Axons and Dendrites

It is hard to describe the evening tonight. We had Dr. T on guitar, Ailsa on cello, Becky on hang, Mick on sax and mixed percussion, and I conducted via dancing. A visitor, Dan, was on cymbals. We also had Jo and Martin, who did some dance and contact improvisation movement in the latter part. The result was magical. It was a very meditational, spiritual-sounding effect.

What does this mean? We held an initial exploratory jam for the Axons and Dendrites piece. We wanted to see how the musicians would work together, and whether they could interpret the concept. We ended up doing one continuous jam from 8.30 to 10.15, when we had to start closing up. This is only the first step in developing the piece, but I am very happy with it as a first step.

The performance will consist of back projection images, with musicians in front and dancers in front of them. I have a full set of images of neurons, to which the musicians and dancers will respond. I also have a draft of the prose piece that will be read out as an ‘extract from the journal of Rrose Selavy’.

The next step is to group the images into three or four sets that will correspond to the movements of the piece. The next time we practice, we will focus on developing different themes to work with in each movement, and how to achieve variation and balance among the voices.

There are one or two more dancers who are out of the country at the moment, so next time we hope to have the whole group together.

I’m totally chuffed!  It was a great session and the real performance will be captivating.

Oh yeah, and we had a lovely jazzy music jam at my flat with Ted, Mick, and Becky.  Cool evening, indeed. 

Brick, poem revised

Just had a go at revising this.  I think it is in its final form.  But then, I usually think that and then find more things to change.  Anyway, would welcome feedback.

Brick

Poem, written 5 June 2009, revised 4 July 2009

eyelids of shops shuttered down
deflect even the gaze
not to mention the thrown brick, the thieving hand
the whole town
has arms crossed tightly across its chest

traffic lights flick from posh to derelict
as you move through the empty avenue
someone or two scurries past, clutching carrier bags
in both hands, eyes averted
evaporates at a side street

the flicker of butane illuminates a face
then just the ember glows
in the gloaming as the figure
turns to silhouette against a silver sky
that tarnishes by the minute

look for illumination, a spark in the eyes
and find only brittle smoke
smoke and mirrors, phantoms
that dissipate and slip away
leaving you standing alone
between shuttered storefronts
and broken brick

ineedart update

Thanks to Andy McPherson’s animation workshop, I’ve had another go at the signature piece for Rrose Sélavy involving reconstruction of roses.  This was my first proper go at animation.  We used Toki Line Test.

Here is the current version, without sound signature piece (on drop.io, Flash format).

The next step is to get a soundtrack.

Having had the experience of making this, I am tempted to plan a more proper go using a camcorder and better software, perhaps?  Ooooh….I’d like proper DVD quality.  Or maybe that is just because I like things to remain ‘in progress’.

snap-shot

notes for a possible poem, created 2 April 2009, updated 14 April

I close my eyes

slowly

field of vision darkens

squeezed into a slit.

I open again

slowly

to blood beading on eyelashes

no wound

it’s only a gash of tulips

in the sun

still

it stings

Process notes: Not sure if this is a ‘poem’ or not. The image below was taken with my phone camera, the poor quality of which I perversely like.  I include it here as documentation. Words as poem will stand without the photo, of course.

phone camera image of Cathay’s Park

Salon Surrealist Sélavy

On 28 Feb 2009, a small group of creative people came over to my flat to try out some creativity games at the Salon Surrealist Sélavy. We found the games generated a great deal of laughter and uncovered creative synergies among the participants (what a lovely group of people!).

Here is what we had on the menu for the evening:

1. Theta State – a tasty appetiser talking through three types of brain waves to put us in the right mood to tap into the unconscious [short performance piece by Rrose Sélavy, which had the desired hypnotic relaxation effect]
2. Surrealist Identity Interviews – find the reality above the reality of another participant and share with the group, variation of ‘Analogy Cards’ traditional surrealist game. [interview someone you don’t already know, something like an ice-breaker but also got people to think associatively - questions and responses have been posted to the Surrealist Games page]
3. Collage - for antipasto, two teams cut up sheets of paper they had brought with their work in words/images/music on them, swap bits with opposite team, reassemble into a collage.
4. Exquisite Corpse – classic surrealist game based on Consequences gave us a choice of entree – each person writes one line of text, then the next person uses the last word to start a new line, or choose a sentence at random from a book, and each person in turn fills in one word according to the sentence structure.  [we played both versions several times]
5. Palimpsest Stories – mixed vegetables in which each person in turns writes a narrative on top of the previous one – what happened yesterday, the most recent dream you can recall, a received narrative from media (novel, film, song etc). Generate random words from the overlapping writing and use the words to make new stories.  [this worked well as a follow-on to Corpse, as we were well warmed-up]
6. Synesthesia - as an after-dinner sweet, there was more good music from Ailsa and Ted, while the rest of us drew pictures of whatever came into our minds in response to the music. Music and art improvised together.
7. The Immortal Hour – to wrap up our meal (after 1am), we had more bread and cheese while enjoying a private showing of Ralph Colmar’s The Immortal Hour. [we were surpised to look at our watches and discover how late it was]
   

For more info on Surrealist games, please click the Surrealist Games tab above.

arts update end of Feb

Quick notes on cool things to check out if possible:

1.  The Studio opening on 27 Feb at 7pm

::the studio:: opens in February with’.i f – i  h a d  a  h i – f i.’ an exhibition of works from local artist ‘this’. multimedia artist ‘this’ aims to capture and explore elements of visual perception; the voyeur is invited to define their own interpretation of the works, giving them a unique glance in to the world of ‘this’.

2. Ralph Colmar’s videos – he has been artist in residence at Aberystwyth Uni for the past three months, and showed his animation The Immortal Hour last Saturday – fantastic! – so check out his other YouTube videos.

3. And of course, Showroom on 26 Feb at the Cwps. No, I’m not performing.  But Showroom is never to be missed!

Surrealist and Conceptual Art activity Jan-Feb

Hi there!  Lots of activity on the site and off for the past month.

The symposium on performance and philosphy provided much food for thought. http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/tfts/research/research-centres/cppr/making-and-thinking/ It was held at the National Library of Wales, featured an array of international and local speakers, and was sponsored by PSi Performance & Philosophy Working Group, Supported by the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies’ Centre for Theatre, Performance and Philosophy.  Fantastic!  I hope that Lone Twin will return to Aber and put on a performance, as it was a bit of a teaser just to hear them talking about it.

Lots of activity on the Surrealist Games section, including a synthesis of Da Vinci and Ernst plus circus skills – see the conceptual piece Decalcomania Writ Large (could probably not be implemented in its current form, but there are some other options).

In/Out of the Box videos from the 27 November 2008 Showroom performance have been mounted, thanks to thispace.

A few more ideas in the real notebooks … if the Synesthesia activity works well, there is scope for doing a 4-way synesthesia performance with improvision in word / dance / music / image.  But I need to take it one step at a time, see if it works in a smaller, less formal context.

I’ve been doing some painting of more postcards from the bottom of the ocean, but they haven’t been photographed for the web yet.  Maybe this weekend.

Gutted that the animation workshop session on Monday this week was cancelled due to snow.  I was ready to construct the ineedart piece using live roses to be  Rrose’s signature piece.  Hopefully next week.

Blubyrd was brilliant last night at Open Platform at the Arts Centre.

Showroom was brilliant last week as usual, just getting better and better. Just one of many high points was Ralph Colmar’s video of Bristol, based on something like a poetry version of exquisite corpse.  He’s one of the artists in residence at the Aberystwtyh Arts Centre.

And…please do go to the Studio for their opening 27 February 2009 at 19:00. See websites for thispace  www.thispace.org.uk and ::the studio:: www.the-studio.jimdo.com for more info.

Cheers!

Situationist International – quote about subversive quality of everyday life

Rrose Sélavy would agree:

“People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth”- Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution Of Everyday Life

via Situationist International – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Rrose Sélavy January activity

More pages have been updated and expanded with images:

• Book of Changes – video clip added
• Surrealist games – new game added, quotation added
• Bio-factoids – revised, early draft added
• Stuffed Bird – first draft of placard text added
• Dream Dressing Table – Breton quotation, more items and sketches of existing items added
• Haunted Hatchback – first draft of text from journal added

More to come….

Rrose Sélavy activity

New and revised pages in the ongoing project of Extracts from the Journals of Rrose Sélavy, surrealist artist.

1. Dream Dressing Table – textiles from the subconscious expanded 6 January 2009
   
2. Palimpsest Stories - surrealist game revised 6 January 2009
3. Synesthesia - surrealist game created 2 January 2009
4. Biographical Factoids about Rrose Sélavy - created 26 December 2008
5. Haunted Hatchback – created 10 December 2008, revised 25 December 2008

There has been a lot of activity over the past few weeks. Giving the unconscious space and time to place its productions has worked…a whole series of potential or real visual artifacts have been generated, and I spent quite a bit of time playing around with art supplies of various types to implement a few of them. More are planned for the animation and multimedia courses this winter.

Some way to play surrealist games with a collection of creative people is also being imagined. I’ve re-acquired the book of Surrealist Games, which I once owned in California.

The fictional persona, Rrose Sélavy, has long been a surrealist. I rather seem to be a practitioner, as well.