copy-boat-movement

The project that I am working on is a multi-person series of improvisations, similar to the game of telephone.  I’ve been thinking about the idea of the copy and the original lately and am interested in exploring how this discussion can be played out in a physical way.

The piece will proceed as follows:

Step 1:  A person will improvise movements using the wooden furniture piece (the furniture piece will look something like a person-sized boat/rocking chair thing) responding to the song Decara A La Pased by Lhasa De Sela.  The improvisation will be recorded with a video camera.    Step 1 will mostly be recorded in Chicago.  The participants will have a strong dance and/or movement background.  They will be asked to pick a location (indoors/outdoors) in which to perform their improvisation.

Step 2:  The furniture piece will be removed.  A new person will watch the video of the first person’s improvisation and attempt to recreate the movements without the furniture piece.

Step 3:  The furniture piece will be replaced.  A third person will watch the video of the second person’s movements and attempt to recreate them using the furniture piece.

Step 4:  Steps 2 and 3 will be repeated until I run out of people willing to participate.

Steps 2, 3, and 4 will be completed at Harold.  I am looking for as many people as possible to participate in this project.  It doesn’t matter if you have experience with dance/movement/music–I’m looking for anyone and everyone.  I am aiming to have five different people finish Step 1 before I leave Chicago.  Harloders will get to pick which improvisation they would like to recreate and also choose a location around the farm for the filming.

I am interested to see what people choose to focus on in the recreations.  Will they try to replicate the improvisation movement by movement?  Will the focus on the overall mood of the improvisation?  Will they concentrate on specific movements?  Also, for the people in Step 2, how will they mimic the furniture piece?  Will they hold their bodies in a particular position?  Will they ignore it completely?   I am also intrigued by the possibility that these questions will become non-questions once the project is underway.  Because its creation relies on the participation of many people, it has the potential to move in a completely different direction once people begin to interact with it.

Destroying Ageing Technologies

Hi Everyone,
I thought that I would just put this out there…I would love to help anyone out with projects that take place during the day, because I will only be executing my piece at night (destroying hi8 camcorders). I will definately need two or three volunteers that are willing to do one of the following things.

1.Drive my car into a videocamera (I have 15 cameras)
2.Help set-up film lights
3.Spot a videocamera (i.e. stand behind a pole with protective gear on and lightly hold the pole that the camera is attached to).
4.Document the whole collison with a videocamera far removed from the situation (Basically hit record on/off).

If any of these tasks sound appealing, let me know. I have a feeling that a few people will want to try running over the videocamera with my car, and I want whoever wants to try this to be able to. It might be a cathartic experience. Or at least entertaining. Thrilling?
Okay, great. Thanks everyone. Again, I am more than willing to help during the day.

I hope that my ramblings are somewhat coherent.

Best,
Mary

If you are interested in more details of the project, please read below:

My project consists of destroying hi8 videocameras that will be attached to a “hangman” type structure, for lack of a better description, while the videocamera is recording. The camcorders will be suspended by rope, and resting on a cardboard box. I will hit the cameras with my truck, at speeds ranging from 20mph-30mph. Apparently, 35mph might activate my airbags. That would be really bad. I plan to use my car for many more years to come. I might also look for a demo derby car, like a $100 car that is barely running, if I can find one near Harold. If I find one, speed is not as much of an issue, although, I do not want to obliterate the cameras. I want the tapes to be intact, which I accept might not always be from case to case.
I chose hi8, asthetically, because it has a low range of exposure latitude, and I want the impact to look somewhat ambiguous, picking-up the film lights (that will be cast on trees and/or field), as the camcorder swings like a pendulum in the night air, after the impact. I chose that format, conceptually, because the piece has to do with consumer culture and the quick replacement of technologies. Even though, people still use hi8, it becomes less common with other video format developments, such as miniDV and HD. I look forward to destroying many more archaic techonologies with record “on.”

Getting to Harold from NYC…rides?

Hey Harolders…old and new…

 I was wondering if anyone is driving to the woods from NYC for July 15th and could give me a lift.

 -monika

Data Collection

 We now have paid access to Survey Monkey, a website that allows you to poll tons of folks and compile their responses in a bunch of different ways. We’ll only have it for the next month, unless there’s a call to renew it. Imagine the exciting and creative data gathering potential!

If you submit your yes or no, multiple choice, or open ended questions, we can poll the Harold residents with them. There has been talk of doing research on a new disease that they’re calling “love.” Please let us know by email or in a response to this post if you have questions for your cohort.

 

 

stealing yr struggles project

I’ve been noticing lately that the art that interests me most is art about art. Art that deals specifically with the struggles artists go through, and especially art that comments on that through it’s form, not just it’s content. Like the song “Dynamic Calories” by Stephen Malkmus, where he chronicles an 80’s band through the years, and uses 80’s style guitar effects in a way that manages not to be cheesy because the little chorus&delay licks set the scene for the story. Or the movies “Clean” and “Late August, Early September” by Olivier Assayas, where he uses gaps in the narrative to show how shifts in personal relationships affect the perception and appreciation of works of art. Or the book “Days Between Stations” by Steve Erickson, where the fabric of reality seems to shift and tear when a filmmaker’s crowning achievement fails and is never completed.

I’m not sure if I identify with this kind of art because I relate to it as a musician who struggles to make something I’m proud of, or if this kind of art is inherently easier to appreciate because the writer or songwriter etc. is closer to these kinds of struggles himself…that is to say, these struggles are truer to that artist’s experience, so the art has a ring of truth. It’s probably a combination of the two. In any case, this is something I’m trying to explore with my own songwriting.

Now the obvious pitfall here is that nobody wants to hear a song from the songwriter’s perspective about how hard it is to write a song. God, that would be awful. What I would like to do, and what I’ve been trying to do, is write narrative songs about other (fictional) artists and their struggles, their failures, and the ways that their lives intersect with their art.

So I want to use all you Harolders. I’d like to approach some of you with certain questions about how you approach your art, where you look for inspiration, how you deal with “writer’s block,” how your creative endeavors inform and complicate the rest of your life… Have you ever had a “breakthrough,” a moment of clarity where what you do and where it fits in suddenly made sense? What sacrifices have you made through the years for your art? These are just starting points, I would have specific questions (I’m working on this.) I’d like to record short interviews with some of you, so I can also use the sounds of your voices in my music in some way.

The idea is for me to get past random ideas jotted down on torn pieces of newspaper and get more specific. You’d have to be willing to let me use your lives for my music (names changed, of course; amalgamations of multiple people likely.) Ideally, the exercise would give me a finite set of material to work with that has a common theme, so I could make an entire cycle of songs that all relate to each other in a cohesive way. And, ideally, talking about your art with a stranger might give you some perspective on what you do and why you do it, and get you thinking about it in a different way. If I manage to break through the wall that’s keeping me from writing songs I’m proud of by writing songs about your experiences breaking through that wall, well, that would be a neat trick.

Let me know in the comments if you’re interested. I’ll be around week2.

Jacob Kart

More Masks

I would also like to take a group portrait of all the
females attending the first week. If there are at
least seven women that would be wonderful. If you
want to participate, please select a (human) mask.
You can choose any mask featured below. if you would
like to reserve a mask for either project please let
me know by emailiing me at thomasmacker@yahoo.com.
Thanks again.

-Thomas

A Minor Project: Spirit Animal

One of my projects is photographing people wearing
animal masks. Before coming to Harold I am going to
purchase a bunch of masks. If you have a special
kinship with an animal and wouldn’t mind being
photographed wearing a mask, please e-mail me with a
response. I hope I can accommodate your request. My
local costume store has a pretty large collection, so
throw any suggestion out there. Also, if you aren’t
camera shy in general, please let me know because I
could use all the models I can get for other projects
involving photography. By the way, I will not
photograph anybody who’s spirit animal is the
salamander. My e-mail address:
thomasmacker@yahoo.com Thank you. **

PROJECT APOLOGY

DESCRIPTION/RATIONALE

Ever since billions of years ago when those first cells developed a way of recording for prosperity their recipes for success, ever since we made that first tool or used that first club, man has been destined to progress, to evolve. From single cell organism to beyond space – we’re somewhere in between.

Yet one would think that, whereas with ‘animals’ evolution seems to be a process of unconscious positive adaptation based on the dictates of their given external circumstances, our unlikely transcendence of an ‘animal’ level of consciousness, if you will, would have endowed us with the good sense to take at least some of the variables of our evolutionary process into our own hands. On the contrary, sometimes it seems as though we’ve lost the point somewhere along the line. That we’re stuck in a state of limbo, suspended permanently in consciousness between things that have happened such as technological/biological advances and their consequences and/or practical applications. Sometimes it seems as though we haven’t evolved at all or, at the very least, that we’ve taken a couple of wrong turns along the way. But then again, in the same way that our mothers never said that life was going to be all peaches and cream, no one ever said that the twist in the cocktail of evolution was going to be a positive one. Perhaps everything is perfect as it is and whatever twists may come were meant to be. What is more than certain is that no one is near being ‘in control’, no one except perhaps that human animal incarnation, greed. And, on the sixth day, greed gave birth to blind pursuit in the western colonial mould that has opened the door for a cultural and human void perhaps best described by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers in Californiacation as follows: Space may be the final frontier but its born in a Hollywood basement.

Why do we bother to hold events like the `World Summit on Sustainable Development (aside from its function as a large-scale business party for high-level oil execs)? Well certainly the weather can’t. For even love is questionable in the days of our lives where value systems are increasingly based on media stereotyped materiality and model citizenship defined by material wealth and good looks. How do we fail to see that we live in a closed system where the pain of our fellow woman/creature is our own and where taking must be replaced, very smartly, with giving and nurturing if we are to survive?

Against this backdrop, Project Apology is a video work in progress that involves the documentation of an undertaking to apologize, in person and as a self-appointed representative of the human race, to members of all of the non-human animal species on the planet that are being adversely affected by human activity. Obviously such a mandate includes every last livi ng creature and, as such, presents a very tall order, the unmanageability of such an undertaking becoming a big part of the content of this piece – in pushing for a greater degree of acknowledgement of damage done and acceptance of the urgent need for responsible change. Once completed (in the course of the following week), we would hope that the project will be successful in its use of satire as a means to hit home a message, whose seriousness is evident in National Geographic’s estimation that 17 species of plants and animals are becoming extinct every hour, and the fact that the adverse effects of human industry that we are currently experiencing are as a result only of damage done up until 40 years ago.

Justin Berry – Novel Extrapolation

Hi, I am working on a fairly large project and looking for people to collaborate in a variety of ways. About a year ago I finished the rough draft for a novel and I have decided to use the novel as a platform for all or most of my creative ventures in the next year or so, possibly much longer. Alot of my reasoning has to do with the means by which we interact with narratives, both in terms of defining our outlooks and also the way we use them as tools to aid in our perception. That sounds vague and meaningless I am sure, but such is life, the main thing is that I am trying to find ways for people other than myself to interact with and engage the narrative of the novel. For instances – A friend of mine works with GIS mapping and he is going to help me build a virtual model of a trail that the characters follow. Another person is a sailor and they are going to go on a sailing trip and mimic parts of a sailing trip the characters go on. One scene takes place on a battlefield and the character cannot see from where he is hiding and so his account of the battle is based entirely on the sound of it, I am trying to get as many people as possible to write a song based off that chapter… and so on. It doesn’t matter what people want to do, so long as the narrative is engaged somehow. I am simply tossing this out there.

Mapping the Woods

Hi Everybody,

I figured I’d start the project discussion going with a little project I’d like to happen out there. Here goes.

I propose that we map the 3200 acre Jeffers Tree Farm. The dense forest that covers most of the property is riddled with paths for which no map exists. I think that this would be a really great, casual collaborative project that people could participate in as an excuse to go hiking and exploring. I would like for us to use an alternative mapping technique, but thus far have only decided that i think it shoud be be collaborative and memory based. Basically, I’m thinking we will send people into the woods with walkie talkies and have them collect different sorts of data as best they can without bringing numbers into the process. At project’s “end” we would create an artifact that would serve future cohorts of Harolders in their adventures through the woods. Certain traditions and movements within art have addressed mapping. We might begin by talking about situationist mapping methods and what we (don’t) like about them. Please feel free to crit or add to this idea with your comments.

Thanks!

Nick Wylie