Ordinary Aura

kevin, some initial responses:

1. I've participated in a wiki, but I've never set one up. Are you talking about a process document, like this blog, or something to use in the show somehow? It's a cool idea, but in order for it to be effective we'd have to figure out a concept and structure that we could fill out to some appreciable extent by showtime. Given that, I'm up for it; it would give a good source of text for the project(s) I have in mind. A wiki could lend itself to something less like this set of linear conversations and more like a sort of impressionistically linked set of texts; it could lead to things like wolpa's poems that he and chris have been using in paintings. I know chris has been looking around for text to use that way.
2. can you elaborate, or would we be getting off-topic for the show?
3. yep.
4. what's going on: we're screwed.
5. In practical terms, do you mean allowing noise to happen, without pre-setting signal interference for dramatic effect?
6. It's not totally clear how much space we have on ffarm.com -- we have a unique deal with our provider -- but given that I share the server with some other people from my freelance days, I think I have to ask that any individual file over 1MB gets posted somewhere else.
7. It comes down to the old horror difference between showing and not showing, between suspense and gore. People tend to talk about which is more effective, but the two things serve entirely different purposes, I think. Something like Dawn of the Dead, with its deadpan, matter-of-fact gore, has less to do with searching and finding than with what you can stand to see. Given the conversations that have already gone on about the idea of looking in this show, how does this idea fit in?

Oh, and blurting irresponsibly is what the blog is for.

1. I hear wiki and I think turntable.
2....
3. I LOVE the idea of accumulated sound... people hearing the sounds from an hour ago, the disjointedness of this (WHat's the name of that punk rock film that's all "off-register", Adam?). In a recent Artforum they profiled the band Ultra Red known for their soundscapes/ambience which is not always ambient in the relaxing sense. They do something that sounds similar to what some of us have been talking about... layering/accumulating sound-time... in theirs, though, to the point of endurance test. Is abrasiveness a component of our piece? I tend to dislike that sort of thing in a gallery space, but let's put aside "like" and think concept-- could sound do more than locate or dislocate the visitors to UICA? Could there be a sound component that creates awareness of self (headphones?) vs. environment? Or shock as in horror? A jolt or sustained increase in pressure?
Sound is a perfect medium for interactivity with visitors.
456...
7 I see films like Dawn of the Dead being about the body and flesh more than the psychology. In this show, I distinguish between Hitchcock dread and fright and the splatter of both horror film scenarios and also real life injuries to BODIES. Adam and I have begun to talk about the element of BLOOD in this show... (sound perhaps... (Slightly off subject, I recommend Fantomas' "Delirium Cardia")
Corrupted flesh. Death vs. Life. How does God fit in... can a murderer be redeemed?

In the TOUCH DRAWINGS I have begun, I think about two things primarily: The act of feeling with fingertips... the searching quality of this as though in a darkened room feeling for a light switch. And also, with red paint, the appearance of the horror film cliche of splattered walls.

1. i guess i thought that everyone's interests in trees and branches and collaboration suggested a wiki as a way of thinking - i'm way into blogs right now but i wonder if a wiki might not make more sense for the ways in which we're working. i think we wouldn't have to come up with a strucuture really, just the four categories we have already. it would be productive to see what structures emerge when they're not preset.

2.maybe off-topic, and i say more about this in a comment to one of chris' old post, but i heard some of my frustrations echoed in adam/chris visit to stray. the thing with the trapper-keepers is that they seem to be wedded to something like "and i can do this too if i want" as a prime motivator. as in "if i want to i can spend five hours on this inch of notebook paper," "if i want to i can draw a picture of two bulldogs having sex," "if I want to i can draw what i drew in 10th grade." "if i want to i can wrinkle up my drawing and then hang it up like i didn't." what does this mean to anchor one's practice to having "permission?" is that freedom, and for whom, and how? and what does it mean to put such things into commerce? i'm very uncomfortable with the politics of this practice, with its relationship to context of the world outside of art, with the definitions of individuality. as for the supposed collaborative nature of the work, I would point to a recent article by someone whose work I normally don't care for, gregory sholette. i can't find it now, ill post it when i do.

5. i guess i'm thinking metaphorically about how sometimes interference is a way of provoking mystery or faith in the unseen - think of the use of blur in recent design, or richter's blur, or modernist fragmentation of the image (cubism). or glitchy laptronica - but how this can be acknowledged as a condition without lifting it up as a goal.

6. i'll just post some mp3s to my server and link them

7. for me the scary stuff relates because of how ordinary vision (ie., "everything looks normal") is transformed when we expect the unknown to appear. my favorite example of this is a very simple flash movie made by David Lynch for Mulholland Drive. it scares the crap out of me every time. I'll post it here

5. On a bit of a tangent, have you read the article "The Recognition of Faces," by Leon Harmon? It appeared in Scientific American in 1973. It's about how much a photo can be degraded and still retain enough information for pattern recognition. I don't think it's available online, but it's an interesting article.

I bring it up because most people take the article to be about the reduction of visual information, but in fact Harmon was just as interested in the addition of noise to the signal. His most interesting discovery was that the addition of interference actually aided pattern recognition; the lack of information forced the eye to interpret, and thus to "see" information that wasn't already there.

In case there's any of us who haven't seen this article or similar recent stuff, the only example I have to hand is this poster featuring Moskovsky, and this edit with a heavy blur added. With the blur, you can't make out detail, but it's easier to read his expression.

I should point out though that the hard lines between "pixels" is also an example of signal interference.

That Lynch movie was slightly disappointing to me. I LOVE Mulholland Drive and as I was watching that Flash, I kept thinking of how similar it was to the scene behind the diner. Then I spent a lot of time watching the cursor thing move across the bottome of the screen ticking off the seconds... Realizing that time was running out, my tension rose as I anticipated SOMETHING, the thing from the dumpster... better yet, I was hoping that nothing would appear and it would be th static image plus the countdown, the sand running through the hourglass that would do the job of scaring me... get a rise out of me. I felt let down when the goon appeared and then flickered away.

So you're right, Kevin... it is the expectation that is key.

You know, watching the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (you see where Paul McCarthy and Cindy Sherman get ALL their material) reinforced this. It is UTTERLY banal for so long that every little nonsensical thing becomes freighted with dread.

I feel a bit like this watching ANY surveillance footage... Is it the format? The exposure to "COPS"? The webcams that invade (or are invited) into people's spaces? The waiting, the voyeuristic waiting is very compelling, I think.