Progress on the Polaroid Front
December 29, 2005 | Filed Under friends, photo, projects, time travel | Leave a Comment
I’ve just scanned and uploaded the latest batch of Polaroids. There are 10 from Korrine’s Christmas party and about 25 from Will’s. I also reversed the order of the set, so now the oldest pictures are at the end and the fresh ones are at the top. Get ‘em while they’re hot.Updated: New Year’s Eve is on there too in a major way.
Aesthetic Phoneticism
December 14, 2005 | Filed Under art, big ideas, poetry, projects | 2 Comments
Here’s an attempt at an explanation of Aesthetic Phoneticism, an art idea that I came up with all by myself:The basic concept is to produce a picture accompanied by a series of words that, when taken as a whole, simply look and sound nice on a purely aesthetic level with no inherent meaning or symbolism. It’s kind of a boiled down, superficial (shallow? visceral?) form of art. It can be done in any medium that conveys imagery with sound. (look, hear, eye, ear). So far, mine are mostly drawings on paper.The compositions are not planned out ahead of time; they’re in the same neighborhood as automatic drawing, but with a little more conscious control. Words are (supposed to be) chosen strictly for their phonetic relation to each other rather than for meaning. It’s not exactly like dada poetry, in which sound is emphasized, because the words are not selected at random. I am (usually) trying to make combinations of sounds that are separated from their definitions, although since it’s a form of free association, associations do appear, (and are permitted to hang around). I tend to use near rhymes more than actual rhymes, because I like the idea of subtle sound and syntax connections and evolutionary changes in the sequences.There’s a dualism to the process for me, in the sense that the rules and constraints that I set for myself force me to work within this framework of non-meaning, while it’s pretty much impossible (at least for me) to really adhere to that construct. My mind is constantly trying to insert symbolism and meaning into the drawings and words. I like that conflict, though, and really, it’s a major part of the appeal for me. So I end up at kind of a halfway point between sense and nonsense. or calculated randomness. Non-representational representation. or something. Anyway, I like it that way; I find it to be more interesting, funnier, and somewhat revelatory.In the interest of full-disclosure, many of these drawings were created after drinking a lot of beer, and two of them are in japanese.
So here are 20 drawings from the aesthetic phonetic sketchbook.
Every Po Ever Laroided (Thusfar)
December 12, 2005 | Filed Under friends, photo, projects | 2 Comments
well y’all, I’ve finally finished the daunting and slightly illogical task of scanning my entire polaroid collection (to date - the hotel party is at the end of the set) and it’s online for your viewing pleasure. I’ve been a polaroid fanatic for a while now, and my photos go back to about 1999 when I got my camera. of course, since the film is expensive, the subject matter/times depicted tends to progress in leaps. whenever I could afford to buy a pack of film, it would usually be shot up all at once, and then I wouldn’t shoot anything else for a while. so I guess these 374 snapshots probably represent somewhere around 40 or 50 specific days or nights sliced out of the past 6 years. interesting. (to me, at least.) (and probably to some of you, too.) I’m gonna go ahead and say that I’m planning to keep the flickr photoset updated as I shoot more pictures. we’ll see if that really happens. but I did score a bunch of free film from the Toby Keith movie, and my dad says he has some packs of film for me from the FBI storage closet. so i’ve got no excuse to not keep it up. if you see me taking pictures, remind me to keep the ball rollin with the scannin. then everyone can have ‘em, and the world will rejoice and be as one.
So Doggone Electric
October 26, 2005 | Filed Under friends, funny haha, god bless the internet, music, projects, video / film | Leave a Comment
A while back, Holden shot a bunch of short video clips of his old roommate’s dogs in their backyard with his digital camera. I edited them to the song So Electric, from Boulevard’s recent e.p. Vice & Daring. It’s kind of funny, so I put it online here for y’all to check it.