MU Talk

Christa Forster 11:11 on 14/07/2014 Permalink Reply
Tags: Christa Forster ( 5 ), ciara ( 3 ), Google Hangout ( 14 ), Kate Johnson ( 3 ), michael masucci ( 2 ), Mixed Berry Shake ( 8 ), vanessa blaylock ( 2 )   

Mixed Berry Shake Hangout (unofficial) Minutes

Vanessa

Kate and Michael

Photos from today’s Mixed Berry Shake Hangout.  In virtual attendance: Ciara Finnegan, Christa Forster, Michael Masucci, Kate Johnson, Vanessa Blaylock.Molly Ross and Rebecca Longworth chimed in by email but were not able to meet up with us today.

Items discussed:

• taking a specific collective action (making something together) in Year 2

• changing our collective’s name to something less “squishy,” something more macho, as in — Que es mas macho: Mixed Berry/Blueberry or ANT FARM? btw, Ant Farm is not available….(look them up — cool collective from the 70s)
  • more about ANT FARM
  • Featurette for Laura Harrison’s documentary about ANT FARM

Other items discussed

• Creating a vocabulary for what we’re doing that is easier for “outsiders” to understand (viz, the way people did not understand that the avatars in One Night event were live, and when they found out, they were more impressed/interested)

• Ciara’s reaching out to Sher Doruff for an interview for MOOC Magazine

• Growing our network and reinvigorating other Blueberries, maybe through tiered participation opportunities (e.g., discreet/one-stop “happenings”; continuing monthly meetups, etc)

• Edie’s Farm — vision/purpose

• The importance/tyranny/power of Context and also of Context Collapse

• Joshua Bell subway performance

• Harrell Fletcher and his Tate Modern Performance Room Contribution
  • http://www.pdx.edu/profile/harrell-fletcher 

• http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/music-and-live-performance/bmw-tate-live-performance-room-harrell-fletcher

• Barbara T. Smith

• Electronic Cafe

• Young people wanting digital experience to work like life (ephemerality/transience in experience) and so they gravitate away from static venues like fb to more ephemeral ones like snapchat and yik yak

• Facebook “Binders Full of Women” and various “Binders subgroups (like Houston Binders)” — I, Christa am a a member of these two “secret groups” (along with hundreds and thousands of women who are writers), and I’m not sure if the links will let you in to look or not. If you’re a woman and consider yourself a writer, and you’d like to be added, I can to do that with your fb username. In response to Michael’s comment about how fb is not specialized enough audience-wise for him to use, I commented on how the specialized nature of these groups is a boon and a bane (showing the power of Context and of Context Collapse in action!)

• Christa’s talk on Ysidora Pico for Forster Family Reunion in SJC, CA.

Next steps: brainstorm in .Re/act around possible “actions” to take or “happenings” to make as a collective

Think up possible new names for our group.
Until next time….xoxoxo

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  Ciara 02:38 on 15/07/2014 Permalink | Reply

  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.

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  Vanessa Blaylock 16:01 on 15/07/2014 Permalink | Reply

  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.

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    xtaforster 21:59 on 20/07/2014 Permalink | Reply

    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.