Thanks Renate, for inviting Christina and I to take the mic, and thanks to Patty and company for the past week's prods to action and thought.
Within the "Hacktivating Design" thread, Christina and I thought to introduce the example of mis-use through humor and mistake, the performed, non-ironic screw-up as a wedge into the impenetrable sensorium of contemporary consumption and art/design education. [from the British television show/performance act The Mighty Boosh] Naboo: This is black magic. This is hardcore. Don't mess with the occult. Vince Noir: I thought it was good for you. Naboo: What? Vince Noir: Well, you know, good for your digestive system. Naboo: That's Yakult! Vince Noir: Oh, yeah... Modernism loves failure - especially when it's on purpose. When properly reflexive, it's like letting the line go slack on the boundary of normative thought and action, only to snap it back into place to show you knew what was right all along. 187.1 Hey, Wayne, I've got a new gold brain. But sometimes the screw-up can't resolve itself, rationality can't right itself again. Lately I've been popping over to revisit Kenneth Goldsmith's piece "Head Citations." It's better in book form than online, but you can find it here: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/works/head_citations.html Scanning this list of mis-heard pop lyrics, the shape of failure is wonderfully unclear, and banal in a way that is tied to the limits of sensation, rather than to some definition of "the everyday." Some I get right away, others I can't. And significantly, Google can't help with the decoding. 192. Well since she put me down I've got owls puking in my bed. You can stop reading here if you're just looking for a start to this new sub thread. Or, you may read further to hear an embarrassing account of my own interventionist screw-up. ..... Ten years ago, as I was finishing out my graduate degree, my colleagues and I were all busying ourselves creating "interventions." (The daily bread of our program was the material later to emerge in Mass MOCA's influential exhibition.) My thesis project, which today causes me to cringe even in working form, failed miserably in a way worth telling. I had been working on a series of public performances in which I generated amplified sound through walking in modified shoes, and then tried to walk in sync with strangers, so as to lend _their_ feet the sounds of _my_ special shoes. For my penultimate Quixotic/Certeau-ian attempt, I identified the busiest crosswalk on campus, and grabbed the very notable sound signature of the space : a two-note audible crosswalk signal for the visually impaired, which at the time was somewhat unique and very distinctive for the space. (You can hear a sample of this here: http://www.wilcoxsales.com/images/cuckoo.wav) I disarmed the city's signal for a day and replaced it with my own - a perfect imitation which would only sound when I walked: left foot for the high note, right foot for the low note. This (in theory) turned me into a piece of city infrastructure, where my walking was necessary for the safe navigation of a busy street. I also had control of the beat, and could alter it as I attempted to walk in sync with others. (Meanwhile, the project wholly neglected the subject of sighted and non-sighted experience of the city. Cringe. Interventionist hubris in full effect.) Halfway or more through my performance, the sensors went bad and the system started firing at random - meaning that THE SOUND WOULD START SIGNALING EVEN WHEN IT WAS UNSAFE TO CROSS. I was suddenly about to send people walking into traffic. I had to rapidly unplug the system to at least make it safe. And then I saw a vision-impaired person approach the crossing. So I whipped out a little digital sampler and hooked it up to the system, and used my fingers, instead of my legs, to fire the signal at the correct pace to indicate safe crossing. I had hacked up a big mess. Getting the normal system to start again would take intervention from the city. I called in the report/request, but they wouldn't be there for hours. So I remained there at the crosswalk, firing my little sampler with my fingers to keep the sonic space exactly as usual, safe for all. I did that for probably 5 hours or more until the city came - longer than the actual project. So in the end, my most successful intervention was to insert myself almost invisibly into an urban structure, only to recreate that structure. Accidental self-camouflage. There's nothing about this project worth emulating, but the farther I get from the piece the more provoked I am by the role of the screw-up, the way my prideful desire to "activate" a space fell apart, only to be replaced by an obligatory, laughable and irrational activity. - Kevin _______________________________________________ empyre forum [email protected] http://www.subtle.net/empyre
