anodyne2art’s posterous

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have,and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people
spend it for you.  - Carl Sandburg

Painter Richard Meyers, a partner in Chordata, began a series launching off from Paul Klee's Twittering Machine painting (which is a rather small, translucent work in the Museum of Modern Art in New York). I am the Twittering Machine and Richard is not and this has led to hot "thought performances" (a reference to Paul Valery. Paul Valery  said he was "sociable on the surface,singularist and separatist in my depths."  His was a  "conscious dialectic of surface and depths."). What follows will be a rambling Twitteresque dialectic (?) or a strange,elastic timeline.

This series was an attempt to see if the paintings that resulted (and the images are of studies,not finished works....to illustrate the complexity of thought process that goes on in the creation of art) could be offered via Twitter (among other related "offerings"). Paintings are  a one on one experience. There is no way to convey what goes on in a painting via digital media. "My Hand to Your Brain" is how RIchard puts it. There is no substitute for this direct experience and this then leads to the notion of place and space, the "ground", locality versus virtual social interaction.  Surface and depths.
We were curious to see if someone on Twitter got (bought for a song!) a physical painting (and they are large scrolls) delivered to their home and they lived with it,touched it,inhabited the same space with it:Would this affect them on a deeper level?

Many of us Twitterers see our lives as blended: both virtual and "real" ,each enhancing the other. Richard has questioned the virtual and whether it will always be just skittering across the surface,hollowing out our humanity. He may question the way I'm putting this,but essentially it comes down to: Are we better neighbours and friends, aware of our common humanity (more the same than different) as a result of social media?

It's too bad that we didn't record these conversations (but merciful for all of you probably). Here is the latest email from Richard ,which I think refers to surface and depths.perception and reality.

Richard: Metamerism: Used to describe the undesirable effect sometimes exhibited when two matching colors differ from each other when viewed under another kind of light. Matching and composition of substance are radically different ideas. The composition of substance is the more interesting by far...........................

................yes?  

Liz: Yes. What is interesting to me is not so much the color theory definitions of Metamerism, but those we find in Chemistry. The reference for the Molecular Twitter Party  is Deleuze (A Thousand Plateaus/Capitalism and Schizophrenia).

 "To confront reality honestly, Deleuze claims, we must grasp beings exactly as they are, and concepts of identity (forms, categories, resemblances, unities of apperception, predicates, etc.) fail to attain difference in itself. "If philosophy has a positive and direct relation to things, it is only insofar as philosophy claims to grasp the thing itself, according to what it is, in its difference from everything it is not, in other words, in its internal difference." (this is from Negotiations). 

 Deleuze ultimately seemed to me to be interested in a pragmatic philosophy (like Robert Pirsig). Not "What is it?, but rather "How Does It Work?" or "What Does It Do?" (Twitter: "What Are You Doing?")

Metamerism in chemistry refers to different SUBSTANCES that contain the same elements in the same proportions and having the same molecular weight.

Explain THAT....

This Paul Klee Book is an example of serendipity. It goes to illustrate something about
the long eye. When Richard began the Twittering Machine inspired work, I didn't know about it.
When he mentioned he was exploring this track,in a flash (a lightning bolt), I remembered that I still had this
Paul Klee book. I bought it from a used bookstore in New York when I was 14 and it has been with me,wherever I roamed, ever since. I used to go into MOMA almost weekly and one of the paintings that mesmerized me was The Twittering Machine. Klee had a huge impact on me related to  poetry and this winds itself into the present with an interest in "Asemic" poetry or "post-literate" poetry.
I gave this book to Richard as It seems I carried it with me all these years,just waiting to give it to him.

And so it goes with asynchronous and synchronous time.

PAINTING GOES WHERE WORDS CANNOT (or,Language is a slippery slope)

All of the images to follow were taken in April at Chordata Studio. Colors are not accurate. If you were here, they'd look different on that day in Spring. Each would see the colors differently anyway and it's said that men and women have different color perception.NOTE: EDIT/Posterous messed up the image sequence so beautiful timeline is no more.  Ha...the joke's on me for using all this splendid free tech.

             

Click here to download:

The_Slow_Long_Eye_Tardigrade_S.zip (591 KB)

   

Click here to download:

0The_Slow_Long_Eye_Tardigrade_S.zip (200 KB)

     

Click here to download:

1The_Slow_Long_Eye_Tardigrade_S.zip (272 KB)

Here's where that line went............

Finally Bionic EYE...Whose Sight is this?

Bionic vision: Researchers at Harvard Medical School aim to build a small digital camera that will feed images to an external signal processor worn by the patient. The processor will translate the image from the camera into neural impulses, then transmit them wirelessly to an implanted stimulator. The stimulator will drive a set of electrodes placed in the lateral geniculate nucleus of the brain to elicit images in the patient’s brain.
Credit: J. S. Pezaris, adapted with permission from D. H. Hubel

and...Enjoy the Deleuze Lego in Cologne: W Wordsworth on Newton...."Voyaging through strange seas
of thought, alone."

             

Click here to download:

The_Slow_Long_Eye_Tardigrade_S.zip (591 KB)

   

Click here to download:

0The_Slow_Long_Eye_Tardigrade_S.zip (200 KB)

     

Click here to download:

1The_Slow_Long_Eye_Tardigrade_S.zip (272 KB)

The Million Mark Bank Note designed by Herbert Bayer (Bauhaus) commissioned by the Thuringian Mint in 1923.
At the start of the famous "Art and Technology;A New Unity",Bauhaus exhibit ( August 15 - September  30,1923), the dollar was worth two million marks.
By the end,a dollar was worth 160 million marks.

LINKS:

http://www.bauhaus.de/english

http://www.archiplanet.org/wiki/Bauhaus (Some inaccuracies NB: Statement about Gropius and

Constructivism. It was his appointment of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy(Constructivist) that altered the course of Bauhaus.

"You surely don't believe the old fairy story about the human soul ? What is known as the soul is nothing but a function

of the human body." (Moholy-Nagy)

We are at a crossroad. For all the "new" frontierism of new media and social nets with idealist,sometimes utopian  emerging philosophies of
open transparency ,we are in grave danger of throwing out what lessons the past and those who came before (our Ancestors) can teach us.

We have access to vast stores of information,but rely on "curators" to put this information into context.
Each generation makes its own meaning although it seems we had almost 20 years of watershed and backlash to the
core ideas of the hippie 60s counterculture. We have now the glimmering of a global movement for change (not unprecedented,because
Peace movement ,hippie movement were global) in the Age of Digital Nomads.
 
The ideas and experiment of the 60s  did filter through into the general culture,but as it was not an era of documentation,much of the essence
is lost and needs to be gathered together and renewed for the present (Diggers would be a good example). The essence is far from the stereotypical
representations oozing through advertising and "branding " cultural memes. Grab a T-shirt and you are the 60s mode.

Lately,the whole history of Bauhaus has been absorbing me,and parallels to present times as related to arts.

It's worth considering Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace built for the Great Exhibition in London,1851.

Paxton was not an architect, but was in fact, a SELF-TAUGHT engineer. Would it be possible for Paxton to
construct this today for a large mainstream public event ? I think not. He would need pedigrees,he'd have to make it through an existing multi-layered
caste system and bureaucracy in the arts.
It's important to distinguish between events like Burning Man (which may have some impact on the culture generally in terms of what is taken back into
local communities) and grassroots community-driven endeavors.

Welfare State International,in the UK,is a prime example of a hugely successful arts- without- art school- pedigrees group,who managed to
insert art into the mainstream and into communities in need of revival economically.
 WSI created so many locally-based entrepreneurial opportunities and community renewal projects,it's a major undertaking in itself to absorb the range of their influence.
The history of Welfare State and its founders John Fox and Sue Gill (now Dead Good) is something for anyone interested in the arts  to study
right now. There is so much to learn from their experience and why the founders pulled away from this type of work ultimately.
Lantern House continues the work and ,specifically, training of arts community activists.

This Posterous really is just a notepad where I intend to jot thoughts down in an informal way as well as expand
on ideas coming out of ARTSEVO on Twitter which is an experiment in itself.
Today,I'm thinking about the great battle that was fought at Bauhaus between Masters of Form and Workshop Masters and the backdrop at that time,economically,
socially (Weimer Republic) in Germany. THE most popular thing at Bauhaus was the canteen and the one meal a day that artist/students could get by doing trade-off work(for food tokens) like
gardening (the school had its own vegetable gardens).

LINKS:

http://www.diggers.org

http://www.welfare-state.org (Engineers of the Imagination)

http://www.deadgoodguides.com

http://www.lanternhouse.org

http://www.greenmuseum.org

     

Click here to download:

ChordataCrystal_CathedralsPala.zip (117 KB)

Nudes: Richard Meyers, Chordata Studio ...new cathedrals ?

SEX  (Pablo Neruda)

(from  New Poems 1968-1970 Transl. Ben Belitt Grove Press,1972)

The harems have opened
in this year of our Lord
and Sex has jumped out of the windows,
the executive suites and the doors-
we've seen its breasts,bared
in celestial timidity
like the writing on postcards,
and women keep shedding
like petals in a lighted proscenium,
A great wave of nudes has rolled up
and crashed over the cathedrals.

The hustlers have come
with their books and their screens and revues-
a great Empire of Assholes
drowning the cities
with commercialized sperm.
It's hard to escape
to one's work or one's loves:
the wolf-whistle of promiscuous
sex,stored up in warehouses
or spurting its drops on the media,
hornily nips at our heels,
overtaking the newspaper ads,
tailing one on the freeways
or soaking the least of the villages
with its genital aqueduct.

Literature has crossed
into the century,phallus by phallus,with arabesque
demeaning our anguish
with books- a backwash of filth,all
flooding one way to the sewers
of susceptible spirits.

The garden was good once
in its hairiness,without any gardeners;
but a black tangle of creepers
has unfolded the bush of its fear
in the books of the destitute.

The page that was white
and seemed blank as the moon
has changed its inheritance
for a grimace of dreary immodesty,
There are no longer books,only
lights to be read-
five syllables of sun,
one naked word
in the rational sign of our purity.

Hello friends...Here's a How To so you can join in #ARTSEVO on TWITTER (Social Evolution Artist Driven...SHARE YOUR TOYS) ||

MUSICIANS,ARTISTS OF ALL STRIPES:WE ARE THE CHANGE WE WANT TO SEE. WE ARE OUR OWN STIMULUS PACK.

LET'S MAKE ARTS TREND ON TWITTER ALONGSIDE CAR CHASES AND CELEB GOSSIP.

USE #ARTSEVO,#ADOPTARTIST  and other evolving tags,to share your experiences and thoughts about sustainabilty for artists,the long tail

of art.

REALIZE: Twitter is a live art medium. It's a PULL rather than PUSH form.

Invite all your artist friends to join AND your fave alt  arts organizations,venues,spaces,collectives,

whathaveyou to join AND join in #ARTSEVO. Power to the people,right on. We're not underground/We ARE the ground.

ILLUMINATE  ELUCIDATE  

Putting HASH TAGS  ##### in front of Keywords in a Tweet allows tracking of all kinds of conversations,conferences,gatherings.

You can track in a variety of ways:

http://tweetdeck.com (an Adobe Air application) allows multiple column viewing of Twitter and you can set up groups to unify your faves and/ or like interests in 

one column for instance.

http://tweetgrid.com  allows views of Twitter in multiple custom grids. You could have #ARTSEVO open in one, be tracking your friends in others,Music

in another. It seems to use less CPU power compared to TweetDeck.

http://linkedin.com   also is fantastic now with its own add-on app section. You add "Company Buzz" app to your

profile and can track anything there on Keywords,hashtags,names.

CHORDATA has a group just started on LinkedIN here: http://tinyurl.com/chordatalnk

You can use it too to drop files,clippings,comments. Note: If you have trouble (like me) with twitter search loading (on Satellite IP for instance),this WORKS !)

http://search.twitter.com   also allows tracking of keywords,hashtags etc...

You can add anything ,at any time to the growing #ARTSEVO conversation. If you think something adds to the conversation or you just want to tweet about 

your life in art,just add the hash tag to end of your tweet.

We've also just started the idea of HI Jacking relevant tweets (sometimes by well-known artists on Twitter),so you can RT (retweet) & HJ too ie,hijacked for

#ARTSEVO.  All the Twitter conventions we take for granted now like the '@" whoever,or RT (retweeting),have sprung from the community.

HI Jack, HI Jinx, HI LIGHT  (yeah...love LIGHT, don't we ?), etc...

You can subscribe to the RSS FEED for Arts EVO...in fact,EVERY Twitter stream has an RSS feed,even your Favorites and this is a way to archive everything of interest to you.

Wednesdays at 1 PM PST (California Desert Y'all), We're Live and communing. Join us. We plan to hold some press conferences

for ART & SCIENCE  using the #ARTSEVO tags and have some fun. If the Israeli Consulate & Best Buy can hold Twitter press conferences,so can we.

Think John Lennon/Yoko Ono (who's on Twitter @YokoOno  with a Department of Peace initiative) in the hotel room ! The idea of meeting at a specific time on Twitter

is that if we all use the #ARTSEVO tag and there are enough participating,we can make arts trend and that,my friends, is what we want to see.

Fridays: There's a #followfriday  "tradition" on Twitter where you recommend tweeple to follow. We're doing #ADOPTARTIST to piggy back onto this on Fridays.

The idea is that someone suggests an artist to follow and whoever follows that artist ,ADOPTS them...becomes their angel,has their back,gives them kick in ass if needed.

See,we're all ONE HUMAN FAMILY and trying to drive this home. You can't lay off a family member !

LOVE IS OUR STRONGEST WEAPON. 

@anodyne2art (Twitter)    CHORDATA: http://anodyne2art.com