(week 3, meeting 4)
to everyone :
Please submit updated/revised/overhauled thesis proposals to me (John McVey), via google drive or attached to an e-mail.
I will promptly put them on your respective designers/proposals pages (links at upper right of blog).
We watched Bernar Venet knock over (with a forklift truck) a row of large iron arcs... the idea involving accident, the use of accident in one’s process —
Performance Effondrement (at YouTube)
Venet (whom I would describe as a geometrician, poet, sculptor and conceptualist, in no particular order) is quite articulate in interviews, for example,
A Conversation with Bernar Venet, A Renaissance Artist of the Third Millennium, by Laura Tansini in Sculpture Magazine (May 1, 2004)
artnet
wikipedia
There is a curious mix of precision (about measurements, materials, weight, location) and accident (and a kind of blindness, an inability to predict or forsee) in Venet’s working method.
maps, mapping (and memory)
Henry showed Google maps of downtown Beverly, around the confluence of Cabot, Knowlton and Winter streets. We discussed what these maps showed, and did not show — made visible, and made invisible. Not every business was named (why not?). Some got reviews, some not (why?). And we discussed other kinds of missing information — topographical/geological information; what bsinesses were at these addresses ten, twenty, even 100 years ago. Certainly left out was this location 400+ years ago, before Europeans began to move in. It was suggested that Henry might add his own points of interest to these maps (e.g., bubble gum in the sidewalks!) — is it possible to customize these maps in Google?
We looked at the Beverly City Directory and North Shore Map for the year 1960, at archive.org. Many (72) volumes, going back to 1903, are available via archive.org. (aside : in 1904, 273 Cabot (until two years ago Maria’s Pizza, now Amazing Pizza and More, was a vacant store)
The Beverly History Room at the Beverly Public Library has these directories, maps, other material relating to the (hidden) history of Beverly (hidden, that is, from a Google Map).
Jessica showed routes of her walks, as tracked by the Under Armour app Map My Walk (GPS Walking & Workout Tracker), and her own recall. it was interesting to see the two versions side by side: the clean (presumably "correct") lines of the app, and her hand-drawn lines of the same routes. The interest was both aesthetic (the different qualities of line) and conceptual ("location memory"). Jessica is also noting things observed (birdcages, etc.). We wondered if one's powers of observation change/improve with practice (we assume yes), and began to consider the value of such observations (beyond the immediate pleasure of simply noticing things during a walk). For example, they provide a kind of snapshot of daily (quotidian) life in Beverly, ca September 2021.
Jessica also showed a drawing of an apartment interior, done from memory and then checked against on-site inspection.
patterns, repetition
Andrea is focussing on pattern, pattern and repetition, pattern and variation... what kinds of formal (and other?) variation there might be.
Andrea directed us to and talked about the impact of Lee Krasner’s Untitled, 1949, at MOMA.
We looked at some drawings/weavings done by Anni Albers.
Melissa is working with old issues of Popular Mechanics as found in archive.org and elsewhere, and finding good material in both editorial and advertising with which to address contemporary and future-oriented themes (e.g., climate change, living standards, money/getting rich). Melissa showed a collage made from advertisements in her source material: overwhelming, and yet revealing fascinating juxtapositions and ideas when viewed through a cropping tool.
Eileen will print thumbnails of her snapshot photos, as a starting point. It was in this context that John sketched one possible way of examining/reusing the material.
Examination of the older photos, and even repurposing them in various ways, may (likely) suggest, in addition, avenues for taking new photos.
Emily presented some different kinds of ciphers (Caesar Cipher, Pigpen Cipher) and other substitution codes, as a possible way of proceeding (the specific aim being, to communicate to others, the difficulty some have in reading facial expressions, body language, etc., and also the extra labor that might be expended in processing what to others is just “normal” verbal and gestural communication, but to some involves painstaking deconstruction of coded messages). Emily also returned to her experiments with handwritten words and sentences (repeated) in various ways (collage, etc.). Working with hand (not computer) is important for Emily at this time. We discussed these, and different ways that collaged material might be employed.
John mentioned the work of Nina Katchadourian, specifically her Office Semaphore project (2006)
Interestingly, she categorises that as a Public Project, and does not include it under the heading language/translation
We also considered Hannah Weiner her Code Poems (1982); copy in seminar room, and online here
books mentioned
- Norman Brosterman, Inventing Kindergarten (2002), LB 1199 B76 1997
- John Cage, Notations (1969), ML 96.4 C33
pdf at monoskop.org 74.4MB - Theresa Sauer, Notations 21 (2009), MT 35 S28 2009.
- Jessica Wynne, Do Not Erase : Mathematicians and Their Chalkboards (2021), publisher’s page; on order at Montserrat’s library
see also “Where Theory Meets Chalk, Dust Flies : A photo survey of the blackboards of mathematicians.”
Photographs by Jessica Wynne Text by Dennis Overbye Published Sept. 23, 2019 Updated Sept. 24, 2019 New York Times (September 23, 2019; paywall); pdf at seminar google drivesee also “Why mathematicians just can’t quit their blackboards : Photographer Jessica Wynne captures the peculiar devotion of academics to working out their problems with chalk”
Nicola Davis, The Observer (Sunday edition of The Guardian), 12 October 2019, here
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