Jim Andrews
Since the beginning
Works in Victoria Canada

ARTBASE (2)
BIO
Jim Andrews does http://vispo.com . He is a poet-programmer and audio guy. His work explores the new media possibilities of poetry, and seeks to synthesize the poetical with other arts and media.
Discussions (847) Opportunities (2) Events (14) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

"Blue Hyacinth" by Pauline Masurel


It's a pleasure to publish Pauline Masurel's piece "Blue Hyacinth" at
http://vispo.com/StirFryTexts/bluehyacinth3.html (requires IE 4+).

There's discussion between Pauline and me concerning "Blue Hyacinth" and the stir frys at
http://vispo.com/StirFryTexts/mazconv.htm .

"The story has already been written...her blue hyacinth voice.
The story has already been written another in the corner is smoking.
The story has already been written in colour.
The story has already been written and he's just here now to watch it played out."

In one of the four texts, we read of a night club owner's remote reaction to his blowing up a
rival night club called The Blue Hyacinth. In another, a woman describes the actions of someone
who broke into her house and left voice recordings on all her tapes, leaves voice messages on
her phone, "it goes on for months, her blue hyacinth voice." In another of the texts, a woman
relates of having won money bet on Blue Hyacinth at the track, and her own inexplicable giving
up of the winnings.

Masurel has used the mechanism of the stir fry to transform fictive stories/vignettes into a
vortex of poetry...and back again to fiction, as you please.

Many thanks to Pauline for "Blue Hyacinth" and its transformations through the shapes of fiction
and poetry.

There are now five stir fry texts involving various participants: Pauline, Brian Lennon, Leo
Marx, Jerome McGann, Talan Memmott, Mary Phillips, Joseph Weizenbaum, Lee Worden, and
translation into Chinese of one of them by Shuen-shing Lee. They have been published in the Iowa
Review Web, ubu.com, DOC(K)S from France, Taiwan, and offline in Denmark. The project was
started in 1999 and may or may not be finished according to whether the form inspires others to
do something different with it, as Pauline has.

The stir fry form keys on the DHTML innerHTML method which allows you to change the HTML code
inside a <SPAN> or <DIV>. Pauline's "Blue Hyacinth" can transform into
4^30=1,152,921,504,606,846,976 different texts as you mouse over it. So the 'whole thing' will
never be read. But neither need all 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 different texts be read to grasp
what we would call 'the meaning' of the piece.

As we move into combinatorially complex works, we realize that what it means to read a
combinatorium with subtlety and comprehension does not involve the necessarily impossible task
of reading all the possibilities of a combinatorium but, rather, getting a sense of the
directions in which the possibilities tend by sampling them until they begin to diminish in
significant difference. In the end, we see that the mind ranges very quickly through
1,152,921,504,606,846,976 despite its seeming insuperability. A text of
1,152,921,504,606,846,976 possibilities is still amenable to the creation of meaning on a human
scale not simply by disregarding most of the possibilities, but by virtue of the way the
underlying 4 texts guide the reader through primary (spanning set) spaces of meaning.

ja

DISCUSSION

RE: ART vs art (was : Pondering the social sculpture, P1)


Concerning forests, there's an old sufi saying: "Easier to be a sage on the mountaintop than in
the marketplace." Concerning Art, Inc., I always liked the name of the little press named
Fingerprinting Ink Operated.

And I can understand Curt's feeling about 'professional' artists--pros are usually pretty
defensive, not particularly generous, because that's all they have and there isn't much ground
underneath. A bird's gotta fly.

Years ago, when I told my aunt Georgie that I wanted to be a writer, she said "Then you better
go where the bears are." And she was quite a bear herself, in her own charming way. No, she was
a lion, but she said 'you better go where the bears are' and that meant 'where it's happening'.
Many years later, I told her I figured out where the real bears are. "Oh?" she said, and raised
her head as in 'yes, finish it'. "Yeah, the real bears are way out in the wilderness."

She half nodded, went back to her knitting, and said "I expect that's right".

Artists end up publishing and showing and talking etc with people they can relate to and with
whom they share a common vision. It doesn't generally work very well or long otherwise. Unless
of course someone has a sack full of cash in which case anything is possible. For a while,
anyway. But, eventually, if it's no fun they quit.

So the galleries end up with the people they want, and the artists end up with the people they
want. Which reminds me of the difference between pessimists and optimists: optimists believe we
live in the best of all possible worlds and pessimists, well, pessimists agree.

ja

DISCUSSION

Re: Pondering the social sculpture, P1


> > > The precondition of art is not exhibition and acknowledgement or place within the
institutions of art.

> > It should not be but it is these days.

> No it isn't. If you want to play up to that propaganda, do so,
> but acknowledge that you are CHOOSING to do so.

I agree: it isn't. Only in the self-deluded, vain minds of the pompous pseudo-patrons is it
true. And in the minds of those who chase or dance with them.

Also, I agree that Grancher was justified in what he said.

There's a poet in Canada by the name of bill bissett who never wins awards but everywhere he
goes the house is packed and his books just get better and better. He's still poor as a
churchmouse and lives from selling his books and paintings and tapes mostly himself. And he's
more open to change and acknowledging the work of new writers than the pillars of writing. More
experimental. More compassionate. Not defending a bastion. Real, for the most part. That'll be
acknowledged when he's dead and less of a threat. Not because he's mouthy. He isn't. Just
because he's real and doesn't acknowledge the power structures of art, has better things to do.

There are such people, Liza. And, ultimately, they are the powerful ones in art. The artists.

I remember reading something Artaud wrote. In the 30s? Anyway, he said something like 'the art
scenes are a pigpen. but especially now.' maybe they're always already a pigpen, especially now.
but maybe there will be a shining day someday.

ja

DISCUSSION

Re: Pondering the social sculpture, P1


Pondering the social sculpture, P1
The moment Beuys "thingifies" creativity and exhibits it in front of a
gaggle of curators and critics, that is the moment that he has created art.

This seems rather cynical to me, Liza. Perhaps you are tongue-in-cheek,
however?

I attended my first meeting of curators (I am not a curator) some months
ago. A prominent Canadian curator (I cannot remember his name, Jean
somebody-or-other from the National Gallery) said that "an artist without a
gallery is nothing".

There are basically two types of personal power. There's power that can be
bestowed on one by institutions or critics or curators or publishers or
awards committees and so on, or, in the case of other occupations, there are
other sources of power that can be bestowed on one. The other type of power
is one's own power. Not over others but within oneself.

It seems to me that Jean what's-his-name is no friend of artists when he
says what he said, for it seems to me a negation of the notion that art is
first and foremost an expression of an individual's own power and human
dignity, power not over others, but power to realize what they themselves
wish to realize. It is a gift to others of insight or song, intense
perception or joy, sadness or mystery...

The precondition of art is not exhibition and acknowledgement or place
within the institutions of art. Instead, it is the moment of insight and
awareness, mindfulness in the full context of being alive. Doris Lessing
said that "love is the delicate but total acknowledgement of what is." Art
is a recognition of the shared nature of our experience and aspirations and
stories, and an attempt to present these with their full significance
honored and acknowledged.

It makes me sad to hear 'important' curators say what the curator said. It
distances artists from the institutions. How can you work with a bozo like
that who is supposed to understand art but doesn't have a clue?

ja

DISCUSSION

Re: Napier's King Kong and Durieu's Giraffe and OeilComplex


> > What other successful 3D art pieces
> > can you think of
> > on the Web that involve 'living entities'?
>
> If you want to play with responsive wireframes with muscles, gravity etc,
> get over to my good genius friends at Soda and try their Sodaconstructor:
> http://www.sodaplay.com/zoo/

How could I forget! I have visited there several times. Yes, it is an excellent site.

It is certainly one of the best 'roll your own' projects I've seen. And the dynamics of the
'world' are indeed very similar to Mark Napier's King Kong piece. But the contexts and concepts
are very different.

There is a tension in 'roll your own' projects that is competently addressed in the sodaplay
project. I don't think this tension is resolved in it, but it is very well addressed, as it is
also in several of Napier's pieces. And that tension concerns authorial control and the nature
of the "unfinished" work of art.

In the most satisfying 'roll your own'ers, there is no pretence that the player or user or
viewer or wreader or whatever is able to create something entirely original and entirely
satisfying, in its own right, as a work of art. It is clear that they are producing an instance
of the possibilities inherant in the device, are 'finishing' an inherantly unfinished work, or
are not finishing it but are participating in the ongoing project of its processual
machinations. To experience the work is to create an instance of the object(s) it allows you to
create.

This is different from using Flash or Word or Director or Dreamweaver or Sound Forge, etc. They
provide more range of possibility. They are tools rather than works of art. The better the tool,
the more possibility and granularity of control it offers to create something that does not have
the stamp of the software authors all over it. In pieces like sodaplay, the instance has all
over it the mark of the software. But the alternative is to create a better tool and less
interesting a work of art.

So, in this sense, the tension I mentioned in 'roll yer own'ers is not one that *can* be
resolved, but only explored with artistic sensitivity and programmerly dexterity.

There is a similarly unresolvable tension between art and game. Art is not a game somebody wins.
Though with all the jockeying for position we see in the art world, you might wonder. For all
that, there is an unresolvable tension between art and game. The middleground is the concept of
play.

Similarly, in successful 'roll yer own'ers, the play is engaging and meaningful. Even though it
may result in an instance of the relatively limited range of possibility inherant in the
software, the process of playing with it reveals a view of the whole work. Even though it is an
unfinished work, it is a single work, and playing with it reveals the character of the entire
set of possibilities of which it is capable.

In attaining this nominal view of the whole work, we glimpse the relations between the
materials, and the significance of the operations the software permits. The particular instances
we create should themselves be capable of interest musically and/or visually and/or textually,
etc, and there should be significant range of compositional possibility, but in an unfinished
work of art, as opposed to a tool, the emphasis is on seeing the instance within the set of the
software's possibilities, rather than seeing it as a unique creation. And the emphasis is on
seeing the larger contexts of the software, how it relates to issues in the world, via its
generative and interactive processes. And the emphasis is on examining play and composition and
just what can be created and considered original.

It highlights the tension between art and the tool, and explores that tension meaningfully. It
probably does not resolve it, however, because the tension may be unresolvable. It does not
offer a pathetic instant art creater, but seeks to create a work of art that problematizes its
own status as a work of art, and may offer a glimpse into new forms of art, also, hinted at in
the small or large contexts of the "unfinished" work.

Hmm. Don't think I've said the last word on this subject, rereading. Well, hopefully the play is
engaging.

ja