Ecstatic Rhetoric

Using the gradual fabrication of thought composed while intersubjectively jamming with the collectively generated metadata that is always being shape-shifted by the artificial intelligentsia operating in its autopoietic environment, suggests that all of the hyperimprovisational performers, vis-a-vis the accumulation of points on a moving vector, have the potential to create their collaborative work as an "accumulation of decisive moments" (Lautreamont) even though they themselves are not necessarily conscious of the fact that this is what they are doing.

Slipping through the blurry boundaries of fiction, memoir, theory, performance, pseudo-autobiographical poetics, and the rhetorical gestures one needs to enact in order to reach new stylistic height, the Unconscious Player becomes "a simultaneous and continuous fusion" (Mondrian) of projected energy in the open field of composition.

This open field of composition, experienced as a networked space of flows, suggests that the trick is to keep on moving, even if just for the sake of movement itself, so that ones speed of life is concurrent with the advancement of an emergent garde du jour, the one I am becoming every day I role-play my digital flux persona!

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Metadata: Lautreamont, Mondrian, avantgarde, rhetoric, fiction

Now, Not Now, and Now

Last week, in talking about some Gertrude Stein loop texts, experimental neuroscience, and the actionary intelligence one uses to launch their creative missives, someone in the seminar, speaking on the edge of their experience so as to gradually fabricate their thought, said:

"Our nerves think for us."

At which point someone else said:

"I feel like a proprioceptive think tank. Now if only someone would pay me to just do that."

Perhaps it has something to do with making appearances.

But then again, there is no there, there.

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Metadata: Gertrude Stein, proprioception, art

Fellini Meets Pachinko

How else to describe this web performance of the artificial intelligentsia in action?

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Metadata: Fellini

On the Gradual Fabrication of Thoughts While Speaking

This concept of "intersubjective jamming" that I have been bringing into both my seminar space and hypertextually influenced blog space suggests that the artificial intelligentsia is made up of all of the active artistic and intellectual agents who generate internetworked thought processes at any given moment in time. My sense is that the shape-shifting discourse that manifests itself in the networked space of flows is indicative of an autopoietic environment for this artificial intelligentsia to hyperimprovisationally perform in.

This performance is best experienced intuitively via body-brain-apparatus achievments. Participating in the networked space of flows, the performers are responsible for setting the social tone of their thought generation in history. And history, as we know, has a way of repeating itself, though not literally and, as Borges has written in his "New Refutation of Time," time is actually never experienced the same way twice (see my previous post on Rauschenberg's "combine" retrospective at the Met for more on the interrleationship between improvisation, repetition, and time).

Going way back, say to Germany in 1805, we find a short essay written by Heinrich von Kleist, collected in his now out of print An Abyss Deep Enough, entitled "On the Gradual Fabrication of Thoughts While Speaking," where the author who, like Lautreamont after him, killed himself at an early age, writes about what I am now calling "intersubjective jamming" but that he put in more direct terms. For example, he discusses how he used his sister as a creative sounding board to help crystalize his thoughts. Says Kleist:

" ...nor usually does she lead me to the conclusion by means of adroit questioning. But because I do start with some sort of dark notion remotely related to what I am looking for, my mind, if it has set off boldly enough, and being pressed to complete what it has begun, shapes that muddled idea into a new form of clarity, even while my talking progresses, with the result that my full thought, to my astonishment, is completed with period."

A few paragraphs later he intuits the Unconscious neural mechanism that triggers creative thought: "For it is not we who know; it is rather a certain condition, in which we happen to be, that "knows."

Then there are those moments when the interlocuters riff of each other's discourse in asynchronous realtime, always a fraction of a second ahead of the game, and the intersubjective jam takes "proud flight." This is when the performers begin experiencing hypsos, when the force of the sublime enunciation "scatters everything before it like a thunderbolt" (Longinus).

(The above ideas were generated as part of an ongoing conversation with the provocative mind of Scott Mann)

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Metadata: Kleist, autopoietic, intersubjective jamming

Urban Clicking

In NYC, art is never far away.

Today, the Edvard Munch show at MOMA.

Forget "The Scream" - instead, check out his "In Man's Brain" - a woodcut with red ink featuring a woman reclining on the top of his brain.

The Muse, no doubt.

But a blood red Muse, one that pre-dates all forms of brain scanning and that suggests that even Munch had babes on his mind.

Was he tapping into the unconscious neural mechanism that enflamed his imagination when playing?

Then there are the portraits: Mallarme, Nietzsche, and Strindberg.

Mallarme brings me the open space of field composition, a throw of the dice that never abolishes chance, typographical inventiveness that allows words to do more than simply mean. With Mallarme, the word is image. Visual text.

Nietzsche brings me style, passion, and the further investigation of Life Style Practice. Check out his "Why I am So Clever" and you'll see that he was ALL OVER open space, exercise, and diet. If Nietzsche lived in Boulder in the early 21st century, he would not have been a venereal madman, he would have belonged to the organically-inclined Boulder Co-op, mountain biked, and hiked in Boulder Open Space.

Strindberg, of course, brings me his dark, philosophical dreams, which fed off the brain of Stanley Kubrick for decades until the Kube finally gave in and made EYES WIDE SHUT. (Actually it's Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle, not Strindberg - I must be getting old and confused).

The more meta-cinematic version of Kubrick's passion is actually played out in Terry Southern's Blue Movie. Dedicated to "the great Stanley K." the book is a brilliant satire of Hollywood film-making while remaining true to the vision of Kubrick.

Speaking of meta-cinema, I am writing this from Angelika Film Center (dig the k), with improvisational jazz recordings in the background.

Just saw Michael Winterbottom's TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY. A movie about a movie about a book about a book, the levels of "going meta" are delicately threaded throughout the duration of the film, which flies by and leaves me wanting even more.

Sterne's famous novel was the first work of what we now call metafiction and is still, in my humble opinion, the best one ever written. That is to say, Sterne brings me the core principles of my practice no matter what medium I work in.

Winterbottom, meanwhile, wants to turn Southern's Blue Movie into a movie.

But not if I can get there first!

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Metadata: Nietzsche, Munch, Tristram Shandy, Terry Southern, Kubrick, art, Muse, jazz

Plug-in Paintings

The Met has a retrospective of Robert Rauschenberg's "combines" - and walking through the gallery looking at them all, I realize that they were some of the most influential early works of assemblage art to assist me in constructing my remixological art practice. I spent considerable time looking at Bed, The Interview, Factum 1 and Factum 2, as well as some of his "plug-in" work, that is, "combines" that only work when you plug them in to the wall.

Of course, it was after this major "combine" phase that Rauschenberg literally "plugged into" the Art+Technology scene where he started up E.A.T. with Billy Kluver. In many ways, his work suggests the coming together of recombinatory remixology with visual electracy (electricity/literacy).

Coming on the heels of Abstract Expressionism and somewhat connected to the early conceptual art readymades of Duchamp, Rauschenberg's early combines seem to take on an anti-drip actionary attitude, and one can only guess why he chose to assemble the various found objects that he used in his work. Personally, I dig the socks, comix, and taxidermy.

The date 1954 stood out quite a bit in the first rooms of the exhibition (perhaps this was resonating with that Cold Cut album "Let It Replay" that I played in my seminar last week, the track by the Japanese sound artist Cornelius where he plays with the history of the Moog synthesizer and his first Moog construction in 1954).

But will these works stand the test of time? I don't ask that question in terms of their relevance. That part is already clear. Is he in the canon? Yes - he is IN. But I mean literally stand the test of time. The newspapers are fading as are the colored fabrics.

His approach to improv was interesting. For example, his First Time Painting (and the ones after like Second Time Painting, etc.) were painting performances that the audience could see him making but they were not allowed to see the actual painting itself since the canvas was facing away from them. He had embedded an alarm clock in the canvas and once the alarm went off, he picked up the canvas and walked off stage without showing the work. You can see them in the Met, though.

Factum 1 and Factum 2 were responses to the spontaneity of the Abstract Expressionists. Nearly identical pieces created during two different time durations, when placed together, he seems to suggest that even improv has its game-plan layed out well before the performance takes place.

Is it possible to be improvisational within a preconceived conceptual framework?

Yes. This blog is but one example of that.

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Metadata: art, collage, Rauschenberg, Moog