archive / fluent~collaborative / kristin lucas / tom moody
Information about the solo performance night done by Kristin after our collaboration went south is here. I didn't get notice and just found out it took place June 18; I hope it went well!
Points of difference (no hard feelings meant):
"Reacting to the space" vs "Not reacting to the space."
"Incorporating the Austin scene/community into the art" vs "Involving the Austin scene as audience/viewers/listeners"
"Installation that employs fiction or artifice" vs "No installation (other than sound equipment, projectors, etc.); no fiction or artifice"
"Focus on live, real time activities" vs "Focus on the internet and blogging"
"Lab" vs "Lounge"
I have a group performance idea to propose.
[preface: Tom, you do not have to perform]
Do you remember the blogging performance idea that I proposed for the two of us? This is an adaptation of that idea.
Background:
Consider that Austin is known for its stitch n' bitch groups, slang for sewing and craft circles. Austin is also known for its hanging out lifestyle with backyard bbqs and bands, a lifestyle which I quickly mindmelded to, moreso as the weather gets warmer. [Sidebar: New York City tends not to breed the hanging out at friend's apartments lifestyle - precious precious space - and social engagements tend to happen in more strict time slots].
Setting:
Laurence's home (living room, dining room, or both).
Performance proposal:
Several persons in everyday outfits sit in a circle with keyboards on their laps, wearing helmets with single antenna attachments. (Optional... every other person's antenna is connected to the next.) There are intervals of people typing and pauses of staring into space as if receiving information or formulating thoughts. Depending on how this would be best suited to the rooms (I would have to go over and investigate) there could be two separate groups in two separate rooms, or couples paired together, or covering one or both rooms in a more internet cafe style cluster. // I first came up with the idea of wires between antennae as I imagined 2 persons seated on the sofa with a line of tape between them - the wire crossing that line, giving the wireless somewhat of a physical (wired) form. //
Variation on performance idea:
The same group of people wearing helmets with single antennae crochet one large thing amorphous thing with the pretense that they are sharing information about what it is by way of wireless networking. They occupy the room in the furniture configuration that is already predetermined.
Tom~
I like that you interpreted the produce pinatas I am working on as power objects. I'll try to address this and respond to more of your notes this week.
Corporations like Monsato (who today shelved their plans to launch genetically engineered wheat in the US and Canada - a small victory for GE activists) are pushing power plays with a transparent adgenda on the world market.
excerpt from Inter Press Service News Agency:
Activists Wary as Monsato Withdrawls GE Wheat
"Despite this week's announcement, the biotech juggernaut continues to roll, according to BIO, the industry association. Eighteen countries are now growing 67 million hectares (165 million acres) of GM crops, chiefly cotton, maize and soya. The area planted with GM strains rose 15 percent in 2003, it adds."
The produce pinatas are derivative of icons found in games like Ms. Pacman and video poker (strawberries, cherries, oranges, lemons...).
Translated back into physical forms as pinatas, these fruits are disembodied shells of their former selves reflecting 'the fruits of over-cultivated and over-domesticated produce' through traditional biotech farming practices (cross-breeding of related species) and more recent genetically engineered biotech practices (DNA cross-breeding of unrelated species), the latter of which threaten the diversity of life on our planet.
The backyard installation offers a playground to an audience for acting out frustrations over: a) nature's stubborn resistance to human intervention and/or b) the 'fruits' of genetic engineering practices... culminating in a full-blown pinata smashing frenzy.
In brief, a response to article 7 extracted from Tom's previous entry:
"7. Kristin will be the cult's principal missionary and spokesman. Tom, who likes performance art but is not himself a performance artist, will be the main tech guy in charge of surfing and printing. Tom will bring with him a box of paper from his surfing and printing activities in NY during the weeks prior to installation week and will print more paper when in Austin (see below). Kristin and Reid (sp?) will produce the Video and Kristin is in charge of fabricating the [power objects]. Both Tom and Kristin will blog."
Tom, I will not be performing as a cult missionary character. This is a performative installation. Depending on how the animation production progresses, there may be two animations. In this scenario, I would at most control a fade in from one video (a setting the tone video) into the second video (the frenzy trigger), afterward a fade back to the first video for the remainder of the evening.
For the other testsite dates, I suggest that the animation and a short edited documentation of the smashing frenzy leading to people taking the contents to the computer station remain. The backyard projection will probably only work for that one night since it requires darkness (beginning around 9PM). Regular testsite hours (after you leave) are Sunday's from 1-5PM, so a projection outdoors would not be visible. I will also consider saving a few pinatas or making some more just to hang in the tree out back for the remainder of our installation period.
So thus far I am not planning a performance for our testsite.
I'm working on the animation for the backyard with Reed Posey, an Austin area artist and musician.
New Plans for testsite
Here's a rough draft of notes of what we talked about Saturday, including some things I made up as I wrote this. To make this work I have some questions for Elizabeth, which I'll get to below. I consider the following "back story" for now and don't necessarily think it needs to be spelled out so literally in the press release or wherever.
1. The testsite will be the temporary home of a quasi-scientific cult, which believes that an evolutionary leap (akin to religious apotheosis) will occur when the sum of all knowledge is reached on the Internet.
2. The cult's four sacraments are "transubstantiating the Net," "watching the Video," "ritual destruction of [power objects]," and "blogging."
3. "Transubstantiating the Net" means obsessive surfing and printing of thousands of web pages (URLs) from all over the world--images and/or text. Printed pages are arrayed on walls in the cult compound. Artistic judgment and discernment is valued (but not mandatory) in their arrangement, as well as making underlying connections, a la John Nash's labyrinths of tacked-up, schizophrenically interconnected newspaper clippings in A Beautiful Mind. (Ron Howard--the ultimate installation artist.) "Naming the 9000 names of God" and Borges' Library of Babel are also precedents here.
4. The Video, to be projected on a cloth in the back yard. has a flickering, low-res mantra/mandala-like flow; its fragmented videogame imagery includes pixelated versions of the [power objects]. (I'm thinking of the "fruits" from Pac-Man--also the "slot machine fruits" above--not sure what (else) Kristin has in mind.) Through overt and post-hypnotic suggestion, the Video induces a state which triggers the ritual destruction of the [power objects]. ("Overt" meaning there may be an image of a Mario-type character smashing a [power object] with a hammer or other tool.)
5. The physical manifestations of the [power objects] are large hydroponic fruits and vegetables, somewhat reminiscent of the overgrown foodstuffs in Woody Allen's 1973 sci-fi parody Sleeper. They are fabricated as papier-mache Pinatas, and arranged in the back yard near the projection screen for the Video. Each Pinata is stuffed with paper, including many pages printed from Net-Transubstantiation activities. Rapt attention to the Video causes cult members to begin smashing the Pinatas in an orgy of violence. Wadded up Transubstantiated Net pages, disgorged from the Pinatas, can be taken away by cult members and other viewers, a la Felix Gonzales Torres. URLs from the sheets can be entered on computers inside the cult building (or not). Wrecking the fruit and "partaking" of the contents mimics transmittal of the Body and Blood in the Christian religion and is also a way for cult members to symbolically take the Net into their own bodies.
6. The fourth ritual activity of the cult, blogging, is a way to fold the cult's activities back onto the Net--to feed back into the larger, sacred Flow--by documenting everything daily with verbal descriptions and pictures, sound files, etc.. The [add a comment] feature allows people all over the world to participate in the cult's activities.
7. Kristin will be the cult's principal missionary and spokesman. Tom, who likes performance art but is not himself a performance artist, will be the main tech guy in charge of surfing and printing. Tom will bring with him a box of paper from his surfing and printing activities in NY during the weeks prior to installation week and will print more paper when in Austin (see below). Kristin and Reed Posey will produce the Video and Kristin is in charge of fabricating the [power objects]. Both Tom and Kristin will blog.
Question for Kristin:
a. A weak link in the above scenario, I think, is the video's "subliminal suggestion" to smash pinatas. Realistically, how do we get people to smash pinatas? Could you draft your former students as "rent a zombies" to get the smashing process started? In other words have shills in the audience playacting a hypnotized frenzy that might inspire others to join in?
b. I changed the "logo" at the top of the page since we aren't talking about vj-ing and dj-ing anymore. Let me know if you have anything else you want to put up.
Questions for Elizabeth:
1. We need to be able to put lots of 8 1/2" X 11" sheets up on the testsite walls. I usually use tiny map pins that don't leave large holes. Is that possible? If not, we would need to affix large sheets of white (craft) paper to walls, so we can tape the 8 1/2" X 11" pages to that surface. Is that possible?
2. We will need a computer, a high speed internet connection, and a fast printer such as a laser printer, to print a few reams of paper quickly during installation week. Do you have such a printer? Can one be rented?
Retired testsite 04.4 blog page logo
Kristin, this email got bounced (says your mailbox is full), so I'm posting it here:
Hi, Kristin, Thanks for the info. How about I call you Saturday, May 1, 11:00 am Austin time? --Tom
Just some business stuff here, and other info from emails:
The testsite number was changed from 04.3 to 04.4
Also, received this email from Elizabeth a while back suggesting we include a performative aspect to the project "which would be held on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings (6/17 - 6/19) and then we would pick up the normal Sunday afternoon schedule on June 20 - - these then wouldn't have any performance involved."
Also, email from Kristin to Tom, dated 4/27/04:
I'm talkin' oversized strawberry and other piņatas in the backyard tree. and a whack 'a mole piece that either goes in the front yard or on top of the table in the dining room. I have many other thoughts (abandonning the food supplements for a different idea) and so performance ideas to run by you [when we talk on the phone].
Tom ~
Laurence would like to know if we can open the testsite on Friday, June 18... and so the installation dates would be June 13-18. We could probably have you arrive earlier for the installation. These are the dates that work best for him.
Kristin