submission:
(via eatsleepdraw)
Deleuze and Guattari’s utopian concept of becoming a Body Without Organs—either as an individual (in relation to his or her myriad personas) or as a populace—is becoming more and more of a possibility as social media rises in prominence, making all of the world and its people just a click away from one another. The ability to connect without the intermediary of a government or a corporation is itself revolutionary—as it allows groups to form organically, as opposed to hierarchically. The many are talking to the many. The false divisions between being the head of an organism and being its feet are being eradicated, as each one of us realizes that we each have a role to play. The lowly colon and fingernails are just as important as the celebrated biceps, or poetical eyes. It isn’t only a matter of needing one another to survive—it’s that we wouldn’t even exist in the first place if not as a network.
“SPIT IT OUT”
By: THEmeanMRmustard
In the same way that scientists can’t accurately measure the hyper-lightning movements of quantum particles, it is impossible for marketers to put a fixed value on the tweets that make up the millions of rushing, constantly changing Twitter streams. The movements of Tweets don’t follow a strict set of rules—and yet, like the particles, they aren’t completely chaotic either. Their worth can be understood according to context and probability—visible not as points or bars on a graph but as waves of undetermined length reaching out in multiple directions. When the send button is pressed, a tweet appears in many places at once (i.e. on individual feeds via various devices) and contains the possibility of being retweeted in many others. A tweet can simultaneously create new connections and dissemble old ones—it can both inspire and disgust, cause followers to be gained or lost. Instead of prescribing rules for how to tweet, it makes more sense to communicate the impossibility of prescribing rules, and instead encourage users to open up to the free flow of the streams—as opposed to clamping down extra-hard with filters and search tools.
The marketers and business people and so-called social media experts will point to this and that as the right and wrong way to Tweet—not realizing that the more exacting they try to be the more the TRUE essence of Twitter slips through their fingers—similar to another aspect of quantum physics called The Observer Effect—which refers to changes that the act of observation will make on the phenomenon being observed.
As long as Twitter continues to be conceptualized as an online version of the existing physical world, many users will miss out on its power as a tool for revealing the invisible interdependent connections between us all. (Remember: just because something is invisible or doesn’t exist doesn’t mean it isn’t real.) The particle-dance movements of tweets provide flashes of fractal multi-verses bursting forth like fireworks before fading just as fast. The goal should not be to freeze-frame and dissect it—but to enjoy its fleeting nature for what it is in a shared awareness of the beauty of NOW.
HEART BEARPOD SEEN IN VANCOUVER SKIES
If I disappeared tomorrow I’d leave behind the expansive, exhausting matrix of my internet wandering to the great search engine in the sky. On secret sites and password protected forums my future followers will attempt to prove or disprove my multiple identities and trade info on where to find authentic, TRUE bits and pieces as they revel in the eternally fleeting nature of my insight—the genius gift of Secret Rockstar Knowledge bestowed upon me by @hena, Goddess of cool hunting, who smiled on me from up in the clouds as I smoked the wild green grass and body surfed between the lyrics and the beat. She gave me the ability to drop critical pearls into the viral swineflu of the internets. Character limits in comment boxes and on Twitter were turned into creative catalysts—it was mind blowing to realize that the most complicated, impossible to explain things came across as succinct and well-put in140 characters or less. It was like taking a Polaroid of an architectural masterpiece. Auras of ghost light and other magical ephermera that get filtered out as mistakes by supposedly state of the art equipment are captured in a spur of the moment SNAP.
In the end, the art of living and the art of dying are all about the simple joy of pressing a button and pressing it NOW.
I call this: ALTER-EGO
An artwork that was featured in our group exhibit last year.
Recently, I had an idea that I keep coming back to—a Matrix-inspired notion that we, as humans are the flowering fruit and technology is the plant. While we grow, blossom and die they upload and update—creating off-shoots via cut/copy. We live connected to one another via their long green stalks, eventually shrivilling up and rotting on the ground while they live for hundreds of years like trees…
I keep coming back to this idea because as nighmarish as its initial resonances might be, the act of contemplating it acts like a springboard into an innerworld of endless corridors, each lined with doors leading to new realities.
Lovely Day
- the second of my three drawings i made for my friends.
If you get open and get aware it becomes apparent that everything spins in sync with everything else—you realize that even disasters unfold according to their own logic. In a sometimes wishy-washy world of virtual workforces and TV news cycles, there is the THUD of certainty that something real and undeniable has happened. The sudden, decisive leveling of a landslide or a bomb feels like the hand of history grabbing hold and shaking the place that you live. However horrific it may be, the universe goes on as though it were nothing special. No matter what happens there’s still the same calm sky shining down with a blank indifference. I remember on 9/11 looking back from the Williamsburg bridge and seeing the grey smoke rocketing into the sky in great gushes and realizing that I was looking at a battle zone…it was all very dramatic but soon the immense crowd lurched forward and I moved with it—the bridge groaning and swaying under the weight of our feet. When I looked back again the scene no longer seemed so menacing…the bright blue sky swallowed the smoke like the ocean swallows a drop of poison. It was a lovely day—the sunshine and the crowds made me feel like I’d just exited a giant simulation ride at a theme park such as Universal Studios. On the other side of the bridge the streets of Brooklyn were empty like unused back lots. Everyone was gathered in front of TVs either at home or in bars.
A few hours later the streets filled with people walking around like zombies—hungry for crowds to be alone in…groups formed without words and without leaders. The only agenda was being together.
I didn’t know it at the time but it was the dawning of a new age…
Random thought that came into my head.
Sharpie and prismacolor marker in my moleskin.
Cool. OK, internet friend (and real life stranger) from eatsleepdraw…here’s my random thought in return for yr drawing: a note from an in-between moment, scribbled on the pages of the moleskin in my mind…
We see therefore we are…which is to say we see ourselves watching ourselves watch the way we see…In turn, our awareness of this has changed the nature of what appears.
Let me explain: In recent times the loop has come back—the circuit of the gaze is complete. While post-modern discourse started out as solely the domain of philosophers, architects and lit critics it is now a mode of understanding that has infiltrated the everyday. Everyone knows what post-modernism means, even if they don’t know what it’s called. Post-modernism is mass produced and served up in pan global microwave meals—nukyularized in under a minute inside pop art inspired containers. It’s a brand new t-shirt with a retro slogan design. It’s jeans that you buy already ripped. It’s the sample of a TV show in the middle of a hip-hop song in which a rapper from the Brooklyn projects raps about his tricked out English luxury car, or it’s a commercial about the making of a commercial that never actually shows the product it’s advertising.
Our awareness that we live in an age of references and overlapping contexts has resulted in new culture products that celebrate the multiplicity of NOW—the show 24 uses split-screen and other production techniques to depict the many aspects and different points of view that made up every moment, while the mash-up straddles the boundary between a DJ cutting up a song and creating a new one altogether by mixing the vocals of one track with the beats of another—choosing ironic cross-cultural combinations for a WOW effect that depends upon a feeling of surprise—which gets harder and harder to create because the audience has come to expect the irony. As consumers we expect the meta-commercial and the lo-fi guerrilla “street” advertising outsourced by big corporations. It used to be that a DJ would have one or two ironic mash-ups in his or her bag to unleash when the moment was exactly right. I remember my mind getting blown at a Cold Cut show when they dropped Public Enemy lyrics over a pitched-up My Bloody Valentine track. Nowadays no one is phased by even the strangest juxtapositions.
a quick sketch in illustrator of a friend of mine, thought she would look better naked and with tattoos, haha, she agree’d. :)
this reminds me of an email i need to write…thank u, telepathic tumblr!
Dusk by Kei Liwanag
Evening came and I felt boxed-in. I watched TV all day and hadn’t caught a single synch—not a tremor or a gastronomical event or anything— just like the day before and the day before that. Usually a lull meant that an intense series of synchs were making their way towards me—even so, I couldn’t help but wonder: Was it all over? Was the download finally finished? Did I have all the information I needed? After all that I’d seen, a part of me still believed it possible that I’d wake up one day and everything would be back to normal.
I recently had a dream about the aquarium.
I try out new ways of thinking with the ease of putting on and taking off a coat. The only rule is that there are no rules. I think in mash-up, I think in rhyme. I think in dreams—which is to say i get lost in the stories that other people tell me about their dreams. I think when I’m jogging. I think when I’m all alone in a crowd and when I’m watching someone’s mouth move. I think about things and then I think about the words that make up those things. It changes from what they mean to how they look and sound. The entire thought becomes a collage that isn’t ready until the last piece has been applied. A bit here, a bit there—I add and take away words like a painter dabbing the canvas with a brush. I try to concentrate on one small task at a time. Like writing one sentence or running one Google Image search. In this way, I can create art in a cubicle, in the midst of email attachments, intercom buzzes, instant message nudges and various internet time sinks and never feel overwhelmed. The important thing to remember is that everything can be used—even the so-called wasted moments. Among the greatest revolutionaries are those who were able to turn a prison cell into the Eye of the world. A life can be ended but an idea can not. It can be burnt and pulverized and blasted into powder but it will only become stronger.
I wrote a scene in which a woman puts out a Craigslist ad and hires sexy women to sit around cutting up the only existing paper copy of her novel manuscript (the hard drive and disc versions having been deleted) using long silver scissors. They were instructed to cut the pages line by line, turning a pile of paper into a pile of curling fortune cookie streamers. The author collected all the pieces and shook them up in a plastic garbage bag. Then she pulled them out, one or two at a time without looking, and these lines became the basis for the lyrics for the album that the book turned into..an album that would go viral online, until it was broadcast across all the internets…
