Saturday, 1 December 2007
Monday, 26 November 2007
final idea
I originally wanted to create some sort of puzzle for other people to work out or put together but it seems this particular puzzle was aimed at me, the creator! Something I’ve always noticed is that some of the time, it’s equally hard to create a puzzle, as it is to solving it.
I have made a folding wooden toy, which is covered, with my own writing. Because all the sides eventually have their time to fold out and show their sides, in different combinations, I had to think carefully about what words to use. All of the sides that meet each other and are read in the same direction match up with each other. Of course there are some sentences that are better than others and on some occasions, artistic license had to be used but more or less, all of the sentences match up and make sense. As like many other people (from specific forums that talk about subjects like this) that have tried other word games such as lipographs and anagrams, it’s strangely refreshing to actually think about that language and words you choose to use in such detail.
I chose to do this because I thought it was an interesting way of generating material. I am by no means a poet but working to a set of rules (as does Perec in, for example, A Void, where he writes the entire novel without using the letter ‘e’.) actually made it easier to generate words! Perec called these devices “story making machines”. I think Georges Perec would have liked my wooden word cube thing.
The OuLiPo group developed the theory that writing under constraints and rules was a way to achieve true originality. Perec believed that the more you limit yourself, the freer you have to become. I wouldn’t have come up with some of the sentences I ended up writing. The subject nearly always ends up self-referencing; the cubes are talking about themselves quite a lot.
Below, I have laid out all of the possible combinations of the cube. Instead of them being in cube form though, I have written them out properly; these are the produce of the “”story making machine”. I hope you can see these alright.
Thursday, 22 November 2007
final idea?
Saturday, 17 November 2007
a puzzle
Monday, 12 November 2007
Thinking about Georges Perec
-number of people involved
-length of the chapter in pages
-an activity
-a position of the body
-emotions
-an animal
-reading material
-countries
-2 lists of novelists, from whom a literary quotation is required
Saturday, 10 November 2007
I've also been looking at other systems Perec used to generate material. He used these:
L E C A R T § I S N O U
S L E C A R T O U § I N
I T L A R O N C E S U §
L I § E C O U R S A N T
L A R U I N E S T O C §
A N T L E S § O I R C U
L § E S A C O U I N T R
I § U E L O R S A N C T
U A I R E C L O § N S T
U A N T S I C L E § R O
§ I T A R E C U L O N S
§ A L O I N C R U S T E
they are called Hétérogrammes. They are a fixed-form poem based on the isogram (above), a series of letters in which no letter appears more than once.
In the poem below, La clôture, Perec uses the principle of a joker, adding one additional letter to the original series.the jokers are written with the § sign.
dis-nous l'écart où finit la ronce sublime
coursant la ruine
stockant l'espoir
Cul-de-sac où intrigue l'or sanctuaire :
clowns tuant —sic— le profit à reculons
Halo incrusté…
there are english translations aswell but I just wanted to explain what they were.
I might use this in my final peice (below). I want to use existing text becuase I'm not very good with words myself.
"My ambition, as Author, my point, I would go so far as to say my fixation, my constant fixation, was primarily to concoct an artifact as original as it was illuminating, an artifact that would, or just possibly might, act as a stimulant on notions of construction, of narration, of plotting, of action, a stimulant, in a word, on fiction-writing today."
Perec has got an asteroid named after him.I've only just found out that Perec wrote the worlds longest (french)palindrome- 5566 letters! despite being dead, Georges Perec is still a member of the Oulipo—which makes no distinction between living members and deceased ones.
“I consider myself a genuine product of the Oulipo. My existence as a writer is 90% dependent on my knowing the Oulipo at a pivotal point in my formation, in my literary work,”
This following passage is from where I found quite a good essay about him:
http://www.drunkenboat.com/db8/oulipo/feature-oulipo/essays/magne/oulibio.html
“Exhausting the subject”Much is made now of the currency of Georges Perec. Rightly so, if one means by this that the importance of his work is increasingly recognized, but the term would hold equally true in its philosophical sense, the opposite of latency. This eminent member of the workshop for potential literature has always prized the act of literature, preferred realization to simple virtuality, and thus positioned himself in opposition to the attitude of François Le Lionnais—“Don’t forget […] that the method in itself is sufficient. There are methods without instantiation. The example is an extra pleasure that one gives to oneself and to one’s reader.”
I've also been looking at constrained writing on the web.
http://www.altx.com/ebr/ebr10/10sus.htm
The ALAMO "Workshop for literature assisted by mathematics and computers" was created in 1982 by two Oulipians: Paul Brafford and Jacques Roubaud.
there was a link on tat page to
http://ambigram.matic.com/ambigram.htm
twas quite interested in making a font based on these ideas-becuase they are so hidous to look at. "Ambigrams are words or phrases that can be read in more than one way or from more than a single vantage point, most commonly right-side-up and upside-down. Ambigram.Matic is the world's first and only online Ambigram Generator! Flip any word, different words of the same length, or even an entire (symmetrically spaced) sentence on its head, and read it both ways!"-from the website.
I then looked more at palindromes (these are just loads of facts about the I found interesting).
"The actual Greek phrase to describe the phenomenon is karkinikê epigrafê (καρκινική επιγραφή; crab inscription), or simply karkiniêoi (καρκινιήοι; crabs), alluding to the backward movement of crabs, like an inscription which can be read backwards."-wikipedia, dont know their source.
Palindromes date back at least to 79 A.D., as the palindromic Latin word square "Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas" was found as a graffito at Herculaneum, buried by ash in that year. Ive been there! but I didnt see it.
Another Latin palindrome, "In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni" ("We enter the circle at night and are consumed by fire"), was said to describe the behavior of moths.
Apparently palindromes can be used in music. Igor Stravinsky's final composition, The Owl and the Pussy Cat, is a palindrome.
Brian Westley wrote a computer program for the 1987 International Obfuscated C Code Contest which is a line-by-line palindrome
The longest palindromic word in the Oxford English Dictionary is tattarrattat.
Friday, 9 November 2007
Thursday, 8 November 2007
Monday, 29 October 2007
this is my new idea
This is one of the videos I found. I just neeeded an example video to practise with until I got my own footage. The section I have taken from is about half way through. Its a video of a dance choreographed by Merce Cunningham.
I've been looking at the work of Muybridge - he's famous for using multiple cameras to capture movement and obviously having a fabulous beard.Through looking at his work, I decided to take stills from every few frames or so. This gives that gerky effect, a bit like a projection. I also want the whole thing to be black and white.
This is the video so far - this isn't exactly how I want it to be at the end, its just a rough idea. I've managed to organise a studio and a dancer to film!
Saturday, 27 October 2007
Thursday, 25 October 2007
Map update, mupdate
My favourite idea so far is fairly ambitious but I think I can do it. I wanted to film someone making a cup of coffee or something but the movements gradually getting more and more dance like until the movements they are doing are just for dancing sake, no function. Down the side of the screen, I want there to be the notation moving up as the dance progresses. Make the notation look like its been put there after I have filmed it. At the end, the person comes over to the notation and writes in the final movements of them writing in the final movements. I was inspired by an advert I saw. I think its by Fallon but im not sure, it just looks like thier sort of thing.
I really like the way it is filmed- letting the story just unfold in front of you.
Another idea, is to somehow encorporate the notation into the actuall dancing. I saw this advert ages ago and really liked it.
I was thinking about doing a similar sort of thing but with the notation - taking it out of its formal structure - and placing the symbols on the floor or in the air.
Thursday, 18 October 2007
Map
This is an example of a form of dance notation- Labanotation. It is a universal way of describing movement using abstract symbols. I chose this as my map becuase its fantastic visaully and also the idea of describing something like dance which is a fluid and natural in an ordered and disiplined way really interests me.
To begin with, I want to notate everyday actions like getting out of bed, and getting ready in the morning- although these suond like mundain activities, they will still look like a dance in notation form. I'm also interested in incorporating dance into the project somehow.
Tuesday, 16 October 2007
Short Video project
So I've finally managed to upload my video! I apoligise for the crap quality and there doesn't seem to be any sound.
I was interested in the video we saw by Lasse Gjertsen which presents a stream of thoughts. I started by going into my garden and writing down my thoughts constantly for about half an hour. I then made this animation in flash, focusing on just a few lines from what I had written. The writing is scanned from the notebook, I wanted to use the original writing and I think this went well with the drawing style I chose to use.
Monday, 15 October 2007
Poster design for John Maclean
Saturday, 13 October 2007
Josie Long
One of her stories really stuck in my mind. She talked about the Quaker Edward Hicks who painted atleast 62 versions of the same painting- A Peaceable Kingdom. He did this becuase he found that painting this scene from the bible didn't in anyway compromise his religion or his act of painting.
She concluded with "if your inspired, however weird it is, just do it anyway". I haven't really done the story justice becuase I can't
properly remember it but I felt very excited and enthused afterwards!
This is Josie Long's version of The Peaceable Kingdom!
She made her own show pragramme and photocopied it for everyone, this was one of the pages:
I quite liked the quotes she picked out particularly the last one.
At the end, she gave out postcards addressed to her and wanted anybody to write to her if they find any interesting characters. Me and Sadie are sending her one with Vance Vance on it with the drawing we did.