1 January 2013
as of september 2012 i have ported/copied/re-established my blogging activities to www.seanmcalister.co.uk
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11 May 2012
when you miss someone, there produces a slight gap in time, where one should have a heartbeat or a pause between beats, and when you miss someone there are non-moments when neither exist!
no one knows where these beats and non-beats go. some speculate that they seek the person their conductor misses, in order to give them an extra piece of life to help them
of course, if two people miss each other exactly the same, beats and non-beats, misser and missie sort of cancel each other out and then the whole phenomena feels less anxious and more comfortable - when a sense of balance in the heart area exists!
the end
Labels: poetry
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29 April 2012
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the first part is musarc singing in a large gallery space, standing in a circle, facing inward with audience scattered around us, their backs the the wall. our conductor, cathy heller jones, instructs us to synchronise record on the dictaphones.
the second part of the performance begins when we stop singing and stop recording, rewind, press play, set the dictaphone at our feet and disperse into the audience. we assumed pseudo-formal poses while we, along with the audience, listened back to the tapes. the out-of-sync tapes satanic or at least darkly-heavenly tone. the performance ends when the last tape reaches the end.
corpus sonus is a revisited version of william byrd's ave verum corpus. the original concept of this revisit was introduced by the talented sam belinfonte with contributions from Original idea by Sam Belinfante with contributions from Toby O’Connor, Cathy Heller Jones, Maria Smith, John Bingham-Hall, Esther Waterfield, Joseph Kohlmaier, Hannes Voss, Mela Boev and the ensemble. musarc performed this new commission at margate's turner contemporary gallery, on occasion of the gallery's first birthday.
www.musarc.org
Labels: byrd, experiment, musarc, music, performance
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29 March 2012
working as a freelance designer with jason bruges studio, i was one of two people designing the names and lighting for bbc radio 4. more info to follow!
Labels: bbc, film, jbs, narrative
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19 February 2012
above : "The high speed flash head was tested for 700 shots, one every 5 seconds, to detect irregularities in Flash power and light characteristics" from vimeo page description of the fascinating digital mediators factum arte
"the idea that i might already have gone blind struck me with sudden terror.... i might only be using people's words and voices to reconstruct the lost world of reality, just as our mind, at the moment we fall asleep, forms images resembling those of real life from the phosphenes that dance before our closing eyes. i stood on the threshold of reality and imagination, and i began to doubt which was which"
Figyes Karinthy [2008] Journey Round My skull. New york: nyrb classicsas quoted in oliver sacks [2010] The Mind's Eye, Picador, London, p180
"How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events — that I am here in my dressing gown, sitting by the fire —when in fact I am lying undressed in bed! Yet at the moment my eyes are certainly wide awake when I look at this piece of paper; I shake my head and it is not asleep; as I stretch out and feel my hand I do so deliberately, and I know what I am doing. All this would not happen with such distinctness to someone asleep. Indeed! As if I did not remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep! As I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep. The result is that I begin to feel dazed, and this very feeling only reinforces the notion that I may be asleep."
Rene Descartes [1641] Meditations on First Philosophy
as quoted in christopher grau's short essay dream skepticism
right : "Simulation of panoramic heads position and movement during recording: camera head and follow-on high speed flash head" from vimeo page descriptions of factum arte
Labels: conservation, descartes, dreams, experiment, history, light, oliversacks, photography, quote, vision
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hoarding hyperdetritus,
datamining dirty digital debris,
my sticky sockets soaked in sumptuous stimuli. indeed!
the peripheral versus the decentralised,
inspect inspiring ignored ignitions with
one extract, one reference and, one word;
anomalous visuals
proprioception
tenderpixel + squidsoup
phosphenes
the matrix
dreammachine
pie architecture
kodakclosure
Isidro Blasco
visualfield
seismanarrative
laura oldfield ford
savageredevelopment
Erik Desmazières
etch
olly moss
draw
words
virginia woolfmomentomomentum
francois morellet
neon
http://inbflat.net/
Darren Solomonconductor
Labels: conservation, descartes, dreams, history, light, london, oliversacks, periphery, photography, poetry, quote, vision
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15 January 2012
title is a comment about to piranesi's etchings, found in
ficacci, l, [2001]. giovanni battista piranesi: selected etchings, taschen, italy p.12
image is a would-be 'pixelated' noise screen my computer gave me today when i tried to play a video file, which required a codec i didn't have.
Labels: image, piranesi, quote, square
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10 January 2012
escape into purity, by wolfgang bauer
i am pursued by a horde of analogies
i want to escape
their sweet utility
on which i have gorged myself
for too long.
i know that the tree is a tree-of-life
that life is a dream
that the soul is as deep as the sea
and death a constant companion
i that the heavens are a tapestry
that the buzzing of bees a song
and that there are two sides to every coin
that woman is a goddess
reality an illusion...
the city a sea of houses
the night a mantle
the sun a ball
the moon a sickle.
out with you,
you cooing metaphors
i want to make poetry:
under the blue sky
in a green meadow
sits a beautiful woman
in her hand is a bunch of daisies
her dress is blue.
in a dark room a man
sits and eats his soup
he quickly empties the bowl
wipes his mouth and
goes down into the cellar.
the pretty woman comes home
the man is already sitting with his wine
she makes him a bite to eat
oh, how fine.
how beautiful and simple is the world
how joyous a life
without metaphors.
■
the art of fiction
INTERVIEWER
What made you decide to study Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse?
BORGES
I began by being very interested in metaphor. And then in some book or other—I think in Andrew Lang's History of English Literature—I read about the kennings, metaphors of Old English, and in a far more complex fashion of Old Norse poetry. Then I went in for the study of Old English. Nowadays, or rather today, after several years of study, I'm no longer interested in the metaphors because I think that they were rather a weariness of the flesh to the poets themselves—at least to the Old English poets.
INTERVIEWER
To repeat them, you mean?
BORGES
To repeat them, to use them over and over again and to keep on speaking of thehranrad[FLAT THINGIE OVER 2ND A], waelrad[FLAT THINGIE OVER 2ND A], or “road of the whale” instead of “the sea”—that kind of thing—and “the seawood,” “the stallion of the sea” instead of “the ship.” So I decided finally to stop using them, the metaphors, that is; but in the meanwhile I had begun studying the language, and I fell in love with it
...
I remember a joke of Oscar Wilde's: a friend of his had a tie with yellow, red, and so on in it, and Wilde said, Oh, my dear fellow, only a deaf man could wear a tie like that!
INTERVIEWER
He might have been talking about the yellow necktie I have on now.
BORGES
Ah, well. I remember telling that story to a lady who missed the whole point. She said, “Of course, it must be because being deaf he couldn't hear what people were saying about his necktie.” That might have amused Oscar Wilde, no?
INTERVIEWER
I'd like to have heard his reply to that.
BORGES
Yes, of course. I never heard of such a case of something being so perfectly misunderstood. The perfection of stupidity. Of course, Wilde's remark is a witty translation of an idea; in Spanish as well as English you speak of a “loud color.” A “loud color” is a common phrase, but then the things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said. Looking for metaphors, for example: When I was a young man I was always hunting for new metaphors. Then I found out that really good metaphors are always the same. I mean you compare time to a road, death to sleeping, life to dreaming, and those are the great metaphors in literature because they correspond to something essential. If you invent metaphors, they are apt to be surprising during the fraction of a second, but they strike no deep emotion whatever. If you think of life as a dream, that is a thought, a thought that is real, or at least that most men are bound to have, no? “What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.” I think that's better than the idea of shocking people, than finding connections between things that have never been connected before, because there is no real connection, so the whole thing is a kind of juggling.
INTERVIEWER
Juggling just words?
BORGES
Just words. I wouldn't even call them real metaphors because in a real metaphor both terms are really linked together. I have found one exception—a strange, new, and beautiful metaphor from Old Norse poetry. In Old English poetry a battle is spoken of as the “play of swords” or the “encounter of spears.” But in Old Norse, and I think, also, in Celtic poetry, a battle is called a “web of men.” That is strange, no? Because in a web you have a pattern, a weaving of men, un tejido. I suppose in medieval battle you got a kind of web because of having the swords and spears on opposite sides and so on. So there you have, I think, a new metaphor; and, of course, with a nightmare touch about it, no? The idea of a web made of living men, of living things, and still being a web, still being a pattern. It is a strange idea, no?
INTERVIEWER
It corresponds, in a general way, to the metaphor George Eliot uses in Middlemarch, that society is a web and one cannot disentangle a strand without touching all the others.
BORGES
[With great interest] Who said that?
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21 November 2011
pope is so sharply funny, satirically damning of the fleet, a pleasure to read this extract.
how concealed from daily notice the fleet river is these days,
and how apt an intersection, the holborn viaduct.
an intuition; there is something buried here worth digging for.
This labour past, by Bridewell all descend,
(As morning prayer, and flagellation end)
To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams
Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames,
The king of dikes! than whom no sluice of mud
With deeper sable blots the silver flood.
'Here strip, my children! here at once leap in,
Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin,
And who the most in love of dirt excel,
Or dark dexterity of groping well.
Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around
The stream, be his the weekly journals bound;
A pig of lead to him who dives the best;
A peck of coals a-piece shall glad the rest.
...
photograph - a brickwork collage of the south-west viaduct gatehouse, 2011
image - a drawing of the fleet river by 'mr crosby,' 1844
image - a drawing of the fleet river by 'mr crosby,' 1844
text - an extract from the dunciad, alexander pope, 1728
Labels: london, poetry, quote, satire
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14 November 2011
my sister married a year ago, this month.
at the wedding reception i pretended
that my camera was a girlfriend or date.
the evident yearning for social,
and otherwise interpersonal intimacy,
through contrived anthropomorphising,
spins perversion, amusement and analogous-thought
into warm and shocking revolutions
performance artist, and good friend, kate janes explores similar self-aware, self-conscious things in her work.
This work is called ‘Hostess’ and consists of a series of photographs of papier mache heads on sticks which are guests at a fantasy dinner party, where I am the perfect hostess, confident, witty and the centre of attention. This is in somewhat stark contrast to reality and these images depict an afternoon where I called the shots.
Labels: kate janes, narrative, photography
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3 November 2011
stephen and i embarked on an archaeological voyage last night, with the holborn viaduct gatehouses centred in our spyglass. these images and captions are courtesy of the city of london planning department. i'm really excited by the prospect of a project here, so let this post act as a lite introduction to something much greater
Labels: archaeology, drawing, history, introduction, london, mythology
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29 October 2011
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“the seeking of new structures and patterns that may be used by writers in any way they enjoy.” Constraints are used to trigger new ideas and the Oulipo group is an ongoing source of novel techniques, often based on mathematical ideas — such as counting letters and syllables, substitution algorithms, permutations, palindromes, and even chess problems.”
as published on the matzine website
Labels: editorial, matzine, poetry, words
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last night stephen mackie & i, armed with needles & thread strung past issues of matzine on a wall at zap architectures after party, in the basement of hoxton Gallery. the party was to celebrate the opening of the pavilion of protest earlier that day, exhibited in riba's prestigious florence hall. a bit of more guerilla-exposure tactics athankyouverymuch.
Labels: guerilla, matzine, photography, stephen mackie
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22 October 2011
jorge louis borges speaks in 1966 while josef albers speaks in 1968. but here they speak to each other today, based on a loosely arranged script machine.
the bezold effect is an optical phenomena which albers used in his teaching. it describes how one colour appears to change lightness or hue intensity when adjacent to a contrasting colour.
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i have found no evidence that these great minds ever met in person. like some sort of
necro-networking nitwit i’m strangely star-struck by bringing these voices into close proximity. i mean, these dead-guys really seem to be talking, arguing and believably ignoring each other! imagine the bizarre weaves of conversation that other script machines could conjure
the script machine
- interview with jorge louis borges
- interview with josef albers
- 7 comments from each interview, in alternating fashion
- the artist to begin will be judged by a flipping of a 1p coin; heads = borges, tails = albers. [coin flipped 11:50am 5th sept 2011]
- each comment can be one or more sentences long, though the final sentence must end with a question mark [?] for it to be considered usable.
- prime numbers dictate the number of entry used to compile script
* this post is a replicate of my submission to matzine#10
Labels: albers, borges, collage, history, illusion, interview, matzine, script, words
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22 August 2011
i return to you years later,
grey & lovely city
unchanging city
buried in the waters of the past
i'm not longer the student
of philosohpy, poetry & curiosity,
i'm not the young poet who wrote
too many lines
and wandered in the maze
of narrow streets and illusions
the sovereign of clocks and shadows
has touched my brow with his hand
but still i'm guided by a star
by brightness, and only brightness
can undo or save me
star by adam zagajewski. i read this on a wall in london's underground tube network, on my way home from leeds & birmingham [as part of project context]. i have a fit of goosebumps on every pass. i'd suggest scanning this interview with zagajewski, it takes my mind to far away places and spreads my eyes apart.
i've been blogging less than i use to because my time is spent elsewhere, in those hidden places for where only few keys exist; sketch books, conversations... but these two photographs above are my studies following josef albers' 'interaction of colour'. the top colour study is from chapter 9 entitled 'colour mixture in paper - illusion of transparence' and the bottom photograph is from chapter 14 'colour intervals and transformation'
the virtuous hunt
for ways of seeing
spears bounty abound;
a game no trap ensnares
Labels: albers, colour, drawing, illusion, poetry
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5 July 2011
josef, étienne & i
"the search is what everyone would
undertake if he were not stuck in the
everydayness of his own life. to be
aware of the possibility of the search
is to be onto something. not to be
onto something is to be in despair"
walker percy, the moviegoer
[as quoted on page 1 of 'seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees' by lawrence weschler]
the image above is my submission to the copy/paste issue of matzine#09; it is of two beds, one for étienne and one for i - two characters from a short story i wrote for the previous issue. i had built part of a miniature stage-set for the piece but the simplicity of this spread, the strange divide of the spine, the butterfly and clone effect, the floating beds in paperspace and the questionable penmanship - these qualities won me over.in a 1968 interview, josef albers said something provocative, that has stuck with me and seems pertinent here :
"the source of art - or where it comes from - is the discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect"
Labels: albers, depth, drawing, dreams, irwin, matzine, quotes, square, vision
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3 July 2011
sunday 19th june saw me lending my brick threading skillz to the f o l l y f o r a f l y o v er team
cool, engaged bunch - the get-up had a great ad-hoc vibe and the competence to pull it off
hats off
[looking forward to 2001 : space odyssey]
Labels: architect, assemble, collaboration, collage, image, narrative, set design, urban
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4 June 2011
p h e n o m e n a l p r e s e n c e
"i began to recognize the difference between imagery and physicality, that everything had both an imagery and a physicality, and furthermore that for me, the moment a painting took on any kind of image, the minute i could recognize it as having any relationship to nature, of any kind, to me that painting went flat...
imagery for me constituted representation, "re-presentation," a second order of reality, whereas i was after a first order of presence... it's about presence, phenomenal presence."
images the mechanical film set of stanley kubrick's 2001: a space odyssey [sourced from wikipedia if i remember correctly]
text seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees, by lawrence weschler. the words are spoken by artist robert irwin
Labels: collaboration, drawing, image, irwin, kubrick, mythology, quote, set design
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19 May 2011
the city of oedipus
[as published in matzine #08]
like clockwork, étienne + i would spend two long days a month in studio monoculeure. always, the first studio day was the first friday of the month; the second, the second saturday
in turns, one would fall asleep, or employ chloroform. meanwhile the other, thirty three minutes later, would shake his friend awake, whereupon the dreamer would take his dream and put them on a page; the dimensions of their studio wall.
friday, my turn, i inhaled fully and closed my eye. a moment passed before i opened again. absurdly, both étienne and the fresh, wall-sized page were nowhere to be seen.
eight days following, in studio monoculeure, étienne and i met again, rather upset with one another. an emphatic, erratic explosion of airborne blame ensued. étienne defended that the previous friday it had been his turn to capture his dream on the page. only, when he opened his eye the room was empty of both partner and page.
disturbed and irreconcilable, we could agree on only one thing; to meet again twenty days later.
friday, the first day of the month, with little trust or patience surviving, we hung the page along the centre beam of the studio, ready to take a dream on both surfaces. we entered our respective unconsciousnesses simultaneously.
i was in a heavily-dark place; a vast and dense chamber. there was a sense of minutes passing, then hours. i navigated every permutation of turn and stride [ if one could call indeterminate movements navigation; my residual self-image was unrestrained, yet unable to move to anywhere ]. a numb intuition said my partner shared this space with me, just as the excited thought skimmed across the void; we had found it!
although consciously imperceptible at the time, an afterimage of the dream persisted - whole and familiar - though strictly unknowable. a double, a mirror, the eye that can view itself directly.
now awake, days later, stylus and knife in hands, both sides of the page were black with lead scratchings. there was no page left unwarped, only two un-placable, unfathomable maps; uncanny in dissymmetries; the city of oedipus
[this is a fictional foray originally presented in matzine #08 in response to the idea 'domestic exotic'. i really enjoyed writing this - and exposing my retina's to the matzine readers was an added delight]
Labels: borges, dreams, light, matzine, mythology, shadow
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[image: joiner of tmle presentation in action]
stephen mackie and i were invited to talk at the modern language experiment; a critical art, practice + theory forum. this took place on 17th may. we decided to present our collaborative work, drawing attention to the progression of our processes over the past year, between the black mill project and the meta architecture exhibition.
the group discussion around our subjects was most welcomed, raising some unexpected questions about our work. thanks to matt and keh from t.m.l.e. for arranging the event and alan magee for co-presenting the evening with us
Labels: black mill, critique, london, meta architecture, presentation
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