Wild

Side it's the same shape as a spirit humonculus cut up by a body-shaped cookie-cutter.

Things:

The placebo effect

Other things (mostly people)

But especially the placebo effect.

behavioral changes

Tonight I feel somewhat similar to how I felt last night. It was my first "crit" class - apparently that means I eat a lot of food and drink beer. I love school!

I kind of feel like I've been acting a bit nuts. I notice that I have been flatlining a lot - by which I mean I stop talking and thinking - you know - glazed eyes, blank expression... I've been getting enough sleep? What is the cause? Stress can be irrational. Then there are lots of weird facial things - exaggerated emotional muscle pulls. MInd revs way up at certain points and then gets waaaay dumb. Hyperfocus - i.e. talk to one, one person in a room of many people. Feelings go up and down, but I think I'm too busy, tired, and overstimulated to care too much about my emotions, luckily, because there's been lots of irrational giddiness and the other as well.

I think I am reconfiguring myself.

Please hold.

There are 1001 interesting ideas worth talking about, but if I even started going into them I would overload the synesthetic supercircuits. When the energy levels decay and stabilize I will start giving more coherent reports. This glitch in the communication system has been a real hold-up for the project.

a little overwhelmed

Things are pretty intense. New people. A thousand thousand ideas flying about, completely scattershot. I can't say anything anything much to say intelligent. I am grateful for the people I am meeting, the other students and the teachers. They are amazing and I look fwd to knowing them better. Now I feel like primal scream therapy, but I guess a shower may suffice. It really is quite a lot to absorb. Quite a lot. Wow wow wowieo.

Too much too much too much too much tooooooooo much

Pollution

Here is a pretty scary slideshow from the NYTimes online about pollution in China:

Pollution in China

There is also a video (the Times has been doing this a lot recently).

Changes at YouTube

I really like the new feature on YouTube where you can vote up or down for the comments. It is exactly the kind of information engineering that will eventually make an internet-based democratic government possible and concentrate attention on important matters. Information engineering has been on the top of my mind for a while, and I am synthesizing some of these ideas into my latest art projects.

However, what the hell? You can only vote a couple of times and then it asks you to come back later. WTF? Stupid! Obviously the best thing for the system (and also the most interesting/amusing/addictive thing for the viewers - and thus the genius) would be to allow unlimited voting. If this is the best way they have come up with to deal with spam and self-promotion, well, that's too bad. I thought there were a bunch of smarties at google - I can think of at least a handful of ways to engineer the process so that there can be unlimited voting that regulates certain types of voting. Too bad indeed! Humans are going to have to be smarter than this if we are to overcome our challenges!

GWAZDA

A little selfishness, stupidity... and ultranationalism.







This sent to me by Henry. Pretty much my favorite song right now.

My last name was changed from the Polish "Gwiazda" (sounds more like gvyazhda) which means "star," and, from what I gather, also means star as in movie star, so this word is all over the net...

Half-off pizza!

I had a bit too much to drink, and I'm still in control.

I can do this!

Guild of birthdays

My "bro" Chester is kind of finishing up the first leg of his Guild of Birthdays on-the-road studio-recording experiment. It seems to have worked out really well, and there's lots to explore on his blog. I guess he is looking for some bands to record now, any leads? Anyway, don't forget to keep up with his experiment, 'cause it's really wild!

MEDIA!

I have been hearing a lot about media lately, having just jumped into art school (well over my head...).

Media. I think it is a distraction. A major one. Or perhaps I am trying to say the exact opposite.

At Berkeley there is an institution called the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), which justhrew a very loveley opening party [at which I drank more champagne than was perhaps offered to me, as well as stuffed grape leaves, oranges, pineapples, la vache qui rie cheese, etc., and which I paid back by polluting the ceiling with balloons.]

Anyway, there was an opening speech to which I was not listening to too clearly (I was trying to smile at people). What was said is that everything is media. Hum. Yeah. Anything in the middle of two people is media. Medium, middle, a simple words-make-it-true definition. Which I agree with.

Here is the representation I might come up with for that idea:

In which the two dots represent two people communicating, and the line represents some kind of communication traveling through a medium.

Media studies focus on this arrow.

I think it is more interesting to study the dots.

But there is a little problem. Where does the dot start and the arrow begin? We can say that the air is the medium for sound, voices talking. But why stop there? What about the tongue, voicebox, teeth and lungs being a medium for speech? What about the electrical signals being relayed from the brain through nerve fibers? And where within the brain is the dot located? Where in the mind is the center of the person from which the signal emanates and to which incoming signals are routed?

And where is the dot inside your partner? In my own studies, as well as my own personal life I notice over and over again that the signal doesn't seem to get through in the way it has been traditionally posited (and of course, tho I don't really want to say this, this is all motivated by the most intense sorrow and loneliness and regret, and, worst of all, hope). After all, every transmission is a translation, and, as they say, much is lost in translation - mutation is an inevitable part of communication. But this is more than just a fidelity issue. Because much is gained in translation as well - don't dis mutation - it makes evolution possible, right? Signals are not received, they are decoded and reconstructed. A creative act (which always must incorporate some form of fiction-writing) is always involved. If we are lucky, after all this nonsense, something will be communicated accurately.

Sometimes we can check whether the communication has succeeded if it is very specific and concrete. I.e. if we say "cut the blue wire" and our partner cuts the red wire it can be assumed that the level of mutation in the communication was unacceptably high.

But if we are communicating something complicated - personal or poetic impressions, love, obscure analyses of the world, etc., then the accuracy of fact-checking communication loop itself falls below the threshold where inaccuracies are equal to the general level of inaccuracy and mutation inherent in all communication (I think this is an area of studies in transmission engineering, or whatever it's called, the signal vs noise issue.) Checking whether the communication succeeded becomes functionally impossible because the random inaccuracies will always obscure the true functional inaccuracies. Of course, improvements can be made - you can move somewhere quiet, use images to reinforce words, employ rigorous fact-checking, learn the same vocabulary, and study rhetoric so you have the same method of discourse, but there will always be a threshold that limits how detailed communication can be. This threshold is much higher than the ideal point at which "perfect communication" (which would theoretically represent the uniting of two dots) is possible.

Here is a representation of this limitation on communication:


Think of a conversation. You are listening to someone, and her words reach your ears, most of the time, although there are all kinds of frustrations in between from guys riding huge noisy machines, to high winds, to poor signal strength, to buzzing mosquitoes, to... well it never ends. And that's not even going into issues in your partner's sphere - from poor volume control, to chewing gum, to strong accents, etc.

So assume that the sound reaches your ears wth enough fidelity that it doesn't immediately make you ask your partner to repeat herself. Sometimes you are not paying attention for some reason or another. Or you completely (even deliberately)misunderstand a word depending on what you want to hear. Or something you idly read or that you hear on the radio intrudes on your mind, sneaks in as an impostor. Then you can misunderstand or not understand the meaning of a word, or not be able to follow your partner's logic.

Think of how words work (many people smarter than I have done this and not yet figured it out...). Say the sound of a word enters your brain - it triggers a series of associations. Some of these may be highly universal (i.e. most people display the behavior that proves they can differentiate red and blue.) But others may be highly subjective. But think of how it actually works - when you hear a word you are already thinking of a response, and the response affects how you hear the word. And a certain word may remind you of a very obscure event from your life, and those strong associations highjack your train of thought. And a kind of internal editor may tell you to not pay attention to this or that, or not acknowledge that you understand this or that to serve some social function such as avoiding embarrassment or trying to impress someone. All this may occur without you being very highly aware of it. And there may be two conflicting interpretations of a series of words which actually appeal to your conscious mind - does she mean this or that? And both of these interpretations can be considered at the same time, and depending on the future of the conversation you may switch your interpretation back and forth.

Finally, where are all these words and information headed to? Where is the dot? This is not a superfluous imponderable. I personally don't really think the dot is anywhere. To put it kindly, consciousness is "decentralized." Information is flying around, and some of it enters consciousness and some of it does so briefly and is then gone. It is routed through different systems, some of it energizes network combo packets in the memory, some of it results in uncontrollable physical reactions, some of it fractalizes off into endless tangential thought spirals, some of it is laboriously formulated into sentences and sent off into typing fingers, wagging lips, and winking eyes.

What I am trying to say is that beneath the skin the media continue. They go all the way down. What is most interesting to me is to see where they go... The media themselves don't really hold any fascination for me. After all, they are just different forms of frustration. I want to examine the dot. But the irony may be that I also think the dot doesn't really exist. So that is why I have to say, perhaps after this whole spiel it turns out that media is all I have left to be interested in. That or nothing.

Here, then, is what I think is a more accurate representation of communication:


(Kind of looks like something:


)

I think the solution (or perhaps the further imponderable) is that we don't communicate only to motivate our partners to action. We also communicate to make ourselves feel like we are not alone in the universe. And this might not involve having t understand the words at all - it could just be the singing voice, the curve of the skin at the outside of the eyelids, the kissing - I can't even go into that... But even when you have a strong sense of togetherness and identification with someone there might be something there, and later you say "that wasn't me" "that wasn't what I meant" "I wasn't being myself" and later it might turn out that the feeling was a misconception. What does the fascination with the dot add up to then?

From here on out it is all confusion.

open secrets, private announcements

What are feelings for, if not for sublimating?

Or burning in a furnace?

Perhaps you may have noticed that I don't often clearly explain what I am doing in my real life here on this blog. That's just not the kind of blog it is. However, I am real, and I even have a pale semblance of a life!

Can you detect a disturbance in the force? That's the sublimated wavefront of a real life trauma echoing through the synesthetic supersmog. It's fine! It changes from a solid to a gas without passing through the liquid state.

The synesthetic sillystraw is deeply opposed to liquids.


“Intermittent conditioning”
If you want to train a laboratory rat to pull a crank to get a food pellet, the reflex will be scratched in deeper if the creature is rewarded with some regularity but not all the time.

-

dance

DANGER!

Are certain types of art practice dangerous?

Is listening to sentimental music dangerous? What about really catchy dark music, really singable sad music, really awfully true music that makes you dance? Will certain chord progressions lead your heart down a dark path? Some people know how to write manipulative music - they know what will make us sound-proles dance. What happens when they abuse this power they have over us? What if the musis they write sounds so happy and tells us to kill, to die?

I always use music as a metaphor for art. Music makes me feel something that art doesn't really. Climbing trees feels different from walking in streams. Slow dancing feels different than fast dancing.

I like what wizards like Gen P Orridge have to say about using magick, but I don't ever want to practice it myself. I never want to know how to manipulate people. I never want to lose to fun of discovering how to create something, even if it means making the same mistakes over and over. I like making mistakes. Or rather, I believe in it.

I guess I am happy being soft. Soft does not mean weak.

I don't really want to force love, trick love, or train love. If love comes naturally I will be ready. I will be happy. If it doesn't come, I will cry.

This is art - art isn't knowing how. It's only the parts that are barely there. That's the only part you can love.

I always say, but nobody has yet responded: I only like art that barely has meaning. Once it is too meaningful it has crossed the line into something else. If it is meaningless I hate it too. This means always straddling the line, which means often ending up on the wrong side of it. Often either becoming a little dictator or a useless bump on a log. But I hope to get better.

Some thoughts are almost impossible to catch. And some feelings (though I don't really draw a line, I just want to be clear). It's almost as if, well, imagine as a metaphor for complexity an origami animal. Some have five folds, some have fifty. Thoughts are really more like unfolded origami paper that used to be an animal. You can look at one with only a few triangles and squares and kind of fold it up in your mind until you see what it is - ah - that one was a simple fish or a crane. But some paper looks like a convoluted network of triangles and criss-crossing lines with cheating soft folds or tiny networks of veins. When you catch a thought like this it stumps your mind entirely. But sometimes, just sometimes, one of these origami dragons or crayfish finds its way inside, and this can be so beautiful that it sticks and sticks and sticks and it's shape becomes imprinted on all things. A brain is designed for an age with less folds - not that we should underestimate how complex an origami crane is, but not there is origami folded by computer, each fold scored with a lazer, and supported with an invisible plastic resin coat. Perhaps these advanced ideas are too complex, perhaps they burn us out? This is such a sad age considering how well our needs for food water shelter etc are met. I don't say that we should smash the factories (though I might suggest smashing the brains - but let's not get into that just now), just that someone should consider if all these crayfish may actually be unhealthy.

Oh but on the other hand, who fucking cares? It's not like we can switch direction at all at all at all. Society isn't a thought, it is an emotion. If it is wrong it doesn't care - it doesn't respond to logic, to begging, to meditation, to biofeedback, to threats, to cajoling, to bribery, to torture, to the silent treatment, to brainwashing. It will throw itself, sight unseen, in whatever direction it wants. You can't change your feelings by snapping your fingers, even if you snap very very hard.

How to get through this one? How can you flirt with danger without flirting? How can you avoid giving danger the impression that you are interested in danger? What if danger loves you? What if danger won't stop calling? What if danger stops calling? What if you discover much later that you always loved danger? What if you became united with danger?

I've been "using" people in my projects, using their thoughts, their opinions, the images in their heads. What if this is wrong? What if Luis von Ahn turns out not to be the hero of men, but of mechanics and death? What if these games turn out to be the key to a box that should not be unlocked? What if I, even with the best intentions, end up opening up a path to dehumanization and death? Why should I not fear action? What is so great about action? What is so admirable about great men? Where is the still point? Where is the center of gravity for a heart that is disoriented and... disheartened?

What happens in your mind when a fantasy dies? What physically happens to the brain cells or network of synaptic preferences? What to the elctrons caught zipping through forbidden pathways? What happens to the particles of love when they lose their polarity? Are they recycled? Or are they expelled? What happens to the portion of your spirit that lives in that fantasy world? Does it retract? Does it fade away? Or is it severed? Is it capable of life on its own? What happens to the mind-people-spirits in that fantasy world? Do they die? Do you die? How much do you die? How can you help yourself die faster? How can you make it less painful? How can you feel every agonizing last second of it? How can you save it? Preserve it under glass? How can you really save it? Bring it back to life? Make it grow again?

Sad songs, sad songs. Do they pollute us or do they save us? What about the sad songs we write ourselves? What about the ones we were going to write but never got around to? Or couldn't? Or that we just hummed a few bars and forgot? Or that we recorded onto a tape that now lies at the bottom of a closet somewhere? What if someone hums our song? Is this anything at all? Is this all there is? Is this everything? How real is that? I mean, really really, not being romantic or poetic at all? Why even bother reaching out with arms of sadness? Why is it done? Why is it so common? Why does it feel right? Why is it dangerous? What should be done about it, if anything?

I can't write a sad song though. Maybe I could find an inverter of some sort and write a happy song. I hear that it's been done. After all, the world is all strange loops of difference, not little slider-scales. The world is a necklace, not a mixing-board. The world just happens to be hanging in zero-gravity, not sitting on a tortise shell.

PUT YOUR BRAIN IN A BLENDER AND DRINK IT UP!!!

Today my Mom dropped me off at Kindergarten and just left me there. I've been crying all day, in the bathroom after lunch, quietly during naptime, after drinking a beer. But not about my Mom... Ha ha. No - there's a kid at school who won a little "gentlemen's bargain" - actually they always INSIST on winning - and sometimes they "cheat" by using MAGIC CHARMS. Not that I mind losing, but I guess I got in over my head. Still, I'm really glad I came to school because I love my new playmates, and it's no fun playing safe, is it? I'm going to get really really smart at school and maybe make some magic charms of my own. And I'm going to learn to dance!!!

Purple heart
Green horseshoe
Brown clover
Red herring

XOXOXO

-f

Regarding that last bit...

The way I see it, a blog is sort of halfway between a letter, a magazine article and a diary. I mean, a third of the way. And that last entry was more personal-like. Not that it's secret, just that it doesn't, er, appeal to the general public... But it's useful for me to get the ideas out. That's all.

School will start this week. I'm very excited and happy!

IDET

So, does it ruin it or what?
These may be unclear even to yours truly…

0. Is Howwa we Anna. This is actually a current concern, so I can’t possibly begin to go into it… But I would like to explain how it relates. I mean, other than through a true path of right-feelingness. The point is that art tries to expand into other territories, and when it does, that is when the excitement occurs. So, like I have been saying, in the act of creation one can be entirely self-absorbed, and that act, that is the art because every thought might have maximum detail, maximum weight, maximum expansive velocity. But the hand moves slower than the eye, so the artifact is of course less-than-infinite. And the viewer is often left feeling left out. Though of course everyone has the key to an in – the one known as “the most specific art is the most generally understandable, the most personal is the most universal.” But I don’t think that most people are crazy enough to use it. But you can do work, shallow work, and that sets up a SHOW, a calculated piece so that the act of absorbing becomes the infinitely detailed act. The art. Therefore the artist is doing the work. No no. This piece is not that. This piece is just another attempt to unlock the door. But working at set-ups is part of it. And the main point being that in recent work I’ve been “using” other people, but not approaching it closely enough – I’ve been looking at GROUPS, but this is dumb, because there is no such thing as a group. There is only room for one other person in the world actually. Not in the world – in the mind. A feeling place. It’s another case of expansion by limitation. I’m not saying anything about this piece. This is another case of “distance confusion.” For YOU, dear reader, not for me. I always intended this list to be pretty close and therefore ununderstandable.

1. Adaptation of China Readings – where I go to library (as I recall doing when last I had a studio at Bard. A lot.), photocopy various diagrams from books, collage them, no break them down, no copy them by hand, and then put them on single pages, on an overhead? On a bluescreen weathermap? Then contact various educated “experts” – this project is about expertise, no it is about anti-expertise, no it is the opposite of wikipedia too, and it’s cut-up, or organized by something smarter, no it is narrative. Then they talk about what it means to them, or answer specific questions, yes on screen, with, how? The image plays big. Is there a thumbnail? P.I.P. (from Nova). Then it gets cut-up. Perhaps there is an organizing informational factor. This shows a secret – noises only – voice hums, that’s antiexpertise too – shhhh - cuts into similarities, or difference. Agreement like stitches of thread go through cloth, but it’s always this way with nonlinear editing, but still, what is smart? What about pure cut-ups as divination, I-Ching slash Burroughs style, or the constant process of rejuxtapositioning of pakuried elements into “new” ideas? What about editing? What about using a programme to automatically sort the info?

2. (Top secret) - RELAY of pure attention. What if you try to imitate someone in real time as they are talking? As they are moving? This takes maximum concentration, maximum attention. And attention is the same as consciousness, in cognitive science and in zen thought. Now what if the face is on a screen (this might take a teleprompter type setup so the face can be cameraed. Now, there are several (9?) of these in a row, thus like RELAY. And finally they are displayed in a line of tv screens with sound, a chorus. What about time? Is it simultaneous? Cut-up with errors, but always re-cued.. So what kinds of activities? Copying words, will be hard, sung to music easier. What about tricks – i.e. closing eyes – - can’t see - trust – leading statements? Then sounds? What about abilities? i.e. high notes, low notes? Foreign languages? Physical activities – twisting the tongue? This will be a joke. What about activities with an eye towards the final chorus effect? i.e. minimal notes – the held note will surely waves, the click or simple rhythm will do what? Coordinated movements? A thousand ideas here. It functions as a wetware computer because there is rebirth and correct, which is the automatic functioning of the muscles of the expressive elements of the face and throat’s instincts and habits – a face will not turn to mush because it is a face, not mush.

3. I would like to keep treated zinc or copper plates in my studio as a place to sketch – this way I can go back into the sketches and rework the “states.” I think this added layer of change would transform the sketches into finished work. I just, it is disheartening to throw EVERYTHING away. Thousands of pages I have sitting here. No. Literally. Plus etching is a pleasure. So it’s simple. So sue me.

4. The project I wanted to do for ARCUS. Or what was it anyway? It was a secret project – the sculpture forms are like Faberge eggs, like charms at a temple, lost on the street, with a www address. This stems from just the desire to create tiny plastic molded sculpture – something I’d like to learn how to do partially because that’s the kind of sculptural form I was dealing with as a kid, and because my drawings suggest it. But the thing would be to lose them on the street, and create a virtual hole for them, so each would function as a key, to create a secret underground network of people whose eyes scan the ground. This would be fun to do with the 3d modeling I think I saw, and shiny stuff like fake bling, but only on the inside, lenses, stickers, rhinestones, chimes, unfolding? Those crazy magical spinning tops toys on a stick that unfold to reveal, now, what did they ever reveal? It was a religious experience. But what if it were a connective experience. Cheap beauty leads to real beauty. Leading meaning really so. Exclusive networks could be good if the gatekeeper were set right – what kind of oblique standards could be imagined? Discrimination in the sense that this wine is good and that’s vinegar.

5. The tactile interface, does it work with the sculpture ideas stolen from “Lathe of Heaven?” I mean, these machines… um… This expertise is in hidden knowledge of body systeming. Homunculus type bodies, flow of chi and other imaginary spirits, chakras, etc. Old lost knowledge that doesn’t make any sense really, but that serves as a useful metaphor to feeling. Because that is the true core of the lost arts, is that they reference what feels right, not what is verifiably true. Which is more useful sometimes. But the machines, they are based on pseudo-scientific machines – i.e. chromatherapy. To teach the system by experience, um, immersive. To provide a psychosomatic cure – the placebo effect as amplified through performance and sculpture. What I mean is that it is important that they look feel and sound good. To study the art of imaginative futurism, utopian focus on the body as interface. To work on them being ultra convincing. Bright lights, loud sounds, feedback, self-propelled work, filtration, visual body doubles, false mirroring, simulated positive thought echo feedback loops.

6. Web site that, with user interface, sorts through drawings as placed in an environment, that is, that in RELAY there was no adaptation, there was no survival of the fittest not only because there was no death but because there was no challenge to be met. It’s like, well, like I was saying, imagine if you took a YouTubesque environment and combined it with a series of conditions, like, say, the curriculum for classes in a high school, and designed a way for the videos to be rated that was well designed, i.e. related to their fitness in the system, and of course you would have to allow copying, huh, and then it would just kind of be automatic. And therefore better than Mr. Bighead (Bush’s brother’s conspiracy). So the thing is, that’s too advanced. The best would be to start easy – just with simple pictures and, I don’t know, descriptors? Like channels – what they are supposed to symbolize or illustrate. As a way to invent more subtle visual metaphors. As a way to make something smarter than me. But I need to learn more, both in terms of the technology used, and I guess I should figure out what the hell I’m talking about. Then I can move on to applying this idea larger – reform reform, game democracy, etc.

7. I like the idea of combining sci-fi stories with fake art documentation. That when I have a truly wild idea, but one that is pure fantasy that I can just write it down and then produce a modicum of faux documentation. OK, so I know that the writing in sci-fi is not so good. And I know it’s dorky. And even trendy. But two things really. One is that I can’t deny it – I read a lot of sci-fi back in the day. Two is that I think sci-fi makes great sense for artists. Because you take imagination (even though we might not have quite figured out what this means yet) and that alone would mean fantasy (which is basically sci-fi with dragons minus... something) and then you throw it HARD against materials. Because that’s what art is all about, your huge imagined world smashing up hard against things like what parts they do and don’t have at hardware stores, how smoothly it is possible to sand something, how much weight a certain piece can hold, how some paint always stays sticky and other paint curdles up, and time time time plenty of time constraints. That’s material. And sci-fi is just any fantasy that considers the practical side of the fantasy, the workings of the fantasy world, the failings, the systematics. This project is also good because I don’t want to change my life entirely, or, you know, I’m embedded in this particular fantasy which is… I was going to say good. And this frees me up to expand borders, or rather colonize lands I will never reach, and actually, doesn’t it also have it’s own internal self-contradiction that is the hallmark of all great a.k.a. self-collapsing art, which is that it removes the real world against which I claim that being banged fixes you up? And, then I’m kind of doing it now, but poorly.

8. Oh and if sculpture can be very very small then it can be huge too, and glow and move and emit vibrations. But there are so many shapes. That’s my problem, like Alexis said, that I am useless. Which is good and not or whatev. By which I mean, well, some artists I’ve talked to, they have trouble drawing anything, in good way. They draw very few shapes and what they do draw means something to them. But not for me. Perhaps that is because their filter is installed properly. Whereas mine is not. I have no output filter. Or rather it is installed mucked up. So I guess that is good, right? Weakness is strength and all. I have to improvise, to figure out my own filter, and the idea is that certain forms are inviolable. This may be a little Jungian. And I was reading about it in F.C. Bartlett’s “Remembering,” which is the book he wrote about RELAY in 1937 – or rather it is a more advanced version of RELAY. Funny how time works. Tonikaku, that’s what I was talking about – forgotten knowledge. I mean, he was writing about von Ahn’s “wet-ware” without really knowing what he was writing at all. And it just was waiting on the street, right next to “The Gulag Archepelago.” Weird, but not more than weird I suppose. So what was I saying? But what Bartlett was writing about, with his old-fashioned out-moded Jungian ideas, actually seems like part of the solution to the entropy problem raised by the images in RELAY and what I was talking about in #6 here. That is that is the INVIOLABILITY of certain forms. Jung would have said it was something mysterious and spiritual in the subconscious. Now, the point is that these things would end up being like Least Common Denominator type Democracy if they were in a general field, but if they were in an environment some of them will show fitness. The more specific, the better. But what could form this environment? Perhaps just a word. A title. That might be enough. Non-linear selection, but how? Maybe I’ll just set up a card table on a nice day. “We want yr wetware.” Then I get to make the sculpture that is inviolable. And of course it will be based on the copies of copies and of course they will be simplified (and Bartlett lists several other features of this process), but then I will be using real materials, and the bump of the real world, that will of course increase specificity, huh? Then they can be shown together.

9. Faster
a. The idea of cut-up ads to make a story, plus verbal descriptors of ads inserted in, then layered with narration.
b. Tell us your life story cut-up, to questionnaire, same as 9a and 1.
c. Robot head sculpture and entertainment – or maybe this is just sci-fi.
d. More questionnaire-based neural-net mapping scifi crap.
e. Eye movement tracking machine – rainbow dots– again, attention as pre-verbal judgment.
f. A Macaulayesque book that illustrates the mind, with focus on neuroscience, cog-sci, mental illness, and psychotropic medication, created through a kind of wiki-illustration, post copyright, for our nation that is insane you know to create more accuracy and also to give young artists a leg up.
g. Shapes revealed in jpegs, in zooms and contrast, processing, blur and sharpen, saturation, these as almost a code almost a key, but it doesn’t drive me nuts, then these images, they are taken from online, they too match bits, interchangeable bits of drawings, it must be animated in, the viewer who has seen this has more knowledge of the black and white drawing than the one who has no, a mystery cult again, this can almost move into color - no no horror horror.
h. Knots as simple technology. What if they were really big? This is so dumb. I need more stupidity so my headaches go away.
i. Painting – can’t even go into this because it is so embarrassing that it is so buried, but the whole point is that I really really like drawing, but I have no idea how to make a painting that has anything to do with them, even though I love to paint, although then again, it’s messy and gross. However, a lot of people know how to paint, and maybe they can teach me how.
j. Sleeping, now, even though it is early afternoon, my brain is burning low.

We interupt this broadcast...

THIS IS NOT A TEST!

This is an actual WAR!

War between Synesthetic Superscam and FAME IS MAGIC a.k.a. "won't get therapy, will talk to computer" a.k.a. ______ _______ (Ok, I'm too discrete for that...).

I need ALL of my fans to go PUKE ALL OVER HER BLOG.

Cheers!

-f

Best intentions

The purpose of this is to think of all the projects that are running through my head and write them out to record what my mental state and plans were BEFORE I started my first semester at Berkeley. I am going to attempt to do this without referring to my EXTENSIVE NOTES on the simple yet unproven theory that any idea bad enough to be forgotten deserves to be forgotten. Which of course nullifies the whole premise of this activity. Well, sort of. I mean, the point being that I remember crying on the first day of kindergarten, but I forget why.
It should be said that artists are often paranoid that if they share their top secret mega ideas that someone will steal them. But in my case I don’t really care. If you can actually understand what the hell I am trying to explain here go the hell ahead and steal away. After doing this and that project about how inaccurately and idiosyncratically people copy things, and after enjoying the products of so much PAKURI I don’t really have any confidence that you will create anything like what I would. If I ever carried these projects out. Which I know through personal experience it is very unlikely that I will. After all, aren’t I going to enter this program that promises to be intense and smart and all that jazz? Aren’t I? And, plus, after all, I stole all my ideas. I rather I stole bits and bits of them.
So…
Now I’m too tired to actually write anything.

Pretty excited

about this:

Emblems from the Black World

This by a Prof. from Berkeley.

Lizzy!

Her new blog is going to be about her trip to Peru. We can all live visciously. I mean varicosely.

Unfortunately, the innauguration of this new blog coincides with a huge earthquake in Peru - a terrible disaster... I hope that Lizzy can still go and it would be wonderful if she were able to help out.

Anyway, we must read the blog to find out:

Lizzy's blog about Peru.

Advice from UUU

I want to write out my thoughts about the future of my art ideas NOW, the week before grad school so that I can see clearly how I have changed when I graduate. The thing is, this is a big project and I have a millyun things to do. But I wonder, is it worth doing? How should it be done? Is it interesting or embarrassing? I remember fameismagic telling me about how a certain DJ friend said that he regretted talking with a reporter about what he was going to be doing in the future because now he can only disappoint. But I guess that I can't disappoint because it's obvious that I will only do a small fraction of the work I say I will, and hopefully I will have better ideas after I graduate with an MFA. Or at least I hope... I am excited about school which really means I am excited about changing. But there are always good parts that get left behind.

PS So stop talking and DO IT.

When you should be doing something else...

What the hell?

I am way waaaaaay too dumb to be going to grad school. I'm starting to feel like uh-oh. Oh well. Learn to be friendly. Learn to be friendly and to spell. It doesn't matter. I'm not smart like that. Not like that either. Hum.

NEW BENT

I think that now that I am going to be going to grad school that this blog may take a turn for the more concrete. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

I live in Berkeley now and I'm going to be going to grad school there. I guess that means that I will be writing about some of the interesting things I learn at school, and what I am doing in and out of my studio. Whereas before I was living in an officially undisclosed location, now I can say exactly where I live. Potentially. I hope that this means I will bump into the real world more often. But also I plan on being really busy. And poor. That's the plan.

This is the final week before school. I have 4 priorities.
1. Register for classes - I have no idea how to do this - there were some emails I was supposed to be smart enough to understand. I better figure out how to be smart soon!
2. Fix my house. This is the most boring I suppose.
3. Work on Howwa We Anna 'cause that's the most exciting secret project right now.
4. Work on stuff for the opening of Artifact-Metafact in NY. They want images and writing. I didn't write about the installation of the work in which I didn't install the work, because that was before my new practical bent.

Actually none of these things are my priorities really. My real priorities don't hover well over a keyboard presently.

One real priority is to cook jasmine rice for breakfast and consider how to flavor it with limited options. That's what I mean when I say that I love cooking.

Everything all together

HERE"S THEE ANSWER TO LAST WEEK"S KWIZZZ!!! (scroll down if you don't get it):
Who was that man?
What does he do that's so cool? (Other than telling FUNNY JOKES?)"
And what SHOULD he be doing?
The answer to that last one is FIXING HIS GODDAMN SITE ALREADY. But I identify with a dude who doesn't always "git er dun." Yes indeedy. So, y'all pizza callers shoulda knowed this one. Member? You member, member? This was posted on the EPN a bit ago, but it just resonates and resonates with me. Like big dub cymbals. Or brontosauruses. But I like his way of thinking - it is details-oriented, about organization of social structures, concerned with the way that images are perceived, looks on humanity in a different way, and completely revolutionary, I think. I know that this is a lil played out, but I think I'm going to be working with some of these ideas.

What have I been doing? Well, it's best to focus on the tiny details. I have insomnia yes I do. And so I will tell you of the books I have been reading. The united themes? 1. They were both FOUND. 2. They are both about horrific, meaningless bodily suffering. 3. They are both about the COLD (perfect for August!). 4. They both have strong people. 5. They are both non-fiction. Oh and they are about amazing.

The first book is The Gulag Archipelego (That's just Amazon, sorr...). It's about he breakdown in justice within the Soviet Union.

The second book is Endurance, which is about the Antarctic Expedition of 1914 that was stuck in the ice and south polar wastelands for 17 months. It is illustrated with photographs taken during the expedition.

Well, Insomnia and all.

New paintings for Perceival

Hi there - One of the things I've been doing is preparing for this group show "artifact-metafact" in Queens. More on that later, but now I just wanted to post some images up here (there's someone I promised to get them up for...)

These are all going to be in the show - they are all 7 1/2 inches square, gouache. (That's a hard word to spell yo!)

As always, click to enlarge!

GUESS WHO?

This is one of my favorite thinkers. Who knows who it is?



BTW - I am still alive. Isn't that fascinating? After a month "vacation" I am BACK!