Detroit Invasion

Saturday, March 26, 2011

The first cold-water experiment was performed right when I got home from Detroit... I made an ice bath in my tub and sat in it for 20 minutes (I have a bathing suit on, don't worry). I was measuring my core temperature, which I expected to drop, but instead it shot up to 100 degrees. This was a continuation of redefining absorbance, or trying to discover what it could be.

The second cold water experiment was a walk, or a commute. I followed an inlet stream to where it joined the river. Again, for 20 minutes. I finished the walk in about 10 minutes, then just stood there. Jo was taking pictures of me, but I was also filming and recording myself with a zoom mic attached to the camera. Will upload the video shortly.

I think for now I'm finished with the cold-water stuff... I don't think it could be as effective as other approaches, and I'm currently trying to replace absorbance with another term that demands some other form of experimentation.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Forensics of Surround Sound & Frequencies

So I dreamed this up on the plane ride back from Detroit, and I have not had an opportunity to test it yet... which is driving me insane, because I simply can't wait to hear what this sounds like. The idea is to take a single recording (will experiment with all types of sounds, from really rich music, to sparse music, to environments, to simple speech, etc) and break it's frequency spectrum into 8 individual chunks. So should you listen to each of the 8 samples individually, one would sound like nothing but rumbly bass frequencies, one would sound muddy, one would sound tinny, one would sound like hissy static, etc. but all those sounds put together create what we hear... but what happens if you spread them out and surround yourself with them? does it significantly alter the sound? are we able to reassemble it, but in some sort of surround sound wash? or does the disruption of the natural arrangements of the frequencies give you some sort of new monster? The idea is to both experience this within the speaker array, and also to record the experience binaurally. this is what the array will look like:

I hope to have this up and running before the weekend is out, and will post recordings as soon as i have them. (remember to use headphones only!)

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi's In Home Cinema

They're watching Iron Man in Hampstead, or "monitor(ing) world events"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208434/Gaddafi-son-buys-10m-Hampstead-mansion.html

Pope.L and Lack

william-popel-eracism-show
In William Pope.L’s book, Hole Theory, the artist writes:

What I mean by having
Something is the fantasy
That having is possessing [and]*
That possessing is knowing

Therefore this sort of theorizing/[deodorizing]
Could only come from someone
Who believes in having things
As a political condition

Conversely, this theory
Could only come from someone
Who lacks something
As a political condition

Hole Theory engages lack
Across economic and cultural
And political boundaries
[Lack is where it’s AT]

Over Under Around and Through

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnJ9rgkePy0&feature=player_detailpage

white noise

Hal Foster's Prosthetic Gods

Foster, Hal.
Prosthetic Gods
Modernism/modernity - Volume 4, Number 2, April 1997, pp. 5-38

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Hal Foster - Prosthetic Gods - Modernism/Modernity 4:2 Modernism/Modernity 4.2 (1997) 5-38 Prosthetic Gods Hal Foster Figures Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on to him and they still give him much trouble at times. --Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) In the first part of this century much modernist practice and marxist discourse still treated the body and the machine as separate entities, with the first often projected as a natural whole, the second as an autonomous agent. So opposed, the two could only conjoin, ecstatically or torturously, and technology could only be a "magnificent" extension of the body or a "troubled" constriction of it. Even with the new machines of speed and representation of the Second Industrial Revolution (e. g., automobile and airplane, radio and film), technology remained a demonic supplement, an addition to the body that threatened a subtraction from it. After Marshall McLuhan and Mark Seltzer I will call this paradox of technology as extension and/or constriction of the body the double logic of the prosthesis. Here I want to consider its role in the models of art and subjectivity espoused by the most technophilic of high modernists: the Futurist F. T. Marinetti and the Vorticist Wyndham Lewis, two competitors in the wartime avant-garde, two complements in machinic fantasies and...

Project MUSE® - View Citation

Foster, Hal. "Prosthetic Gods." Modernism/modernity 4.2 (1997): 5-38. Project MUSE. Web. 22 Mar. 2011. .

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Foster, Hal. (1997). Prosthetic gods. Modernism/modernity 4(2), 5-38. Retrieved March 22, 2011, from Project MUSE database.

Foster, Hal. "Prosthetic Gods." Modernism/modernity 4, no. 2 (1997): 5-38. http://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed March 22, 2011).

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T1 - Prosthetic Gods
A1 - Foster, Hal.
JF - Modernism/modernity
VL - 4
IS - 2
SP - 5
EP - 38
Y1 - 1997
PB - The Johns Hopkins University Press
SN - 1080-6601
UR - http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modernism-modernity/v004/4.2foster.html
N1 - Volume 4, Number 2, April 1997
ER -

Monday, March 21, 2011

Homeostasis Experiment

This was an experiment designed to actively change my homeostasis (which is a new term I added to my practice diagram). Homeostasis must be altered if you are to be altered. Each picture represents one cup of coffee, guzzled at 20 minute intervals. I held a pen lightly to a sheet of paper (as a sort of measurement, knowing that coffee makes me tremble), and the results are the pictures below, in order (20 minutes, 40 minutes, etc...). Better quality scans will replace these, soon...

Touch is only in the finger sketch

Second Experiment

Time: 35min

Recollect threads, sticks and bags

* Change rules / use in a Tennis Court

* Use a found plastic bag as a Kite

I tied up in diverse parts of my body

a thread and on the other end the bag.

(ear,neck,arm,leg,hip..)

Stick - body

Play/ run / kite experience

* Bag as KITE

* Land / field as tennis court

* Change codes, rules and use

Found photographer

Total time walking/ searching 15min

Total time 45min

First experiment

Wrap/ border- frontier

Time: 45min to do something

I had the alarm set up to know when to stop.

I went out of my dorm and started walking

and running.

A word that continuously appeared was

"Caution" so I started taking photos

of the word, the context and surroundings

of it.

A few words came to my mind like:

border - frontiers - territory...

My reaction to this was to find yellow

strips and a place where people run - walk.

I started to to mark / block the path

Then I made a web - (NO photos)

The person who was taking the photos

needed to leave.

Two persons didn't walk in to the web.

After the web I needed (in my thoughts)

to tie up my self with the environment

and then wrap my body.

New practice Diagram

Creation of Static Assets

I haven't had a chance to fully gather my thoughts on this, as it seems to be a very complex web that one moment I understand, and the next it evaporates. But through the processes that were uncovered and in an attempt to achieve static or alienation from understanding I ran my first physical test and uncovered this.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/3cff32z1y3pe8yb/Test%201.wav

I have no idea what this is or was, other than music. I took a random music file of which i have 0 knowledge about. I don't know the artist, genre, country or origin, instruments.. nothing. i then removed a one minute sample from a random location, and ran it through 7 steps of destruction and this was what came out the other end. (I did not record the steps in any way, and thus will never be able to repeat this in exactly the same way ever again)

Now, the process that I am beginning to understand is that this is not about creating a particular thing by this series of steps. I do not have an end goal in mind like create a song or to create a specific type of sound or anything like that. But it is simply to generate a sort of alien moment. Upon achieving that moment, the asset can then inform me as to what it needs. This then has two possibilities. To be used as an object in my existing practice, or to be used in an unknown series of steps to arrive at yet another version of static. This second process is basically an 'unknown second step', allowing practice to remain open, flexible, etc. With this flexibility it is unknown if i will arrive at a wholly unique conclusive object, or if i will simply end up with another object of static to then be propelled into my existing practice. Only the moment of experience of the static can inform that decision.

Detroit Audio

i have no idea if there is any way to embed audio in here.. i don't think that there is. so here are download links for the different detroit audios. (currently in progress of uploading/adding)

Ben's Audio: http://www.mediafire.com/?45d2bu8ox36s7n6

Detroit Group Improv Music Session (UNMIXED/UNALTERED) http://www.mediafire.com/?oxqd1azww5yff0d

Sample of Static as Alien From Workshop (edited out recognizable sounds) (5 minute sample) http://www.mediafire.com/?oxqd1azww5yff0d

Evolution

In an effort to understand the new processes that have been uncovered, this is a reworking of my practice. Through contemplation I realized that what is of the most importance to me is not to abandon the original mode of thinking, but to inform it to generate new possibilities. While these new practices may yield a certain 'unknowing' of places of start and places of finish, there is still a desire to create a particular thing. One can get there by chance, but then what do you do with it? The new area of starting that has been uncovered is an approach in which you don't assume an end. I like to think of this as arriving at a situation as a complete alien. No understanding of what you are dealing with can be achieved ahead of time. The result of this is a creation of a particular asset, or a static. When I realized what this was, as an asset, I realized that I was not in the practice of creating works, but of creating assets for use within a practice. Static was not an end result, but a beginning. Can static be used to achieve that particular thing? That thing gets created through my existing practice, though the processes through which the assets are rendered informs the practice as an infinite growth cycle. That is to suggest that beginnings can be created with no end in site, and render wholly unique assets or creatures. These processes themselves are unique, individualized practices. The end result then informs the core practice and is run through it to generate the ultimate desired object. Assets remain individualized and unique, and are also combined, hybridized, and frankensteined through the core practice to generate further unique end results, which are ultimately the desired particular objects. This is simply the process of creation. Process of distribution, assimilation, spreading, and consuming demand a different graphical representation all together. Though I feel we have not yet reached that part of the cycle.

practice as bought from detroit