2/3 through fading Modest, OK

Worked late last night and am 2/3 finished.

I found out this morning that Roy Clark is from Tulsa. It reminded me that for the next step in our project toward a possible movie installation that I wanted to get clips/images from some of the films we are working with—Oklahoma, Tulsa, etc—and we can add Hee Haw to that list too.

The animation on Modest has been basically a four-step process: 1) insert a keyframe in each layer/letter where I want the dissolve to begin and then one frame later in the layer below, 2) placing keyframes at the end of the fade (approx 20 frames or 1 sec. away), 3) changing each character into a symbol at the end keyframe and then changing the tint to white, and 4) putting motion tween the two keyframes. For some of the fade, I timed it with the voice-over, but that ends basically in the middle of the piece, with the remainder fading at a very steady, mechanical rate.

I’m hoping that the mechanistic fade will draw attention and enact the reverse of the kind of electronic mail composition referred to in the poem. We use computers so often to generate and disseminate texts, not to erase them.

Can we go over this again?--justifying animation

As I’ve been working on the flash animation, I’ve been trying to figure out how the animation fits with the (Tulsa) theme. First of all, we’re trying to say something about poetry and reading/writing/creating in general, such as suggestion that reading is a type of erasure (Modest). The animation on that poem, that looks as if the poem is draining away, fits with the themes of washing away, baptism, etc. The real story in Modest, OK? is the way the sound interrupts and displaces the narrative of the poem, which as it describes a nightmare itself has the syntax of a nightmare. The linear flow of the text mimics the temporal flow of that makes sound possible.

The movement in Big Box Block not only reinforces that but is less liquid and more airy, like the blowing wind that haunts that poem.

Death/Metal will work a little more like light or fire, flickering into new arrangments as the poem itself is consumed. The Dig poem, dwelling on the earth, will shudder and shift like a quake.

Although I hate it, I think I’m going for the four elements concept quite heavily….should find a way to deconstruct that expectation that since there are four, it must be a (seasonal) cycle like many other poetic quartets.

At this point, I’ve animated half of the poem.

Fun with Flash

I’ve been learning Flash over the Winter Break and have learned enough to animate “the big box block” like I want it. Instead of trying to duplicate my animation from ppt, I used a more reactive approach, focusing on the music and on the composition that was emerging (both in terms of shape of the poem and meaning).

I found that I was able to use animation to mimic, emphasize, and contradict the soundtrack. First, I could make animations that corresponded in some direct way to the meaning of the sound. Second, the animation could enact representationally the meaning of the words. And third, the animation could be used to draw attention to the sounds by happening both in synch with the sounds or not (I found that the sounds stood out more sometimes when there was no animation happening concurrently).

The goal of this experiment is to start with the “traditional poem” (whatever that might mean: left justified margins, jagged right margins, stanzas, use of fragment, etc) and to “undo” or deconstruct that construct using the sound and animation. The ultimate goal of this project is the same as our Wakow problem—how to integrate sound, text and image. Although this particular manifestation lacks images, it attempts to make an image of the poem itself using animation. The words become the ‘actors’ in the movie, calling attention to the materiality of language and the relation of text to sound.

Each poem will have the following animation scheme:

1. Big box block: disappearing letters/words along with occasional movement
2. Modest, OK? : slow dissolve in concert with reading of poem
3. Dig down deeper: Christmas tree lighting effect with various words appearing at certain times. Start by having Doby Bowl sign flickering, as if it were a neon light going out. Then have the rest
   of the poem flicker out, with certain combinations soon appearing after that. One combinations could be letters spelling out “Tulsa spelled backwards is a slut.” Need to give rest of WaKOW some homework to create various combinations of the poem in the vein of Jen Bervin’s Nets.
4. Death/metal: words rearrange in motion. This should be the last poem because of the way it and the soundtrack ends.

Brainstorm of places to shoot

Railyard- North of downtown

Bama Pie Factory

ONG Oil Refinery

Flea Market

Greenwood district

Brady Heights

Brady district

Drive In

ORU

St. Francis Hospital 61^st and Yale and Lafortune Park

Northeast Downtown

Woodland Hills Mall

Arkansas River

Expo Center

Bells Amusement Park

Armory

Waterpark

Drillers Stadium

Tulsa Football Stadium

Tulsa Zoo and Park

Airport

14^th and Cheyenne

Fitzgerald’s

Downtown

Between the airport and the zoo

Quiktrip

11^th St.

White River Fish Market

Uncle Herm’s

Cain’s Ballroom

Circle Cinema

Ideas for Living Arts proposal

Ideas for Living Arts

Keep Tulsa materials

Mindy would like to focus the project more because she things it’s too broad

• ie focus on the oil refineries (Nate-there’s probably a lot about the industry/history that people don’t know) or Oral Roberts (Mindy: “Oily Roberts”
• signs (ie putting photos of words into something you can read) but also “sign” broadly conceived (as portent, trace); sound might be difficult (Nate--corresponding specific sounds with specific signs, not random); (David-imagining a non-textual sign)
• the way Tulsa represents itself to itself and the outside world (a Tulsa catalogue or calendar; fake Tulsa propaganda or development proposal, complete with Power Point presentation performance piece)
• North Tulsa

Email from Nathan 9/17/.2006:

Hey,

D&M and I talked for a few more minutes Sunday about the project and decided, I think, that our next steps should be to shoot at the the two places we've already chosen: the refineries and ORU. More specifically, we thougth that we should start by documenting at one of those locations next Monday from 5-7 p.m.

In the interests of keeping our project manageable, we thought we could document these two locations and see where that process leads us. Maybe that will be towards something unexpected though, obviously, the larger issues of oil and religion are present in those sites.

I think there is some concern that we not try to tackle oil and religion generally (especially at the outset), but that by using those two locations as poles of a project, we may find a path to take from there. One great connecting element between ORU and the refineries is that both are in a kind of decay that explains something about Tulsa's present condition as well as something about its past. Also, it wouldn't be difficult to work in some historical documentation/text for both.

Another good thing here is that this is a project that we can pitch to Living Arts. It sounds specific enough, but also has topical political overtones and we have some documentation from the work we've done so far that we can provide in the proposal.

For the proposal, I think we should be specific with the locations and ideas of form (how we set up our installation/s) and not go too far into the political or historical on oil/religion.

How's that sound to you?

What to send with proposal:

1. Power Point
2. Digital images
• Of Tulsa
• Of art show
3. Book
4. Poems

Our project will be a dynamic multimedia installation exploring the relationship between oil and religion in Tulsa. The project explores specific sites in and around the Tulsa area that embody the cultural, ethical, and aesthetic aspects of this intersection. Poetry, sound, and photography are the media we work in, blending the three in various ways. The materials are produced by visiting various sites in and around where we take photos and record sound; texts are written and edited through various collaborative procedures involving not only our images and audio but also sampled/found materials related to Tulsa, such as films or songs. The installation will involve one digital projector, an audio sound system, computer, and curtain dividers.

Installation could include

• photographs
• multimedia projections[GMJ1]
• collages?
• sound (ambient, listening stations)
• interactive computer stations
• poetry reading/performance event
• books

---

[GMJ1]This is what binds all of our media—texts, photos, and sound can all be projected.

Notes on Nathan’s sound edit

As Nathan ran what he had edited, I copied down some prominent lines in order to determine what, if anything should be emphasized or deemphasized

I raise the concern aobut volume, asking N to give us an idea of volume.

The sounds of the earth are like music

Coney Island hot wieners

Missionaries did much about helping the natives…ask the minister

Dip one toe into the and dry it off

The bedroom community of Modest, OK

Close my email program there—I’m always leaveing them lying around

As goes my colon so goes everything

Swallow whole the messiness

Clean the wax from my ears

My colon is the task facing the community

forest

If I’ve seen one pair of spindlie whites, I’ve seen them all

Started the conversation and gone on talking

Tulsa, and neighboring Modest, where shall I find you?

I watered my lawn on New Years Day and hoped my hopin jOhn made a difference

a child before I realized

the sun beat down like the metal of death before I realized

glossy brochure buthe pictures and text are creepy and weird

plumes of doll heads lying in pies of colon contrivances

as penance

the chase, the bedroom

cleaning the wax from my ears

turns me into someone I’m not

after a while you learn to hear it coming

Questions/Comments:

• Start at 1:30:00
• What is that hum under the tracks from the movies?
• This is very textual—now I see what you were talking about with Mindy
• The piece begins very cinema heavy
• I like when our voices come in
• But the sonic parts after the voice at 1:38:00 were really interesting—I like this ambient stuff best
• like the gusher sounds too, btw—they are really going to feak the images—by 1:44:00 I was wondering of they might be too much—what was your thinking in terms of the level for that track?
• Should the gusher stuff be more underneath the opening part too, just softer?
• At 1:46:00 I think the voices should be brought up
• Nice transition between gusher and train—really plays on the historical connection between the two
• 1:47:50—gusher ends, electronic and ambient bird sounds begin

Selection of Text:

How to balance visual with meaningful

David wants them to interface with text as text with signification

Meeting minutes

Began with discussion of possible forms and projects; I showed the powerpoint because they couldn’t hear sounds.

We also discussed create web pages or flash pages [that made me think that I should put notes about collaboration on a blog that is in the exhibit itself so that process is acknowledged.]

I told of my vision for installation full of various forms—books, ambient music, interactive computer stations, poems and photos on wall, Tulsa Boxes, maps, etc. and accompanied by poetry readings, musical performance, performance happening, etc.

Book brainstorming

Book with four spines whose pages open in different directions

transparent flyleafs

interactive—brings book closer to computer interactivity (putting technologies in dialogue/tension with each other would become part of the project.

Use found objects, collages, etc for covers

Start collecting paper from Tulsa sites

Mindy said she would do research on book forms and make a presentation on findings

M said that she wanted the form to fit the content and be relevant to place.

M brought up filmstrips (the old educational kinds)

Sound screening

Listend to some of what Nathan came up with editing our sounds/readings/music/soundtracks. All of us had very positive reactions.

David mentioned possibility of intertextual references between various media in terms of sound, words, and sights. We all discussed the relation of sounds to Tulsa and how they raise the question of representation and the relation of art to place.

We don’t have to pack all of our material into one package

Mindala said that the project becomes as much about collaboration as it does Tulsa

The question once was “what are we going to do?” but not it is “what can’t we do”?

We talked about working in pairs and other combinations of collaborations rather than just always as a foursome.

We discussed how we might make sound that was relevant to the Tulsa material (M and N didn’t think the musical improve we recorded was relevant) by drawing on the Tulsa sounds we have (OK musical soundtrack, found sounds, Tulsa songs, etc) and then trying to make “music” with that sonic palette (ie a fucked up version of Oklahoma!)

Mindy thought it would be fun to get as many people from Tulsa as possible to sing the title track to OK

Mindy re-raised issue of interviews –who would we interview, why, when? I like it because it is documentary and in my style of poetics.

Mindy suggested setting up a recording station in the mall or somewhere people could record what they want

NYPL.org performing arts image database might have some stuff on OK. TU website has race riot photos—using found photos like w are using the objects and sounds

Ideas for sound--mistakes and glitches

After D and I edited one of the poems, we went to Nathan’s to work on sound.

While listening to some of the stuff we came up with, I had an idea: take all of the mistakes/fuck-ups from the poetry readings and use them as sounds to layer in the “musical” parts.

Peanut reading is between 18 and 22:00.

We copied some of the more interesting verbal sounds and set them aside.

Nathan then began processing some of the sounds to see what would happen.

The debate came up, again, as to what we are doing with these sounds and where they are going to go in our “final” product.

I suggested a four step process: 1) combining, 2) selecting (based on some arbitrary criteria), 3) arranging, 4) processing with sound effects. Result would be sounds that could serve purposes/functions in final product.

David wants us to keep the purpose and final form in mind as we are doing this.

If all sounds can become other sounds, and all cities like Tulsa can become other cities, then what is the concern?

Meeting minutes--installation brainstorm

Wakow Notes 12/4/05

Secretary: Davide d’Oro

“Tulsa boxes”

each has sound, image, word

"Best Buy Box"

"Starbox"

wall, website, etc.

boxers as neighborhoods--relational

connections are as important as individual boxes

sound

allow listener to manipulate w/in certain parameters?

imagined sounds

conversations, real and fictional

allow listeners to record…impressions of Tulsa?

sort of like a non-internet blog

collecting/archiving reactions

solicit audience photos, etc.

perhaps create another box with that material

make portable, move to different venues across city

cd be boxes scattered around a room, diff. maps on walls and floor, somehow integrated or in competition w/ boxes

maps

weaving lines of type, images into map shapes

visual thesaurus, virtual map

map as overlay of informational units

Deleuze and Guattari on map vs tracing, associative rather than literal

leaving 1 layer on a map that’s familiar, then adding our own layers

maps that allow viewer choices, show associations but don’t dictate pathway

or drawers, cabinets, rather than boxes (architect’s drawers, Brothers Quay “Street of Crocodiles”

South Tulsa as dildo

balloons w/ stuff in ‘em

what about not trying to represent Tulsa

pieces of photographs, collages

tacking up photos, hanging on string

the blender approach

signs

erase words in signs, add in our own language

or keep words erased and have sound emerge from the wall

what can one pick up: photo

piece of paper

recording/listening device

M: take it off the wall

process of walking through space replicates our own experience

antecedents:

fluxus experiments with boxes

Joseph Cornell

Mexican ritual boxes

suitcases

Other display options: projection

print

blow up poems

install listening devices in books

artist books

treated books, like the Oklahoma textbook

integrated photos

pasted language

projection

M: seems tooo usual to just project on a wall

G: can use projection to create texture, light, etc. (mattress installation at Contemporary Museum of Art in Chicago)

What if we make sound the focal point?

Slideshow with sound?

sound piped into a room where one’s looking at photos

headsets

suitcase for the part w/ the abandoned hotel?

suitcase as imagined history, detritus of human life?

do an installation at abandoned hotel?

Place as exile

I've been trying to think about place as identity, as I told David (sorry you'll have to read this all over again, Golstein); what is Tulsa? what is there? how do I describe the place? what is place? etc etc

But that is not how I think about place at all. Instead of identity, I, being somewhat of a nomad myself, have always thought about it as wandering at best, exile at worst. Now, the latter association is something I've gotten from my reading of Levinas, which brings me back to the whole bible thing that came to me this morning where place is part-and-parcel with the face (of G/d et al).

In his readings of the Talmudic interpretations of the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai in Exodus (another quasi-face-to-face moment at a place in the Tanahk), Levinas points out that in the Hebrew G/d literally holds the mountain over the Isrealites, threatening that they accept the Law or else. Levinas talks about this as "the doing before the hearing/choosing" that exemplifies all ethical situations, that one is obligated to others before accepting the law and before choosing to "do good."

Secondly, Levinas posits the story of Abraham agaist that of Ulysses as the most emblematic story of (philosophy) and the human condition. Ulysses returns home after years of wandering and detour; Abraham does not. The latter's expenditures are always pure loss, even as he is promised to be father over countless grains of sand.

What does this biblizing have to do with "place"? Well, I'll tells ya. Place is not for me a sense of belonging or tradition or ownership. Instead, it becomes the site of an inescapable bondage (and I don't mean S&M) before the law (more Kafka) that is, in Levinas's terms, "im-memorial." That is, it can't be memorialized because that obligation preconditions and outlasts identity, heroicism, or memory. Secondly, it is something that is always u-topic; that is, a no-place to which one can never return.

OK, enough of the philosophical jargon. What this means is that, in a sense, the dystopic emptiness and horizontalness of downtown Tulsa is a nice canvas on which I can work through some of this redefinition of place as exile, wandering, and infinite ethical obligation.