feedsmark edward grimm2009-01-05T13:27:21-07:00megrimmhttp://megrimm.net/archive/feeds.phpmeg156@columbia.edutag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feedsPivotCopyright (c) 2009, Authors of feedsmpc2059 - trail blazers2008-06-05T12:08:00-07:002008-06-05T12:08:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.7505.20.08
mpc2059 is a conceptual art and audio project that utilizes puredata and max/msp.
mpc2059 is a conceptual art and audio project that utilizes puredata and max/msp.The year is 2059. We have just emerged from a 50 year global civil-war. Ecological disaster has not been averted. We have become increasingly reliant upon machine technologies. Our biological life support systems have failed. The vital impulse of our planet is artificial.
mpc2059 is the sound of that mechanical heart beat - machine music manipulated by biorobots for a new cultural computer controlled phenomenon....
10_intelligent_machine.mp3
]]>markmpc2059 - machinic demo2008-06-05T12:09:00-07:002008-01-07T10:38:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.7301.07.08
mpc2059 is a conceptual art and audio project that utilizes puredata and max/msp.
mpc2059 is a conceptual art and audio project that utilizes puredata and max/msp.The year is 2059. We have just emerged from a 50 year global civil-war. Ecological disaster has not been averted. We have become increasingly reliant upon machine technologies. Our biological life support systems have failed. The vital impulse of our planet is artificial.
mpc2059 is the sound of that mechanical heart beat - machine music manipulated by biorobots for a new cultural computer controlled phenomenon....
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]]>markINTERVIEW: UNDECISIVE CONTEXTS An E-mail Conversation with Mark Edward Grimm2007-12-18T15:40:00-07:002007-12-18T15:38:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.7212.18.07
#006 Re: MAGAZINE / UNDECISIVE CONTEXTS
An E-mail Conversation with Mark Edward Grimm
#006 Re: MAGAZINE / UNDECISIVE CONTEXTS
An E-mail Conversation with Mark Edward Grimm----- ----- -----
The net establishes its significance as artistic medium no longer in specialized communities but has become dispersed more and more into contexts commonly assigned to the "classical" art business. As a logical consequence the coherence of these structures is broken up and infiltrated. Traditional processes have been running along the line: Production of an object-contextualisation as artwork-selling of it (eventually). For a few years now, however, the question has been raised if the "fetish object" as an artist's product is still acceptable. A basic principle of artistic analysis is the inclusion of a reality which does not necessarily mean descriptive realism but intellectual examination. Thus, can the examination of realities by means of an object be more than mere decoration? As a role model for a discursive medium, doesn't 'the net' need to replace the "progress" (meaning a linear progress of an operating process resulting in the manifestation with an object )?
In his works Mark E. Grimm covers different contexts which—evaluated by conventional criterias—could be considered as undecisive. The collaborative work in and outside the net, the study of the working processes and the transfer of net-related working methods into real life are all practices deliberately dealt with as artistic statements but rarely leave material-related marks. Perhaps we observe here the reversal of the 90' s Californian Ideology and its "Second Life": the reality is not subordinated to the net but the net turns with its constant use into a part of the reality. (Interview conducted by carlos katastrofsky in June 2007)
Re: MAGAZINE is an editorial project by CONT3XT.NET (Sabine Hochrieser, Michael Kargl (a.k.a. carlos katstrofsky) and Franz Thalmair). This is a newsletter by CONT3XT.NET (ZVR: 999765999, Vienna/Austria). If you do not want to receive information anymore please reply with "NO newsletter".
The net establishes its significance as artistic medium no longer in specialized communities but has become dispersed more and more into contexts commonly assigned to the "classical" art business. As a logical consequence the coherence of these structures is broken up and infiltrated. Traditional processes have been running along the line: Production of an object - contextualisation as artwork - selling of it (eventually). For a few years now, however, the question has been raised if the "fetish object" as an artist's product is still acceptable. A basic principle of artistic analysis is the inclusion of a reality which does not necessarily mean descriptive realism but intellectual examination. Thus, can the examination of realities by means of an object be more than mere decoration? As a role model for a discursive medium, doesn't 'the net' need to replace the "progress" (meaning a linear progress of an operating process resulting in the manifestation with an object )?
In his works Mark E. Grimm covers different contexts which -- evaluated by conventional criterias -- could be considered as undecisive. The collaborative work in - and outside the net, the study of the working processes and the transfer of net - related working methods into real life are all practices deliberately dealt with as artistic statements but rarely leave material - related marks. Perhaps we observe here the reversal of the 90' s Californian Ideology and its "Second Life": the reality is not subordinated to the net but the net turns with its constant use into a part of the reality.
The following Interview was conducted by Carlos Katastrofsky for CONT3XT.NET.
CK: Mark, your collaborations with socialmediagroup.org, your solo works and your texts show very heterogeneous approaches to artistic expression. Having works in mind like "wars grind things to a halt" (1) - a more conceptual piece of media art, collaborative works like "Excavate: cohabit 02" (2) or your partly very personal but nonetheless substantiated writings (3) i always feel there is some connecting path between them. How would you personally contextualize your works?
MEG: Yes that is a very interesting question. First I think a little background history is appropriate.
My upbringing was a product of a very blue-collar, working class environment in central New York State. Artistic expression, cultural creation, intellectualism etc. was never really taken seriously throughout my education – always dominated by the practice of ‘business’ and sports. I had always done art as a child and as an adolescent I just never realized that it was ‘art’ as the artistic community (especially the international artistic community) see might recognize it now. Before being trained in the university as a formalist (painter/printmaker) I was an insistent ‘dabbler’ in almost anything. Any idea of ‘focus’ eluded me.
Tools were really an essential part of this early education. My father was a carpenter and so was my grandfather before him as well as a mechanic. My German ancestors that immigrated to the U.S.A. were also laypersons. Somehow generations of tools accumulated in my house (no one ever threw anything away or got rid of anything because to materialists ‘things are a valuable resource). We also had an old barn that was literally ‘full’ of tools, car parts, car paint (acrylic enamel from the heyday of 1960’s muscle cars) and pretty much anything you can think of. Also my grandfathers house (on my mother side) was very similar in content and material storage.
I spent my weekends as a kid experimenting and building with these materials, making weird shit, learning to use tools, building projects – basically whatever I could make. I never really realized I was making ‘art’ per se but now tat I look back these experiments really taught me about material which later translated into virtual material when I started learning and experimenting with computers at about age 15 or 16. One example might be the building of ‘bicycles’. In the neighborhood of Rochester, NY (which is basically an old industrial town economically built form the Eastman Kodak business) there would be ‘trash day’ every Wednesday in which people would put their trash on the curbside. We (either me and neighborhood kids or my grandfather and I) use to cruise around looking for old junk that we could make things out of. Our favorite was old bicycle parts in order to make these weird ‘monster bikes’. They were totally hideous, always painted different colors and made of parts that seemed to be just forced together. We once made an 3-wheel bicycle that we named the “Cow 900” that we outfitted with an old lawnmower engine. It was painted bright yellow and had these really long banana bars for steering. We had to put a 100 pound steel plate on the front because there was one speed either on OR off and when you started it there was such a strong torque that the bicycle would do a wheelie. Without the steel the thing would have just flipped over!
When I started really getting into making art I still wanted to retain what I always loved about art making – uninhibited experimentation. The problem I had in art school was that the institution was always trying to fit artists in little boxes almost as a ‘marketing’ strategy of sorts. This artist paints little pictures of birds; this artist paints abstract imagery etc. – totally modernist crap. It took me a while after I left art school to regain a sense of childhood ‘play’ that I always enjoyed in art – obviously though, I now became aware what I was doing was more serious than just ‘fucking around’.
To now answer your question, I just have these ideas in my head that I just cant resist. I basically use my personality (mark edward grimm and megrim.net) as an ‘online’ portfolio site to highlight any work I’m currently doing or completed. Unfortunately it is partially gear toward academia because I am currently (and sometimes desperately) looking for employment but I guess that is one of the regrettable consequences of being an artist – we are always looking for funding! And what is interesting is that this is also part of the artwork – if we consider these sort of ‘life-practices’ as culturally significant and as artwork.
‘Socialmediagroup’ (see http://socialmediagroup.org), on the other hand, materialized as a need for working as an artist collective with my wife Amy Cheatle (see http://happyhousewife.org/) and others who wanted to be involved – friends, collaborators, family etc. We were looking to create a self-funded, autonomous system of art where we could run a multimedia business as ‘socialmediagroup’ (see http://socialmediagroup.com) in order to fund our artistic endeavors. Many of the ideas come from Amy’s research into ecology and environmental systems. ‘socialmediagroup’ has really become the prime method for us for create large scale installations. Because there is a ton of work involved in these projects (especially CoHabit where we had to enlist people to disassemble an old fruit barn) we really needed a way to get many interested collaborators involved and socialmediagroup was a good semi-anonymous way to do this.
The writing I’m doing lately has been just another method for art creation. There are visual works that we can see as in a gallery but also written works that can have just as much of a cultural impact. In this area I was really influenced by the surrealist writer Andre Breton, the Situationist Guy Debord and of course the philosopher Gilles Deleuze. They showed me how writing can be just as much of an art form as anything else and just as legitimate as an artistic ‘piece’. It really took me a very long time to learn to write and it was something that I think I will always struggle with – especially to be actually coherent! I think visual thinkers tend to think in a very ‘non-linear’ manner; writing is such a linear process – there is always a ‘beginning’ and an ‘end’ at least in a traditional sense and not including recent literary endeavors that are taking place on the internet with hypertext.
To finish answering you question – yes, I do feel that there is something that ties everything I do together, even loosely. The computer has the potential to create a real gap between artists – those that work traditionally and those that work electronically. This is a real shame – contemporary art (cutting edge art) seems to be relying more and more on electronic environments. What I have always understood is the similarities between these materials that are looked at as very different – physical material and electronic materials. When I teach, I try to teach artists that have been grounded in traditional materials that there is really nothing but similarities! The computer (code, images, video, graphics) is just another material that can be manipulated in the same ways as physical materials can be manipulated. You have to know what you are looking to do, you have to know the tools you need to do what you want to do, and then you just have to do it! 1) It always has to start with a concept – no matter how simple that concept might be. 2) There is always an experimental aspect of realizing that concept where one discovers something that they did not know before through the intimate processes of working with something new (or old for that matter). 3) There is that act of completing these processes – at least in the idea that one takes a work as far as they are willing to take it. 4) And then those ideas that are learned and the created ‘piece’ that is generated emerges into new concepts and ideas that must be tackled.
Writing for me is a very similar process. What is seldom understood right away is how time-consuming it all is!
CK: So, to put your work in a tiny, little box again: would you say this aproach could be subsumed under the term 'hacking' ? And if so, is hacking an essential modus operandi for artists nowadays?
MEG: Yes. I do rather like the term ‘hacking’. I enjoy the ambiguity attached to it. Artists understand it in a positive light - to take what is available and ‘make it ones own’. BUT we cannot forget the subversive qualities attached to the term either! The term is twofold: it is at once the practice of alterations – to hack code, to hack education, to hack a material, to hack a social organization AND the knowledge that those alterations can have a potential cumulative effect that specifically targets the dominant organizational methods of top-down homogeny in favor of more heterogeneous elements.
I think artists really have the potential to interject using creative methods (hacks) in many other places and areas traditionally not associated with the ‘art world’, per se. This is a new quality of the contemporary artist because we are not as bound to the ‘image’ as we once were. Artist interjections OR ‘hacks’ become the artworks themselves and can now be documented via the digital image and text, subsequently displayed on the Internet. The gallery is pretty useless in this regard because it only give some final ‘results’ at an end-stage and seldom documents the processes that were involved (mental, physical) and the struggles that ensued (economics, social pressure, networks of collaborators etc) – which are all very important.
One of my recent works conceptually addresses this. It’s rather long title tentatively is: “For Demonstrating the Automated Targeting of Any Individual That Poses a Threat to the Security of Those With Authority OR For Use in Deceptive Action Against Security Forces Using Gunfire Simulations Based on Motion Tracking”. It is basically a small program patch written in PD (puredata) that tracks movement from a web-cam and simulates the firing of an AK-47 when any movement is detected. I imagined that it could have multiple uses such as any technology always does. Hypothetically I imagined it being used as a security demonstration at some security conference in Las Vegas: “Target the Intruder To Your Estate Before They Target You!” – a sort of pre-emptive weapons system for private property where parameter guns would be automated and would not distinguish friend from foe.
It could also be used by ‘insurgents’ OR criminals, subversives etc. as a real-world simulation. All they would need is a computer, web-cam and some speakers. When the police or military enters the property the motion detection would trigger the AK-47 gunfire. The police, marines etc. might think they were being fired upon and would give some time to the people in the house to make their escape OR just create an overall simulated illusion as a distraction/smoke-screen with computer synthesis.
Computer hacks are great. Taking a piece of code and altering to fit ones needs. BUT this teaches a lot about reality hacks too and how computers can enter into the picture. It’s fascinating to me that people/institutions discard all this old technology that they deem ‘useless’ and replace it with the ‘newest’ without really understanding the potential of what they just discarded. Artists have an interesting opportunity here because computers are being discarded at a very high rate and replaced with ‘the new’. Artists can take these old materials and do really amazing things with them other than create just ‘trendy’ visuals or sounds. They can replicate military technologies! OR become scientists and record environmental data! We all must now strive to hack ‘the real’ using the methods/pedagogy that we learned from hacking ‘the virtual’ – a call for a pedagogy of the hack. McKenzie Wark’s book “A Hacker Manifesto” is a good resource in this regard. It’s a kind of (to paraphrase in his words) a “Communist Manifesto 2.0” for the hacker practice, theory and aesthetic.
To finish your question - yes I do think that hacking is an “essential modus operandi for artists today”. I would love to teach a class on ‘Artist as Hacker’ in the university but I’m not sure how well that would really fly locally. The larger the organization the longer it takes to change and in the area that i live, art, unfortunately, is still considered in a traditional sense as something that is ‘made and displayed’ rather than the often complicated processes involved in even the most modest of alterations OR ‘hacks’.
I just wanted to add that I just saw the brilliant film by Martin Scorsese, “The Departed”. Pop-Hollywood sometimes produces great things. What was interesting about it is that it had no perspective as far as its characters were concerned. The characters were sort of neutral – they were neither good nor bad. Many times such films try to ‘demonize the other’, this film on the other hand was about the relationship between two contrasting views – the ‘state’ represented by the police organization and the ‘autonomous zone’ represented by the criminal organization. Both are fighting for the right to exist, both are corrupt, both are viral in that decisions transcend individuality, and both strive for their own peace.
‘Hacking’ is similar in that it comes with all this negativity – hacking mainframes, hacking into government organizations etc. but it is also a change in organization which is really threatening to those who are use to being in control of the hierarchy. The police organization is a top-down system that is dictated by the ‘chief’ OR ‘captain’ or whatever. ‘The mob’, al-Queida, hippy-communes, artist collectives are much more viral and in this sense posse a threat to more establish organizational systems. “The Departed” shows what happens when opposing organizational methods refuse to recognize ‘the others’ right to exist – huge shifts in perspectives begin to occur, wars ensue etc. We are in one of these massive organizational shifts right now brought on particularly by the side-effects of the technology of the computer. New forms of organization are occurring and beginning to emerge – established systems are not so happy about this.
As artists we must be participants in this new organization but also be educators in creating a new pedagogy that addresses these changes so that transitions from one organizational method to another doesn’t have such a dramatically frightful effect as it has been having on world populations as they are trying to cope with these swift changes. A pedagogy of the ‘art hack’, as an institutional method, is important in educating new artists (those that use the institution as a primary access point for learning) in the significance of everyday activity as artist methods for ‘life hacks’ and how cumulative effort can inject a new organizational shift into local, national and international systems that for the most part have historically privileged the wealthy and powerful.
CK: In this context I would like to quote from an essay by Mirko Schaefer(4): "A community, which we consider functioning as collective intelligence (Pierre Lévy), can be much more productive and innovative than a company's research and development department" (5) Speaking of institutional methods - can there ever be something like a "hacking class"? Isn't the structure of an institution completely different to the methodical organization of "hacking"?
MEG: Yes. I agree with you that there are particular problems associated with the juxtaposition of seemingly conflicting organizational methods such as “the institution” OR “hacking” in the same location/territory. Let me just clarify really quick that there are many variations of institutional organization. Educational institutions vary greatly as well as governmental organizations, corporate organizations and even community organizations: all have desirable as well as undesirable traits associated with how they function within the larger assemblage. Here I’m assuming we are really talking about education institutions of higher education.
When we talk about ‘hacking’ in terms of under or within these institutional structures we are really talking about emergent organizational methods at the micro level that have the inherent ability to modify top-down structures, even at very subtle intensities,
from the bottom-up – sort of like bubbles emerging from the bottom of carbonated beverages. This doesn’t mean that these ‘hacking’ methods don’t exist or shouldn’t exist within more traditional institutional structures such as ‘higher-education’, it just means that these emergent methods have been historically repressed in favor of a top-down structure for the last century or so.
We can already witness forms of ‘hacking’ that are - and have been available in education that are often overlooked. An example of ‘hacking’ classes that are already in existence, even at the primary and secondary levels, although obviously not defined as such, might be found in high schools across America. ‘Shop’ classes OR even ‘Home EC’ usually fit in this category. There have been some teachers of ‘shop’ for instance that are teaching students how to run diesel vehicles off of alternative fuels. This is definitely an engine ‘hack’ because it takes something that is available, something that was commercially produced, and creates something new from it – a car that can run off of alternative fuels that it was not specifically designed to run from. Through these processes of manipulations, students begin to learn acts of modification as well as the properties of energy and energy consumption – for me the ‘modification’ part being the most interesting. In ‘Home Ec’, for another example, students are taught how to create and cook food. They are learning properties of creation rather than those of consumption and they are also learning about energy transference – energy for creation, energy for consumption and energy renewal. These methods for learning are strategic in learning about micro-levels and the ability to retain autonomy over other areas of learning which prepare an individual for the larger ‘economy of scale’.
For the most part these subjects (or even anti-subjects) are looked down upon and are usually considered downright laughable comparatively to more ‘serious’ subjects and disciplines such as the math and sciences (cold war mentality still in existence?).
Obviously, there is the prevalence of memorization and regurgitation that these subjects so often really upon in their educational methods. They are dominant as legitimate forms of how one is educated. These methods are for the specific purpose of insertion within the larger assemblage that is for the most part hierarchically formed around economic interests.
I think art is also in a predicament that is indicated by this same problem. It may be a broad generalization but I always have this image, probably from my own experience in high school, of the high-school art teacher as some ‘foo-foo’, big hair with bad glasses and kinetic earrings that gets his/her students so play with paint and clay – it always feels like some joke to me and other students and teachers treat it as such. ‘Art’ is a joke subject – there is just no extended economic interest involved in its pursuit, at least as an interest for the ‘masses’. And I really have no hope at all for their to be a drastic methodological change in curriculum or legitimacy. That’s why a lot of these ‘new media’ departments that are popping up in colleges across America are so diverse in pedagogy.
Many are not associated with ‘studio art’ but are often grounded in Information Technology, Photography, Film, and Communications -very often placing the same constraints that their traditional counterparts did. The institution, as far as higher-education is concerned, is very slow in response to external technological and theoretical change.
I think what I’m trying to say is that there is and there should be a place for ‘hacking’ classes in the institution (there always has been and there always will be) but we can not have a specific hope that there will be some quick and drastic change in organization because of the slow response time that is inherent within these organizations. Any class in ‘hacking’ as such will always have to be called something else. I’m pretty prone to say that an ‘Art 101’ for non-art majors can be an interesting experiment because there is no ‘preconception’ in the student to what art OR ‘hacking’ actually is! BUT even within other subject there is opportunities to learning from the ‘hacking’ community. Hacking is experiments and experimental processes in creating something new out of something that is already in
existence. Right? Lets maybe make slow changes in how student can create and evolve materials and code through experimental processes rather than just simply studying what has already be learned and taking a test on it. Students need to be able to take something, a material (biological, chemical) OR a piece of code and change it just a little – alter it and make it their own. It think this approach has the ability to alter top-down hierarchical structures such as ‘the institution’ from within and from the bottom-up – through emergent processes at the micro-level and NOT through he economic interest of external sources.
Other than at institutional levels I think that you are right with your Levy quote in that ‘communities’ themselves have a lot of fluidity and ability for self-organizational and self-education. Obviously we cannot rule these out but we also have to make sure that the community and institution can have a proper relationship and that the artist can create interjections that allow these formations to evolve and new organizations and relationships between organizations to emerge.
CK: The concepts you are talking about seem to mix the ideas of 90ies relational aesthetics (Nicolas Bourriaud) and a post - millenium diy approach. What do they mean to your current development as an artist especially under the influence of the economic pressure emerging artists (and not only they) have to bear?
MEG: Yes - and we could also say that this is also a flash back to the 1960's also. Hippy commune culture, craft movements, punk-rock - these can all be traced as historical lines of flight that diverge and converge in various ways forming the exoskeleton of, as you say, the new "post-millenium DIY" aesthetic, hacker culture, etc. Yet there is a distinct difference I think in what this 'neo-diy' attempts to 'do' (and I stress 'do' as in Gilbert Ryles difference between 'knowing that' and 'doing that' (6))... it is much more material now comparatively to 'the '60's' which was for the most part very ideologically driven, at least in this country, with its 'drop out' cultural aesthetic and experimentation with individuality (LSD, psychedelics, etc.) rather than understanding social ecologies in terms of 'assemblages' such as Deleuze & Guitarri understand it (7) and more recently Manuel Delanda (see ‘A New Philosophy of Society) (8).
Punk moments had similarities in that they still retained a sense of ideology that was really grounded in cultural aesthetics (rock music, images, t-shirts, graffiti) but also brought in the political function of 'anarchism' rather than the politics of 'autonomatism' found in the ''60's". This was a kind of forceful action that had the properties of 'bleeding' into general populations (in a different way than '60's' 'counter cultural' trends) through a kind of 'viral' infection that was forced from the inside to the outside through radical acts - volume, violence, DIY, ripped jeans, whatever.... obviously I'm lacking complete detail here but we should have a 'vibe' of history before we can analyze the present.... to any extent.
What has emerged recently (post millenium? 9/11 is a pretty good political and social event reference point.) in philosophical and artistic thought that I think is new and very different than past movements – and I mean different in a sense that past movements were not ‘failures’ – but we have definitely learnd what works and what does not. Artworks do not necessarily have to be bound to any form of visual or cultural aesthetics (clothing, music) nor do they have to be territorial (clubs, galleries, public-markets) but instead can function at a distance, through distance in the form of networks – either temporary and short in duration to very long term. The teaching of children can be a long-term artwork for example – especially if the children are your own! Children are extensions of our-selfs and must learn to create through everything that they do rather than conform or submit to any type of pre-conceived ‘societal’ standard. Is the teaching of our children not a great artwork? Children will grow and ideas will eventually replicate themselves through new networks of social relationships. There are long term consequences - meaning an artwork continues to evolve through a system many years into the future – an artwork that is never completed but is continually in development. My question is -how is this (education) legitimized as an artwork? Does it need to be? How can we utilize research methods in order to document this form of art and create legitimacy for it? Does it really even need to be legitimized under some sort of institutional/academic pretense?
Actions can have aesthetic properties – although the aesthetics are projections (projectiles) that do not result in ‘an image’ necessarily - for example. What we must do as artists is shed the ideological constraints of some hidden ‘essence’ of an image OR ‘aura’ and begin to replace it with the aesthetics of material manipulations and processes. This does not necessarily mean the manipulation of just art materials as in an ‘installation’ OR ‘video’ BUT the manipulation of the materials of social bodies, the materials of nation-states, the materials of networks, the materials of culture, the material of electricity and energy, the materials of biology, genetics.
I think there is a lot more going on here than just ‘mapping’ (visually) these movements of materials OR even a traditional understanding of DIY because I think there is much more to it. Rather we are trying now to understand (conceptualize) the artist as having the ability to manipulate these materials in direct/indirect, conscious/unconscious ways that may or may-not have direct and immediate outcomes resulting in some ‘final moment’ – a painting on a wall, an installation.
I think economically the arts must sustain themselves but can do this by moving beyond the ‘institutionalized’ professions of art to explore the infinite amount of materials out there. Can an artist become a biologist? Can an artist become an economist? Can an artist infiltrate a foreign system (even slightly) from the outside to the inside? Can artists be politicians? Lawyers? Mercenaries (lets not pretend all artists are ‘good’)? Can artists become ‘the other’ as Nietzsche (9) might say? What keeps an artist in the discipline of “art”? Comfort? Friends? Common interests? Does border crossings from one discipline to the next make one any less of an artist?
Right now I am working in “Theater” with lights and sound. I have never done this before nor have I really had any exposure in theater other than going to see a bad Broadway musical once! I have had to learn a whole new language, aesthetics, collaboration, etc. in relatively a short amount of time. Granted I’m still in ‘the arts’ – but even comparatively to ‘fine arts’ this experience is very foreign to me. What now can my role be in this new field? Can I bring something new to the discourse indirectly and directly through my presence? What can I learn that might be utilized in another discipline and under different conditions?
I have also been studying mycology and would love to take a few classes in genetic engineering, micro-biology etc. – but I could only do this if I had a University job that allowed me to take classes for free obviously.
I think economically the ‘institution’ of art is too established, specific, and at times very impenetrable. For me, artists need to look for alternative economic systems to grasp onto, infiltrate and consequently redefine and alter. This may be a disciplinary change! – but I really mean that there are other systems for us to involve ourselves in and other mechanisms to creation and material manipulations that can eventually emerge to have extraordinary impacts – viral impacts that are much different I think than just the idea of ‘drop-out’ autonomy OR punk and/or ‘90’s DIY.
About Mark E. Grimm
Mark E. Grimm is an artist that works in and between New York City and Rochester, NY in the U.S. His work is primarily focused on new media art (interactive installations, video art and internet art) and conceptual works. In 2000 he became co-founder of the Social Media Group (http://socialmediagroup.org, http://socialmediagroup.com), recent works have become increasingly concerned with the intersection between the human, the ecological, and the technological. Heavily influenced by current philosophical theory such as post-modern and post-structural theory he uses environmental and social issues as hidden text veiled in a minimalist garb.
His professional experiences include teachings at Oswego State University of New York (NY), Kean University (NJ) and Teachers College at Columbia University (NY). Currently he is working on his PhD.
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(1) http://warsgrindthingstoahalt.megrimm.net/
(2) http://socialmediagroup.org/projects/entry_excavate_cohabit_02.php
(3) http://megrimm.net/writing.php
(4) http://mtschaefer.net/
(5) http://art.runme.org/1107805077-9249-0/schaefer.pdf , p.68
(6) Ryle, G. (1949) The Concept of Mind. Chicago. The University of Chicago Press
(7) Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
(8) Delanda, M. (2006). A New Philosophy of Society. London: Continuum.
(9) Nietzsche, F. (1956) The Birth of Tragedy & The Geneology of Morals. Anchor Books.__
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]]>markmegrimm - BFG Soundtrack2007-11-04T13:00:00-07:002007-11-04T12:58:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.7111.04.07
Soundtrack to the Rochester Children's Theater production of "The BFG".
Soundtrack to the Rochester Children's Theater production of "The BFG".megrimm - BFG Soundtrack
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]]>markESSAY: Nine Parts of Nine Parts: Part II Mullaya2007-10-01T11:52:00-07:002007-10-01T11:52:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.6910.01.07
Part two of an essay series based on the theatrical production of 'Nine Parts of Desire' by Heather Raffo.
Part two of an essay series based on the theatrical production of 'Nine Parts of Desire' by Heather Raffo.Nine Parts of Nine Parts: Part II Mullaya
By
Mark Edward Grimm
Part II: Mullaya
In a scene form ‘Nine Parts of Desire” we see Mullaya, and old Iraqi woman standing on the banks of a river in Bagdad.
BAGDAD – “Without the river there would be no here, there would be no beginning.”
Is it the beginning that we long for? Isn’t there always the desire to return to the womb, to return back to the point of orgin? If we follow the ‘lines of flight’ back to the past, in our collective memories, navigating the machinic phylum and understanding its emergent properties then we find the intensity of our earliest memories are that of “eden”.
The river is the river of life, the root of civilization. “Qurna, Eridu, Ur. The garden of Eden was here” - the Garden of Eden was Baghdad. The Garden of Eden is Iraq (Babylon)– the dawn of civilization is the garden of civilization.
Lets quickly look then at the garden. What does it mean to be a garden? A garden bears many things. A garden bears fruits and vegetables and anything else that we can domesticate as a food source OR anything that naturally occurs as a source of food. A garden is also a place where plants, bushes and trees grow. It creates a shade on the earth. A garden is also a place where things rot – they die and then they are returned back to the soil later to be resurrected in the rejuvenation of new growth. A garden is also a place of ‘pests’ – at least a pest to us and to the garden – a place where external entities from outside penetrate the wealth of the garden because the garden is a living organism – a living ecology.
The pest, I think, is the most interesting aspect of this garden ecology because if we as humans are trying to tend to the garden and what the garden produces and offers us then we are always trying to get rid of these pests that are coming from the outside of our ‘perfect’ ecological systems in order to feed off our self-created system as a host. It is amazing that it is as if reality itself is trying to burst into our nice little harmonious systems in order to disrupt our ‘utopia’ and create chaos. If there were no such thing as a ‘garden’ would the ‘pest’ exist?
It would be kind of like saying that if an apartment OR house didn’t exist for us to live in would there be such thing as ‘dust’? We are always trying to push this thing called ‘dust’ out of the house only for it to eventually creep back in – on our pants on our shoes etc. This is like the void again – the void is always trying to push itself back into a place that is constantly trying to eradicate it. Rats in the sewers, roots and ‘weeds’ pushing themselves out of the concrete and pavement of the roads – parking lots. Is as if we are only interested in building an illusion of the world as our own perfect ‘garden’ – always trying to re-create this perfection of what we keep remembering in our collective memory. In America this is called ‘Disney World’ but in Baghdad this is called ‘The Garden of Eden’.
The ‘Garden of Eden’ stretches back in our collective conscience to when we were apes – when we evolved. BUT the more modern version – in ancient history – is the ‘Hanging Gardens of Babylon’ which was once in present day Al-Hillah in Iraq. As described by he Greek Historian Diodorus:
The Garden was 100 feet long by 100 wide and built up in tiers so that it resembled a theater. Vaults had been constructed under the ascending terraces which carried the entire weight of the planted garden; the uppermost vault, which was seventy-five feet high, was the highest part of the garden, which, at this point, was on the same level as the city walls. The roofs of the vaults which supported the garden were constructed of stone beams some sixteen feet long, and over these were laid first a layer of reeds set in thick tar, then two courses of baked brick bonded by cement, and finally a covering of lead to prevent the moisture in the soil penetrating the roof. On top of this roof enough topsoil was heaped to allow the biggest trees to take root. The earth was leveled off and thickly panted with every kind of tree. And since the galleries projected one beyond the other, where they were sunlit, they contained conduits for the water which was raised by pumps in great abundance from the river, though no one outside could see it being done. (Wellard, 1972, pp. 156)
Like all present day gardens this was a controlled garden – a fabricated garden, a constructed garden. And like all present day constructions – especially constructions that have reached utopic proportions – it invited the pests at the outskirts of the city walls looking to feed on that same ‘utopic’ vision yet ‘destroying’ that vision in the process allowing a morphogenetic process to occur that was not in the initial intent. The naked, thus, must put on clothes again to shield the intrusions of the outside created through the specific conditions of the inside.
But unlike an invading force of populations, viruses or pests - the very earth that it rested on – through an earthquake it was destroyed in the first century B.C transforming this ‘garden’.
And again the ‘imaginary’ was rebuilt in a new form, the area of present day Al-Hillah emerged as the center of learning, education and technology in the Islamic world. A new garden of illusion created but also at the same time – again – creating its own vulnerabilities through our own concepts of perfection. From the outside – a sweeping void the ‘nothing’ again consumed in the form of the ‘nomadic method’.
As Mullaya said:
“When the son of Genghis khan burned all the books in Baghdad the river ran black with ink”.
In 1256 a ‘black death’ of ‘nomadic’ forces swept in and the Mongol empire – having no regard for the structure of the city. This was not a ‘misunderstanding of the city’ as many would argue (Deleuze & Guatarri 1987) but instead it is, on the contrary a misunderstanding of nomadic external forces and the power of a decentralized ‘war machine’ on a structured state.
The problem is that the exteriority of the war machine in relation to the State apparatus is everywhere apparent but remains difficult to conceptualize. It is not enough to affirm that the war machine is external to the apparatus. It is necessary to reach the point of conceiving the war machine as itself a pure form of exteriority we habitually take as a model, or according to which we are in the habit of thinking. (Ibid p. 354)
Because there are always going to be cracks in the milieu, especially a very homogenous plane - because it is much easier for something external (culture, social organization) to be ‘the other’ - that it sets the soil for easy penetration and replication. Once there are drastic homogenous conditions it is much easier for the potential of the reverse to emerge or transcend upon that same consistent plane. The radical shift from the ‘State’ to the ‘nomadic machine’ is even more extreme and to that end the ‘nomadic machine’, once it has transformed a space from an intensive ‘minor’ organizational schematic to an intensive ‘major’ system must then recondition this severe anxiety of the ‘conquered’ state into a new anxiety – a new void as a the return of a linear aristocracy.
The conquering of the Maya became an example of this extreme external, foreign force descending upon them. This was a ‘super void’ in the sense that the two cultures – Mayan & European ecologies, biology’s etc. had been completely separated for thousands of years – since the initial embarking on separate journeys from the “garden of eden”. While the European populations had exposure to intense civilization (dense urban environments, market economies), the Maya, being relatively new from emerging out of nomadic populations relatively, did not. This created a condition of sterilization that had openings for all these different external relations to exploit, develop and emerge as a dominant ‘majority’. Disease, religion, external substance (alcohol) easily found a vulnerable host to develop within. As McNeill (McNeil 1976, Delanda 1997) says of the Europeans, they contained within their own biology a “biological weapon urban conditions of life [had] implanted into the bloodstreams of civilized peoples.” (p.62, p. 131) So in a way, all they had to do was to show up – and biology took its course.
From then on it was all too easy – history could be wiped like a computer hard-drive. The bishop Diego de Landa “in one of histories worst acts of cultural vandalism, … burned all Maya manuscripts that he could locate in his effort to eliminate “paganism.” (Diamond p. 159) This was an easy result from, as Delanda (1997) says, “cultural material [that] flowed together with genes and biomass (not all human) across the Atlantic [creating] a whole complex mixture that triumphed” (p.133) over the Mayan populations. A ‘blank slate’ had been created and in this way an entire continent was “transformed into a supply region for all three spheres of the European economy: material life, markets, and anti-markets ” (Ibid).
Is the present day – 2007 – Iraq this same promise of a ‘blank slate’? Except here there is no ‘virgin’ ground for a new emergent becoming – this ground is too old, ancient. It is as though we are trying to get back to the garden that we left yet the garden is different – it has changed, mutated and morphed in unexpected ways. It is as Mullah says, the “great dark sea of desire”.
The variations in possibilities have been expended in a multitude of ways prior to even our slightest conception of the space, topologies and histories involved. In this sense the major (the nomadic) is too strong and the sedentary army cannot proceed against the smooth planed that has settled in, as Mullah says, “This land between two rivers”.
Obviously the old techniques were tried to an extent. When the American army invaded it protected the economic interests of the oil fields yet allowed the museum to be vandalized. Another erasure of history - is there a word for this? To control a society, to dominate a people we know for certain - their history must be erased. Yet as we also know – total recall is inevitable. Memories always resurge, bubbling and brewing from underneath the concrete, the parking lot that has tried so hard in vain to hold back the earth from doing what it wants to do – what it desires most to do – grow.
American slavery has shown this because out of this cultural elimination there is still a culture that is retained – the blues, jazz emerged from this great cultural repression – it could never leave, it was always there. By repression, homogenization - we breed super-culture. Like with the virus – by eliminating viruses we give rise and opportunities to super viruses. And ‘terrorism’ – whatever our subjective understanding subscribe the definition to be - the more we try to eradicate ‘terrorism’ we help to build new forms – super-terrorism.
“The Garden” is this great illusion and also paradox. The more we build and create this garden as an image of something that we think we lack – some vision of ‘good’ and ‘utopia’ – the more we are inviting what we don’t want from the outside – inside. When we try to build this garden anew – a creation of a new location – our garden will both spread and thrive OR the tenders of ‘the other’ garden, viewing our garden as an invading weed such as in an aesthetic war between greening states, will stop it.
So to return to the beginning, the question for me is not - why do we need the garden? The question instead is why does the garden need us? What do we do to this garden that it cannot do on its own? The difficulty is that our memories of this garden have all slowly changed through and within populations to the point that we do not know or recognize this ‘Garden of Eden’ when we see it anymore – too much time has past since parting ways long ago in the cradle of human evolution. The garden has ceased to need us because we have become so reliant on NOT needing the garden – precisely because we are looking for something that either already IS or a garden we can re-create (Disney World) in our own fantastic illusion of perfection – and the garden is bored of disingenuous relationships which means we are not necessary anymore to its survival.
Delanda, M. (1997) A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History. New York: Zone Books
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Diamond, J. (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. London: Penguin
McNeil, W. (1976) Plagues and Peoples. Garden City, NJ: Anchor/Doubleday.
Wellard, James. 1972. Babylon. New York, NY. Saturday Review Press.
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]]>markESSAY: Nine Parts of Nine Parts: Part I Layal2007-07-19T09:01:00-07:002007-07-19T09:01:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.6707.11.07
Part one of an essay series based on the theatrical production of 'Nine Parts of Desire' by Heather Raffo.
Part one of an essay series based on the theatrical production of 'Nine Parts of Desire' by Heather Raffo.Nine Parts of Nine Parts: Part I Layal
By
Amy C. Cheatle
Mark Edward Grimm
This essay is in nine parts. It is based loosely from the play “Nine Parts of Desire”.
Nine Parts of Desire is a work so compassionate, so heartbreaking, so soul-shatteringly human, that it promises to change forever the way you'll think about the women (indeed, the people) of the Mideast.
A portrait of the extraordinary — and ordinary — lives of a whole cross-section of Iraqi women, this solo work lifts the veil on exactly what it means to be a woman in the age-old war zone that is Iraq.
Each part of this writing is based on ideas presented by each of the nine women that the play represents. We do not wish to state a narrative or ‘review’ of any sort but to convey ideas that we feel necessary to address, ideas that need unpacking and contemplation in order to be properly grounded in new ideas that may spring forth.
Part I: Layal
“God Created sexual desire in ten parts; then he gave nine parts to women and one to men.”
Ali ibn Abi Taleb, husband of Muhammad's daughter Fatima and fourth Caliph of the Islamic World after Muhammad. Revered as the first Leader of the Shi'a sect of Islam, his shrine is in Najaf, Iraq and is a major place of Shi'a pilgrimage.
And Layal states:
That is me. My phlosophy!
These stories are living inside of me
Each women I meet her or I hear about her and I cannot separate myself from them
I am so compassionate to them, so attached – la, la, it’s the opposite
Maybe I am separate, so separate from the women here
I am always trying to be part of them.
I feel I could have been anybody if I looked different.
We are all inseparable from each other yet also contain and retain our individualistic capacities. It is easier to feel pain that is close than to feel pain that is distant. We, across the Atlantic, are removed from direct contact with the territorial geography that is defined as ‘Iraq’.
To not only acknowledge the suffering of others, but to refuse to become subjugated by it.
To deny the voyeuristic nature (Sontag 2003) of consuming images of pain.
To deliver it to the rest of the world perhaps with the hope that by experiencing, for a moment, some portion of another’s suffering we might become transformed into creatures that actively oppose those who will instigate pain in others.
Some who experience these removed accounts of pain, loss, suffering, will become students of this conceptual pain, comrades of distant martyrs who were once just people like we are just people, involved with our day-to-day lives - understanding how art can have a greater effect on psyche than the photo documentation of a war… or just acknowledging or bearing witness to another’s pain- you did live, you did die.
You did interact with your environment and your surroundings and your environment and your surrounding interacted with you.
Traveling with families in tow, dinner digesting, passing intact shopping districts with lights blazing into the night and buyer-friendly pre-selected music played for its soothing effects on the equilibrium of an individual’s addiction to consumption and accumulation, into the theater where the simulation of another reality is before us - one of bombed out buildings, annihilated infrastructure, children, husbands dead and gone, torture and rape, deliberate environmental contamination, the purposeful destruction of shared cultural artifacts and history- and yet still the strength to live- is this hope or determination?
Thus, this is a transformation from one reality to the next, a movement from the theater of everyday life to the theater of a projected reality – an assemblage of desire, nine parts from variations in space/time assembled as a singular instance. Assembling the…
…individuals that have compassions developed by seeing, if not experiencing, the suffering of others.
And as the theater lights die and return - 'A Call to Prayer' is heard 5 times a day: at dawn, at midday, in the afternoon, at sunset, and finally when the sky becomes dark and daytime is over. ‘The Call’ is like eating. It is like breathing. It is exercise. It is thought.
Earliest television memories were of coming face to face with children our own age, on the other side of the world, suffering from famine. Looking into faces we felt a strong sense that here was another form of us. If we had been born to another family that might be us… years later on TV George Bush “the first” announcing a war with Iraq and our crying- at 14… then ash covered witnesses of the fall of the World Trade Center who would, a few hours after seeing them on TV, be walking, still in shock, under our Manhattan apartment window… Hurricane Katrina and crying men and women begging for relief as family members were dying of heat stroke, lack of medication, lack of water… a baby in her mother’s arms that would not wake up…
We hear the 'call to prayer'. It is within a theater. The theater is within a theater. The theater is within the theater of the spectacle. Theaters are always within other theaters – theaters are part of assemblages. They re-enact histories and create new desires. They create new concepts within their walls. They highlight instances of external theaters and create new instances of them – a re-appropriation of spectacle. A theater creates a spectacle within a spectacle - though through its re-appropriation an art form is assembled and maintained extending throughout a given time duration.
That the suffering of others, the deaths of their loved-ones, will not go unnoticed by the rest of the world. We may very well belong to a society that is oversaturated with images and accounts of pain, suffering, destruction, and it may desensitize some and activate others, while others still may become media-recluses, dropping out of the media game by putting an end to newspaper subscriptions, to internet news, to television. As a citizen of the United States is it our responsibility to bare witness to what evils our elected government enacts upon others, and in our name? Can accounts of suffering reach a critical mass that will demand an end to its cause?
A critical threshold is often reached that tips the balance of social bodies and organization. Theater is not a 'television'. It is not a 'machinic enslavement' insofar as the “television viewers are no longer consumers or users, nor even subjects who supposedly “make” it, but intrinsic component pieces, “input” and “output”, feedback or recurrences that are no longer connected to the machine in such a way as to produce or use it.” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987 p.458) The theater breathes – it takes breaths. It assembles briefly and then disassembles after a certain amount of designated time only to reassemble again in a new altered form.
Unlike electronic media that is reproducible bit-for-bit and culturally replicated as perfect clones of itself for the mass component parts, the theater operates within the theater of mass cultural replication but is a temporary autonomous zone within the larger assemblage where variation is its strength. Each day the assemblage comes together a variation on the machine take place. The machine is the theater itself but it never runs the same way twice.
A performance is a re-enactment of jumbled bits of information re-assembled in a new form, a synthesis of externals. It is not pre-recorded but still alive as an ecology that grows as time extends its duration to the end.
Have we as a civilization become accustomed to images of war and suffering - become desensitized to imagery of complete destruction? To have the voices, to hear the stories of a part of a population rendered all but silent, to cry with them and experience their suffering - to raise our fists in solidarity from the comforts of our own warm living-rooms, or the mediated environment of the theater, empowers or awakens us and- is a powerful reminder that we are all still human.
A theater within a theater: nine parts is a theater within the “theater of militaris.” (Virilio p. 108)
Iraq is at the center but its projections are global. It plays out in variation over and over again. Iraq is its own theater – Bagdad is its stage. The television is a simulation of unreal events – the television is the American social assemblages 'portal' into that external theatrical event called 'Iraq': it is the viral extension of the external. Iraq is a theater of variation – each breath of life and death are different than the previous. We have created a theater of our own to give theatrics to the external theater of Iraq – a different theater where the stage is everywhere and the patrons are collaborators in its production. This is the invasiveness of territory.
The stage is open to narrative – there is always a story to internalize and leave with. A memory is pasted down through subsequent generations and triggered by externals and internals in relation to the body in question. The body in question is a becoming – one that becomes its surroundings…
…and those who have become women can become other things as well – artists, painters, creators.
Layal, the Iraqi artist and painter, is alive on stage and breathing the breath of herself through the actress that she is represented by - who in turn is representing Layla al-attar, the artist and creator of the “Bush is Criminal” mosaic at the Rashid hotel. The narrative does not necessarily have to be historically correct because the documentation of facts do not directly correspond with the narrative of the theatrics yet we do not necessarily mind because the flow of memory and reproducibility through the system of the Iraq social network is intact. The singularity of mind becomes a by-product as art. And art materializes as a physical demonstration of that singularity:
The mosaic, an unflattering portrait of Bush [The First] with his teeth bared in a scowl, was installed later in 1993 right in the Al-Rashid's doorway complete with a caption in Arabic and English: "Bush is criminal.
In Arab culture, putting the soles of the feet to ones face is a grave insult. Patrons that walked into the hotel walked over the commissioned 1993 mosaic and wiped their feet on it. The notion of Iraqi feet trudging over George Herbert Walker Bush’s face was thus particularly appealing after the 1991 Iraq invasion. The hotel had been heavily trafficked by foreign guests and the base of journalism operation during the 1991 Gulf War.
The face – the bust: portraiture is not a face anymore than it is a pipe. Yet the memory of reaction, action and experience is long. An occurrence of visualization (the dream) has a forceful power to create new building blocks for intensities. The intensity becomes field for new intensities to be sown. Image power is intensified greatly when it becomes participatory and interactive. Dead images hang on walls. Living images are those that we touch, smell, hear, see and walk upon. This image has a breath in its ability to create vibrations and oscillations through populations. Its power is in the nature of its physical projections as much as in its mental projections giving no preference to either one or the other.
Some notables who have purportedly walked over the floor mosaic at the Rashid Hotel:
- U.N. Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on the upper lip.
- Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky on the Adam’s apple.
- Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter made a point of sidestepping.
- U.N. weapons inspector Hoans Blix over the shoulder.
- International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohammed El Baradei over the shoulder.
Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Rick Schwarts
Thursday night, April 10th, 2003, U.S. soldiers, wielding hammers and chisels dug out the mosaic replacing it with a portrait of Saddam Hussein – no photographs are available.
We know the power of removing a central feature of a system in order to disrupt the over-all ecology that is present. A desert ecology, for example, is very fragile. Biotic and abiotic factors interact supporting a diverse community of plant and animal life that has “evolved resistance to and methods of circumventing the extreme temperature and arid conditions” Plant, animal, and bacterial population interact with latitude and longitude, soil and climate. As in any ecology, the system can be highly disrupted by removing an integral part of the over-all assemblage OR by introducing a new part.
Social organization acts also as an ecology or assemblage and when one part of that social organization is disrupted consequences can not only be devastating to that ecological formation but also create a new less-than desirable aftermath containing within its genetic makeup the possibilities for regional, national and even global ramifications.
An occupation is a territorial one; it is an infestation that is highly invasive.
To occupy ones territory one must first erase ones cultural history, replacing the offensive imagery with ones own. That is how territory is marked and remade in the conquerors image.
We have imported a breeding population. We arrive. We survive. We thrive. The ecosystem in question has now suffered a disturbance; this disturbance changes the fundamental nature of the ecosystem (Byers 2002). Cultural histories have been thrown in disarray.
…and around the same time, the Baghdad museum of art was looted.
As Layal states:
“My sister wants me to come to London… If all the artists leave, who will inspire the people?”
The loss of culture is the first step in domination. To destroy ones history first is to destroy the retention of memories (Diamond, J. 2005). A place open up, there is a hole just waiting to be filled by an invading species, and invading culture – the ground become fertile for this invasive species to take root.
The real Layal, Layla al-Attar, was killed on June 27, 1993 by a missile attack on Baghdad ordered by US President Bill Clinton.
And Layla states:
“Why would they bomb a painter?”
Our own theater is distant and removed to the point that the invasion cannot be controlled or contained from a distance. There cannot be any distant projection to pull itself back because the weight of the invasive species is too strong to stop itself from trying to root. In it’s trying to survive though, native species develop other ways to retain their territory. The performance in this theater is immediate because pre-planning has no barring on performance art other than a ‘rough sketch’ of possibilities - but nothing as machine-like as our own theatrical needs.
…the suffering of others is not amplified by distance so it must be amplified in some other way. Theatrical means, artistic means can create singular instances that have breeding potentialities – a reproducibility that can replicate itself quickly throughout a small system. An invasive species always folds back upon itself because it facilitates the destruction of the ecology that allowed it to survive in the first place.
References
Byers, J. E. (2002) Impact of non-indigenous species on natives enhanced by anthropogenic alteration of selection regimes. Oikos 97 (3): 449-458.
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Diamond, J. (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed. New York: Penguin Books.
Sontag, S. (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Virilio, P. (2006). City of Panic. Berg Publishrs.
]]>markESSAY: Carlos Katastrofsky and Internet Artworks: Conceptualizing Centrality and Maritime Networks2007-04-17T09:06:00-07:002007-04-17T09:06:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.5404.17.07
An essay devoted to the work of Carlos Katastrofsky by conceptualizing his work through ideas of centrality and maritime networks.
An essay devoted to the work of Carlos Katastrofsky by conceptualizing his work through ideas of centrality and maritime networks.For the past decade or so, artists have been increasingly relying on the Internet for communications and collaborations. Email, website, forums and mailing lists have all contributed to these new and emerging communicational methods. For me, as an emerging artist in the late 1990’s, communication and collaborations between artists was a product of late night drunken and drug induced squabblings in a comfortable home environment eventually emerging as some sort of theoretical epiphany that might or might not be forgot the following day. As unproductive as these ‘sessions’ would sometimes be, those were the good days!
Unfortunately (and fortunately for ones health!) as artists have a greater and greater need of expending their palette across localized and territorialized borders, the Internet develops for them into a finer and more accessible medium for artistic communication. Rather than linkages to specific artistic parties formed through common expressive relationships based on personal and physical interactions, artistic collaborations through internet technologies have created a type of nodal mesh that is much more reminiscent of a maritime network than a centralized territorial state ‘capital’. As Manuel Delanda (2006) explains in the case of maritime networks “it was not the increased differentiation of one and the same regional culture that expressed a dominant position but the gathering of expressions from all over the world.” (p. 110)
Artistic cultural expressions were once, for the most part, homogenous as far as cities and city centers were concerned. This is because cultural creators tending to have fixed relationships with other cultural creators that were localized as far as territory goes which allowed creation of singular cultural entities to be amplified in their unique qualities giving ‘cities’ their cultural significance and legitimacy in relationship to the rest of the world. As Delanda (Ibid) remarks on these localized relationships:
The largest central places, often playing the role of political capitals, attracted talented people from the lower-ranked towns: people who brought with them linguistic and nonlinguistic elements of their own local culture. Over time, these capitals gathered, elaborated and synthesized these elements into a more or less homogenous product which was then re-exported back to the smaller [centers]. The higher prestige of the more differentiated culture at the top acted as a magnet for the short-distance migratory patterns of cultural producers and gave the synthesized cultural product the means to propagate throughout the region. (p. 111)
New York and Paris dominated the global art scene in the 20th century in fact because the finest artists and cultural producers of the world centralized in these specific areas: this is where the industry for cultural communications between like-minded individuals took place. In the first half of this century, the dominant capital for artistic production shifted from Paris to New York and in the case of Marcel Duchamp, for example, as Paul Virilio (2005) amply points out, this was who the “much vaunted NY ‘art scene’ centered around” (p. 48). As a reason and as a byproduct of this centralization the artistic and cultural global significance was averted in their gaze “from the Medusa of the twentieth century, deserting the fields of horror of totalitarianism” (Ibid)
At this point I would like to introduce the work of Carlos Katastrofsky (see http://katastrofsky.cont3xt.net/) who I have been communicating with in artistic and conceptual collaboration and communication over the past year. Based in Vienna, Austria, our relationship has evolved over distances rather than proximity because of the ‘speed’ of new communications technologies. What I have observed is a relationship that is more closely related to a ‘maritime network’ that a centralized cultural ‘center’. Also, what is interesting, is that this sort of collaborative expression and idea exchange does not divert the gaze from world situations in the same way as a central ‘art scene’ very often can do. Locality contains a certain amount of unique information that can be ‘exchanged’ with other specific localities thereby increasing the potentialities for new concepts and ideas to emerge. Rather than centralized exchanges that amplify one specific concept and create rather homogeneous variations as an ‘art-scene’ can do, global communication methods between heterogeneous artistic elements can produce very interesting and unique results that all contain capacities for new and unique variation. This is the nature of recent discoveries in artistic practice and collaborations often deemed as ‘net.art’, ‘generative art’, ‘emergent art’ etc.
In this essay I would like to focus on two works by Katastrofsky that have both a conceptual impact and a material one: works that express themselves via networks and that create a communicative structure with other artists and collaborators to vitiate upon and elicit a response. One work is called ‘internet art for poor people (2006)’ (http://katastrofsky.cont3xt.net/poor.html) and the other is called ‘russian roulette (2006)’ (http://roulette.cont3xt.net/)
First let us look at the work ‘internet art for poor people’. I am forced to imagine for a second that I am without connection to the outside world. There is simplicity in its execution that is almost laughable in that it is just a reoccurrence OR replication of what we, as internet users, have seen on occasion – though a lot less frequently lately: “404 Not Found. The requested URL was not found anywhere”. Because information can also have an ecological crisis associated with its creation, appropriation and dispersal, ‘access’ to this information has become detrimental in establishing previously hard-to-make connections that have historically been reserved for ‘the elite’ and ‘powerful’ that have all the means of procuring any information available. Those with the least access to information historically have been those most subjected to the will of ‘the informationally informed’: the poor and lower-classes.
Electronic information creates no less of a circumstance and those that do not have access are continually on the ‘catch-up’ as new forms of information and information dispersal (technologies) emerge. But rather than engage in a lengthy discourse on ‘information freedom’, some neo-Marxist ‘net Theory’ analysis, or any other prevailing theoretical thought on ‘net culture’ – let go back and take a look at this idea of the ‘maritime network’ and ‘centralized territory’. On a computer network the ‘404 Not Found’ error creates an immediate grounding to a persons centralized and fixed territorial locality. It is an error whereby the computer browser is looping back upon itself. There are no distances and speed is only approximated by the computational power of ones own CPU. The ‘404 Not Found’ error is a textual loop as an image loop that, as Virilio (Ibid) states “has become the signature of contemporary disasters” (p.85)
If hurricane Katrina exposed a population of poverty that was masked from the outside world (as many urban, centralized American city populations are) than ‘404 Not found’ exposes the lack of interconnected communications between heterogeneous populations. If hurricane Katrina exposed a ‘looping’ or continuous ‘folding back’ of special parameters towards its center then ‘404 Not Found’ exposes the ‘folding back’ OR looping of the poverty effect – one that is barley escapable. Lets make a note that the city of New Orleans ‘imploded’ from its edges inward rendering it ‘inescapable’ also!
The ‘net effect’ of continuous looping due to lack of proper network connectedness can be a fatal one. ‘404 Not Found’ is an example patch of a singular number sequence that has nowhere to go and affects nothing thereby rendering useless the machine (or software in this instance) it is run on. Emergent wholes have the potential to “react back on their components” (Delanda 2006 p.118) to either enable them or to constrain them. Cities, populations, and even cultural creations can exhibit these phenomenon and can choose, though way of connections, maritime or centralized properties. Yet others can not ‘choose’ which system OR assemblage to become apart of but are subjected to the constraint and freedoms that they emerge within.
Let us now look at a work of Katastrofsky’s that exhibits another spectrum of conceptual properties - “Russian Roulette”. This work highlights the nature of ‘maritime networks’, which also are not immune to disastrous results. Interconnectivity, speed and the ease of communication technologies do not necessarily mean a more democratic or ‘equal’ system. What I am interested in through this work, is the difference in the relationships that are exhibited comparatively to the previously discussed work – “internet for poor people”.
“Russian Roulette” is a ‘download’ button that will download to your computer a random file. As the work points out:
the file you can download below by pressing the button is randomly chosen. but be aware! it could be pornographic, a virus that crashes your entire system, a britney spears - song or other bad data. but it also could be some really great stuff... who knows? (Katastrofsky 2006)
We do not know what we are downloading to our computer. By pressing the button ‘the void’ becomes known – it materializes on our desktop and/or becomes apart of our computer system. What we are doing when we press this button is allowing an external world, one which is not of local origin, to access our desks – to become apart of our system and to create a synthesis between two historically unconnected locals.
The maritime networks of Europe engaged in a similar exchange. As ships traveled from Venice to Antwerp to Genoa to Amsterdam (Delanda 2006) to deliver goods and merchandise, and to make exchanges, these ships also brought with them this same unknown – ecological ‘voids’, pieces of information from previous localities. Sometimes these pieces of information were in the form of viruses that would mutate and take hold on a population as these networks developed and became denser. The viral holocaust of the Native-Americans in the Americas was one such result of these new and emerging networks of trade and organization. Ecological exchanges were also present in genetic ‘plant’ information such as herbs and spice plants from Asia and other exotics and invasive species. Animal life (domesticated) also found the speed of ‘breeding’ as different versions of the same species were much more easily breed due to breed exchanges from different parts of the world.
Warfare is another exchange that became quicker as networks became faster and more accessible. Weapons and war machinery could be remote, dictated from over-seas such as the British war in the Americas was. And wasn’t September 11th 2001 initiated by a ‘network’ from a distance both in time and space?
The ‘download’ button is always a gamble because we do not know what might be received from the other end – we do not know its immediate or its eventual consequences. Choosing to become apart of this network or ‘maritime’ role is choosing to take risks with outside materials and information’s that are not always apparent as ‘this is this’ or ‘this is that’ from the start. There is always an accident waiting to happen because as in ‘Russian Roulette’ ones chances will eventually run out.
The ‘download’ button is metaphorical (ecologically, materialistically) but it is also practical because we can see and directly observe the results electronically on the computer. It is not though, a simulation or simply ‘virtuality’ as we might hope. The computer plays a vital role in the exchange of information and has the ability to affect remote assemblages in unpredictable ways – unpredictable in the sense that there is a cause and effect, of course, but also unpredictable in that the creation and dissemination of information always has the repercussions of eventually folding back upon oneself. This can have positive of negative consequences such as in the case of 9/11 or the New York ‘blackouts’ of 2002 where the capacities to provide (energy) could not meet the capacities to consume – what came in externally could not meet the demand for what a population increasingly became reliant upon internally. The energy networks crashed as a result of there own empowerment – the inevitable accident on a grand scale which was the result of a complex gamble of reliance on an imperfect assemblage.
The ‘download’ button is also an ‘upload’ button. Ones consumption of information does end on the computer but is consumed and ‘uploaded’ the local assemblage through persona, physical and electronic information exchanges. The ‘download’ button, the virus, comes form ‘outside’ to affect the ‘inside’ – it is destabilizing mechanism for the greater assemblage whole. This deterritorializing affect creates and information explosion – an ‘information bomb’ wherever it might land. Like the centrality and homogeny of a system that accepts nothing form the outside has the potential accident of imploding, a ‘maritime’ allows for the potentialities to exist for ‘exploding’ (population explosions, viral explosions, ecological explosions).
The ‘download’ button means ‘I want too know’ NOT ‘I do NOT want to know’. This comes will all the weight associated with it, a window to the world is not always the best of choices! Katastrofsky could just as easily be Catastrophe! As Virilio (2006) stated, “Perhaps this is what they mean when they talk about an ‘open society’ – like the city offering itself without resistance to its invaders?” (p.110)
In this essay I tried to create a novel approach to critiquing art (internet art) based on the work of Carlos Katastrofsky. Rather than simply view and critique the internet works ‘internet for poor people’ and ‘Russian roulette’ I tried to make connections and synthesize a new way for critique that looks at artwork though a contemporary theoretical lens. This was done by combining Manuel Delanda’s concept of ‘maritime networks’ and ‘centralize territories’, and Paul Virilios style of writing as well as examples from ‘City of Panic’. My attempt was to draw connections between the three entities and to understand Katastrofsky work through theory while creating my own language for art critique.
References
Delanda, M. (2006) A New Philosophy of Society. London: Continuum.
Katastrofsky, C. (2006) Russian Roulete. Internet Artwork residing at http://roulette.cont3xt.net/
Virilio, P. (2005) City of Panic. New York. Berg.
]]>markESSAY: Painting as Image Assemblage and Reterritorialization in the works of Jacob Roesch2007-02-28T08:56:00-07:002007-02-28T08:55:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.5002.28.07
An essay about a painter friend of mine.
An essay about a painter friend of mine.It would be easy to write about Jacob Roesch’s paintings in a traditional sense. One could talk about color, form, materials, imagery, structure etc. There is no denying that there is a modernist aspect to his work: it draws on rich traditions in art history and can be judged and compared as such to those histories. In this essay I do not wish to regurgitate the same tired language used to describe and critique such work but instead I am interested in approaching the work in a novel way. By creating my own twists and turns to synthesize an argument that shows the various external sources that combine and converge allowing these paintings and imagery to emerge and ‘become’. I will thus describe the conditions that gave rise to this work rather that try to undertake a study of the ‘work’ itself.
In relationship to Jacob Roesch, I am in a unique position to write about his work. I have been very close to Jacob in friendship for several years and have had the opportunity to know the intricate and intimate details association with his paintings evolution. Writing on his work is a task I undertook, not simply and a gesture of friendship, but with the preconception that artists should be writing about artists: artists they know personally, artists that they collaborate with, or artists that they respect.
Part of the idea in writing ‘essays by artists on artists’ is to 'bypass' the ‘expertise’ of the critic/historian. The idea is that an artist, to paraphrase Deleuze (1995), can take another artist from behind in essay form and produce a mutant child that could or could not resemble its parent’s original conception. ‘The essay’ becomes the writer as much as it is a product of the relationship between artists. The work under focus becomes a part of the jurisdiction of the artist/writers own work/theory therefore making the given artists work part of their own. With this precondition, artistic work does not exhibit negative OR positive qualities but instead exhibits qualities of its own accords in the historical, theoretical, political, sociological etc. frame in which the artist/essay-writer responds to it. The work is then not criticized in the sense that the historical tradition of 'critique' dictates, but instead becomes a product of is own processes that gave rise to that work AND the processes that gave rise to the essay that was written based on that work. I believe this to be a valid way (artists writing about artists) that artists can begin to balance art-world power by helping to facilitate the disintegration of established 20th century art world relationships (artist/critic/historian/academic) and the classification of those disciplines in favor of more heterogeny and fluidity.
To use this concept as a starting point I will begin with my own experience and observations that I see extremely apparent in Roesch’s painted works and make observations on how his painted works materialized based on recent philosophical discourses in assemblage theory. To briefly define, assemblage theory as outlined by Manual Delanda (2006) crosses the nature-cultural divide by treating wholes as entities derived from the convergences of historical processes once composed of heterogeneous parts. To quote, “Entities ranging from atoms and molecules to biological organisms, species and ecosystems may be usefully treated as assemblages” (Ibid p. 3) To begin to understand the painted works of Roesch as assemblages it is essential that one first understand the territory that they surround, a territory that “is made of decoded fragments of all kinds” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 504). In the painted works of Roesch I am interested in these fragments of information (social, material) that create the territory for the paintings to emerge as an assembly of his various social processes.
Roesch’s works resemble something less than any artistic ‘drive’ to paint or ‘express’ but rather are the result of a lingering memory that must emerge and materialize as a rehabilitation mechanism for a genuine desire to turn what is perceived as chaotic into a lasting sense of order. These ‘memories’ are both psychological (embedded in the neural-net of the brain) and technological, derived from direct observation resulting in the taking of a digital photograph. “Memories always have a reterritorialization function” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987 p. 294) and Roesch’s are no exception, territorializing and assembling to form a painted image. His painting process currently is a result of a combination/convergence of ‘memories’ of specific people and places and digital photographs in which a photo is responded to through the calling of a certain memory associated with it in order to assemble a paintings aesthetics; color, form, feel etc.
Memories have a way of creating their own assemblages. Bits of information often converge to form singular ideas. It is in the growth of the child and adolescent that has the lasting impact, an impact that must be articulated as a form of ‘rebirth’ in order to make some sense from the various complex sources of data-bits that have accumulated over time. Childhood can be a complex endeavor and as Guattari (1996) states “a wide spread anxiety accompanies every incident in [its] development” (p. 68). This anxiety is a source of memory because it has the impact of sustaining the memory and creating a vivid representation of itself: stored and locked internally. The child is always a center of others because s/he lacks the proper mechanisms to consciously extend by intensities her/his territory past her/his immediate vicinity becoming a ‘person’ only by “emerging from the assembly of subpersonal components (impressions, ideas, propositional attitudes, habits, skills)” (Delanda 2006 p. 52) that have been territorialized by the surrounding social networks, environments and architectures that surround. Under this condition “the entire society finds itself infantilized, puerilized, under the “panoptic” regime described by Michel Foucault” (Guattari 1996 P. 69). Territorialization is the process OR processes that “define or sharpen the special boundaries of actual territories” (Delanda 2006 p. 13) which can also mean that the homogeneity of a surrounding system (this being the parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents etc) has a direct effect on the internal homogeneity of the child.
Having a direct personal relation to Jacob I am well aware of the complex social histories that surrounded his upbringing. I would not be a friend if I were to divulge personal details that might prove embarrassing yet I can say for honesty that there is nothing ‘darker’ in his past than most tight, family oriented social assemblages contain. There are some unique qualities of his circumstances that I will also not take the liberty to disclose. What I can say is that there has always been a struggle for a personal autonomy that meets the expectations of both him and those surrounding him. This very crucial point is one of the main driving forces and influences in his image creations and assemblages: he draws from vital memories and impacting moments and feelings in order to rebuild a vague idea of what circumstances that might or might not have been beyond his control. This is the materialization of memory that was lost in the transition and struggle for individualism. As a child we are all under the eye of the social order we are subjected to.
There then becomes a singular point where a critical threshold can be met, granted the conditions, where the child/social-actors extended territory become greater that the territory that others in the social networks place upon him/her. With this extended territory OR deterritorialization of the body into larger social assemblages comes “a powerful desire for autonomy in every area; emotional, sexual, financial, intellectual, etc.” (Guarttari 1996 p. 65) To quickly define: “any process which either destabilizes spatial boundaries or increases internal heterogeneity is considered deterritorialization” (Delanda 2006 p 13). Such deterritorializing can have a dramatic effect because of the added weight of social responsibility that accompanies the transition. This is “because entry into semiotic life mean[s] having a job, entering production, the production of models, the production of subjectivity. During the whole of adolescence, there is considerable anxiety concerning the coming of “normal adulthood.” (Ibid P. 67) The more complex the child’s place within the social assemblage, the more difficult it is to make sense of the processes of deterritorializing. Painting, for Roesch, has become a method for reterritorialization as a personal process to create an order from a complex childhood and transition to ‘adulthood’ under the watchful eye of the social assemblage that he emerged from.
Much of this is present as memory residue in his painted work. There are images of children, parents and grandparents: all seemingly trapped in nostalgic time. Sometimes the images of ‘persons’ are genderless where time-period and style (fashion) converge. At other points in his work there is the confusion of genetics where the parent could be confused for the child or the child could be confused as the parent creating a non-linear relationship between subject and desire. There often emerge relationships to environments and architecture (machines) that set the ‘place’ but also create a foreground that the images of the person/subject dissolve.
Painting has always been there for Jacob. It is a method of meditation where thoughts can material into imagery and seemingly random bits of collected information can be manipulated in a process of reflections on interpersonal networks. He has also been a product of institutional organization making a transition from social networks to larger institutional ones, which have also influenced the processes, and imagery that is assembled. In his paintings, there are these collections of nostalgic like memories that are juxtaposed together, converging with the formal education of an arts training that teaches traditions and materials. The transition to ‘artist’ is one of massive deterritory because the formalism of the institution must be bypassed at some point in order for new ideas and concepts to emerge.
Becoming an artist is never an easy decision. “Artists are stagemakers” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987 p. 316) that territorialize what has been fragmented. It is a decision of social organization that one must choose, as Paul Virilio stated, “To dwell as a poet or as an assassin?” (Ibid p. 345): to assemble or contribute to destruction. As a method it is how Roesch has dealt with “insertion into family, social, sexual, athletic, military, etc., situations” (Guarttari 1996 P. 67) that has become his art form, materializing into painted images. He has carefully chosen his memories, something that strikes him, something that has developed internally and through various expressive interactions. The pre-recording of a digital image sets the stage and in turn begins the painted image assembling processes that reverberate on the canvases. In one painting, a man (boy?) on a pink bicycle with his head cropped at the top of the canvas is either Jacob Roesch or his father OR both. Genetics have memories too and they assemble and converge at various stages in histories to form ‘individuals’. The image emerging from the digital photograph does not necessarily have to be derived only from that particular photograph but has a direct memory of its own from previous and past interactions in his histories.
To describe some of the works, several paintings are of sky shots: pieces of buildings, fences and power-lines. Pictures of daily activities of nomadic, nostalgic wanderings build the canvases. In these works, “painting recreates the silhouettes and postures of materiality” (Deleuze & Guarttari 1987 p. 301), memory images and the technology of the digital image converge and assemble: the assembly of accumulated visual information slowly pollinates the canvas. Such as bees assemble a ‘hive’ by bring together various bits of materials and memories - so do canvases emerge in a very similar way.
These works have contained the image of a personal social network and its associations. Family photos are more represented, often depicting the subjects slightly humorously in style, aesthetics, and presentation. Colors are somewhat muted and the edges between subjects and background is often blurred: the lines are not tight and crisp. Besides the evidence of an education in art and art history, Roesch’s paintings depict much more about his own internal and external relations: internalizations through territorialization and deterritorialization as well as processes of combining memory with technology.
There are noticeable wounds present where the drastic drama of transitioning between states of need and autonomy create some uncomfortable silences in the imagery as one looks retrospectively at his body of work. The push and pull is between a desired life and a life under the gaze of others whether it be the organization of the institution or prior to his institutional insertion. The properties of the paint, the properties of the brushes and canvases/stretches have all recently congregated in his Brooklyn studio with his memories and digital imagery intact waiting to be assembled into a singular instance or idea. His paintings are a presentation of informal and external stimulations. Painting is a therapeutic mechanism in the sense that it makes sense through visual creation the personal relationships to external and internal social mechanisms at play within the social networks that he is involved. By reterritorializing what has been so drastically deterritorialized he is able to retain that bit of autonomy that he has always so desired: through painting.
References
Delanda, M. (2006) A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London: Continuum.
Deleuze, G. (1995) Negotiations. New York: Columbia University Press
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Guattari, F. (1996) Soft Subversions. New York; Semiotext(e)
]]>markESSAY: Neo-minimalism, Generative Art and the Work of Amy Cheatle2007-01-28T11:53:00-07:002007-01-28T11:50:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.4901.28.07
An essay I wrote about my wife and artistic collaborator Amy Cheatle as a personal reaction to her recent work.
An essay I wrote about my wife and artistic collaborator Amy Cheatle as a personal reaction to her recent work.Neo-minimalism, Generative Art and the Work of Amy Cheatle
by
mark edward grimm
In October of last year I posted a question to the ‘Eugene’ generative arts mailing list with the question: “Could wine and beer making be considered a 'generative art' practice?”
My question was initiated to gather collective information on a topic that both Amy Cheatle and myself have been involved with, beginning with the “ORG” show at Macy Gallery under the arts collaborative name ‘socialmediagroup’, for the past several years. Just recently my artist/partner Amy Cheatle gained part-time employment as an apprentice winemaker in the small, canal-town village of Fairport in upstate western New York. As an artist she had moved rapidly from more traditional approaches to art making such as painting and drawing to more experimental varieties: working in an experimental artist collective that focuses on systems theory, critical theory and environmentalist practices. Work in this area has been expanding within the art discipline over the past few decades, beginning, but not limited to, the land artists of the 1960’s and 1970’s.
At the same time as our installations were occurring, we as artists began experimenting with new forms of art creation that could not specifically be located or displayed in the context of the gallery setting. These ‘artworks’ were instead, a sort of ‘life practice’: they were experiments in living where, as the Situationist Raoul Vanetgem (2003) stated, “tiny adjustment[s] in what is essential has much greater import than a hundred incidental improvements.” (p. 17)
These ‘small improvements’ or simple actions could not be documented to the same degree that a gallery show might eventually materialize into some glorious singular event. In contrast to a gallery ‘show’ of sorts, which in our case only came into being about once a year, the simple changing and manipulation of daily action and activity could potentially be performed several to many dozen times daily. Clothing the body, weeding the garden and even loading the dishwasher could become new artistic mechanisms in which to express and critique oneself as an artist, leading to the eventual emergence of new processes in which to conduct those very same activities. The adjustments are minimal, but the accumulations of minimal processes that evolve over time are, to us, substantial. As Deleuze (1995) tells us, these processes or ‘capacities’ for new conceptual emergences “invent new possibilities of life. Existing not as subject but as a work of art …[presenting] thought as artistry.” (p.95)
Obviously through these processes there is going to be interactions with philosophical concepts and scientific ones that can be monitored, producing variations to create new ‘activities’ and forms. To cite Deleuze & Guattari (1994):
The three thoughts intersect and intertwine but without synthesis or identification. With its concepts, philosophy brings forth events. Art erects monuments with its sensations. Science constructs states of affairs with its functions. (p.199)
And so the problem for us in dealing with the art making process has always been the history of separating the arts from other disciplines, including the activities of the everyday. I must first admit that I take a narrow view of art-making in this essay by classifying and generalizing trends. It would be fair too say that such thoughts and generalizations have formed the basis of our work – we react to what we personally feel and observe. To us, art-making and the scientific and philosophical processes involved in art-making have been slowly replaced by the aesthetics of image making which is immaterial comparatively to the physics of physical processes which our art now partakes. To us, pure image creation contributes to the spectacle where populations can no longer produce but instead are restricted to mere consumption. In this sense the idea of the ‘gallery’ as exhibition space is nothing but a symbol of separation: white, laboratory conditions that isolate a cultural practice from the general population of the outside world.
Obviously, the gallery world has been criticized and critiqued, starting with Marcel Duchamp, by artists since the early 20th century, but rather than a historical perspective I think it is essential as a critical starting point to understand Amy Cheatle’s recent work. It is from this perspective that she has viewed the art world and especially the ‘art market’. Subjectively, the elitism of art as a specialized field always places the working person (blue collar, those in poverty) outside of the specialized processes of art making that have become institutionalized to the degree where image makers have power over image consumers.
This brings us to the question of production. Who controls production? Who produces and who consumes? Recently we have been looking at our family history. Both of our family heritage is rich in English and German immigrants who were material workers, meaning they were a part of micro-economic systems that could be considered relatively autonomous, at least comparatively, to contemporary mega-markets. We discovered our heritage was full of closed-loop communities where production took place under micro-conditions: tailors, beer-makers, food producers and all were gardeners. ‘The garden’ above all, has struck Cheatle’s artistic interest.
Why is ‘the garden’ such a revolutionary idea? As Hakim Bey (1999) stated, “Growing a garden has become - at least potentially - an act of resistance. But it’s not simply an act of refusal. It’s a positive act. Its praxis.” (p.10) It is simple production methods that all can perform, and it is Cheatle’s contention that not only is this a revolutionary act of praxis that exchanges acts of pure consumption for acts of micro-production but it is also an act of art and cultural creation. From these self-processes of material manipulations there is the potentialities for new processes and variations in processes to emerge: each micro-system has potentialities embedded within them for diversity to develop.
We can see this when we look at ‘seed savers’ OR heirloom varieties. It is truly unfortunate that the ‘beef-steak’ tomato is what all tomatoes are judged upon. It is often overlooked that each area, each geography and topography has developed its own variety of tomato. These tomatoes are not the products of one singular genetic manipulation in the lab but have emerged over hundreds of years in backyard gardens and community seed exchanges. Such varieties have almost been virtually eliminated by large industrial agro-business, which favor quantity over quality/diversity on all accounts. In light of this, Cheatle’s question has been, how does this affect art and art making practices and processes? Obviously she sees similarities in the trends. ‘The garden’ is not only a symbolic example but also a functional example. As an example, ‘the garden’ could not only be used metaphorically and theoretically but also practically as a cultural tool for education: an artist tool where all could participate in its actions without necessarily having to be specialized in one area or another.
Obviously the garden was one such tool that Cheatle and myself as artists could use – all could participate in its production (adults, children – garden creation transcends all boundaries) and this was not contingent upon any academic, cultural terminology ect. OR otherwise such as the questions “Is it art?” or some equally uninteresting ‘IS’ questions. Whatever it ‘IS’, the one thing we know to be true is that it just ‘DOES’. Something happens and we can think about what happens, why it happens, why it does not happen, or we don’t necessarily have to think anything at all: an opposite to the ‘art establishment’ where everything has to be legitimized in some form, again, generally and subjectively speaking.
And so Amy Cheatle began the experimental endeavor of wine production as art creation. Nothing to be legitimized or rationalized in its aesthetic, cultural or practical effects: it was the processes of ‘DOING’ and how things could be made that formed the basis of the artistic creations. It is through processes that, as the philosopher Gilbert Ryle suggested, ‘learning how’ rather than ‘learning that’ takes place which in turn gives the creator the possibilities to diverge, to branch off in new directions that may not have been visualized prior to the initial creations. Deleuze & Guattari (1987) called this ‘lines of flight’ where a singular instance (the fermenting of wine) has the possibilities for multiple dimensions (multiplicities) and forms to materialize from the same point of reference – no two batches of wine could ever be exactly the same no matter how stringent the system and ingredients used.
It is essential to understand the generative processes involved in the creation of a ‘wine’. We can begin with the term ‘terroir’ which means that local influences (geography, weather patterns, soil quality) are transmitted into the character of the given plant – this being a particular variety of grape vine. Even if the grape vine is genetically identical, depending on where or how the grape is grown, vines growing in separate geographical location can produce a grape with unique properties. It is said that some wine-tasters can tell what side of the road grapes might have been grown even if those grapes are the same genetic breed and are in the same relative location – one side of the road might get different light or have different water run-off for example.
Add variations in grape varieties, genetic makeup, and different ‘strains’ and just out of the diversity of the ‘grape’ many variations in ‘juice’ can result. We not only find this in ‘grapes’ but also in other types of food products, materials such as wood and fiber and any other type of material utilized as a resource. Coffee beans differ compared to the ‘terrior’ that they are grown. It is said that the Normandy cow produces milk that is churned into the best tasting butter on the planet because of the perfect conditions for the growing of the grasses that it eats.
In contrast, industrial agriculture in the United States for instance, does not use the natural ‘terroir’ of a region to allow a diversity of product to emerge based on local systems. Instead it relies on ‘imposing’ its will on a geography in order to produce a homogenous product which stays relatively the same across geographic locations. The soil is manipulated or ‘forced’ to be something that it is not through specific fertilization processes. Where in Native America we once had a very diverse native corn supply filled with special ‘spiritual’ varieties of species and strains, we have yielded to the homogeny of ‘yellow corn’, which we all see now in the grocery store. In addition, genetic manipulation and bio-technology have contributed greatly to this lack of genetic diversity in our food supplies.
Wine, on the other hand, is in the unique position of retaining some of these special properties because the quality of the wine is based on the unique environment in which the grapes are grown and the wine is fermented. It is unique because as an educational and artistic tool it is not hard for a general public to understand that quality is not attached to quantity but instead is directly connected to the factor of diversity and variation as its defining characteristic. It is an exploratory material in which contains in its possibilities, the opportunity for uniqueness to emerge. It is a minimal art form that contains the information for alternatives to potentially exist. It is a ‘generative art’ form, one in which, as Philip Galanter suggested:
[an] art practice where the artist uses a system, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art.
But this of course is being contingent upon if one can consider ‘wine making’ art at all.
Once the grapes are grown and harvested, which are processes of their own generative identification, the grapes, to simplify, are turned into ‘juice’. Each juice will have its own characteristics and therefore will give rise to a wine containing its own characteristics. The fermentation and manipulation of the ‘juice’ is its own personal process that each ‘wine maker’ decides upon. Each winemaker has their own set of rules and processes to create their own unique blend, even if the ingredients are the same a wine maker can manipulate the processes involved to where the final result is completely different. Through morphogenetic processes, the ‘phase space’ of results is full of possibilities. The philosopher Manuel Delanda (2002) might define a ‘phase space’ as a “space of possibilities” (p.10)and ‘morphogenetic as the dynamic and divergent processes that gave rise to those possibilities. In wine, these generative processes ‘evolve’ the wine beginning with the winemakers choices.
In addition to wine additives that can give a ‘wine’ specific properties (such as adding ‘oak’ or other flavor manipulatives), ‘yeast’ is the ‘spark’ that ignites the fermentation and synthesis giving wine a resulting uniqueness. Yeast is a heterogeneous element in itself. Traditionally, wild yeast could be colleted in the air and used in an assortment of food creations from bread making to beer making and of course wine fermentation. Populations soon realized that different yeast could be used in different ways and that the type of yeast strain used in the production of alcoholic beverages would drastically change the resulting liquid. In contemporary wine making practices, wine makers are not restricted anymore to local yeasts although some vintages stay as local as possible to create a truly ‘local’ terroir wine. Many winemakers, including ‘home winemaking’ winemakers such as Amy Cheatle, can choose from any yeast variety that they might find compatible with there wine. Again there is no ‘right’ answer and many variations are possible.
This can be a complicated process but once the yeast is added to the wine the generative capacities take hold and the fermentation process begins, the artists hand initiate the process but once the process has been initiated is then beyond there control (other that slight tweaking that are possible here and there). The wine becomes and autonomous entity, a living organism. The yeast is a single cellular organism. Its only job is to eat sugars. There are many sugars in the provided juice and as the yeast eats the sugar its byproduct OR excrement is alcohol. All different yeasts consume and process the sugars into alcohol differently contributing to the diversity of taste as an outcome of different yeasts. The yeast will consume and consume until there is no sugar left and the yeast die in there own excrement/alcohol OR the winemaker kills the yeast and stops the process.
There are several processes that can be done before bottling such as filtration, secondary fermentation etc. that I will not cover here. After bottling, the wine continues to complexify and change – its stays ‘alive’ and slowly evolves over-time, sometimes even becoming something that it had not started as. It becomes a ‘line of becoming’ that has no end point but continues on its life cycle until the wine is either drank Or the wine ‘goes bad’ in the bottle and becomes undrinkable as ‘vinegar’ both of which are continuations of processes.
A line of becoming is not defined by points that it connects, or by points that compose it; on the contrary, it passes between points, it comes up through the middle…a line of becoming is neither beginning nor end, departure nor arrival, origin nor destination… A line of becoming has only a middle. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987 ,p.293)
Wine rests in this ‘middle’. Art rests in this ‘middle’. Culture rests in this ‘middle’. Wine, such as art and culture, are always in a state of ‘becoming’. There is no real ‘end’ or ‘end product’. Wine can not end even after it is drank by participants because it always will become something else: thoughts as a byproduct of inebriation, morning sickness, appetite, love, physical sensations etc. There is no real ‘end’ or ‘end product’ in art. It is easy to pretend that the final ‘piece’ ends on the wall but it is only a middle stage in its life – the processes in its creation are just as OR even more relevant than its display. And wine, as in art, will always have an end-cycle where they will die, ceasing to be what they were in their original form but instead taking on new forms and giving new possibilities for becomings to emerge. (Ibid)
This is why I think Amy Cheatle’s work is so important and relevant, not just and an exercise in generative process, but also as an artwork. Wine processes posses possibilities in becoming something else: becoming thoughts, becoming addiction, becoming culture. It is neo-minimalist work at its middle, choosing to use activity as a material to create and allow variants on processes to develop. Small adjustments have much larger consequences. Art, in Amy Cheatle’s sense, becomes micro forces contributing to greater wholes rather than end products of individuals.
Bibliography
Bey, H. (1999). Avante-Gardening: Ecological Struggle In the City and the World. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia
Delanda, M. (2002). Intensive Science & Virtual Philosophy. London: Continuum
Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations. New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G. & Guattari F. (1987). A Thousand Plateus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press
Deleuze, G. & Guattari F. (1994). What is Philosophy?. New York: Columbia University Press.
Galanter, P. (2003). What is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory from http://www.philipgalanter.com/academics/index.htm accessed 23-5-05.
Ryle, G. (1984). The Concept of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Vanetgem, R. (2003). The Revolution of Everyday Life. London: Rebel Press.
]]>markESSAY: Frank Shifreen and the Materialism of Shamanistic Painterly Visions2007-01-28T11:49:00-07:002006-12-20T17:07:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.4812.20.06
An essay I wrote about my good friend Frank Shifreen in reaction to criticism I over heard on his painting art show at Macy Gallery at Teachers College at Columbia University.
An essay I wrote about my good friend Frank Shifreen in reaction to criticism I over heard on his painting art show at Macy Gallery at Teachers College at Columbia University.Frank Shifreen and the Materialism of Shamanistic Painterly Visions
Frank Shifreen himself can explain in much greater detail than I can the content of his art: the shamanic inspirations and the like that gave rise to his body of imaginative work. It is always unfair for a writer to try to understand what was 'meant' by or what some image might ‘represent’ compared to the way the artist himself might describe it. As a good friend of Frank's, I would hate to try and explain the intricacies and complexities in the content of the images and get it wrong!
Contemporary painting (at least through my observations of contemporary art magazines, gallery and internet imagery, as well as being involved in the field for over a decade) has become increasingly reliant upon cleverness in the manipulation of the image. There is a kind of pop perfection that increases salability and commercial value—paintings to be seen on the walls of wealthy patrons or corporate offices, lending cultural power and prestige—a failure of art as the aggravator of cultural transformations. To quote Paul Virilio (2005),
“They have masked the failure or the accident with commercial success
…the pride of contemporary art has masked its failure and its weakness.
You have the inflation of the dealers, the immense wealth of the galleries
and the artists, the delirious prices of contemporary painters, but at the
same time it’s a façade, and it’s going to fall. (p. 64)”
Contemporary painting serves as a propaganda tool, using its creator in unsuspecting ways to realize the imagery of the capital classes. It is hung as a sign of power on the walls of an office, a private home, etc., in order to draw an onlooker into the 'behind-the-scenes' of who or what that institution is in support of. This is so whether the images presented are for 'charitable' means (e.g., children’s art) or blatant prestige (as in, ‘Have you seen my Picasso?’). There is always going to be a certain amount of exploitation of the image maker involved. Images become advertisements, marketing ploys for whatever particular public or private establishment hangs them, as Raymond Williams (1980) might say.
Materialistically, contemporary painting is an art that produces `against the grain.’ Natural image flows are deemed uninteresting. Materials must be pushed to their limits, breaking their bonds; they are made to act one way as opposed to letting the material properties of the paint, for instance speak for themselves. Letting materials flow with their given properties is uninteresting to the average population that has been conditioned by electronic technologies such as the television and film to expect some ‘special effect’ from the materials involved. It is not a question of pushing the material and making it do what one chooses but, instead, as Gilles Deleuze (1987) writes, “it is a question of surrendering to the [material], then following where it leads by connection operations to a materiality instead of imposing a form upon matter. (p. 408)”
Peace is uninteresting. War breaks the boredom. Sanding against the grain dominates the ecologies of the wood. Contemporary painting dominates the eyes of its observers.
Frank Shifreen’s work has never been a work of domination. He acts intuitively in reaction to the materials that he is given; he paints with the grain. He goes with the flows, like a seasoned craftsman, though not at all with the same aesthetic of refinement.
As a practicing artist in New York City from the late 1960's until today, Frank has a very compelling personal historical knowledge of contemporary artistic practice. He's been around; he knows the scene and is acquainted personally with many of the recognizable names involved in the art world over the past four decades. But no matter how the trends and fads have fluctuated, Frank has always remained on the edge of fame, not stepping into or receding but always experimenting with the 'new' – and always staying true to
himself.
Though new materials for artists to work with are always emerging, Frank has never been one to be afraid to experiment and incorporate new technologies into his work: film, regular and then digital video, and other types of digital manipulation. All these he has
employed to express himself naturally with various forms.
Frank’s work is much less interested in clever trickery than in informing spectators on the processes involved in their own personal creative processes. Paint sometimes randomly splatters on the edges and across the surfaces. His canvases look ancient and dusty as if they were just pulled from an attic or museum. His palette can be bright but often recedes into grays, a product of the mixing of contrasting colors. Intense expressive actions are often embedded in the surfaces.
His recent show at Macy Gallery was a testament to these processes in improvisation. This work presents itself less as a recent body of work and more as a recently created retrospective. Ideas build on each other and layers of information erupt from the canvas
surfaces. Whether the surface is physically large or small the same emotional energy prevails in each.
This work, like many of Frank’s other works, has one odd inherent property – the massive body of work itself resists being edited down and insists on retaining its cluttered character – and I do not mean this in a bad way. Instead this body of work calls viewers into Frank’s own world, as his work always does.
Frank’s work becomes more of an ongoing performance piece that has no beginning and no end – as Deleuze (1987) might say “always in a state of becoming (p. 408).” And many times this performance is the wonderful nature of Frank himself! Unfortunately this performance aspect is very seldom noticed, typically being discarded as nothing more that a disturbance. But perhaps the greatest art is the disturbance itself! In every regard, Frank has gotten this completely right.
There is a constant fluctuation in Frank's body of work—his painting, sculpture, and his performance of concepts and ideas—by virtue of their convergences that interweave in a complex mesh of notions and intensities. Sometimes those intensities are very high and even reach their zenith, a point of no return. At other times they are reserved and
intellectually driven. It is this interesting balance and juxtaposition of intensities that I find most interesting in Frank's work.
The work is not modernist, as one might think or want it to be. It is not always pretty or well executed in style. It is not like a well-designed, oiled machine that will always run reliably the same. The painted works do not have what one might call a 'minimalist'
aesthetic that is sometimes looked for in 'high' art nor an expressionist one that one might assume from the artist's rich artistic history. There are simply too many oddities and peculiarities involved for his work to be defined or categorized easily. This might be a
problem for the traditionalist or formalist onlooker who has been institutionally educated in the ways and means of idealized 'artistic' languages—which often conform to the properties of the economy. Unconventional and dissenting ideas often don't come out of established and conventional functions.
As a result, this work is not always going to sit pretty in a gallery as we might think it should. It could be said to be a period of intense action laid out as a presentation of a history that happened to take place—a history of movement and motion, of intensities and trauma that played out over a given amount of time. This production time has been a time of weaving processes and bifurcations.
One cannot edit 'the real,' or real-time, as it happens; only afterwards can the
manipulations (such as digital ones) take place. You cannot edit a burst of energy nor can you edit a burst of creativity or improvisation as it is taking place. Imagine Miles Davis and John Coltrane being edited down from a 50+ minute piece to a 3.5 minute radio
version for the consumer—what a tragedy that would be! This is work that is not about the hit radio station. It is meant to be experienced in the real-time in which the work was produced, as Frank Shifreen himself should be experienced in real-time—closer to a do-it-yourself aesthetic or total punk rock than some L.A. glam band. It is anarchistic art of the highest caliber.
Frank is not interested in the creation of pop-cultural manipulations. He is not interested in 'edits' of reality that have the potential to deceive the viewer and manipulate the image for political goals or commercial appeal. The work is much closer to the Situationist practice of drifting, of losing oneself, abandoning all conventional purposes and
rationalized coordinates to seek out radically distinctive orientations in experience, but on an unpredicted global scale as though you could wander across entire regions, spanning the gaps between worlds or spiraling weightlessly through civilizations (Attali, 1985).
In his Macy Gallery show, the intensity of the experience of the specific actions in painting was laid out as a bare bones system—a historical process revealed, a demonstration of real-time let-go, without holding back or letting up. This reflects an experience of painting as process not as product, a continuation that is always continuing
despite the appearance of static moments.
Arguably, Frank's work is that of an outcast on the fringe of the institution. An outcast sees society in a particularly political light, as opposed to, say, the art historian, who reflects society's deepest values. But in some ways, the work, like Frank himself, has gained the acceptance of both the outside and the inside - the practitioner and the
institution. He is, as Jacques Attali (1985) states, "simultaneously excluded (relegated to a place near the bottom of the social hierarchy) and superhuman (the genius, the adored and deified star). Simultaneously a separator and an integrator."(p. 12)
The paintings presented in the gallery were a burst of temporary energy, hung for approval or non-approval. But no matter how one might feel, all onlookers had to admit that this show was brutally honest on all accounts. The work told us we are all dreaming that we can regain a certain intellectual and artistic dignity.
References:
Attali, J. (1985). Noise: The Political Economy of Music. University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. University of Minnesota Press.
Virilio, Paul. (2005). The Accident of Art. Semiotext(e). New York: Columbia University
Williams, Raymond. (1980). Culture and Materialism. London: Verso. (See Chapter 4, Advertising: The Magic System)
]]>markred blood ground2007-01-02T08:40:00-07:002006-11-02T16:03:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.4311.02.06
All songs were written and recorded in a 24 hour period.
This album explores how simple song structures are created and recorded. These songs are based on 'melodies' or 'tunes' that I have been developing in my head for the past few years.
All songs were written and recorded in a 24 hour period.
This album explores how simple song structures are created and recorded. These songs are based on 'melodies' or 'tunes' that I have been developing in my head for the past few years.red blood ground
Without any prior song writing experience I wrote and recorded a 13 song album using only one microphone, a computer and an old beat up classical guitar. The idea was to understand the process of song writing - lyrics, chords and melodies.
All complicated arrangements were purposely striped from this experience. I understand it as giving power back to the amateur. All songs should be kept as simple as possible. NO manipulations. NO trickery. NO cleverness. NO gimmicks. ALL LEFT RAW!!!
All songs/recordings were ONE TAKE ONLY.
I was very interested in my ability to relinquish my ego and awareness of self-critique to the forces of immediatism and immediate action. It also proved useful in understanding distortions in the creative process. By trying to replicate some type of idealized cultural state, distortions in the outcome were inevitable yielding to my own personal subjectivities through the conscious replication processes.
]]>markExcavate: CoHabit 2.02008-07-26T11:09:00-07:002006-10-14T08:39:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.3109.02.2006
An demonstrative inquiry of possibilities in autonomy and collaboration.
In collaboration with 'socialmediagroup', we excavated dirt to the bedrock in an art park in upstate New York - to use the dirt for 1 month in an electronic, interactive installation - returning it to where it came from in an altered, rejuvenated state. This is the forth installment in the series "eco-works" begun in 2003.
An demonstrative inquiry of possibilities in autonomy and collaboration.
In collaboration with 'socialmediagroup', we excavated dirt to the bedrock in an art park in upstate New York - to use the dirt for 1 month in an electronic, interactive installation - returning it to where it came from in an altered, rejuvenated state. This is the forth installment in the series "eco-works" begun in 2003.Project | Installation
Stone Quarry Hill Art Park in Cazenovia, NY. see http://www.stonequarryhillartpark.org/
Introduction
In an upstate New York Art park we excavated a 6' width x 20' length 3' depth plot to the natural bedrock and used the extracted soil for an interactive electronic gallery installation. The Stone Quarry Hill Art Park is a 107 acre non-profit art park in Cazanovia, NY (20 miles south east of Syracuse NY) and was established on an old stone quarry. The excavation was performed on the side of the hill adjacent to the gallery and surrounding buildings. The soil was installed in the gallery one month after excavation. Wheat was grown on the soil and electronics were installed to monitor environmental conditions and create a forum for user interaction.
This artwork and performance is a demonstration of possibilities in creating educational art works that are temporary, interactive and variously change over a given period of time. We are interested in the interactions of social organizations (bodies), ecological systems and electronics medias. We are concerned with how these various elements meet in order to create a specific (in terms of time and place) situations for observation, discussion and analysis. We see art work less as an aesthetic object (although this can be used to draw an viewer or participant in) and more as a micro-model that draws attention to the interactions of the everyday.
Gallery Description
Placement
The soil was placed in a long semi-organic shape randomly across the length of the gallery. A path was consciously formed through the soil mounds for participants to traverse. Objectively, the overall aesthetic was reminiscent of a mountainous region with a valley snaking through its center area.
Wheat was sowed on the present soil and thoroughly watered. Stepping stones were carefully placed to create a path or 'stroll' area.
Three separate speaker cabinets were placed surrounding the soil. One cabinet, a Mesa-Boogie 4 x 12" speaker cabinet, was placed behind the placed soil facing the gallery entrance. Two other speakers, custom built boxes with one 8"mid-range and one tweeter each, were placed next to each other on the left side of the installation if facing from the entrance. One custom speaker faced the back of the gallery and the other faced the front.
Speakers were powered by an amplifier on the floor in a custom made aluminum rack that measured 20" width x 30" length x 20"depth. Present in the rack was the amplifier, a G4 Macintosh computer, an Electrotap Teabox, a PAIA Fatman analog synthesizer, and a Digidesign DIGI 002 computer audio interface. The rack equipment was powered by a red/white-striped extension cord that was snaked and coiled around the various electronic components. The speaker wire was snaked around the extension cord and in the back and through, in some case, the soil deposits.
Sensors
There are three environment monitoring sensors that were installed in the gallery in conjunction with the soil: a light sensor, a temperature sensor, and a soil moisture sensor.
The light sensor measures the light that is omitted in the gallery. The gallery has several skylights so any change in outside light (such as sun, clouds, evening, nighttime conditions) change the readings of the light sensor. This sensor is very sensitive to changes and is also affected by participants that approach the sensor and cast a shadow.
The temperature sensor is much more subtle. It senses the temperature of the gallery interior. Its is also affected by temperate changes such as the fluctuations that occur during the day as well as the drop in temperature at night time. The heat of the sun through the gallery skylights also affects the temperature sensor readings.
The moisture sensor has an average sensitivity. It is affected by the amount of moisture that is present in the soil. The moisture sensor is installed under a particular mound of soil that will give an unbiased reading summarizing the moisture present in the entire installation. It is installed at a vertical angle to give readings that analyze moisture present close to the bottom of the soil mound as well as near the top.
The installation must be watered to keep the vital signs intact. A lack of care will result in a deficiency of wheat growth, an aesthetic dysfunction and an affected audio signal generated from the moisture data.
Sounds
Each sensor produces a distinct audio 'tone' based on the sensory data that the computer receives.. For example the light sensor produces a deep tone and the moisture sensor produces a midrange tone. All sensory data must be within a particular vital range in order to produce a 'harmonic' sound when all tones are mixed. For example if the soil is not watered properly the tones will subtly change, and a less than desirable tone will be produced
We also put installed trigger buttons under the stepping stones that when stepped on would randomly 'shuffle' the resulting audio. The trigger buttons or pads were custom made to fit under the stone blocks. The pads use strips of metal separated by foam. The metal strips are encased in plastic to increase their water moisture resistance. When a stone is stepped on the strips of metal touch each other sending an 'on/off' signal to the computer for processing. The wires are embedded under the soils and are only seen as they emerge from the installation near to the electronic rack equipment.
In order for the sensors and trigger buttons to work they must be converted from an analog signal to a digital signal that the computer can read. For this conversion we used a Electrotap Teabox (analog to digital converter) to make this transition. Once the sensor data has been converted to a digital signal it can be used in conjunction with programs in the computer and other external equipment.
We used the program MAX/MSP (cycling74.com) to process the digital data that the computer was receiving into audio and midi signals. MAX/MSP is a graphical programing language and interface that can be programed to manipulate and output data and audio signals.
The MIDI information that MAX/MSP output was sent from the MIDI outputs of the DIGI002 and to a custom built and modified PAIA Fatman Analog synthesizer. The synthesizer has many various knobs that allowed us to change and manipulate the produced sounds. LFO and Oscillation synchronization were some of the many synthesizer options that we used to produce some of the effects and sounds that were present. Critically, we were very interested in using analog synthesis because we are intrigued by the warm, physical sounds that analog systems produce compared with digital computer audio. The down side is that analog synthesis can tend to produce low volume 'hiss' type noises that generated from the physical electronics (picking up radio frequencies from the electronics is one example).
Computer sounds were also synthesized internally using FM (frequency modulation) synthesis within the program MAX/MSP. These sounds were output via the DIGI002 1/4" audio output jacks. The benefits of computer audio are that one has the freedom to program any type of sounds that one might wish to produce within the computer. The downside is that computer audio lacks the analog aesthetic of the equipment that is used, it lacks physicality as in the manipulation of tangible 'buttons' and 'knobs' (computer audio in this case is virtual manipulate through a monitor interface), and it lacks that 'warmness' in sound produced by the physical circuitry in the audio synthesis (think of a record vs. a Compact Disk - might be a good example).
The two audio signals (one from the synthesizer and one from the computer) were mixed and amplified. We did this not only to get the most desirable effects by using the best of both worlds (analog and digital technologies) but also to have the freedom in the sounds that were produced. It was very interesting for use to draw connections between computer technologies and 'the physical' by juxtaposing the analog and the digital in this fashion.
The resulting audio was then sent to the three separate speakers at a medium to low volume as to be not to distracting but enough to give the gallery environment a somewhat ambient 'atmosphere'. The ambiance created by the sensors and electronics is harmonic and has a multi-dimensional feel to it. This is a result of the mixing of the various audio components.
Participants were encouraged to walk on the stepping stones in the installation to produce various 'random' mixes of audio generated from the temperature, light and moisture sensory data. When a stone is stepped on the trigger under the stone sends an 'on' signal to the computer. It then uses a randomization object/script to quickly 'shuffle' the tonal sounds generated from the computer and the MIDI output. Because of the randomization in the program, each time a stone is stepped on the audio that is generated is slightly and sometimes even drastically different from the previously stepped stone. The audio tempo instantly quickens pace and various peculiarities result. After participants end there excursions, the sounds slowly, sometimes very slowly, return to ambiance or 'normal' conditions.
Some of the ambient sounds are a reaction to the present environment. There are faint 'insect' type sounds that exist: slight buzzings, cricket sounds, frog croakings. These 'chirping' sounds are produced by the Fatman and are a reaction to the outside environments. At times during the day and in the evening it is very difficult to distinguish between between the outside environment of the art park (the gallery is close to fields and ponds so there are plenty of cricket sounds, frogs and birds) and the internal gallery sounds produced by the installation.
With these organic, emerging and evolving sounds based on the data of the gallery environment, the environment of the gallery and that of the outside Art Park tend to merge.
Excavation Description
In order for the gallery installation and interactions to be demonstrated, we needed access to the materials that we would utilize. The main material that was used was soil. To achieve this we dug a long trench ( 6' width x 20' length 3' depth ) on the side of the art park hill. This in turn exposed the natural bedrock that lay underneath. This was done in a similar way that any 'excavated' area might take place: such as in an archaeological dig, a geological exposure, or even the beginning a a building foundation.
Soil, in this instance, was shoveled and removed by hand. It was then transported to a temporary area on the upper portion of the exposed hill about 100 feet from the gallery entrance where it rested and settled for one month prior to gallery installation. While in storage, top soil sod removed from the excavated area wilted and died.
The excavated area was then roped off with yellow 'cautionary' rope tied through eye-hooks to four 4"x 4" posts embedded in each of the four corners of the excavated area.
The bedrock that was exposed was sedimentary rock that was produced from the massive compression of glaciers compacting the existing soil in the many thousands of years ago in the Finger Lakes area. The geological formations of this area are a result of the existence of glaciers and the glacier movements over this topographic history.
The bedrock itself is a soft and flaky rock material. It is easily broken and dislodges from the side of the hill by hand with little effort. It is a deep gray with hints of reds. Its surface is dull and often has dried soils in its grooves and crevasses. This is caused by water runoff from rains creating water that often accumulated in the excavated areas lower basin where the bottom soil and the bedrock meet forming a vertical edge.
After installation the soil will be returned to the excavated area in a new, changed and revitalized state. The wheat that was grown will be tilled back into to the soil to in oder to compost. Once the soil is returned new wheat will be grown to mark where the excavation had taken place.
Philosophy and Concepts
This installation is a part of some broader investigations that we have been creating and performing over the past five years that all deal with various social, ecological and technological interactions.
Initially, while we were discussing its conception, we were interested in juxtaposing two separate concepts: Labor and Environments/Ecologies (though as the project commenced other concepts and ideas began to emerge). Labor, as a form of energy transference from one material to another, sparked our interest though concepts of thermo-dynamics (cybernetics) and investigations into sustainable practices and the creation of micro-systems (keeping energy produced and consumed geographically and locally as tight as possible). We have been investigating ecologies, as dynamic systems, for several years and throughout several various projects. With 'ecology' and thinking 'ecologically' we are interesting in the interrelationships between various related and seemingly unrelated forces and how different available entities interact with each other.
We have found that through the creation of various art-works, we can investigate and come to understand many complex phenomena that interests us. Our studies of academic texts in diverse disciplines and fields help to inform us of the concepts that we want to investigate. For example, texts in the area of critical theory such as those by Herbert Marcuse and Walter Benjamin of the Frankfurt school, assist in keeping critical awareness of the actions we are performing and the venue in which we are performing them (capital rural America in this instance). French post-structural texts such as though of Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guittarri allow us to see the interconnections, complicated material and historical networks of the many elements we prefer to involve. Deep-Ecology texts, for example, such as those of Arnie Neess, inform us of the critical ecological circumstances and concepts that we engage with.
It is from these vantage points that we like to begin with something simple that is grounded, as 'The Situationists' might say, in the simplicity of the everyday. For this information we started with a material we felt comfortable with and that we have used in many other projects, a material that aids in the reproduction of life itself, soil.
As a material, soil - in any one particular area of the globe, has its own unique vital energy associated with it. It is a diverse material that contains energy and retains its locality and history. It is an archive of past interactions. Who has previously tilled the soil? Has it become contaminated by industrial contaminates? How did it get to where it now rests (glacial moments, human transportation)? What kids of energy or minerals exist in the given soil and what would they be best suited to grow and/or destroy (if we are talking about contaminated soils for example)?
Soil also has the ability to have metamorphosis " it can be present in various material states. The bedrock that was revealed is compacted soils " a sedimentary rock. Earth has indefinite variations of soils. Diamonds are made from the super compression of organics: the homogenization of a particular earth material " in this case coal. Certain soils are rich in minerals and diverse in content. Other soils are one-dimensional such as in desert sand. The materials in which we live and interact with locally and geographical affect the societies that we build, the cities that emerge etc. We often neglect these understandings when we are creating various theories, philosophies and ideas. The geographies and topologies of various areas have been lacking in educational theory and pedagogy as well as a discourse of art creation.
As far as the idea of beginning with such a simple material as 'soil' is concerned: this is an interesting place to begin our philosophical and artistic constructions because once we establish the many different paths and connections that can be made with such a seemingly simple material then the ensuing discourse becomes open to connections " the inevitability of conceptual emergence becomes undeniable. What direction should we take? What areas do we highlight? Do we draw on aesthetic merit first (as an artwork, performance etc) and allow philosophical connections to the literature to be made 'post' installation as in this present writing? What is the educational implications? What can we learn from the creation of these types of projects at what concepts are present in these projects that can be taught to others.
To us, an artwork itself is always a temporary phenomena. Even painting, as static as it is (in terms of hanging indefinably on a wall in the case of a museum), has a temporarily to it. The 'Mona Lisa' for example, despite all its glass and technology can not deny the materiality of the materials that it was created with: canvas and oil paint are materials that are always changing. It is at this beginning that we wish to highlight our given material properties and create an understanding of the temporary nature of visual artworks by condensing the performance time to coincide with the average human life-span. This is a time period where growth and change can be easily observed and appreciated without loosing the attention span of a given media saturated area (give the area is America " a population that has a different sense of time than many other sociological entities because of increased 'speed').
Our artworks then, tend to be performed over a one-month period: enough time to observe the changes that take place and enough time to make connections with historical events that take place during that time period. For our ORG project for example, we brewed beer and allowed it to ferment and age for one month. The creation and bottling of the beer and the eventual opening and drinking of the beer were both historical events that took place in the time-line and life-span of the materials that were in the beers conception.
It is these specific 'events' and the space and changes that take place in between that we consider the actual 'artwork'. The visual aesthetics that the gallery goer views and witnesses is secondary. Its is only a manipulation, a gimmick, a visual trick of pop-culture to hopefully draw a participant into a deeper forum for conversation.
In a way there is something to be ashamed about this conscious trickery. It seems that only the educationally privileged have this ability for visual propaganda creation. The cleverness in the image is one that separates the 'artist' from the viewer, a relationship that we as artists have never been comfortable with. Digital imagery has only added to this confusion because the image now has the power to construct the reality itself. We now can not distinguish between something that might have happened and has been documented and something that has completely been constructed in the computer. A blind synthesis, a total simulacrum.
We demonstrate this in our 'Excavate' exhibition by combining and mixing both the analog and digital technologies. It becomes almost impossible to distinguish between the two " what is doing what? What sounds are being made by what instrument? Adding to the confusion is the similarities between the internal OR constructed environment of the gallery and the 'natural' or outside environment. The 'chirping' sounds could very well be crickets outside... OR synthesizers inside! A complete manipulation of the participant. A creation of confusion and disorientation that empowers the installations creators " which in this case is us!
It is odd and often paradoxical how 'artists' have this ability to experiment with new technologies that eventually become appropriated by others to empower themselves with the language of the visual. Does this mean there is some artistic involvement in the creating of war simulation video games used to train troops in the machinery and acts of warfare? It seems as though any 'artistic' action that is legit in terms of its creation by an 'artist' can have the adverse side effect of re-appropriation of the powerful to be inserted into the discourse for hierarchical control over particular unsuspecting bodies of populations.
Even critical research and philosophical creations can have the opposite affects of their original intentions. For example, the IDF (Isreali Defense Force) has been using the philosophies of Deleuze to understand the decentralization and non-linear dynamic of its present enemies.
But what really stands out for us (and what differentiates between what we think of when we hear 'art' or 'artist' and what an 'artist' might DO or how an 'artwork' evolves) is the difference between what "IS" and how various things (materials, social bodies, etc) have relationships to each other. We once took a very incredible course with the Deleuzian thinker Manuel Delanda in the architecture department at Columbia University. Never have we heard more interesting things that were directly related to our work and the concepts that we were interested in. In his course he talked about how we have a tendency to want to always describe what something 'IS'. When we do this we are trying to get at the 'essence' of something. What IS this glass? What IS this car? What IS god? What IS art? When we ask what something IS we philosophically pull away from materialism and toward the realm of ideology. What something IS to one group of people or individual can be completely different from what another group of people or an individual might think that same thing IS. Trying to get at an 'essence' of something is trying to describe what something IS and therefore falls to the path of ideology. Ideologies can be dangerous when they conflict OR groups or individuals can not agree on what something IS. The dominant ideology (whoever has the most allocated resources be it technological, intellectual, population) will tend to oppress those that do not agree with what IS or what IS NOT.
It is from this rational that we have become interested less in what something IS (What IS art? IS it art?) and more interested in the complex relationships BETWEEN things (art, culture, technology). It is in these relationships that there is an opportunity open for interesting analysis, ideas and connections to form. We prefer, as in Deleuze, the use of the word AND - as in art AND culture, technology AND ecologies, culture AND social bodies.
In terms of our art projects then we are much less concerned whether it IS or IS NOT this or that as it resides in the gallery. It is much more appropriate to understand what we do in turns of beginning AND end, interactions AND social bodies, electronic data AND soil ecologies, labor AND energy.
To this point the 'artwork' becomes less than the existence of the 'image' for us - the manipulated environment, the cleverness of the 'creators' - but much more the various processes and ecologies that take place within a given period of time (the energy produced and consumed, the social involvement, the direct actions).
With this I would like to say that we still have a very hard time thinking strictly with relationships and not trying to get at what something IS. Trying to understand the essence of something is one of the foundations of western thought. The tendency is not easily broken and we very often (embarrassingly) fall back on IS concepts. As artists we have been institutionally educated to try to understand what art IS and very often try!! When writing we often use punctuation marks around the word 'art' to understand it in terms of what history has told us it is " although we often agree that there is no difference between a masterpiece at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a simple random stone on the edge of a lake. OR that art has no materiality to it but instead is action based as in 'micro-production' or the movement of bodies (social, geographical etc).
The most we can do is talk about the things that we thought about as the project was being conceived, as it was being performed and after the installation has come to an end. This can take a number of different directions and just like our concept of 'artwork' is a lengthy process that contains no beginnings or ends but only critical events that emerge and disappear in semi-random, inter-connected osculations.
Connected Observations
There are ecologies of growth as in the wheat growing and social ecologies where people interact with the installation - both the ecological system (growing wheat) and the electronic computer system. The energy that was present in the wheat seed and in the extracted soil was a vital energy that maintained the sprouting and the growing of the sowed wheat seed. It gave life and with the help of water and sun energy, maintained life. It changed and evolved over time.
What was particularly interesting was the edges where the dirt and the concrete met " where two systems collided OR were juxtaposed against each other. This 'edge effect' was created the result of two seemingly opposing systems touching. One was the sterility of the gallery environment (concrete, white walls) and the other a fabricated ecosystem. The edge, as the product of this collision, became a dry area where water moisture could not be retained in the soil and wheat could not spout nor grow. In some areas where the soils were a little deeper the wheat did sprout but quickly wilted and dried.
Are ideas and thoughts not similar? Where two seemingly opposing concepts meet is there not sometimes an adverse 'edge effect' that is created. Where any two ecological systems come in contact with each other there is going to be a noticeable edge to where those two systems meet.
Many times we are much more interested in these two large forces rather than what is created by their contact. An edge of moisture-less and unfertile soil is much less interesting that these large events that create that condition by there interactions. Understanding the 'gallery' as a venue OR a pile of dirt for participant interaction and wheat growing is what becomes immediately apparent when one first enters the given venue. BUT we want to make a point that no matter how simple and insignificant the 'edge effect' that is created by these interactions is, there is much more to look deeper into than just and unwanted or undesirable consequence of this engagement.
We bring this to our readers attention because this edge is something that is very often over-looked not only in art systems but in other discourses and disciplines " especially institutional disciplinary structures. There is always an edge to even the most subtlety different subjective and/or objective thoughts and ideas. There is always going to be a personal subjectivity involved in created discourse. This is a call for instead of trying to understand the differences between various methods as in terms of what those methods ARE or what the discourse under speculation IS to instead look at the effect that is generated at the 'edge' of those two various subjectivities, discourses, pedagogies, theories etc. We believe that it is inn this 'effect' that we can begin to understand the AND: soil AND gallery, soil AND pedagogy, gallery AND pedagogy, soil AND critical analysis.
In terms of the given gallery project (Excavate) this 'edge-effect' may be very subtle and on the surface really just not that interesting for analysis YET the edge has many complexities that have yet to be understood. The edge symbolizes the relationships that emerge though varying ecologies of discourse. The sociologist Randel Collins makes reference to these edge effects in his book "A global Theory of Intellectual Networks". He is interested in much less the theories of individuals them selfs than the theories that arise and emerge from the dynamics of intellectual group interactions. The critical theories of the Frankfurt School, for example, could not have emerged without the environmental and ecological conditions that gave rise to there theories. The histories of thoughts that they relied upon (Hegal, Marx), the political conditions that were emerging at the time of their most influential writings, even the geographies (Germany, Columbia University) and urban dynamics were influential in the creations of their thoughts. Media also (especially in the twentieth century) became an important attribute because of the 'speed' inn which information could travel and accessed AND also the type of media information available contributed to these theoretical emergences!
To return to our present installation, we are really interested in the conditions that give rise to ideas, ecologies etc " the 'edges' of discourse AND not the discourse itself (although this must be thought of in reference to the edges and have obvious various importance). We say this because 'edge' analysis has been lacking comparatively to the tendency to define what something either IS or IS NOT. The 'edge' as junction therefore must be emphasized.
We have found that there is a triangulation between the social or human, the ecological and the electronic. This installation, to us, demonstrates via a micro-system (although very simply) the relations we have with the everyday. In this case we DO see the everyday as an 'edge' that exists between various events. Events that can easily be pinpointed as significant: though observation, through history etc. But these events, just as in the everyday, have edges of time (both) long and short that seldom get recognized in the wake of 'the significant'.
The everyday contains the revolution within. Simple actions, when cumulative within populations can have very significant results. It seems insignificant when an individual chooses to consume a product (cultural product, physical product such as food) rather than become the creator of a product even at the micro level (growing backyard tomatoes). Yet accumulative results can have extremely far reaching results even at the most simplest and basic of actions.
Art 'events' fall to the same fate. When the cleverness of the image prevails and a gap becomes apparent between the image creator and the image consumers then the creative spirit inherent in all community based or social organizations become reliant upon the 'expert' of image manipulation: the image 'firm' who has the resources for creating the 'professional' image that we all must accept as something to be consumed. It is in this fate that some feel that such professional results could never be achieved in a DIY (do-it-yourself) manner so the only alternative is to consume what someone else has created.
It is a falsity for the theoretician, the art historian, educator etc. to to place such emphasis on these significant events because that empowers the event and the event creator over that of the everyday life of groups or individuals. Why place such emphasis on the 'event' of the Whitney Biennial and image manipulators OR experts involved (the clever folk that create novelty and deception) and miss the simple actions of the everyday that have far more reaching significance as an artistic discourse.
What do the actions of digging the ground have to do with the creation of a revolution of the everyday? Can there be an art discourse surrounding the actions of tilling the soil? Can there be an artistic discourse on the simplicity of revitalization of an expended resource (such as the composting of kitchen scraps)?
There is not much glory in thinking about such things because actions such as this do not seem to be very 'special' for anyone to do. What we are asking is the question: Why does an artistic discourse miss the circumstances of the daily routine? An can a recognition of such an art discourse have much farther reacting consequences?
We admit, we like to see art in books! Art books! We like to see clever depictions via installation, painting, video and imagery. We enjoy going to galleries and see what 'art' is out there. The Biennials are fun!!! They are social and they are interesting! What we are trying to emphasis though is the edges that take place between these events, the processes that give rise to them. The simple actions that the everyday produce that can have far reaching results, revolutionary results! In our installation what are the differences between removing the soil by hand and having the soil removed by machine?
The energy expended by the labor of the human hand is a product of what that individual consumed over the past few days: and even farther reaching in what had been consumed in a life span. Where was this energy (food and drink) produced? How was it produced? Was it a local production, regional, national, global? It is interesting to trace the relationships of the human body to that of what they ingest. Throughout a lifetime this can grow to be very complicated (in terms of an urban dweller) who may consume products that contains materials accumulated over the span of the globe)! OR very simple such as always having a local food OR energy source such as many Amish populations, nomadic or tribal peoples, or organic farmers " to give some examples.
Do the way we consume food as an energy source contain hidden meanings and associations? Are there everyday actions that can be altered that create new networks of interactive and food consumption that can have from small to large scale ramifications?
If the soil was removed by machine then we can also trace the energy consumed in both a complicated and/or simple way depending on the machinery and the fuel that was used. The machinery itself has a history " lines of flight, a mechanic phylum that we can trace to its eventual emergence as a technology and as a machine for local soil removal. The fuel used has a different historical significance such as that of gasoline that must be extracted from the earth and refined for use OR that of vegetable oil (for use in diesel engines) that can be created and used from and on the land that it was generated.
Machines and machine parts often come from various resources and factories around the world and are gathered together in one location for assembly. The resources and the materials that are used for the creation of the parts also come from various areas in geologically rich areas where minerals and ores are extracted and refined. There is also a rich history to these machines that start with the most simplest parts and pieces (such as the wheel or the screw): make their way toward each other as time progresses (with the help of human assembles and inventors) to emerge in various technological forms.
Fuel is a stored energy that these machines must rely upon just as the organic machinery of our bodies use. the stored energy in food products. Fuel, as mentioned above, can be derived from oil extracted from far under the earth, from the sun, from oils that are 'grown' (such as vegetable oil), radioactive substances etc. A fuel is a stored energy. Any material that has energy has the possibility of being utilized as a fuel. Many technologies have not yet emerged that would allow any material that has energy to be used for such.
It is through these tracings that we find the educational and critical significance of the event that took place: in this instance it is the installation and the excavation. It is not enough to try to understand the installation as it IS but instead we find it much more interesting to discover the pedagogy behind the actions that took place and all the various aspects and histories of the materials and social bodies that were involved. An art pedagogy that lies at the edges of interactions between significant events.
Therefore, with the relationships to the 'labor' involved, we are interested in the energy produced and consumed by the various elements and the many histories involved in these energy productions and consumptions.
As far as the installation goes, at least in our research and investigations, conceptually we were interested in keeping the micro-system we produced as tight as possible; as self-sustaining and autonomous as possible to maximize our understandings by minimizing the complexities of the materials involved. For example, most of the soil excavation as well as the gallery placement was done by hand so we know that energy for the most part came from the food we consumed (and during this installation much of the food was from our backyard garden). Using local soil that has a rich geographical history (moved and deposited by glaciers). Using wheat seed from a local seed supplyer and using water from the art park well.
It is in these actions (as simple as they may seem) and conscious use of local media that we find is critically significant. It is artistic action on the 'edge' of gallery proposal and resulting installation that we find most interesting as a work of at and research. An artistic action that contains far more implications for critical awareness and pedagogy than the single 'static' image that is created and promoted (such as the still image of the installation itself that exists on the web).
As far as the computer technologies are concerned that were used to create an 'interactive experience' for the participants I have a few questions and implications to ourself as a result of engaging with these technological. Is such technological use nothing but a gimmick? Is there a critical significance to using interactive computer technologies other than to gain a participants attention? Do we want participants to feel comfortable in our self-contained, manipulated world? Do we want them to be happy? Did we add electronics to our installation just to show how clever we were in the creation and manipulation of computer technologies? Can we use these computer technologies in future exhibitions more critically and more educationally?
To quickly answer these questions that i have no intention of going into great detail on we will begin with this: there always must be a starting point at learning something new. This, we are fully aware of. We have been investigating ecologies of growth and the manipulation of organic materials in many installations and art projects for several years now. We feel that we have a grip on the concepts and conceptual nature of there uses and the significance that we aren't interested in their use.
That said, this is our first experimentations with participants and our installed materials (the soil moisture sensor) interacting with computer technologies. In a way, ill admit, we utilized interactive computer technologies just to actually see if we COULD do it! Whether there is the same interesting and critical connections that can be made such as we have philosophically done in our other installations " only time can tell. BUT I can safely say that we are very interested in continuing our experiments, so to create more critically aware pedagogical works in the future is more that likely.
Such works may use real time data to monitor changing and evolving environmental changes that could include the monitoring of environmental 'toxins' or monitoring the local growing conditions. Data could be used in remote locations to bring about community awareness and pedagogy of impending environmental disasters or the value and significance of actions of the everyday.
Alternative Description
Outside, on the hill of the art park, we will excavate 2, 5"x20" rectangles of topsoil, exposing the bedrock (to expose the "stone hill"). The soil will be transferred into the exhibition space of the old ceramics studio where it will be placed on the floor (over heavy plastic sheeting). The soil will have a pathway wandering throughout it (reminiscent of Japanese Stroll Gardens). The pathway will consist of hypertufa stepping-stones fitted with sensors to register the weight of gallery visitors who stroll the path. Each stepping-stone will be approximately 3 inches tall and 12 inches wide. When a sensing stone registers the weight of a participant, a low tone will sound in the adjacent gallery, emitted from a Leslie speaker placed in the room. On both sides of the pathway, planted in the soil, will be a crop of rye and vetch. These two crops are planted together as green manures in sustainable agriculture, and rely on each other for fullest benefit to the soil. Gallery visitors will have the option of watering the vegetation, which will also be monitored by sensors reading the water content of the soil. Dry soil will emit a constant audio tone, wetter soil a different tone, saturated soil yet another tone. The tone will be combined with the tones of the sensing-stones resulting in an immersive audio environment.
In addition to the audio signals sent from gallery 2, gallery 1 (the white space) will be equipped with "documentation" of the excavation process (photos and videos). The documentation will be exhibited on long "kiosks" about waist high. Part of the white space may be partitioned off to exhibit a wall-sized video installation. Also included may be a photo exhibit on the walls (shot by Michelle Grimm), creating another layer of information.
Aims of Show: To instill in gallery viewers, volunteer participants and artists a sense of collaboration with each other and the art park. They would leave the exhibit with an understanding of how community actions are constructed, and how they can be combined with expressive and artistic pursuits.
To involve gallery viewers in an action-based artwork, that differs from their previous traditional "pure aesthetic", passive, observational relationships with physical artworks.
To give audiences a chance to become involved in the caretaking of plants, while experiencing a warm, human-centered technological environment.
To explore solutions to environmental salience by introducing action-based experiences to willing participants.
]]>markCoHabit: Cooperative Networks and Ecologies2008-07-26T11:10:00-07:002006-10-14T08:38:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.3001.22.05
An artistic inquiry into sustainable systems and interactive, architectural collaborations.
In collaboration with 'socialmediagroup', we disassembled a depression-era fruit barn in upstate New York - transporting the materials to Manhattan - to mill small building blocks for gallery goers to utilize as miniature collaborative structures. This is the third installment in the series "eco-works" begun in 2003.
An artistic inquiry into sustainable systems and interactive, architectural collaborations.
In collaboration with 'socialmediagroup', we disassembled a depression-era fruit barn in upstate New York - transporting the materials to Manhattan - to mill small building blocks for gallery goers to utilize as miniature collaborative structures. This is the third installment in the series "eco-works" begun in 2003.CoHabit Gallery Installation
What kind of practices will motivate environmental concern, and how will this concern then reduce instances of environmental salience in American society? What events can urge one to adopt an ecological/environmental worldview, and then to act according to this worldview? How is physical space manipulated to fulfill the needs of human endeavors and also to ensure the ability of the land to regenerate itself and also allow the regeneration of other species that rely on that land for habitation? How do we cohabit this space? How is art involved in this conversation?
For questions resulting from urban sprawl, emptying city centers and urban decay, we produced the collaborative interactive show, "Cohabit". We seek to bring this show to Rochester venues to encourage in gallery-viewers a sense of community action, development & planning, and to overcome the pursuits of a modernist art program that glorifies the aesthetic object and reduces the role of the community to mere spectator.
Following the sale of one artist"s childhood land in a Rochester suburb to a development company (who plans to build a track of high-cost houses), "Cohabit" developed in response to a great personal loss, and the need to explore how artists and the community can work as creative groups to question and experiment within the boundaries of urban planning, ecological worldviews, and interactivity.
The project left conception and began in full with the collaborative tear-down of the artist"s barn in the "sold" portion of backyard, the structure called "shed" by the family, having a rich past as "Fruit Processing Area" of past inhabitants, and then as "Workshop" of the artist"s deceased father.
The teardown was performed by the artist and his partner and wife, and by several friends who traveled from New York City to take part in the action. It was thoroughly documented with video, and this video was then edited, and became a portion of the exhibit as it was displayed on two small lcd monitors.
The wood from the barn was brought to a studio in Manhattan where it was transformed from planks into over a thousand wood blocks of various size and shape. These blocks were used in the gallery as building blocks for the creation of any structure that gallery visitors could create with them. During the course of the exhibit these structures were formed and reformed by a variety of participants of all ages.
A hundred fruit baskets taken from the barn and filled with dirt from the artist"s rooftop garden and planted with hard red spring wheat (that had sprouted and grown to over 3 inches by the show"s opening night) joined the blocks as objects ready to be manipulated by the audience. The audience also watered these baskets using squirt bottles provided in one corner of the installation.
The blocks and baskets were juxtaposed around mounds of growing wheat meant to act as natural landscapes we all must develop within. Some participants "built" on top of these growing mounds while others placed their structures alongside of them. These were also watered daily by the artists and assistants.
On the wall were the words "Close" and "remote" spelled in large aluminum letters found on a construction job site.
Built into the space was a 152"x 125" screen "wall" where edited video of rural, urban and untouched environments were projected onto. The video was collected from a number of sources and participants, and was truly global as footage was coming from rural and urban New York, Barbados, France, and other locations. The video was meant to act as stimuli or "location" for one to begin thinking from.
It was interesting to note that, despite the artist statement on the wall, it was necessary to paint instructions on the gallery floor to "please move these objects". Once written the artists were amazed by what was created by those who visited the show.
We"re our questions answered? Did we come closer to understanding how creative efforts might shape the development of a landscape? Did our viewers enjoy taking part in a collaborative and creative endeavor that was meant to act as stimuli for questioning development patterns? How can this show be managed to encourage the dialogue sought?
The show encouraged the artists to delve deeper into urban (and suburban) development, and to find other venues to exhibit this show within. It was widely enjoyed by those who visited the space, and its collaborative nature included show installers, cleanup crew, video artists, shed deconstructors, reviewers and audience who wandered upon a shared experience in building and creating a shared space.
Art that is meant to be touched- then destroyed and rebuilt again.
]]>markORG: Reaping the White Walls2008-07-26T11:12:00-07:002006-10-14T08:37:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.2909.29.2004
An art and biology show. Macy Gallery at Columbia University.
In collaboration with 'socialmediagroup', we baked bread and brewed beer for gallery opening participants to eat and drink. This is the second installment in the series "eco-works" begun in 2003.
An art and biology show. Macy Gallery at Columbia University.
In collaboration with 'socialmediagroup', we baked bread and brewed beer for gallery opening participants to eat and drink. This is the second installment in the series "eco-works" begun in 2003.ORG Gallery Installation
The Org exhibit in Macy Gallery at Columbia University dealt with many of the same issues present in the rooftop garden: notions of sustainability, of the visualization then actualization of a local food movement, of food patterns as resistance to the massification of homogenized American food culture. Also, we wanted to share our experience of the Sky Garden with a broader audience, to inspire them to seek out innovative ways to raise food and eat, no matter where one lives.
To become informed about contemporary food issues, we undertook a cross-disciplinary research study into practices inherent in the industrial food complex- which included genetically modified organisms, factory farming techniques and consequences, the protests surrounding the WTO and farm subsidy and trade politics of the United States and other peripheral issues. We also spent a good deal of time on the dialectics of these systems-practices that existed in defiance to the above systems of production. By spending a week on an organic farm, joining in a Community Supported Agriculture venture, shopping and eating from the farmer's markets, and researching the growing local food movement, we began to see that by taking part in direct action or critical enactments in micro-political arenas, an alternative future could be charted regardless of mass ideologies.
The Org exhibit and the subjective nature of art itself gave us an opportunity to present our findings in dynamic ways. When dealing with the creation of artworks, statements and ideas are presented non-linguistic patterns that translate into first-hand experiences had by the viewer/participant. We questioned how we might best give our audience a firsthand experience of alternative and dialectical food systems.
Of course, we had to eat.
By focusing on the local, we began researching the histories of the staple foods beer and bread- or wheat beer and sourdough bread- and how the organism of yeast produces flavors unique to each locality. Yeast became our natural spokes-organism, with wheat closely following it, and we set out to produce our own batches of wheat beer and wheat-sourdough bread to be the focus of the exhibit, which were served at the opening.
We also wanted to share our knowledge of the rooftop garden as an extremely viable way to raise food, so the exhibit included a large number of photos in a wall-based installation. To pass on the ephemeral experience of watching a garden grow, we brought the now dormant soil into the gallery and planted it with the seed of hard red spring wheat.
]]>markVirtual Real-Estate: Squatting Domains2007-01-02T09:03:00-07:002006-10-14T08:36:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.2809.02.04
Full Screen net.art websites devoted to a single Squatted Domain Name
I experimented with creating various websites that acted as single 'channels' of information (imagery, video, animation) in full screen mode that emulated a television 'portal' in a web browser. All information had various instances of 'looping' that created an indefinite 'web' instance. Sites were 'found objects' - domains that were registered yet had no content so therefore had the potential of a virtual 'squat".
Full Screen net.art websites devoted to a single Squatted Domain Name
I experimented with creating various websites that acted as single 'channels' of information (imagery, video, animation) in full screen mode that emulated a television 'portal' in a web browser. All information had various instances of 'looping' that created an indefinite 'web' instance. Sites were 'found objects' - domains that were registered yet had no content so therefore had the potential of a virtual 'squat".Squatting with Full Screen net.art Websites
Description
Current sites may or may not be present in the same form as this project initially began. Several domains were randomly registered by others via 'bulk register'. Sites sat content-less for several months. Sites were mapped to our Gentoo servers. Content played upon the given site title.
I effect sites were NOT squatted in the sense of a building that might be squatted upon without the actual owners permission. This project DID have domain owner permission to utilize the given web domains BUT it was also understood that these web domains were available temporarily and could be taken back and 're-confiscated' at anytime.
Many sites were located and mapped (25-30 in all). Below is an example of some of the more successful experiments.
Slimeballs
http://slimeballs.org/
Site was replaced with high-quality photos of 'politicians'. Photos were all full size. All photos extended past the browser window so that scrolling was nessesary. Any mouse click within the windows would randomly load another 'slimeball' image.
HappyHouseWife
http://happyhousewife.org/
Random animated lines scrolled horizontally. Pop-cultural pallette meets the psycedelic - mothers little helper.
Nine-One-One
http://nine-one-one.org/
Footage of the fall of the World Trade Center continuously looped. World Trade Center Television. On the web and full screen though the browser window.
InTheAir
http://intheair.net/
George Bush giving the middle finger to the camera on a continuous loop.
TrashBag
http://trashbag.net/
An animation of the US flag waving on a contiuous loop, full-screen in a browser window.
]]>markGuerrilla Servers: Gentoo Linux Server Project2007-01-02T09:03:00-07:002006-10-14T08:35:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.2707.02.04
Streaming Content from the Institution Guerrilla Style on Custom Gentoo Linux Servers
In collaboration with 'socialmediagroup', we built, maintained and ran our own servers without institutional authorization from the Columbia University network.
Streaming Content from the Institution Guerrilla Style on Custom Gentoo Linux Servers
In collaboration with 'socialmediagroup', we built, maintained and ran our own servers without institutional authorization from the Columbia University network.Guerrilla Servers: Gentoo Linux Server Project
The 'Gentoo Linux Server Project' was the result of a need for group and collaborative autonomy within the confines of the Academic Institutional superstructure. It became apparent to us that in order for expressive networking and server based experimentation to occur 'on the fly' we needed to bypass the bureaucratic 'Information Technology' machine that controlled a vast amount of the technological ecologies and networks through its own forced institutional protocol. Any experimentation with projects, code or networks had to be approved from the 'top-down' for purposes of 'security'.
The hierarchy in this scenario was difficult to penetrate. In order to accomplish even some of the most simplest of tasks, one had to navigate the hierarchy for project legitimacy and eventual approval/disapproval. This task could sometimes take months as emails would be exchanged and opinions on the legitimacy of the project could be expressed. Often question would arise: Why do you want to do that? Why don't you do it this way? Everyone wanted input, yet no one actually wanted to dedicate resources: labor time, expertise, hardware etc.
The artist does not work under this formula. They create and express. They help to evolve an idea and create new forms. They go from their gut to create something fresh. They experiment, they change code and hardware around - they make do with what they have.
We were not interested in the latest, fastest computer. We wanted to take what was old and figure out how to make it new again. The discarded computer as found object. The 'out of date' system as restored experimentation. the 'no budget' solution.
Why spend on the cutting edge (the newest technology) when we don't yet even understand the possibilities of 'old' technologies. Does 'free' systems such as the discarded remains of old g3's in place of expensive g5's allow for more unhindered creativity to occur? Is this an educational model for technology and technological systems? Use what we have - not what we don't have - make something new.
Below is a legitimizing statement of our 'Gentoo Linux Servers'. This was written in case we were 'caught' in the act of running illegal hidden guerrilla servers off of the institutional network. We were below the radar - but for how long? Just incase this statement was on hand......
The Gentoo Linux servers (Macintosh g3's) are running several academic
research projects for faculty, students and staff.
One of these servers exclusively runs "mailman", an open-source community listserv. One of these lists is "CSTC", an Academic Cultural Studies list that is used for communication of events such as the "Citizen Project: Bodies in Motion" hosted by Kelvin Sealey and other events, areas, subjects and discussions of interest to the over community participants including students and faculty. This list is coordinated by Professor John Broughton as well as moderated and maintained by Doctoral students Mark Grimm and Cyrille Adam.
This server, titled "papaya", runs several other lists and projects including a class list for "Intro to Art", a class taught by Kean University Adjunct Professor Mark Grimm. This list doubles as a research project component in a larger study of network pedagogy and communication in the college classroom.
Another list is the "socialmediagorup" list run for an experimental arts collective of the same name. This list discusses art, technology, politics and social theory and places them all under a "new media" lens. Participants include artist/media theorist/Professor John Broughton, artist/activist/educator/student Frank Shifreen, artist/student/Adjunct Professor Hugo Ortega, artist/student/AdjunctProfessor Jacob Roesch, artist/graphic designer Kelly Cheatle, artist/computer programmer/student/educator Daniel Rubin, artist/activist/Adjunct Professor Mark Grimm, artist/activist/educator Amy Cheatle among others.
In addition, this system also contains several other lists utilized for various discussions and research pertaining to education, theory and media run by students and faculty alike.
Our second Linux server, "watermelon", delivers web content via the apache web-server. This system contains many research projects including several electronic academic journals, personal student web pages, and spaces for web development and experimentation.
"SubjectMatters" is an online journal on media, culture and technology conceived and edited by Professor John Broughton. It is rapidly being developed by several of his students and plans to go "live" by mid winter.
In addition to this we also host several students research projects in the visual arts such as Frank Shifreen's "thedigitalmuseum.com" which documents the course of Franks artistic progress through organizing, curating and his own personal art shows. It will be used in his dissertation as an example of democratic "electronic" space, and the ability to use images as a global mechanism for activism, art and change. Several projects such as the "Anti-war Poster Show" held in Macy Gallery of last year, and "Anti-War Posters At the World Social Forum" in Mumbia, India that had an attendance of several hundred thousand is completely documented and hosted on him
site.
Another site that is in development is for a large upcoming (spring 2005) conference conducted and organized by student Cyrille Adams. This site will house video, audio and accompanying documentation from this conference that will be attended by keynote speaker and prominent critical theorist Douglas Kellner as well as New York University Professor and scholar Stanley Aronowitz. An interactive forum that is currently under development and written in PHP will also accompany the site for conversation and participation.
We also run several student pages on this server that contain artist portfolios, teacher portfolios, resumes and curriculum vitale's.
Our third g3 Gentoo Linux server has been designated as completely experimental hosting many different artist projects, group projects, open-source development projects, and other media such as audio and video. This server has been used primarily as the "sandbox" for our community development team of artists, theorists, and programmers.
We feel that its eventual use will evolve as projects and team deployment become more and more complicated as time goes on. This server is necessary for experimental purposes that proceeds final publishing.
Watermelon - This server was home to several artist websites and pportfolio as well as this site 'socialmediagroup.org':
• frank shifreen
• jacob roesch
• mark edward grimm
• amy catherine cheatle
• brett virmalo
• socialmediagroup.org
• socialmediagroup.com
• subjectmatters.org
Papaya - this server ran several of our mailinglists including our own mailing list for 'socialmediagroup' and the Teachers College 'Cultural Studies' group mailing list.
• Papaya Mailing Lists
Rhubarb - this server ran many experimental projects including net.art, wiki's, forums and experimental media. Many of these site may be inactive do to a constant rotation of experimental ideas.
• artoftheinsane.net
• artzglobal.net
• artopolis.org
• inthewires.com
• intheair.net
• nine-one-one.org
• hatedell.org
• sqwump.com
• sporble.com
• dionysic.com
• imapic.com
• inthepod.com
• artlaboratory.net
• slimeballs.org
• panarts.net
• iamthat.com
• smurb.com
• thedigitalmuseum.org
• thedigitalmuseum.net
• thedigitalmuseum.com
• mythus.net
• pixelocity.org
• inthevoid.org
• chitwit.com
• sexpixels.net
• voided.net
• imuri.com
• niceplacetovisit.net
• nohoarts.com
• bleepbleep.com
• trashbag.net
• autobiographical.net
• gottohavethat.com
• hereincyberspace.com
• shamansdream.com
• weartheweb.com
]]>markRooftop Guerrilla Gardening: SkyGarden2007-01-02T09:04:00-07:002006-10-14T08:25:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.2603.18.2004
A Guerrilla Gardening Research Experiment in the Manhattan Urban Terrain.
In collaboration with 'socialmediagroup', we grew a garden on the roof of an 11 story building in upper Manhattan without authorization. This is the first installment in the series "eco-works" begun in 2003.
A Guerrilla Gardening Research Experiment in the Manhattan Urban Terrain.
In collaboration with 'socialmediagroup', we grew a garden on the roof of an 11 story building in upper Manhattan without authorization. This is the first installment in the series "eco-works" begun in 2003.Rooftop Guerrilla Gardening: SkyGarden
It is estimated that in the year 2015, 55 percent of the world’s population will live in urban areas. In some regions, such as Europe, North America and Latin America, over three-quarters of the population is already urban . As cities have developed, they have pushed agricultural land further and further from their boundaries. Agricultural systems are increasingly owned by open-loop agribusiness corporations who are focused more on the bottom line than on planetary or individual health, and rely on the use of fossil fuels, chemical “solutions” to land driven infertile through overproduction, genetically engineered crops, and undocumented and unprotected migrant laborers. Small-scale farms are diminishing leaving communities struggling to develop local economies, and those who remain on the land often need to work off the farm to keep the farm alive.
In response to growing urban populations, should urban centers involve themselves in issues of food production? Cities such as New York rely on importing fresh food from neighboring farms. Yet these cities have shown incredible yield results and social benefits from urban gardening initiatives. Additionally, following September 11, 2001 when New Yorkers found themselves isolated from the rest of the country as bridges and tunnels were closed to in and out-going traffic, is there more of a reason for cities to increase their self-sufficiency and food security?
We began answering these questions by experimenting with methods of urban gardening via architecture, crossing the boundaries of the built environment with growing material as we gardened seventy feet above the ground on a roof of Columbia University. Sky gardens, or greenroofs, have become more and more frequent in cities across the world as local governments, developers and individuals become educated to their ecological benefits. Greenroofs, as part of sustainable building projects, have been gaining support in urban areas such as New York, Toronto and Chicago, and greenroof organizations show initiatives are planned for hundreds of others (see greenroofs.com).
Roofs built to hold soil and plantings are noted to have the ability to filter and clean rain water runoff, to act as sinks for carbon dioxide, reduce summer temperatures elevated through the urban heat shield, and reduce energy costs for building inhabitants by decreasing the building temperature in summer and increasing it in winter (Empey, 2001 available online at http://www.cityfarmer.org).
Sky gardens have begun to focus on the possibilities of raising crops on the roof to feed citizens; nowhere has farming on rooftops been more successful than in Cuba, where creative self-sufficiency has proven valuable for survival.
We formulated the question: Can city-dwellers to take matters of food production into their own hands, even without a claim to land? How would we, as artists and educators approach the issue and merge two seemingly opposing landscapes into the human endeavor of producing food?
As both winter and our theoretical research drew to a close, we began enacting our own urban gardening initiative. Carting hundreds of pounds of soil up onto the roof, as guerilla gardeners , we installed a composting system and collected the fruit and vegetable scraps of friends to begin creating our own on-location soil. We rigged an irrigation system by attaching a chain of garden hoses to a near-by faucet, and found a group of like-minded individuals prepared to assist in tending to the plantings and running recon hose missions. We built beds to hold the soil, and planted vegetables and flowers.
After a few weeks passed and the plants began to fill out their beds, we began getting compliments from other roof-users, namely the union workers of the university. Within a few months we were harvesting leafy greens and carrots, and visiting the garden more and more for enjoyment and personal reasons.
Before we knew it, our first growing season was coming to a close, and it was time to put the garden to bed. We deemed the garden so successful we planned an even greater crop for year two.
During the second year of the rooftop garden, we were still gardening without the approval or permission of the university, yet we now had a following of staff, professors, and fellow students who frequented the space. The uses of the garden were expanding beyond that of food production, as we came to find that a nearby on-campus photography studio was utilizing the garden for aesthetic purposes. As the photo instructor informed us, more than half the class had submitted photos of the garden for their critique.
We expanded during this year by importing trees into the garden and experimenting with hydroponics systems to great success. As year two drew to a close and we were about to put the garden to bed, a random fire broke out near the garden. When NYFD found out we had installed a rooftop garden in a public area without consideration of the roof’s load capacity, they demanded us to remove it immediately or be subject to steep fines, and the experiment came to its end.
Though we felt the experiment had its successes, we note that more efficient watering systems needed to be developed and we also would recommend finding a lighter-weight soil. We kept containers to easily-carried sizes that could be dismantled and stored indoors during winter so snow load did not increase the weight on the rooftop. Had we consulted an engineer, we might have been able to come to a definite load capacity, and left the containers up year-round.
We had documented the project and decided to use this documentation in an art exhibit within the university gallery. The garden was thus reborn in a way within an artist’s space, its properties exhibited in the ordinary aesthetic language of still photography, video, installation and sculpture, and in the unordinary language of home-brewed beer and sourdough bread.
]]>markNYC Anti-War Protests: Art & Actions2007-01-02T09:04:00-07:002006-10-14T08:23:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.2505.10.2003
Ongoing Project Documenting Anti-War/Activistic Actions and Interactions in NYC since 09.11.01
In collaboration with 'socialmediagroup', we documented immediate political events after the collapse of the World Trade Center and leading up to the Iraq war.
Ongoing Project Documenting Anti-War/Activistic Actions and Interactions in NYC since 09.11.01
In collaboration with 'socialmediagroup', we documented immediate political events after the collapse of the World Trade Center and leading up to the Iraq war.NYC Anti-War Protests: Art & Actions
Recently, with the continuing availability of powerful technologies, the American masses have had the undeniable opportunity to become participant observers, documenters and distributors of their own human thoughts and experiences, and also 'information warriors' in global battles against vast state and corporate infrastructures. With inexpensive still and moving cameras in hand, and digital culture and technology within the intellectual grasp, these 'real-time' warriors are witness to overly prevalent forces known to 'limit the potential of the people' (Chomsky 2002). They have been given the opportunity to use the same tools (digital camera, laptop, Wi-Fi) that the mainstream media now use in 'embedded' situations as well as the power of information distribution. In the hands of global citizens, new and available technologies present the opportunity to tell personal and shared narratives to initiate the promotion of social and political justice through visual means (Stephen 2003).
By 'going-native' and becoming participants within some of these dynamic formations, we personally witnessed that some sub-cultural resistant groups and collectives (from traditionally organized to anarchistic self-organized) have 'flipped the script' or folded over the medium of digitized information in direct opposition to the ideologies of their corporate manufacturers (who solely rely on the mechanism of the culture-industries to remain progressively stable), while concurrently seeking what Hakim Bey would call, 'Temporary Autonomous Zones' (1985).
As this has been defined, "the TAZ is like an uprising that does not engage directly with the State, a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/else when, before the State can crush it." (Bey 1985: 99). Among these sub-particle, micro-political structural systems is a strengthening alternative media and the wide distribution methods of shared ideas and experiences that the mainstream press has the inability to embrace in full . Such emergent systems of recording, editing (or non-editing), and distribution combined with grassroots and mainstream screenings of independent documentaries, internet-streaming, art exhibitions and experimental television have become a contemporary form of tactical hegemonic disturbance. This disruption has become a method of resistance against state, corporate and institutionalized power structures.
Demonstrative interruptions in opposition to the state and corporate infrastructures is not unlike Nathan Martin's idea of critical deviant practice, where, "...the deviant member should be supported in an attempt to establish a reciprocal system or network or action that addresses the fault they observe" (Martin 2004). Support for such practice is generated in the micro-networks of individuals and group actions, acting simultaneously in critical collaborative practice. This practice is identified in the growing use and 'shared' nature of the digital video activist as was personally witnessed during the Republican Convention demonstrators of 2004.
Nevertheless, we often must begin a march without knowing when or where it will actually terminate.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1986: 128)
Like Martin Luther King Jr., we began this study without knowing where it might lead. We had inclinations into the purposes and uses of digital technology within the social spheres through our own experiences with the medium, and some theoretical readings shaping a field of study into resistance and technology. Our study of the digital activistic culture surrounding the protest movements of 2003-2004, including the globally massive Stop the Invasion of Iraq campaign, and its local cousin, the Say No to the RNC campaign, grew from our personal interest in video activism and our professional interests in the artistic production of video media as a pedagogical tool for public education. In the desire to locate our identities in alternative systems that are occupied outside of the conventional American status quo and hierarchy of power systems, we saw an opportunity to study a subject (video activism) that we felt was frequently overlooked within institutional environments. This was informed by our understanding that there are certain things that are not proper to say and are not proper to think in the "uniformity of ideology in the intellectual culture" (Chomsky 2002: 112).
In direct participatory action and as contributing observers we engaged in a form of 'critical action research', where research is undertaken by those personally involved in certain social situations, in order to better understand these circumstances and their own "social or educational practices" (Morrow 1994: 319; Kemmis and McTaggart 1988: 5). As participant-observers, our collection of ethnographic footage ultimately became a methodological tool for an interdisciplinary analysis of certain events and structures that we locate within various cross-disciplinary texts and theories. These consist of studies in network and media theory (including radical alternative media studies), Critical Theory as research method and social theory, the widening field of Cultural Studies, and Deluezian notions of ryhzomatic, self-organizing networks.
We used Critical Theory, as even 70 years after the development of the Frankfurt School it "retains its ability to disrupt and challenge the status quo" (Kincheloe and McLaren year? :260) Critical Theory is involved in struggles for social change, and seeks the unification of theory and practice (Kellner, Critical theory and the crisis of social theory, :8). We too sought to unite digital media and social network theory with video practice, and analyze their strengths for social justice issues. For instance, we explored techno-theory claims that investigate the perimeters of new technological boundaries, to gauge their usefulness for individual liberation, plurality of message, and democratic participation. Often these parameters involve the "misuse" of new technologies (Dery 1996). Radical videotaping and publication, especially of footage where police officers used great force to dominate peaceful protestors, becomes an activity that expands the boundaries of socially-transformative technological practices.
Critical Theory is also concerned with instances of domination, as "complex notion[s] based on a concern with the ways social relations also mediate power relations to create various forms of alienation and inhibit the realization of human possibilities" (Morrow 1994:10). As our experiences with this protest movement increased over time, we began to understand that though the protests were strong in number (over 250,000 people marching in NYC streets) they were not strong enough to persuade the government to dismiss their war plans- or even to persuade NYC's mayor not to endorse the Republican Agenda. We were also concerned with the lack of news coverage of these protests, feeling that here was an instance of the media inhibiting the realization of the protest's message(s) by refusing to acknowledge it/them. We sought to use the self-publication possibilities inherent in digital technologies to tell the story of those who were actively engaged in the democratic process, and resisting the mandate of war and conceptualizations of power.
Though both optimistic and pessimistic schools of thought exist in relation to the democratic uses of technology for social and individual liberation, we chose to employ the discourses of critical theory and technology as a non-objective process that is utilized by individuals for good or harm.
From a critical theorist perspective, the non-objectivity of technology has been well examined in many texts over the past 70 years, most notably by the Frankfurt School when it "rejects the neutrality of technology" (Morrow 1994: 282). They have argued that "technology is not a thing in the ordinary sense of the term, but an "ambivalent" process of the development suspended between two possibilities (our emphasis)" (Feenberg 1991: 14). With this in mind, our investigation into the opportunities or detriments of digital video processes in its relation to the social and political sphere began with our own working knowledge of such processes, and resulted in our understanding of the transformative effect that certain technological processes can promote.
Over the course of several months, our 'action-based research' study involved the consistent videotaping of police and demonstrator activities at several key activist events. Our primary technological tools (info-weapons) were the Panasonic DVX100A digital video camera, the Canon GL-1 digital video camera, an external omni-directional microphone, and a body tripod. Collected throughout these demonstrations was over 15 hours of video footage; this included video interviews of a number of demonstrators, as well as more organized speeches, marches, acts of civil disobedience, surprise autonomous/deviant acts, debates by civilians in the street, and other statements of highly-organized to self-organized resistance to the convergence of national right-wing ideologies in the urban center of New York City.
We found that by embedding ourselves within various movements, we had the opportunity to personally observe that members of the NY Police Force were either unable or unwilling to speak for the camera (although the police in turn had plenty of cameras for themselves ). We also worked spontaneously with the Independent Media, Lawyers Guilds, individuals involved in direct forms of action, and even the mainstream media (ABC). We had the opportunity to screen some of the footage at art shows in three cities, and distributed DVDs of material to those who had an interest in watching it.
Two real-life events sparked our initial interest in studying the uses of digital video in the culture of resistance "as a form of memory against effacement", or to defend culture against authorities in search of domination (Said 2003: 159). One of these occurrences was the witnessing and documenting of what (was perceived to be) police brutality and possible racial profiling. The second was another example of police brutality, and the subsequent sharing of the footage gathered. We provided the taped event to the Independent media to distribute, and also gave copies to Legal Aid and the Legal Observers, (two groups of volunteer legal services aiding demonstrators and bystanders caught up in sweeping arrests)
We found that the physical and digital convergence of a network of camera people, editors, writers, lawyers, bike messengers, demonstrators, chefs, farmers, and other professionals was an interdisciplinary group of energized individuals who used their strengths to create zones of autonomy where the normal rules of living are replaced with community action. Their collaborative efforts were for a common goal, and not based on financial rewards.
Media theorist Geert Lovink, who considers himself to be a radical media pragmatist, calls for the opening of a dialogue among "media activists, journalists, those who work in fashion, pop culture, visual arts, theatre, and architecture" so that an active Info-war can begin, and begin successfully (2002, 315). We found his vision to be somewhat narrow to those expected to participate, as our post-analysis of collected materials (including images, image sequences, text and sound) opens wide the notion of whom is to collaborate in combating or resisting dominant discourse in social practices.
In these protests, where slogan's such as Martin Luther King's "Injustice anywhere is Injustice everywhere" abound, we found many small organizations had come together under a larger umbrella movement of the War Protest, or those who came to protest the American agenda under the Bush administration. Some of the groups who were represented included, the Communist Voice Organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Women's Global Strike, American's Coming Together, Swing the State.ORG, United for Peace and Justice, War Resister's League, Critical Mass, Another World is Possible, various artist collectives, Families Against Bush, and the list goes on and on.
In this paper we have argued that video as a disruptive medium has the potential to create new ways of viewing and changing societal norms. As Chomsky has described, institutions inherently will not allow a mechanism to exist that will eventually lead to their own self-destruction (Wintonick, Archbar & Miquet ?). Therefore, video and the electronic image as documentary mediums must exist in non-institutionalized, independent form either working completely outside and against the institutionalized norm, or as a micro-political act of internal dissent from within: small enough to lay low under the radar, but large enough to make an eventual impact.
This model of radical video practice reconceptualizes the entire historical framework of communicative models of video technologies in the understanding that radical video does more than just promote an 'alternative' message prescribed by the same classical steps of communication discourse. As Dahlgren (1997) observes the conventional steps involved with video production and distribution: 1) in the sender of the message and the circumstances of its production methods; 2) the from and the content of the message that is distributed; 3) and the processes and impact of the receptions and consumption of that message. In contrast, radical video as a medium is more that just an alteration of the 'message' but instead the alternative message is accompanied by new networks of organizational practice that redefine the distribution, production and the audience of the medium itself.
An alternative message in this form of autonomous (working outside institutionalized structures) materializes in the social practice where the audience actually become the 'involved' over the merely informed. The educator teaches how to create knowledge over merely how to consume it. The distribution of information is technologically decentralized over information centralization; it comes from groups, collaborative and individuals rather than large institutionalized structures such as the mass-media. The audience becomes not merely the 'public' of consumers, but become the multiple points where the social production and distribution begins. This extreme democratic organizational structuring produces a multiplicity of meta-narratives and personal stories. It opens up hidden atrocities and doesn't 'edit' for a focused audience. It doesn't discriminate against information that is perceived as 'unimportant' or 'invalided'. It is radical in its organizational design and it is new very powerful medium.
]]>markArmy Men: Symbolic Plastic2007-01-02T09:04:00-07:002006-10-14T08:22:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.2403.19.03
Operation United States Freedom
214 plastic 'Army Men' were deployed in and around Manhattan in New York City. They were placed in buildings, in public and private areas, and on 'the streets". This was done the same day as the "2003 invasion of Iraq" when 214,000 United States service men and women were deployed in Iraq.
Operation United States Freedom
214 plastic 'Army Men' were deployed in and around Manhattan in New York City. They were placed in buildings, in public and private areas, and on 'the streets". This was done the same day as the "2003 invasion of Iraq" when 214,000 United States service men and women were deployed in Iraq.Operation United States Freedom
Description
Plastic 'Army Men' were purchased from a local 'dollar store' in Manhattan. On May, 19th 2003, the day that the United States coalition forces invaded the country of Iraq, 214 plastic army soldiers were placed in and around the Manhattan area. Some soldiers were placed 'on the streets' such as on top of public mailboxes, street corners and curbs. Others were placed in areas of higher educations such as in and around Columbia University and New York University. Many were placed inside university buildings as well as public buildings. Some were placed in public parks.
This was a symbolic gesture made to draw attention to a military invasion. In reaction to the invasion it was necessary to reinforce the publics perspective the is so often dominated by the spectacle of the media. Physical symbols of military power such as the placing of 'army men', even as simplistic as it seems, is a gesture of creating unavoidable situational instances where even the site of such symbols can provoke individual and group reflections.
One of the ideas was, how would it feel to the average Manhattan urbanite if New York City was invaded and under an occupied force? Can an individual artist create a symbolic action that might reflect this perspective? Can an individual artist draw attention away from the 'media machine' with physical situational objects?
Through the use of temporary artistic instances at basic levels, new conversations and dialogues are possible.
]]>markThe Long Emergency Notification System: The Thick Neck Sessions2008-06-12T09:07:00-07:002006-10-10T13:33:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.2105.04.2006
Musical experirments with electronica, computers, sequencing, filters and noise rock.
A Pro-Tools studio was built equipped with a Digi 002 rack, mixing board, computers and mic'ed instruments (drums, keys, bass guitar). The following are recordings done over a 2 year period starting in 2005. Experiments commenced with musical forms such as techno-electronica, noise rock and jam rock. Other experiments in noise and sound creation often commenced.
Musical experirments with electronica, computers, sequencing, filters and noise rock.
A Pro-Tools studio was built equipped with a Digi 002 rack, mixing board, computers and mic'ed instruments (drums, keys, bass guitar). The following are recordings done over a 2 year period starting in 2005. Experiments commenced with musical forms such as techno-electronica, noise rock and jam rock. Other experiments in noise and sound creation often commenced.The Long Emergency Notification System: The Thick Neck Sessions
right click each track and save
Description
The LENS (Long Emergency Notification System for short) was a conceptual project band that was interested in exploring the relationships between the production of culture and the political. How can music alter or influence the body politic? How can a musical collaboration between individuals create a situational arena where new interpretations and participatory creations can emerge and develop?
The idea was to create an electronic band that would step away from the traditional venue of 'the stage' to perform in and around the spectators on the floor. In this regard the band 'Lightning Bolt' was influential. (see http://laserbeast.com/) This allowed us to question and critique the use of the stage - where all who attend gaze upon in order to consume a pre-designed 'show' of imagery and sound. We felt that in order for the audience to be participatory they needed to become an integral part of the performance and at times become the performance - much like a 'rave' in this sense except with a live band instead of a DJ/VJ.
Performances became more like original artworks. There was always a 'pre-designed' beat but the structure and sounds would always differ. Because it was instrumental and improvisational, new forms, sounds and structure would emerge to form dense textures of sound - synthesized, sampled, electronic and acoustic (drums).
Electronic instruments were networked together using MIDI. Filters were synchronized to each other and to a beat clock in the computer. The drummer played to the clock and filters.
MIDI information was then sent back to the computer. Video clips were loaded in a customs developed program patch created with the visual programming software max/msp/jitter (see http://www.cycling74.com/). These video signals were triggered by the events of the live music and sent to a digital projector (or several) that were displayed on the wall(s). Performers and participants responded to the imagery. The responses changed the imagery through trigger events. The imagery then changed the performers and so on. This created an improvisational loop between the performers and the imagery that the performers were responding to.
This was very interesting to me because it helped me to understand the relationship between social organizations and computer technologies. Throughout a performance it was observable how each material (whether is be physical, biological, electronic etc) affected one another. As one change occurred in the structure the entire chain of events between all bodies would also inevitably change in reaction.
]]>markPostMarks and JaKlab: L.E.P.2007-01-02T08:51:00-07:002006-10-10T13:27:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.2011.12.2003
Experiments with recording and 'Pop' song structures
The following recordings were done over a 4-year period in NYC from around 2001 to 2004. Most recordings during this period were experimental jam sessions that resulted in fixed songs structures. Experiments included singer/songwriter material, instrumental compositions, and indie-rock structures. Many pieces have an 'un-finished' quality and are not very refined. Their 'incomplete' nature is what makes them interesting and complete. These recording DO NOT have a underlying coherence but instead are meant to experiment with different musical genres, sounds and content.
Experiments with recording and 'Pop' song structures
The following recordings were done over a 4-year period in NYC from around 2001 to 2004. Most recordings during this period were experimental jam sessions that resulted in fixed songs structures. Experiments included singer/songwriter material, instrumental compositions, and indie-rock structures. Many pieces have an 'un-finished' quality and are not very refined. Their 'incomplete' nature is what makes them interesting and complete. These recording DO NOT have a underlying coherence but instead are meant to experiment with different musical genres, sounds and content.PostMarks and JaKlab: L.E.P.
right click each track and save
Description
While this project I was back to the idea of 'amateurism'. All recording were done under very unprofessional conditions - one mic in the room, cheap microphones etc. I was also very interested in the concept of 'collaboration' and understanding how music and sounds can be a collaborative enterprise. Many various individuals participated - all from varying musical background and expertise.
What materialized was some very interesting recording and experiments. It was not that these recordings were meant to be 'unserious' but instead time was utilized in a way that increased the enjoyment of the experience rather than force a product into a preconceived mold.
Many of these recordings started with a simple idea or song structure that was built upon. Some were a product of just 'on-the-spot' song creation. There was really no one in particular lens in which we started or ended. No recordings presented here have been finalized but instead have been chosen to be displayed 'as is' giving them a characteristic of unfinished, unrefined and even sloppy.
But I think to quickly label these recording as nothing more that 'messing around' would be foolishly underestimating their purpose - to be a presentation of an exploratory process. These recording are not meant to be provocative, interesting or in many ways even listenable for that matter. What I think is important is that through these recordings and educational process can be witnessed. This is a process not of consuming a product but in the creation of processes. Whether accomplish musicianship is present or not, just though the act of creation and recording do technologies become learned and understood - music in this sense is something that is made and shared rather that something that is bought and sold.
It is this aspect of this project that I am really very interested in- the idea that students, individuals, groups have a technology at their disposal but are afraid to create and to share because the product that might be produced doesn't sound like 'what’s on the radio' or is not professional enough. Radio, television and internet technologies have molded the ears, eyes and brain to be aesthetically responsive only to those creations that are legitimized through the media industries. Prior to electronic recording and distribution, sounds and music were much more of a vital folk dance where participation in the medium was a prerequisite to it legitimacy as an art form. Now it seems like an art form is only legitimized through its consumptions rather than its participation, collaboration and production.
Throughout this project these were just a few of the observations that were made.
]]>markSounds from the Undeveloped Nature of the Human Distortion Box: Volume III2007-01-02T08:53:00-07:002006-10-10T13:08:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.1906.14.2001
Experiments in Computer Generated Noise
The third 'Volume' in the SFTUNOTHDB series I began taking 'found' sounds and manipulating them on the computer. I was really interesting in this volume in understanding what the computer could do and how audio could be manipulated in different forms. The program 'pure-data' was used in conjunction with audio samples to create this entire recording.
Experiments in Computer Generated Noise
The third 'Volume' in the SFTUNOTHDB series I began taking 'found' sounds and manipulating them on the computer. I was really interesting in this volume in understanding what the computer could do and how audio could be manipulated in different forms. The program 'pure-data' was used in conjunction with audio samples to create this entire recording.SFTUNOTHDB: Volume III
right click each track and save
Description
An unreleased recording from 1968 of a Ugandan children’s choir was digitized from reel-to-reel into the computer. The program 'Pure Data (pd)' was used to manipulate the audio with granular synthesis.
"PD (aka Pure Data) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. " (from the Pure Data website)
"Granular synthesis is a sound synthesis method that operates on the micro-sound time scale. It is often based on the same principles as sampling but often includes analog technology. The samples are not used directly however, they are split in small pieces of around 1 to 50 ms (milliseconds) in length, or the synthesized sounds are very short. These small pieces are called grains. Multiple grains may be layered on top of each other all playing at different speed, phase and volume." (from the Wikipedia entry on grandular synthesis)
With this content and these tools I was really interested in understanding the concept of time within the framework. There is a 'time' or a history of the original recording of those sounds. There is a history to the sounds that are recorded. There is a history to the individuals and groups that those sounds were created by. With this in mind I could understand the complicated networks and relationships between the sounds I had obtained and where they are historically placed.
Manipulations of these sounds brought the concepts of time and history to another level. Micro-samples of sounds became mixed. Ghostly appearances of Ugandan children began to emerge. Time itself became blurred. Sounds folded and unfolded. Sounds became textures instead of images.
]]>markSounds from the Undeveloped Nature of the Human Distortion Box: Volume II2007-01-02T08:54:00-07:002006-10-10T13:05:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.1807.19.00
Experiments in Computer Generated Noise
The second 'Volume' in the SFTUNOTHDB series explores the relationship between instruments and computer technologies. With this Volume I was interested in understanding aspects of MIDI technologies and how they related to the computer. I juxtaposed this with 'acoustic' instruments and traditional 'electronic' instruments in order to better understand the relationships between the two very different control devises for sound creation.
Experiments in Computer Generated Noise
The second 'Volume' in the SFTUNOTHDB series explores the relationship between instruments and computer technologies. With this Volume I was interested in understanding aspects of MIDI technologies and how they related to the computer. I juxtaposed this with 'acoustic' instruments and traditional 'electronic' instruments in order to better understand the relationships between the two very different control devises for sound creation.SFTUNOTHDB: Volume II
right click each track and save
Description
Every other track is comprised of a different and sometimes opposing method of creation. Several of the compositions use a MIDI keyboard as an interface to a soft-synthesizer that is entirely computer based. The soft-synth used was a 'grand-piano' sampler called 'Steinberg The Grand'. It is a sampled instrument of a real grand piano. According to 'Steinberg':
"The samples used by The Grand were recorded at 24-bit, 48kHz resolution from a Kawai concert grand in an anechoic chamber, and together make up a hefty 1.3Gb of data. Because of this, there are three CD-ROMs in the gatefold pack. The first contains the Mac and PC instrument files, along with an 18Mb audio demo, while disks two and three house the sample data."
With this I was very interested seeing the relationships between the various technologies being used and its connection to computer technology. I found it extremely interesting that anyone with a computer could create the virtual sounds that the sampler made. What was intriguing was the fact that the computer acted as a 'hub' for these sounds that were previously recorded, edited and turned into a sample bank that were originally derived from a physical, tangible instrument. The samples themselves are only reproductions of the real sounds, waveforms created. I then, in a sense, remixed these sounds. A listener is deceived in this transition because the sounds are so realistic in emulating a 'real' piano that the average listener cannot tell the virtual and the physical apart from one another.
What I also was interested in this experiment was understanding how the 'amateur' can play a role in the re-mixing and creation process. I myself have no ability in deciphering the logic of the piano instrument. At the time this was my first experience with trying to actually 'create' something with the piano. I am very interested in the 'amateur' logic and find what can be produced by the untrained in many ways much more interesting that what an accomplished pianist might create!
As far as the rest of the recordings are concerned I was also very interested in the relationship off the 'amateur' to the instrument. Most of my recordings take this as a primary feature but this was my first experiment in understanding the validity of 'lo-fi', amateur recording and realizing that it does have importance.
These recordings are concerned with acoustic instruments and how sound can be recorded and manipulated in the computer. Some of the recordings are just simple ideas - an acoustic guitar playing very slowly. Others are larger and longer pieces that record layers upon layers of information over each other. Many of the instruments (in true amateur fashion) utilize various objects around the house - pots and pans, stomping on the floor. Occasionally a drum was present to make different sounds. Cymbals, piano, and guitar were also used.
]]>markSounds from the Undeveloped Nature of the Human Distortion Box: Volume I2007-01-02T08:56:00-07:002006-10-10T13:02:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.1708.19.99
Experiments in Computer Generated Noise
The first 'Volume' in the SFTUNOTHDB series was some first innitial experiments with computer generated noise and beats. These experiments were conducted over the course of a 2 month period using basic 'WAV' editing programs. This work proved a stating point for future computer related works that span several volumes.
Experiments in Computer Generated Noise
The first 'Volume' in the SFTUNOTHDB series was some first innitial experiments with computer generated noise and beats. These experiments were conducted over the course of a 2 month period using basic 'WAV' editing programs. This work proved a stating point for future computer related works that span several volumes.SFTUNOTHDB: Volume I
right click each track and save
Description
The first section of this Volume was created by recording and manipulating computer noise. All external computer hardware (speakers, microphone, monitor) was detached except for the keyboard. The recording program was set to take a single keystroke to begin and stop recoding. Recording lasted one hour.
The resulting audio was a recording of computer noise itself. A computer recording of a computer recording the internal sounds of itself - an infinite loop recording of computer noise.
The resulting sounds were sounds random sounds of static, a recording of the computers internal electricity and mechanisms. This recording was then analyzed for content in terms of patterns or "beats". The recording was amplified and continuously stretched (zoom-in) several times in order to 'detect' interesting sounds and patterns. Chosen sounds were highlighted and saved.
In the resulting Volume, the first 30 minutes is dedicated to this computer 'static'.
In the second section, the saved 'snippets' of audio were used to create 'beats'. These small beats were only a few seconds in length. they are 'mixed' samples of short pieces of information. There is 70 three to ten second 'songs' on this Volume, all various bits of mixed information generated from computer static.
Note: I used 'filters' on the static pieces that were generated in order to create 'instruments'. These 'instruments' were then replicated throughout the experiments to give me a palette of beats and sounds to work with.
]]>markmmpc: Pink Triangle Man and Other Recordings2007-01-02T08:56:00-07:002006-10-03T19:56:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.1402.13.1999
First experiments with the traditional 'Rock' band structure.
mmpc was a first experiment with the structure of an electronic band format. The music was primarliy 'Jam Rock' based but became highly experimental with electronic improvisational formats and time progressed. 'Jams' were extended sometimes reaching an hour or so in length. Songs structures began with 'cover' songs and some originals, often evolving into experiments in controled noise. The following is our one 'album' of original music and other various recording.
First experiments with the traditional 'Rock' band structure.
mmpc was a first experiment with the structure of an electronic band format. The music was primarliy 'Jam Rock' based but became highly experimental with electronic improvisational formats and time progressed. 'Jams' were extended sometimes reaching an hour or so in length. Songs structures began with 'cover' songs and some originals, often evolving into experiments in controled noise. The following is our one 'album' of original music and other various recording.mmpc: Pink Triangle Man
right click each track and save
Description
Pink Triangle Man was recorded on cassete tape with a single room microphone in a studio environment. It was then digitized on the computer and editted. Copies were given to close friends and band members.
The name mmpc is derived from the first letter of our first names - Mark, Matt, Paul, Craig. 'Pink Triangle Man' is derived from a bass player that 'tried out' with a pink bass with a triangle on it.
]]>markAnalog Pixels: Situational Experiments with Color Field Surfaces2007-01-02T09:05:00-07:002006-10-03T11:22:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.1301.22.2001
Experiments in creating physical pixels for use in installations, interactivity and situations.
These experiments in painted surfaces and LCD photos were begun at the end of my masters work at Rochester Institute of Technology. I was interested in creating flat painted surfaces that were devoid of brush strokes and photographs that were devoid of objects for use in gallery installations and creating public situations.
Experiments in creating physical pixels for use in installations, interactivity and situations.
These experiments in painted surfaces and LCD photos were begun at the end of my masters work at Rochester Institute of Technology. I was interested in creating flat painted surfaces that were devoid of brush strokes and photographs that were devoid of objects for use in gallery installations and creating public situations.Painted Boxes
8" x 8" x 2" boxes were constructed from luan and poplar. Backing frames were nailed and glued using a butt joint. Luan was attached to the top and tacked on with finishing nails that were counter-sunk. Wood putty filled the holes and the surfaces were sanded.
Tape was then attached tot he 'edges' of the surfaces. the tape in conjunction with the surfaces created a flat pan. Acrylic Enamel paint (car paint) was then 'poured' into this 'pan'. The paint came off the surface from between 1/4" and 1/2" depending on the color used and the thickness of the paint. Paintings were left to dry for several weeks.
Once the paint was dry, the tape was removed and a table saw was used to create a flush edge between the surface and the backing frame. Surfaces were then 'waxed' such as a car would be waxed and the edges of the backing frames were painted neutral grey.
These paintings became analog pixels. Surfaces that simulated digital pixels in the physical environment. These 'painted boxes' were used in installations, interactivity and performances through out New York City in the spring of 2001.
A color was chosen at random on the computer. The color was used as a 'solid' desktop color. All desktop icons were removed or hidden. A photograph using a film camera was taken of each displayed desktop color from the LCD screen. This was repeated 100 times each with a different color.
The film was processed and each photograph was printed. Printed photographs were cut to 8" x 6" and mounted behind glass backed with masonite. Backing 'clips' gave the mounted photos a dimension of 8" x 6" x 2".
These photographs were used as rectangular 'pixels' in installations and interactive works in New York City in the summer of 2001.
Canvas squares were treated in the same fashion as the painted boxes. Squares were larger measuring 24"x24". Squares were constructed with muslin on stretcher bars and gallery tucked and staples in the back. Acrylic paint was applied with a cloth. Metallic acrylics were used. Layers were applied, dried and lightly sanded resulting in an even smooth surface. Paintings were sealed with a acrylic gloss medium.
Where complete canvas squares were placed in the outside environment for 1 hour. All interactions with persons coming in contact with the paintings were recorded 'voyeur' style with a hidden DV camera.
Canvases were placed in and around the Manhattan area. This was performed several dozen times in places such as Manhattan Square Park, Columbia University and Riverside Park. All temporary installations were recorded. In addition to the painted canvases, painted boxes and LCD photos were also utilized.
These performances became a conversation between social bodies (those that interacted with the objects whether by touching them or avoiding them) and manufactured objects that represented the digital 'pixel'. The 'pixel' became material (as opposed to virtual) and entered the physical environment.
With these works I was interested in how electronic and physical environments can merge - how boundaries and borders between different mediums can dissolve. I was also interested in the time and history of objects and temporary spaces - how one can create situational improvisations within the everyday. These situational creations can be subtle and to me it is in the subtleties and new creations and existences can synthesize.
I was very interested in the alteration of everyday routines and how social oscillations can temporarily be adjusted. As a jazz band may improvise off of each other, so too can artists and social, public streams create dialogue even at the simplest levels.
Photographs were taken of specific 'living' environments - the interior of a Manhattan apartment. Photographs were juxtaposed with digital scans of the 'painted boxes'. Photographs were mounted on 6"x4" foam core surfaces. 24 photos in all were created and displayed.
Particular attention was paid to a single material present in the photograph - a strip of wood boarding, a single bathroom tile etc. This material was then 'replaced' with a 'analog pixel' that was digitized.
Again I was interested in the merging of two environments - the virtual and the 'real'. How can these environments be manipulated? How can the materials be manipulated? How can one make simple changes to environments that have larger implications - both materialistically and theoretically?
These were some of the questions I was addressing in this series of projects.
]]>markThe Material Anatomy of the Handgun and Its Representations2006-10-10T12:15:00-07:002006-10-01T14:48:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.1105.19.06
Script for a Performace: Academic Lectures, Video and Poetry
This Project is a performance based lecture that uses a video as a large scale backdrop to expressive, academic spoken word. It is the first in a series of expected performaces to be based around weaponry, war and violence. This lecture was inspired by a statement by Gilles Deleuze in the book 'Negotiations' where he proposes that 'lectures should be like rock concerts'. These, therfore, are experiments with what would be traditional academic presentations.
Script for a Performace: Academic Lectures, Video and Poetry
This Project is a performance based lecture that uses a video as a large scale backdrop to expressive, academic spoken word. It is the first in a series of expected performaces to be based around weaponry, war and violence. This lecture was inspired by a statement by Gilles Deleuze in the book 'Negotiations' where he proposes that 'lectures should be like rock concerts'. These, therfore, are experiments with what would be traditional academic presentations.Preface
Marshal Mcluhan once stated in Understanding Media - "if the arrow is an extension of the hand and arm then the rifle is an extension of the eye and teeth." If this is so, then what extension or human appendage is that of the handgun or pistol? Neither a bow nor a rifle the handgun is both an extension of the eye and the hand simultaneously for it can either be pointed in the direction of someone or somewhere else - this I will refer to for the rest of this presentation as ‘sighting-in’ - OR the handgun can just as easily be pointed at ones own-self as in suicide or self-destruction. This point makes the handgun particularly interesting for study for it can either be a long range weapon in relation to the immediate distance of the body - or a short range weapon, one that can just as easily be turned against oneself in an act of self-destruction.
Unlike the rifle and bow - both of which must be stabilized by the body – for example the rifle is stabilized against the shoulder and the bow is stabilized by the position of a ‘locked arm’ - the handgun has free range and motion, a larger possible phase-space of capabilities in relationship to the human torso. These possibilities are as diverse as the combination of body, shoulder, elbow, and wrist movements can be – as many positions as the arm in combination with the body can move, the handgun can follow – a much larger scale of variables of possibilities of motion – an accumulation or multiplication of all the potential movements of the joints.
Again - on the one hand - when firing forward OR “sighting-in” - the arm stabilizes the weapon and the eye looks down the barrel - the handgun is pointed in a direction of "somewhere" else. On the other hand the wrist and hand play the important pivot point where the end of the barrel has the potential possibility of being pointed toward oneself.
The handgun, in its uniqueness, allows for three main stages to be illustrated effectively under the scope of the visual – stages that effectively show its material versatility – a versatility that can be used in order to make many analogies to sociological and political systems outside the immediate realm of the micro-space that is the body. I have illustrated in my visual artistic studies of the handgun 3 distinct stages that are as follows: 1) Deterrence 2) Self-destruction and 3) ‘Sighting-IN’
Stage 1: Deterrence
The first stage – deterrence (illustrated on the screen) – is one of an effective defensive and/or aggressive strategy that’s underlying action is to demonstrate to an outside force that any attempt to trespass in action or physicality on ones personal space can result in dire consequence. It is an act of preventing or controlling actions or behavior through fear of punishment or retribution.
The handgun – hidden and out-of-site – restricted from being seen – in one’s own house – under the bed – in ones apartment – in the glove box – in ones pocket – in a bag – a lunchbox – a bookbag - under ones clothing.
We do not know it is there – we do not see it – it is there but it is not – it is hidden in the shadows – in the basement – and documented with the immateriality of the photograph – present on the television – on the Internet. This is how we know that they exist – yet we do not know where they exist.
We shall not come to close to one another because we do not know what ‘the others’ actions might be – we do not know what is hidden – we do not see ‘the void’ because we can not see ‘the void’ – we do not want to understand ‘the void’ – so we just stay away.
Because what may eventually protrude with force is a bullet – a dished heel base bullet – a jacketed bearing surface bullet – a round nose flat based bullet – a full metal jacketed bullet – a round nose cup based bullet – a truncated cone exposed tip bullet – a hollow based wad-cutter bullet – a full jacketed hollow point bullet – a semi wad-cutter cup based bullet – a jacketed soft point bullet – a semi wad-cutter gas check bullet – an exposed tip hollow point bullet – a semi wad-cutter half-jacket bullet – a semi wad-cutter full jacket bullet…
We do not wish for our bodies to meet any of these nasty metallic creatures that our neighbor has the potentiality to deliver onto us.
Deterrence – a last ideological rampart against a kind of global destruction – a global suicide – a deterrent in the fact that we could all disappear. Which leads to the current escape, the escape of nuclear war, of deterrence.
From the NRA Handbook:
“A major factor in determining the “best” method of carry is the mechanical design of the handgun in question, particularly the firing pin. Here are considered, in order, semi-automatic pistols, revolvers, single-shot pistols and derringers.”
The handgun is cocked and ready to fire, hiding in the shadows.
Stage 2: Self-Destruction
Self-destructive (implosive) – Paul Virilio’s “the suicide state”, - Pol Pot in Cambodia - deregulatory territory, environmental self-destruction - our own intentional initiation of the apocalypse – a suicide machine . Death as weapon – death as pure war. The war on terror – the war against ourselves. The war against our own state authorized terror. Destruction of the mirror image. The silent genocide. It is easy to see the crimes that are committed by others, but it is much harder to see the destruction against one-self.
How do we kill the ultimate self-destructive weapon? How do we get rid of it? - Especially when we have no real time for reflection – when speed is essential and the day is endless. When work and labor replace pleasure. When sweat and long hours replace family and relaxation. When complexities replace simplicities. When technologies that are supposed to make our lives easier do nothing but make our lives harder. This is an endless positive feedback loop of self-annihilation. A struggle for survival – a new social Darwinism that leaves us all deprived of life.
War has been turned against ourselves. War begins organized - but somehow always escapes. War has self-replicated many times in places that are not expected – internally. In the bunkered fortified ghettos where “form does not follow function as much as it does fear” , in prisons, in the streets, in the institutions, under our skin. War against the self is a viral infection. Culture has become super-homogenized to the point where only the extreme as ‘the other’ can exist. A super-viral infection. HIV and bird flu terror. Often it points back to the one that started it - a backlash of sorts - a conscious suicide of the self.
We are now in a stage of “terminal art” of suicidal art. The abuse of television – “producing various morbid phenomena such as obesity or anorexia nervosa, poor cerebral performance, language problems, special disorientation, aggressiveness, alcoholism and drug abuse.” A television pathology particularly affecting children and underprivileged communities – a suicidal-genocidal machine.
And do we not filter our industrial byproduct toxins through the bodies of our population? Would it not cost more to bury them OR to dispose of them than to reuse them? Or is it easier to recycle our waste in our food supply. Let the body process what we do not want. Cancer as a population reduction method. A slow death. A stealth death. A death we know is there - yet we cannot see because of our blindness to our own self-destructive tendencies. A self-initiated genocide. A war on the environment - an environment that has a direct effect on a population. A war on ourselves.
What we often call “natural materials”, according to the an-architect Lebbeus Woods - “materials that involve the mining of the earth and the felling of forests [result] in the disruption of plant and animal life, the pollution of rivers and air, and the degradation of human existence … produce buildings that begin to decay even as they are built. The effects of this decay, which continues regardless of all maintenance, contribute to the spiral of human life, indeed of the whole environment, downward toward an ultimate heat death.” A death that is self-initiated.
And our safety rules do not help!
The 10 Rules of the Handgun Cited in the NRA Firearms Handbook.
1. Always point the muzzle in a safe direction.
2. Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.
3. Keep the action open and gun unloaded until ready to use it
4. Know how the gun operates
5. Be sure your gun and ammunition are compatible.
6. Carry only one gauge/caliber of ammunition when shooting.
7. Be sure of your target—and what is beyond
8. Wear eye and ear protection as appropriate
9. Don’t mix alcohol or drugs with shooting
10. Be aware that circumstances may require additional rules unique to a particular situation.
… and again
10. Be aware that circumstances may require additional rules unique to a particular situation.
… and I ask the question – do these rules apply when one is pointing the gun at ones own self?
Stage 3: Sighting-In - Externalizing Direction
How A Fire Arm Fires……………Cartridge in chamber………Firing pin strikes and ignites primer which in turn ignites powder………Gas from burning powder expands in case…………Gas pushes bullet out with force……………speeding bullet out through barrel.
Aggression and defense (both of which deal with externals) – to point a finger at the ‘axis of evil’ – you are wrong and I am right – I am good and you are bad – both the language of ‘aggression’ and both the language of ‘defensive’ – both are ‘sighting-in’. Putting ‘the other’ in my sights and firing because I am good and you are evil. I am right and you are wrong.
You attack me so I must defend myself. You have something that I want so I must attack you. You have something that I need so I must attack you. You do not really need what you have so I must attack you. I am just defending myself from your attack before you attack so I must attack you. I have a gun and you do not so I must attack you. You have a gun and so do I so I must defend myself. You are “mere things – whose lives are of no value” . “So therefore we can proceed with this with complete equanimity, and total impunity, and only praise for the achievements.”
Let us now bring our great European art into the hands of a “good number of filthy rich American industrialists who [want] to build collections or foundations.” So they can also have the weapon of the image. So art can be controlled. So we can be made great and made righteous for producing what the ‘others’ cannot.
And since Merleau-Ponty stated “Since the same words – idea, freedom, knowledge – cannot have the same meaning in different places unless we have a single witness reducing them to some common denominator” – we are the witness and as the victor we and we alone have the right to define these words and use them to tell ‘others’ where they are wrong.
An extension of the arm – the reaching out of a helping hand? – with a handgun at its end. Becomes a “murderous humanitarianism”
Lets not forget the gun was, as stated by Lewis Mumford, “the starting point of a new type of power machine: it was mechanically speaking, a one cylinder internal combustion engine: the first form of gasoline engine…… [and] because of the accuracy and effectiveness of the new projectiles, these machines had still another result: they were responsible for the development of the art of heavy fortification, with elaborate outworks, moats and salients, the latter so arranged that any one bastion could come to the aid of another by means of cross-fire. The business of defense became complicated in proportion as the tactics of offence became more deadly”
The art of the handgun is a new stage of warfare. It is one that deterritorializes, decentralizes, and non-linearizes ‘the other’, the invisible army of defense and attacks. It is one that ‘sights-in’ away from oneself and just as easily toward one-self. A true deterrent of real contact and understanding with each other.
Rule number 3: Keep the action open and gun unloaded until ready to use it
Quote - “What, in the case of closed action handguns, does “ready to use” mean? Obviously defensive pistols should be “ready to use” when holstered or [deterrently] pocketed by legally entitled servicemen, police, or civilians, but then should they be fully or only partially loaded?” - Endquote From the NRA Handbook
… and then this assumes that legally entitled servicemen, police, or civilians only take a defensive stance. And does this insinuate that non-legal handgun carriers are typically aggressors?
We defend ourselves from ‘the other’ – ‘the other’ is the only aggressor. We are the good and strong – they terror.
End Stage
The visual portion of this project has dealt with the small-arm as a design that has evolve in relationship to the body over the last few centuries to form a seamless and comfortable extension of the human arm. Handguns in particular, small and compact, are designs that have been bred (in terms of moving along a line of flight in what Deleuze called the “machinic phylum”) throughout history to fit the particular desires of a group or individual. What once started with relatively few design variations, handgun designs have emerged to be as diverse as the human populations they serve to empower or at least give the illusion of empowerment. The materiality of the handgun thus becomes one of power - a personal power – one of deterrence, self-destruction or sighting-in - attributed to the comfort-ability of the design that the user makes in connection with the design of the handgun and its handle.
This seamlessness OR the singular point where flesh turns metallic must be a point of analysis in order to better understand the mechanisms involved with handgun design, manufacturing and utilization - be it against oneself (suicide) or against another (nature, human beings, static targets etc). In doing so we can better be prepared to educate on the aesthetic and material effects of the handgun and how feelings of power and comfort are attributed to the effects of design OR the question “What exactly IS a handgun?” - the tactile nature and physicality of the mechanisms involved exemplified by the hand gripping the handle. This visually constructed project and research is about understanding the materiality of the handgun and its relationship to the human hand though my own personal interactions with handguns and their visual documentation. Through the past few years I have been studying the anatomy of the handgun though artistic video and photography – assembling, disassembling, loading, pointing and firing. In the networked systems of guerrilla combat, “terror”, gang violence, ecological violence, and American hegemony and military domination, it has become important that the mechanics - the visualizations and the interactions of small firearms - be explored in this sort of graphic visual detail. The visual portion of this work has given a brief aesthetically oriented understanding of the mechanics and internal and external working of handgun designs and the spoken portion has been a personal reflection on the handguns mechanical significance in a contemporary networked society.
]]>markIntroduction: The Art of Collaborative Networks and Autonomous Systems as an Educational Praxis2006-10-10T12:12:00-07:002006-10-01T14:47:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.1012.30.05
Initial Paper Draft and Writen Experiments
A first draft of a certificational paper that I have been working on. This paper is by far complete. I am not even sure I indend to finish it! But in a way am more interested in workinng out some of my ideas in writen form rather than, at this moment, creating a finished product.
Initial Paper Draft and Writen Experiments
A first draft of a certificational paper that I have been working on. This paper is by far complete. I am not even sure I indend to finish it! But in a way am more interested in workinng out some of my ideas in writen form rather than, at this moment, creating a finished product.20th century education fell victim to the dominant organizational ideology of the time by allowing itself to over-institutionalize, over-specialize and over-homogenize its system in order to fulfill the goals of national power and authority (Freire 1970, Illich 1971, Aronowitz 2000). As McKenzie Wark (2004) illustrated, power “seeks to privatize knowledge as a resource, just as it privatizes science and culture, in order to guarantee their scarcity and their value.” (Paragraph 066)
Education became a term that soon defined an institutional environment proctored by the economically powerful and ideologically driven capital class of the western state whose interest subsists in the indoctrination of state residents with teleological and ideological stances on all issues and subject-matters (from history to science to the arts) that in almost all cases facilitates a re-empowerment of the dominant class; a social stratification technique that keeps the layers of hierarchies intact (Collins 1971). The school system itself - a hierarchically administered organization that provides elevation to those that play the game and punish those - economically, socially - that do not. The educational climate that had been created responded to the necessary conditions of the state while leaving the necessary conditions of the individual behind.
This paper is NOT about this type of education or understanding education through a traditional (Frankfurt School) critical analysis. It is not about working within the given educational system in order to try to bring about some type of recognizable change form the ‘inside’. It is not about separating children and adults by age in order to gage what type of understanding of a given subject matter they might have at the moment. It is not about placing people in a bizarre architectural disaster 'box' (or ‘parlor’ as Ray Bradbury called it in ‘Farenheit 451’) that we call a classroom, making them look forward at some higher power (teacher) and sucking in information with the sole purpose of regurgitation - a byproduct (or even symptom) of the television and televised individual “incapable of finding a meaning outside of itself” (Baudrillard 2002 p. 187).
This paper is about, as Mark Twain said, never letting "school interfere with your education". This paper is about understanding education as something that happens throughout an individual person, a family or a group’s life – complex adaptive systems that are constantly forming, reforming and morphing to fits individual and group needs (Taylor 2001). This paper is about leaving the classroom in order to understand working class struggles as an autonomy that bypasses capitalized institutional states in network societies while at the same time trying to understand and recognize their power and “orchestrating radical intercultural exchanges” that are outside of closed loop monocultures (Lovink 2002 p.34). It is about an education that creates collaborative networks of individuals with common interests in order to educate each other for the pure enjoyment of educating each other – cooperation as a fact of life (Shultz 2005). It is about the youth learning to share both ideas and materials, give things away and leave the profit index behind – a Do-It-Yourself education in the Fluxus tradition (see Friedman 1998) using the network and ‘new media’ as a binding, common tool.
‘Freecycle ’[1] networks [2], barter systems [3] , and time-banks are resource centers that the networks provide. "What beautiful and priceless potlatches the affluent society will see -- whether it likes it or not! -- when the exuberance of the younger generation discovers the pure gift; a growing passion for stealing books, clothes, food, weapons or jewelry simply for the pleasure of giving them away" (Vaneigem.& Nicholson-Smith, 2001, p.81) An educational tool in networked societies?
This paper is – at its core - about simple things that we do, see, and say everyday that can push smaller, local and networked systems to expand with the side effects of larger systems (Global, State, Homogenous Supersystems) to begin to collapse and/or destabilize and divide. This is where the diversity of ‘eco’ politics begins and homogeny is forced to re-conceptualize itself within the networked system. This is a type of education where resources are created from scratch and/or recycled in specific localities or traded fairly in equal labor, as opposed to the ‘corporate’ hierarchy model or ‘anti-market ’ [4] that Manuel Delanda so eloquently described (see Delanda 1996). The idea is to allow new smaller more dynamical systems of thought to emerge as a ‘bottom-up’ dynamic in opposition to our current ‘top-down’ model while at the same time repressing those large antiquated sluggish systems that cant keep up with the basic needs of a healthy humanity.
This is very much a new praxis of thought and action that has emerged in theoretical and artistic discourse in the past several years. We have been witnessing this transition in the physical and everyday, in the networks as well as in the surfacing of theoretical texts beginning with the theoretical text of Deleuze and Guitarri but also having its historical foundations in the autonomist Marxists, the Situationists, the Fluxists, Critical Theorists, etc as well as some historians such as William McNeil an Fernand Braudel - and the list goes on. This paper will address many of the current theories involved with these convergences and divergences of theory and thinking as well as relate to some of my own personal work in the subject. - artworks that no longer resemble something that can be hung on a wall but instead have become something that brings back the role of the builder as opposed to the commentator, an art in the fashion of Bertolt Brecht and his famous - maybe even overused – quote, "Art is not a mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer in which to shape it." (Brecht 2002)
This paper is also NOT about bloated overly rhetorical and complicated academic theories such as ‘post-structuralism’ or ‘postmodernism’. Although we do reside in the ‘postmodern era’ whatever that might mean in certain disciplines and academic circles, my language will hopefully tend to sway toward the materialistic sciences as opposed to the psychological and semiotic ones that have been so prominent in postmodernist thought for the past few decades. I will also back many of my statements up with extended quotations assuming that the original authors say many of these ideas far better than I ever could hope to do.
This paper is about simple things, simple actions, simple practices and simple methods of the everyday that can be easily taught, learned and practiced in commonality with each other - a giving-and-sharing method of trading ideas, forms, aesthetics and materials. The Situationists writer Raul Vaneigem is of particular interest and influence to me in the writing of this paper as well as the materialistic philosophies of Deleuze and Guitarri, the articulation of Manuel Delanda (an articulation that in my wildest dreams I could never hope to achieve!) and many of the young writers and theoreticians that are currently writing and discussing there ideas on the internet through lists such as Nettime.org and Rhizome.org.
For me it was Raul Vaneigem’s text “The Revolution of Everyday Life” that provided an example to begin this type of discourse and research into practical implications for personal expression and how practices as art-forms can be revolutionary acts if taught and learned appropriately and in the context of alternative based cooperatives and systems of knowledge and knowledge transformations. This paper draws much from his ideas as well as the rest of the Situationists which I will discuss as I proceed.
Although the language of this paper may fall into at time the language of the academic its over all theme hopefully does not. It is a theme of aversion, sustainability and autonomy. When the system is broken just build a new one, and that is what we are doing - building a new system.
Also to note – for the most part I privilege the organizational traits of the “network” over that of the hierarchy. I would like to say first that the hierarchy as an organizational model is not always a “bad” thing and when reading my paper one might come to believe that I think this is true. Instead I am trying to give some weight to a new system of thinking, one that is relatively recent – at least in a theoretical sense. The hierarchy has been our dominant organizational body for the past 200 years. We are now just starting to understand things in terms of the network and this paper gives privilege to that network organizational system because it is new and because it needs its chance to flourish as the hierarchy has done for far too long. (DeLanda 1997)
This paper is divided into two parts. The first part addresses the theoretical concerns and the historical framing that I have been researching and studying in order to inform my own artistic endeavors. This paper is about other views and the other views that shape new emergent organization in contemporary societies. Therefore, given the standardization of the historical processes of acquiring knowledge, how have theorists and practitioners offered other views that advocate personally relevant and critically focused perspectives?
The second part is my own artwork as it has unfolded over the past few years and how it is theoretically and aesthetically based as a contemporary art form. Therefore, given that the standardization of the process of acquiring knowledge is the dominant ideological identity of institutional systems, what opportunities emerge for re-conceptualizing knowledge creation though projects that counter-resist these standardizations through a tactical resistance artistic practice.
1. Freecycle.org is a Yahoo Groups collaborative where local residents give away free material objects – from clothing to automobiles – that they do not need anymore. Participants pick these things up from private residences. The idea is that instead of throwing what we do no need out (consume and discard culture) we offer the item for free to anyone who might want it. Most offerings are taken.
2. Barter systems have recently been springing up on the internet. Craigslist.org is one example of many.
3. A “time-bank” is the idea of bartering labor or time. In Italy this practice, mediated by public institutions is called 'La Banca del Tempo (the Bank of Time)'. See Nettime.org posting at http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0409/msg00030.html Further details of this sytem to be described later in this paper.
4. To simplify and ‘anti-market’ as Delanda described it -an anti-market is large scale enterprises, with several layers of managerial strata, in which prices are set not taken. This is in direct conflict to a ‘market’ economy which is much more collaborative in nature and where individuals and groups rely on eachother rather than impose their ‘will’ upon a population such as ‘anti-markets’ often do.
]]>markDeleuze and Guattari and the Machinic Phylum2006-10-10T12:09:00-07:002006-10-01T14:47:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.901.09.06
Initial Draft of Ideas Concerning the texts of D&G
The following is from a paper that I am now in the process of drafting. It is a first attempt at understanding the very complex thought of Deleuze and Guattari and their understanding the the 'Machinic Phylum'. I feel very close to this subject matter because as a materialist, artist, and the son of craftsmen it is important foor me to understand the philosophical and historical implicaitons of creating and using materials.
Initial Draft of Ideas Concerning the texts of D&G
The following is from a paper that I am now in the process of drafting. It is a first attempt at understanding the very complex thought of Deleuze and Guattari and their understanding the the 'Machinic Phylum'. I feel very close to this subject matter because as a materialist, artist, and the son of craftsmen it is important foor me to understand the philosophical and historical implicaitons of creating and using materials.The first term that I would like to talk about, one that in the past few decades has come into existence and that I have found to be extremely important in understanding the arts (aesthetic and material) and sciences, is the concept of the Machinic Phylum.
The machinic phylum was first given to us in the texts of Deleuze and Guattari. Influenced particularly by the texts of Heni Bergenson who understood that the future was "truly open-ended, truly indeterminate, and the past and present as pregnant not only with possibilities which become real, but with virtualities which become actual." (DeLanda 1997), Deleuze and Guattari set out to understand that "all spheres of reality, including geology, possess virtual morphogenetic capabilities and potentialities." (Ibid)
To give an example of this trait, say I am an artist and I am making a series of prints or drawings. I am not interested in just making one but instead I am interested in fleshing out all possibilities of one design that I have stumbled upon during my years of training and creating. I am creating a series of 300 drawings based on one drawing. Now, all my drawings are not going got look the same. I am going to draw each drawing in the beginning based on my prototype. After a few drawing I may discover that I have unleashed some extremely interesting property in the drawing that I would like to pursue in a different direction. I soon begin to flesh this idea out until another not entirely dissimilar idea or composition begins to emerge. I then take this most recent emergent trait and begin to flesh it out and so on. Sometimes I may not like the direction that a series is going and I may backtrack several times in several ways and pick up where ii left off. Through this series of drawing one thing begins to unravel. There re millions of possibilities that can be fleshed out.
We can also do this type of 'fleshing out of possibilities' on the computer. In a way it is very much like we are taking a drawing and simulating its evolution. By scanning in a drawn picture or drawing directly on the computer we can put the drawing or image in a computer program and run algorithms on it. The algorithms will search and find all the possibilities that the drawn line can proceed in, it is then up to the designer or artist to pick which possibilities that they are interested in pursuing and then running the algorithm on that new design. And so on and so on.
This is an example of the machinic phylum at play. Though Deleuze and Guattari did not, in their most vivid instance, describe this materialistic act in the same way as I (and as Manuel DeLanda does when talking about art) did, as a way to create art, they did - and named it so appropriately - by trying to understand the flows and the properties of metals as metals created a path through history much the same as a series or drawings create a path and a history:
"the machinic phylum is materiality, natural of artificial, and both simultaneously; it is matter in movement, in flux, in variation, matter as a conveyor of singularities and traits of expression..." (D&G ATP
And in relationship to metals that guide that flows of mater:
"Metallurgy is the consciousness of thought of the matter-flow, and metal the correlate of this consciousness....metal is coextensive to the whole of matter, and the whole of matter to metallurgy. Even the waters, the grasses and varieties of wood, the animals are populated by salts of mineral elements. Not everything is metal but metal is everywhere." (D&G ATP)
They then go on to talk about the hand of the artisan and how the material traits of metal guide the artisan in the path to create. Just as i have exemplified in how a drawing can flow and evolve through paths of choice and paths of material properties - (pencil on paper will yield different properties that paint on canvas or computer simulations) - metal has had a historical path, albeit quite a much longer one than an afternoon drawing session, in a similar way, metal must be heated to a certain temperature, banged with a hammer - etc, until properties that are inherent in the metal (imperfections, foreign substances) begin to emerge:
"Finally when working a metal into shape, the artisan must also follow the accidents and local vagaries of a given piece of material. he must let the material have its say in the final form produced. This involves a sensual interaction with metals, applying a too in a way that does not fight the material but conforms to it" (DeLanda 1991 p.30)
"In other words, the blacksmith treated metals a active materials, pregnant with morphogenetic capabilities, and his role was that of teasing a for out of them, of guiding, through a series of processes (heating, annealing, quenching, hammering), the emergence of a form, a form in which the materials themselves has a say" (DeLanda 1997 p.2_
To go back to Deleuze and Guattari:
"an artisan who planes follows the wood, the fibers of the wood, without changing location. But this way of following is only one particular sequence in amore general process. For artisans are obliged to follow n another way as well, in other words, to go find the wood where it lies, and to find the wood with the right kinds of fibers. Otherwise they must have it brought to them: it is only because merchants take care of one segment of the journey in reverse that the artisans can avoid making the trip themselves." (Deleuze & Guattari, ATP p,409)
At first it might seem strange some of the examples that I have used. What I am really trying to understand here and get a grasp on is a philosophical and theoretical discourse on the materiality of form and how form through filtering though some system (whether it be the artists hand or even some naturally occurring process) can eventually emerge. I think understanding complex systems and trying to understand networks as continuing flows and NOT as static totalities is central to my current thesis: understanding material flows and how seeking out the path of least resistance through artistic and artisan analogies both historical and contemporary can help us to understand how to bypass a sluggish and outdated political and education system.
]]>markArchive 02: Resisting Empire - A Cultural Diffusion2006-10-16T15:36:00-07:002006-10-01T14:46:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.805.08.06
Idea Writing: An Archived, Non-Refined Draft
Just something I found while looking through my notes. Just a strange rambleing blurb about resisting empire, cultural diffusions and the like. Sometimes it is a lot easier (and interesting) to write something quickly and with feeling than to really sit dowwn and write a very refined and researched piece. the following is one such example of some improvisational , semi-academic, post-modern type writing.
Idea Writing: An Archived, Non-Refined Draft
Just something I found while looking through my notes. Just a strange rambleing blurb about resisting empire, cultural diffusions and the like. Sometimes it is a lot easier (and interesting) to write something quickly and with feeling than to really sit dowwn and write a very refined and researched piece. the following is one such example of some improvisational , semi-academic, post-modern type writing.As one might suggest, The Matrix movies are not about a distant future where mankind is controlled by a global rhizomatic machine; all encompassing, controlling our brains. No!! The matrix is present reality!!
It is a difficult task for us to “wake up” and see the earth we have bred. Our current wars on humanity in the Middle East may be compared to “Zion”, the underground city where humanity still exists. We are controlled! By television, by the movies, by our computers. It has become an impossibility for those of us bound to this indefinitely connected system to relieve ourselves from its grasp. How can self sufficiency exist anymore when we are bought and sold through our eyes. As candy of video games and “product” placements. Our media biz has connected us to a brainwashing mechanism that has obliterated individuality. What we must do now is resist. With everything we have, we must resist.
Resistance has been an extremely difficult task given our globality. It seems that the harder we push the harder the weight pushes back. Terrorism has been a failed path; as a weapon of the weak (Joxe, 2002) it only fuels the anger of the strong, oppressive forces. This therefore echos Chomsky’s argument that we cannot address terrorism of the weak against the powerful without addressing terrorism of the powerful against the weak (Chomsky, 2003). Civil resistance in the form of peace is chaotic at best given the lefts continual disorganizations. The internet as a organizational tool has been extremely effective but only as an “internal” resistant not as an external one that helps to cease expansion. It cant be trusted that reality to be sent to us in an email. “Meet here. Meet there. We are doing great.” It’s so sad that this is false. We are being forced back with ever increasing strength, at every turn, in every media. As for virtuality, by its very nature, offers a product deprived of its substance, offers reality without being so (Zizek, 2002). We choose what to see within it, as we choose what to ignore.
Our first sign of this impending global disaster came with our desire to control and ultimately obliterate nature. Favoring a monoculture that replaces diversity, modern industrial agriculture - requiring fertilizers, poisons, petroleum, steel mills, agricultural universities, polluted waters, dead seas – is a system to fight back environmental life that is constantly in an effort to rebalance itself, to heal its wound (Kotke, 1993). This was no small task for nature is a very powerful enemy. To illustrate this control, horizontal growth must be coupled with vertical growth; resistance to this is to give back to the earth what it has lost, recreate sustainability (Virilio, 2002). In this sense it is our bodies that must be reclaimed. Since the conquest of space our bodies have been lost (Virilio, 2002), now with ever increasing network connections our minds, our psyche is in jeopardy of being dangerously homogenized.
As a combatant, the minimizing of assets and return to the “real” is in the strongest of order. To resist the impending claustrophobia of globalization, a telluric contradiction of distances as Virilio states (Virilio, 2002), is to become horizontal again. To return to the land, the environment, to embrace sustainable living practices, to know and realize where food comes from, where clothes come from, where energy comes from and keep it localize, self contained. This is the form of ultimate resistance to technological, industrial, and capital slavery.
]]>markT-Shirts as Public Art2006-10-16T15:37:00-07:002006-10-01T14:45:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.709.16.05
Cultural Reflections and Project Propositions
I've been thinking about t-shirts lately and about creating a line of them. They would of course be highly political in nature. Living in the suburbs exposes one to a lot of imagery worn on the body in the form of this medium. I was really prompted when I was doing a little research and came across a variety of extremist right-wing imagery.
Cultural Reflections and Project Propositions
I've been thinking about t-shirts lately and about creating a line of them. They would of course be highly political in nature. Living in the suburbs exposes one to a lot of imagery worn on the body in the form of this medium. I was really prompted when I was doing a little research and came across a variety of extremist right-wing imagery.This site immediately caught my eye: thoseshirts.com. T-shirts such as 'Celebrate Diversity' and 'Pro-War' I found to be particularly disturbing. I started to think about the imagery that could be on a t-shirt that I found was missing from the American wearable discourse. For example we could easily tolerate an image of an American flag on a shirt, we would rejoice at the love and patriotism that one shows for the county. It is easy to self embrace ones one ideology, to back it us and reinforce ones own thinking, but what would happen if we suddenly introduce other imagery that we normally would not see on a persons body? For instance the Iraq border being displayed as HIP line graphic: What about an upside down flag? The World Trade Center collapsing? George Bush's face and others from his administration sporting Hitler mustaches (I'm sure this has already been done)? But what other imagery can we wear to create dialogue? Is dialogue dead and would we see the consequences of actions and images that are considered taboo, wearable imagery that forces public onlookers to reconsider the meaning of t-shirts? Is a t-shirt not a public work of art? Subtle yet different even in its POP-ness? It should be understood and redefined, the idea of popular imagery as a subversive force in generating discussion and external opinion. I think that is where this projected is headed for me. An exploration of images, wearable images, which have not been thought about or used in this manner before.
]]>markRunning a Car from Vegetable Oil?2006-10-10T12:05:00-07:002006-10-01T14:45:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.611.07.05
Cultural Reflextions and Project Propositions
In the wake of moving from New York City and the ever increasing fuel prices it has become apparent to me that the American addiction to oil might have to go through a serious phase of withdrawal before it can begin the process of curing. Just as methadone might be thought of as an alternative to the highly addictive heroin, as a substitute and being less harmful it does its trick, weaning the patient from its self destructive opiate cousin.
Cultural Reflextions and Project Propositions
In the wake of moving from New York City and the ever increasing fuel prices it has become apparent to me that the American addiction to oil might have to go through a serious phase of withdrawal before it can begin the process of curing. Just as methadone might be thought of as an alternative to the highly addictive heroin, as a substitute and being less harmful it does its trick, weaning the patient from its self destructive opiate cousin.The emergence of bio-diesel, an alternative to petroleum-based diesel fuel made from renewable resources such as vegetable oils or animal fats, might be just one of the methods used to wean our own energy addictions. At a 20% vegetable oil / 80% diesel fuel mixture, an analogy to the methadone/heroin example could easily be made, although there is still harm being done, it is much less harmful than a full non-renewable source of energy.
This I think gives a great opportunity for experimentation as an environmentalist, ecologist, inventor, artist etc. Vegetable oil as a fuel substitute is a non-political, bipartisan issue: good for farmers, good for the environment, good for renewing what was once thought of as waste (oil can be siphoned right out of the back of fast food restaurant into the gas tank of a car with a little engine modification). I have really become interested in this way vegetable oil can be used as fuel, even to the extent of "brewing" and experimentation with mixtures (vegetable oil can be used straight in the gas tank without a diesel mixture if "brewed properly - "brewing a mixture is supposedly very much like brewing beer).
As an educational devise I think that understanding that alternative fuels are available to the public is the first step in a transition form an addiction to a recovery. There are even high schools that teach how to run an engine off vegetable oil. Could this sort of fuel experimentation also be used in the arts? Shouldn’t the arts also be interested in the creative process, the experimentation, and the environmental and social impact that could emerge from such an economic and political transition from a reliance on foreign oil to a reliance on sustainable fuels and self-sufficiency?
EBay is a great way to find hard to located items. Lately I’ve been searching for old 1980's Mercedes Diesel cars - supposedly they run the best off vegetable oil. I have also heard that the public in Ithaca, NY (where I’m not that far from) has been using a lot of vegetable oil cars, taking the oil right from the back of Chinese food restaurants. A friend of mine ha a friend who has himself modified about 15 vehicles to run solely on vegetable oil. We have been talking about running a workshop that teaches how a modification can occur, hopefully recruiting some Cornell University students to join in on the education.
Some of my questions are these: as an artist, media artist and educator, how can an educational process like this relate to an artistic discourse? Can something like the process of a car modification to vegetable oil be a collaborative process that utilizes skills and theories from number of disciplines including art in order to create a less specialized, more substance oriented educational framework? Like timber frame building and organic farming is there a cumulative artwork that emerges that might not look like art on the surface but is nothing less than, as Bertolt Brecht said, an art that is "not a mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it"?
]]>markReflections on Art 012006-10-16T15:37:00-07:002006-10-01T14:43:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.507.28.05
General Reflections on art and art making
I imagine like anyone involved in the arts it is vital that one continually persists in reconceptualising their own conception of what ART IS. My own personal view on this matter has gradually changed over the past ten years. As an undergraduate in a Community College my understanding of anything 'artistically based' was very much limited indeed to my past, historical experiences - mainly landscape painting and animal photography. Eventually throughout my education I soon began to take in a more globalized view of the arts, for the most part New York City based - not too far from Rochester NY where I was born and initially educated.
General Reflections on art and art making
I imagine like anyone involved in the arts it is vital that one continually persists in reconceptualising their own conception of what ART IS. My own personal view on this matter has gradually changed over the past ten years. As an undergraduate in a Community College my understanding of anything 'artistically based' was very much limited indeed to my past, historical experiences - mainly landscape painting and animal photography. Eventually throughout my education I soon began to take in a more globalized view of the arts, for the most part New York City based - not too far from Rochester NY where I was born and initially educated.It was not, however, until I actually moved to New York City that I was really able to rid myself of the conception of art as some grand phenomenological modernistic viewpoint of complete non-objectivity that had been so apparent in my 'Bauhaus' style art education thus far. Was their anything beyond the minimalists? And how could an artist become so minimal that the art world itself would jump right off the canvas and re-embed itself in the daily routine of life where it once had been not so long ago?
First, one of the problems that I am continually seeing in the education of the arts in the university is that the concept of art, the definition of art is very reluctant to change. "Art" must be filtered though the history department in order to be legitimized as worthy study and therefore worthy practice. It is very hard to legitimize, institutionally, an art form that is in direct opposition to the current concept of art. It is also very hard to legitimize and art form that by its very nature hopes to abolish the "expert" as the top level in the hierarchical scheme of complex relationships. Art of this nature can be very subversive in that foundational preconceptions of "art" are eradicated in place of an art that is neither elite nor requires mastery or skill. Institutions can be threatened by these new forms because they mean that any and all can be equal in the area of artistic discourse. WE all make STUFF. HOW do we make STUFF. AND what usefulness does that STUFF have?
Institutional environments must act appropriately and quickly in the context of new theories, organizations and economies in order to stay 'cutting-edge'. A fine art department is one that must be interdisciplinary, collaborative and is able to reorganize their educational base to change – they must be able evolve and emerge within a quickly shifting economy. The days of old are gone! An artist cannot retreat to specializations. "Painting" as a practice is not the only art there is. An artist is a theoretician, and critical sociologist, a cultural scientist, an anthropologist, an architect, a multimedia guru, an ecologist. All must be critiqued and argued. Ideas must become the artworks NOT the products. PROCESS must reign supreme.
I am for an art that critiques and utilizes daily life and world events to make historical, present and future connections to ideas. To quote John Zerzan - The Case Against Art:
"Adorno began his book thusly: "Today it goes without saying that nothing concerning art goes without saying, much less without thinking. Everything about art has become problematic; its inner life, its relation to society, even its right to exist." But _Aesthetic Theory_ affirms art, just as Marcuse's last work did, testifying to despair and to the difficulty of assailing the hermetically sealed ideology of culture. And although other "radicals," such as Habermas, counsel that the desire to abolish symbolic mediation is irrational, it is becoming clearer that when we really experiment with our hearts and hands the sphere of art is shown to be pitiable. In the transfiguration we must enact, the symbolic will be left behind and art refused in favor of the real. Play, creativity, self-expression and authentic experience will recommence at that moment."
]]>markArchive 01: Labor, Craft and Open source2006-10-16T15:36:00-07:002006-10-01T14:42:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.405.08.05
Idea Writing: An Archived, Non-Refined Draft
Since I haven't had a lot of time in the past week I just thought I would post some obscure "idea" writing that I was developing some time ago. This short is just one of many that I will eventually post as I come across them scattered all over my hard drive. I believe this writing to be highly subjective and was a little leery to post publicly at first. Since I am trying to write a certification paper and eventually a dissertation I soon realized it was not entirely out of my interest to track my progress no matter how "wrong" the thinking may be. What I have realized is that it is not really about whether the writing is "wrong" or "right" in a research or academic manner but whether one is "thinking" or "not-thinking". I myself would rather see "wrong thinking" than "right regurgitation". This is very true in art and when I teach my students this they (and I for that matter) usually become pleasantly surprised by the outcomes. This is to be my first entry in this experimentation of subjective thoughts. I will then be able to link thoughts together as these entries progress.
Idea Writing: An Archived, Non-Refined Draft
Since I haven't had a lot of time in the past week I just thought I would post some obscure "idea" writing that I was developing some time ago. This short is just one of many that I will eventually post as I come across them scattered all over my hard drive. I believe this writing to be highly subjective and was a little leery to post publicly at first. Since I am trying to write a certification paper and eventually a dissertation I soon realized it was not entirely out of my interest to track my progress no matter how "wrong" the thinking may be. What I have realized is that it is not really about whether the writing is "wrong" or "right" in a research or academic manner but whether one is "thinking" or "not-thinking". I myself would rather see "wrong thinking" than "right regurgitation". This is very true in art and when I teach my students this they (and I for that matter) usually become pleasantly surprised by the outcomes. This is to be my first entry in this experimentation of subjective thoughts. I will then be able to link thoughts together as these entries progress.Labor, Craft and Open Source
For one, the emerging class of open-source code workers was not paid for their labor but instead choose to create for the purpose of enjoyment and peer recognition over the sale of their intellectual labor. ‘In progress’ working ‘models’ are shared and worked on, continuously being revised and improved. Also, not limited by physical transportation, the distance these projects must travel was removed by the internet allowing instantaneous real-time collaboration at a global level to occur.
The labor that legitimized open-source software as a viable threat to closed-source hegemony dominated by the software giant Microsoft constituted a new organizational paradigm, one that used to its benefit a workers ‘spare-time’ as its sole means of production. This creation technique differs greatly from industrializations traditional methods of centralized and industrialized production, production that has for the last few hundred years thrived on company hierarchies and chain managements for centralized control. In the 19th century, this “American system of manufactures” that was so rightfully named by the British, restructured the dominant and localized artisan labor force strictly into divisions of specialized disciplines (Rosenberg 1969). This reorganization revolution dispensed with localized craft in favor of standardize product and a production technique that effectively resulted in improved efficiency, higher volume and lower costs. Coupled with the transportation revolution, by mid nineteenth century, it was apparent that the craft/apprenticeship breakdown was leading production from a local level to a national one (McPherson ?). Labor became the product an individual sold, replacing localized autonomous craft as the main means for creative and economic employment.
In historical contrast, labor in the medieval guild system was one of economic sustainability. The guilds objective was not in high pursuit of profit and growth such as the American system was to become, instead its intention was to maintain its current positioning of operating within market ecology. On the other hand, stabilization of this small group logic was one that was conscious of its direct and indirect ties to the land. In terms of localized food, clothing, shelter and fuel production, dependency mounted for the most part from the immediate surrounding area.
Marx’s criticism of what would come to be the populouses eventual severing of this nurturing tie throughout the 19th and 20th century, specifically addresses the peasants right to fuel in the form of wood. In his “debates and laws on theft of wood” Marx notices that the peasants’ final rights to common land are terminated by law terminating the right to collect dead wood. This was the final phase that forced the peasant (craft/artisan) into industrialized society by eliminating all access to free fuel, access that had always been available. “private property” was firmly established, and the peasant reduced to relying exclusively on the economics of the industrialized and privatized system that they was essentially forced cooperation by the ruling and privileged class. The last of their ecological autonomy was relinquished therefore paving the way for the next hundred years of environmental domination and degrading.
It has not been till the late 20th century that the laborer has had the option to get some of that autonomy back in the form of alternative energy, most notably wind and solar. This technological progression to dispel with large corporate energy providers is one of a grassroots campaign not dissimilar from that of the open-source movement. An alternative to the dominate structure was found and quickly exploited: open-source in the form of licensing and the idea of “copyleft” and “new” energy in the desire for personal sustainability.
Rosenberg, Ned eds. (1969) The American system on Manufactures. Edinbugh
Mcpherson, J.M. (?) Battle Cry of Freedom
]]>markEcologies Part I: Garden as Revolutionary Act2006-10-16T15:36:00-07:002006-10-01T14:23:00-07:00tag:markedwardgrimm,2009:feeds.304.29.05
Ecological Observations of the Everyday
For the past few days my wife and I have been progressively tackling our upstate New York yard. After spending the past 5 years in New York City we recently moved to the upstate Rochester area due to the death of my father. My grandfather has been I’ll and living with my mother and she just couldn't take care of him alone. We have basically taken the summer off from our business and academic work. This sudden move has allowed us to be quickly immersed in suburban culture and because I am (I hope) a critical thinker I have become increasingly interested in the suburban landscape and its revolutionary potential for community and political transformation.
Ecological Observations of the Everyday
For the past few days my wife and I have been progressively tackling our upstate New York yard. After spending the past 5 years in New York City we recently moved to the upstate Rochester area due to the death of my father. My grandfather has been I’ll and living with my mother and she just couldn't take care of him alone. We have basically taken the summer off from our business and academic work. This sudden move has allowed us to be quickly immersed in suburban culture and because I am (I hope) a critical thinker I have become increasingly interested in the suburban landscape and its revolutionary potential for community and political transformation.What I have been struck with most - and I believe that much more thought can go into this in future entries - is the amount of unutilized yard space the common suburban household has. Yards seems vast occupied only by the dreaded suburban "lawn". Everyone has a lawn! And lawns are large! It has become apparent that this is a product of mechanized landscaping tools (the lawn mower) and the desire to suppress all that might grow, a fear of "the void". As Nietzsche stated in The Genealogy of Morals, "man would sooner have the void for his purpose than be void of purpose...."(1)
It seems that the effects of the "Protestant work ethic" - see Max Webber (2) - have been in full effect dividing the labor of work (the job) and the labor of life. The yard has been systematically affected by this strict division becoming an area that is void of work (labor) and into an area of pure leisure (swimming pools, baseball, riding lawnmowers). With this transformation from and area where traditionally "the land" was meant to be an area that was vital to the sustainability of life - mainly food and resource production - it has fallen victim to certain predictability. The ecosystem is reduced to a weekly schedule - the lawn grows, the lawn is cut.
Food systems now rely on large industrial markets. The pay that is received from labor in the workplace is used in trade for mass produced agricultural industrialized products. Personal control over these products is reduced. Diversity suffers.
I am just giving my brief thoughts here. My thoughts have really nothing to do with sound research or evidence but instead I am arriving at this thinking though the very act that I am now critiquing - namely mowing the lawn with a lawn with a riding lawn mower. I do believe though that this is an important area for further research and investigation. The "lawn" and the "garden" seem to be and area that has very interesting cultural and sociological implications. My questions are: What would be the sociological and community implications be if local organization turned from a Lawn economy to a garden economy in American suburbia? Can a private garden be a revolutionary act by taking commerce away from large global industrial systems and allowing more localized food production and power to exist? Could garden systems replace currency exchange with DIY barter exchange?
These are some questions that I will be attempting to tackle over the next several months and as our lawn slowly begins to develop from a "lawn" structure into a "garden" structure. Just to note, I was particularly inspired by the Peter Lamborn Wilson edited book Avant Gardening: Ecological Struggle in the City & the World.
(1) Nietzsche, F. (1956) The Genealogy of Morals.
(2) Weber, M. (1958) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
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