narrative with shapes

We were asked to construct a narrative using only shapes and immediately thought of the beautiful mathematical novella Flatland by Edwin A. Abott – “a romance in many dimensions”. So I mimicked the story of a line in a world of lines who is visited by a creature from a second dimension, a square, who shows the line that he too is a square and gives him a new perspective on his life. The square is so enthused he discovers a third dimension in space and realizes that he is not just a square but a cube, and that in fact life has so many dimensions that we may not realize…it just depends on your perspective.

biology and the body

I admire the performance artist Zhang Huan who uses his body in startling ways in live performances and pictures. When I was very young I saw his picture in a newspaper and wrote a poem about him – I admired him because he fled China to practice his art freely. He is very controversial in his home-country and yet he is the foremost performance artist from China who is recognized internationally. After many years abroad he returned to his country to set up a studio. His performances often touch on suffering and the endurance of the corporal body. When he puts his body in extremely uncomfortable situations, he tries to distance himself from his condition. He hopes for his mind to leave his body and when this happens, he can’t feel any pain. Zhang Huan says that “when the mind returns to the body, there comes an ever stronger feeling.” He is in a spiritual state of being.

Zhang Huan has traveled the world doing performances and one performance he did in Boston about books and reading was very poetic and relates to my daily activity. Zhang Huan describes his inspiration:

“When I was young, my mother often told me “ You have to study hard so when you grow up you have a bright future. ” But I never liked to read books. Whenever I read a book my mind always wanders off and I fall fast asleep. I tried many different ways to keep myself awake and concentrate. For example, I would bite my hands, stab my flesh with a pen, and in winter I would dunk my head into a pot of freezing cold water. I couldn’t help it, I would forget what I read immediately, so I read again and I still can’t remember, not to mention I couldn’t understand it at all. Later on, I had a great idea. Everyday I’d tear a page out of a book and eat it. The result was I couldn’t digest it at all, and I shit out the exact same thing as I ate. I had many dreams involving books. In one of the dreams I discover all the books that I have ever owned were being blown all over the sky by a mighty wind. Suddenly, in a split second, all the books were floating on the river toward the East. It was very unpredictable.”

Performing Technology Final

Here is a recording of my performance for the last class of Performing Technology:

http://www.itp.nyu.edu/~fv237/videos/performance.mov

And here is a close-up of the video that was projected on the floor:

http://www.itp.nyu.edu/~fv237/videos/Sequence%201.mov
The poem is transcribed here:

There was an earthquake and each wooden plank came loose,  like a breeze over my sheets. The sockets burst and I trembled. All around was electricity. And I stayed to watch the doorposts flame. And the golden shards of morning break everything down. To the warm of the outside.

The voices on the street came overlayered and overloaded. A switchboard with all the connections gone awry. Giant and anxious. and I walked the street with my bangs neatly covering my forehead. And the little red gash the cupboard made when it swung apart. Violent and red. It was my little secret.

An old woman looked at me to say: “A little fire is a jewel against frost and darkness.” But I did not look back. I let the streets wash over me in a thicket of kisses. It’s dreamy weather and my skin shines like embers.

more of the daily activity for performing technology

My daily activity -  this video is cut by my friend Leslie who wanted some experience using Final Cut – she thought that all that reading was very boring and so she took some liberties with the editing – what emerged is this :

http://www.itp.nyu.edu/~fv237/videos/flo%20read.mov

processing poem

Here is a little poem built with processing:

http://www.itp.nyu.edu/~fv237/ICM/mars/

surveillance video

This week I looked at the perfomative power of surveillance cameras – in this video performance the cameras take on a life of their own as they track me through a crowded subway platform:

http://www.itp.nyu.edu/~fv237/videos/camera%20florica.mov

biology and the body

This week’s assignment was to choose one of your senses, appendages or behaviors and augment or frustrate it technologically. I am starting to learn MAX/MSP/Jitter so I wanted to create a patch to distort and enhance my image. Here are two little videos I created:

http://www.itp.nyu.edu/~fv237/videos/flofrustrates2.mov

http://www.itp.nyu.edu/~fv237/videos/flo.mov

The first video frustrates my image by distorting me into shapes. The second video enhances my image by creating a kaleidoscopic effect allowing me to be in many places at the same time.

daily activity for performing technology

http://itp.nyu.edu/~fv237/videos/reading_sm4.mov

For the assignment of recording a daily activity I chose to show my book worm side by filming myself reading. In the following clip I am reading from The Phantom Ship by Capt. F. Marryat, Kyra Kyralina by Panait Istrati, Turning the Mind into an Ally by Sakyong Mipham, Total Freedom by J. Krishnamurti, The Mystery of the Black Tower by John Palmer Jr. and The Crimson Sails by Alexander Grin.

Yoko Ono Cut Piece

Yoko Ono first performed ‘Cut Piece’ in 1964 in Japan. She repeated the performance at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1965. In September of 2003 she performed the piece for the last time in Paris.

The piece consists of a solitary perfomer, Yoko Ono, sitting on stage with a pair of scissors at her side – inviting the audience to come and cut off pieces of her clothing and take them away. (Audience members are given this instruction in a leaflet at the commencement of the piece.) Unflinching, she allows strangers to gradually remove portions of her clothing until there is nothing more to cut away at. The piece ends when nothing more can be cut, or when the performer decides that the piece has ended.

In her script for the piece Yoko Ono adds that the performer does not have to be a woman.

In all its manifestations, the piece is very powerful. Art historians and critics have descriped it- “more like a rape than an art performance”. Yoko Ono lies still and quiet, her eyes fixed and distant as pieces of fabric are removed from her body… first someone takes a sliver at the neck, then someone tears at an arm, then a piece is cut at her belly…and so the piece proceeds, sometimes with long pauses until somebody grows bold and proceeds again.

The piece is interactive and is created by what the audience brings to it. There is of course an element of trust – but it is the unpredictabilty of the piece that gives it power. It is a slow violation.

About the piece Yoko Ono says: “In the 1960s I did it out of anger.” As if taking all the violence of the world upon her. But of her last perfomrance in 2003, Yoko Ono says :”Following the political changes through the year after 9/11, I felt terribly vulnerable — like the most delicate wind could bring me tears, (…) Cut Piece is my hope for world peace.”

The two performances mirror themselves as both occur in turbulent political times and times of war. I see the peice as being about sacrifice, about the giving up of oneself – it is grown both out of love and anger, out of frustration and helplessness and out of inner strength and perseverance. Many things can happen to a person on the surface – changes can change the exterior, the material, but it is the integrity of self that gives us strentgh and grounding and is our shield.

The simplicity of the piece, without any explanation or judement, allows each viewer or participant to take from it what they will – one can observe what is taking place and yet no interpretation is imposed on the event. Following the performance, a spectator remarked the following about Yoko Ono: “Her inventive sometimes provocative game-like concepts and instructions encourage us to step over the bouderies of art’s constraints to construct art inside ourselves.”

Moving art performances can create a change within the self – and it is from that open place of change and creation within the self that we can grow and share and trust one another.