The HairFlip Clinic

HairFlip Poetry Hotline.

2008-07-24T18:50:00.000-05:00

The HairFlip Poetry Hotline

Step 1: Determine the purpose of your Hotline.

Who is Your Intended Audience?

Our intended audience will be for poets and people interested in poetry.

We are not limited to any specific kind of poetic readership. Anyone
interested in listening to us read our poems over the telephone or cellphone
is welcome to call. Callers will not be discriminated by age, ethnic background, religion, political views, artistic and poetic schools or preference.

What type of service will your hotline offer?

Callers may also read their poetry to us. The idea is to read our work in progress to each other. We are open and willing to provide personal critiques for individual poems that are read to us over the phone and would like the same from our callers. This will be an opportunity to provide space for open dialogue regarding poetry and poetics, exchange ideas, refer and site works (printed or online) of other poets whom we may or may not know. The conversation may also lead into various other art forms and tie back in to poetry/poetics. This hotline is also intended to provide an intimate platform of talking about poetry without any preconceived ideas about who the poet is. The caller may also remain anonymous. We are here to learn from you.

Will you hotline offer to send information packets to callers?

If the poet/caller would like a transcription of the conversation they are free to wire-tap the phone or tape-record. HairFlip can also take notes of the conversation and email them to the caller free of cost.

Step 2: Decide on the geographical area your hotline will serve and hours of operation.

Will the hotline be Centralized or Decentralized?

Depending on the volume of callers, HairFlip will begin with neither. We will first invite you to call our personal phone number since we do not have access or funding to centralized calling which would be toll-free. However, we will be in one centralized portable location since we will be using a cell-phone. A decentralized hotline would cost more money and require us to have several call centers across the county. A way for us to talk "toll free" would be by using your cellphone after 9pm-6am, depending on your carrier. We are using Cingular Wireless so if you call us from the same carrier anytime during the day, it can be considered toll-free.

Will Your Hotline have a Toll-Free number?

Kindly refer to paragraph above. We will not have a toll-free number as of yet.

What will be the Location of Your Hotline?

Since we are working from our cell-phone we can be anywhere. We may work from our home and/or any public space.

Do you Need a Multilingual Service?

We offer service in English, Spanish and a little bit of Tagalog.

We will consider more languages in the future if needed which would be wonderful.

What Hours Will Your Hotline Be in Operation?

Preferably, we would like to dodge daytime calling charges on our cell-phone.
But if its an emergency, we will make an effort to speak with you briefly during the day. Ideal times for calling are 9pm-6am which might also be limited since we do need rest.

Step 3: Determine the Management structure of your hotline.

Will Your Hotline partner with other organizations?

We would be happy to merge with other organizations (on and/or offline) that promotes the discussion and readership of poetry in any shape or form. This can be worked out. If our Hotline can be of benefit to any organization, we can try to work together with donor support.

Step 4: Determine the promotion and evaluation strategies for your hotline.

How will you promote your Hotline?

HairFlip will begin promotion by posting this outline on the HairheartsFlip blog at http://www.hairheartsflip.blogspot.com. We will also accept suggestions from our readers! We may also send out a mass email to friends and post them on bulletins on Myspace and Facebook. If you would like to help us in promoting the hotline, feel free to contact us by leaving a comment on the blog or calling our hotline number. We will gladly accept critical and positive tips on how to go about this.

How will you evaluate your Hotline?

Anyone interested in monitoring the hotline by assessing and providing quantitative data about calls and quality of service is welcome to do so. We have to figure out how this can be done through cell-phone use or perhaps tapping into our phone system which we would rather not.

Step 5: Set Goals and Objectives:

Goal

The Goal of HairFlip's Poetry Hotline is to provide a national telephone readership, listernership, a space to share information regarding poetry/poetics, and a mutual exchange of referral service of constructive criticism, ideas, and support for poets in this day and age.

Objectives

- To listen to anyone read their poems over the phone.

- To read our poems to anyone over the phone.

- To provide a space of intimate readership and critical listening of each other's poems.

- To provide dialogue regarding the poem if desired by the caller or dialogue concerning poetry and/or other.

- To provide each other up-to-date information regarding ongoing readings happening locally depending on where the caller is.

- To make the hotline accessible to poets or anyone with an appreciation for poetry in the USA.

- To provide a respectful, empathetic, and critical listening.

- To operate the hotline in a personable, light-hearted and humorous manner.

Operator is on standby. Call Flip at (818)282-5400.

Rip My bad TV-self, Mr. Belding.

2008-06-22T23:08:00.004-05:00

So Basically, WTF is Going on Here?!

The desire for a physically tangible approach regarding TV, and the content "within" or "on" it is one that deserves more attention requiring a medium which can work to physically interact with the non-space of TV through its basic outer physicality; the screen. In this case, hook and loop fasteners, or more popularly known as velcro, serves to relinquish an appetite for the desire to physically engage with TV provided by the gesture to rip, displace, and reconfigure the transient surface of TV flow (inclusive of narrative, place, time, and multiple drives contained within it like a battery and toy of culture constantly charging and playing.) The attempt to interact with TV through the aforementioned gestures requires an adhesive and/or double layering of the screen itself; velcro would then function as an intermediary, and to an extent, serve as an organ for the effect and sensation of un-hooking. In the essay Touch Sensitivity & Other Art Forms of Subversion: Interactive Artwork" Lynn Hershman writes, "The art of our century, says Katherine Kuh, has been characterized by 'shattered surfaces, broken color, segmented composition, dissolving form, and shredded images'." (193) The rearrangement of form, content, and color of TV through velcro is a process borrowed and traced from aesthetic shocks of Modernity, when she continues that "New technologies and their interactive uses by artists now extent many previous conceived ideas such as the use of multiple perspective and simultaneous viewpoints as explored by Cubists; incorporation of randomness, everyday experience, and the audience as investigated by the Surrealists, and the deconstruction of form as explored by the Dadaists." (195) Velcro, as an adhesive and marker for the sensation of ripping, is not only relegated to its function of security, but, when repeated in the act of hooking and un-hooking onto the loop surface does it develop an object-oriented fetish according to its basic function and gesture to secure one surface onto another.

In this way, the gesture is then appropriated into a metaphysical field of TV flow in which velcro attempts to (literally and metaphorically) fasten onto the transience and illusion of there being an inner and outer quality of TV flow due to the dimensions of the moving-image seeming to simultaneously appear "on" and "inside" its own frame, or as video artist Pipilotti Rist put it "The screen is a membrane that allows the constitution of an inner and outer world, the separation of the familiar from the uncanny." (Rist,10) What is considered uncanny, with regard to TV, is partially toyed with in the attempt to give it a velcro surface; to give a physical surface to a metaphysical current of moving-images.

Without coming across an article that addresses the specific physical gesture to rip, displace, and reconfigure TV flow, Margaret Morse's essay "An Ontology of Everyday Distraction," briefly touches on the notion of physically "sqeezing". (yay, squeezing!) She writes, "The representation of the copresence of multiple worlds in different modes on the television screen is achieved via division of the visual field into areas or via the representation of stacked places which can be tumbled or squeezed and which, in virtual terms, advance toward and retreat from the visual field of the viewer. (206-207). The ability to move and shift hook pieces around the loop surface personifies Morse's concern for "dislocation," when she writes, "In a quite literal, physical sense, freeways, malls, and television are not truly 'places'." (199) Considering the TV screen as an outer jacket that contains and displays an ever changing stream of culture that also works to homogenize the (virtual) world, Rist may have borrowed from Morse or makes a similar connection when she asks "What is the relationship between image and surface? What happens, for example, when the surface of the screen and that of the body meet? Can the television "membrane" become permeable? What happens when it dissolves? Can we break through it"? (Rist,15) Physically breaking through the screen itself would destroy the possibility of interacting with the non-space and flow occurring on it. Morse refers to the screen almost identically, as she writes, "The membrane between virtual and material reality is an actual and easily verifiable second skin...Television, [...], cultivates a far thinner membrane between itself and everyday life, since its very function is to link the symbolic and immaterial world on the monitor with an actual and material situation of reception." (Virtualities: A Conceptual Framework, 17) Because of its fragility, attempts at penetrating through the screen can be made without destroying it. In this way, adhesion may serve as a means and end dependent on certain gestures linked to its function, creating a principle of interaction with TV flow projected onto a TV screen covered with the standard black fuzzy loop material and white pieces of hook fasteners in varying shapes and sizes. Hence, a broken mirror effect. Consider a broken mirror of narrative, time, and place that allows for interaction with the pieces in the attempt to re-arrange them; a breakdown of linear convention that prompts one to control it in such a way.

The issue regarding distance involves interaction with TV in attempt to manipulate it, while also inviting whomever to step out of the conventional mode of viewership and into a more tangible realm of interacting with the screen while whatever occurs on it poses as an ongoing and endless happenstance phrased by Morse as "happening out there." (An Ontology of Everyday Distraction, 199) She also refers to John Ellis' notion of "double distance [in] television's complicity with the viewer against an 'outside world' represented as 'hostile or bizarre,' and the viewer's delegation of 'his or her look to the TV itself. Both means of distancing [blink towards] 'the opposition of inside/outside,' which insulates the viewer from events seen by TV." (ibid) Being able to move around the hook velcro pieces would disrupt and enfold creases on TV narratives, since select portions of the TV show would be seen. The process would then work to open up a space to create a montage or "broken mirror effect" that also depends on select TV moving-images. The temporality of time, moving-image, (and perhaps identity with regard to TV as a metaphor of a mirror or vice-versa) is re-evaluated, or at least aroused in this way in the concept of re-arranging a TV show through hook velcro strips in varying sizes & shapes. Also, the process addresses the standard screen-ratio of TV sets in that each velcro strip varies in length and width where only parts of the TV show are shown. A part of the whole TV show is visible on velcro strips, while the remaining the parts are projected, or in a sway, subsumed, into the invisible dead space of black loop velcro.

Miniaturization, as a reference point for the sake of arguing, works to playfully control TV flow by substituting multiple sections of the moving-image with small velcro pieces intended to move around. Morse goes on, "Miniaturization is a process of interiorization, enclosure, and perfection, one in which the temporal dimensions of narrative or history are transformed into spatial ones, a plenitude of description of seemingly endless details." (211) The ability to physically engage with the moving-image, and endless/seamless TV flow requires a pliable medium and flat surface that would allow for a TV show projection to appear for the pleasure of ripping apart. So far, it seems that the hook & loop processings of velcro may work to play with this desire to touch, rip, and dislocate the flow of time and narrative taking place in that seemingly non-space. In this case, velcro would provide a dimension, or at least an illusion of it, by providing the urge and means of engaging with the colorful and "hollow" space of TV by way of un-stripping parts of a show projected onto itself or a large wall.
In reference to the computer screen, Morse touches on a certain desire to physically merge with the screen. "It is as if one were capable of moving around inside a drawing that responds to one's changing point of view--or for that matter, as if one were able to climb into a monitor and experience the symbols inside without apparent mediation." (Virtualities: A Conceptual Framework, 17) The same concept could be applied to TV as well; the impossibility of being able to physically jump inside it creates more possibility to interact with it. "It is television that first raises the problem of constructing full-fledged parallel visible worlds and then linking them with our own, via speaking subjects, proxemically "near" to and addressing the viewer with some degree of intimacy. Apart from having a private intimate affair with certain characters on a show, interaction with the screen itself does permit another kind of intimacy, one that forces one to get close to it, touch, rip a projected TV show apart and assemble it however way, and raising issues about subjectivity and the viewer that has remained another passing subject of controlled viewership involving parts of the self (as a subject of cultural experimentation) and the constraint provided that it can also create multiple approaches for installation, interaction, and aesthetic cultivation either on, in, or around TV itself. Morse completes it when she says "Conceived in this way, the interface and interactivity may be seen as obstacles or barriers to "immersion"- a concept that conveys the state of being totally inside a created world both virtually and emotionally [...] The wish to design an interface that is transparent, and an interaction that is "intuitive," [...] who aim at immersive involvement." (The Poetics of Interactivity, 3) In this way, velcro-TV, for its rough and soft surface is driven by an intuition and minor deconstructive drive to rip TV flow off from itself as a middle finger salute to Zack Morris an in homage to our childhood being unconsciously subsumed into the canned laughter of Saved By the Bell that everytime an alarm clock goes off I have visions of Jessie Spano's frizzy ass perm.

Turn Around, Get on Yr Face.

2008-06-20T00:37:00.004-05:00

Daytime Television: A View of Oprah & Cops as Confessional Apparatuses

The oral-technological operation of confession, as it is executed in first-person discourse in TV shows such as Oprah and Cops, is reflective of binaries regarding power and pleasure which requires a positioning of the person or "guest star" as subject (on the show) for the viewer to exert administering patterns of scrutiny and categorization. The main subject of the TV show and viewer (also a difference in "live-studio audience" viewership versus being situated in front of a TV) equally participate in a culturally-specific confessing arena. Confession, as spectacle, is also exclusive to the space in which it occurs in; the tight ventilation of a confessional booth in a Catholic church versus an accessible, vast, and participatory production studio, such as Oprah's Harpo Productions or the selective "on-site" geographical (usually economically down-trodden) pockets of America portrayed in Cops. "...Social and spatial operations of the TV set [...] focuses attention on the ways in which the audiovisual and material forms of TV blend with the social conventions and power structures of its locale." (McCarthy, 2) Spatial (in terms of location, audience, and live performace in which the first-person discourse is contained and captured) difference between Oprah and Cops effects their contextual, and therefore, confessional scripts and modes of "confessional production." While both are "on-site" or on location, Oprah's studio audience is fixed in Chicago, while Cops exploits an array of "moral truths" via cinema verite, in an attempt to stir, anticipate, and capture acts of misdemeanor. "The term site-specific is generally used to describe a certain genre of installation art-work designed solely for a particular place or institution, work that cannot be transplanted elsewhere." (ibid) In turn, the ritual or commodity of confession (generated and framed by TV production and it serving as a filter to execute certain modes of confessional styles and not forgetting the costs for airtime) is subject to site-specificity since the confessional gesture is pre-determined, installed, and made available for distribution, which, in part of the viewer, can be interpreted as being "heterotopical" (in another place or medically, a collection of normal neurons in abnormal locations) depending on the location and etiquette of the confessional venue. "There are also, probably in every civilization, real places-places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society[...]all the other real sites that can be found within culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them[...] heterotopias. I believe that between utopias and these quite other sites, these heterotopias, there might be a sort of mixed, joint experience, which would be the mirror." (Foucault. 1967) Analogous to a mirror is that of a TV screen, in which the viewer too, can reference parts of his/her self through the actions and/or "faults" of the first-person subject on the TV show. Foucault then goes on to compare the mirror, in relation to his position in front of it, as a "virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not[...] but it is also a heterotopia insofar as the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position I occupy." (ibid) It can then be said that Oprah and Cops, in their differences and similarities, unfolds permutations of confessionalism through a subject (or messenger) which mediates (or unknowingly relays) culturally specific moral codes to the viewer (be it on studio location, home, or public space). They also provide a means to examine how the audience and featured guest or "sacrificial lamb" are mutual receptors of obtaining pleasures from effects of power, revealing that confession as spectacle, when appropriated into a culturally specific currency of power and pleasure, provides a rate of exchange between subject and viewer and how both are equally participating in the particulars of a moral code. Apart from confession being "an enclosed , private process, crucially secret and therefore immune from any democratizing possibilities of open speech in the 'public sphere', [it serves] as an open de-ritualized [arena]." (Dovey, 107) Oprah and Cops (which I consider TV utopias in their own right) stages and administers two different types of "utopian-confession." One being that the first-person subject, or lets just say person, has made the choice to seek and objectify his/her absolution through affirmation or negation of a public, and the latter being caught red handed to the extent of self-reflexive parody. Oprah and Cops, as logos or doctrines (both TV shows which provide instances of speaking) will be viewed in their productions of"utopian-confessionalism" and the way in which the first-person speaker is subject to the workings of dominant power interests behind the veil of self-empowerment.

Confession, with regard to TV that has an ability to frame, produce, reproduce, and endlessly generate commodifiable emotional states is divided by episodes or simply, time slots. One example is the apparition-esque appearance of Britney Spears on the syndicated Oprah Winfrey show on February 4, 2002. A young woman wrote to Oprah stating that it was her dream to meet Britney Spears after having gone to several of her concerts in every attempt to meet her. Oprah meets the young woman backstage, greets her to the light-hearted and literal reaction of "you white girls all look the same" and leads her to the main stage where an audience awaits in a bright cascade of studio lighting as though descending through clouds above, praises stapled upon the atmosphere in a thunder of clapping until they are standing, in camaraderie, at the center of the stage. Oprah then reveals, with her hands at the center of her chest, the "original" (as though handwritten) letter of the young woman pleading for Oprah to perform the miracle of Britney Spears to appear. The woman's words are read aloud by Oprah as though one of the criteria's to make Britney appear is if the plea were first released out onto the public to gain an inevitable stamp of approval, as the crowd too, desires it for themselves. Part of what evokes the bargaining gesture to be categorized as a "confessional" one, is that the woman begins to cry during the recitation of her letter. It is unclear to the viewer as to why she is crying, perhaps a montage of various registers: excitement, happiness, embarrassment that Oprah is reading her letter aloud, anxiety, not any singular drive that could stand solidly on its own. Perhaps no one will really know except herself. The woman, as a subject to be scrutinized and/or empathized within the gaze of the audience and Oprah (as a sign and/or organizing persona/replica of omniscience), exerts an ecstatic reconciliation of her fantasies coming to life and in the flesh through a more or less poetic and inarticulate code; that which is quantified and mediated through her tears within the confessional ring.

The woman has become subject to a tripartite relationship between power, pleasure and confession. The role of confession serves as a tool or mode of the Greek root techne for the former drives to be commanded in such a way within the confessional container, be it in a booth, closet, or TV show. In the case of Socrates who ironically saw the operation of techne or technology as a threat to order and Aristotle who viewed it as a human imperfection in an attempt to imitate nature, both interpretations of techne are applicable when assuming that the act of confession (derived from its Christian DNA) is on the brink, if not already a commodity of technological expression within TV production. Confession, as a televised working (socio-political) currency which requires production, and not metonymical, sets a specific tone and atmosphere for discourse to emerge between the talk show host, subject, and viewer. "Talk shows not only promote conversation and debate, they break down the distance between the audience stage." (Shattuc, 171) However, the distance between stage, audience, and outside viewing also speaks to the lack of distinctions between them. "They elicit common sense and everyday experience as marks of truth." (ibid) The tight circuit between subject and viewer is needed in order for common problem-solving and solutions to be made, problems which are relevant to themselves, including the viewer, in which the subject serves as an epicenter for the discourse to emerge. In regard to typical daytime shows that "... do not discuss specific governmental institutions, they are clear debates about the public sphere's growing intercession into the family, the home, and the regulation of the individual body," Shattuc privileges Oprah to the extent that her program "privileges process over a single truth or closure." (173) With the lack of distance between audience and stage and the value of "process" (perhaps also motivated by confession as an apparatus to link all three) considered as an ultimate approach to problem solving, certain moral codes also seem to be exclusive in that it caters to a specific 'species' of participants or viewership, and therefore, thrusting a pedagogy of "Oprahism" (also now being aware of creating neologisms as a potential drive for power in the act of naming), which is then returned to the subject and viewer as a mark of pleasure/empowerment or as a purple ribbon of open-ended reconciliation. "For Foucault, 'speaking out', naming, confessing, are part of a 'perpetual spiral or power and pleasure'." (Dovey, 106) In relation to this specific power drive executed within/through language, it is clearly executed in the baptismal fountain of identity-politics on the Oprah set. "The ubiquitous guest labels or "I.D's" (in production parlance) underline the social representativeness of the guests[...] The labeling offers a popularized version of the logic of identity politics, which attempts to break down the hegemonic notion of homogeneity or that "we are all one." (Shattuc, 174) However, although a hegemonic breakdown seems to appear on the surface, they collectively and literally wear their problems on their sleeves as labels, as in "a mother who wants to give away her violent child" (ibid), making them distinct individuals within the overall Oprah arena of "process" based discourse. If the label is a sign of individuality, then there is automatically a concern for where such a confession is taking place if self-identification is already in debt to the daytime talk show as a potential producer of identity in itself. However, individuals which actively participate and adhere to "process" oriented problem solving and to the identity-politic taking place, Oprah (also as an ideology) would inevitably be a source of self-empowerment, since part of the nature of a self-sustaining TV production is that it must maintain its own creed in order to build trust from its viewers and participants, hence, a self-reflexive flow of continuity provided by the entirety of the utopian-production. Power interest may have begun in a linguistic impulse to name and categorize, which is partially what the Oprah Winfrey show promotes on the flip-side, if an audience member claimed "Don't tell me how to feel. I am my experience." (178) Yes, one can claim to own how one feels, however, its a question of "owning" and "feeling" within a site-specific discourse in which it takes place inside of and to what extent an audience member is critical about what exactly it is that they "own" and "feel". Perhaps if society (or TV society) were truly self-empowered, there would be no need for daytime talk shows to imitate the need or seek it, but instead, realize it within themselves in a place where there'd be no need to display it under scrutiny or categorization if the empowerment could occur anywhere, far removed from any mediated gaze and more often in each others eyes, and where there'd no longer be a need to evaluate and affirm the "I" in relation to "experience" if it were simply lived without having to create a spectacle of it.

A 2003 episode of Cops begins with a few police officers gathered in a tattered office station in awe of a bicycle manufactured by Mercedes Benz in which they, as though playfully, make their way into a low-income pocket of America to implant the bicycle as bait on a sidewalk in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood. A middle-aged Hispanic male sees the bicycle leaning against a wall and decides to "go for a ride" in which he is already being studied by several positions: the hand-held camera, cops, producers, entire camera crew, and TV viewers. Not long after riding around a parking lot for roughly twenty minutes, it is as though a conglomeration of all the mentioned viewing positions rushed towards the man (as though a sale in a department store erupted where doors break open) through an artifice of rugged cinema verite convention. He is then man-handled and questioned for taking the bicycle in which he responds to the honest effect of "I took it because it was there." His "confession" is one that is pre-ordained, plotted, and provoked; the "scene of the crime" is staged in order for a discourse of confession to emerge which will then be used as a currency to buy him time if he admits to it. His confessing-subjectivity is clearly displayed as a mantle-piece or plaything on the altar of male policing while the cops themselves do not know how to gauge the honesty of his "petty theft." Moreover, the staging of the crime is self-reflexive and (ready) made available for anyone in the neighborhood to find himself trapped in the "interactive-installation." Participation in the pre-determination and parody-making of a crime is one that adheres to a shrewd limitation of free-will while part of the production of Cops is to produce (if not only the image of) "criminals." In effect, the production of criminals is heavily weighed upon developing a consistent stereotype of criminality which casts a net toward lower-income individuals in suburban pockets nationwide. In terms of power, especially when certain "moral codes" are instigated and enforced upon, this specific episode exemplifies that an object so neutral as a bicycle could serve as a symbol and medium for power to be exercised and where the "victims" of the plotted crime are seduced/manipulated into becoming unaware social actors for the sake of criminal production taking place within a theatricized arena. In this context of Cops, targeted individuals that play a criminal role unawares are ironically trafficked into the situation in which money is ultimately being made from their existential expense. In this sense, confession functions as a monetary tactic which cashes out at the vertex of live-video recording of the criminal's often forced submission to power partially based on a scripted plot. The police officers are in an equal position; a penumbra to the criminal's shadow since it takes both contrasts for monetary ends to inevitably emerge from the drama. Either way, the criminal is not only subject to serving as a social actor, but falls victim to an ongoing circulation of Cop's financial revenue which passes through his utterance of "I took it because it was there."

So basically, Circus is the New Disease.

2008-05-10T01:14:00.003-05:00

Haircrobat, mic check this real quick-

FASHIONS in dress often have their origin in the wish to hide disfigurement caused by disease. The voluminous trunk hose worn by English gallants at the beginning of the seventeenth century were introduced by James I as a means of concealing an unsightly malformation. Slaves of fashion to whom Nature had refused an adequate curve of the hip had to supply the deficiency by art. Readers will remember the story told by Carlyle of the discomfiture of the unlucky courtier who sat down on a nail, and on rising to receive His Majesty instantaneously emitted several pecks of bran, and stood a pitiable figure with his breeches hanging in folds about his shrunken person. The introduction of the crinoline is often attributed to the Empress Eugénie before the birth of the Prince Imperial; as a matter of fact, a similar apparatus had, under the name of farthingales, vertugadins, and what not, been used by ladies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The patches which added so piquant an effect to the faces of the beauties of the eighteenth century were first used by officers to disguise the scars of wounds received in battle. If the late Sir Robert Peel had been a royal personage his manner of wearing his hat at an angle that seemed intended to express defiance of public opinion would have become fashionable among young "bloods," as they are beginning once more to be called; yet we believe it was really intended to conceal a scar. In a second series of his Indiscrétions de l' Histoire, recently published, Dr. Cabanès cites several other instances in point. In the fifteenth century Philippe le Bon, having fallen ill, had his head shaved. Like the fox in the fable that had lost his tail, he tried to persuade the nobles of Burgundy that the human head looked much handsomer when its shape was not hidden by a mass of hair. They did not see the thing in the same light, but, unlike the fox, Philippe had the power to compel people to be of his opinion, and, shaven heads perforce became fashionable. The daughters of Louis XI had feet of a size which made it necessary for them to hide them; hence the society dames of the day thought it due to themselves to wear trailing gowns. The wife of Philip III disguised an abnormally long neck with a high wimple, and was imitated by all ladies who wished to be considered fashionable. Henry Plantagenet, anxious to hide the deformity caused by an outgrowth on the foot, had boots made with extravagantly curved toes, which straightway became the only wear for courtiers. Louis XIV wore a wig to hide unsightly wens on his head; the fashion of wearing wigs has also been attributed to the havoc played by syphilis among the "love locks" of the seventeenth century. Many other instances could be given, but these will suffice to show that there is a closer connexion between fashion and deformity than might at first sight be suspected. This may serve to explain how a thing ugly in itself may come to be accepted as the stamp of social. ( BMJ 1905;ii: 88)

Red Lipstick-USB

2008-05-09T15:38:00.001-05:00

The spacing, there, some
rain. What it does to none
of me as a result of forgetting
where the piano keys go or a window
cutting all weathers into boxes
on a calendar. Look, today's
May and there's a pile
of quiet electricity bills
I am sending through a shredder
in case you didn't notice
we never left the house.

Shove a tree into a paper shredder.

2008-04-20T17:24:00.002-05:00

1. Find a tree, any size.
2. Buy a paper shredder.
3. Try and stick the roots of the tree
first into the mouth of the shredder.
4. Keep doing this until the whole tree has been shredded.
5. Open the shredder and take out whatever bits of the tree is left.
6. Make an image of a tree out of these scraps.
7. Project it against the exterior building of Kinkos.

So what's the Use of this Hour

2008-04-07T03:46:00.002-05:00

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Curtains are drawn, literally, to conceal a black and white repartee of what could otherwise
be material for charades when putting them on mute, a portable theatre built for two. Though
there is only so much makeup and body to fight with silence, keep us interested unless placing
a laugh on repeat, the sound of it pulling downward to the floor. So I lie down to see if its
true, if the seam between laugh and image has anything to do with getting to the bottom
of repetition. There is nothing down there but a darkness gaining popularity the more the back
of a head presses against it or what velcro could possibly sound like if it gave up any attachment
to understand or refusing to count all that sheep walking across a stage.

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Refrain it here: when distance is subsumed into its own icon, as if in mid-air an object
gaining volume, making the wooden desk another echo of an online forest I can barely
conceive of. Its not that I don't like nature, but that its not convincing enough to
try and touch. Does it become another chat-room to log on to, making birds more
conceptual and flat than a forest has ever been, if their chirping presses against itself
so that I can't hear it.

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The ampersand is an erogenous thing, a body with one arm ceaselessly touching itself
under the table. Or a telephone cord loosening between two mouths, snapping a morpheme
in half, how a relation-ship can also go divided and never sustain. At first, a knot was tied.
At second, it sailed away. What if I told you we were sailors this whole time, perusing the
water like googling out of habit, latching onto the many options of how to live when its
all built out of air. I can feel you googling me, she said, don't stop.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

tv ink: another one

2008-04-03T16:49:00.000-05:00

Check out this video: tv ink 2

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Tv Ink: mouse

2008-04-02T20:20:00.001-05:00

Check out this video: tv ink

tv static ink

2008-04-01T14:17:00.001-05:00

Drawing on the tv with all that static on it. It feels really nice. The closest I'll get to jumping inside the tv perhaps.

parts from Soft Objects

2008-04-01T14:13:00.002-05:00

Reciting poems along with pieces of a japanese tv show of a lady who takes care of pandas.

parts from A Media of the Seasons

2008-03-24T18:34:00.010-05:00

Not like any kind of professional editing, a chain of stars chained to their
windows, irreducible the soft gender does reflect from American Apparel syntax:
consider a light-bulb in the TV, knocking back, knocking at a thought full
of pollen in the neighborhood. A static reception of coughs, sore throats,
a spoonful of honey coating the light; the light not knocking, not on the TV,
there was only a possibility of montage rearranging itself somewhere in the
plexus without any use for it but to make the flu derivative.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pigeons exited a building, sure, that's what I'd want you to think. That's what
I convince myself too: X amount of lbs. of impulse, each carrying a word on
its back, scattering the conclusion though its not that simple. More like a habit
to click them all at once or shove them into a folder because you just can't.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the summer it takes longer for a video to upload, the heat in constant motion
where you touch it to stop. In real time, we escape from a neon-theory of hide and seek,
delete all the furniture and figure a way to be people with limbs again. The video skips,
mouth-less seconds bite at the frame where you laugh around the edges; a laugh so
consistent it gives reason to fast-forwarding outdoor escalators and some invention of wind.
But slow enough to notice each step without having to pound a fist onto the stop-button,
cover up the affection accumulating and hollow out the grass we're standing on with thousands
of stop-buttons to make it less obvious.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The weight of a crowd suggests a few things: improvisation, structure, how necessary
some tickets to watch the film projection in a cemetery. What more for a picnic atop an epitaph,
spread a sheet over your Myspace page to keep the profile from shifting. A hyphen as long
breath or wishing through a tunnel between two points, not a point, just an appropriation
of friends to keep the clause from wandering.

I Need $600

2008-03-19T01:24:00.004-05:00

for Hair

It wasn't the spring, that emblem
particular nothing of square boxes
on a calendar, turning the
pages sure there's more trees
out there to make you outdated,
hollow lights surrounding
when flicking cigarette buttes
to push down a thought further
it goes, your thought takes a whole
lot of other people to articulate itself
when all it wants is another cigarette
that buy two get one free Parliament Light
blue dictum at a gas station taking them home
giving posture to the fact of money,
how much of it you need to get a car
to get me out of some Literary Arts
department I'll just tell you to keep driving
not how "Bob" says it but how I want it
to begin again with a different name, another
"John", a new syntax with more internet
tangled at our feet while you speak to me,
beg me to drop out of Providence for once
and g-Chat with some boxing manager
who might be interested in chipping in
for a 1986 Toyota Tercel I ask you what color.

23. for Hair

2008-03-11T17:53:00.002-05:00

1. basically
2. basically
3. basically
4. basically
5. basically
6. basically
7. basically
8. basically
9. basically
10. basically
11. basically
12. basically
13. basically
14. basically
15. basically
16. basically
17. basically
18. basically
19. basically
20. basically
21. basically
22. basically
complication is
another death
drive, there's
no other use for it
except that we don't
know where to go
after its all over
so thats why it
functions out of
procrastination, love,
don't ever let me
procrastinate
ever
again, but
wait, when
will you basically.

Autumn Scenes: 1955-2005. 14min.

2008-03-09T16:53:00.000-05:00

Check out this video: autumn scenes

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parts from Little Black Dress

2008-03-08T22:45:00.001-05:00

Check out this video: parts from Little Black Dress

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for CLos

2008-03-06T00:12:00.003-05:00

*59

I forgot to mention, on
the phone, while you
were cutting the wind
in half when talking about
death, that anonymous verb
on the line like a pigeon
had flown through
the really good reception
of I don't know what you
said, but it sounded like
a damn good idea
probably because the
subject was made of
glass in what you were
saying that I could see
straight through it and
wow, how beautiful you are
when talking about death
while still in boxers
lying in bed, waiting
for a reason to go
blog about it.

pome for Winona Ryder

2008-03-02T21:40:00.001-05:00

Hair, there's
a skhanda of. high-school
in the living room, a
squad of geeks parallel
the football team. When
will we apply
for Publisher's Sweepstakes
like you said? I flip my long
sentence over to you
while a paragraph
of girls in shoulder pads
face themselves
in the mirror, a patch
of green square tile
when Veronica walks
over to Jason Dean
in the cafeteria, himself
a solid persona of velcro
and the milk carton
to make it casual
when all they want
is to fuck. What happens
when two people kiss
on a screen, does it
ignore the surround sound
of the weather it occurs in?
"Monday morning, your
history", she said, but
what about the presence
we give to yellow? Or
the red handtowel I see against
a black Whirpool stove
that makes me want
to tell the cops
1988 was all your fault
that the comma was
a knob to what you
keep in the drawer.

Before you say Color is a Consequence of Will & Collision

2008-03-02T21:34:00.001-05:00

Its those motions
again, you are
the way it is

when

you say book,

and I want

nothing more

than
to get
published

in the way

that you say it

book

over the cell-phone

and its

locked
somewhere

in the milk glass
reception, it is

so white in there, up

before we came
,before

we were persons
merely talking
about what
it'd b

e like

if we decided
to come down,

and so

we did, and

how post-operose!

that you decided
to take over red

the way you've

said it to me before

you ever
decided to
put it on
"Skittles, too

contains its own
mimesis"

& your skin,
hair

is proof of it.

Pinball PoeMechanics

2008-03-02T17:54:00.003-05:00

Check out this video: pinball punctuation

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Using the form of a pinball machine.

from Paragraphs on Conceptual Writing" Kenny To;the G says:
"When an author uses a multiple modular form she usually chooses a simple and readily available form. The form itself is of very little importance; it becomes the grammar for the total work. In fact, it is best that the basic unit be deliberately uninteresting so that it may more easily become an intrinsic part of the entire work. Using complex basic forms only disrupts the unity of the whole. Using a simple form repeatedly narrows the field of the work and concentrates the intensity to the arrangement of the form. This arrangement becomes the end while the form becomes the means...". So then why not apply this paragraph to any form thats already out/in here, especially a form or one considered a cultural relic or game like pinball? It'd be nice to keep & use the physical form of a pinball machine, instead of those online ones. The physical aspects of it, finger tappings, body all together involved in a thrust from head to toe, in which, he goes on " Writing of any kind is a physical fact. The physicality is its most obvious and and expressive content[...] the physicality of the work can become a contradiction to its non-emotive intent. Rhyme, meter, texture, and enjambment only emphasize the physical aspects of the work. Anything that calls attention to and interests the reader in this physicality is a deterrent to our understanding of the idea and is used as an expressive device." Ah, this is very nice. And it would be even nicer to have a printer of some kind, perhaps, attached to the pinball machine so that when the game ends, a hardcopy of the poem comes out. But why the need to involve a print-out? The pinball machine also seems to resemble, or at least animate, the printing process. It does start to seem like a printing press, with its gears, reminding me of that ancient one in Keith Waldrop's basement, but with the brief gestures of push/tap/pull levers & all the bright carnivalesque coquetry working together to combine lines in however way yet to be thought out.

Pinball Poetics, fuck it.

2008-03-01T20:23:00.002-05:00

Basically a tangible digital pinball machine that generates text according to certain gestures within the game such as "flipping", "nudging", "soft & hard cradling", "dead flipper pass", etc. through the machine's layout: bumpers, slingshots, ramps, targets, holes & saucers, spinners & revolvers, switches & one way door doors, toys, magnets & captive balls, etc.

Perhaps a way to work with these forms in order to generate Lines.

micro softobject paints

2008-02-28T23:25:00.001-05:00

Nata my lovey, not moscow anytime soon.

2008-02-25T16:18:00.004-05:00

my little paragon far away in london. We lived together in San Pedro, CA., shared a room with the view of the Long Beach Harbor pulling in objects from all over the world. Our single beds opposite the room, dreams parallel. inseperable ever since. now she is making dresses. now i am making blogs. one day we will make blog dresses together. one say we'll share a room again and she will show me how to wear them.

Hello, Operator? what happens when you start to imitate the interface of your blog?

2008-02-20T18:03:00.003-05:00

Readymade Canvas-furniture: Boulder, 2005.

2008-02-20T17:16:00.004-05:00

Basically,
large canvases painted white or black
and assembled into a couch with a projection
of any textile (leather?) or words from pomes
projected onto the canvas-furniture durable
enough to use or at least sit on for until it breaks.
Have begun making little models of these and
want the fucken money to make em' life-size. holler.

heart,
FLIpKea

P.S.
I don't think so: http://mocoloco.com/upload/2007/11/tokyo_design_we/tide0802.jpg

Punky Brewster: spoil painting notes, 10/07.

2008-02-19T13:55:00.003-05:00

Robert Stam's "Mobilizing Fictions"
"...a mass of spoiled children sitting before their TV sets, children who require
a periodic state of the art slaughter to cure their sociopathological meloncholy..." (108)

-"Since television as an institution fosters a phantasmatic relationship between the viewer
and the news celebrity, people who scarcely know their neighbors are convinced that they
know and love the newscasters." (109)

-Their minimal performance style orchestrates barely perceptible smiles
and the delicate lowering or raising of the eyebrows in conjunction with slight variations
in tone and stress, constructs a studied expressionlessness usually triggering an effect
of neutrality, a calculated ambiguity of expression open to the most diverse projections." (109)

-Going through a brief recollection of my position as a child watching this show,
the metaphor of the TV screen as a mirror & touching on identity; how Punky served as a role model/friend/
her fulfilling certain unimagined fantasies as a kid, while at the same time narrating a corner of my childhood
which I actively participated in through viewership & to some extent desire. She provided a space/time of 'being',
without being, but watching her become or age alongside myself, not in the sense of comparison, but
as a sign of support and admiration.

-The guitar music in the background in conjunct to the legband sticking out of the door.

-The sentimentality of the narrative working with or against the sentimentality of the sound effect
when Punky walks out of the room.

-Then working into some of Klee's paintings (geometric shapes,colors) which reminded me of Punky, the sense of time from 1926 vs. 1984 vs. the present.

video: A voice-over of a Punky Brewster interview
-slowness, duration, speed
-flipping over the usual expectations of culture/ethnic and calling attention to comparing it to oil painting.
-voice sounded detached in beginning and then personal voice went into it second half.
-written narrative vs. voice sounding--> tonal differences which can also be subtle.
-painting into the flow of dream, thought, sleep, & how it leads into that blackout.

the New Theatre

2008-02-17T17:22:00.004-05:00

On May 6th, 2007 SuperCuts held its
annual hairstyling competition at Pechanga
Casino & Resort in So.Cal. Many gathered
for collective simulation in homage to G. Debord.
They cut & styled one another's hair, competed
and strutted down a persian rug catwalk, arm in arm
with stylist & volunteer. A sacrificial ceremony for
hair as a profitable revenue, an outpour of Paul Mitchell,
& Tiki products emanating from their eyes & scalp;
an event to celebrate their inner celebrity. A cause to
celebrate lack of celebrity or in promotion of the fame-industry
itself. Sure, the phantasmagoria of split ends, dyes & cuts; a
parody that owes itself to the platform of a New Theatre: Supercuts,
(targeted towards men) one of 6 chain salons owned by the multibilion dollar Regis franchise.

Hey: (in homage to supercuts post-pinstripe Law Suit)

2008-02-17T14:05:00.001-05:00

Hey kid,
you.

*

Flesh filled
to bursting.

-MC Creeley

Valentines Day pome from last June.

2008-02-14T11:32:00.002-05:00

What they say is; they what; is they. Tether the sentence back to me< twice, in a row, like a column of talking teeth<<<>>>The back row, one of them; where you step outside the comma, on either side; roses precede other ones. Place them all in here ( ). I'll take the red from CNN and translate it into Valentines Day. Why don't you just get out; take the holiday from every travel agent, & gesso it to my frontal lobe. "Which participant has any real intention here", says the digital photographer to the moon; a private number keeps calling like a prostitute that falls in love with her client. It is on the otherside of voyeurism, that the private number breathes, a paragraph separates us, it might be healthcare that keeps us in shadow; so why don't you 1-800-Flowers me.

for CLos

2008-02-11T23:50:00.000-05:00

*57

On the "out of pocket"
nothing, birds, or are they
little books of forms, make
more air into having them go;
useful when you're
next to me checking
you're e-mail to see
if those birds
were also in my head
in the parking lot
walking towards Radio
Shack to buy a new
cellphone charger. Yes,
I was there with you
even if our footsteps
weren't legible
trying to sign on.

carla installment under the table.

2008-02-11T22:50:00.000-05:00

make a really big Cloud

2008-02-11T20:17:00.000-05:00

out of Huggies diapers.
hang it from the sky,
let it rain.

the Context cost more than the Image

2008-02-10T19:03:00.000-05:00

Instructions:

1. Buy a really expensive authentic gold frame.
2. Take a photo of the cheapest thing
you could possibly imagine or encounter.
3. Place the image in the gold frame.
4. Hang it in a gallery.
5. Get someone to buy it for the cost of the frame itself.
6. Let the buyer take you out to dinner.
7. Have an intimate conversation about what the piece implies.
8. Go to a bar, talk some more about it.
9. Take out the cheap photo and replace it with a photo of the both of you.
10. Kiss the buyer goodbye.

Poem in response to Pablo Joaquin's dream..

2008-02-10T14:51:00.000-05:00

Several nites ago, P-Lo dreamt that we
were in a triangular elevator moving outta
control. Then the Triavator shot us out
onto a street where we found C-los.
With just beginning a habit to randomely
flip through Creeley's Selected Poems 1945-2005
once a day to start every new day, it landed
on this one:

NINE

There is no point
of rest here.
It wavers,

it reflects multiply
the three
times three.

Like a mirror
it returns here
by being here.

*

Perhaps in the
emphasis implicit-
over and over-

"triad of triads,"
"triply sacred and perfect
number"-that

resolves what-
in the shifting,
fading containment?

*

Somehow the game
where a nutshell covers
the one object, a

stone or coin, and
the hand is
quicker than the eye-

how is that nine,
and not three
chances, except that

three imaginations of it
might be, and there are
two who play-

making six, but
the world is real also,
in itself.

*

More. The nine months
of waiting that discover
life or death-

another life or death-
not yours, not
mine, as we watch.

*

The serial diminish-
ment or progression
of the products which

helped me remember:
nine times two is one-eight
nine times nin is eight-one-
at the end,
move forward, backward,
then, and the same
numbers will occur.

What law
or
mystery

is involved
protects
itself.

Dream: Licorice Lamp

2008-02-09T14:45:00.000-05:00

dreamt last nite of being in a store with
Michael Keenan. another girl is there too.
a man comes up to me, shows me how to
use a lamp made of what seemed to be
Twizzlers or red licorice lace. In order to
turn on the light of the lamp, you had to
tug on the licorice lace which hung from
the center of it, like from the center of a
bell. The whole lamp was made of candy
but you couldn't eat the light. But if you
could eat the light, then the color would
also effect its flavor.

parts from Soft Object Chronicles

2008-02-08T16:24:00.000-05:00

*47

The months turn, folding
space into collars, a wrist
gives motion to embedding
goodbye on the street, sleeves
and more sleeves that make
me believe in what
meaning has do to
with the way a word
is put back into a drawer,
one long paragraph
of how to be; how
one is kept
in a body and the
creases where
inflection gets left.

*48

Light leaves a mark
on the brick building, a
thought doesn't want
to admit what it knows, or
the brick building is
just a surface for a thought
to have texture, as in
to think "brickly" about
you, but what would
happen if I projected
the greatest film of
our lives against it,
starring endless associations
between objects in relation
to ourselves would it
make the brick softer.

*49

Last nite was a mess, love
where were you, in some
room where your iTunes
echoed all the way
to my ear while talking
up and down Bedford Ave.
trying to find the bar,
branches fonted strict
against my eyes,
the verge of a note
popping on violin strings
or the For Rent sign
through a window
where I could drag
and click a file of
future music we'll be
talking through someday.

*50

Carlos, why not, might
as well have you as
my number one
friend on myspace, but
your profile is under
music and nothing
there plays except
the residues of since we
first met, all the coins
clinking at the cashier
like syllables, what is
happening to language, is
it becoming soft, or
are the objects which
surround it making it so,
like placing cotton balls
all over the words
cotton ball, defining soft
without ever being able
to hold it.

*51

The porch light
linking, you say
would you like to
sublet my porch &
I'd be happy to use it
as background to a song.

*52

Under the TV drizzle
of rain, we hollered aloud
below that Gertrude quote
etched on the side of the
english department "And
then there's using everything,"
umbrellas blocking
the spaces where I begin
to hear the panic of line breaks,
a digital flash photo as
semi-colon to an image
I've been trying to build
and you basically punch
through it with a lens
without letting me get
to the part where it matters
the most or
just saying fuck it,
why not just let the cloud
build itself once it gets
uploaded onto your laptop.

chinese jump-rope

2008-02-07T22:23:00.000-05:00

materials:
exclamtion mark from 1992
floss
tilapia fish
tonsil stone
black sharpie marker
black wire

microSoft paints: #83

2008-02-05T21:46:00.000-05:00

Materials:
chalkboard
paper
scissors
string
chalk

notes for the New Roulette 3-Dpoetry Machine.

2008-02-05T14:44:00.001-05:00

Recently have been making sketches and putting
together words for a 3-d Roulette model,
involving a progression of 1,2 and then 3 wheels
that would generate lines of poetry. Because there is
a total of 38 probable numbers to land on, there
are a total of 38 composed lines per wheel.
(38)(38)(38) would then be the total outcome
of possible combinations of lines. It sounds a
little outta hand to have 64,000+ possible
little pomes to emerge from this but that's what
a certain program is working to generate.
Daniel C. Howe is responsible for making this possible,
to the most extent. Though I don't know exactly
what he is doing, technically. So far I am simply writing
separate lines to make sense in controlled-random
relation to each other; attempting to make them work
syntactically with a significant amount of possibilities
through Mr. Howe's computer program. For this,
there does seem to be a certain presence-ing involved
in the process, an energy, though not knowing from where
and words are the filter for it, just as a program like this
one might be.

parts of Olson's "Projective Verse" comes to mind: http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/jarnot/olson.html

<<<(1) the kinetics of the thing. A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it (he will have some several causations), by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to, the reader. Okay. Then the poem itself must, at all points, be a high energy-construct and, at all points, an energy-discharge. So: how is the poet to accomplish same energy, how is he, what is the process by which a poet gets in, at all points energy at least the equivalent energy which propelled him in the first place, yet an energy which is peculiar to verse alone and which will be, obviously, different from the energy which the reader, because he is a third term, will take away?>>> ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION.

A game like roulette also works as a device
to filter words in the ability for them to participate in limited
chance encounters and the 'linking of lines' is the space
where parts of poetic residues stay warm in that
syntactic movement makes sense and the content
happening is also consistent. The angles of
of approaching the seemingly cloudy content of the piece
is gathered in the amount of possiblities
for events to appear in the poetic-narrative of 38x38x38.
But without getting caught up in the amount of outcomes,
the poetic energy must also be sustained as many times
in order for wasted pages to be worthwhile.

love,
http://www.391.org/manifestos/tristantzara_dadamanifesto.htm
& the Softies.

the (p)O(em)ptical text-Refracter

2008-01-20T14:14:00.000-05:00

notes for
Optical Refractor Poem
partly inspired by Jean-Dominique Bauby's
The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

-the optical refractor would serve as a visual field, permitting text to
move around by plain vision or various types of eye movement (e.g. rapid eye movement, blinking, eye direction)
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye#Smooth_pursuit_movement

-text movement to occur within/through apparatus of refractor.

-optical refractor would detect qualities of a person's eyes, like color.
The color, for example, would initiate the tone of a working narrative.
There would be a total number of working narratives based on the amount
of existing human eye color--8 to date. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_color
which would then be 8 possible narratives, including the color red.

-if there were an optical refractor that detected eye conditions, diseases, disorders
on its own (without an optometrist) in the person viewing/experiencing the text then this could also contribute a possible ongoing narrative in the text--> disorder/disruption of text.

-or any such eye condition would be detected by the optical refractor which would
initiate or prompt the movement of text.

-text can move around in any which direction
-fontsize of text would enlarge, minimize, remain the same.
-3-d text to construct /arrange itself-- like furniture.
-eye conditions/diseases/disorders would also direct the
movement/construction of text.

-3-d images directed by eye-movement.

-blinking also used as a tool to direct/alter text, narrative or poem.

-certain number of blinks to indicate or lead towards an image or word.
see Jean-Dominique Bauby's novel "The Diving Bell & the Butterfly."

-blinking would prompt & direct movement within visual field: right-eye blinks to
turn or walk right, & left-eye blinks to turn or walk left within or around the text
which is simultaneously building itself.

2007-12-15T14:50:00.000-05:00

Loop 1000 are you kidding?!

2007-12-07T17:11:00.000-05:00

Turns out, what I need is Loop 1000
after having received Veltex which is
thin and has no thick hairs on it whatsoever
after convincing the sales rep. at Velcro in N.H.
that it just won't work. He tried arguing that in
fact it is thicker than velcro 1000 but after telling
him is wasn't about durability and he says "what do
you need this for?" and I said "I basically want it for
the sensation of ripping." & I kept saying "like the velcro
shoe" and he says there's no such thing and I said well
then where do you get the kind they put on shoes?" and
he said "look, there's all kinds of loop fasteners" and I said
ok, I just want the one I could rip.

Slumber party notes for Hook&Loop Velcro TV

2007-12-04T14:59:00.001-05:00

http://www.immersence.com/publications/2003-Mmorse-full.html

Since I haven't come across an essay that addresses the specific physical gesture to touch, rip, and displace certain parts of TV Flow, I found it most compatible to refer to Margaret Morse's essay "An Ontology of Everyday Distraction," which briefly proposes the notion of physically "sqeezing". She writes, "The representation of the copresence of multiple worlds in different modes on the television screen is achieved via division of the visual field into areas or via the representation of stacked places which can be tumbled or squeezed and which, in virtual terms, advance toward and retreat from the visual field of the viewer. (206-207). The issue of displacement, regarding the ability to move/shift velcro hook pieces around the velcro loop surface, is relevant to Morse's concern for "dislocation," when she goes writes "In a quite literal, physical sense, freeways, malls, and television are not truly 'places'." (199) The product of distancing bleeds into the interaction with TV FLow, while a TV show is projected onto the velcro surface. It invites the viewer to step out of the conventional mode of viewership and into a more tangible realm of interacting with the screen also in relation to TV as an ongoing/endless happenstance phrased by Morse quotes as "happening out there." (ibid) She also passes the hot pocket to John Ellis' " 'double distance' of television's complicity with the viewer against an 'outside world' represented as 'hostile or bizarre,' and the viewer's delegation of 'his or her look to the TV itself. Both means of distancing blink towards 'the opposition inside/outside,' which insulates the viewer from events seen by TV." (ibid i) Being able to move around the velcro pieces would also disrupt/cause creases on TV narratives since select portions of the TV show would be scene. It would then work to open up a space to create a montage or a sort of 'broken mirror effect' depending on select TV moving-images on display. The temporality of time, moving-image, (and perhaps identity with regard to TV as a metaphor of a mirror or vice-versa) could be re-evaluated or at least aroused in this way, through the concept of being able to re-arrange a TV show through hook velcro strips in varying sizes & shapes. Also, it would work to mess with the standard screen-ratio (what are they?) of TV sets in that each velcro strip varies in lenth and width. A part of the whole TV moving-image would be visible on velcro strips, while the rest of the parts are projected/invisible on a dead space of black loop velcro. There(fricken)fore, I hate to throw this in, but, "miniaturization" also becomes part of the hopscotch of critical concern, perhaps in the attempt to playfully control narrative and TV flow by substituting multiple sections of the moving-image with small velcro pieces intended to move around. Morse hollers, "Miniaturization is a process of interiorization, enclosure, and perfection, one in which the temporal dimensions of narrative or history are transformed into spatial ones, a plenitude of description of seemingly endless details." (211) The ability to physically engage with the moving-image and endless/seamless TV narratives requires a pliable medium and flat surface that would allow for a TV show projection to appear for the pleasure of ripping apart. So far, it seems that the hook & loop processings of velcro may work to play with this desire to touch, rip, and dislocate the flow of time and narrative taking place in that seemingly non-space.

The Velco of TV Flow

2007-11-20T15:46:00.000-05:00

*Mac the Ripper & Mpeg Streamclip to hijack TV shows

Traces of this attempt to "squeeze" TV 'flow', the
moving-image in general on screen, references Margaret Morse's
essay "An ontology of everyday distraction: the freeway, the mall & television."

Wikipedia says: Velcro is a brand name of fabric hook-and-loop fasteners. The term VELCRO is a registered trademark in most countries. Generic terminology for these fasteners includes "hook and loop", "burr" and "touch" fasteners. The VELCRO company headquarters is in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA. The strength of the hook and loop bond depends on how well the hooks are embedded in the loops and the nature of the force pulling it apart. If hooks and loops are used to bond two rigid surfaces, e.g. auto body panels and frame, the bond is particularly strong because any force pulling the pieces apart is spread evenly across all hooks. Also, any force pushing the pieces together is evenly applied over the entire surface, engaging more hooks and loops. Vibration can also cause rigid pieces to improve their bond.
When one or both of the pieces is flexible, e.g. a pocket flap, the pieces can be pulled apart with a peeling action which applies the force to relatively few hooks at a time. If a flexible piece is pulled parallel to the plane of the fastener surface the force is spread evenly as with very rigid pieces. hooks (left) and loops (right). Two ways to maximize the strength of a bond with one or more flexible pieces are: increase the area of the bond, e.g. long purse strap ensure that the force is applied parallel to the plane of the fastener surface, e.g. bending around a corner or pulley. For example, shoe closures can resist a large force with little bonding area by wrapping a strap through a slot which reduces the force on the fastener by ensuring the force is parallel to the plane of the fastener and by halving the force on the bond by acting as a pulley system.

Concept:

An attempt to physically/tangibly grasp the flow (in scope of flow as a metaphysical register) but not able to do so. In the inability, then finding a mediation that will get close to it, that perhaps through velcro. Velcro, as a metaphor of attachment/detachment, would work as a layer or surface of a t.v. show taking place as its being projected unto the loop-surface. It
would then invite one to unstrip patches of hook-velcro from the fuzzy loop surface and rearrange them in any other parts of the screen to catch and reveal the t.v. show being projected onto the entire surface of the velcro. The loop-surface would be black while the hook-surface is white. One would then unhook/detach any which parts of the velcro and arrange
them in a way that would recreate another or missing parts of the whole t.v. show being projected as the rest will not be visible on the black loop-velcro surface. It would work a bit like a puzzle or those poetry refrigerator magnets. If anything, it'd be a means to engage with TV flow, through velcro as a mediation, (in an attempt to unstrip, detach, rearrange the moving-image); velcro as an adhesive (both literal & metaphorically) to unstrip the content and 'flow' of a TV show.

This would hope to engage with flow through a certain 'diagnosis' of unstripping or perhaps just ripping the moving-image apart, in multiple pieces, choosing to see what I want to see without having to be dedicated to an entire frame.

*More connections to be made regarding the fabric of hook & loop velcro, the gesture of 'unstripping' & the intangible
moving-image being projected onto it. --> Now also thinking of this as a hook-suit in which persons can roll around
the the hook-surface. ;) which is already out there but to add a projection onto it.

Materials:

multiple strips of white hook-velcro pieces
tv show preferences are currently being decided
projector
gator/foam core/painted plywood
spray 77 by 3M
white hook pieces
5X5 ft black loop velcro (Levitt Industrial Textile 1-800-548-0097)

Location:

under construction

Autumn, 2007: copyright Hairflip

2007-11-07T21:09:00.000-05:00

After hours of digging through
autunm from ACME video on Transit
& Brook St., they incarnated 16 times
within couple hours, though many more
incarnations bound to break the zipper.

This is, so far, is what autumn appears to be:

All the Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1955)
Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)
Love Story (Arthur Hiller, 1970)
Chintatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
September (Woody Allen, 1987)
When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner, 1989)
My Father's Glory (Yves Robert, 1990)
The Lover (Nicholas Kazan, 1992)
Sleepy Hollow (Tim Burton, 1999)
Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola, 2000)
Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)
Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2003)
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring (Kim ki-Duk, 2003)
Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2004)

Panopticonic Tv Tower

2007-11-04T00:24:00.000-05:00

Concept stolen from J-dog's panopticon,
though the center tower covered with working TV sets.

-Tv sets are watching the inmate/viewers.
-It'd have to be set up on a smaller scale cuz
the original ones were huge.
-Standard several floors circulating around the Tv Tower
for the viewer/person to walk around.
--> a loose association in which earth revolves around the sun, the ultimate source of light.

Commentary on the viewer being surveillenced by Tv (empty surveillencing)
while also participating in ongoing Tv narratives-->concept of there not needing
to be anyone watching you in the tower (as there is also no one inside the Tv),
as long one is convinced by certain narrative driven strategies to remain within
the metaphorical (or not) confines of the cell. Or it doesn't even have to go that
route! It can just be enjoyed, walked around, watched for pleasure, critiqued for pleasure,
whatever the viewer wants it to be-->perhaps no 'cells' just the tower itself depending
on surrounding space.

*just notes, due to change.

But what will be on the screens?:

-anything on Tv, from karaoke footage of rural parts of Asia to
nostalgiac family episodes, news, commericials, porn, cartoons,
anything, content may change depending on where it'll eventually lead.

...
With regard to TV, Bentham's panopticon model works in reverse; the screen is open and available to anyone in which the viewer is tricked into believing that one is exercising controlled-viewing through choices of hundreds of channels, when in turn, it works to keep one in a stationary pursuit of choices which are indebted to a production of narratives; the viewer may be seen as chasing after a stream of ghosts working to solidify endless possibilities of a self in a constant process of becoming.

TV Clock

2007-11-02T20:06:00.000-05:00

Materials:

1. 12 TV monitors set up as a round face of a clock, each TV represents an hour.
2. Specific (cable) TV shows which play at that exact hour for 1 hour in am/pm.
3. not sure the size

Process:

1. each TV set will play a TV show for an hour, the rest will be off/idle.
2. it'll go around the clock
3. someone needs to figure out how to synchronize eastern standard time to trigger or have TV show played at that hour.
--> a TV show rerun of time-->no such real time, only marked on the circular face-->TV show signifies 'segmentation of time into the domestic sphere', in which, an hour long episode (including commericial breaks) measures/solidifies a 'TV of the Self'--> TV abstracts time from the viewer-->the body/person as 'clock'--> death.

*concept inspired by David Morley's essay "The Construction of everyday life: political comunication & domestic media."

Installation: Post-myspace Minimalicious, ruff notes

2007-11-02T15:28:00.000-05:00

Materials:

1. large, bare white, all white room with 4 walls.
2. 8 top friends
3. blocks for interface/push-buttons
4. or just a white box

How would it be interactive?

1. if you touch/tap a friend, they will
answer any question you ask, sing you
a profile song, comment on you, share their
interests in music, books, movies, educational background,
etc.. If they like you, they will ask to be your friend,

2. an attempt to tangibilize the space.

3. you can actually walk around, inside the page.

4. experience it as an actual body/living space--though not a space to live in but physically interact in.

5. encounter people in the flesh and decide if they could be a potential friend.

But why can't we do this anywhere else, like in a coffee shop?

1. Because certain public places may come equipped with interpersonal expectations.
Persons are already expected to have eye-contact, bump into each other, hide behind a book,
etc. Also, their "myspace-selves" are hidden behind their clothes, locked away within their bodies.
An open white space, a typical gallery space, effects personal/intimate approach to a living/breathing person,
creating a futhered distancing through inherent sterility invoked by the whiteness or breaking through that and
increasing intimate/friendly engagement. Anyway, it raises questions about "Top 8" in the way friendships are 'measured'
or when you see someone else's Top 8 and wonder what that person is really like--> if "really" is in itself solipsistic.

Velcro TV: can flow be tangible?

2007-10-31T03:42:00.000-05:00

Materials:

1. multiple strips of velcro to cover large scale wall or one
large rectangular strip of velcro.
2. projector
3. tv images/flow projected onto the velcro
4. someone to unstrip the velcro during TV projection.

Considerations:

How does this satisfy the desire to make TV flow tangible in the process
of unstripping (an image) (via velcro)?

What about the sound of velcro in conjunct to the TV flow?
Does velcro-sound work in tandem with or against or as a
distraction to the flow?

Velcro as a filter to create/suggest physical tangibilities of the flow.

An attempt to "scratch" at the flat moving-image; to grasp the flowing river of images.

----------------------------

*these sketches inspired by critical texts on TV in Lynne Joyrich's Tv/Tv: Alternative & Commercial Television
Fall 2007 course.

2007-10-31T00:37:00.000-05:00

University of Stockholm: 1st to introduce a fashion studies program the way it does.
http://www.fashion.su.se/pub/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=4604&a=15915

University of London: Literature & Medicine?
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/english/pg/masters/litmed.html

Velcro Grass

2007-10-29T23:54:00.000-05:00

So basically, what happens when nature gets like way too intense? When the immensity of it just doesn't seem real? When it makes you want to just rip it apart to see whats underneath all of it? Like cutting through it with scissors and then gluing it back together? Velcro Grass 3000 might be a way to solve this impulse. By making grass removable with velcro, you can take it anywhere you want to go or simply un-patch the grass the way you would velcro on a shoe. Those desires to "un-patch the grass" are possible with a few easy steps. The process is under construction, creators are on standby.

Here's what a few people had to say about Velcro Grass 3000:

"Yeah, you know, I've like been having this tick to rip off the tiny patch of grass from its lawn in front of the 7-Eleven. But like how do I do that without being able to patch it back?"

-Carol Steinbeck, Los Angeles

"In the future, whose idea of public velcro grass and order will be in velcro spaces? That is perhaps the greatest question we have to face. You can look at a landscape and you can see it as perfect in itself. Or you can look at it as undeveloped velcro grass. Those are very two different points of view. Who will make the public velcro grass in that space?"

-Julia Roberts, Mona Lisa Smile

"I think being able to displace your intuitive senses of the grass calls to our attention the ability to displace the projections we place upon it. If only we could do this on an emotional level. Imagine being able to un-patch any feelings of anger or guilt. That would be the next step, to alleviate aggressive states of mind through velcro."

-Pema Chodron Rinpoche, Nova Scotia

"We're still working on dismantling all those old binary oppositions and the differences between the grass and un-patching. All those 'un-patchings' and all those grasses are really part of a large framework of centers and margins all together."

-Tony Hedgewick, Lincolin, Nebraska

Autumn: Ways To sense at It

2007-10-25T15:18:00.000-05:00

TV Project 2:

*look at Martin Arnold, Christian Metz, Jason Vosu
-download Mac the Ripper to abstract scenes from various films, upload them into QuickTime, edit in Final Cut
-Find 12 scenes from 12 different films which exemplifies/theatricizes autumn season.
-Consider foreign films.
-Edit the scences in progression according to time period.
-Loop it continuously.
-Extend each autumn scene by slowing down its time so that each are worth 1 minute.
-total of 10 min., then looped.
-possibly display it in the Modern Culture & Media windows at Brown.
-The trees are looking beautiful right now so it would be an interesting contrast between the screen
and autumn leaves.
-A representation of color as it gets processesed through a video-camera and the changes of textual surface over time.
-Perhaps choosing films 5 years apart as a a progressive cursor of time flow within film: 1950-2005= 2 films every 10 years.
-Now I have to go find autumn scenes..yay!
*Douglas Sirk, "All that Heaven Allows" "Written on the Wind." 1950's technicolor.
-Talk with Richard Manning, the film archivist in MCM.
-Ideally, to have 12 TV sets stacked on top of each other in the window display.
-But without the funds do it that way, then just have them as 12 separate screens (have them all playing at once) in one large screen and projected in the window.
-film TV screen to use as frame.
-decide whether to have all clips playing simultaneously or in sequence-->In sequence.
-what time of the day to project this?-->dusk
-playing with seasonal representation
-the fictions of season-->raises concerns if the season is experienced through mediation itself, and how the mediation effects direct experience with the season.
-season as a container, how much of it passes through the filter.
-season as it is viewed/interepreted through film vs. experience of it.
-"natural time" vs. "media time"
-Just play the scenes in progression--> 1950-2005, color.

2007-10-23T00:31:00.000-05:00

The difficulty in approaching what 'television text' is, involves an attempt to write about an artifice (TV) that consists of sound and image to convey specific forms and contents in order to sell or display a message; a difference between written text (the alphabet, grammar) and televisual text (sound & image) as it appears in a flat, (non)linear, temporal space catering strictly to the senses of sight and sound on a screen. Text within television contains multiple registers: space, time, movement,content, sound, image, all of which assimilate into t.v.'s notion of being 'slippery', supported by its physical parts (described through written text) for broadcasting.

An image source. This is the electrical signal representing the visual image, and may be from a camera in the case of live images, a video tape recorder for playback of recorded images, or a film chain-telecine-flying spot scanner for transmission of motion pictures (films). A sound source. This is an electrical signal from a microphone or from the audio output of a video tape recorder or motion picture film scanner. A transmitter, which generates radio signals (radio waves) and encodes them with picture and sound information. An antenna coupled to the output of the transmitter for broadcasting the encoded signals. An antenna to receive the broadcast signals. A receiver (also called a tuner), which decodes the picture and sound information from the broadcast signals, and whose input is coupled to the antenna. A display device, which turns the electrical signals into visual images. An audio amplifier and loudspeaker, which turns electrical signals into sound waves (speech, music, and other sounds) to accompany the images. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Television#Elements_of_a_television_system.)

Even the means to define TV's physical parts itself relies on written text; the written text as another added register in attempting to approach a subject that consists heavily of sound and image and which isn't typically read; a barrier between receiving messages from a TV screen and attempting to write about it. What does it mean to write towards (as though reaching through writing) a subject (TV as text) or form that doesn't require literacy (strictly in the sense of reading and writing)? What if a response to the question could be through simply showing parts of a TV show, commercial or as moving-image? It seems the difficulty in approaching what television text is, also has to do with a difference of textual spaces (with regard to reading & writing, watching & hearing); certain tensions between both kinds of mediations in receiving and
processing information, be it through narrative or in an attempt to define a word or that when "it is caught in the ambiguity
of actualization" (de Certeau 1988: 117 ff.).

A common outlet between written and TV text might be that both require space in order to perform their functions and content, just as words acquire room on a page to describe parts of a television and a television requires enough space to fit in a room. In shadow of this, words possess transparent qualities different from that of a TV screen; the word 'slippery'(also an onomatopoeia) is different from the experiential lexicon of TV emitting audiovisual tones of 'slipperiness'. Television as a signifier performs what a word cannot, that which signifies and/or is capable of resembling "slippery" in audiovisual
variations, as though television (as a metaphor in itself) also serves as a pre-linguistic thesaurus of the moving-image. With
regard to defining "slippery", the articulation, so far, seems a process caught in the wings between audiovisual and literary modes. In exploiting TV as an audiovisual thesaurus, the next step is to to embed a Youtube video clip of someone sliding around in an ice-skating ring, connoting "slippery" in its literal meaning through physical representation, as well as the textures of low-grade foggy reception on the screen, analogous to the weather, ice, wetness, slippage, promoting a kind of visceral engagement with the text.

In the video, text, in terms of space, is exactly what it appears to be: elsewhere, this person ice-skating within the capsule of a specific 'place' and 'time', though capable of extending its finite moment into multiple times and places at once in simultaneity; the moment/text not physically happening anywhere, yet occurring everywhere through its one-time reproduction by being uploaded on Youtube.com. In relation to space, television works similarly to what is termed as the "projective stage" of perception. "Then comes the projective stage, in which all activities and objects are experienced in relation to a single, subjective point of view[...] The centered space of everyday life bears some resemblance to the space perception characteristic of the second stage. But, while the projective space is liquid, moveable, always related to the position of the spectator-subject, the everyday space is a stable one; the point of view is locked on to one and the same locality" (Larsen, 110); that "same locality" characteristic of television, a rerun or reproduction of a moving-image stored in a frame or a box/flat screen, catering to multiple-singular times and places, which, based on accessibility, simulates more time and place.

T.V.'s textual 'slipperiness' to some extent, mirrors the mind. I imagine TV as a neutral zone which invites,
harbors, and executes varying mental states and then works to stabilize and prolong them; the "stream of consciousness" mentioned by Patricia Mellencamp in her essay "Beyond the Pleasure Principle of Television." Mellencamp attempts to appropriate Freud's "repetition compulsion" to TV reruns. In Buddhist psychology, the intellect is viewed as "a collection of a lot of little details and aspects of psychological inclinations of different types[...] which enables ego to gather further territory, further substance, more things[...] there are six types of [...] egocentric thoughts. They are ignorance, passion,
anger, pride, doubt, dogmatism" (Trungpa, 1975). Like the mind to an extent, "TV triggers memories of TV in an endless chain of TV referentiality[...]It is a disassociated, dated history, out of synch with the present, with nothing, now to do with us..." (Mellencamp, 79). But in light of the glossy textual surface of the screen itself, its apparent in the ice-skating clip presented on Youtube; sixteen seconds of a flowing stream of 'soft-shock' impressions, heightened by eight punctums of TV static soundtrack, while a man swirls around lacking any fixed narrative; this in turn, exemplifying the realization of "'Nervous impulses' and electric energy' portend electronic culture and its reception- the creation/mediation of the shocking experience of modernity" (ibid, 97). The lacking narrative (due to it being only 16 seconds) as metaphorical to a personal narrative at the risk of being consumed by the bombardment of multiple narratives shooting from every passing channel. I've viewed the ice-skating clip with Claude Debussy's classical piano piece " Passepeid" and it is changed entirely, the watery composition adds to the effect of slippage.

An attempt to develop an overarching theory of TV is slippery in itself, if it is an object that is constructed and evaluated within the framework of metaphysical binaries such as "light & darkness", "nearness & distance" or if it is considered a "nonspace" divided again via the play of motion and stillness organized by passages and thresholds to the worlds behind the glass, by a mise-en-scene of light and darkness and by proxemic indicators of nearness and distance within an unanchored situation. (Morse, 207). The conception of TV as a 'neutral zone' comparable to a "nonspace" to the extent that the past, present, future has already happened, where the passive-viewer does not need to react as episodes, commercials, infomercials, educational, sports, entertainment TV have already done it or is in the process of doing; a boot camp to train one how to be, act, or cook a certain way. In Morse's reflection from a passage of Foucault's Discipline and Punish, "The Empire of the habitual is the matrix of mental and social life, made of mundane opportunities and choices composed of practices conducted half-aware, which assemble one's very own personhood. What is new in contemporary life are not these institutions of mobile privatization per se but the interpenetration of layer upon layer of built environment and
representation, the formative and derivative, the imaginary and mundane" (210). However, Morse might not agree with TV as a "neutral zone", as she is concerned with it as "privatized ground." "It is rather, the result of the dominance of one set of values over other values held a little less dear. Those other values, loosely allied with the "public sphere" are represented- but not included in a way that gives them substance." (214) Regarding her use of "nonspace"(here I would extend this to all forms of media representation responsible in developing identity in degrees), and the variations working to promote and stabilize fictions of lifestyles, it is the production of identity (via commercialization) passive viewers are vulnerable in becoming addicted to (I use the term 'become' also in regard to not having an opportunity 'to be' without having TV as a solid mirror to reference parts of the self); a mode of narcissistic viewership reinstated, driven and recycled within "zones of ontological uncertainty" (210), where persons project 'themselves' back into the nonspace (via tuning in to what is present/updated, "in the know"), furthering an illusion of there being such an 'outside', thinning any crevice between supposed 'fictions' appearing on TV and the 'non-fictions' occurring apart from it. In this way, it is also a concern of TV text (via a currency undefined) stepping out from the screen and into the immediate perceptual stage of oneself and others; if there is such a zone or difference in which parts of the self (perhaps as an audiovisual assemblage) are not already locked within the TV's artifice. A way to dry up the slipperinness in building a friendship with TV involves a method of understanding how it effects psychological development, perception (as passive or active viewers of the screen and environment) and the possibilities of becoming responsible creators from TV as a medium to be critical of ourselves.

It is up to viewers to (re)create their own meaning/sub-text within varying discourses (or lack of) of TV in order to resist the production of fictions, by reflecting on how TV has contributed to sculpting parts of the self and to evaluate its consequences, relating back to the functionalist approach that " grew out of certain observations that people use television and radio to fulfill certain psychological and sociological needs and to gratify certain desires" (Allen, 14) The approach is as many viewers there are, more than ninety million U.S. families with television sets and only five thousand selected to represent the demographic for advertising companies (19). With these numbers in mind, it can also mean the possible mass potential to recreate TV, experiment, subvert. But finding a personal way to approach the subject is one that requires introspection: what is my personal relationship to TV? Are there any fantasies in my life that run parallel to certain fantasies on TV? Are there characters specific to a TV show that have influenced me and in what ways? Concepts of identity formation and TV's precedence of self-identification; a kind of TV of the Self pertaining to Morse's "nonspace". Hence, the assessment of TV's social impact not needed to be on the fringes of quantifiable deductions "when what we are trying to account for is how people drive sense and pleasure from television...what scientific law explains our curious relationship with fictional television programs?" (16) There needs to be a way to engage, communicate, and penetrate through the televisual text instead of being quantified as another passing entity across a statistical board. There needs to be a production of meaning through a contemplation of how TV has contributed to the personal narrative that is our lives; an attempt to re-narrate the script, internalized or abandoned, as though being thrown into a void of t.v. static and working to compose the constraints within it, before it composes me anymore than it already has.

TV can be defined in the process of working to reconcile with its psychological and phenomenological impact in relationship with ourselves and the way in which we perceive on a social and biological level, basically, TV is applicable to any discipline of inquiry as it will mirror what is out there. It is both empty and full, a container capable of storing infinity as long as electricity remains an active phenomenon that relies on positive and negative charges, "light and dark", a matter of ethics in deciding how a medium could function to alter consciousness instead of suppressing or leaving it idle, unafraid to inscribe the I against televisual text without double quotations surrounding. It is also a question of authorship, a re-emergence of self from the ruins of network/cable TV in reference to text being "...a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original...a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of
culture...the space of the writing is to be traversed, not penetrated: writing ceaselessly posits meaning but always in order to
evaporate it..." (Barthes, Death of the Author). Any attempt in re-narrating (through voice-over) TV shows, episodes, is also
suggestive of non-attachment to the text, as the act/utterance is subservient to the cause of de-centering, dismantling, disrupting the flow.

®oulette Word Game

2007-09-16T19:21:00.000-05:00

Write a short poem/story consisting of 38 words. (make sure majority of words are nouns, verbs, adjectives) if you want.

Using the poem/story:
1. replace every number with one word (including 0,00).
2. replace every chip with one syllable (the more syllables to gain or lose).
3. spin the wheel & ball.
4. see where it lands.
5. re-construct the original poem/story based on chance to determine the story/poem.
6. spin wheel 38 times.
7. you may land seveal times on one word and zero on another.
8. place your bets on a word.
9. if it lands, the more syllables gained to stay in the game.
10.but don't count on winning, no one wins.
11.the objective is to reconstruct a poem/story based on the operation.
12.just a means to land on words.

At Foxwoods Casino in Connet-it-Cut:
from the utters of "I need a Lipstick & a USB"

They wanted to &
so did I, we drove through
wood from where line breaks
haven't yet begun,
that I-95 to South 92,
C-Los in his seat
shuffling through De-La-Soul
Cut to: 7th grade, a
lapse of bored pencil carvings
mark roads on the desk,
who would've known
we'd grow up to get out
of Providence in a hurry
for readymade chance encounters
on the table: I ask a 20-something male
"what's your number" to which
he says "21" & it hits, a curtain
of digital red falls flat, I knock over
P-Dog's rum & coke on the
3rd 12, even numbers turn over
from sleep paralysis in Berlin,
a Chinese woman pulls out
a Hair blow-dryer
as if to scan the causes of chance
while the other one rings
a gold elephant charm
quietly to herself. We stare
at the numbers awaken
softly from behind the bars
of zero; 28 in a queen-size bed
batting lashes in bright red lipstick
& it occurs to us that
there might be nothing
behind those numbers
but rooms that house
a ghost of gestures
to make you win
if you aren't attached
to a physical world.

the Lip-Drive

2007-09-15T16:14:00.001-05:00

lipstick+usb= Lipdrive

something I can save writings on
& have my lipstick to go.

If I run out of lipstick, then perhaps there'd
be no more spaces left to save documents.

find an engineer at MIT?--that's what Brian Conn said.

41

2007-09-05T22:10:00.000-05:00

The body moves
in black satin, you
could imagine
how much leg room
could fit into
K's thought of it; he
takes the pencil
& something moves
his hand, through
the glove
onto the page,
dense matter, an
accumulation of himself
against white
when he draws it
& she walks
as traces of pencil
following the
line of what
he forgot.

Shower Curtain Couture: by Natalia Ryzhova

2007-09-04T20:35:00.000-05:00

One of the greatest fashion artists my lovely Nata...

2007-09-01T17:33:00.000-05:00

38

An olive green coat
cuts open
just below
the heart; a being
is justified to the middle,
we begin this way
at the center
of a page & come out
to fulfill whatever
spaces are left
unoccupied.

37

K cuts out
the blue
from the sky &
sews it into the
shape of a woman; pale
because tones are
sometimes geographic,
pearl buttons; the
kidney stone, she.
Drinks cranberry vodka
to deal with nature
as it becomes flat
as a screen.

33

The left knee; ⠀
her strut full of forward
slashes, everywhere
handicap in the
back pew of my mind / /,
the ground covered in
discarded beads K will
invent the proper climate
to pray them in.

28

The nylon scratches
at K's frontal lobe; she
struts with one foot
forward, cutting out
an image of herself
before reaching
the pixels it takes
to stand in place.

27

He wants it cut
at the rib cage; the
skin as thin paragraphs
of soft aging; hands
passing through yards
of _________
now exposed for
an audience to read
through a word
clothed in leather; K
watches from the monitor
searching for shadows
left on the ground, not
even she can see
how death is accumulative,
"seconds are softer
than clouds", closes
his eyes and
presses his cheek
against the womb
on her screen.

26

K is 'meticulous' about
chance; low notes
drop throughout his ear
to which outside of it
is just rain to them; a
hallway of mute profiles
stepping inside him, the
back alley
keys black & white
are not enough so he
replaces every other
major note navy blue.

wedding D/R/E/S/S for hair

2007-08-23T20:23:00.000-05:00

~` `~
< ;;:( _-f_--_____ ):;;>
[ ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ]
/|| /|\ |\ ||\\
"
/ /__
// h //___ ||l
' '
¿
/|l \\,,
, / p / ///a ?
\
( i / )
)\\\\\\\\\ / ///,,

||| | || || || |||| |||||
.....................r

gonzales keeps his notes clean

2007-08-23T18:48:00.000-05:00

excerpts from the Little Black Dress poems, for Karl.

2007-08-17T20:38:00.000-05:00

07

He remembers in baby blue,
when Coco first tailored the
woman's suit, except he
lengthens it 6 inches above
the knee because she
had beautiful knees that
were hardly seen; two buttons
conjunct the cap as periods
to keep distance aligned, her
shadow throughout the
base of sport.

06

Only her fingers and face
touch what occupies the air, not
another's; it does not. Belong
to any other place, but that
which enters K's mind; a whiteness
cut by the release of black stiching,
while the rest of us watch
from various degrees. He
stands in the wings holding
a compass in his pocket, not
telling which way to look.

11

She is covered
in lines of restraining order,
as though marked
by solid strokes of sharpie; K
likes the pencil effect of
non-attachment to skin
and conceals every part
with cows & sheep; the
animal detected in
a single line, wearing
its last breath to keep breathing.

16

Hair told me
in one ear to "strut
the sentence like
no one's business" &
she swung her purse
like an exclamation mark
down a short paragraph
of silver sequence 3 inches
above the knee
without turning on the t.v.

14

She walks through
velcro of November,
wind covered
in a cap, listening to
the interior of soft black; she
likes the sound quality
of not thinking, but
being in place while
an audience
moves around her.

The Dance Revolution has started in a Philippine prison

2007-07-26T10:11:00.000-05:00

Philippine jailhouse rocks to Thriller

The most popular clip is a version of the video for Michael Jackson's Thriller
An unusual physical fitness regime at a jail in the Philippines has attracted worldwide attention on the video sharing website, YouTube.
A clip of hundreds of prisoners in orange uniforms dancing to Michael Jackson's song Thriller has been watched more than 1.3 million times.

The routine is the brainchild of Byron Garcia, a security consultant for the Cebu provincial government.

He said it had helped "drastically" improve inmate behaviour.

And two former inmates have since become dancers.

'Discipline in action'

The dancing is compulsory for all 1,600 inmates at the prison in the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Centre, except the elderly and infirm.

Prisoners have also performed to songs by local artists, Queen and from the film Sister Act, clips of which have been watched on YouTube tens of thousands of times.

"Using music, you can involve the body and the mind. The inmates have to count, memorise steps and follow the music," Mr Garcia told the BBC news website.

"Inmates say to me: 'You have put my mind off revenge, foolishness, or thinking how to escape from jail, or joining a gang'," he said.

The routines developed last year after Mr Garcia started making inmates march to music, such as Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall, in a bid to increase participation in exercise.

The inmates are very happy at the interest, they are always talking about it
Byron Garcia

Other early choices included In the Navy and YMCA by the Village People, which were chosen so that macho inmates "wouldn't be offended by being asked to dance".

Mr Garcia has been taken back by the worldwide popularity of the clips, which he originally posted in order to share his work with other members of the penal community.

"I wanted to show them that I am doing something here that has been a success, to show discipline in action," he said.

But the videos have now become a source of great pride for the prisoners.

"The inmates are very happy at the interest, they are always talking about it, and they ask how many people have watched it on YouTube," Mr Garcia.

And fans of his work can look forward to another three routines in the pipeline, including one set to the Vanilla Ice classic, Ice Ice Baby.

hand dryer opera

2007-07-21T16:17:00.001-05:00

I Remember 2006

2007-07-18T11:35:00.001-05:00

sound off on origami. sound on regina. do you remember?

7226 Newcastle St., Reseda. Ca. 91335

2007-07-13T02:39:00.000-05:00

It is a house of seven bedrooms, seven forms of mental disabilities; each room to a form unknown. Each are housed in a body whose frame exposes limitation on the inside. A woman dresses herself blindly; her eyeglasses punctuate the dark, in the dark, she is surrounded by voices; the others who speak in a catalogue of textures. Turn the page, we are standing in a speech made of wood, it is a male. She has never seen a tree, or a man, all her life; this life that gets dressed as if she could actually see, browses through drawers for a green shirt with her hand, sensing green in the shadow that the man leaves behind. I close my eyes to understand what she is looking for and walk around her room to imitate what is happening in her mind, in the afternoon, when no one's around.

Ella Scats "One Note Samba" to Mario running as fast as he can.

2007-07-12T03:50:00.000-05:00

for Hairio Brothers who hates the scat!
look at him go! so cute.

Weather Dream Sequence, 1986.

2007-07-07T03:14:00.000-05:00

-wind as fashionable in 1980s
-wind's effect on hairstructures in 1980s and tools to promote, stabalize, stylize (hairspray, moose, gel)
-weather manipulated by media
-weather as intangible theatre
-the 'weatherman' as storyteller/false psychic reader/retailer
-weather-narration
-physical appearance of weatherman as bodily representation of the climate within fashion
-1980s textile/design in relation to 1980s weather
-weather be subsumed by fashion
-weather fashionable through t.v. production
-how does its representation effect the viewer's relation to it, how does the viewer interact with 'visual wind'? & what are the consequences, if any, when the viewer is actually inside it?
-fashion in attempt to cope with undesireable weather through temporal play of accessories
-weather as a desire through its representation and seductive accessories involved to make it tolerable.
-experience of 'the weather' through accessories, weather as accessory ('hair blowing in wind' aesthetic)
-the weather's growing religious insignificance and use for sport.
-materialism of weather through representation (fashion contained within it), accessories created by way of tolerating/interacting with it, as a backdrop to sell products useful or useless (hierarchy of necessity inclusive of design)
-"the_______of weather will be its design"

Son of a Preacher Man

2007-07-05T18:46:00.000-05:00

Beautiful. A reappreciation of a song through someone's body.

Claude & Beyonce go for a walk in nature.

2007-07-02T03:01:00.000-05:00

1. put on mute. play with Debussy's 'Arabesque'. Watch the tone move through the words. look back and forth between background footage of 'nature' and words.
2. sing the lyrics with arabesque in background.
3. watch content of lyrics, background footage, and piano move through the words.
4. try to let go of preconceived inflections of words.
5. let the musical tones of arabesque speak the words.
6. watch words begin to look like piano keys.
7. watch tone give character to words.
8. forget what the words mean.
9. then pay attention to shape of words, & then to each letter.
10.watch shapes of letters become tonal.
11.watch the words no longer mean what they mean because of tone.
12.watch movement of landscape, waterfall, monkey, iguana & jellyfish look so beautiful with arabesque.
13.notice the season change.
14.say someone's name out loud who reminds you of the song.
15.say someone's name silently who you love throughout the piece.
16.call someone to say their name and hang up.
17.email their name back to them.
18.take off mute and play Debussy & Beyonce together.
19.listen to the 150 year difference.
20.listen to Debussy's reaction to Beyonce wanting him to say her name.
21.listen to Debussy trying to say her name.
22.listen to Beyonce kick it with Debussy.
23.imagine how he would say her name, with what 3 notes?
24.close your eyes.
25.hear the notes.
26.open your eyes.
27.go to nature and say the person's name.

the vingle

2007-06-30T23:11:00.000-05:00

Hair, like any other part of the body becomes an outlet for whatever pressures/events occur. Fixation of a body part is reactive in that it assists in (impulsively or extensively) coping with unresolved pressures. Style, as an outlet that owes itself to gratification driven by other causes, distracts the body from fixation; it avoides resolution and attaches onto anything that also contributes to the pressures in symmetrical momentum.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6255334.stm

2007-06-30T13:42:00.001-05:00

'Overwhelming'
Anticipation has been running high ever since the design, which combines a phone with music player, camera and internet browser, all controlled by a touch screen, was unveiled in January.
Jessica Rodriguez, who was third in line having queued since Tuesday morning, was overjoyed to have the iPhone in her hands at last.
You like it from the first minute you touch it
Norbert Pauli
"It feels great, oh my God, overwhelming. I never thought this day would come - and now it finally has, it's mind-blowing," she said.
"We got no sleep with the rain and the dump trucks going back and forth. I'm going to go home and sleep and play with my phone a little bit."
She plans to give the second handset - Apple will let each customer buy only two - to her sister.
All those who buy the iPhone must activate it via iTunes, so no-one was able to call from their new handset as they left the Apple store.
But Norbert Pauli, a German working at the UN in New York, said he had been impressed by the phone's easy handling even from the little he had been able to do so far.
"The Mac community has waited for so many months and read so many reports. It does feel exactly how it should feel," he said.
"It's a masterpiece of craftsmanship, polished aluminium - the weight and size, it just feels great. You like it from the first minute you touch it."

Nag Kanta Para sa Dios.

2007-06-24T21:47:00.000-05:00

What occurs in the karaoke-interior changes the quality of sound and experience all together. Karaoke (empty-orchestra) as cultural apparatus; to view what surrounds the machine, a center that collects an audience to reflect back on itself. How many voices have entered and left the moment through subjective relation to the song? By singing, one's job, occupation, etc. is projected into the means (karaoke) and released back into the environment which supplies and prolongs it. The kitschy background also contributes to temporal hope and execution of stress in that it has no cultural relevance to the environment whatsoever; it passively supports the exterior and stimulates the singer/viewer to sing out what hasn't been fulfilled or desires to. Its temporality can motivate the release of pressures or accumulate them; either way, its limitation doesn't exceed what it 'serves'--to 'gather people together' in the form of an 'empty orchestra' where no one is listening but those that equally participate in a neutral form which mirrors the environment through sound.

An ideal communist resort

2007-06-23T00:23:00.000-05:00

Hotel offers 'East German chic'

East German authenticity does not extend to the bed linen
The Berlin Wall may be long gone but communist East Germany lives on in the form of lovingly maintained Trabant cars and now an old-fashioned hotel.
"Ostel" takes its guests back to some time before 1989 - an era of ugly brown and orange wallpaper, spartan furnishings and Politburo portraits.

The hotel, which opened in Berlin in May, offers guests a choice of rooms in the style of the old eastern bloc.

The "Stasi Suite" is more expensive than the budget "Pioneer Camp".

The hotel is a former East German Plattenbauwohnung - the kind of mass-produced concrete apartment building that came to symbolise life in the communist bloc.

The hotel's exterior is also a reminder of the Soviet bloc
In the reception four clocks are another throwback to the "socialist" camp, showing the time in Moscow, Berlin, Havana and Beijing.

The hotel was the brainchild of two former East German circus performers, Daniel Helbig and Guido Sand.

Their concept of retro chic continues a wave of "Ostalgie" - a sense of nostalgia for some aspects of life in former East Germany, expressed in the cult status of Trabant cars and the hit film Goodbye Lenin.

The hotel founders managed to rescue communist-era furnishings from private homes and the dusty store rooms of furniture dealers.

A display case in the hotel lobby contains East German souvenirs such as plastic egg cups, chocolate GDR-Mark coins and even a rare roll of GDR toilet paper, German media report.

Guests cannot escape the party's watchful gaze, as the hotel also boasts portraits of former Socialist Unity Party leaders, such as General Secretary Erich Honecker and Prime Minister Horst Sindermann.

Denise Levertov +Twins= Double Mint Gum poem

2007-06-17T16:39:00.000-05:00

The Secret

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

-Denise Levertov

Eye Love U

2007-06-13T13:39:00.000-05:00

what does inversion do to the veiwer? does the upside down eye remark at the separation between the customer and the product or at the position of the spectator. or maybe its maybelline.

1987 Hamburger Helper: Eating Installation

2007-06-12T17:38:00.000-05:00

A study on eating the past: Hairmburger Helper, lets eat this shit.

1. people invited to submit photos of loved ones from the year 1987.
2. large projection of the photos on wall of some interior space. (exterior white facade of MACBA (barcelona) would work best.
3. find about 20 boxes of Hamburger Helper mix from 1987.
4. cook the mix.
5. invite people to eat it while walking around or looking up at the photos.
6. an attempt to eat 1987.
7. match flavor with images of 1987.
8. does it taste like your idea of 1987.

The Harptile Loom: A youtube collaboration between Joanna Newsom & Symbioza (Symbiosis, Tadeusz Junak, Poland 1969)

2007-06-07T22:20:00.000-05:00

Hair-lala,lets dance.

Play together, yay.

Filipino Soap Opera "Sa Kamay Ni Rosinda" (the hand of rosinda) with O'Hara's "Lana Turner Has Collapsed" pome on ubu.com/sound/ohara.html

2007-05-31T01:42:00.000-05:00

so it goes: the mom walks into the kitchen blaming her daughter about something and it ends with the daughter asking the mother if she wants some coffee. Or put on mute and play 3 times with Cage's "Waterwalk" below.

.waterwalk.

2007-05-30T00:02:00.000-05:00

Brad Pitt reads Breton's "Freedom of Love"

2007-05-29T22:19:00.000-05:00

For questions or complaints, please call 1-800-hell-no.

notes on movement & intonation

2007-05-20T21:12:00.000-05:00

1. Movement from the immediate environment working with alternate audio source.
Watching fish swim around in a fish tank while listening to Creeley reading his poem “Anger” on ubu.com/sounds.

2. Watching videos on Youtube while listening to poetry.

3. Listening to Vito Acconci read “The Bristol Project” while watching Nintendo weather channels.

3. Watching runway fashion shows while listening to poetry.

4. Watching t.v. shows on Youtube while listening to poetry.

5. Watching scenes from films, starting anywhere, while listening to poetry.

6. Sitting in a restaurant and watching people while listening to poetry.

7. Watching short footage of productive sewing machines while listening to music and poetry.

8. Music which works as background for poetry to enhance cadence.

9. Not being able to record moments of synchronicity.

10. Letting go of synchronicity to allow more room for synchronicity to occur.

11. A practice which doesn’t require attachment to its own practice.

12. Allowing for pure synchronicity to emerge; this is where beauty appears in pure form.

13. Synchronicity is controlled to the extent of allowing two or more mediums occur.

14. No control of both mediums whatsoever.

15. Staying open and attentive to incongruencies between sound & image.

16. There is no incongruency.

17. It is always unfolding another sensation.

18. Poetry serves to narrate the readymade moving image.

19. The moving image is sometimes neutral; a kind of wallpaper open to any content and intonation.

20. The poem is open too.

21. Movement (moving image) & Intonation ( poem) = Content

22. Content is not fixed, always shifting according to movement & intonation.

23. Form and content depends on synchronicity.

24. Through the juxtaposition, the poem performs on its own and unfolds for the viewer.

25. Form and content limited and expanded by time.

Watch with Michael Snow's whistling in ubu.com/sounds/snow.html

2007-05-20T17:44:00.000-05:00

post-it list of neat things

2007-05-15T14:30:00.000-05:00

pascal incorporates narrative in his design:
http://www.designmuseum.org/design/pascal-anson
ron's Concrete Stereo
http://www.designmuseum.org/design/ron-arad
assa's 501 chair:
http://www.designmuseum.org/design/assa-ashuach
martin baas asks the Chair to be a Bookshelf!
http://www.maartenbaas.com/
sam's video chair:
http://www.designmuseum.org/design/sam-buxto
their so happy:
http://www.designmuseum.org/design/fernando-humberto-campana
Halla with those lamps fam! (as yoyos would say):
http://www.designmuseum.org/design/committee
the tree trunk table & dresser drawers...da-dayaam:
http://www.designmuseum.org/design/droog
that lawn chair got ta go:
http://www.designmuseum.org/design/luis-eslava
don't quite trust this guy, tho he could probably rob an ant:
http://www.designmuseum.org/design/konstantin-grcic
what a cutie:
http://www.designmuseum.org/design/marti-guixe
2020 lampshade:
http://www.designmuseum.org/design/stuart-haygarth
projecting shadows of trees on buildings, moving wallpaper:
http://www.designmuseum.org/design/simon-heijdens
The fold up canvas deck chairs:
http://www.superegodesign.com/ecommerce/cat176_l2.php?n=1

poem to be read with Chanel fashion show 3

2007-05-13T21:45:00.001-05:00

After M.C. Creeley’s anger

Is it your anger,
then, the one you’ve
made us listen to, not
one involved, whose
face if not the cry
or close breathing, what
you give to the world.
Which sun was wrong
to come on? Love, no
not the way you’ve said
it, meant it and made familiar
for the rest of us to save,
a clutter of not enough.
Something I know
is black, the pit
not wanting to
be pulled in; it cannot
pull an expression
double or split.
You say who did what,
not a rage, but
one done to be wrote,
I do not see the cry;
the self sight which
returns, not giving
but what life
was it we were
talking about;
It’s true that
all I say I want
to do to myself,
I do to others,
when you face me
as a floor, as a hole
in the wall.

Prelude to a having fun with a Canvas-Chair

2007-05-13T20:46:00.000-05:00

Been putting together small canvases and
assembling them as furniture models. It
started in July 2005 with making a box,
then moved towards a tiny bed, desk, couch, chair.
But now having the desire to make them life-size.
So I will go ahead and assemble a chair. Also
looking into repetition, production of readymade canvases,
"clinical" whiteness, anxiety & convenience of
being able to purchase a canvas to "paint" on.
And because I can't paint, there's a desire to build
out of them, though limiting and costly.
But that's just it! To buy buy buy & build build build,
though its mostly already been built for you.
Without too much emphasis on that, it also just
looks fun, stark white and factory made.
Utrecht+Ikea= canvas furniture.

Pandas part3 (3/4)

2007-05-10T02:46:00.001-05:00

Watch With Robert Creeley's "Anger" Poem on ubuweb.com

Lately, its been feeling a little 1992.

2007-05-09T17:41:00.000-05:00

A story, as it yawns, wants to unfold; it begins from nowhere, it is nowhere that I am trying recall, filling the void as it leads into a movement, the void as a thing, has other things inside it; persons that pass through, cars, trees, soil, a bicycle, the weather even. There is a building behind the flatness and before that, a flatter blue, the sky without dimension, people passing in front of it, sunglasses and car windows. A woman in yellow walks across, affecting other movements, she is not the center, she is the center; branches hit the wind like nerve endings, she is a function of molecular movement, that is one way of saying it, a white van moves to cover the lack of seeing or believing it. Someone takes a picture of the moment that depends on another image. Somewhere outside the frame, it develops and preserves a lack of belief, not effecting what happens in the void and produces the same white van. A truck passes to negate this, a girl walks indifferent to either one; she is in the image, reacts with a digital camera and doesn’t mind at all.

It wants to develop. So two people walk in with a bag of food. They have stepped further into an open page, full of things still there, or ones that have gone. A sign that reads “fire parking lane no parking anytime.” They can’t be seen, nor can the fire anytime, edges begin to burn; they have set the page on fire. The one on the bicycle rides to the bottom right, out toward the street. Its safe there, where the story does not touch, where stores open and close to decorate spaces and those who go in and out.

An angel walks past, or rather, a man with white wings, flannel shirt and cargo pants. He might as well be the real thing; the story could use one. He passes quickly enough to be a figure of speech. There is no use for him unless he saves a part of the story or promises that the sky still matters; the blue pulls into a lighter degree, stays there and doesn’t give room to wrestle. An angel possessed a man to wear wings, this is where it begins.

Mind can be Clear Mirror or Mirror Filled with Frames

2007-05-05T01:03:00.000-05:00

How to Make a Cake & Eat it Too.

2007-05-03T17:09:00.000-05:00

What to buy:

1 8x8 inch, 2 ½ profile canvas
1 6x6 inch, 2 ½ profile canvas
1 8oz. tub of while acrylic paint
2 small tubes of blue & gold finishing acrylic
Zap super glue
colorful buttons
thread

What to do:

glue 6x6 canvas on top of 8x8 canvas
heavily spread white paint over it
put buttons on it
wait to dry
thread around the buttons

What may happen:

She purchased a cake, or rather, an idea of one. She took it home, watched it and showed her friends. They too, wanted to try it. One of them said “I bet it tastes just like one”, another said “Don’t touch it. It might get all over your fingers.” “Try it”, she said, and handed them a fork and knife. Only, it wouldn’t cut. “Close your eyes”, she said, and a slice came out.

They are seated at a birthday party, whose, we do not know. The birthday did not belong in the room, it was the room that had nothing to do with the person, whose birthday they were celebrating. A room which gathers opinions; the space interior, a square. In this square people are inside it, puncturing the air, voices begin to thread a long line of talk; it is in talking that a line begins to define several points, these points that wrap around several buttons.

He unbuttons a white collared shirt in the dark of a smaller room on the second tier of a house. “Do you have a needle”, he says. She is standing on the opposite end of a threaded sentence. In every instant they are separate until their inflections had potential to rip a seam. At an interval on the line, he approached her and cracked a button and there appeared another definition of pink, one that couldn’t be spoken.

In spoken parts, degrees of pink emerge; a common denominator is needed for the story to agree to, though color might be a state of motion. The telephone rings as constant embroidery, unnecessary when no one is there to pick up. All have left the party. No one is inside the birthday of the one who never came. In the center of a room, a cake; the cake which guests stood around to wait collectively. Someone says “How shall we eat it?” Another says “I don’t want to wait my whole life to eat what can‘t be eaten.”

At mass, a child coughs during transubstantiation. The priest drops the host onto the ground, unsure if the gesture was reduced to accident, flesh or art. Would Christ be present in any of these after hitting the ground? People stood in line to receive whatever came of it, believing for different reasons, each standing in their own body to eat an idea eternity.

It Was Lovely today in the Mid-70s.

2007-04-30T22:19:00.000-05:00

Today in the MaryAnn Brown Memorial,
I recorded 4 poems from Roses of the Non-City
inside her "tomb", so hollow and moist in
there, you could get a sense of stagnant climate.
Maybe this would have some effect on the voice, whats
around it, death or preservative, rain without
the water. Either way, it was something else
to project the poems into that artifice.
Then we headed to the piano in another room
to use 4 different notes to replace
the comma, period, semi-colon & colon,
after I had explained that the poems
are in a state of not have one consistent,
proper execution when being read out loud.
Lately I've been feeling that they're not
supposed to be read out loud because
of the verbal restraints; how can a punctuation sign
be performed? A few months ago, it was suggested that
I use a set of bells to strike during every line break,
each corresponding to tone. Even if punctuation
loosens the borders between them (regarding a sense of movement, speed, pausing,
or continuing) in sentence fragmentation, it also bares the
weight in executing those particular line-breaks verbally if each
space is an 'internal-rupture'; a closure and release.
I used to play piano as a kid, something I've felt guilty
about not having pursued and wish to try again. But today,
it was tried by sensing the tones of the punctuations, marking
the keys with post-it notes. Using two high&low octaves,
c-sharp=comma, c=semicolon, a=colon, a-sharp=period. These assimiles were
based on pitch and movement (of the signs). The limitations are open to
using whatever acoustic so long as there's variations, be it bells, piano, whatever.
But the need for tonal variables are based on not having a means
to verbally execute punctuation in every line-break, which then
alters its function into a different state, that being performative.

But earlier in the day someone approaches with a digital camera on Thayer St.
and asked if I mind that she ask me a few questions to which I said, sure.
"Are you happy?", then I said "you mean, today?"
& she said "yes", then I said "I'm not sure."
& she said "how about generally?", then I said "I'm not sure of that either."
& she said "can I ask what that is that you're holding?"
"petals".
& she said "where did you get them from and why do you have them?"
then I said "I found them on the ground..because they're pretty."

Later a student asked why I had roses as part of the poems.
Then I said because of the petals, which is only part true. all the
other petals might be a lie.

1957 French Commercial for Necchi Sewing Machines: Puncturing intonation, speed, movement of the prosepoem into Fabric

2007-04-29T01:06:00.001-05:00

Hairmachine, I am ..........::::::;,;;.;;,;,;,;.;;,;,;.;;,;,;;.;,;,;,,,,,,.................;;.::::::::::::::::....:;;;;;.;,;.;,;.;,;.;,;.;:.;,;.:,;.;,:.;,,...:,:,::::,..,;,;.,;,..,;,.,;,;.,,;.-----------,.,.;,.,.;;,:::;,,,,;;;;;;;;,;.;,;.;,;.;,;.;,;:.,;..,:,.,..;l,;;.,,,,,,,,::;.;,:.;;,:.;;,:.;,;:,....,.,.,.....:::::::::::::.,,,-----------------,,,,,;.;;;.;,;;.;,;.,,,,,,,::::::...........:,:,;.;,;::::::;;;;;;;,;.;,:,,.;,.;,:.-----------:,;.;,;...:,;, to make punctuation tangible.

Notes on Acrylic-Cake furniture food

2007-04-28T16:46:00.000-05:00
AtRPmE/RjPCm4ZWLBI/AAAAAAAAAiQ/K7zJn7rmAOc/s200/july2005+022.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5058600779696712722" />

1. Square double layer cake:

Materials: Utrecht/Joanne's Fabric

-readymade canvases
-zap glue
-acrylic paint (white, gold)
-buttons
-pink nylon thread

Process

-glued smaller square canvas on top of the larger canvas
-spread white acrylic paint over entire piece as frosting
-spread gold tint acrylic paint over it to make it look old
-glued buttons on top surface of both layers to add color, candy, flavor, evoke more edibility.
-winded thread around all buttons, connecting them in various symmetries

Concepts

Past experiences surface from the cake in which it becomes 'relic' to a conglomeration of occurrences from the past:
Desire to preserve relationships/events, childhood, reconcile with past, anxiety regarding uncertainty of future, my mother’s compulsiveness to shop for food and the house being overstocked with food, to replace/disguise initial lack,religious iconography.
Impulsion
Preservation/time
Desire
Memory
Death/procrastination
Re/collecting
Limitation (in purchase selection & inability to eat)
Prolongation of desire
Visual edibility
Exploit readymade canvas (original attempt in building small furniture pieces)
Readymade Canvas (notion of artist as consumer of materials to create, the convenience to “make art” compulsively--this in relation to anxiety, death.)
Limited choice selection inherent in the consumption of readymade canvas (aesthetic as a consequence of this limitation--as is the case for 9x12in. oval canvases)
Acrylic-paint as edible medium (tension of inability to eat this medium)

Eating (desire, inability, lack)
+ Consumption (of canvases to reconstruct the present)
--------------------
Acrylic-cakes

Self Portrait as Self Portrait

2007-04-25T06:59:00.000-05:00

5 Instructions For The Successful Creation Of An Enviable Self Portrait:

1. take off yr face but leave it on (for further instructions please visit "The Heart Sutra").
2. be sure the waist stylistically fits around the 1930's for the best silhouette.
3. laugh, as accident on canvas by recognizing small shapes in the distance.
4. rescue excess laughter from the canvas weave and rework into finer details that pose as "style".
5. be mildly attracted to yr representation.

Karaoketures

2007-04-25T00:10:00.000-05:00

Karaoke footage as pattern or source of color for dress,
embroidered lyrics and song&artist as label.

Digitial printer might make it work.

Failed Dwarf Paint

2007-04-20T10:16:00.000-05:00

"There is a danger that the art, like other aspects of control technology, will only serve to dull our senses and dampen our indignation"

Fabricate life as imitating art. An embodiment of eros and loss.

Life as control technology:

film walking styles
slang
laughing
violence patterns

create transfers of each pattern and style and cut out to imitate dress form.

BBC's " Warching Art Imitate Life":

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6564115.stm

Acrylic-cake: bake for one semester.

2007-04-18T23:56:00.000-05:00

A rough draft of a yummy cake.mmmm.

Materials:
acrylic-paint
buttons
pink nylon thread
canvas
super glue

Found some neat kinds of cakes
using terra cotta as a base: http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/cda/article_print/0,1983,HGTV_3269_4341621_ARTICLE-DETAIL-PRINT,00.html

sculptor Bolek Niedzwiecki made cakes using acrylicpaint:
http://newyorkdailyphoto.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html

StethoPoem: a bretonian accessory (for Kuya on his way to medskool)

2007-04-17T14:34:00.000-05:00

Stethoscope that plays poetry.

check out:
http://www.thinklabsmedical.com/
http://www.thinklabsmedical.com/heart-sounds.html

called:1(800)988-1088 to see if the probe or digital control system could be replaced by a digital audio device that would play poetry or a recording of Hair's heartbeat or both her poem & heartbeat at the same time.

without getting into too much detail
check out:
http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/FinalProjects/s2004/bcr5/index.htm
if anyone could display their heartrate on a t.v., it'd be interesting to see it superimposed over an ongoing weather channel or tvshow.

2007-04-15T21:17:00.000-05:00

I don't want to but,
I'm beginning to see my cat
as a kind of textile, changing
what it means to be a cat and
the way she's been perceived as
'a cat'. She begins and ends
somewhere, though not sure where,
walking throughout the room,
a clause between exterior-fur
and how far one could go
looking into her eyes; green,
another field I am afraid there is
nothing inside her, but a personality
I'm not even sure is relevant
to an interior sentence.

Thread of Forgetting

2007-04-15T15:09:00.000-05:00

Edited in a way to
assist the viewer to forget
entirely through speed acceleration,
movement & lack of footage.

Materials:
spool of metallic thread
video-camera

Process:
Left-hand screen:
single long shot of
metallic thread unravelling
until it ends.
Right-hand screen:
images from someone's life
flashing until the thread ends.

Sound options/al: debussy,poem recitation, rain.

Continuity of Metallic Thread--->Memory--->Interrupted frames= narrative of forgetfulness

check out: "Moments in Time: One Narration & Slowness", by Susanne Gaensheimer Leubachhaus/Munchen.

"snapshots from the passing reality & string them on a becoming.." h.bergson.

The speed of representing speed; thread as a line of forgetting while in attempt to preserve and embroider itself.

soon, this will be forgotten.

Fabric T.V.: friday nights on Channel H&F network.

2007-04-13T18:59:00.000-05:00

Video Stills of:
corduroy
polyester
velvet
chiffon
tussah silk
carpet
hemp
ramie
peau de soie
donegal
flannel
loden fabric
tartan
tweed
virgin wool
oxford
gauze
seersucker

www.fabrics.net/fabricsr.aspx
Find 18 kinds of vocal tones & inflections that corresponds to every type of fabric.

Auditions: Open screening for anyone interested in donating their voice to a fabricated cause.

Materials:
18 t.v. monitors & headphones
18 different voices in separate monologue
Or 1 t.v. monitor & headphone with 18 channels
Each texture of the voice corresponds to each fabric,
voices may also be interchangeable

Process:
1 segment lasts 3 min.
OR as large projection in theatre