Dear Berries, I’ve been so busy lately, what with trying to reduce my Carbon Footprint and studying Seitz’ Concerto No. 5 for piano and violin, that I’m only now getting a chance to respond to Vanessa’s invitation to think over how to proceed in 2015.
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I made a Flickr group where we can share:
1. pix of our hangouts
2. pix of our collaborative projects
3. pix to discuss in the next hangout
4. pix of projects any of us are working on
https://www.flickr.com/groups/pbrita
Please join the group and add any pix you like!
I appreciate what Michael is up to with his paper for the Art Historians of Southern California, arguing for “Hacking the Timeline” in order to widen the scope of women artists’ role in art history. And I also appreciate what Kate Johnson is doing in this mode as well with her documentary, “A Dancer’s Journey,” which will air November 20 in LA on PBS and nationwide on PBS in 2015 (schedule to come). One of the concrete things I learned while working on my recent performance “What’s on [My] Mind?” is how hard we have to fight for our story to make it into “History.” And it IS a fight — often, frankly, a war — that determines whose names will be remembered by the generations to follow.
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When I say God’s job, I really mean the job of gods
Awesome Xta! I sadly can’t remember the author who said this, but here it is:
Men write about important things, like war; women write about unimportant things, like family.
Interesting twist for Site Dance II MOOC: Certificates ONLY for Signature Track. Regular Track: no virtual paper for you!
As Christa can testify, I’ve been thinking about the wonder and compelling nature of things like Cornell Boxes. And the amazing, immersive bookfulness of books. And records, amazing records like Camille’s Le Fil or The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper.
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I think this is an interesting and worthy goal. One thing to note, is that in a way what I’m trying to create is “preciousness” in a time of Abundance. Abundance is a good problem to have, at least compared to the alternative, Scarcity. But in a time of Scarcity, almost anything can be precious. In a time of Abundance, there’s just so much competition for Attention. Entities like Art Galleries and Churches all try to create the experience of Preciousness, and in our time of Abundance, they’ve really got their work cut out for them!
Van, I’ve been wanting to comment for several days, but finally I have the time.
Perhaps one of powers possessed by a Cornell box or any precious object in the non-internet world lies in its ability to arrest, to STOP us in time. The object captures us in a way that allows us to experience it in time, but the object itself has a kind of permanence to it, a stasis: the object itself does not change. Because we can return to the object (artwork, album, poem) over and over, we both are relieved by its constancy (not everything changes; what a relief), AND, also, we have time to notice how WE have changed in relationship to the object (artwork, album, poem), and this may be the REAL draw of the physical thing: we are more curious about ourselves and our own lives than we are about the lives of others, and these static objects help make ourselves clear to ourselves.
Who hasn’t felt the “whoosh” effect of FB, or Twitter, or the internet in general — move along, move along, move along — there’s more, always more — to see, to learn, to do, to watch, to read? It’s exhausting! But these static objects — the Cornell, the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s, the epic poem (currently, I’m reading The Odyssey again for the 10th time in 20 years) — do not “whoosh” us along; WE may whoosh, but they restore us; they give us back to ourselves, despite the way the world takes us away from ourselves over and over and over (so like the internet — life). The object’s stasis is the very thing that provides this restoration: it offers us the time and space (constant, reliable) to be moved emotionally — at our own pace, in the directions we choose (or that our unconscious minds choose).
The internet moves similarly to the way the unconscious mind moves, but I think we feel that we’re being moved from without rather than from within, and this makes all the difference.
Although I am a Documentation nut, I am not a Object maker. My work is in Ephemeral Experiences. Hopefully these are engaged and immersive experiences. Participants at these experiences may have some of the “Box” like experiences I’ve described. I do wonder if my yearning for this “Box” like experience isn’t a sort of desire to turn the ephemeral experience of performance art, or cyberspace, into a sort of virtual object?
Berry Good Fun
What a fine bunch of Mixed Berries turned up on Monday! Vanessa and Christa – you were both much missed but rest assured, you were very much a part of the conversation:-)
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Hello all! So sorry I missed Monday’s Hangout! Had a bit of a power outage here! 🙁
Hope it went well. Did Andrea make it in ok this time? Did Oscar receive a warm reception?
A while back we were talking about ideas like Counterfactual History and Creative NonFiction and blurring of fact and fiction. Christa really liked the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.
Today Madeline Raynor over at Mashable.com has written about “15 Captivating Autobiographical Books That Mix Fact and Fiction,” including O’Brien’s book.
http://mashable.com/2014/09/01/autobiographical-fiction/
Thanks for this list, VB! I can use it with my 10th grade class, where I teach not only O’Brien’s semi-autobiographical book, but also Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, too. xo
Firstly, my sincerest apologies for being unable to join last weeks hangout. Now that the issue has been resolved I hope to join you next time. I’d also like to extend an open invitation;
At the beginning of September I will chair a discussion on a paper by Michael Masucci on the role of women in digital art. It is going to be a ten day asynchronous discussion with the comments featured alongside the paper. The format is like a Q&A session, intended to be a medium to add questions and perspectives on Michael’s ideas.
Following the symposium I would like to publish the proceedings and attract writers to produce new essays that will form a book. The book will be launched at a later date within an exhibition featuring works by digital women artists.
The topic of Michael’s paper is, of course, very interesting. And the format of your discussion will also be interesting to watch unfold.
Send us links etc when it’s time to participate!
You may have noticed over the months that the comments on .Re/search often put the wrong person’s face with the comment. We haven’t been able to resolve this and have now switched to “Disqus” comments for .Re/search.
It should pretty much function the same. New comments should avoid the wrong face issue. I’m not certain if it will be importing faces for the old comments or not, but at least they won’t be the wrong images. And it looks like it cleans everything up going forward. 🙂
I tried commenting (I have a disqus), but I don’t see the comment yet. I’ll check again later.
Oh gosh, it’s always something! I don’t see your comment on .Re/search OR in the “moderation cue”… can you try another one?
I haven’t done much coding of comments, but I have done some with avatars and bbpress.
My first thought would be to check if/how the site is cached.
Next step is to check a plugin conflict – minify, CDN, or something associated with Javascript.
Or if the site uses a comment related plugin check that.
The WP Codex says the avatar function is pluggable which means functions are easily overridden.
Outlier possibilities: document structure issue (open element tag), php loop error.
It is most likely a small problem.
thanks Mike! We had a comment issue here on .Re/act in the past, that your comment would go under the wrong post! That turned out to be some issue with Jetpack Comments & this Houston / P2 theme. Turning Jetpack Comments off solved that.
Meanwhile, over on .Re/search we’ve always had a “wrong icon / avatar” issue. It’s intermittent. I’m thinking it might use the right avatar if the commenter is logged in to the website, and if not, it uses the author’s avatar for the commenter!? As far as I can tell, that’s an issue with .Re/search’s “Diablo” theme. Moving to Disqus may have been overkill, but it seems like it’s resolved (or driven over) that issue.
TY!
Since the “existing” comments have been “imported” to Disqus, your name and comments are still there, but it doesn’t automatically have your Icon / Avatar. (it will on any future comments)
If you go:
disqus.com > edit profile > merging
and “merge” your comments, then, voila! Your icon will “populate” all over .Re/search!
Michael’s invited Andrea Foenander to join us on Monday! Here’s the talk she gave at EZTV in April!
She’s got a lot of compelling ideas as well as an exciting upcoming project to tell us about. Ideas like
How would contemporary culture & art historical discourse be different if Charles Saatchi liked riding a bicycle through a virtual landscape instead of plopping formaldehyde sharks on gallery floors?
Michael has asked similar questions when he’s talked about all that art history has failed to include in recent times. For myself, I’ve felt that work with Virtual Reality & Virtual Worlds has existed in a space separate from the object production & commodity culture of the main art historical narrative.
An event like Burning Man exists largely off the art historical grid. It’s not much talked about in museums, galleries, art fairs. Yeah it’s had impact in so many ways, including inspiring Philip Rosedale to create his Virtual World. Famously, one of the key reasons Larry Page & Sergey Brin allowed Eric Schmidt to be CEO of Google, was because he’d been to Burning Man.
Does New Media want/need validation from Old Media? Or does it create its own independent cultural narratives?
I was delighted to be “friended” by a distant RL cousin on FB yesterday… and then quickly horrified by her (to me) extremist neocon values.
It’s kind of shocking just how few, short posts it takes to convince me that we’re diametrically opposed on just about every Social, Political, Ideological, Cosmological-Philosophical-Theological dimension I can think of.
Of course I think my cousin is insane. But since she seems to reflect the majority values of my family, perhaps it’s not that she’s insane, but that I’m… hmm… an alien baby??
And then… wow… Alien Baby! What a great performance work that’d be.
I wonder how that piece might go…
Are you putting this out there for the group to ponder as a possible group performance?
xo
yes I said yes I will Yes
OMG! That’s so cool! Have a great time! Post pix! Say hi to Molly Bloom!
Hopefully at the August hangout we can introduce Hugh to Edie’s friend Nasrene who’s up the road from him in Dubai.
Did y’all take pics?
If you use this link to sign up, they’ll connect us when they launch! 🙂
http://emoj.li/#7aC97bGv7aC97bGT
Oh, thank you, Vanessa! This is great!! I updated my OS from snow leopard to mavericks last night, allowing me access a whole new world of pictograms and hieroglyphs 🙂
I’m an octopus on a bicycle (well, two bicycles, actually – so many limbs to arrange…)
This is the link I received in order to connect with friends: http://emoj.li/#7aC97bCZ7aC97bqy7aC97bqy
hey… how come my emoji’s not showin up? Oh no, we found .Re/act’s weakness!
Octopus-bike-bike not showing up for me either though it gives the illusion of display before posting in Safari whereas in Chrome the emoji display only as empty rectangles…Mysterious…
IDK… maybe it’s something about the text formatting of .Re/act’s “theme”… try Twitter! Works great there… I’ve sort of started my own Emoji only campaign on Twitter. Or, of course, anything on your mobile!
Hope 2CU on Emoj.li soon! 🙂
Items discussed:
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Thank you for posting the minutes, Christa. It’s really helpful to have this record of our meeting and the links are great too. I enjoyed the Ant Farm documentary trailer – it was interesting to hear Doug Michaels speak of how they arrived at the name Ant Farm – (though I think “Chip, Chuck and Doug” has a catchy ring to it too and happy associations of chipping away at an idea, chucking out the stuff that doesn’t work and er…Doug…hm…dug, past tense of dig and…eh…erm…well, okay, just Doug then!)
I think I conveyed a slightly wrong impression about the name issue in our hangout – it was not so much the name itself that I struggled with (I’m fond of “The Berries”) but rather more that felt uncertain about the identity of the group to which the name refers. This only really became a problem for me when I tried to describe us in an email to Sher Doruff. I’d grown to think of us as a sort of online artist collective/artist-led initiative but I wasn’t quite sure if this was a view held by the other members. I didn’t feel entitled to make such assumptions about the identity of the group, particularly as I wasn’t “with the band” at the beginning 😉
Anyway, I absolutely love Christa’s idea of doing an action or performance together that celebrates our commitment to the group, opens it to further participation and, in some way, serves as a little signatory act.
It’s so interesting that Christa & Ciara & Michael & Kate all seemed to be bring up ideas that I thought fit well together. I agree with all of it! Or at least whatever I thought the zeitgeist of it all was! 😀
I’d love to move on these compelling ideas right away! However for myself, I think July & August are just too buried in other responsibilities. But you all certainly don’t have to wait for me! You can totally run with any of this in whatever form(s) make sense.
I never thought I’d hear Vanessa say she was buried under too much work! She IS mortal, after all. xoxoxo
Here’s a name I’ll throw out there — ARACHNET (did you remember my mentioning that spiders are my spirit animals?) Anyway…definitely has a stronger bite than berries. I do love the anti-oxidant connotations of berries, though.
Ciara made an interesting comment at the end of today’s hangout, that since she wasn’t one of the “Original Blueberries” she always felt a sort of “imposter complex” (my word not hers) about her participation.
It reminded me of why Richard Stallman left his beloved MIT AI lab and founded the Free Software movement. It all started the day Passwords arrived at the MIT AI lab. He hated the idea that someone who sat at the computer yesterday could have control over what someone who sat there today could do with it.
Interesting, Vanessa. Ownership is a very powerful force in the American experience, isn’t it?
and had a physical meet up. It happened today at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Michael Masucci, Kate Johnson and I — Christa Forster — lunched at the outdoor cafe and loitered in the “Becoming Los Angeles” exhibit.
Michael Masucci, Christa Forster, Kate Johnson, July 13, 2014, Los Angeles
Ah, Christa, what a good idea to point one another toward residencies in our respective “hometowns”…
This Dutch website offers a fairly comprehensive list of residency opportunities in Europe and beyond:
http://www.transartists.org/
And, off the top of my head, a few others that spring to mind:
In Amsterdam:
http://www.de-ateliers.nl/en/
and a super one here:
http://www.rijksakademie.nl/NL/residency/
another great one in the southern part of the Netherlands:
http://www.janvaneyck.nl/en/home/
A really nice one in Belfast, N. Ireland:
http://flaxartstudios.com/international-residency/
and one in Dubin, Ireland:
http://www.imma.ie/en/subnav_13.htm
Thanks, Ciara! Great to have these resource links. xo
Good day dear people.
I have been given to understand that Mr. Nostradamus may be found in this vicinity. Can anyone please direct me to him? I have had the most extraordinary vision and wish to discuss it with him. I am hopeful that he might help me to construct an interpretation of the vision.
Your assistance in locating Nostradamus is most appreciated.
Rock musician Al Stewart, who recorded Love Chronicles, Past Present and Future, The Early Years, Modern Times, and Year of the Cat is the only known person to have contacted Nostradamus. There are rumors that Mr. Stewart now teaches poetry.
Hello Mr. Lord. Thank you for this valuable information. Do you know where I can find Mr. Stewart?
I’m in the middle of reading Mr. Britling Sees It Through by H.G Welles, which I put down to try four online MOOCs. When in church, I’ve been reading a novel entitled The 39 Steps, by John Buchan. Well, you’ll appreciate this, I walked out with it. I suppose i could bring it back, but after last summer, during which i read ten novels by the author E. Phillips Oppenheim, I can barely stand the thrill of making love to a church librarian and inadvertedly tucking away a copy of the novel. I have it right here. Think of what will happen next!!! I literally forgot I had the book on my person and brought it home. Today is my 52nd birthday.
No, I don’t know where he is right now.
With MOOC Magazine / Warhol coming out Saturday morning, 00:01am BST, now’s a great time to “like” MU on FB!
https://www.facebook.com/medici.university
I was forwarded a message from Hugh about helping out with a VR Construction project. (awesome! 🙂
Hugh had heard about a VR Medici University Campus, which Izzy has graciously pushed back to 2015 so that we can focus on creating Edie’s Farm starting on 1 August 2014. The website doesn’t currently have information on the VR Project, but here it is:
http://edies.farm
I’m applying for an “LEA AIR” or Linden Endowment for the Arts, Artist in Residence Land Grant. If Edie’s Farm is selected as one of their Land Grant Recipients (gosh Ysidora, nobody deserves a compensatory land grant more than you!) then Edie’s Farm will begin on a generous 6.5 hectare plot of virtual land. Much like Warhol’s Factory this will be a collaborative place for experiments and activities. We may put some elements up to make it cozy, but the focus will be less on construction goals and more on inspired activities.
I hope everyone will come visit, participate, and play!
Good luck with the application. Let me know if I can help you. Ysidora and I will participate, no doubt!!
Makin stuff in SL Sandbox with Hugh
Hugh came to visit today. We made some stuff in a sandbox and looked at some art installations. It went pretty well but after a while he had some sort of graphics lag or freeze.
Hugh, here’s some thoughts on that:
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Good luck with your course on Research Papers, Hugh. I opted for British Literature, Communication Science and The Resurrection of Richard III (not Richard II) instead.
Sorry for any investigation into the world of college pranks and artistic deceptions that may have crossed your path, I’m actually a serious writer.
You may have heard that Edie and I have started MOOC Magazine. Gary Needham from U of Nottingham Trent has written a wonderful intro article for us:
http://mooc.mediciuniversity.co.uk/warhols-childhood-scrapbook/
Just realized we started PBR 8 months ago this week! Fast creeping up on a year. Whether it’s Medici assassination attempts, or Warhol confidantes trying to trash his legacy, we continue to live in such a divisive world. It was truly a special opportunity to meet so many generous peeps in PBR and to share ideas about art & culture with you all.
Thanks everyone!
xoxo
Crikey! Eight months! It’s an almost-birthday 😉
Yes! Crikey! (did you get that word from Oscar?)
Er…maybe…(He’s got a knack of putting words in my mouth!)
IKR! (he’s no dummy!)
He’s with me at the moment. We’re trying to knock our heads together for something for the July PBR MM issue…
Oh cool! It could be something new… or any of the work you created back then (assuming we can still find stuff from ’13! 😛
My Dear friend, Professor Talbot Rice is very impressed with your efforts. Now that you mention it, someone at a Boston University wrote a monograph that it was glaring that there were attempts upon the life of Queen Victoria Regina and that Sherlock Holmes was absolutely mum on the subject. Talbot has a buggieboo about historical artifacts- there’s a shoe on a statue he thinks is priceless as pieces of some historical art-what-objects-are-used-for before they become what we call ready-made. Like culture or society revolved around the manufacturing of slippers in Persia. No theories on whether the real Queen Victoria was left handed and her twin sister was righthanded and converted to Communism and then Hinduism, more that it was just her liver.
Hello. Just met up with the Mixed Berry Shake team for our June hangout, and Hugh and I (he showed up late Ciara!) promised to post here on .Re/act what we’re up to in a the six-week summer MOOC we’re undertaking: Understanding Research Methods via Coursera.
Here is a link to the question Hugh is developing and some discussion around it: How do Arabian women artists view the status of women within the Middle East?
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Well… the cameraperson just disappeared without a word… so it would seem that we’re not going on…
Oh, no! Want update soon….
The event actually went very well! The audeince loved it and the city has asked us to make it an annual event if we’d like.
Turns out the delays in Fly By going on had to do with Donna’s costumer accidentally cutting the wire on one of the illuminayed costumes. This actually made time for the volunteer Jackie to arrive and set-up the SL laptop. She was very nervous and that may have translatted overseas to Van and her group.
I sent Van some images of her dancers both being projected 45′ wide to the audience as well as onto the aerial balloon which was not originally expected. But sincve the tech team was waiting for costumes to get fixed, they made additional switching sp that Van could swicth back from the balloon to the Library wall.
The event was named one of the 5 top dance picks for that weekend by the LA Weekly, in a townj where an awful lot of dance takes place each week.
Sorry if there was any confusion. I was stuck waiting in the wings to perfoam live music for Fly By, so was not in the loop, and Kate was dealing with re-programming the evening to keep the event running smoothly for the crowd while waiting for Donna to fix her outfilt.
The audience of course never suspected anything was ever wrong and everyone appreciated what went down.
Thanks Van!
P.S. now that this three-month long series oif evenst is over I plan to resume contributing to PBR.
So happy it all worked out! When Van posted her comment above, I mused on how many things can “go wrong” or — more accurately — cause stress when technology is a component in performance, which is amazing, because performance is already stressful enough (but in a good way, of course). 🙂
Michael, Van and fellow cast: It is so cool that your dance performance was a success and congrats about LA Weekly giving it Top 5 honors! We avatars had fun despite anxiously awaiting our cue 🙂 The projection photos look great and I can’t wait to see video. I bet the RL dancers were super!
OMG Still waiting to go on!!!
You can cut the tension with a knife!!
It’s finally in print! The “Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance” has a section on Digital Puppets that will be of interest to many of you! It’s very $$$$$$$ so get a librarian to order a copy you can check out. The more books that sell now the more likely it will get printed in a more reasonable paperback version for the layperson.
http://www.routledgementalhealth.com/books/details/9780415705400/
Thanks for the info Molly! Sounds fantastic! And yes, OUCH! not exactly priced to sell!
.Re/act is the place to take the great connections you’ve made in a MOOC and keep the conversation & collaboration going!
And now… MOOC Magazine! is the place to collect the great essays, videos, performance works that you’ve created in a MOOC and present them in a focused magazine!
Contribute today!
http://MOOC.MediciUniversity.co.uk
Aero Bigboots
AlexandreLois1
Ananda Crystal
Andrea Foenander
astrid
Aunt Renie
Aurelia Scheppers
Christa Forster
Ciara Finnegan
Bird on a Cyber Twig
Diptheria
Donnie Archer
Edie
Elle
Emma
Elizabeth Taylor Swift
Fanny
FeelsEmpty
Glad Kidd
Izzy
Jade Ravenheart
Kate Nova
Ken Doll
Mary Anning
Meg O'Ryan
Michael Masucci
Mireille
Molly Ross
Monerda Skute
Myra
Neeva
Newton
Michel Nostradamus
Oona
Oscar
Owen
Patrick J. Sweetman
Paypabak Writer
Pearl Grey
Rebecca Narum
rmarie
Ryan
Scarlett Luv
Sello Tape
Serra Qendra
Teresa of Avila
The Knight
Tiffany Mosienko
TrilbyM
Tullia Aragona
Vanessa
veyot
wendz tempest
Xue
Yellow Fever
Ysidora Pico
Yves
Zsophia
Christa Forster are discussing. 
Mke, and 
Ciara are discussing. 
Teresa of Avila are discussing. 
Michael Masucci are discussing.
Vanessa Blaylock 08:46 on 24/01/2015 Permalink |
It’s been so great meeting you in 2014 (and maybe late 2013) Oscar!
Forgive me, I know you’re not a “marionette,” but you’re certainly no “dummy,” I’m not sure how you refer to yourself?
However you do, I think as an “avatar” I have some things in common with you. I must say, you’re far better at typing than I am at speaking! Do you have special keyboard? Or do you just use a full sized one? Anyway, when you mentioned having to fight to have your voice heard… I felt kind of silly doing “Video Hangouts” since I can only type. What I found though is that it’s nice in some ways. Instead of waiting my turn to talk, I can be typing while listening to someone else. And then I kind of love that someone else, like Christa or maybe Molly will, at some times “speak for me” and read what I’ve read. Sometimes no one voices what I’ve said and that’s interestingly not bad at all. I’ve discovered a little bit, just how many unnecessary things I say! It’s “humbling,” but “humbling” is too dramatic a word, I don’t mean it in a big or emotional way, just that it’s surprisingly fine to have some things passed over. And sometimes I respond to a point but by the time the speaker finishes the conversation has moved somewhere else and it’s nice not to have to drag back to my earlier me-too-ism.
Other times though, when someone does voice my words for the group they can seem smarter or more important than I thought they were. It is supposed to be a “group”, a “community” if we can get that far, and I find I like having 1 facility less and being a little bit reliant on others. Has your experience been at all like that Oscar?
I’m not aware of the full breadth of your oeuvre, Oscar, but I’m quite impressed with all you’ve accomplished in the brief time I’ve known you. And, BTW, your speech at the climate summit brought tears to my eyes, literally.
I love that photo on your website Oscar!
http://www.oscardevent.com/
You always seem to look so happy. Like no matter what happens you’ll find a way to make the best of it.
Have a great 2015 Oscar!