May 2000 | June 2000 »
Petr Kazil's Urban Adventure art. One of the best and most concise collections of descriptions of bizarre performance art pieces.
"1972 - Chris Burden's piece 'Deadman' was another all-too serious game with death. He lay wrapped in a canvas bag in the middle of a busy Los Angeles boulevard. Luckily he was unhurt, and the police put an end to the work by arresting him for causing a false emergency to be reported. In other performances, Burden crawled through broken glass (Through the Night Softly, 1973), had pushpins stuck into his stomach (Back to You, 1974), tried to breathe water (Velvet Water, 1974), and remained on a shelf mounted just below the ceiling of a gallery without descending to eat or drink for twenty-two days (White Light/White Heat, 1975). "
what is your favourite physical feature?
i like my hands. they're not good looking hands by any means, they're just normal hands. but i still think they're quite wondrous. i may just be a meat puppet within which to house my soul, but damnit, i can sure pull those strings...
life is my homework, and when i hit 70, i'm going to try and get it all done the night before it needs to be handed in.
*twitch*
you know whats really bizarre? old notebooks
apparantly, in 1996 i did a two day long flag-waving course. what the hell is flag waving? and why don't i remember any of this?
I'm Moving!
i'm so happy!
just down a few blocks, but to a much nicer neighbourhood and into a building full of friends.
yay!
of course, now i'm going to be useless for the rest of the month whilst i visualise where furniture is going to go and how things should get packed
i like playing with the character map : ‰ Š §
the alt combinations are just fun. alt-0177. alt-0172.
it feels like casting a spell in a text adventure.
the sun.
the sun is good.
the sun is good because it powers my magnifying glass.
the sun is good because it creates that wispy, wild, tail of smoke from the burning trail in the smouldering wood i hold in my hand, oh so pungent of bonfires and barbeques, writhing and twisting in the currents of the air.
i cant stop thinking about this quote from the Wired interview with Brian Eno: "the curator, the editor, the compiler, and the anthologist have become such big figures. They are all people whose job it is to digest things, and to connect them together."
It has obvious implications to weblogs, but also to the internet in general. A great human effort is going into reproducing old knowledge in a new medium. The printing press has been invented all over again. Organizations like Project Gutenberg or the Online Books Page are rapidly putting thousands of books into electronic form. If companies such as Sony have their way (which they surely will) then soon all works of film and music will be available digitally via the internet.
Whats really great about this recompiling of works, is that it makes it available to a wider audience, who in turn are inspired and produce their own content. The inner eyelid movies of thousands of souls are suddenly only a moment away.
one of the things that im slowly coming to terms with, is that i'm not special. sure im a unique one-of-a-kind individual, but there are 8 billion other unique individuals out there. this is way too large a number to conceive of. i cant even comprehend that my friends exist when they're not in my field of vision.
every day i am utterly startled by the idea that as i am going to sleep, there are millions and millions of people going to work, and children going to school.
heck, i still get a big thrill out of looking at my hand and flexing my fingers. thats some neat stuff going on. existence really is quite spectacular.
one of the things i miss most about my parents, is knowing i'll never again fall asleep to the sounds of them hosting a party downstairs. thats probably the sound that defines being a child for me. the clink of glasses, the bursts of varying pitches of laughter, the gentle rumble from the men with deep voices, the bad music in the background.
what sounds define childhood for you?
server city hell.
maybe lag will become standard like rush hour traffic.
or billy gates will upgrade the entire US infrastructure and make everyone call it the
world wide william.
scratch that.
the rest of the world is a really wierd tradition.
north america is a really bad habit.
the prom is a very wierd north american tradition.
the idea of going to one huge party, that is organized decorated and run by the school you've been trying to escape from for 12 years, where all these formerly rebellious teenagers whom you couldnt get to conform with each other if you paid them are suddenly wearing tuxedos and formal gowns, with chaperones and no liquer ("you lick 'er" "no, you lick 'er"), is very very odd.
actually, most of north america is a very wierd tradition.
i was talking with owen about how i wished that my cat could talk, and he wondered if i really did. Would i actually want to hear what she would say? Given all the concepts behind language, which would need to be understood in order to use a language (and supposing that she doesnt actually know these concepts in her current noncommunicative state), how would she regard me when given this capacity for conscious thought? She would be suddenly aware of the ideas and preconceptions behind words such as "pet" and "animal". Would she look differently upon being given cat-food, and being made to use a litter box? Would she feel like a prisoner now that she knows the idea of freedom?
Or would her animal nature override the human frailties of language, and leave her still regarding me as a surrogate mother?
What would your pet say if she/he could talk?
i really like taking long walks at night. the world after the witching hour has
past is quiet, dark and crisp. the glow from the orange streetlights gives a
warm hue to everything it touches, and the shadows enfold whatever visions
your inner eyelids can conjure up. the rustle of leaves and distant passing
cars add a soundtrack that only lulls you deeper into the step, step, step,
rhythm of your passage.
however, sometimes it just doesnt work out. sometimes every shadow contains dark
memories, around every corner is someone waiting to jump out at you, every
noise seems to build and build and build until they drum into your mind. its
like those dreams where you're fighting someone, but all your punches are
going in slowmotion. i dont like those nights.