hey y'all

i'm still working on the project i played on the last day of class, using Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 as a foundation. it's slow-going, but definitely a worthwhile pursuit. here's something interesting i've found: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony of greater importance than technology

This article discusses how the symphony played a crucial role in the invention of conventional compact discs. It's a great brief insight into the way that all of our sign systems are constantly interacting with and affecting each other.

Check back in a week or so to see what I've come up with my own personal system of analysis. Hopefully I should have something really cool for you. I started trying to decode the second movement, but I'm not sure I like my system yet, so I want to wait until I have a better idea of how I'm going to make sense of this enormous bundle of sounds.

images

by francesca woodman

that are full of dread.

the dread of the use of the word dread

I really am very sorry about adding so many posts at the last minute. I had pieces of dread in various technological and physical locations and was only just now able to unite them (with the exception of final photographs, which had been camera-napped but will hopefully make it on this blog). The reason for the wide dispersion of work is that the dread comes unannounced very often and I made a point of documenting its appearance no matter where I was. (I have work on the dread's departure as well, but it will not be ready for quite some time.) I, perhaps, mislabeled a few of my pieces, since the #1 temporary dread remedy is, in fact, writing about dread. My project became a study not only of the feeling and how to interpret and represent it, but also how to counteract it through interpretation and representation. 

The project started when I began trying to think of a theme for our first poam assignment. I wanted to pick something personal, but mysterious so I would have a lot of very important questions to ask about it. I ended up picking the dread because it wouldn't leave me alone and I thought that while I was being dreadful I could at least explore the sources and consequences of the feeling. 

I began with lists (in the first dreadpost) of specific things that reminded me of dread, caused me to feel dread, or helped get rid of my dread. A few of them were highly specific and therefore not very accessible, but I started noticing sentences or images or whole stories that would remind me of the same feeling and I began to try and keep track of them. I felt obnoxious as it was posting ten entries in a row, so I chose a few of my favorite images and a short story. The work of my own that I included ranges from pieces written directly about dread, to pieces written while experiencing the dread, to pieces written about things that I think cause the dread. Some of them are more highly developed and edited than others, which are simply thoughts. 

I am excited to go back on this blog after I finish this last post to see if the pieces are at all related to one another or have any unifying images. The stomach and the teeth seemed present in a lot of my writings about dread, which lead me to begin transferring my written work into a highly textured 3-d form with the help of many bags of steel wool. Steel wool seemed a good material with which to construct dread because it was ugly but could be made into something more pleasing to look at (in my opinion). It also seems to be the right texture of dread and can easily be manipulate into different forms that can fit into all of the places where dread is found.

For my first structural idea, and the one I brought in to present, I chose the somewhat obvious image of the stomach. Dread is felt most prominently in the stomach. Often it is present in what feels like small balls of varying textures and numbers within the stomach. I made the stomach model the largest because I wanted it to have a presence, like the feeling does. I then began to explore what the inside of the steel wool stomach might look like. I mapped out a few possibilities with materials such as dirt, glass, fur, more steel wool, bronze wool, and clay. The feeling is never quite the same, depending on the source of dread, the time of day, the amount of food consumed previous to and after development of dread, phone calls made, projects assigned/due, run-ins on the street, glasses of water processed and endless other factors. 

I realize that upon reading the poems, if you ever get through all of this and make it down there, they might not seem to be depicting the same thing or even the same type of thing. I was very lax with my self-regulation in terms of what to consider applicable and what not. This project, as unfinished and fresh as it is, has helped me learn to slowly love the dread, or at least appreciate it as a character in my life. It is a constant source of dependable companionship that I will continue to get to know in the months and years to come. 

If this is extremely long when the margins get significantly thicker I, for the 4th or 5th time, apologize for taking up so much space. I hope some of this is at least fun to read.

mp

someone else's dread

and the dread of not knowing if you like a short story, despite its undeniable strain of dread

Two (from the collaborative project Seconds by Adam Simon and Matthew Sharpe)

The meanness of the satirical essay you wrote hit me yesterday like a baseball on the chin. Those Sundays we lay curled up in each other on your hard futon kissing and discussing Marx eventually gave me serious lower back problems but at the time I was having like these day-long orgasms in my brain. You said, "Satire will be an important tool for the revolution," and maybe it will but it also can be a place for someone to hide from the intensity of any real feelings he may have and also to transmute them into a very painful projectile to be hurled at the person he has them about. 

It felt so good to be able to unburden myself to you re my inner conflict over my job at the ad agency, so then to see it lampooned yesterday on your blog in what was basically a "humorous" open break-up letter to me - "I'm hoping my $10 million campaign for the US Army is offset by the fact that I buy only free-range organic granola" - made me feel, well, I don't know, what does Marx say about how it feels to be betrayed by someone you lay naked next to for a cumulative total of fourteen months of your life, someone whom you let pull your hair - hard! - during sex because it game him so much pleasure even though it really hurt you although you sort of liked it but only because of the obviously intense pleasure he was deriving?

Also, do you think those cool hand-printed signs in the window of your bicycle shop aren't advertising?

After I read your thing I had a lot to say and even if you thought you knew what I was going to say and didn't want to hear it from yet another person, it wasn't fair to not let me say it, and the beautiful mixtape you gave me didn't make up for that because if I've gained any knowledge from my time with you it's that beauty is one thing and fairness is another. 

You said, "The distinction between the public and the private is a distinction internal to bourgeois law." So you keep posting those satires of me on your blog from the back of that little storefront were you work and sleep, and I'll climb up to the roof deck of my nice apartment building and advertise to the world till I'm hoarse that i loved you. 

spit as thick (apologies)

or 

the other woman's dread #2

your stomach noises

are loud on the hard

floor and I'm staring

again at the one

grey hair in your eyebrow

the space between our

lips is another person

drenched by now

in questions in an apartment

on the upper west side

again I am here in bed

but you smell better

I can hear your engine 

from halfway down the 

block and the clicking

of the driveway turn

like the creases on 

a bent finger

it tastes like wet

bread when you

use your whole

tongue

throw it back 

and I will tap

tap on enamel

until a few grains 

are pushing at 

the back

of my throat

will we keep

digging with scalpel

fingertips on each 

other's soft skin

into the cheese cloth

canyons of someone

else's soft wound?

friends

or

the dread of the vegan

glue them to your wall

and let them drip

onto your napping chest

when you were young

you ate your scabs

so you could make 

more 

faster

in a cycle 

body system

my phlegm tastes like

medicine as I pull it 

off my tongue and save

it for you for later

grow out your hair

while you're lying 

with long toenails 

snoring

letters touching

so often I see you but

never really all at once

I made her a water bowl

with a half&half container

but real heroes eat red meat

maybe soon you'll be drunk

under your desk and

remember to call me back

you feel heavier and 

heavier in the back seat

spin it in a circle, bite

spin it in a 

circle bite.

a bad quality image of the preparation of stomach#1 and stomach #2 with a special appearance made by Loretta aka temporary dread remedy #3.

sleep

sit on the couch

imagine a different living

room and put your hand

inside your stomach.

break it into three pieces

and give one to your 

aunt nancy for the trip

to italy.

don't give any to your 

parents because then 

you'd have to choose.

if you find anything

from red lobster or olive

garden in there give it 

to chuck for that time on 

the stoop in july.

throw the second 

piece up in the air.

make sure it doesn't

land near loretta.

roll the last piece 

in your palm so it's

smaller and put it on

adria's pillow. 

she'll find it in the 

morning when you're

still on the couch holding 

hands with dread.

the deer  county zero

or

the dread of false memory

dark in wisconsin looking 

for shapes on the side 

for 30 miles mistaking 

cardboard for flesh

swerving large metal 

outside the truck stop

brick lutheran church

every bump could 

have been

screaming in the bitch

seat, grab the oh jesus 

handle and close your

eyes don't think of vermont

postcard images  gumballs 

uncle john's porch  his

pancakes  fire  guns

replace the shreds and 

throw them over 

the top of the car.

curfew

or

the dread of landmarks

you stepped on my knee

and I sat on your foot

when there was a line 

for the bathroom I had to talk

to strangers because

I was wearing my seagram's gin

shirt not proud I rode the train 

alone getting off the six blocks 

away wrong stop

I had to walk past the kfc thinking 

about my mother's cabriolet 

in the parking lot with the wrong men 

on its last night white and clean 

before in the garage with inches 

of calabrian dust on the hood 

Then maya angelou at the feminist 

camp in woodstock talking 

about how the daughters of those

women are never the same though 

I'm sure I would have been fine had

I Ieft the talk early when I'd wanted to 

when I had to pee.

+2 and more to come (very sorry)

cramped 

or 

the other woman's dread #1

the jars on your floor are

nineteen days full of rain

I keep trying to get off your couch 

but the fever in my calves

keeps me from standing 

then a man king comes

home again for an hour

I am locked in your hallway

cut out of my rough nest old

smelling like kool-aid 

and tobacco. he sits in my

spot and you hate him for

it because you miss me.

there is someone walking by

your front door and I can see

them from where I'm kept

in the hall. if they ask me

to come outside I'll go

the wet air will fix my legs 

and I'll remember what it 

was like before I knew you.

fur

or

the dread of drunk examining

sitting on the edge of the bathtub

I look down at the pale skin 

crinkled at the edges and think

of a twelve year old. 

wet fingers grasp my forearm

but my bra is still on so I put 

my toes in. 

when my hands run down wet

bodies they should hit 

something there should be 

friction wet soft nails should 

find more than bones and skin

so I keep going.

I lose a finger on sharp breasts

but still nothing. my whole left

hand is gone after the tail, almost

concave in its sterility. 

finally I see floating

in mucky water rooted 

in a big toe

three black lines.

I rub them with my thumb

I rub them and it gives me 

pleasure 

but it gives her

none.

some dreadful things

1.

"A process for filtration of matter from a liquid suspension through a membrane uses a rotor within a concentric shell rotating with a surface velocity which, together with the rotor-shell gap and suspension viscosity, establishes vigorous vortex cells about the rotor. At least one of the rotor and shell surfaces include a filter membrane. Tangential velocity components at the membrane surface constantly sweep the membrane surface to limit cell deposition tendencies while constantly replenishing the medium to be filtered. The vortex cells are established along the length of the membrane despite the constant extraction of filtrate and the resultant change in physical characteristics of the suspension."

2. (which eventually became 3.)

frozen in acetone and foamed with polyurethane 

ropes wire foampad and needles (to get the right pose)

the curing of your mother's body (cured meat)

3.

fresh bodies

take your mother's shoes off

before you throw her in

the frozen acetone

her dingy flowered dress

won't last in the pink bath

foamed with polyurethane

be nice to the german man

holding the ropes he'll

use wire foampad needles

to get the right pose

the curing of your 

mother's body 

the ultraviolet 

specimen in

Gunther's hands

bring her back home 

sit it her at the kitchen table and 

she'll wait up for you all night.

4.

your stomach noises loud when pressed on the hard floor

dinosaur mouths, dinosaur teeth on chicken

women with their shirts off watching a camcorder

turn the genes back on.

temporary dread remedy #1:

mold fake teeth out of soft clay.

temporary dread remedy #2:

or

questions that I feel better about after having written them down but questions that I cannot ask because their answers are none of my business:

those bracelets?

are you back to texting me like I'm a piece of shit?

have you gone to a therapist yet?

how often do you tell her you love her?

do you tell her when I'm in the other room?

when you say you're thinking about nothing do you actually mean that in that moment you want to be anywhere but where you currently are?

some infantile dread poems

checking in on dread

I woke up from a nap rolled

over and checked your myspace

I had waited months scared that

after leaving you standing crying

for sixteen hours flying hundreds 

of miles to do it you would dig up 

all your old new york friends to bash 

my thick thighs and colorful shirts. 

but you just kept repeating a line

about my dandruff on your pillow.

long distance dread

or

when you stop talking on the phone I know I've asked a good question

those whimpering sounds as you 

smash a pillow on your face probably

won't get you anywhere this time, but

when I hear you grind your teeth (and

you don't know it) I have to pinch my own

together so I don't say your name in that

tone that means I love you

 

you bring up things I don't want to think

about getting closer. when you use the 

nickname you'd given me a year ago

drunk in bed I open my mouth so you can

hear me breathe heavily and out of time

I hear you squeeze the phone to your face.

Jordan Catalano Dread

if you ever dare write a song about

your car and are dumb enough

to not realize that I think it's about 

me until you blurt out that it's 

about your car I will kill you

I will cry and I will kill  you.

sometimes the dread is angry and momentarily lacks common sense 

I said to myself, I said, if she fucks

that bitch one more time 

and she

did so I 

loved her because it is her lack

of common sense that makes her

so easy to spend long periods

of time with. 

the dread loves drama

take it out at night.

hide it in your inside pocket.

remove only to share or to toss in snow.

do not drop it behind a toilet 

because it will wait for you.

try not to give it away 

as punishment to the receiver.

if she is having a good night

keep it to yourself.

use sound discretion when 

handing it over and remember

that it is always stronger 

the second time around.

Apologies for the Initial Dread Bombardment

To be followed by more well developed dread.

This dreadentry is in some semblance of chronology.

the song and place of dread

mother, leave me a message about sundacita (sun-dah-chih-tah) on my phone 

father, pick your finger for 30 seconds

I don't know where it comes from but it always wakes me up. Sometimes adria calls me on the same nights and the dread seems less personal. I'm not being a drama queen but my father was picking his thumb that night also, he always is and eating his skin and maybe it's the new baby but mine was probably then just the project I have to do. they are like small balls when you're homesick. and on bad weeks they grow in slimy layers, getting thicker, in need of palm-rolling like elementary school clay. 

an exhibition of bad decisions. 

you can make a sky out of a ceiling, that's no problem.

dread mascots?

a stomach: not soft, not wet

a tooth: naturally colored or gold

the inside of a stomach: many possibilities who knows what goes on in there

a sharp angle: metallic or crackling or cracking

concrete dread

a raw, chewed finger: father

an old boarding pass: many

a sagging mattress: forced together

a window screen: from behind

anything chipping off of a surface: lame

a pile: on the floor

other peoples' actualized dread and dread remedies as decided by me:

bess' dread face - her snacking

rachel's 2nd stage of sleep (heavy, irregular breathing) - excessive snoozing

adria's everyday (always something) - late nights

kate's hands twisting above her stomach - unclear

my father's thumb biting - continuation of thumb biting down to knuckle

angel's pre-sleep - being walked upstairs

lingji's bottom lip - a specific hug

peter's wall punching - nutritional yeast and a rooftop garden

laura's severe phone angle while texting - geeging (in every sense)

alanna's fingers on the inside of an elbow - shared: a couch and a vanilla coke

olivia's twitchy fingers - her white ring

miscellaneous dread

the dread of getting two moments confused

the dread of forgetting what I have just said

the dread of the swings/swing preparation

the dread of piles of leaves in warm places

the dread of knowing your schedule

the dread of confusing the last 4 digits of my social security number with those of your phone number

the dread of talking

the dread of hidden files

the dread of not knowing who I wrote this poem about

the dread of disappointment 

THE BEAUTY OF INABILITY

Painting watercolor over crayon marks, the medium dihydrogen-oxide is denied access to the deep fiber of the paper. Learning English after adolescence, the phonology is denied access to the deep structures of the language mind.

The denial of pigment has been exploited for artistic purposes and discovered as a new aesthetic star: the animals here were not painted, but unpainted by the absence of wax.
























Now exploit and discover the denial of phonology: the presence of Mandarin sounds, Polish sounds, and French sounds unpaints the animals of the New English in the 'words' of these speakers. Forms unlike those which can be drawn in crayon alone spring from the negative space of the existing wax phonology. The inability to speak properly becomes the ability to sing splendid.


THE MUSIC IN IT

Composed by cumulative cultural evolution, these forms have function. But when the consumer is deprived of access to function, form swells to fill the functional void, and sounds of language become songs of homo sapiens. It's like listening to English backward, forward.


THE MUSIC IN IT AND OUT OF IT



When words are spoken but not understood by their speaker, do they mean anything at all?


THE SPACE OF LANGUAGE

"The first portion of the alimentary canal that receives food and begins digestion by mechanically breaking up the solid food particles into smaller pieces and mixing them with saliva" contains small calcified structures attached to the jaw which cut the calories and assist in the production of labiodental Fs and Vs. A muscle on the floor of the orifice manipulates the food for chewing and swallowing and helps with coronal dental fricatives and Ts; and the twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the larynx participate in 'uh-oh's and word-initial vowels.

Oh, and of course, the Labium superius and the Labium inferius, who clap like seals' hands, sometimes sticky, sometimes red:

Breath Study

I had time to complete my breath experiment; a more detailed explanation of it is within this blog.



FreeVideoCoding.com

incorporating thoughts

It began with Kanye West. It was his audacity, jumping on stage, unscripted: he was an interrupter. How rude!

There’s POWER in this. I want to harness this! How can I harness this?

But then: What is a relationship? What defines one? I was curious about the idea of how the relationships I have affect my life: how am I changed by the people with whom I associate? I wanted to dissect this. Years ago I got into voice recording conversations with a friend. Largely they were intended to capture the fragments of “genus” that we believed were spewing out of us, constantly. But looking back, it was something more like self gratification and obsession; both of these things, the cocky manner with which I spoke about ME, and the thought that what I had to say about anything was important enough to have its own digital plot added only to my ego.

So this poam began and I wanted to do something with all this digital landscape. I began carving from this ground work a new informing landmass. But what I found was an egotistical aim that I was fulfilling through the exploitation of other’s criticisms. I have an audio stream flowing into selfish thought after selfish thought. All in the name of art.

BUT I want to do something selfless! Like in the Verse I posted “When the ego interferes in the rhythms of process, there is so much doing! But nothing is done.” I felt as if I was doing something sitting in front of the glowing computer screen making my bits and pieces line up like little links in a chain. But what I was really doing is creating a piece to be trashed. That’s why…

All of this is valuable because it got me here to this point, to this moment where I feel I am doing something that I can be proud of. That is why this selfish movement is not worthless. This path of discovery made what I am doing more meaningful because of the juxtaposition.

A big influence:
Paulo Freire’s work with true words. I want to say true words. There is a difference. We are often bombarded on a daily basis with false words. We are told that because we live in the U.S.A we are granted the right to become anything we set our mind to. To work hard is to achieve anything. This is a LIE! There are plenty of people (we ignore) in this country who’s lives are never told in fairytales and who never have a choice about who they will become.

We are so busy being consumed by consumption that we lose sight of what it means to be completely human. What is a human? There is humanity in all but there is a cloud of possession which obfuscates the realities of what it means to be a human (it is not the possession of, identification with, and consumption of things). This consumption affects the daily routine: It is expected that as we pass one another in the morning, we will not say hello. If you smile you are crazy, something must be wrong with you. At least that’s the way I feel sometimes when people smile at me. I have my things, my friends, my life, why should I validate yours?

Guerrilla theatre posses the same kind of power that Kanye had on stage the night of the VMA’s.



I will now attempt to capture, with words, the first invasion:

I had five people set for the first Moosejaw performance, three showed up. We did not let this detour us. We set out on Wednesday, December 16th at 4:45 from Angel Hall. We arrived at Moosejaw and our “shopper” spy indicated that there were 3 shoppers and 3 work staff present in the store. As this text message came, my partner and I watched five more people walk into the store. We knew it was now or never.
The premise: We were animals. I was a dog and Christopher, my partner in crime, a monkey. Moosejaw believes that prison existence is funny (they made a jail activities book), so we thought we would make them laugh by showing them how prisoners are really treated. We treat prisoners like animals: locked in solitary confinement made to go insane by lack of stimulation, we feed them food lacking nutrition, we kill them, all in the name of safety. After we ran around the store for about thirty seconds acting like our respective animals, Chris and I stopped at the counter and addressed the store. Telling the truth about prison, how their ad campaign is degrading and offensive. We also talked about how we work with these people and we know their names and faces and we see that they are not the stigmatized images that we thrust in the name of commercial gain. They are talented, insightful, intelligent,compassionate people. They are 2.2. million citizens of the United States. They are mothers, fathers, sisters, grandparents.

We plan to do more and more Moosejaw performances until they realize that we are relentless and will not take their simple we-apologize-but-we’re-not-going-to-change-a-damn-thing excuse for an answer.

In my video, if you can decipher anything, you can see a man standing behind the counter applauding us. He was clapping and saying that they (the employees) cannot do anything and we should contact their executive offices if we want something to change. This has already been done (there has been a letter writing effort and a petition) and nothing has changed. So, my group plans to train people on this guerrilla theatre tactic and have people going in every week, if not more often, until they receive the message that we want visible change.

What I hope to capture with my on-going guerrilla theatre project is the power of human-to-human communication. There are a lot of mediums with which we can communicate (mail, e-mail, texting, phone, cell phone) but for me the most productive, meaningful ways to transfer information is between people. You cannot ignore people acting like animals (I have learned this)!

My apple-and-oranges piece gets at this establishment of difference. With the common saying “it’s like comparing apples and oranges,” we tend to see the most monumental of differences between things and people who are fundamentally the same. If we could get away from this assumption, people will treat one another with more respect. We would have a better understanding of human life.

I consider my effort one by and for humanity. I hope to branch out and not do only politically-charged pieces but theatre that originates with this idea of a fundamental sameness. The spectrum of human emotion is representation of these essential needs.

The first action

I don't think there is any sound, and the video direction isn't the best because I was acting like a dog. This is our first attempt.

My Super-post

Note that I lost the final page of my super-post. Professor Moss has it in her possession, but I must have forgotten to save it.

Timothy Rabb
11/3/09

Failed Kanye West Project

I initially intended to focus my project on proposed sources of narcissism, but since the list of potential subjects was virtually limitless, I decided to narrow my search down to celebrities. After Professor Moss’s revelatory video clip presentation on vibrations in the mass media, I finally settled on the self-proclaimed “voice of this generation,” rapper Kanye West as my study subject. I considered a celebrity figure to be an excellent subject, partly because a celebrity’s high-profile status allows for the analysis of a wide array of video and audio records, but also due to the inherent sense of vanity possessed by many celebrities.
More specifically, my plan was to assemble an array of video clips, accompanied by the popular rapper’s music and arranged in chronological order. This would serve the purpose of creating a sort of visual map of the landmark events in Kanye’s life, revealing causal connections previously unbeknownst to most of Kanye’s listening audience; these connections would hopefully shed some light on his egomaniacal behavior. A good portion of my arrangement was to include clips of Kanye with his late mother, because I considered her death to be a marked turning point in Kanye’s life and a potential source of his subsequent narcissism.
Unfortunately, I was forced to completely abandon the thesis of this project in favor of another. Because of the copyrighted nature of most print, visual and aural materials that feature Kanye, it was nearly impossible to amass a collection large enough to be fit for this comparative analysis.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Timothy Rabb
11/10/09

Roommate Project Proposal/Failure

After a bit of thought on the reasons for my Kanye project’s lack of success, I decided that I wanted to retain my original theme of a character study of narcissism, but with the aid of a different subject. Since I have a roommate whose behaviors closely correlate to those observed in narcissistic personality disorder, I decided that he might be an appropriate subject for observation. Though one might immediately label this diagnosis as unreasonably judgmental, I’ve included a list of traits below that conclusively categorize him as narcissistic, courtesy of Wikipedia. I consider Wikipedia to be an adequate resource for materials of this nature; as a matter of fact, several studies have been conducted comparing the factuality of Wikipedia with that of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and Wikipedia has been proven equal in reliability:
Note that, among those listed, I’ve emboldened the specific traits that my roommate most clearly exhibits.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fourth edition, DSM IV-TR, a widely used manual for diagnosing mental disorders, defines narcissistic personality disorder (in Axis II Cluster B) as:
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
4. requires excessive admiration
5. has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
6. is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7. lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
8. is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
I had the intent of recording verbal conversations/arguments had between my roommate and other members of my house. My new idea was to attempt to highlight the ways in which a single self-centered individual can cause absolute tumult in a house full of ordinarily well-mannered people.
Ultimately, I rethought my motives for the project and decided that – since my means of collecting information was incredibly deceptive, and the entire process behind my proposal was more mean-spirited than scholarly – it would be best to conduct a study of another subject or find another topic altogether.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Timothy Rabb
11/20/09
Plans/Reasons for Final Project Proposition

Because of the fact that both my Kanye West and roommate project propositions were somewhat condescending in their approach, I’ve decided upon a more neutral, personal project thesis. For the project, I plan on perusing through 8-12 articles I’ve written during my tenure as a film critic/reporter at the Michigan Daily newspaper. While scanning these pieces, I’ll circle the words I deem most relevant and create a new written poem for each respective article, using my chosen words as a point of reference. My goal in this is to examine the new meaning a word or phrase inherits based on the manipulation of its proximity and order relative to other words and phrases. I also want to juxtapose both the original and manipulated works for the purpose of noting their similarities and differences. In the process of conceptualizing of this project, I formulated a set of rules to govern the writing of my “transitive poetry”:
1. No more than three consecutive words may be circled at once. Because I’m trying to create a legitimate, unique new work, copying whole phrases verbatim would undermine my efforts. Instead, I’ll allow for a reasonable proximity between ideas so as to create autonomous new concepts.
2. These words will not be arranged in the same order in which they appear in the article. My project also explores chronology in addition to proximity, and it would defeat my entire purpose to simply string together gapped words in the same chronology they were originally written in. My goal is to manipulate the work, not simply condense it.
3. To facilitate flow, coherence and originality, extraneous words may be added to the new poem, and existing words may be modified to another tense or exchanged with a synonym. Pertaining to the words I’ve circled in the article, I do intend to use several of the most profound ones in their original form to establish the dominant theme of the poem. However, the majority of the words are only intended as a foundation upon which I will build an entirely new structure.
4. Because I wish this project to be a learning process and not just a personal reflection, a different style of poetry (ex. Ode, sonnet, haiku, etc.) must be used for each individual poem.

After I’ve finished writing these poems, I don’t wish to have naught but a drab, banal verbal presentation to illustrate my project. Therefore, I will use several of the poems – particularly those that were born from film criticisms as opposed to interviews – to create a graphic compilation. To do this, I’ll pick a font that I feel best represents the style of each poem; then, I’ll superimpose each poem in its entirety over a promotional poster of the movie that inspired that poem.

Impeding Flow

I was about to go for a swim, and I noticed that I was taking off my iPod and my headphones before entering the water. The change of medium from air to water is an impediment; it literally distorts the physical sound waves so that the previously lucid music becomes muddled and unintelligible. Disregarding that aspect of impediment, there would obviously be some sort of electrical malfunction once the electronics make contact with the water. Throughout the semester, I attempted to piece together interactions, and display the uncontrolled but progressive flow; this notion of hindering, however, is not something I considered until recently. The reason it went unnoticed is because it cannot be analyzed until the ability to recognize its influence is gained. How would you know you were going to perform a certain action, or have a certain thought if you never even experienced it? This leads to an overwhelming sense of infinite possibility that one can never encounter, yet the impediment needs to exist so this chaotic path will never be taken. Even when considering the Lichtenberg Figure, the clear medium gives the energized electrons a space in which to travel, but its size restricts its advancement and ultimate shape. Though failure was often discussed and encouraged, impediment is different because it does necessarily facilitate a completely new undertaking, but rather an alternate route, and unlike failure it is much more insidious only because it cannot be immediately recognized. This realization of impediment is now requiring me to make some changes to my internet history model, for it only shows what materialized, and lacks the ability to expose possible road blocks.

This is the collected ramblings of how I attempted to make sense of my project. For the most part it kind of reads like fragmented ideas and self-dialogue. While there is a sort of process, these pages can probably be read in any order. There's a little bit of evolution of the idea, mainly from the first two pages to the third and any following, but that may be as far as it goes. Hopefully my handwriting is somewhat readable. If there's any urge to see a non-digital version, let me know. They're essentially the same, just you can see the lines where they didn't really scan that well.

An Attempt to Re-assemble Fractured and Compartmentalized Selves

FreeVideoCoding.com

It's like comparing apples to oranges

(Re)born

This response to Howard Nemerov’s “Style” was my first poam under Limited Fork. I began the semester so very lost–not confused in the sense that I knew where to find the answers; lost. At first, I was not even sure what to do. So, I admit, I didn’t do much, that is, until I began exploring the multitude of sources provided on the course site. I discovered and listened to “Why Fork?” This awoke an awareness (albeit still very limited) to what we were to explore, and how. The answers to these seemed to be anything and everything, and in any way you’d like. We had been introduced to Nemerov’s “Style, so I started there. After deciding that I would like to work with multimedia, I recorded the pieces and constructed my first sonic essay.
There were two decisions that I had to make in order to progress. What did I want to explore? [and] How was I going to document or communicate my journey?
What did I want to explore?
I was searching for the starting line. It wasn’t until I realized that I was searching for something too lofty that I needed to simplify my project, and look at the things that I have access to around me. After a trip home, I decided to explore intimacy. Home had been struck by a series of life-altering events in the weeks coming up to the semester, and every person within the immediate family had an obligation to adjust. I wanted to track this progression. I began by gathering recordings and video of the relevant past, recording conversations with my iPhone as discreetly as possible so as to retain the natural conversation. In the meantime, I read Tender Buttons, by Gertrude Stein.
I listened to Stein’s reading “A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson,” and “The Making of Americans,” and identified four phrases that resonated with one’s own being and feeling, and that being and feeling with someone. I extracted these four phrases as my audio track for “A Gertrude Stein Orchestration.” The phrases are repeated 4 times, each in a different order, with the first phrase remaining the same.

Along with my increased awareness in the most intimate and meaningful relationships around me, this project put me in contact with video and audio processes to create the piece. Since the beginning of the semester I have spent some time on learning adobe premiere and adobe soundbooth to produce the desired effects for communication.
Vibrations Keep Water Out of Lotus Leaves
Soon after, I read an article on the way lotus leaves vibrate on their stems to repel water from the surface. This idea of resistance had never occurred to me, and I was not necessarily sure how to handle it, but it felt an important characteristic of intimacy.
I continued to record conversations and lectures, extracting those moments I found relevant beyond the moment. While experimenting with how to translate text into a multimedia or interactive experience, and inspired by For All Seasons, I began working with kinetic typography. Then, one of the worst (or best) things happened to my work. I witnessed the crash of my 750GB external hard drive; nearly every document, photo, audio and video file lost with no recovery in sight.
Filled with anxiety, I was back searching for a starting line. I had to exercise my memory. I began hand-writing in a journal to continue my sense of awareness. I spoke about how during conversations and lectures of times I was recording I lacked presence because I knew I was capturing the moment and could return at anytime. With all of this lost, I was truly left with only a fleeting memory of the experience. I had read “The Kingdom of Infinite Space,” a work that resonated well with my background in cognitive science. It took a turn inward, about the relationship of the body and mind, and I thought maybe I could go there, too.
With Memory in mind, I turned back to writing sonic essays. I had photos from our Paper Brain/Social Construction exercise and some video left on my iPhone. Working with what media I had, I made a second video piece with an accompanying text. The video begins with photos and video captured of the paper brains. It also includes scanned images of my journal so far, superimposed onto video that captures the act of writing.

That is current state of my project. As I continue to (re)capture video, audio, photos and other media, I hope to continue to gain application experience in making videos like those that I have posted here. I feel that my project will at least begin with a continued focus on the self, awareness and memory in reference to the self. I would like to continue to incorporate and (re)orchestrate the texts and media of others (such as was done with Gertrude Stein), and discover paths through texts that are not my own. Hearing the presentations of the progress others have made held as one of the most significant moments of the class, and leaves me enthusiastic to be starting back at start with the experiences of these last fourteen weeks.

As one last night, I thought I would expand on the title of this blog. Thylias continually referred to our projects as infants, and simply with my inevitable loss, my project has returned to a stage just beyond conception.

I leave you with a script in the making for a sonic essay.

Limits & Resistances
I was, and have been, realizing limits and resistances
in myself.
The former is uncontrollable, we are only so much.
The latter, able to be broken down.
There are those universal limits,
we are all only human.
But, again, these were lofty,
over the top. I was brought back down;
To my own limits, and the difference between
limits and resistances.
My limits would by and large never change.
But what I resisted was my own doing.
Choices I was making to act out or not act out.
What was stopping me from always acting, and speaking, and responding, and making progress?
Filtering myself, looking back, and being filled with regret.
I took notice to my mind-body relationship.
How my body reacts to feelings of
tension, shyness, embarrassment, stress, fear, and so on.
My resistance was a social construction,
A crease in the brain and mind,
That could perhaps be flattened
but would never wholly vanish;
vibrations (of resistance) dialed down to a low echo.

How memories have the power to rekindle those feelings and reactions.
The power of the memory of the mind.