Nowhere to Go - Nothing to Do - Street Style Photographic Project & Vintage Rummage Sale

Nowhere to Go - Nothing to Do is a photographic project concerned with documenting New Zealand street style. Inspired by Ted Polemus' idea of the street as a dead end - the place to go when you aren’t old enough or rich enough to get in somewhere, Nowhere to Go - Nothing to Do transforms the street into a dynamic and fluid aesthetic environment constituted of these very subjects by way of presenting it photographically in an online diary format.

Check out the blog here and get in touch with Kimberley if you have know of any secret New Zealand street-fashion spots or events where people would be interestingly dressed that could be photographed and included in her ongoing project.

Make sure you don't miss Kimberley's (Nowhere to Go - Nothing to Do) amazing Vintage Rummage Sale! (click on the cute poster above to enlarge view and for sale details)

The Hack-Able Curator Project

day 78: Inspiration by moirabot (flickr)

This project is really interesting in terms of its efforts to diffuse some of the 'power', prestige and authority a curator has in terms of selecting artworks for shows and exhibitions, across a diverse social network. The works that make up ‘imaginary exhibitions’ found on The Hack-Able Curator Project website are chosen from flickr. flickr is a network that literally makes millions of artworks, (photographs primarily, although people often scan illustration, collage and other media) from both professional and non-professional artists (labels that, during my recent internet art searches, are proving to be futile), available to the public, like day 78: inspiration pictured above.

This idea of the artwork selection process as a random one is polyvalent. Works for The Hack-Able Curator Project 'imaginary exhibitions' are not selected as they typically would be for a normative art show or exhibition, based on conceptual or aesthetic merit, for example. The selection is computer generated, and then controlled by users who vote on the curator’s choices, and therefore influence the subsequent choices the curator will make. Users also have the opportunity to upload their own images into the pool, and can therefore also influence the curating process in a more direct manner.

The images are chosen by means of a robot arm controlled by simple algorithm, based on the full set of tags associated with the images.

Aleatory procedures are at play in The Hack-Able Curator, and even though we may think this project is reversing art world hierarchies, that exist between the curator and the artist, I also think that it obliges us to consider whether the premises of normative curatorial practices, are anything other than this, anything other than, random. Sometimes works appear to be randomly selected for shows, random in the sense that they are chosen just because they are considered to be "good" or "important". To me, this "goodness" or "importantness" in relation to establishing a show is often arbitrary and the reason for selecting a particular work therefore seems random. The “importantness” or “goodness” of a work is decided prior to the assessment of its appropriateness for the show's main concept or goal it is chosen for. Shows may be "randomly" created because a group of works has been selected to be in a show, for one reason or another, they are considered important to a particular movement, or to be definitive of an artist’s career, not for "a show" in itself.

The Hack-Able Curator project illuminates our assumptions about role of curators - their position and worth, within our art institutions, and the purposes of art exhibitions, which in itself, all judgments, for better or for worse aside, is particularly interesting.

Fields of Dream - How To Write a Poem, Randomness & Anti-Randomness

The small, not like careened around the bend, nearing the burnt, it was a bloody stars day for sighing heavily in the christened crash sighing

Maw bit ate a clefting parchment and fell into a cuddle, leaving home it was a raining night as "animal" talk to me

The tight, blackened careened around the bend, nearing the burning holes, it was a stampingly day for nevertheless in the dusky aeons

Tell like cold, and with decided warbling over.



The lines of the poem above were created using Fields of Dream, a literary game where participants can do one or both of the following two things. They can write fill-in-the-blank texts, called dreamfields, that are then left as templates on the site for someone else to populate, with their own words. Or participants can blindly combine their own words with the words of the template, so within the dreamfields, that have been set up and left by previous users. The participant is blindly combining words because they do not know what the dreamfield they are inserting their own words into actually looks like. A template never exists for long, ten dreamfields are always available and by creating a new one, an existing one is erased, similar to a dream that may be forgotten upon waking up. It soon becomes obvious that there is no randomness within fields of dream; fields of dream explains “we are anti-randomness. Or rather, any randomness should come from [the participant's] mind, not from the server's pseudorandom number generator”, or aleatory computer generated procedures. For example, you may enter any word or part of speech when it asks for a noun - “There is no provision for editing what you have submitted; we are anti-editing, just write what you feel like writing at the moment and throw your words together with someone else's.” So while the participants inserted words may be completely "random", the template within which they are working is somewhat deterministic. The radomness is always determined, not by what a participant writes in - but by way of the syntactic structure of the lines. Compare the first and third lines of my poem. The project is collaboration between Nick Montfort and Rachel Stevens. Click here to play Fields of Dream.

PLAY IT, MAKE IT

Click on poster above to enlarge view and Link to Window :)

Pantoume - Some of the Pleasures & Possibilities of Hypertext

There were days in that city when I would not face its streets, previous experience of leers, catcalls, projected identities brute incentives to pull out, if only for 24 hours. Foreign women were defined by an influx of game students who frequented the clubs and, by proxy, the rest of us too were divorced from local femininity, marked for an extraordinarily rampant mitigation of social mores. Pale-skinned, blue-eyed, so tall I could rarely find trousers of the right length in shops, sans camouflage, I was effortlessly Other.

- Text and image, by Kai Fierle-Hedrick & Marianne Morris, respectively, from their collaborative project Pantoume.

Pantoume is a new media project by Kai Fierle-Hedrick & Marianne Morris published in How2, an online journal that is interested in exploring innovative writing projects, non-traditional directions in poetry and scholarship by women. Pantoume exists as an interactive hypertext art work, you can visit Pantoume at How2 by clicking here. Marianne Morris' visual pieces were also exhibited at Cambridge Experimental Women Writers’ Festival. (Click here for a link to that festival).

Sophie Robinson has written an introduction to Pantoume as well as written her own poetic response to the work, titled Sugar and has interviewed both Kai and Marianne about the project.

I think this work particularly interests me in terms of what I have been reading about interactivity and differing levels of user participation across the myriad of new media works. I am particularly alerted to a comment Julian Stallabrass quotes in Internet Art to illustrate his and others' point that user/screen interactivity, that which necessary for new media works (having someone behind the computer screen clicking on the hyperlinks to "move through" the works for example). However, he argues this does not necessarily mean the work should be marked out as "interactive", considering the base level of audience "interactivity" that is required to "read" (that is to view or experience) any work of art, whether materially object-based or hypterextual. It does seem perhaps unusual to mark out these works as interactive when any viewer in any art space, actual or virtual, is required to "move through" the space in order to "read", view or experience the work(s). This actual bodily movement in space does not seem so differentiated from hypertextual leaps. We may conclude that all artworks are indeed interactive, although require different levels of participation from the spectator, viewer or user.

I think our tendency to think of a painting, for instance, as not necessarily interactive comes from our thinking about it as an art object, one that we stand before, in awe and contemplation. Because new media works require a user to activate them, it is difficult for us to perceive them as objects, in the way we do with painting or other works that exist in the actual. I also think that this (non)differentiation has to do with the passivity/interactivity binarism heavily engrained into our thinking about art that exists in the actual and art that exists in the virtual, a binarism that helps us describe how virutal based works are differ from works that exist in the actual. However as I was reading Pantoume, I recognised there is the possibility of reading the piece, by clicking on the hyperlinks, without actually "reading" each page. The presence of hyperlinks makes it easy to "move through" the piece without actually reading Kai's text or really engaging with Marianne's collages, which makes it seem as if the user is missing out on what these works have to offer.

However, in saying this, I think that hypertext makes more tangible (rather than limits) possibilities for reading that exist in the actual. Alternative ways of reading are made more "real" in virtual space. These alternative ways of reading are always possible and may occur in "actual" reading, however our dominant mode of reading a book "cover to cover" in the actual is sharply contrasted with the demands of hypertext. I think it is also useful to consider our normative ways of viewing artworks aswell. Hypertext seems to free us from the linear mode of reading where we feel that we must read every word on the page to understand or make sense of the narrative, and in doing so it makes it possible for us go on reading the book. (Although I do acknowledge there are projects and books that resist this and the argument that "actual" reading has always been hypertextual, I just want to point out that the linear normative mode of reading still prevails - and on the other hand, I think that perhaps there are those who attempt to carry this mode into viewing and "reading" artworks online).

So does moving through hyperlinks at hyper-speed mean we are no longer "interacting" with the work and therefore we should equate with a kind of passive spectatorship? This seems to undermine our capacity to register and reflect upon all that we may see (or interact) with, even if it is only for a fleeting moment.

‘Everything Everybody Owns’: A Script for Performance - inspired by Meg Cranston's Keep Same Over

‘Everything Everybody Owns’: A Script for Performance, There are No surprises: Eliminate the Possibility for Surprise

1. Pre-event: Choose/select/designate a space for the event and ask all the participants to bring to the event everything they own.

2. Event: Gather the participants in the chosen space and arrange everything they own in the space.

2.1 Arrange everything they own in the space to create an environment
2.2 Or a structural assemblage,
2.2.1 or a series of assemblages,
2.2.2 or an accumulation,
2.2.2.1 or a series of accumulations
2.2.3. or a formation
2.2.3.1 or a series of formations.

2.3 Allow the participants and the audience
2.3.1 to move through the structural assemblages,
2.3.2 or inhabit the stimulated environment

2.4 Record the event
2.4.1 Take photographs of the event and write captions for the photographs.
2.4.2 Make a video of the event
2.4.3 Sketch the event on a piece of white A2 standard cartridge paper with a 2B pencil.
2.4.4 Record the event using the following materials only - a wasp’s nest, yellow card, toothpicks, glue and purple glitter.


3. Specified Environment Version

3.1 Use everything the participants own and will bring to the event to stimulate a specific environment,

3.1.1. Stimulate a real-life environment in the space, by using objects and materials to create,
3.1.1.1 a café,
3.1.1.2 a supermarket,
3.1.1.3 cyberspace,
3.1.1.4 a dance studio,
3.1.1.5 a tropical island.

3.1.2 Create an environment with dramatic or distorted spatial dimensions.
3.1.2.1 Put large objects into small spaces
3.1.2.2 Make an object smaller than it really is.
3.1.2.3 Make an object larger than it really is.

3.1.3 Create an environment for the objects which the objects would not normally inhabit.
3.1.3.1 The chosen space is a swimming pool. Arrange
household appliances under water so participants can dive under water and use them.
3.1.4 Create an environment the participants can inhabit permanently.


4. Specified Assemblage Version

4.1 Pre-select from everything the participants own to create an assemblage.

4.1.1 Not all objects will be used. Participants still need to bring everything they own to the event so the object-selection process can take place.

4.1.2 All objects must be owned by the participants prior to the event,
4.1.2.1 Objects or material cannot be found in the chosen space and used for the event.
4.1.2.2 Objects cannot be purchased especially for the event.

4.1.3 Suggested assemblages:
4.1.3.1 Attach 100 safety pins to1 kg soap powder or laundry detergent (any brand) and pour the detergent-safety pin mixture into a bird cage.
4.1.3.2 Gather together 12000 litres of water (with or without a receptacle), a series of wires or cables, and a ‘Home Is Where The Heart Is’ sign or a ‘Welcome’ doormat.
Create organic forms from the wires or cables and attach them or balance them underneath the sign or doormat.
4.1.3.3 Create a series of face masks using rubber husks from deflated balloons, broken household appliances and fridge magnets.


5. Fluxversion

5.1 Participants must arrange everything they own into tidy market stall layout.

5.2 Then participants are to go and look at the other participants’ stalls.
5.2.1 They are to then,
5.2.1.1 trade,
5.2.1.2 swap,
5.2.1.3 exchange,
5.2.1.4 or barter
with one another, only using objects and items from everything they own.

5.3 Everything the participants own is lumped together in a large pile, and then sorted into new individual lots according to the number of participants. Allow the participants to take away their new holdings.

5.4 Timed Version - Give Fluxversion a time frame.
5.4.1 38 seconds,
5.4.2 35 minutes, 56 seconds,
5.4.3 Or, 2 days.


6. Mathematical / Deterministic / Procedural Versions

6.1 Limit the number of participants to 4.8.

6.2 Limit the number of objects participants can bring to the event,
6.2.1 Ten participants are to bring the number of objects, from everything they own, according to what number participant they are. For example participant one brings one object from everything they own, participant two brings two and so forth…

6.3 Work out the spatial dimensions of the environment or assemblage according to the total volume of all the objects present. Reduce this figure by 74 percent. Attempt to assemble all of the objects in a space that is too small.

6.4 Limit the number of bodily movements participants can make when creating the environment or assemblage to 18 bodily movements per participant.

6.5 Arrange the objects according to size, in ascending order.
6.5.1 Choose every fifth object and remove all other objects. Retain the negative space that this will leave between the objects.

6.6 Create an accumulative time capsule by arranging everything the participants own according to the years in which they attained that particular ‘thing’ - object or material. Arrange all the objects from a particular year, horizontally, and then stack each ‘year’ (the horizontal assemblage) on top of another to create stratification or a vertically layered assemblage.

6.7 Choose another procedure by which the objects are structured or assembled into layers.
6.7.1 stacked on top of one another
6.7.2 or separately in the space.
6.7.3 Suggestions for structuring procedures:
6.7.3.1 Objects are to be assembled by colour. Put all the brown things together, the white on another, etc.
6.7.3.2 or, objects are to be assembled by shape. Put all the square things on one layer, triangular on another, etc.
6.7.3.3 Objects are to be assembled by other physical attributes.
6.7.3.3.1 According to the softness or hardness of particular objects.
6.7.3.3.2 or, by grouping similar things together. Put all the office supplies on one layer, food on another, clothing, etc.

6.7 Resist creating a casual assemblage. Use things that people own to determine chance operations.
6.7.1 Flip a coin to determine all decisions for constructing an assemblage.
6.7.2 Use a numbered spinning wheel to determine all decisions for constructing an assemblage.
6.7.3 Use die to determine all decisions for constructing an assemblage.


7. Musical Version

7.1 Use the following music score to accompany the event.
7.1.1 Stimulate the sounds of the music score by limiting the sound materials to
7.1.1.1 materials ‘found’ in the chosen space
7.1.1.2 objects and materials from everything everybody owns that are not being used as part of the event assemblage or environment.

7.2 Use the following score to actually create a musical / sound ‘environment / assemblage’. Choose objects from everything everybody owns to create sounds.

7.3 Score:

Materials, such as rope, wire, cord or strings, are plucked for one minute at 2-second intervals.
A participant repeats SOMETHING CONFUSES US INTO SMALLNESS AND WE COME BACK AGAIN over the top of the plucking for 1 minute 7 seconds.
Silence for 35 seconds.
There is a cracking sound of a whip, wet tea towel or glass lasting for a minute.
There is a sound of gushing fluids for 3 minutes.
Silence for 12 seconds.
There is noise of hammers, wood, ceramics, and pots being crashed together for 20 seconds. Then all participants repeat SOMETHING CONFUSES US INTO SMALLNESS AND WE COME BACK AGAIN over top of the crashing noises for 30 seconds.
Silence for 7 seconds.
Crashing resumes for 12 seconds.
Silence for 5 seconds.
Crashing resumes for a second.
Silence for 12 seconds.
Then a series of saws bent almost in two are struck with metal objects for 2 minutes.
All participants repeat WHEN ONE IS BEING NEITHER EMOTIONAL NOR INTELLECTUAL! for 1 minute over top of saws and metal objects.
Silence for 5 seconds.
Someone blows a whistle for 17 seconds.

- Emma Phillipps © 2007

An (Actual) Sleepless Night (Standing)

Pertaining to; some little things kept

Water, Cetearyl Alcohol, Cyclomethicone, Cetrimonium Chloride, Glycerin, Dimenthiconol, Ceteardimonium Chloride, Propylene Gylcol, Hydroxyethylcellulose, Lysine HCL, Hydrolyzed Silk, Borago Officinalis Seed Oil, Tea-Dodecylbenzenesulfonate, Potassium Chloride, Disodium EDTA, DMDM Hydatoin, Methylchloroisothiazolinone, Methylisothiazolinone, Fragrance.

Water, Stearyl Alcohol, Cetyl Alcohol, Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine, Zinc Pyrithione, Dimethicone, Fragrance, Glutamic Acid, Benzyl Alcohol, Phenoxyethanol, Methylparaben, Propylparaben, Citric Acid.

Active: Zinc Pyrithione 0.5%

Demineralised Water, Denatured Alcohol, Silicone Quaterium-16 (And) Undeceth-11 (And), Undeceth-5, PEG/PPG-15/15 Dimethicone, Fragrance, Cetrimonium Chloride, Diazolidinyl Urea (And) Iodopropynyl, Butylcarbamate, PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Gingko Biloba Leaf Extract, Chamomile Extract, Panthenol, Citric Acid.

Aqua/Water, Glycerin, Glyceral Polymethacrylate, Biosaccharide Gum-1, Trioctanoin/Triethylhexanoin, Dimethicone, Propolis Cera/Propolis Extract, Mel/Honey Extract, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Polyacrylate, Carbomer, Phenoxyethanol, Bisabolol, Parfum/Fragrance, Xanthan Gum, Sodium Hydroxide, Benzoic Acid, Gardenia Florida Extract, Dehydroacetic, Caramel, Royal jelly.

Extract of Malted Barley and Rice and/or Barley, Milk Solids, Sugar, Cocoa, Vegetable Oil, Mineral Salts (341, 504, 500), Vitamins [Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Retinyl Acetate (Vitamin A), Thiamine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2)], Mineral [Ferric Pyrophosphate (Iron)], Flavour, Emulsifier (Soy Lecithin).

Active: Sodium borate in the form of a ready-to-use liquid.

Active: Aluminium Zirconium Tetrachlorohydrex GLY 20% W/W

Aqua, Cetyl Ethylhexanoate, Isostearyl Palmitate, Pentaerythrityl Tetraethylhexanoate, Isononyl Isononoate, Cyclopentasiloxane, Glycerin, Hexylene Glycol, Glyceral Stearate, PEG-100 Stearate, Dimethicone, Panthenol, Zinc Gluconate, Magnesium Asparate, Copper Gluconate, Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer, Sucrose Cocoate, Sorbitan Stearate, PEG-6 Caprylic/Capric Glycerides, Caprylyl Glycol, Tocopheryl Acetate, Disodium EDTA, Sodium Hydroxide, Methylparaben, Propylparaben, Phenoxyethanol, Parfum – [FPT 0613].

Active: sodium fluoride 0.22% W/W, Triclosan 0.3% W/W

Skim milk, Maize Starch, Beverage Whitener (Mineral Salts (340, 451), Emulsifiers (471, 481), Anti-caking Agent (551)), Chicken meat (1%), Wheat Flour, Salt, Sugar, Flavour Enhancers (621, 635) Parsley, Maltodextrin, Chicken Fat, Flavours, Yeast Extract, Vegetable Gum (Guar), Food Acid (Citric), Colour (Curcumin). Contains Soy.

Aqua/Water, CI 778891/Titanium Dioxide, Glycerin, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea Butter), Propylene Glycol, Methyl Glycol Diethylhexanoate, Mica, Ruscus Aculeatus Root Extract, Hydroxyethyl, Acrylate/Sodium Acryloyldimethyl Taurate Copolymer, Dimethicone, Cetearyl Alcohol, Phenoxyethanol, Xanthan Gum, Centella Asiatica Extract, Panthenol, CI 77491/CI 774499, Iron Oxides, Aluminium Hydroxide, Methyl/Propyl/Ethyl/Butyl/Isobutyl/Paraben, Bisabolol, Hydrolysed Yeast Protein, Calendula Officinalis Flower Extract, Tocopheryl Acetate, Polysorbate 60, PEG-40 Castor Oil, PEG-8, Aesculus Hippocastanum (Horse Cheasnut) Seed Extract, Ammonium Glycyrrhizate, Triethanolamine, Sodium Cetearyl Sulfate, Caparylyl Glycol, Disodium EDTA, Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Extract, PPG-1-PEG-9 Lauryl Glycol Ether, Butylene Glycol, Hedera Helix (Ivy) Extract, Phytic Acid, Sodium Polycrylate, Sodium Hyaluronate.

Water, Cetearyl Alcohol, Cyclopentasiloxane, PEG-2 Oleammonium Chloride, Glycerine, Dimethiconol, TEA-Dodecylbenzenesulfonate, Lysine HCL, Hydrolised Silk, Borago Officinalis Seed Oil, Disodium EDTA, DMDM Hydatoin, Methyl Chloroisithiazolinone, Methyl Isithiazolinone, Fragrance.

Alcohol Denat., Butane, Propane, Isobutane, Isopropyl Myristate, Fragrance, Triclosan.

Cereals (62%) (rice, wheat), wheat gluten, sugar, wheat flour, minerals (calcium carbonate, iron, zinc oxide), salt, barley, malt extract, vitamins (niacin, vitamin B6, riboflavin, thiamin, folate).

Active: Tetramethrin, Bioallethrin, Bioresmethrin.

hamamens virginiana, alcohol denat., aqua purificata.

Aqua/Water, Magnesium Sulfate, Laureth-23, Taurine, Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein, Phenoxylethanol, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Methylparaben, Hydrolyzed Wheat Starch, Ethylparaben, Parfum/Fragrance, Polyquaternium-10, Propylparaben, Arginne, Lysine Hydrochloride, Linalool (D4197/2).

Milk solids (62%), Glucose Solids (Contains Wheat or Corn), Vegetable Oil (Vegetable Oil, Soy Lecithin), Salt, Vegetable Gum (415), Mineral Salts (339, 340 or 341, 451, 452), Flavours, Sweetner (951), Colour (160a), Emulsifiers (471 or 472c, 481), Anticaking agent (551), Antioxidants (322, 330).

Aqua, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Glycerin, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Cocamide DEA, PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Coco-Glucoside, Benzyl Alcohol, Phenoxyethanol, Parfum, Limonene, Methylparaben, Plassiflora edulis, Passiflora incarnate, PEG-55 Propylene Glycol Oleate, Propylene Glycol, Hexyl Cinnamal, Butyl Methoxydibenzoylmethane, Linalool, Disodium EDTA, Butylparaben, Ethylparaben, Geraniol, Isobutylparaben, Propylparaben, Citral, Citronellol, Alpha-Isomethyl Ionone, CI 60730, CI 19140, CI 17200.

potassium sorbate, paracetamol

Water/Aqua, Cetyl Acetate, Cetearyl Alcohol, Isopropyl Palmitate, Myristyl Alcohol, Cetyl Alcohol, Isopropyl Palmitate, VP/VA Copolymer, Sorbitan Oleate, Lanolin Alcohol, Isopropyl Myristate, Ceteth-20 Phosphate, Hydrolyzed Quinoa, Chitosan, Panthenol, Magnesium Sulfate, Quaternium-60, Polyquaternium-11, Propylene Glycol, Acetamide MEA, Tormentil (Potentilla Erecta Root) Extract, Yarrow (Achillea Millefolium) Extract, Wild Cherry (Prunus Serotina Bark) Extract, Arnica Montana Extract, Sage (Salvia Officianalis Leaf) Extract, Glycine Soja (Soybean) Oil, Butyl Stearate, Sesamum Indicum (Sesame) Seed Oil, Lanolin Oil, Tocopheryl Acetate, Acetylated Lanolin Alcohol, Lactic Acid, Dicetyl Phosphate, Disodium EDTA, Benzophenone-4, Red-4, Yellow-5, Methylparaben, Propylparaben, DMDM Hydantoin, Fragrance/Parfum.

Active: octinoxate 3.5%, titanium dioxide 1%

Aqua, Isopropyl Palmitate, Cyclopentasiloxane, Isohexadecane, Propylene Glycol, Sorbitan Isostearate, Sorbitol, Phenoxyethanol, Simmondisa Chinensis, Panthenol, Cera Microcristallina, Ceresin, Carnauba, Magnesium Stearate, Aluminium Stearates, Tocopheryl Acetate, Sodium Lactate, Lactic Acid, Parfum.

Aqua, Prunus Dulcis, Theobroma Cacao, Glycerin, Stearic Acid, Triethanolamine, Cetearyl Alcohol, Lanolin, Phenoxyethanol, Alcohol Denat., Propylene Glycol, Mentha piperita, Parfum, Methylparaben, Menthol, Butylparaben, Ethylparaben, Arnica Montana, Isobutylparaben, Propylparaben, Limonene, Linalool, CI17200, CI 15985.

Wheat Flour, Sugar, Vegetable Fat [Antioxidant (306)], Invert Syrup, Whey Powder, Salt, Raising Agents (500, 450), Flavours, Colour (106b).

Sugar, colour (E122)

Aqua/Water, Coco-Betaine, Butylene Glycol, Polyethylene, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Chloride, Disodium Cocoamphodiacetate Salicyclic Acid, Zinc Gluconate, Eucalyptus Globulus/Eucalyptus Globulus Leaf Extract, Capryloyl Salicylic Acid, Solum Diatomeae/Diatomaceous Earth, Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer, Allumina Benzophenone-4, Camphor, PEG-60 Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Polyquaternium-47 Propyleneglycol, Sodium Glycolate, Sodium Hydroxide, Tetrasodium EDTA, Xanthan Gum, Imidazolidinyl Urea, Methylparaben, CI 42090/Blue 1, CI 42090/Blue 1 Lake, Parfum/Fragrance, Benzyl Salicylate, Limonene, Linalool (FIL B12464/1).

SD Alcohol 39-C, Fragrance, Water, Tricolsan, Benzophenone-2.

SD Alcohol 39-C, Fragrance, Water, Benzophenone-2.

Aqua/Water, PEG-7 Caprylic/Capric Glycerides, Poloxamer 124, Poloxmer 184, PEG-6 Caprylic/Capric Glycerides, Polysorbate 80, Centaurea Cyanus/Centaurea Cyanus, Flower Extract, Pyrus Malus/Apple Fruit Water, Vitis Vinifera/Grape Fruit Extract, Propylene Glycol, Disodium EDTA, Tetrasodium EDTA, Butylparaben, Methylparaben, Polyaminopropyl Biguanide, Parfum/Fragrance, Benzyl Salicylate, Linalool (F.I.L. B11120/1).

salt, anticaking agent (551), potassium iodate

cream, water, salt.

- Emma Phillipps © 2007

See the previous post for the notes on this project :)

Hot Pants in a Cold Cold World

Hot Pants in a Cold Cold World is a beautiful catalogue published by ARTSPACE and Clouds on the ocassion of the exhibition The Pleasures of Obvious Problems: Meg Cranston 1987-2007, organised by ARTSPACE and curated by Brian Butler and exhibited at ARTSPACE, Auckland last year. I was lucky enough to have Meg sign my copy. I am really interested in her inter-art-writing practice.

As I Told You and Keep Same Over have inspired two writing projects of mine. A fluxus type-performance art piece I scripted last year, ‘Everything Everybody Owns’: A Script for Performance, There are No surprises: Eliminate the Possibility for Surprise, some of which I will include in another post.

The other project was an inventory/list poem, titled Pertaining to; some little things kept. This poem constructs a list of ingredients found on the packaging/label of everyday household items found in the bathroom and kitchen. The ingredients are copied directly down, in the list format as they actually appear on the label, and each item is listed in the poem by way of cataloguing the ingredients the item contains rather than the item itself. When these ingredients are decontextualised and brought into a poetic space they take on a different meaning, becoming strange and unfamiliar, even puzzling, despite the list consisting of nothing more than banal household items.

Working Notes: Thoughts on extending this piece further, have been to divide the poem into different areas of the household – kitchen, bathroom, laundry, etc. I would like to go to great lengths and create a full inventory of all the items in each of those spaces, retaining the format of listing the individuated ingredients of each item and without naming what that item is.

I will include the current version of this project in another post aswell.

Making Chapbooks & Winterling Press

Today I am posting photographs of my latest chapbook printed by Winterling Press. Winterling Press is my own ongoing creative project in self-publication. I choose a plain white handmade paper for the cover and printed the title in grey which gives the effect of the text being barely perceptible. This idea of “being-perceptible” is carried throughout the short story by the moving letters of the five “word-ships”. The "word-ships" are often difficult to see or grasp as they form rapidly and move quickly, break apart and come back together, as the narrative progresses. The idea of "word-ships" came to me as I wanted the story to be centered around something that is conceptually abstract but that could also be concretized on the page (but not necessarily in a literal way). I like the "word-ships" because they emphasize the materiality of the language, narrative and the page as a space where letters, words and sentences are mobile and difficult to pin down.

I have used a basic single signature binding technique for this chapbook, using pale pink thread. I should also mention that this story is largely an investigation into 'voice' as it exists and the myriad ways it manifests, develops and shifts within a singular narrative. I initially thought of this story as a dialogue between two people. They are speaking to one another but then they are not. Theirs is a failed dialogue. I was thinking about communication as an impossibility and the ways in which full desired communication is always impossible. When we communicate we are made aware of the distance between ourselves and that which we want our voice to move toward. During the writing process I felt that I also wanted to consider 'voice' more as a singular entity. Multiple voices may be embodied by a singular entity, and shift amongst what is heard, said, imagined and remembered. I am interested in the simultaneity of 'voice' that is between, within and that never reaches. I also wanted to evoke a voice that is moving, particularly moving further away as the narrative goes on. It is interesting that the "word-ships" by contrast actually become clearer, visually, and more perceptible. However, their function as words on the page is perhaps still obscured by a 'voice' that is lingering on the page but can no longer be present.

The Critical Proximity of Memory

Today I am posting a selection of pages from a 30 page un-bound book I created. I choose not to bind this book because I wanted it to be a text that could be read in any order and be endlessly recreated by its reader. This book structure is inextricably linked to its narrative, both are conceptually structured around the complexities of remembering and the possibility of recovering memory.

The materials I used for the project, both for the writing and the book as a physical structure, are all recycled or as I like to call them, "waste-language" materials. I made the book from language that people normally throw away, for example, pages of photocopies that come out incorrectly so people throw them away and things like receipts.

I collected text-paper-rubbish and other such waste materials that engaged with language. A lot of collage was involved. I alternated between using the actual words themselves (cut them out and pasted them on the page), copied some text directly from the source material or deviated from the source material by interpretation and extension, to create 'original' text.

This project illuminates the impossibility of making decisions for multimedia writing projects in advance, prior to the making, regarding form, structure and the use of materials, and also decisions about writing (although it is difficult to separate it from my use of materials) that is the process of writing and the physical words that end up on the page. The narrative actually evolved and established itself as I created each page singularly.

I hope to do more projects using "waste-language" materials.