Slumberlord
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Fountain heads and found sounds
While looking for something else entirely I stumbled on an interesting interview with experimental poet Kenneth Goldsmith. Despite my relative ignorance of avant-garde poetry and a few minor quibbles with the interview format, I found the following two sections quite interesting:
EB: ... In what sense is being new or innovative important to you?
KG: An artist responding to their time cannot help but be new or innovative simply because parameters and paradigms shift constantly. This is especially pressing for artists using language which is radically shifting as of late. Only a few years ago, our culture was said to be moving toward the strictly visual (remember the Whitney's "Image World" show of the late 80s); the rise of the Internet has proved that wrong. In fact, due to the web we're responding to language in ways unimagined just a few years ago. Language is being influenced by the technology; compound word URLs are completely Joycean. Suddenly we can read Finnegans Wake and understand it in a different way. Rap music, which began compounding ordinary words to form mass-culture neologisms, is another example. Joyce certainly knew that one day we'd catch up to him yet he never could have anticipated that it would be the internet or rap music that would be responsible for it. I can imagine future generations understanding the Wake in ways my generation (or his) could never have imagined.
***
EB: In your mind, does the method of writing you used in No. 111 and Soliloquy, in the sense that you kind of open up a certain linguistic channel and then proceed to let the writing flow through that channel … Personally, I think this is a relatively boring question, i.e. "is it really your work if other people said the words?," but I think some of our readers with inquiring minds might want to know.
KG: Almost a century ago Duchamp settled these questions with his Fountain. After that, authorship simply became a matter of framing. I'm shocked how long it's taken our culture so long to legitimize framing or "brushing" content as a valid artistic practice. In the late 70s and we began to see artists like Sherrie Levine "appropriating" images and now, of course, we have a culture built entirely on sampling and recycled material. What was once branded "plagiarism" has long ceased to be an issue.
I go on a lot about how the biggest thing keeping most people from enjoying hip-hop is the idea that what a vocalist sings or raps or says is (or has to be) much more important than how the vocalist sings or raps or says it. Thankfully that prejudice has partially receded in the past five years or so, but listeners still greatly underestimate the means in favor of the message, in hip-hop and beyond. And Duchamp’s expression of artistic ownership is, astonishingly, almost as controversial today as it was 90 years ago.
While looking for something else entirely I stumbled on an interesting interview with experimental poet Kenneth Goldsmith. Despite my relative ignorance of avant-garde poetry and a few minor quibbles with the interview format, I found the following two sections quite interesting:
EB: ... In what sense is being new or innovative important to you?
KG: An artist responding to their time cannot help but be new or innovative simply because parameters and paradigms shift constantly. This is especially pressing for artists using language which is radically shifting as of late. Only a few years ago, our culture was said to be moving toward the strictly visual (remember the Whitney's "Image World" show of the late 80s); the rise of the Internet has proved that wrong. In fact, due to the web we're responding to language in ways unimagined just a few years ago. Language is being influenced by the technology; compound word URLs are completely Joycean. Suddenly we can read Finnegans Wake and understand it in a different way. Rap music, which began compounding ordinary words to form mass-culture neologisms, is another example. Joyce certainly knew that one day we'd catch up to him yet he never could have anticipated that it would be the internet or rap music that would be responsible for it. I can imagine future generations understanding the Wake in ways my generation (or his) could never have imagined.
***
EB: In your mind, does the method of writing you used in No. 111 and Soliloquy, in the sense that you kind of open up a certain linguistic channel and then proceed to let the writing flow through that channel … Personally, I think this is a relatively boring question, i.e. "is it really your work if other people said the words?," but I think some of our readers with inquiring minds might want to know.
KG: Almost a century ago Duchamp settled these questions with his Fountain. After that, authorship simply became a matter of framing. I'm shocked how long it's taken our culture so long to legitimize framing or "brushing" content as a valid artistic practice. In the late 70s and we began to see artists like Sherrie Levine "appropriating" images and now, of course, we have a culture built entirely on sampling and recycled material. What was once branded "plagiarism" has long ceased to be an issue.
I go on a lot about how the biggest thing keeping most people from enjoying hip-hop is the idea that what a vocalist sings or raps or says is (or has to be) much more important than how the vocalist sings or raps or says it. Thankfully that prejudice has partially receded in the past five years or so, but listeners still greatly underestimate the means in favor of the message, in hip-hop and beyond. And Duchamp’s expression of artistic ownership is, astonishingly, almost as controversial today as it was 90 years ago.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Bullpen help
From a recent Harper's article, describing an Illinois senator Q&A from this past summer:
"[Richard] Durbin mentioned to the crowd that [Barack] Obama had thrown out the first pitch at a Chicago White Sox game last year; this, he noted, had sparked a long winning streak, at the end of which the team won its first World Series in eighty-eight years. Later, a student at the University of Illinois asked Obama if he might also throw out the first pitch for the perennial sad-sack Cubs, in order to impart similarly good luck. 'My arm,' Obama deadpanned, 'is only so good.'"
I was at the second 2005 American League Central Series game — of dropped third strike fame — when Obama also threw out the first pitch. He threw cleanly from the mound to home plate, which a lot of ceremonial throwers can't manage. It should be a presidential prerequisite.
From a recent Harper's article, describing an Illinois senator Q&A from this past summer:
"[Richard] Durbin mentioned to the crowd that [Barack] Obama had thrown out the first pitch at a Chicago White Sox game last year; this, he noted, had sparked a long winning streak, at the end of which the team won its first World Series in eighty-eight years. Later, a student at the University of Illinois asked Obama if he might also throw out the first pitch for the perennial sad-sack Cubs, in order to impart similarly good luck. 'My arm,' Obama deadpanned, 'is only so good.'"
I was at the second 2005 American League Central Series game — of dropped third strike fame — when Obama also threw out the first pitch. He threw cleanly from the mound to home plate, which a lot of ceremonial throwers can't manage. It should be a presidential prerequisite.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Wiki-wiki sound
The true measure of a man: the past few weeks worth of Wikipedia visits, as recorded in workplace Internet browser history:
A4 Paper Size
Apollo Creed
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Care Bears
Carrie
Carrie the Musical
Charles Krauthammer
Don Drysdale
Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act
Endocytosis
EPR Paradox
Eugene the Jeep
Garth Marenghi's Darkplace
Goldman Sachs
Graduate Record Examination
GRE
Haniwa
Henry Ford
Kangal
Kirby's Dream Land
Malachi Ritscher
Military History of Italy During World War II
Mitochondrion
Mongoose
Necromonger
Orel Hershiser
Pitfall!
Popeye
Riesling
Rockford, Illinois
Seven Deadly Sins
Swahili Language
Tampa Bay Devil Rays
Waddle Doo
Welcome Back Kotter
Wire Fraud
Wormhole
The true measure of a man: the past few weeks worth of Wikipedia visits, as recorded in workplace Internet browser history:
A4 Paper Size
Apollo Creed
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Care Bears
Carrie
Carrie the Musical
Charles Krauthammer
Don Drysdale
Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act
Endocytosis
EPR Paradox
Eugene the Jeep
Garth Marenghi's Darkplace
Goldman Sachs
Graduate Record Examination
GRE
Haniwa
Henry Ford
Kangal
Kirby's Dream Land
Malachi Ritscher
Military History of Italy During World War II
Mitochondrion
Mongoose
Necromonger
Orel Hershiser
Pitfall!
Popeye
Riesling
Rockford, Illinois
Seven Deadly Sins
Swahili Language
Tampa Bay Devil Rays
Waddle Doo
Welcome Back Kotter
Wire Fraud
Wormhole
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Weather or Not
From Friday's Chicago Tribune, following the year's first big winter storm:
I imagine heretics sinking into huge snow drifts, shreiking as they realize too late that their pagan storm god has betrayed them...
From Friday's Chicago Tribune, following the year's first big winter storm:
8:43 AM: Lesson in irony? The Illinois Education Association has faxed out an announcement that it's canceling something called the Winter Advocacy Conference today due to ... the weather. So, a pro-winter convention is being nixed because of winter? Not quite. Closer inspection reveals that the "advocacy" in Winter Advocacy Conference pertains to union bargaining. It's an annual event the IEA holds to brush up on labor matters.
I imagine heretics sinking into huge snow drifts, shreiking as they realize too late that their pagan storm god has betrayed them...
