HW#3_1/7: SCANOGRAPHY

NMNF SCANart Series #1 [Scanned ink drawings on paper (PJM)]

PROCESS:

The project starts with the drawing I made for the ON/OFF experiment, part two. Using that sketch as a point of origination, I traced elements of Drawing 1 to begin Drawing 2, of Drawing 2 for Drawing 3, of Drawing 3 for Drawing 4. Obviously, this system can be continued ad infinitum. Then, I scanned all four drawings and output the results on almost-transparent paper. I overlay each derivative scan/print in horizontal flip or reverse position on the matching drawing and re-scanned the combination to produce the second NMNF SCANart Series #2 (below).

I used ISSUU, instead of Flipsnack or iBook Author, because I already have an ISSUU account, set up to publish NOVAD MEGAzine End of the World Edition, Vol. ø, NO. ONE, which I designed in 2012 for the novads.

HW#2_7/11: BERT'S LEAVES + ASSOC IMGS

For this assignment, I was asked to basically curate a mix of images from harvested online materials. I took a streaming association approach to the task. My first selection was a painting by John Fincher (I worked at Elaine Horwitch Galleries in the 80s when John showed there, and the painting is representative of his paintings in that era/phase). Then, I found a nice botanical image on someone's social media/post-it site (I think) - which seemed an almost oppositional relative of my classmate's snapshot. Next, I picked a lush Gauguin. This and some of the following picks were definitely precipitated by my recent visit to Kauai. I thought Bert's photo had that kind of photosynthetic intensity I associate with the tropic garden. The images of the Na'Aina Kai Botanical Gardens and the Dale Hope's "aloha shirt" photo (check out his great book and site on the subject) sprung from that connection. Then I bounced to flowers in Tibetan spiritual painting, especially treatments of the lotus, which is important in the spiritual practices for consciousness expanding visualization practices and more. From lotuses, I ricocheted to Warhol's flowers, Mark Tribe's virtual landscapes and Pipilotti Rist's colorful, planted environments/projections. These three associations I think of as synthetic, primarily.* All curated files are scrambled out-of-order-of-selection in the gallery below, which is ordered alphabetically/numerically according to their file-titles. Most images are cropped to-fit in the slideshow format, which I like in this instance.

*I apologize for the lack detailed source attributions, etc. in this post. I don't often sample images this way.

HW#2_10/11: READINGS TAKEAWAYS

1. On the topics of digital storytelling, "new literacies" plus re-mixing and so on. It is clear that narrative is being substantively reformed by phenomena related to pervasive, networked media tools and strategies. The shape of the Story in transmission is now infinitely variable, and this creates a significant challenge for both storyteller (transmitter) and the audience (receiver). The "Fake News" story is a case in point. The tension between virtuality and veracity is palpable throughout the circuitous Social, which is embodied by the narratives that people attach to their behaviors, driven by beliefs that create and are created by the Story and repetitive transmissions of it. The accelerating pace of "technological"/social (virtual>analog) conversion of formal community hardly softens the profound effects of sense(d) displacement for people. The shifting structural topology on the mechanisms for generating pronouncing the imagination, whether that transmission is intimate or general is migrating from nature to artificial sources. Giving voice and/or sign to the inner life of people in the particular and collective is essential to sustainable community exchange. Orientation - from nature to machine - changes, but we have no idea to what extent that change is constructive and/or destructive. Not only is the change happening IRT, it is occurring within Networked Reality (NR) as a complex. We do however have enough evidence to suggest caution is in order. The means of ensuring free thought and speech are currently stressed. The space for protected storytelling is being co-opted by powerful entities at an alarming rate, and those entities do not necessarily align with prioritized civil liberties for all on a spherical scale of equality.
2. Along these lines, the practice of listening is evolving into a vaguely performative act, a specialty with attendant pantomimes derived from non-cultural ideologies, including psychotherapy, sociology, anthropology, etc. Witness Hillary Clinton's "listening tour." Critique and deconstruction of such programmatic exercises would be valuable, perhaps extending to a new discipline of secondary analysis. A comparative practice might involve study of what we might call the mode "Listening for Survival" and other modes (e.g., "Listening for Pleasure"). Medical science has accrued much data on human hearing and technologies for sound amplification and reduction are manifold, as are the relevant analytic data associated with countless instances of testing, etc. In short Hearing has its own massive database. One thing that's worth examining is the tech-enabled disruption of traditional methods of teaching listening. Another is the evacuation or destruction of "quiet space," and re-/displacement by programmatic noise. I am speaking not of Nechvatal's ultimately creative noise, but the polluting kind. Another is the impulsive filler saturating the interstices among meaning objects in conversation, both formal and and informal, which may be a symptom of these other things. The teaching of mindful relation to all sound (and silence) is an ancient practice among many cultures, and may be a basic element in the formation of meaning in thinking and conveyance.

HW#2_9/11

An Assemblage.