Label Gazing

Investigating identity through labeling. Literally. Adjectives on Avery labels on Post-its on us. Sensitivity training gone wrong or soooooo right. A project spawned from Erica J.s' consideration of labeling of the Obamas and the McCains.

1) Send Kate 15 adjectives that define yourself by Saturday.
2) Kate will print out adjectives on labels.
3) We'll transfer labels to post-its in class a la assembly-line.
4) Tag each other? See what happens? Other ideas?

Objection: Purloined Letters

I was thinking about Tom's shorthand pieces and wondering about the hidden meanings behind the text. Also, last week when we did the erasure activity, there was talk about how when the text became obscured on the pages they somehow transformed into being "text as object." I wondered if Tom considered his shorthand pieces "appropriated text," even though the legibility and the meaning of the text was obscured. What makes text become an object? When its legibility is obscured? It made me think of the idea of the purloined letter, where the idea of the letter with unknown text takes precedence over the actual meaning of the text in it. Is the way we view the shorthand pieces markedly different because we know that there is hidden meaning in the shorthand text used to make the piece? If it were a piece made of multiple curved lines, how would we view the piece differently?

lawrence weiner: language as material (itself?)

hello all,
thinking about our in-class discussion on materiality the other day and noticing the lawrence weiner link on the wiki, i decided to embed this short video which, i think, nicely illustrates weiner's practice in relation to the materials he engages with. he is working in a discursive space where materials--language, paint, museum walls, etc--are used to both define that space as well as dissolve that which defines the space. he aims to collapse the art object ("a-r-t"[language]) and art material (paint, wall, floor, language, etc.) into one complicated loop of circular fun in a way that plays with the importance of the material art object's relational status.

it is also worth noting that L.W. has done several "art" books which consist only of words on a page (yet which somehow escape being labeled poetry [not even concrete poetry!] or even writing!) our library has several of these in the art stacks and they are all worth checking out (with your eyes not your id since artist stacks are reserve only:). I wish i had cough syrup as an excuse for that horrible joke but i don't so i will just see you all in class tomorrow.

Fwhoie-co

I wonder how Foucault would qualify the author-function of his own "works." Does he consider his body of work to demonstrate an initiation of multiple discourses? How close does Foucault stand to the "second self" of the "I" in "What is an Author?" Foucault was so prolific with his writings that it's hard not to think that he wasn't struggling against death by making sure his name appeared alongside all his writings before he died. I'm curious that the only direct reference he makes to himself, as an author (or would he have called it as a "functioning author") is when he discusses his intentions for The Order of Things. Reading Foucault after reading Barthes' "The Death of the Author," I start to think that it's irrelevant for Foucault to try to explain his intentions. In my reading of his essay, I think of other things. I think of a bald head, a pair ofglasses, the pendulum at Griffith's Observatory. I wonder of Michel ever thought of Leon and the rotation of the earth. I think of how my expectations that Foucault would reference himself more directly in a piece entitled "What is an Author?" are completely unmet.

Too Much Cold Medicine or It's Raining Text!

I decided that I really wanted to post some ideas to you guys, particularly because I am out sick (like a dog) and so I won't get to participate in Caroline's project and bat around thoughts, you know, corporeally.

I love playing with words. I love mad-libs. I love magnetic poetry. I've often wondered about how to make a piece of work that involves some of the exciting elements of those games. The joy and accessibility of the play, the productivity of the constraint, the leveling of the playing field, the interactivity, the group dynamic. So, in web-surfing text art et al, I came across this piece by Camille Utterback called Text Rain and I think it is fun and worth discussing, and gets at some of these questions. To encourage you to link on through to the piece and then open the quicktime documentation (I highly recommend the larger file, the small file is all pixel-y) the piece is an interactive projection field where falling letters respond to bodies, umbrellas, and other objects placed in their paths and bounce around the objects. You can see in the documentation the way that the audience engages in the piece, playing with the rules of the letters, trying to contain or disperse it, trying to make sense or destroy sense. There is a poem that the letters are culled from, about bodies and text so the website says, and it begs the question of where the author is. Is it the author of the poem? Or in this case, does it have something to do with bodies in particular? What about when there is no poem, just letters? What would the interceding bodies be then? What about absent bodies (like mine? :)

Ok, and also, speaking of mad-libs and art, can we maybe do this mad-libs-ifesto as a class? Cause I think it is AMAZING!

Don't get this cold. It BLOWS.

Also, what about writing in all caps? Why is that so what it is? Ok, too much cold medicine, obviously. Do not compare this post to the last one! It is crazy. Have a good class, guys, and I'lll be back with you next week. More bloggers please!

Context: The Culprit

Posting Date: TUESDAY : 24th

Title: Context: The Culprit

Ok, I had this revelation, last night at 12:30 am (the only time I had to allow my brain to wonder)

This goes back to our conversation yesterday: 

“Why are writers not allowed to play with visual arts, as visual artist are allowed to play with writing?”

I caught myself being stuck in somewhat of a tunnel vision during class: I could only think of academic “writing” during our discussion, hence my comment “writing has never been artistic or creative, and more factual”. Of course writing has been creative! And of all people I should know as a graphic designer:  from Iranian arts of calligraphy, to illuminated manuscripts, expressive typography, Futurists, and Dada etc.

So, after admitting my mistake, I asked myself why/how? 
And I came face to face with the culprit: Context
At least I believe so. 

Of course politics, cultural trends and other aspects we discussed are have influence on what different groups considered proper – or otherwise –  when it comes. However, when one discusses writing in an academic environment, we are dealing with a specific lineage. When discussed in the realm of creative/arts, we see a different history behind us. etc.

Acknowledging the overwhelming importance of context and the relative control that we –as communicators– have,  can initiate a path decipher the elements that are causing the original question to arise, as well as giving us the choice to gamble with our work in arenas of our individual choice – since that specific arena will bring with it the context which the work will be critiqued within.

I had to get this off my head, before I went crazy talking to myself. I hope  it makes some sense.

And I Quote

Some things that I've been thinking in class, and some things that I mentioned off-hand with a little more follow through, and some Merleau-Ponty (for the laughs, obviously).

Miniatures and Text:
I know that I brought up miniatures in class, but my notes just refuse to tell me why. Until I can learn to take better notes, I'll put down some things that I'm thinking about, and hope that the metonym will just make itself manifest by the sheer power of causality. I remember that we were talking about affect in artmaking, and the affect of puppets, most particularly the miniature, is an interesting one. According to Susan Stewart in her book On Longing, there are two ways in which we view the miniature. "First, the object in its perfect stasis nevertheless suggests use, implementation, and contextualization. And second, the representative quality of the miniature makes that contextualization an allusive one; the miniature becomes a stage on which we project, by means of association or intertextuality, a deliberately framed series of actions."

I started to feel like there must be an analogous relationship between theories of understanding the impact that puppets have on us and the way that we understand text. How does text point to a framed series of actions, or perhaps does it do the framing? What if we think of text like miniatures, nesting dolls of semiotic, intersubjective (intertextual?) and entirely reliant on their context in order to stand in for meaning? Maurice Merleau-Ponty would have something to say about that, maybe. In the essay that I was talking about in class, The Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence, he says that "[l]ike a charade, language is understood only through the interaction of signs, each of which, taken separately, is equivocal or banal, and makes sense only by being combined with the others." This is a more complex idea than the surface might seem, in the same sense that a miniature is a more complex representation than simply a tiny version of the real thing. We understand that language is not meaningful outside of context, but this observation of M.P.'s perhaps stretches our sense of context from merely the sentence to something quite larger. Also, he ask that "we rid our minds of the idea that our language is the translation or cipher of an original text, we shall see that the idea of complete expression is nonsensical, and that all language is indirect or allusive-that it is, if you like, silence." So, in total what this suggests is that the constituent parts of language are meaningless AND ALSO, the whole is actually silence. That feels a little like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. In that I mean that I'm hoping that if I wave my arms around enough, you won't notice that there's a bunch of holes in the middle part right now I don't have a great solution to pull it all together, but I think it might be interesting to discuss.. Perhaps someone will do some nice magic in the middle there. More later that will hopefully pull this all together.

Oh, and germane to the conversation, tiny puppets with big puppeteers try to take on the Great War on a small scale...
Hotel Modern

If you want to read more on either of these:
On Longing by Susan Stewart
The Merleau-Ponty Reader