PICTOCRACY test

I finished up the test version of the animation I've been talking about on the extended pizza network and posted it on YouTube. It still needs a lot of work.

Hits, Content, etc.

I am working on a new project now. Mostly because I haven't been able to produce in a bit due to nerves about this whole getting into Grad School thing. I'm wating for word - will it come by letter? Email? Telephone? Me no know. Soon soon.

The new project is a simplification. Simplicity. Conceptual minimalism rather than aesthetic minimalism. It's more moral. It's more sciency - few variables. The codification of creativity. Unconscious expressionism? The frustration of creative intention. Sounds complicated, but just means removing doublethink. Self-doubt is the feeling of the ego shrinking. I had a pride problem for like two days. It was a real trip. Two mes. I don't know. Doublethink is bad. Joriki is good (no-mind power). Remember squeezepunx? Now we've got sprocketheads. But they're on hold because the foundation is not laid. You can't get laid if you don't exist, that's one thing.

It's all a plan to get more hits. Hits.

Then there is FameIsMagic. What will happen?

Project

I posted a long (surprized?) post at the Extended Pizza Network asking for advice on a new project I am considering. Please help me out!

I feel overwhelmed

I'm not human, or at least I tend to create an artificial environment for myself so I can operate on a semi-mechanical level. Alien. Psuedo-semi. A faux-rational level. Thing is, when you take hormone therapy to castrate yourself, your voice doesn't go up, but you might cry at the movies, and maybe you can collaborate with a group more efficiently. People are hairless apes - emotion machines, not number machines. Some emotions are rational - others, not so much. But I'd like to play it safe and only deal with the sensy onese, pretending they aren't special. So I create fake spaces for myself - like this blog - like my notebooks - like my art projects - in which my mind can claim dominion over an imaginary, simulated rational space. Plus I "hide out" a lot...

But recently I've been to too many places where there are people everywhere. Surrounded by strangers, it tends to stimulate your imagination. Eyes and clothes and the exploding things they say when they walk by. Plus spring is going to change my mind with hormones and erase the winter me. The new me is juicier and harder to control. Women wear clothes that really explode my simulation. Then I succeeded at getting in some grad schools, which means I have a social self, an identity I can share with other people in a few short words. That really gives me a chit in the game that plays out in the emotional world, the consensus reality game. Which tends to embarrass my simulation, dry it up like a puddle in the sun. But it's dangerous. I am sleepy all the time from thinking. Getting this ID has been my goal for a while, and now that I have it I am transformed by confusion.

I can only see clearly when I have a few variables on the move. Of course I can handle more than one variable, I carry around the world's most powerful calculating machine all the time and I use it to decide what to cook for dinner, who to call (usually no one), what to blog about. But there are so few constants nowadays, and I forget what loose thread to pick at to untangle the knotworld. Writing for me is just a sounding. Pick a location in the brain, any level, and put a mic there. What comes out is just a constant resampling of the landscape of connections played out from that nexus-point. Sometimes it's words, then I've scored. Opened up, and filtered through a sense-maker some of the time. I can't see myself very clearly - this is not among my skills - but recently I've noted there have been an increasing number of soundings that have been aborted due to signal strength issues (poor strength, ultra-hi freq., or inconstants). That means there is a chaotic reconfiguration of the system. The poles are flipping, the magnetic field is stormy and spotty. I don't know which end is up.

My fantasy version of FameIsMagic for this evening is operating in a world full of real-world events that keep the mind full up busy calculating emotional possibilities. How can you write about the streets? Other people provide the most variables - do you want your head to catch fire? How can you do it? It makes me feel like I am falling backwards, like I've hopped into a new body and my hands are huge. If you keep on puncturing your emotional-fantasy bubble, how are you going to dry it up? How are you going to be able to concentrate and say what you mean? Zen is a complicated process of pointing at the world and saying "this is it." You seem to be trying some kind of alternative practice where you point at other people's minds and say "this is it." How can you do this? It makes me want to find a cabin in the woods or better yet a martian cave. But you seem to be able to handle it. Watching you write was terrifying for me in a way - it was fast and direct and pink. I can sometimes see the real world, but I can't play it out in my emotional-simulation. That's like trying to plug your computer into a wire fallen from those high-voltage erector-set monster power lines. But that's your thing, no wonder you need a smoke. Oh - I'm sure for you that there is a balance point. Of course I can't imagine what it's like to be you. But I wouldn't be able to survive. I wouldn't be able to survive and prosper. I've met a lot of creative people and asked them - do you do any kind of practice to calm yourself - you know simple meditation like counting your breaths? And you were the only person who was like - no no ha ha. And this is my fantasy version of you, so don't be offended, but we need to help each other live more healthily.

Finally, there is the "impostor complex" - when I enter an institution I have to play up to their idea of who I am - and of course I can't because, oh man, they use the biggest words. And I use big words about myself too, but different ones. But sometimes I can be so small. Sometimes I can be a kitten playing with a piece of string, sometimes I can be a single electron. But I am hardly ever a giant striding across the noble landscape. But the truth is, nobody has a head. They've got a whole lot of fake ones, and these hardly ever screwed on strait. What I'm saying is that there is no such thing as solid ground. There is decadence, aging, conservatism, and money. I am not an irrational rationalist - I think there are a few facts in the world, but they are like ribbons of seaweed in the churning surf. A lot of art is terrible. Awful stuff. Dangerous? I don't know, but misdirected. I want to find my tiny who-world on a strange seaweed-scape and broadcast a previously-opaque nexus. I need something to slow me down. But with all these churning variables I don't know if I can do it.

In the Temporary Autonomous Zone, Hakim Bey said "Kidnap a stranger and make them believe they are the president of an imaginary country." That's so direct and godlike. I can't even find my shoes in the morning. But an artist is a philosopher who works with his hands. I wonder if, as a thinking artist, I'll be able to stick my head above water. We all need reprogramming. Thing is, I know that the minds from the future, the ones that are an order of magnitude more complicated than ours, are reading this as soon as I put it down. I know that you are able to handle a lot more variables, and I know you know more than me, and I'm sure it feels amazing, like being high all the time, or being tortured by the CIA, like being a room full of people. Whatever. You could have sent me a message, you could have given me a hand. Any sufficiently-advanced technology looks like magic. Yeah yeah. I know. But aren't you spinning as well? Isn't the universe still infinitely vast? Doesn't looking at the springtime people still make you want to say hello and hide at the same time? Don't be mechanical! We're both going to fizzle out in the end. What's the point of all this knowledge, all this smart talk, all this speed? Isn't it just exhausting? Can't we join the picnic in the warming sunshine, lie under the tree, stare at the canopy, and roll down a hill hugging each other?

blogging from life / blogging from mind

I don't usually write about what is happening in my real life here. That is just my blogging style. FameIsMagic (will talk to computer) writes about office appliances and feelings, but I don't. Partially because I don't make a coherent effort at hiding my ID, but partially because I can't imagine that anyone really wants to hear about how nervous I was on my interview at Columbia (not very - I'm a pro. Not), how much I drank and who I met in the city, etc. etc. etc. Or maybe it's just cause I don't know how to write about these things so that they sound interesting or significant, the way FameIsMagic does. But I kind of feel like I am missing out on the whole experience of what writing a blog is all about - that anything bad that happens to you becomes something good because you get to blog about it. Bad's still bad for me. I mean, it's not changing my relationship to society in any significant way. I still have a lot of private areas in my life that I don't want to share with everyone. Because they are boring? Because they don't fit the fantasy-self that I am creating up here? Because I am a slow typer?
Anway, it really is amazing how clear-headed Logan was being way back during "The Logan Show" days, when he was saying that we were entering an age in which surveillance and living our lives on the internet would change our ideas of privacy and alter our self-perception. Or whatever he was saying. (Logan spent a lot of time living under cameras in a kind of simulated internment camp on campus being oppressed by Ted Dubok, some kind of dictator or guard or therapist...) Back then, I don't think that I understood exactly what he was getting at. The resulting movie "Logan, Limited" (which isn't on YouTube yet...) seemed to me to be about an alternative fantasy world, a negatopia, or just an expression of Logan's private concerns, but he was actually being super-smart in predicting where our society was going. Because a lot of artists are also futurologists. (Or at least I'd like to be.) Maybe he should have explained it differently, or maybe he shouldn't have tortured his audience so much, or something. But anyway, respect.
Anyway, FameIsMagic and I recorded a few conversations and monologues as the intro to her new YouTube-based vlog. This is pretty interesting. If you haven't ever talked to a camera before about your life (I have) - it's HARD!!! First of all, it's really unforgiving. Conversations in real life aren't like thesis statements. They're not even like conversations on reality shows. It really makes concrete the abstract concept of VOICE. Who are you talking to? The cameraman? Yourself? Your imaginary audience? The 1 or 12,000,000 people who could potentially watch it? Makes for some pretty awk. and self-conscious talking, and I think FameIsMagic did pretty well, with room to grow. I'll post here when we get those up.
The thing about blogging from mind is, my brain was racing all weekend. I must have thought of three thousand things I wanted to write up here - profound things - no really. But your mind is infinite and never strikes the same place twice. So how can I suppose to even try to write down thoughts from two days ago? They will be stale and simple. The only thing to do is to think live in realtime and hope that the fingers type it. That's blogging - a little shocking true-to-life psychedelic brilliance, and a lot of mud. Maybe once cameras become more transparent (less clunky) we will be able to capture the moments in ou conversations where we really shine, but by then we will all be dehabilitatingly self-conscious all the time. That'll be a smart smart world with no real life.
In the meantime, I'll leave my private life a mystery and save you all the boredom.

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Early Chinese Characters

It is quite difficult to find good resources on early Chinese Characters. I am quite excited about going to grad school and using the library to find more books on this subject. Thing is, I don't read Chinese that well - so I have to stick to English. But these are photocopied out of an old book I found through inter-library loan. I lost the information on what book it is from. Cause I'm a real wizard that way. Anway, this info is not available anywhere else on the internet. If anyone can tell me where I can find more about this topic, I'd be extremely pleased.

Why should you care about these images? Hey! This isn't just the invention of Chinese characters - it's the invention of writing, period. The first image here that is clearly written out as a textual composition is 20,000 BC!!! And that's not the earliest. Watch as ritualistic religious symbols change into strings of pictograms that work almost as spells, and then change into texts that record people's names and instantly become concerned with money and property - how uplifting! But seriously - I think these are some of the most beautiful images from any art, anywhere. The influence on my work is profound - the composition, the symmetry, the combination of abstract and representative elements within the same image, the tension between communication and opacity... Consider that works like the Tao Te Ching and all of Confucius were recorded with the latest of these characters, and you can understand why the translations are so open to interpretation.

Click on the pictures to see the details.

Prince Sattva Sacrificing himself to Tigers

When I was in Dunhuang, China I went to the caves which have been carved out of the cliffs and painted by Buddhist monks for thousands of years. While there I bought a cheap, flashy tourist book of images which seemed to be written in English. The English in the book seems to have been written without the aid of any native speaker, and so it is ungrammatical and awkward. But I also love the sound of it. I am interested in translation and in language-games. Error and mutation are an essential part of the evoluion of language, one that has been stalled by spell-checkers and scholarly journals. I hope that as English is now a world language, it will divide and branch and new dialects will be born. Not that I think that China will be using English (more like the other way around - and I'm excited for that). Anyway, when grammar is not correct a light goes off in our minds that increases our sensitivity to the words being used. I hope that I have conveyed a sense of respect for this writing. This story is quite beautiful, and there is no problem understanding the plot. The pictures are scanned from the book. All errors including punctuation taken from the original.

Prince Sattva Sacrificing himself to Tigers

DaChe, the king of a state in ancient India, had three sons being named Mohe-Polo, Mohe-Tipo, and Mohe-Sattva respectively.
One day, three princes went out for a tour together. They suddenly found seven new-born tigerlings cried piteously for food around their mother being dead-beat and at her last gasp. Three princes had a lot of sympathy with them. The elder prince said: “The death comes to them step by step, She, either to eat her children or to die together. It’s terrible! Oh, my god! “The second prince said: “Yes. Too horrible to look at. What should we do for them? “They could do nothing about it except for nail-biting. The eye-catching sceneries along the way could not detain them. They were low in spirits and came back.
The eighth life approaching death as well as brother’s sorrowful and powerless expressions activated little prince Sattva. He went and meditated on it, the image of eight tiger’s misery appeared in his mind constantly. “I have to save them, they ought enjoy themselves, I should sacrifice myself to those who lived miserably, relieve them out of the abyss of misery! “ Prince Sattva was refreshed and overjoyed after determining to sacrificing himself to feed tigers.
Sattva asked him brothers going first owing to being afraid of being discouraged. He came to tigers alone and lay by tiger’s mouth nakedly. But to his disappointment that dead-beat tiger could do nothing. Sattva looked at the tigers vexedly and thought that his detainment would bring end to tigers. He would self-reproached forever. He ascended up the cliff urgently and prayed silently for continuing tiger’s lives. He then pierced his blood vessel by the aid of a dried bamboo and jumped down. A grand, solemn and stirring scene appeared in the world. All Devas were touched by him, sang praise of him. Numerous fragrant flowers descended down and covered the whole valley.
The tiger at her last grasp snuffled the blood and lapped which refreshed her appreciably, finally she ate up Sattva and went away together with her children. Sattva’s brother returned to look for him after a long time’s waiting. What came into their eyes were the bloodily clothes and remains. They made out what left there were Sattva’s. They regretted to leave their little brother alone and cried their hearts out.
The queen, in the meanwhile, was sleeping in the daytime. She suddenly dreamed about that her two breasts being sliced off together with her full teeth dropped as well as the little one of here three favorite pigeons was hold in glede’s mouth. She woke up with a start and being told what had happened to her favorite son. She could not control here eyes and hurriedly came to the valley in company with the king. They were filled with deep sorrow and lost consciousness while finding Sattva’s remains and clothes left for them. Finally, they were rescued to come to their senses and sent Sattva’s remains back to the palace as well as built a pagoda to attend Sattva’s relics there. It enjoyed endless stream of pilgrims so that prince Sattva could attain enlightenment and become Buddha as soon as possible.

- "Dunhuang & Silk Road" Du Doucheng (Lanzhou University) and Wang Shuqing (Dunhuang Academe). Published by Sea Sky Publishing House, Shenzhen, China, May, 2005. pp. 70-71

The Buttmops - En Voiture

Below is a link to a zipped copy of the Buttmops final album on Cat O' Nine Tail Records. This album never really got the wide release we dreamed of, so I am posting it here. There are 14 tracks (there is no track 13), none of which are deserving of a name. The album was recorded live in my mother's car on a cheap, disintegrating Hi-8 video camera, driving around the roads in the countryside surrounding Pennington, NJ late at night somewhere around 1999, the last year of a crappy century. There was some use of some pre-recorded bomb tracks, also recorded that evening with the Rapman keyboard and poorly-functioning KORG synth and played back through the car's tape deck, but all of the singing and most of the instrumentation was done live and is improvised. The nihilism is palpable as the band vaccillates between profoundly disturbing primal-scream choruses and aborted verses that devolve into absurd spats about how to operate the vehicle or junky recording equipment. The horrifically riveting sounds were achieved by forging unforgetttable grooves out of raw pain, unhappiness and friction between the bandmates (by which I mean my brother Chester). This is the sound of a band crashing and burning. It is also the sound of a car crashing. Listen for our encounters with road kill, the consequences of light-headed driving, petty and immature death threats, and eventual resignation and acceptance of our doom. The album was mixed by Chris of Disgust, who still has the original tape. I wanted to ensure that posterity was not spared. Enjoy!
The Buttmops En Voiture

I need a manager.

I need to meet with someone who will help give focus to this blog, which is becoming, like everything in my life, ultracomplicated in my mind, froze up, and therefore empty in the world. I have exactly seven thoughts in my head at all time, but they are on very competitive rotation which doesn't give them time to flower.

I NEED SOMETHING TO SLOW ME DOWN.

Perhaps it can be my loyal fans, the nonimaginary ones (the imaginary ones work much more in the sped-up, confabulation sector...). What should the focus be?

I have some simple ideas (we can start stupid because I can add the decorations and tangents in a jiff).

1. Talk about real life: i.e. schools etc.

2. Book list (promised a bit ago.)

3. Talk about art projects that I am planning.

4. Talk about what I am thinking i.e. the words that won't stop, the art theories, etc. (This one going to require the most management.)

See? case in point, by the 4th thought a great deal of random noise is entering. Very hard to keep on track here (and I've been quitting coffee.) Nothing new.

Awaiting your incisive directives,

00f

New ways of representing the world as radical as the invention of perspective or analytical cubism

Logan and I gave an art talk in Palm Beach about the future of art and new methods of representation that would profoundly change our ways of seeing the world, as a lot of mainstream gallery type art now is stuck in a pretty conservative phase... One of our ideas is that these new ways of representing the world would come not neccessarily from the visual arts, but from the the way art and science interact on the internet. The best example of course is google images (and google image labeller will be radical once they fix it up a bit - sigh - if only I could get in touch with them about my ideas...). But since then I have been on the lookout for more radical ideas. Now, I'm not hugely into design, because I think a lot of the theories are disconnected from reality, the system is plagued by nega-institutionalism, and a lot of the actualizations are distracted by capital and cater to people's grossest instincts. But design is really coming into its own as an art nowadays - or perhaps I just not "get it" cause of the "worldchanging" book et al. Anyway, I am using a lot of design strategies in my art, especially since I stopped believing in myself (I'm not going to get into it right now). Anyway, here is a video that is a testament to the power of representation - surely you can see how this could lead to amazing insight and transformative actions. Well, that or perhaps it just is another step into the simulation replacing reality - the ESPNization of the world (Poor Baudrillard is dead...).

Oh forgot to say - the video is "Hans Rosling: No more boring data: TEDTalks."

twitter

I may or may not have sent you an annoying message about signing up for twitter. What is it? It is a social network that operates completely over cell phones, but has an internet based component. You tell them your number, write a text message to the telephone number 40404, become my friend, and then every time you send a text message to 40404, me and all your friends get texted. The text has to be ultra short, and it is delivered mad quick. So it's like a decentralized and instant blog. We can use it to start flash riots or parties. Or flash boredom. See, I don't like myspace, and people hate me cause of that. But this I think I could dig. So do it.

Anyway, click here to go to my twitter account.

I'm trying to keep it stupid here. I don't want to say anything smarty.

BTW - I changed the layout here. I'm learning HTML. Not really, but I made the text wider...

I'm baaaaaaaack!!

I was in Oakland for a couple nights, but now I'm back in Ptown. I visited both UCBerkeley and CCA to see the programmes. All I can say is that I am overwhelmed and since I have a million thoughts flying around my head I have nothing definitive to say, so why don't I pull an unusual move for me and say nothing...

There are a lot of exiting things in the works here at synesthetic superscam so stay tuned, and don't forget to visit the extended pizza network, it's the best thing happening these days. The notebook challenge has started - let's see what happens.

I'm off again

I am going off to the bay area to visit some schools so I won't post for a couple of days. You're going to have to, I don't know, learn to watch tv or something...

I don't think I'm going to post that "notebook challenge" on Extended Pizza Network until I come back (tho I said I'd do it this weekend) - someone else can do it, if that's your thing. And what was wrong with the mix of Japanese music? You really don't know what you're missing!

80's myuzic from Japan (mix)

80smusicfromJapan.zip

This is a mix of 80's new wave music from Japan. I draw pretty heavy from Yen Records, the label of YMO. And there is a lot of Miharu Koshi, as well there should be. It is generally pretty keyboard driven, but there are some very very silly songs in here I have to say. This is as "cold" as Japanese pop music gets, which is not too cold - this is more like tunes from a pool party in September where everyone sits around smoking cigarettes than the soundtrack to a post-apocalyptic vacuum cleaner sacrifice ceremony. I'm getting through here, right? If you are unfamiliar with the particularities of Japanese Pop music you may have to give these a few listens before the click. And I didn't put any YMO or Plastics on it cause I'm not into YMO and I think everyone should already have the Plastics - if you don't, shame on you! I don't have anything serious to say about this music. I'll leave that to total cool dude. I'm really no expert - it's hard to find info about this music, let alone the tracks themselves, and this might not be the absolute best of the best of this genre, but it will give you a taste.

Some more (kind of goofy) info on this music can be found here.

This is a huge zip file 'cause I think compression is destroying the universe. Unfortunately this means you have to practice being patient.

From notebooks

I've been going through notebooks preparing for the Extended Pizza Network Notebook Challenge and because I just returned from a month or so away and I have a bit of distance from the creative efforts found therein and can see more clearly.

My production of nonsense is not limited to the destruction-of-sense-by-mechanical-process type. I also am capable of writing for hours and hours in a certain nonsense-producing mode, a familiar mindset. I don't think I am writing good poetry, but these writings always seem to come closer to what I would like to say than when I sit down and try to explain what it is I have to say in a traditional essay format (I can be a writer of very boring and simplistic essays). The trouble with these texts is that they are full of repetition that I find unsatisfying, and there are a very few nuggets thrown in with the chaff (and yes, mixed metaphors as well). Because the phrases that satisfy me are tied in with the ones that get me down I can't seem to extricate them. One option would be to learn to write differently, and I am trying to do so, but in order to write this way at all I have to give up all control and write whatever comes to my head as fast as possible - the whole methodology is taken from Ginsburg and is similar to the mode of so-called "automatic drawing" in which I produce a lot of my work. The other option is to edit out the junk, but this is a hugely creative process with a lot of cheating and rewriting and tie-togethers, and I usually find it kills the writing. Perhaps I am just not good at this yet (editing is an art), but I have a feeling it is just not the right way to do things for me. The last option, and the most interesting to me, is to use some sort of mechanical or human social network based method of editing the texts so that they change according to a process involving people's preferences and innaccuracies. But I don't yet know how to structure this. I want it to be less of a conscious effort than Wikipedia (and of course, smaller-scale 'cause I would never be able to interest more than a handful of interested people).

Anyway, I am going to copy out a typical text from a notebook, unedited. So please feel free to skim. And by the way, I'm not going to stop burdening my readers with this kind of trash unless I receive some kind of negative feedback - that's how mindless I really am. Yay!

[*This seemed "pointed writing" - risky talk?]

Whoever goes past anyone's tiny scrawls - this shawl.
Forget the other big-boy's notebooks.
Stripey-sweater monkeys in tree houses with switches
Fruit-loop tree forest
Dive in a creepy cardboard-cut silloehette to save face
Dodge the flying shit like a sky black with arrows.
A world of fun, half-a-life away
Truely yodelling in synch, eyes locked
We form a chrystal-shaped power blue-white lazer light array
All the vines are plastic-lined and oh so green as green.
Hear a bell in the wall? That's the future notebook.
We called them ghostesses 'til they wised up,
(We are the futuristic gods, that's all.)
Look like buildings much better now, shaped like blenders and blogs.
It's a sappy ending, the audience inwardly groans.
The fleabag in the corner, pastey-faced, cutting the shit cards
Who could love such a moonface?
Scorched earth, we are impossible to pray for anymore.
We've lost the last lesson and that's why all our singers sound so sad.
How long a chain can we let out, and how fast can we run away?
Songwriters will bang the bars 'til they spark.
A drive-in screen of thousand kilowatt cells.
People get to be so lazy driven by chaos,
But the world is so uncomplicated when we watch things fly apart.
Weight was the thing shoulders were designed for - we don't have wings.
Our bodies are pendulum spools.
This seems clear enough - binary sprockets.
I get everything I want - like a monkey in a pit of it's own shit.
Terrified by the awful rumbling train, delighted by starbursts and melon rinds.
It's impossible to pay attention to such nonsense! I really connect with you.
I know - let's go wriggle out red muscles together, that will be a tv moment.
"If you can't handle the dust, get out of the bowl."
Now this imaginary audience, it was always laughing, it was always stroking its chin.
Hello my secret flip-flopping heart, I know you know about my life.
Is there anything in this cabin except for tinker-toys?
The one that almost got away, my secret scientific sleuth.
Zippy tv color details zap in and out of the blurry focus.
Depth is an illusion, lots of details make the whole.
There's no glow-line guy for real, though he looks soooo good.
Cut-uppers and travellers, we live in the slump of the ages.
You are paying to maintain the most complicated social illusion
when you walk into a gallery and buy some monkeyshit.
If only we could freeze the details here
and press them into the shifting set permenantly,
then we could be still in our contemporary cave.
Scratch in the mud, do bad magic, and cruel up the earth.
A waveform of conscious complication arisen on the surface of the dustballs.
Onward and upward, we march into the future, they cried...
But out in the night time, the wind blew cruel, saying, "It's natural...
Your toys have grown more complicated, but have you ever wrestled with a waterfall?"
And think about it; how's your skeleton doing right now?
Feeling ready to shiver? To some, our greatest are bugs.
To some, our magic universe. To some, our waving uniform.
Tiny little signals lead your eye on 'til it forgets the detail.
How can we see again, dear shoppers? Rumble! Roar!
Our complicated tube? Our favorite talisman?
When we are shards in the alien hand, will we look advanced?
Shut down that ringing sound, we are a nation at war.
The bloody-faced demigods roughing up the good simple children.
Cutting up our own bodies, a metal-plated mammal.
The rulers of the earth could not stop its own destruction.
If only I could come close to stopping my own mini-model.
Truely, your earthen mounds are iced real nice, topped by fire
All the great inventions were made by forgotten heros.
The man who discovered fire was named Wilma -
Oh how she did rub those sticks!

Enlightenment distorted, nonsense clarified

I have been reading a lot of the books that Duane Beitmen gave me on Buddhism and thinking a lot about the exactitude of the words which have been translated in various combinations from Sanscrit to Chinese to Japanese and to English. Also I have been thinking about how words cannot describe how to become enlightened, but only to point the way, as indeed no words can ever describe any experience.

And so I present, without an original (as indeed I am not using an original myself) 8 versions of Buddha's words - each is translated from English to each of the languages shown, back to English, and then to the nest language on the list, for a total of 16 translations each. It is a wonder that there is anything left in common with any of these phrases, and yet (this is the thing) I think there is something meaningful to be extracted from the empty spaces in the matrix set up in your mind by these sentences:

Arabic - Chinese - French - German - Japanese - Korean - Russian - Spanish

Wonder! The miracle of Buddha of all the material tanning vat lives, but the thought and suppresses to the information [launching] all the virtues. He, along with 11,934 left thoughts and aspirations in the space.

Chinese - French - German - Japanese - Korean - Russian - Spanish - Arabic

See! However, the impression of a miracle of the tube all the pipes will be beaten down in the minds of gasoline Buddha and return to the people Virtue and benefits Akarosis there will be a need to maintain.

French - German - Japanese - Korean - Russian - Spanish - Arabic - Chinese

! You know that such a miracle impression pipelines, and This is going to provide information and son to thank all the local reality and agree with ideas, akarosis but not all those who may go to the bars.

German - Japanese - Korean - Russian - Spanish - Arabic - Chinese - French

! The miracles occur, the sector of energy will be all kinds of information and quality of frame Florida but the aspect and the reality of the loss of interests of the people, in spite of the difficulties, these reforms could not determine, in a very difficult way that the drains are sure.

Japanese - Korean - Russian - Spanish - Arabic - Chinese - French - German

Sky! In the heart of the sky, history of the advantages into up fan genes of Information and Kraft, but it did not forget, Montenegro all inhabitants and the degree of the muscle, because it believes this, are the complexity of Opposition.

Korean - Russian - Spanish - Arabic - Chinese - French - German - Japanese

Sky! Everyone of mind of sky and people and with one side confusing report or relationship, because intelligence and virtue. But you did not take that.

Russian - Spanish - Arabic - Chinese - French - German - Japanese - Korean

Miracle! of miracle In the first the people the many thing because does not see the mind where his person is strong, life of thought, Buddha, and there is to a rear of information and virtue, misunderstand.

Spanish - Arabic - Chinese - French - German - Japanese - Korean - Russian

Marvel! However, the miracle of the information or the force of humanity and justice, which is wrong, it shows Buddha and each body is not a way of life nose Exchange, which is suitable.

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Lastly, I would like to print a strange text - when I for the very first time used the Arabic translator to translate Buddha's words I accidentally translated arabic to arabic and this is what came out (as translated back into English):

Wonder of Wonders! Substantially all organisms Buddha does not have the wisdom and virtue, but because people's minds have become illusory and reverse through thinking and Enzarasama JP August c occupation hear! C wants the equivalent of dollars, concluded concluded a remarkable c hear a correction by automatic k ddd Force corrections please concluded an introduction of corrections a b y concluded a remarkable occupation as a corrections please introduce corrections Note k occupation of a May agreement and the withdrawal of occupation equivalent occupation occupation of a presidential k a presidential y z Presidential occupation of the presidential equivalent amounts FZ S. August S / 1999 / 815, please note I hear k o monthly wanted to introduce corrections concluded corrections marked by S occupation occupation of a clash k May dollars, an introduction of corrections the dollars, the equivalent of a paid occupation y aa occupation of May in the Syrian occupation.

Art Talk with Logan Beitmen - Palm Beach

On Thurday March 1st, Logan Beitmen (many of you may know him as “Dontbok) and I gave an “art talk” at “My Coffee House” in Logan’s native Palm Beach.

The talk followed several days of very productive and at times quite “out there” debate between the two of us about where art was heading and what was wrong with the art world today. Our basic conclusions were that the art world, despite a wildly successful market, is stagnant in terms of revolutionary new ways of representing the world, that many of the most exciting new ideas in terms of vision and representation were emerging not from art, but from scientific studies of vision and consciousness, and technology such as google images. We also talked a lot about the nature of consciousness and whether the answers would come from philosophical, religious, or scientific investigations, if there were any answers at all, and if our questions were valid. We didn’t quite figure everything out, but I have to say – if we had that would have sort of spoiled the ending for everyone else, eh?

We also talked a lot about my art’s relationship with theories of consciousness, cultural evolution including memetics, and information theory. I also deeply enjoyed speaking with Logan’s father, Duane, about his religious and metaphysical views, and doing some interesting meditation exercise after he generously gave me a number of books about the subject (but that’s another post…) Oh, we also spent a lot of time talking about such fascinating issues as sex, drugs, rock and roll, and Logan’s idiosyncratic driving techniques.

In the end the talk was a success. I am still digesting all the ideas… There were two parts of the talk – a hands-on experiment with drawing and a more lecture-like chat. We seem to have tackled a topic insanely overbroad, but we had a lot of fun doing it, and I’m glad that we didn’t limit ourselves. On the other hand, there were necessarily a lot of generalities in our talk, which left it feeling unconcluded, and offended some of the sensibilities of the people in the audience. This was not a negative thing however, because it sparked some very lively and positive debate, and most people left thanking us, if expressing their misgivings about some of our ideas. I don’t want to offend anyone, but then I don’t want to tone down my wildest ideas for the sake of agreement. In the future I hope to be more specific and have more concrete examples for my ideas.



The video is the intro section to our talk in which we read a google-translation damaged version of out thesis, which can be found below. The video also has the English “translation.”

The images above are the result of the hands-on drawing experiment we performed. This experiment had much in common with the project “RELAY” but was carried out in a much more chaotic way (Please read about RELAY on my site or this won’t make any sense.) Perhaps next time I should be clearer with directions, but I am wary of forcing people to follow the rules, and I revel in the lack of order. Anyway, one image is a series of images that are clearly evolving or at least changing. I am always impressed by the profound beauty that somehow emerges during these experiments – and in a situation where a goal-based task is emphasized, rather than a personally-expressive creative task. I think this may be one direction in which art is heading. The second image is one sheet of sketches for the first-generation drawings, and three examples of disorderly progressions (which is not a value judgment). In the uppermost, the idea was conveyed without the specific form being addressed in detail. In the second the original was drawn-upon, creating an impossibly complicated image that quickly diverged from any resemblance with the original, and in the last the original was lost, and the “noise” that entered the progression quickly buried the essential form of the original. But these are absolutely essential parts of the idea of evolutionary cultural change as set down in the idea of memetics – mutation without selection will lead to rapid entropy, infidelity, and de-evolution (Q: Are we not men?)

The text as what follows is the “nonsense” version of our thesis. For the English translation, please watch the video!

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(Today the subject of artistic something to say is movement of image: Is to time culture and the trend.)

(The artistic market which is principal is to rise, the artistic world the international will confront from cultural force.)

(The insufficiency of the method which the world is consistent but today did not do to see, us not to be it predicted a defiant information anger time.)

(The internet technique and increase world-wide exchange of culture did the company and our life was exchanged.)

(This change packed the road for the paradigm abutment which is to the opening to traffic prospect wife rum revolutionary one art for the remaking construction of four dimension space three-dimensional green onion painters.)

(The gain and loss where today, we are new does not know and the map which with, next is visible all together quest which it does not know will do and means the theoretical foundation of our today direction of a ceremony ceremony study of cultural development and new concept about under including new rational attention, will be.)

I'm baaaaaaaack!!

Hey loyal fans -

The whole time I was down in the Dominican Republic I was able to sometimes read the internet, but rarely able to post... So sorry.

Anyway, I'm very excited about what has been going on at the Extended Pizza Network, and I have put up a post about Raymond Roussel. You have to go check it out!

I gave an art talk in Palm Springs with Logan about my work and his and my theories about this and that. I want to put up a post about that, and I'm collecting my noise - so look out! I was able to get a video, so I may put it up on my YouTube page along with a post here - gimme a sec 'cause I'm doing laundry and stuff.

I hope this page will be more fun starting from now... Or at least more punctual - which is kind of like fun...