As my first post in a very long time, in what should be a very self-centered and egotistical rant, I would like to point your attention to something bigger than me, something bigger than you, something so catastrophic that to live without it seems nearly impossible- the Internet. (however, if you would like to read some year old musings of Colleen Brogan, access her blog from freshman year of college here.) The holy invisible web in the sky that watches our every move and lets us watch others, too, if we know the right tools to use. For example, perhaps you are reading this because you were looking just for me and found this shoddy piece of writing. Perhaps you were just Stumbling along and did not know what you would come across--or, by the very nature of Stumble, you did not want to know where you were headed. In any case, the very nature of Internet networking made it possible for you to be here, now, reading this. So when Zachary McCune attempted on June 25, 2008 to live for 24 hours as though the Internet did not exist, he was doing it not just to test his personal willpower (or the patience of his employers) but to prove how indispensible the Internet has become for up-to-the-minute communication, language, and universal knowledge.
Not wishing to steal any of Zack's spotlight (but only hoping to brighten it) I created a facebook group on June 25th at 11:35am and invited all of my friends (and Zack's) who I thought would be interested in supporting his resourceful journey, and perhaps holding a little competition to see who could get in touch with him the fastest (obviously, without the Internet) and in the most creative fashion. I attached a link to Z's website and his personal, webcasted statement about the big day--little did I know that this small attempt to rally support would prove interesting points about social networking.
At 12:30 nobody was in the facebook group, other than myself. 1:46 proved the same...and 2:30, and 3:45, and 4:24, 4:25, 4:26.2, 4:26.4....yes I was checking that often. And obviously the 60-odd people I invited were not. What does this say about social networking and collaboration through facebook? Where groups "cheesy" and poorly advertised? Should I have made it an event instead? Were my friends off doing far better things than me?
In a last-ditch attempt before heading to work, I facebook messaged 6 of my best friends, and begged them on life and friendship to join the group so that at least, when Zack came out of his digital hibernation, he would not see me, his single fan, parked awkwardly solo in what should have been his voracious digital welcoming committee.
By the next day, Noe Web Day (the facebook group) had blossomed in to 9 members, and Zack seemed grateful (he's so considerate in that way) of the tiny success I had in the span of his 24 hour analog hibernation. It's strange to think of how long it took to reach friends, even through the internet--I had expected a response within an hour, not 7. I had expected one flag with the tags "cyberculture /Zack Mccune/ Harvard" to attract attention immediately--and it is no knock at all to Zack that it didn't, but only the presentation form was flawed, and that immediacy through the Internet requires diligence and at times luck (if only people checked facebook as often as I did!). Perhaps people do "live" on the Internet and "constantly" check their e-mail, but don't want to exactly reveal that they do, and therefore do not commit to groups and respond to e-mails rapidly because they do not want to let others know how much time they spend online.
Or perhaps, that's just what I keep telling myself so I don't feel bad when I have to beg people to join a facebook group.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Magic Words
In the very earliest time
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen--
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
that's the way it was.
--"Magic Words" by Edward Field
inspired by the Inuit
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen--
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
that's the way it was.
--"Magic Words" by Edward Field
inspired by the Inuit
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Because no matter what happens, there will always be imagination
Later:
He had the key to the house but the locks had been changed and just when they were getting worried the key worked and they got in. The heat has not been on in weeks, maybe he said and she said she didn't mind, maybe and they walked up the stairs.
A mounted skeleton head watched her from the kitchen fridge as she tiptoed around the kitchen floor and looked inside the kitchen oven, expecting to see last-nights last-overs. The kitchen oven was empty but the kitchen drawer was not, it was half-full-not-half-empty of peeled garlic and dirty spoons.
I want to get out of here she whispered when she saw his shower door led into the living room and his piano was open but dusty with three doll heads on the propboard (these were his father's, of course, but of course she still missed the comforts of her doll-head-less dormroom.)
They creaked up the stairs and ducked under the wires and he said wait, here.
He opened the room's door and stopped and said fuck you dad and he said nothing and he said fuck you dad when he saw the the stripped walls and stripped wallpaper and he laughed when the only lasting relic from his childhood was the one thing his father couldn't strip, which was the water heater.
Let's go she said and she closed the door.
They went upstairs where a windchime hung from the beams and EE Cummings wrote on the floor and he remembered he lived there, this was where he lived (but his father did too). They started a fire and grabbed two flashlights and huddled under the blankets for warmth and huddled under the blankes with the books and eachother and with eachother they looked through books his father had maybe never touched because the bindings still popped.
The fire popped and the bindings popped and under-blanketed and under-warmthed she helped him escape from being under-fathered.
Then:
A thin slice across the wrist his father said is just what teaches a boy to mind his words. His son asked what teaches a father to mind his words and his father said take the leash and ive the dog a walk. His son said the dog's just been outside and his father said no, no I think teh dog i'm looking at needs to get out of my house.
His son walked the leash out of the house and forgot the dog and turned back and let the dog out and when he turned back around she was there.
Hey I've seen you before he said and she said I know we go to school together and he said where do you live and she said around here, maybe adn he said you don't know? and she said no, you don't.
Scared? he said Of you? she said Yes he said No she said.
You're strange he said.
A police car whistled by and the trees and the yard and a brick building kept a polite little boy in his house from whistling back. The dog strained against the leash and the leaves strained against their stems and the boy strained against his fear and said want to go for a walk? The girl laughed to him and he caught it and put it in his pocket next to the sound of a typing keyboard and wind wrapped in the sails and the squirrel outside his window and he said, what was that for?
You're strange she said and she was quiet and she said no I won't go on a walk with you and your dog, but I will tell you where I live.
Now:
"Knock twice, and if I don't respond go away" the door read. He knocked once on the door and waited no response so he knocked twice on the door and waited no response and he thought that's it and he turned away. But then he turned back and said no he said no that's not it and he opened the door. No response.
The sweaty ship tilted and when he opened the sweaty door a hinge broke and the door bottom scraped on the sweaty-floor-bottom. He knocked into a barrel marked Fragile and got not response so he kept moving, past the crates and barrels and straw-crusted cages all marked, Fragile. The door stayed open and leaked in the sounds of dark waves crashing, dark waves smashing. Not much farther, must be, he thought. No response.
He got to the end of the hallway with a door marked Glass House Theatre with two doorbells and a rusty intercom and he thought, this? Is where she lives. I'm being watched he thought and he smiled and he said it out loud I'm being watched.
She came out of the Glass House Theatre and said I didn't expect you so soon but I'm glad it's you and he said me too.
This is me returning your phone call he said and she smiled and said I don't have a phone, you know someday you're going to ahve to stop being so dramatic and he said you were expecting that line, weren't you? And she said yes and he said well then I guess I wasn't being dramatic enough.
He had the key to the house but the locks had been changed and just when they were getting worried the key worked and they got in. The heat has not been on in weeks, maybe he said and she said she didn't mind, maybe and they walked up the stairs.
A mounted skeleton head watched her from the kitchen fridge as she tiptoed around the kitchen floor and looked inside the kitchen oven, expecting to see last-nights last-overs. The kitchen oven was empty but the kitchen drawer was not, it was half-full-not-half-empty of peeled garlic and dirty spoons.
I want to get out of here she whispered when she saw his shower door led into the living room and his piano was open but dusty with three doll heads on the propboard (these were his father's, of course, but of course she still missed the comforts of her doll-head-less dormroom.)
They creaked up the stairs and ducked under the wires and he said wait, here.
He opened the room's door and stopped and said fuck you dad and he said nothing and he said fuck you dad when he saw the the stripped walls and stripped wallpaper and he laughed when the only lasting relic from his childhood was the one thing his father couldn't strip, which was the water heater.
Let's go she said and she closed the door.
They went upstairs where a windchime hung from the beams and EE Cummings wrote on the floor and he remembered he lived there, this was where he lived (but his father did too). They started a fire and grabbed two flashlights and huddled under the blankets for warmth and huddled under the blankes with the books and eachother and with eachother they looked through books his father had maybe never touched because the bindings still popped.
The fire popped and the bindings popped and under-blanketed and under-warmthed she helped him escape from being under-fathered.
Then:
A thin slice across the wrist his father said is just what teaches a boy to mind his words. His son asked what teaches a father to mind his words and his father said take the leash and ive the dog a walk. His son said the dog's just been outside and his father said no, no I think teh dog i'm looking at needs to get out of my house.
His son walked the leash out of the house and forgot the dog and turned back and let the dog out and when he turned back around she was there.
Hey I've seen you before he said and she said I know we go to school together and he said where do you live and she said around here, maybe adn he said you don't know? and she said no, you don't.
Scared? he said Of you? she said Yes he said No she said.
You're strange he said.
A police car whistled by and the trees and the yard and a brick building kept a polite little boy in his house from whistling back. The dog strained against the leash and the leaves strained against their stems and the boy strained against his fear and said want to go for a walk? The girl laughed to him and he caught it and put it in his pocket next to the sound of a typing keyboard and wind wrapped in the sails and the squirrel outside his window and he said, what was that for?
You're strange she said and she was quiet and she said no I won't go on a walk with you and your dog, but I will tell you where I live.
Now:
"Knock twice, and if I don't respond go away" the door read. He knocked once on the door and waited no response so he knocked twice on the door and waited no response and he thought that's it and he turned away. But then he turned back and said no he said no that's not it and he opened the door. No response.
The sweaty ship tilted and when he opened the sweaty door a hinge broke and the door bottom scraped on the sweaty-floor-bottom. He knocked into a barrel marked Fragile and got not response so he kept moving, past the crates and barrels and straw-crusted cages all marked, Fragile. The door stayed open and leaked in the sounds of dark waves crashing, dark waves smashing. Not much farther, must be, he thought. No response.
He got to the end of the hallway with a door marked Glass House Theatre with two doorbells and a rusty intercom and he thought, this? Is where she lives. I'm being watched he thought and he smiled and he said it out loud I'm being watched.
She came out of the Glass House Theatre and said I didn't expect you so soon but I'm glad it's you and he said me too.
This is me returning your phone call he said and she smiled and said I don't have a phone, you know someday you're going to ahve to stop being so dramatic and he said you were expecting that line, weren't you? And she said yes and he said well then I guess I wasn't being dramatic enough.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
apricots for you, bumblebees for me (alright time to stop)
for the first time in my life, someone told me tonight I could explain things better out loud than on paper. It was a sad day for my writing. And a triumphant day for a certain sailor.
Friday, March 30, 2007
I guess you could say my goal in life is to be described as one of the spunky ones
You know the one. It's the one that sparkles when she walks in the door, the one that magnetizes everything, the one that brushes her hair five times quick before stepping out of the car. It's the one that starts her day off with a Slimfast bar, the one who tans unconsciously, the one who should add another sheet to her senior yearbook to fit all the inside jokes, but never does, because someone else thinks of it and does it for her. Her yearbook adjectives stretch far, but words like boundless, creative, outrageous, spectacular, "best friend EVER" and "I LOVE YOU FOREVER!!!" are repeated the most. In one word, loved. She is the spunky one.
I can't even go as far as to say I was the angsty one, the angry rebel lurking in the midst of pre-burn-out glories, the hidden Guineverian Einstein. You know me. I'm the one that walked in the door three steps before the true diamond, the one that gets attracted to but does not necessarily attract, the one that rolls down the window to blow dry her hair. I'm the one that starts her day off with cheerios and skim milk, the one who freckles oddly, or pinks and reds THEN browns. The one who thinks to add another page to her yearbook and sticks it in, greedily, then after doing another round of the room, realizes there is no one else left worth having sign. Alright even this is making me sound less confident then I actually am. Yearbook adjectives were still pretty loving, I still got the creative, outrageous, spectacular, "best friend EVER" and "I LOVE YOU FOREVER", but even these same words still left one empty feeling, a void that should have been filled by spunky, but it wasn't.
It's like being prepared for every photograph taken of you three seconds before the picture is taken, and the agility and life of your face is just beginning to freeze as the flash captures the moment. The picture shows you were, at one point, life-full (that is a plus) but it also shows you were conscious of being life-full and you were trying to present it. By preparing to look artful you have just killed any chance of being artful. By preparing to look life-full you have just killed any chance of being life-full. By preparing to look spontaneous you have just killed any chance of being spontaneous. Three seconds ago it was real. Three seconds later it was documented.
That made so much more sense in my mind before I wrote it down.
I can't even go as far as to say I was the angsty one, the angry rebel lurking in the midst of pre-burn-out glories, the hidden Guineverian Einstein. You know me. I'm the one that walked in the door three steps before the true diamond, the one that gets attracted to but does not necessarily attract, the one that rolls down the window to blow dry her hair. I'm the one that starts her day off with cheerios and skim milk, the one who freckles oddly, or pinks and reds THEN browns. The one who thinks to add another page to her yearbook and sticks it in, greedily, then after doing another round of the room, realizes there is no one else left worth having sign. Alright even this is making me sound less confident then I actually am. Yearbook adjectives were still pretty loving, I still got the creative, outrageous, spectacular, "best friend EVER" and "I LOVE YOU FOREVER", but even these same words still left one empty feeling, a void that should have been filled by spunky, but it wasn't.
It's like being prepared for every photograph taken of you three seconds before the picture is taken, and the agility and life of your face is just beginning to freeze as the flash captures the moment. The picture shows you were, at one point, life-full (that is a plus) but it also shows you were conscious of being life-full and you were trying to present it. By preparing to look artful you have just killed any chance of being artful. By preparing to look life-full you have just killed any chance of being life-full. By preparing to look spontaneous you have just killed any chance of being spontaneous. Three seconds ago it was real. Three seconds later it was documented.
That made so much more sense in my mind before I wrote it down.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
To change the world, begin with a sociology experiment on the internet
"To change the world, begin with the maps..." he says. A 26 year old man with jet black hair and serpentine green eyes according to his myspace profile, Nicholas Schiller has become the face of cartographical abstraction and digital isolation. His fame comes from his art, but the tesselations of aerial views of famous cities, schools, and occasionally people, are also the source of his obscurity, and in the catch-22 of most modern artists, also the cause of his fame. Confused? Here's an example: I would have had no interest in this avant-garde artistry if his article in the Philadelphia Inquirer didn't have a direct invitation at the end: "I'm interested in seeing other people's opinions," he says. "Will people blog about it? Will I be made fun of?" He creates a website that cannot be found "unless you've already been there", but also has a prominent article in a newspaper that is delivered everyday to my front doorstep. If you're one of the chosen ones, you can type in the cryptic name sequence (which, ironically, was also provided by the Inquirer article) in the google search engine, and finally press that "I'm Feeling Lucky" button (noted as step 2 in Find Nicholas Shiller by the Inquirer...quite handy, kudos to some spotless journalism there) leading directly to the website's home page. No disappointments here, the home page is impressive, a black page with the words "click here" in between the split halves of a person covered with what looked like hieroglyphics, but is really a warped version of Schiller's maps. No making fun of you yet, Schiller. Points for the metaphor of the empty space between two halves of a person being exactly where a map should be, and a knowing smile for your tasteful rendering of all of us split personalities being as mirror-oriented as your maps are...maybe our splits are not so different after all.
When I first started looking at the maps, I liked them, a lot. I couldn't decide which one I liked the most, though, and I realized it was not because I couldn't pick which color i liked the most or which design was most appropriately done for that particular picture, because I had no way of differentiating them. My home town is not on an ordinary map let alone Schiller's digital ones, so I didn't get to join in on the fun of "trying to find my house on a tesselated map", and once I searched around a little bit more on the different so-called "projects", I realized the only thing that differentiated one "project" from another was the spin put on the pictures...but if you were in a certain project, no matter what the picture was, the tesselation was always the same! So my question becomes, what are you trying to hide? So there can be some hidden irony in the multiplying President Bush pictures, and a bit of humor found that most of these pictures are in the tesselation that Schiller finds makes the pictures look most like gas masks, but honestly, there is so much to be said about creating a world of symmetry...maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I didn't find it.
Honestly, Nikolas Schiller has a whole lot of material to work with. Perhaps the point of the art is not it's meaning, but the irony of maps being hidden. This is an interesting turn, but seriously, he's got America to manipulate. The whole world, and if that isn't big enough, I'm sure NASA has a few solid shots of the solar system that would look nice in repeating planes around a center point...and if that's the only point of this experiment, and to get some bloggers checking out your website, congrats. I'm all in support of making a more symmetrical world...but challenge us. Why is it important to split the world with a mirror? What is there to gain from this test of the curiosity of the digital minds? Schiller you clearly have an interest in it, judging by your myriad of digital profiles, and the well maintained blogs and myspace page, but me, I'm just a fleck on your digital resume, half a pixellation in your map...manipulate that point, but who's manipulating me?
you're showing me the map, but not telling me the destination. Maybe I'm reading into this too much, maybe I expect too much, or maybe I'm just too hopped up on metaphors and meaning that I can't like art just for it's aesthetic qualities anymore...blame it on higher education. The colors are pretty. The likeness to gas masks in the abstract project is pretty interesting. If I had to pick a favorite, I would say the Hurricane Katrina pixellation, but you know why? Because turning something that wrecked such havoc throughout an entire city into a symmetrical, beautiful, calm picture has some fierce irony in it, as well as hope that maybe someday New Orleans will be mirroring it's past self, not Katrina, as it does in the picture. Sorry if that wasn't the point.
When I first started looking at the maps, I liked them, a lot. I couldn't decide which one I liked the most, though, and I realized it was not because I couldn't pick which color i liked the most or which design was most appropriately done for that particular picture, because I had no way of differentiating them. My home town is not on an ordinary map let alone Schiller's digital ones, so I didn't get to join in on the fun of "trying to find my house on a tesselated map", and once I searched around a little bit more on the different so-called "projects", I realized the only thing that differentiated one "project" from another was the spin put on the pictures...but if you were in a certain project, no matter what the picture was, the tesselation was always the same! So my question becomes, what are you trying to hide? So there can be some hidden irony in the multiplying President Bush pictures, and a bit of humor found that most of these pictures are in the tesselation that Schiller finds makes the pictures look most like gas masks, but honestly, there is so much to be said about creating a world of symmetry...maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I didn't find it.
Honestly, Nikolas Schiller has a whole lot of material to work with. Perhaps the point of the art is not it's meaning, but the irony of maps being hidden. This is an interesting turn, but seriously, he's got America to manipulate. The whole world, and if that isn't big enough, I'm sure NASA has a few solid shots of the solar system that would look nice in repeating planes around a center point...and if that's the only point of this experiment, and to get some bloggers checking out your website, congrats. I'm all in support of making a more symmetrical world...but challenge us. Why is it important to split the world with a mirror? What is there to gain from this test of the curiosity of the digital minds? Schiller you clearly have an interest in it, judging by your myriad of digital profiles, and the well maintained blogs and myspace page, but me, I'm just a fleck on your digital resume, half a pixellation in your map...manipulate that point, but who's manipulating me?
you're showing me the map, but not telling me the destination. Maybe I'm reading into this too much, maybe I expect too much, or maybe I'm just too hopped up on metaphors and meaning that I can't like art just for it's aesthetic qualities anymore...blame it on higher education. The colors are pretty. The likeness to gas masks in the abstract project is pretty interesting. If I had to pick a favorite, I would say the Hurricane Katrina pixellation, but you know why? Because turning something that wrecked such havoc throughout an entire city into a symmetrical, beautiful, calm picture has some fierce irony in it, as well as hope that maybe someday New Orleans will be mirroring it's past self, not Katrina, as it does in the picture. Sorry if that wasn't the point.
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