tom moody

bad at sports on BYOB LA

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Was a little disappointed that, in an otherwise copacetic discussion about the BYOB LA show, Guthrie, Seecoy, and Artie smiled favorably on this assessment of the BYOB NY incarnation (from Karen Archey's Post of Revenge):

the content and quality of work shown in such exhibitions is relatively superfluous to the political stance encompassing it. Most important here is the gesture that - perhaps in the face of web-based social networking - physical meet-ups and community building are vital as ever.

As a biased participant in the NY show, I say she's wrong, the work was great. The meet-up was nice, too, but ultimately it's about what's on the walls. I wrote some un-objective, boosterish comments on AFC and believe all that stuff. As for "political stance," so tired of these warmed-over post-structuralist attempts to peg every event as political. It was in a gallery, deal.

when the walls fell

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darmok_hi5mountain

From Alan N. Shapiro's Star Trek: 20 Basic Principles:

Star Trek Basic Principle #7: Non-Signifying Language

In early capitalism, the law of accumulation is limited to the science of "political economy" and production. In late capitalism, it expands to wider instances of consumer culture; psychology (self and unconscious as psychic metaphors of capital); and linguistics ("signification" to infinity). In Chomsky’s linguistics, the brain is a "universal language machine" making possible the translation of all grammars and signifying systems. In Saussure’s linguistics, the playful gap between "signifier" and "signified" is barred by positing their equivalence in a linguistic sign that fixes a word’s identity. But language is sometimes other than a means of communication. In metaphor or poetry, or in the “mythical” speech of the Tamarians, language is not directly signifying. It is symbolic, ambivalent, evocative, and even destructive. "Meanings" are exchanged, subverted, enjoyed, and transformed in relationship and encounter.

image via hi5mountain

addendum to altar post

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dumpfm-andrej-smallish-gifdumpfm-andrej-person-looking-bottom-left

The "text altar" in the previous post was part of a series of text posts andrej did on dump.fm last July, a friendly/sarcastic critique of previously not-terribly-closely examined conventions that had developed on dump--in that particular case, the trope of placing objects side by side in symmetric configurations. As andrej noted in an email, "I think altars are sometimes a pretty lazy alternative to deeper aesthetic considerations--symmetry being a such a pretty and strong device." True, and some of the best altars acknowledge this by accentuating, exaggerating, or problematizing (academic word, sorry) their own symmetry. It should also be noted that "altars" or shrines are a folk-like adaptation or response to the dump software that were identified and called "altars" months (weeks? days?) after the fact. As designed by the dump founders, each "dump" is a horizontal line, like a line of chat text, that can accommodate "sentences" consisting of words, photos, webcam shots, glitter text, or gifs in any combination or size (up to 400 x 400 pixels per element). When a line reaches the right side of the browser frame it "wraps" to the next line. HTML is disabled so it is impossible to make grids such as this one, you have to work with the limitations of the line. One convention that developed early were concise symmetrical arrangements of elements that don't wrap. (They are a specialty for some dumpers such as jeanette, illalli, mirrrroring, and many others I ask not to be shot for not naming.)