they are purchasing clothes in London. One is holding a button up shirt, still packaged, and asks if it would look professional enough for his upcoming presentation where he is posing as a member of the WTO. Now, he is giving a presentation satirizing the shameful production of textiles worn in the developed world.

So why buy the new shirt off the street?
Why buy McDonalds to prove they are awful?
Why waste thousands of dollars on travel?
Can this culture jamming be done without participating in the corporate culture you are trying to destroy?
Does it make much of a difference beyond simply being insightful and comical?
Is protesting simply a construction of the dominant class to assuage social deviants?

One last point: in the film the only time anyone vissibly disagrees with The Yes Men's satire is in the college lecture. This is the last great platform for free speech. After this it is off to the business world where to descent is to oppose progress and efficiency. It's the same avenue for a lot in the creative world too. I have a friend with a degree in art direction who is vying to renew the Navy print campaign for fear of loosing out to a lower bidder. Where does this corporate takeover of our talents, thoughts, and essence stop? And as for the government outsourcing its propaganda to private ad firms. This is the topic of another blog.

This is reminiscent of my largest apprehension towards digital work, it is inherently corporate. This is also true with printed work or really anything short of moving in with the sasquatch, which is just a tourist trap for Target, Wallmart, and Kohls shoppers.

This is what really makes me thankful to be able to write a blog, the last free avenue of speech. I just hope they don't find it when I'm looking for a job.

Jello Biafra

2009-02-04T15:17:00.000-08:00

This kind of fits in to my earlier post.

Proletariat Bourgeoisie Remix

2009-02-04T11:53:00.000-08:00

Last night I began a PBR induced debate about the modern day proletariat. Really not any new ground for me, as I truly enjoy both arguing and communism.

Newly discovered to me were the pontifications of Wark McKenzie who identifies a new struggle for the working class masses.

Inside A Hacker Manifesto Wark explores new ideas of ownership and thus arises new ideas of control and submission. The rise of the internet has brought the rise of new commodities by what he identifies as the "Vectoralist" class. These new commodities are information and the avenues information is channeled through. I had difficulty differentiating this from a straight forward post-marxist concept and an all together modern version of The Communist Manifesto.

Speaking for communism and anarchic ideals is a pursuit of mine because nearly everyone disagrees with me. It is a wonderful way to say, "Hey, I'm going to start an argument that I can't win because it has been historically proven not to work. And yes, I am incredibly self righteous. Ready? GO!"

In order to make an argument such as this successful one needs to pick tangible points.

I, wrongfully chose music as information, and thus as a commodity.

My friend's counterpoint was that music is not information.

I did not see this.

Music, she said, is a product made by a group or individual just like a lamp or a chair or any other tangible, and thus purchasable, product.

My thoughts were that music is now a purchasable product because it has already been commodified. Basically I was reiterating McKenzie's thoughts into, "The Vectoral class owns the rights to music say and sells it as property. Music, in and of itself is just sound. The creation of sound is most sensibly owned by the waves of air pushed and vibrated upon to produce it. Then the artist who created that sound. Is the sound the property of the one who sold the sound making device, the recording studio the sound was recorded in? Where along this line does something such as sound become property? When it is made illegal to posses without paying for it? The Vector class needs information or in this case sound in order to thrive. It needs to have something that can not be obtained without the vector class' assistance. The hacker class undermines this by releasing this information without charge, taking away it’s property identification. It is then the necessity of the vector class to develop a new property that is unobtainable without being purchased. The process repeats and both are proven to be dependent upon one another."

Last night I was, however, not this articulate.

We also moved into the realm of plagiarism as something that the vector class does a good job of policing and prohibiting. I disagreed, of course, saying something to the effect of, "You can't like own a potato, man."

This, as is usually the case with me, was quoted from an episode of The Simpsons. So, to be affable in conversation I am required, at times, to plagiarize. Is quoting a song or a line from a book or television show then plagiarism?

We both agreed that this was not.

When then does something become plagiarized?

Modern culture is inherently based on plagiarism in my opinion. All culture is. We are the summation of the civilized world. Our entire argument was fueled by things we've read, seen, and heard. Isn't that plagiarism? The words we used to make our points are taken from words we have remembered from other contexts. Language in and of itself is plagiarized from older forms and older languages and in the end sounds to represent objects. Language was originally then a way of uncommodifying (is that a word?) something. A way of making something abstract. An avenue to make reference to a thing without it happening or being there. Language then in and of itself is plagiarized from emotions and objects. (With this in mind I would like to see someone communicate strictly with emotion, rock, dirt, and possibly water. You know, as a performance piece.)

Plagiarism is nothing new.

Why then is plagiarism and copyright infringement something to be prosecuted for? Why is there a hacker class?

Because information has been commodified, it has been turned into a product. Further, not thought, but the avenue to convey thought has been commodified. In order to express myself for this class I need to obtain a computer, get on the internet, find a website that allows me to post my thoughts, and finally type (a plagiarized for of communication dating back to the 1800's. Stolen from the more traditional pen and paper genre). The avenue for information is now brought to me by Comcast and Apple and it is filled with impulse distractions.

This is of course not a new concept either. 25 years ago my thoughts would be the culmination of RandomHouse Publishing (for example) and Remington & Sons (makers of the first typewriter). An interesting side note on this is that when I just now typed in typewriter to Google (another company commodifiying information) the first suggestions were not information on typewriters but places I could purchase one. I suppose this shows us existing on the cusp of information commodity and that of the tangible.

The idea of turning information into product is nothing new. It is the base for a capital driven system to give things value. Without value how can one thing be weighed against another. Without values how can a decision be right or wrong? Without a given value nothing could be decided. These values are based upon past experience and historical evidence. Are our values then not plagiarized?

In a given society where one is, through the culmination of plagiarized civil history, brought to the opinion that all things have a both moral and tangible value why then not make that leap of assimilating information into the same realm as something that took information to make.

In a digital realm information is the product of the information needed to convey said message. Programmers develop language in order for laypeople to communicate. By the very nature of things language and the ideas needed to create language are commodified by the vector class. Without this process there is no way to convey an idea. If a vector or bourgeoisie did not control the means of production of information who would?
Where can a proletariat class thrive?

How would information be communicated and shared without an avenue, or language, to convey it it through?

The term itself, proletariat, is plagiarized from the Latin, proles, meaning "offspring." In modern terms the hacker class is an offspring of the vector class, the class in control of the means of production. It thrives because of the reaction to and manipulation of information and emerging forms of communication brought about by the interplay between itself and the vector class.

The two have been codependent in various forms since the introduction of private property, be it physical or intellectual. The ability to communicate, to convey information, has always been a commodity cherished by those in possession of it and used as a tool to make submissive those without it or trying to seek it.

Yes, knowledge is still free but you will need to buy a mac book and have a high speed internet connection to contribute.

And no, none of this knowledge is new.

And yes, I will have another PBR.

Mouchette and Tralfamadorian Existance

2009-01-28T10:14:00.000-08:00

It's always nice to learn new things, obtain usable insights that will help you later in life. I'm talking beyond that which will further the progression of my own work. Cultural universals that supersede language barriers.

With the advent of the internet as a standard communication tool these insights often pass over us and are under appreciated. I wonder if this deters us from the nuances in daily life and leaves us to only notice overwhelming profundities.

In reading the socially interactive piece Mouchette I noticed a section that allowed for anonymous advice for pre-teen depression. Here I noted the following tidbit in a section entitled "What is the best way to kill yourself when you're under 13?". Gracie writes, "LETHAL INJECTION OF STARS AND BUTTERFLIES." Doesn't get more insightful than that.

All kidding aside I think this brings up an interesting point about the presentation of a work on the internet or really in any modern medium. Because of the access to technology and the ready ability to not only add to something but also manipulate it an artist is at the will of his or her audience. By allowing the audience to not only interact with the work but to also offer input into it is a risky move on the part of the artist. Where does the author censor his or her own creation when it has been defaced? Is that the point?

Mouchette, the interactive piece, is based (I believe) off the 1967 French film by same title.

Mouchette also means little fly, lending well to the section Lullaby for a dead fly, which I found to be the most interesting.

Here, Mouchette is deceased. Yet she is not because she is posting the mourners comments on the site. The mourners' comments stream about the page and proclaim Mouchette to not be dead because her creation (which I've found reference to being originally created by a Canadian man) is still alive and thriving.
Since Mouchette is an all together fictitious character she can never die in the literal sense because she also has never lived. But because of the interaction allowed in this medium she takes on a much more emotional presence to her audience than were she simply words on a page or an actress in a film.

The imagination of these website patrons not only allows them to be fans of Mouchette and post advice on her suicide site. They are also, through delusion or suspension of disbelief, allowed to mourn her in a more profound way than a conventional work of fiction.

They also do not mourn in a conventional way. Instead each offers philosophies of the their take on the digital afterlife. Mouchette, in the same way people often mention tangible loved ones, is "still with us." (Despite never really being with us to begin with.) Mouchette's website is still updated daily or so, people still contribute to it, still interact with her creation, with her. And even though she is dead in certain portions of the site it is irrelevant to her character as a whole. It's a lot like the Tralfamadorians of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. While deceased at one moment they are alive in a great many others. There is no need for chronology.

So Mouchette, like any tangible art work, becomes timeless in a way. Still, like a tangible work of art, Mouchette will only exist as long as aesthetics allows.

Once Mouchette's website has become outdated will she parish?

Well, the website is already outdated but I have seen postings from patrons as recently as January 22nd 2009. So in this way Mouchette has already stood a small test of time. I suppose she will parish when her links are lost or when the server respirating her breaks down. She might also homogenize into culture like other hijacked and manipulated thoughts, ideas, and works of art. In some ways she has already done this. The website is based off a movie, based off a novel, based off an idea from an author, based off of certain experiences and teachings that led him to said idea.

Hypertext and the Confessional Memoir

2009-01-21T11:40:00.000-08:00

The early experimentation with hypertext in a literary form seems to have focused mainly in the genre of the confessional memoir.
The three examples read (Body, Six Sex Scenes, and These Waves of Girls) were also written in the mid to late 90s, which makes me wonder if it was the genre best suited for the hypertext format or if it were simply a popular genre to write in at the time. In researching further I was unable to find out the popularity of the confessional memoir in relation to the advent of the hypertext format. Anybody know?

Regardless, I do think that the format serves well for the genre. It allows memory to be something discovered for the reader. By which I mean the reader is able to make the same connection between things as the author via the medium of the link. Also, it gives the author the chance to connect more than one memory to another and more than one topic to the same memory.

For instance, in My Body, Jackson says, “Far better, maybe, if we had a happy void in the center of the face.” this line acts as a link that takes the reader from the musings on the nose to those of the eye. The connection of each body part in some way reminding of the other or in a way being similar is more easily accomplished via hypertext. In an interview with Bold Type Jackson stated, "My mind doesn't travel in a straight line, and neither do my stories. I like digression and interruption and the clash of styles and voices."

Jackson also discusses at one point in My Body the way that she would make this work if it were tangible. She says that she would make a wooden body and provide corresponding drawers for each section. I simply found this interesting because it is something actually done in the Bodies Exhibition currently touring museums around the U.S..

The downside of hypertext is there is a chance that a reader will simply not click on all the links. I found this especially frustrating in These Waves of Girls. The author has portions meant to be read in a linear form or that at least read as a narrative when followed using the "next" and "last" arrows. However, these scenes also provide other links to other portions of the story and disrupt the narrative. While I understand the author's notion of memory and thus a memoir not being viewed in a conventional format I did feel that a number of the stories contained within the text to be better told conventionally. Which is to say, I did not see them as interesting in a non-linear format. It was just unnecessary.

Where I found the hypertext working best was in Adrienne Eisen's, Six Sex Scenes. The story was easily read without the convention of narrative for one. Also I found that the jumping around lent well to the narrators style of thinking which is kind of paratactic in a sense.
I might be partial to this one because I found the character was easier to relate to or because I believe I read this story at some point in my undergraduate education. (You just don't forget a story like On My Fifteenth Birthday.) Regardless of these reasons I simply found Eisen to be more captivating than the other two readings, which I think is the most important part of reading text, be it in a digital or conventional format. Without a well written, captivating story to tell no amount of technical innovation is going to really help. Keep in mind this is not to say the other two stories were not interesting both in form and content. I simply found Scenes to work the best within the genre.
My body would be really cool, visually, were it an actual sculpted piece. And I think that These Waves of Girls would be better suited in a more orthodox form.