random art thoughts. reminders to self.

things always end up cycling back. is it like that for everyone or do i just cause it to happen? is it because i like thinking about the threads, the patterns of thought that occur over time? perhaps.

over a year and a half ago i tried to make this video (that i ended up scrapping) thinking about what was the idea of nature versus what is natural. now in thinking about my thesis, i find its back. but its only now, that i feel like i can think about it in a way and use it more appropriately or at least in a better way in my artwork. back then i could only think of the idea, and make bad things to go with it. but i know i've done the same thing with other themes before too. everything comes back again, but with new things added of course.

what about using toys as sound. getting back to that too, maybe. . .

as stupid as it seems, its so easy to forget about the most obvious aspects of your own artwork and forget why they are they way they are. i have to remember them again. there's the body. and then there's landscape. environment.

also back, is a phrase, a question i used to write all the time in my sketchbook, think about all the time, and was the main part of the first video i ever made, back in undergrad for a video art history and theory class, edited on the vcr- then later, when reading julia kristeva was shocked when she discussed the type of person who asks that question of him/herself. oh yes, and that's a reminder to myself to go back to that reading.

ook.

observances so far of taiwan. . . mostly right now thinking about the strange combinations of feelings in a culture both ahead and behind things. different values of things. the fact that alot of things are falling apart yet you can get really high tech and logical technology here. and then those illogical combinations remind me of things with my parents. paranoia over certain things, but then they don't care about other things at all. i'm being vague here its true. but there is so much i guess.

today was bah-stang day. a holiday for all, a day when you eat this particular food- the rice dumpling, the bah-stang, a triangular shaped leaf wrapped flavorful rice roll with pork, peanuts, chestnuts, and shitake mushrooms. or a soh-stang would be the vegetarian variety. i went to my uncle's today, my aunt cooked roughly 12 dishes of food. they were all placed on a special roll out shelf in front of their home shrine and we paid respects with two sticks of incense each, my aunt and uncle both speaking at separate times giving thanks. then my aunt and uncle went to burn the ghost money outside- fake money for the ancestors. then we ate the food, cold by this point. the ghost money and many of the things they did were more of the Daoist form of Buddhism, at least i think that's what my mom said. Its not really the kind of stuff the rest of my family partakes in so much. (i know my parents have totally poopoohed the burning fake money thing and i would agree with that) but it was interesting anyway.

mm, i have more to say about today, but its time to stop sitting here getting bitten by mosquitoes.

more conversations within the in. . .

kahn and selesnick said to me the other day they felt that something was about to burst in my work. as if they anticipated the future, things are starting to hint at that. i feel an eruption, yet it is all so uncertain, but it feels seems exciting. and then it all seems related to my decision to go somewhere. physically moving, instead of staying trapped and hiding within objects, feelings, and things. to not be afraid of moving. not be afraid of exposing myself, of embarassing myself.

talking to myself.

i know it, i'm almost there, almost done with this brief intermittance of a thought.

i feel strong right now. as saul williams (the granola hippie!) said, asserting my vulnerability makes me strong. as silly as that sounds, it is true for me. i'm not afraid of it right now.

where am i? its the movement of all confusions that take me down and bring me up again.

i am looking for the medium or the median? where do i balance? where to go? pull back or forge on ahead? it is both and all and less and more and none at the same time.

to go to. to be covered up. or hidden. or both. to burst out. to be forgotten, but not by myself. to find out.

to go in circles one way. come back another. then round and round again some more.

to go back to years ago.
where am i?
is it now? or before?
where am i?
is it here? or there?
where is this?

more later

an inspirational performance tonight by the books. i need more music, more sounds, more performance. yes. its one of those experiences where i just feel deliriously happy and like i could almost just die right then. live instruments and electronics is the best combination from my viewpoint. yes.

okay, sooo, i have been trying to read this book for awhile- powers of horror by julia kristeva- it was recommended to me by anne-marie, and then i happened to read a little bit of it once somewhere and was quite taken by it- really felt like things she was talking about were very relevant to me, exactly some of the things i think sometimes. but now having been trying to read it for awhile. . . really, i never read philosophy- i know so little, so i have a super hard time with it. in alot of ways in reading it i sort of just have a gut feeling like i understand it, almost like sound. but then i can't explain it. so i keep going back and re-reading. . .lots of re-reading but i don't get very far. but i am determined to.

other things- getting people to communicate with me, open up is good right now. a few different cases of that and all are good. rick and me making noises is good. weather is sort of good, already getting to sweaty for me though. water is good. being alone in the house right now is good. i'm getting super into music again- both listening and playing is good. artwork in my studio is not so good but i hope to make it again good. copying off of rick is good. making plans to travel is good. music is the best good.


looking at old photos is good.
for some reason won't upload now i'll try again later.

catching up after a few long simultaneously blissful and hellish weeks of work. . . .

eleanor antin, what a character! totally new york rude without realizing it or does she actually relish in it? hilarious and controlling at the same time. i was sort of apalled at much of her talk, probably because she had already irritated me in my crit with her, then she was ultra snappy during her lecture and not willing to answer questions that were asked of her. but then we had a good day in visiting artists class which was funny. i think looking back now that my crit with her was so awful because she is so talkative, and i tend to get really quiet around very talkative folks. i hate feeling like i'm competing. thus, i didn't speak much about my work which just sort of caused her to go off on an awkward tangent about completely random things that had nothing to do with me! orange extension cord. . . mirrors. . .the hideous paint job on my back wall (which she said she liked!) but then the performance i did for her she liked and said there was not much to say about it because it spoke for itself! amazing to go from her saying that she couldn't say much about my work and that she couldn't help me to the other extreme! hilarious yes. also wondering why people continue to use photos of when they are young in press photo stuff when then you meet them and they are clearly much older! what is that about? of course i know, but it still seems ridiculous. but its good because i ended up getting something out of her visit, it forced me to think about this work that i hadn't thought about in awhile and to acknowledge the fact that i enjoy doing simple things in artwork.

so then cory arcangel (while this is not a photo of him here he was wearing the same fab sweater) coincided with that and he was totally great, totally hilarious. and the things we talked about that i will remember are that simple things are great, and he said the less you do, the better. and i'm totally into that right now and thinking about improv with my work- and the reason that i can't wait to be done with my stupid igloo- actually i think it is pretty cool the way i am thinking about it now- but at the same time realizing that i could have made it in some other manner much more easily than i have been doing it. but its good to realize it. i have had to suffer through this stupidity and horror of months of work on one thing to realize this. but that's fine, because now i know that this is it! yes. yes. yes.

in other thoughts. . . especially considering my flickr project with casey. it is great that i went from only 6 months ago being so wary and afraid of doing any collaborative projects to now. . .well, i just want to do a ton of collaborations! it is exciting and of course i want to still have a few things just of my own going but doing collaborations makes doing scary things easier and more fun. . .i think the new theme of my work process will be fun. in the past its definitely about masochistic and needlessly painful practices. i mean, i'm sure i'll still have a bit of that, but maybe balance it out more with other shit. but what is great is to work with all these people that i can trust.

ohhh, living is great. today was my impovisational day off from the studio. it was very nice indeed.

man, i can really go on and on with my little rant here, huh? i sort of love it in my selfish little way.

in the digital lab classroom recently:

visiting philosopher/writer- ken (mackenzie) wark, writer of the hacker manifesto. oh, and you can read a version of it here. wow, so much to take in. still am. . . reading this was great because as juvenile as it is. . . i definitely had a more preconceived notion/definition of the word "hacker". so the exploration and additional contextualization continues in all things. . . yes.




and then derek holzer and sara kolster. (they should merge their names into one. kholszter?) out of all the things they showed, i was most pleased with the documentation of their resonanCITY, the other video of theirs they showed, and the vasulka pieces. oh, and the nicolas provost piece too. i very much wish i had gotten to see their live performance and also their workshops on PureData. ahh well. provost piece yes was a one trick pony but it was still lovely and intricate and i was especially attracted to the sound. but then i was also affected by how much i did not enjoy certain videos they showed- especially the Servaas video with the Michael Mcclure poems (which i actually remembering reading some of before). i did not enjoy the fact that the sound and visualization of the objects moving on the screen moved with every accented syllable in the reading. it just made me think of my least favorite drummer that i ever played with- he just played on the beat and it made the music worse somehow. i think mark described it as representational? yes, i would agree with that assertion.

i have said before that i am trying to walk as many fine lines as i can between things in art, and art and everything else and so on. but i am also at places right now where i keep teetering into one extreme and then the other in short and long term areas of existence and i am realizing just how fine those lines are. they're so hard to see right now. i can't see much of anything these days.

to continue on with paul pfeiffer- there seems to be a bit of debate about him. i seem to have a different opinion than everyone else, but i suppose its because i was familiar with his work and talked with him quite a bit when he was here. his lecture was not amazing, but i thought it was fine. i also thought he was very sincere and quite thoughtful in giving it and thinking about everything that was going on. while he may not have always had answers for questions, should he know it all? i think he could have answered them easily if he wanted to, but was answering them in the moment of reconsidering the ideas. i get more turned off by artists who have a spiel, know exactly what to say and just keep repeating themselves over and over. he was thinking about the questions, thats for sure. no he wasn't there to sell his work, but why should he? does he need to? is that the point? and in class i was thrown off by the fact that everyone took his not wanting to put his stuff on the internet and not do projects with corporations to be anti-marketing anti-commercial etc. but really, i think he's just not interested.

i just read casey's blog so alot of my comments are responding to hers. . .and also because we've been around each other alot lately and have been talking to each other about things. . .

so i'm going to continue with that in talking about the paul miller aka dj spooky book rhythm science. yes, casey and i were talking about social sculpture in correlation with miller's book and it made me think about bueys and the definition of social sculpture and rick lowe. ( i will argue till the day i day that sound is sculpture. sound is a material, it has shape and takes up space). . shaping life is sculpture, and isn't that what social sculpture is about?

wait so where am i going here? i did the exact same thing casey did, found the same bueys passage- Social Sculpture refers to a conception of art, framed in the 1970s by Beuys, as an interdisciplinary and participatory process in which thought, speech and discussion are core ‘materials’. With this perception, all human beings are seen as ‘artists’ responsible for the shaping of a democratic, sustainable social order. Social Sculpture lifts the aesthetic from its confines within a specific sphere or media, relocating it within a collective, imaginative work-space in which we can see, re-think and reshape our lives in tune with our creative potential.

i think maybe miller's thinking of his work as social sculpture is related to ideas of mixing of classes and races . . . one of the things that is so amazing about sound in the first place is that it travels and it keeps going. . .it reaches so many people in so many ways, its hard to stop. i think he means the social sculpture in his work in the re-contextualizing of these works he is remixing and the environment he is setting them into. there's a large audience for music, lots more than for visual art. you can release music and sounds into the world and people that want to hear them will either listen carefully to hear the literary gertrude stein or jazz innovators matthew shipp and guillermo brown or dub of king tubby or wu tang or thurston moore, or be entranced by his beats or the sound or the feeling itself. people listen to music for a variety or reasons, and his music pulls from different forces to create a blend of the intellectual, interesting yet pleasing sound . he can play all over the world to different audiences and they come together in that way. as simple and cheesy as the idea sounds, a common interest that brings people together of all different races and classes of people is a beautiful thing. so also, people that get into his music for one reason, might go on to investigate another aspect of something else he as sampled or collaborated with. so. . . i think that what miller is talking about in terms of social sculpture.

while his work does not as immediately shape society like rick lowe's project row houses, i think that the way miller could possibly shape society with sound is beyond anything that can be described. i'm not saying i think this is all true, but that i can see the possibility for it.

i didn't even get to everything i wanted to touch on. more later.

reflecting here at the end of the most of the week that was paul pfeiffer mania for me. . . first off, paul is a great guy and great artist, very conscientious about everything that is going on around him in close and far spaces, very purposeful and careful with his words and thoughts. i enjoyed my critique with him immensely. i feel like we related in ways of thinking about video in correlation with objects as well as talking about that desire to walk fine lines between pop culture and art. one of the things he talked about was the fact that he is not so interested in commodifying his work or trying consciously to make it into something that is outside of the art world. he is also not interested in trying to make it into net art as there is already so much online. i found this interesting, because even though i hadn't thought about it, i feel sort of the same way. but it is the same way that i have issues about making objects- they are getting larger and i have issues about making more stuff to add to the world. but at the same time i have a physical need to experience a variety of objects and the spaces around them. images, words, and sounds from monitors, screens, and projections feed a lot of senses and emotions but not all of them.

at lunch the other day a conversation began that continued into the interview today about a show he is co-curating. while i won't speak of the details of it i will just say that it made me think about my identity as an artist. . . as a physical person. . . i think in the past i have been more intrigued by certain works that really feel like the persons, and very unique persons at that. okay, yes i still am to some extents, but it makes me think of my identity, and how much differently i move and try to do things since coming to grad school, since being single for the longest period in my life in the last 10 years, which if anything, really has been a time for me to grow and learn and all of that. . . but i think that greater change has been more so in my "personal life", but that greater change i think is not as prevalent in my artwork as i would like it to be. the other day i had a converstion with one of my professors about how she thinks i'm a little bored and the fact that some of my not as recent work had more of a sense of improvisation to it. of course this makes me think of music and so it also works in that mark just posted about hyperimprovisation. its funny because my life outside of school has become more improvisational than its ever been, but i've lost it in my artwork. then i started thinking tonight about this drum kit that christian, our visiting artist/adjunct in ceramics this semester, told me about at the salvation army. (funny now just thinking about how much christian's work is pretty much all about this idea of improv, sort of a constant performance). so i want to do all of the things i said i was going to do in grad school- one of which was that i was going to buy a drum kit and start playing it.

i've made this huge loop around but it all makes sense to me. i love the way that you can put all the little bits of things and thoughts together so it makes sense. . . i guess that's my favorite thing also about making art.

oh wait, so back to thinking about identity. i think that possibly i am a little bit stuck in a art identity crisis, and i need to do some improv in that area. maybe playing the drums, or maybe playing more music again in general will somehow help even if its not part of it. also, i used to do a lot of improv with my sewing, especially of sewing of my own clothes. especially because there are so many particular ways to do this, most of which i know anything about. i have always used the sewing machine as a tool in my own way. . . i have no idea what to do with a pattern or how it works. when i make clothes its all about making it up for myself and seeing what works and what doesn't. in video i find more improv, its the objects i'm struggling with right now. do i know too much about them? i think maybe i like to know less about things so i can invent a way to work with it. how do i continue to invent ways to work with things after i get to know them? i mean, you can with everything if you learn more things, make it more complex. . . but that was another thing paul and i related on. . . is the idea of using simple technology, simple materials to do things without overproducing. well, there's too many things in the world to learn, so that sort of works out for me right? just learn bits and pieces of as many things as i can and use them and learn them in the ways that i need them to work. and that's improv for me too.

the immediate future. . . .

things i would like to learn:
aftereffects
dreamweaver and other website stuff
percussion/drums
kinetics/robotics
some aspect of winter sports/activities

would like to improv more on:
fabric, stuff i collect
all my noises in general
boulder
my aesthetic

need to learn more about:
sound recording

thinking about this all, there seems to be a direct correlation between my lack of playing music, lack of performing live and this lost sense of spontanaeity in my work.

will admitting this realization here make me do it faster? i hope so. but i am slow. don't harass me. there's nothing worse than harassment from someone else about something that you are already painfully aware of. reminders are okay though.

how come i only now just found out about the craft technology group on campus here?

how come i had to read this to find out about it?

huh? huh?

on my walk home from school just now and considering the sonic outlaws video watched last week. . . okay i have to start from some personal perspectives that may be pretty far off, but i think it will get me somewhere? maybe not but i guess i need to just think aloud for awhile.

i first heard negativland probably in 1991 or 1992, probably listening to the local college radio station. . . i was lucky enough to have older siblings that were radio djs in college, turning me onto things unexpected on the airwaves and at home. negativland was one of those things i didn't know quite what to make of, but i knew there was something cool about it. it didn't strike me sonically as something i wanted to listen to again really, but it had that air of bands at the time that were political in some sense. but then i probably thought that any band then using found sounds of people speaking had similar purposes. like consolidated. (is that band still around?)

but now to consider their issues of copyright, it does seem silly that they were attacked for their use of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." especially now considering this issue, i don't think anyone would blink an eye. or maybe?

I suppose if it were me i would just like to be asked permission. Personally, I would think it was great if someone considered my work to have affected someone enough that they wanted to make a comment with it, even if it were to be in a negative tone. I can think of situations that i have been in when playing music when my sound has been manipulated by others. i was just in new york over the break and my friend byron and i did one of the things that we often do together- he records me doing my stuff and then uses it for his own purposes. i don't mind at all, but i also know and respect what he's going to do with it. but then the first time i tried to play music with an ex-boyfriend of mine, i played some stuff that he recorded, then he immediately manipulated it into something else. i remember crying. . .and well, that was i think just the first of many times we tried to play music and it usually ended with me crying. possibly because i didn't like what he did, and maybe because i just wasn't expecting it.
I can think of a few situations i have been in when playing music. i was in this band called for a very long time, and this guy offered to record us. after spending some time recording an album's worth of stuff, he gave us a copy of the recording- which was a completely remixed crazy version of our music. i remember vaguely that he tried to sell it to us in this way. . something about a feature about him that was going to be in AP magazine and he was going to push the music. basically, he needed some material to present and used ours to present his own ideas. and really, he did a fantastic recording job and some of the things he did were indeed amazing. . but it wasn't our music. and the whole thing was under false pretenses. later we even let half of it be released as a split with another band he recorded. we ended up being fine with it, but it would have been nice to be asked.

so as with every situation. . it certainly depends on the specifics. i'm typically not a person who appropriates other people's work. yes i've used found things, but they were designs that were sold to be used (commercial decals) and sounds that are meant to be used as well- bbc sound effects. i'd rather just make my own stuff personally. if someone takes my stuff and alters it without asking me? well if its good and well done i'll give them props. if it sucks, i'll be pissed off.

happy lunar new year!

its the year of the dog. its my sister's year.

i sort of wish i had planned an event.
but thoughts of the new year flashes me back to memories of new years in taiwan two years ago. my cousin's wedding, all the family, the food, my uncle asking our ancestors to find me a good husband, going with my mom and my aunt to the temple where my grandparent's ashes are kept and paying respects to them with a lot of food and incense, hanging over the railing outside and asking my mom if she wants to the same treatment when she goes, going to my other grandmother's temple to eat their fabulous new year's feast. . .

so here. . . respects to my deceased grandparents. . . and goodbye to my deceased grandparents beautiful house with the large snail on it- just got sold. on the upper right that's my still living grandmother with my sister and niece. they had matching hairdos.

this turned into a sentimental post. i don't know what happened.

My other technologically saavy class this semester is Intro to Music Technology with Lyn Goeringer. Our first project is actually to create a website. This is great for me because I have always wanted to make one but just have never gotten around to trying to learn this. I just find it ironic that i had to venture outside the art department to get an assignment on this! Regardless, our first step in this is to research some websites, using an electronic musician as way to learn info. and examine good and bad parts of non-commercial sites. My research took me to a very interesting composer and performer Laetitia Sonami. She is most known for this work called the "Lady's Glove," a wearable instrument that controls sound and light.

Anyway, I think this will be a great class for me, not just because I have been wanting and needing technical help with my sound recording (pretty lo-fi right now), but also as a way to learn more about the history of electronic music and get me back into these types of musics that i have neglected since moving here and since the days of my old radio show in undergrad, tintinabulary.

Yay for school, right? Now if i can just get a handle on my many work-jobs. Need to quit one. I have to write that down to remind myself because i somehow keep forgetting.

hyperoriginal metaauditory experience

Riot is the website in question.

Who is the artist? I say it is Napier, the creator of the site. But everyone's always got a different take on it and I'm open to other suggestions. Napier's the one with the concept, the idea-maker and organizer of what you see in front of you. The website designers and such are contributors to what he is doing, but we are all contributing too. We're just all pawns, little bits and pieces to this project, but Napier's got it figured out before we get to it, realize that we're part of it. They say that all art is thievery right? i'm not sure if i agree 100% with that, but maybe 98%? or not. again, you can change my mind. (in actuality, i'm an idealist and i want to try to make, or assemble things into a new thing at least). but yes, i do think that most things and ideas came from somewhere else but are just assembled in everyone's individual way. its just like ideas themselves. everyone's got great ideas, but the execution is what counts right? how and what you do with those ideas are the aspects that are going to make people stop and say hey, what's going on. in the case of RIOT, Napier has clearly stated this by something that's obviously a collage of things that aren't his.

The art for me is the end result here and the ideas behind it. an everchanging collage never the same. the thing that you look at that makes you wonder, okay, what is that and why is it there? but it also turns into a little game. . . what will it do next? what if i. . . what about this? the children in us want to play around, make it do different things. i still like bright and shiny things. would my nephews like it i wonder? since i do, i suppose i expect them to as well.

what we have here is a place for thoughts regarding things going on in one graduate art seminar class. and more.