Fragile Fireflies of Imagination

the awesome wonder of this new medium/ paperless and flickering like electronic fireflies conspiring to emulate filaments of imagination/ fragile and fleeting/ the faint glow of monitors reflected on our faces/ a growing presence of intelligence/ with life dangling at the ends of links/ real lives pulsing as centers of consciousness/ the genius of the species disclosed in brilliant flashes/ the immense mediocrity echoing in images, sounds, and text/ all colliding in an incredible delible awareness deciphering meaning from the expansion of ourselves revealed/ suddenly time seems allied to our ongoing discovery of an otherness defining us from moment to moment/ tears and laughter/ wisdom and insight/ foolishness and fantasies/ the virtual world displacing the material illusions diverting us from the destiny of an infinite progression of becoming...

lightning bugs blinking their binary code, clusters of imagination gathering here and there, too many to bottle them up/ reality is an electronic wavering/ disappearing and appearing like millions of fireflies in an arkansas meadow on a summer evening....

Facing this Winter of Discontent

having worked through so many ideas/ i find myself grappling on the edge of discontent/ a vast silence generated through the conspiracy of distractions and routine demands that I cannot escape/ my energy dissipated through the multiple intrusions of moments without meaning/ how do we stumble upon such ordinary paths?/ yet i find companions who inspire me to go beyond myself/ to seek some symphony that lingers in the silence/ to stroke the tones to some new melody/ to touch the pulse concealing embedded rhythms of a new energy...

the winter came so soon...too soon/ enduring the bitter cold demands so much...too much/ can such delicate soundings survive the onslaught of the relentless wind of winter?/ somewhere i hear the music of myself struggling to break through the icy surface/ i search for pathways across this opaque tundra/ blinded by the snow, i wander in the vast white nothingness/ a mere speck on this bleak desolate snowscape...

phaedrus listens/ phaedrus watches/ phaedrus knows the path but cannot intercede/ he sees the struggling gestures/ hears the halting attempts to break the silence/ and pauses in anticipation...

The Sound Poet

Lauren Weinger is an extraordinary poet of sound/ her imagination shapes sound in epic proportions as she creates site specific works in collaboration with choreographers, dancers, and videographers/ she derives the sounds from each site and transforms them into metaphors and similes/ sound collages shaped by the environment that serves as the container of a new music/ such soundings redfine the parameters of musical meaning /making poetry/ lauren is a magical shaman fusing with the sounds emanating from the site/ discovering and disclosing inner rhythms of the existential reality of the physical world her music will inhabit...

My work is site motivated, the vocabulary changes in response to the constraints and material of a given place. The memory of sounds no longer heard and ‘the ability of recorded sound to evoke memory and 'bring back' places that no longer exist. ...based on processed acoustic sounds gathered at the site, or of the object being portrayed. In performance and installation I diffuse and layer sounds using three dimensional multiple channel and speaker projection extending in some cases to forty speakers through spaces up to a quarter mile long and sixty feet high.

hearing recordings of her work is like viewing postcard prints of huge museum tapestries/ her music is the sound in the moment/ in the special world of the work/ giving it immediacy/ validating its origin and authentic being...

A Fine Madness

no two realities are identical/ thus phaedrus declared the fundamental tenet of his madness/ departing radically from the scientific model of one true reality/ science as the new dogma and religion has declared that there is one reality and that one true/ a fine madness suggests that there are infinite realities all intersecting/ physics finds eleven dimensions/ phaedrus finds limitless dimensions/ all media and educated people know the scientific model to be correct and yet our personal experience confirms phaedrus/ yet phaedrus admits there is one truth that slices through the myriad multiplicities/ that truth is TIME but it is a time that we do not comprehend except in the moment/ time as history is nonexistent/ time as infinity is obscure confusion/ the only truth is the presence of NOW / multiplied by infinite reflections of consciousness/ and sometimes we intersect in that delightful awareness/ we are detained and entertained by such collisions making us aware of being...

Artists in Soho

Hosted by the distinguished artist, Angiola Churchill/ assisted by her able apprentice Daniel, a remembrance of time past in a Soho gathering that almost seemed like Christmas dinner/ elegantly planned by Ms. Churchill with wine by the artist/philosopher David Ecker/ a small party in Soho in the artist's loft where her work resonated with such an elegant presence/ installation being prepared for Naples in Spring/ a quiet disclosing of works in progress discerning and earnest/ strong statements of a highly original sensibility/...a time past that brought Ecker, a noted phenomeologist and artist who has been responsible for inspiring the rescuing of living traditions in the arts (ISALTA) that were on the verge of extinction, Sandro Dernini, the spiritual force behind Plexus who has managed to stage elaborate collaborations, exhibitions and conferences that connect the arts and life in extraordinary combinations for more than twenty years, and the Wyzard who has quietly engaged the issues and ideas through his own personal quest/ the work of this tiny group is noted that for a moment they came together in mutual endeavors, ranging from reconciliations, well-being, and dematerialization, to navigations through distant and remote cultures, globally explosive but cut off from a sense of history/ institutional history is mute and inglorious, having neglected the origins of its extraordinary claims about global culture/ Wyzard and others authored the web-pioneering Navigating Global Cultures at a time when the world was just becoming aware of what it meant to be wired and wireless/ no matter where Dernini goes he tilts at windmills, a knight errant who sees the true substance of what it means to exist in time and space/ he knows the politics of art and persuasion with instinctive accuracy/ he can cunningly entice leaders, scientists, culture critics and artists into discussions that are always on the brink of discovery/ he fascinates us into creative ideas, weaving a spell that enlists our energies and resources/ somehow he must persuade us to look beyond ourselves and the commonplace/ touch reality with a sensitive gaze that looks backward and forward even as the present is sculpted out of the debris of the past/ awakening slumbering masterworks and inventions of a marvelous vision...

Beautiful Snow for the Moment

Surprised by the snow storm that suddenly painted New York City a soft chiffon-like white/ hot coffee and roll from Moxa/ watching the snow with big wet flakes blanket the morning in quietness/even the machines clearing the snow sound muffled and distant/ coffee shops and businesses tucked away from the street seem sleepy and slow to open/ somehow this morning snowstorm, although almost paralyzing the metropolitan area, seems private/ something to be shared intimately/ these trivial moments often dwindle to extinction unless we take some special notice of them...

Eating Art --- Right in the Old Plexus!

Gone from my consciousness for ten years, suddenly Sandro Dernini lit up the Torch Club by what seemed to be a sudden materialization, an apparition as startling as the ghost of Hamlet/ Sandro Dernini whom I had described to some friends just a day earlier as writing the most provocative dissertation of modern times in which he takes his cue from Derrida and writes the entire analysis in the margins/Sandro had been absent from my mind for almost a decade/yet here he was erupting in the room like a volcano/ripples of enthusiasm spilling from table to table as suddenly all the exploitations and adventures of Plexus came flooding back into the reality of the moment...

Greying and smiling/yet full of the mischief that energized artists, philosophers, engineers, dancers, musicians, composers, students, professors, executives into happenings, conferences, art shows, exhibitions, and extravaganzas/ Sandro Dernini, the italian philosopher and scientist once again raised the banner for Eating Art---a movement now matured, and in his hand, poised like a bible, a sacred tablet of Plexus, he held the advanced proof of his new book, Eating Art/ chronicling the adventures of Plexus over the past two decades/ all the old players swept up in the torrents of memories and happenings along with the new generations somewhat stunned and awed by the loquacious and gracious italian impresario/only Sandro could convert a basic human survival need such as eating into art/his magical powers led us like pied piper along the routes of Plexus parades and voyages/navigating the globe like Columbus/making us digest the reality of all the atrocities and astonishing discoveries as the miracle of being human/and humans are meant to devour art with the voracious appetite of a people starved by the mundane and commonplace...

Deepening Darkness

Today the cold cut through my coat/the wind chill was almost devastating/winter asserting its presence/a threatening presence of days growing shorter/winter solstice like the menace of endless night/no wonder we built stonehenge watch towers to monitor the delinquent sun/no wonder torches filled the air with a flicker of hope against an immense darkness/no wonder we found despair in the lessening light as earth's shadow enveloped us in superstition and ignorance/no wonder we wept for the death of the day that might never be restored/we watched and waited in awe as the sun froze on the distant horizon before slipping into oblivion...

Alone in an unforgiving universe/the perpetual emptiness of night engulfs the day and tumbles into the blackholes swirling to devour all light/the crushing darkness beckoning like a demonic maelstrom/ collapsing upon itself so that the light surrenders to such density that nothing can escape/all disappears unto the deepness of the darkness/the sun pauses in a final moment/a blinding blush before relinquishing its hold and disappearing behind the curve of the approaching night...

Worlds Apart

deep in the abyss of myself, i read the sunny world of ismene/bare feet in grass/words spilling across the page like bubbling champagne/insights deepening/her "textured childhood etched like a birthmark" /pausing in an arc of time like a still portrait/suspended in the beauty of awareness/ i touch her page with my eyes and images explode in my mind like shooting stars/her garden a cyberspace paradise of sunlit memories and new worlds waiting...

and in the silent and yawning past, phaedrus beckons/his madness matching mine/the darkness gapes like a new dimension where perceptions become echoes rippling over the landscape like lost phantoms/ familiar forms and futures fade/ receding and evaporating in the midst of mystery/in the mist of illusion/miles loom ahead full of emptiness and self destruction...

visions dancing between these worlds with music born of spontaneity/rescuing the silence with festive celebration/time stands still/we are on the verge of change/caught in the infinite pause of now...

Internet2 and the Arts

In a discussion with a performamce artist who recently created and performed an interactive Internet2 production with a site in another country, we agreed that such events reveal that I2 is a new performance medium. Simply put, Internet2 is a broadband Internet highway that permits streaming back and forth of multiple video and audio channels (although I understand I2 originally referred to a consortium of institutions). I had become involved in I2 interactive productions since 2001. Such performances can include dancers, musicians, poets, composers, choreographers, and other performers, a well as videographers, graphic and video designers, sound designers, multiple camera operators, lighting designers, Internet engineers and technical support personnel. Both locations performed in experimental or conventional theatres before live audiences. Both productions used multiple projection screens in which processed materials were combined with live images and sound to create a multimedia experience that was unique ro each location, and yet, each production was inclusive of the other and the two creative works formed a whole whose fabric was the resonance of the electronic exchanges and live interaction enveloped in the latency created by the distance collaboration. Even though the dual location production was highly structured by the use of scenes and transitions, at the heart of the performance was improvisation. The immediacy and spontaneity present from the live interactive responses of artists separated by thousands of miles can be exhilerating and energizing, giving rise to wonderful ideas born of the moment.

We both agreed that coordinating multimedia and structure at different sites calls for new ideas in narrative and a new vocabulary to define this new medium. We also agreed that this language should emerge from the active engagement and interaction of creative artists working with this dynamic new medium. Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media helped us understand that each new medium undergoes a period in which it digests the content of previous media before it finds its own idiosyncratic characteristics.

But we need new performance spaces/studios in which the new technologies are integral to the production facilities, where the conventional computer screens and consoles are transparent so that the focus is on the interactive immediacy more than on the technology, for ultimately it is the texture of the artwork/medium itself that can push the envelope of technology as this promising new venue discovers its own unique characteristics and identity.

photos by Chianan Yen

First Snow

from my window, i can just make out the left-side of the Arch at Washington Square Park/this morning awoke to see the first snow of this winter season/ a light dusting/ enough to get the snow machines out/ starting to feel like the holidays/ still much to do, but christmas is creeping nearer/faces are red from the chill/ puffs of frosty breath punctuate the morning air/ few are out on the street/ snow makes everything quieter/ it's different though/ not like other years/ not as though christmas is coming round again/ it is more linear/ this christmas and no other/ many friends and family have disappeared/ new people appear/ memories invade, floating like tangible balloons/ i am no longer in the cycles of the years/ it is as though i have slipped out of orbit and am rushing into remote space/ i've never been here before/ first snow to remind me that each moment, each event inhabits its own reality/ nothing repeats/ breaking through the illusion i am afraid/comforted by the unknown...

My First Audio Blog

yes, O ye of little faith, i called this test audio blog in from my mobil phone/ now Blogging has found its voice(well maybe not this blogger...since i have a way to go to develop an audio blogging style)/ look out world/ the possibilities are staggering/ clearly a different modality/ after finally getting through the mechanics of connecting my mobile to the server i found myself mute and inarticulate.../it's actually very simple/just call the server and give it your phone number and pin and your in.../ in this case the medium is the message...there is virtually no content in my spoken blog!.../the audio blogger sets up the blog on your page/writes all the code automatically/all you do is publish (and add comments if you like)...

Gilmore Girls and Dostoevsky

Sometimes it is just the empty space, the empty page, the silent interval, coaxing something from the nothingness...sometimes it is just the words...making connections...what is it about Ismene that sparks my imagination?/...it is the energy of an innocence making words that bend to the moment...it is her love of her choy/the honest aching after a run/ the friends that snicker and chide on the tagboard/the company she keeps/ her imagery, metaphors, and poetry leaping through her blogs like elegant gazelles/ the sensibility that evens the field for the gilmore girls, dostoevsky, vanity fair, tolstoy, vogue, count basie, architecture, chet baker, and the shins/ delighting in the moment, the food, gelato and sushi.../ her friends and friends of her friends/ life running full throttle and piling upon itself/ falling in a heap and laughing at yourself/ somehow measuring the world as a playground to be savored before we awake to something else.../a candid and unpretentious style like I am reading John Updike in Singaporean drag...

Rick and Schubert's Winterreise

Ulrich Hartung and Winterreise ...somewhere in a remarkable past... the years collapse and the remote years are vividly alive..was it 1977...1978...? There in Loewe Theatre Rick united with Schubert and Müller, and for an instant there was an intense presence of the poet and composer, but with Rick as the Wanderer, the lover whose love has been squandered and not returned...the bitterness and sadness...oppressively sorrowful...

Rick became the wanderer in that moment, somehow his own pain emerged in the evolution of the character singing of his utter, absolute despair forming the foundation of an inner reality, and his voice and demeanor were now the saddened wanderer on a winter's journey...a "celebration" of isolation and desolation... his immersion in the moment transcended the words and music and became the complex character depicted in the poems of Müller whose spirit and substance is captured in one of Schubert's most eloquent musical expressions.

Rick's performance transcended the singer of a song cycle Winterreise...it transformed the audience...so that the audience was the Wanderer...the audience was stepping through the terrain of winter lurking in the shadows like death...frozen footsteps across the snow where there is nothing left to hope for... This is the essence of the Romantic sensibility, the remote and unrequited passion, misunderstood, and alone forever...

Yet in that moment of Rick's disclosure of this monumental masterwork, I was caught up in the sheer beauty and majesty of such eloquent perception and execution...the delightful anguish of it all! Even now, I can hear/feel this performance as one of those passionate moments that live forever.

As the years go by, and Rick and I sit in Bruno's with our cafe lattes, one might think that this performance has receded into the nothingness of a distant past. Yet as we speak I can still see in those eyes, the spirit of the wanderer still engaged in a long winter's journey, and somewhere the performance still echoes and resounds through the catacombs of remembrance.

Listening Through the Echoing Ethernet

the flood of images distracts me as a bewildering maze that overwhelms/ flashing across the eyes attempting to focus on the forward field in front of me/ two eyes meant to zone in on the object/ isolate and destroy...

sounds collide as crashing collages in a continuous web/ an atmosphere of decibels of varying densities/ ears sensing all directions with surround sound encouraging cacophony as the most delicious, exquisite harmony/ vibrating strings resonating eleven dimensions of melody/ encompass and embrace...

No wonder music is the stuff that dreams are made of...