Bathroom Sketches (2008)
underwater poems from an unconscious mind
This website is being updated in February 2021 after the death of Flash plugin.
What remains is documentation of what was formerly a dynamic generative interactive oasis.
This project was originally completed January-May 2008 in Montreal.
It appeared online as a blog with 28 interactive video poems.
Thaw
when the spring runoff
creates arbitrary streams all over the city, and the small hill (that
we call a mountain here in Montreal) sheds its snows, then beneath the
anarchic rivulets, crouched amongst the anemic flattened grass, bubbles
cling to stalks, holding to the ephemeral life given to them.
And in this is echo, a lesion.
This is a former Flash poem that dynamically loads 61 brief videos, a soundtrack, and a set of poetic phrases which the viewer could accelerate thru with the arrow keys.
Flash R.I.P. January 2021.
Today
Video documentation of a 2008 interactive video poem now dead due to death of Flash plugin!
In 2008 I wrote on the 'Bathroom Sketches' website http://glia.ca/sketches_wp/
"The days have passed swiftly. The sketches migrate out of the bathroom. More meditative, maybe boring; whatever, it’s spring-time. The writing is always done in an array form now. And its leading toward a truncation of meaning, a condensation of intent; morpheme bubble clusters isolated almost alienated, communicating yet intent on their private purpose.
(no)des. corrugated cerebral insidious clots. instantiated instincts.
Navigation note: None. Click-anywhere to goto next phrase. As always, for full viewing pleasure: use right-mouse (or CTRL+right-mouse on Mac) button to go ‘FULL screen’ .
Dissect it (nothing new here): SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (40 mb .) http://glia.ca/sketches/swfs/April-2008/today/today-download+videos.zip or just the Flash MX SOURCE CODE ( Cruft commentary: Nothing has changed. Old code accumulates like dust.) http://glia.ca/sketches/swfs/April-2008/today/today-download.zip
~~~
Soundtrack water from a walk in the cemetery. Thanks again to Jericho and Pasc for again letting me use their keyboard.
~~~
Location: The set was an aquarium at TML. The bubbles are under the water surface.
ShelfStorm
Video documentation of a 2008 interactive video poem now dead due to death of Flash plugin!
In 2008 I wrote on the 'Bathroom Sketches' website http://glia.ca/sketches_wp/
"I made this last week, but have let it sit. Gestating. It’s fairly melancholy so if you are looking for a party, best to move on.
Hard language, gentle sounds, effulgent light. A lament on the political state of the world. Filmed on a windowsill.
It begins with a shit of blandness. Propaganda and mental debris blowing everywhere. Then the hierarchies sprout.
~
Navigation note: None. Click-anywhere to goto next phrase. As always, for full viewing pleasure: use right-mouse (or CTRL+right-mouse on Mac) button to go ‘FULL screen’ .
Dissect it (nothing new here): SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (44 mb .) http://glia.ca/sketches/swfs/April-2008/shelfStorm/shelfStorm-download+videos.zip or just the Flash MX SOURCE CODE ( Cruft commentary: Nothing has changed. Old code accumulates like dust.) http://glia.ca/sketches/swfs/April-2008/shelfStorm/shelfStorm-download.zip
~~~
Soundtrack: Once again thanks again to Jericho and Pasc for letting me use their keyboard.
~~~
Dedication: For Francis Foster whose windowsill contains such radiant worlds.
Candle
Video documentation of a 2008 interactive video poem now dead due to death of Flash plugin!
In 2008 I wrote on the 'Bathroom Sketches' website http://glia.ca/sketches_wp/
"A homage to nostalgia and mortality, this brief wistful study has been hovering in my archives since last week.
in this world of melting dreams>gentle tongues make harvest>hands console hearts
~~~
Dissect it (nothing much new here): SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (14.2 mb .) http://glia.ca/sketches/swfs/April-2008/memoryCandle/memoryCandle-download+videos.zip or just the Flash MX SOURCE CODE http://glia.ca/sketches/swfs/April-2008/memoryCandle/memoryCandle-download.zip ( Cruft commentary: Nothing has changed. Old code accumulates like dust.)
Navigation note: None. Click-anywhere to goto next phrase. As always, for full viewing pleasure: use right-mouse (or CTRL+right-mouse on Mac) button to go ‘FULL screen’ .
~~~
Dedication: This one is for Uncle Ken, a good man, who died last week."
crutch
My girlfriend is on crutches. We spent the day at the hospital. While she was undergoing tests, I was perched in a plastic chair with my laptop. It is from such contingent circumstances that artistic advances sometimes emerge. Opportunities constructed from suffering hop out of hiding.
This piece continues to explore the emotional impact of a still-image color-transform. That is to say, by shifting the saturation and hue of circumstantial perception, cognition arrives at diverse interpretations of the same data.
Be aware, synthetic crumbs float beneath the surface of every ability. Beauty lingers beneath every skin.
dust.flow.poem
Well I have finally followed the counsel of two of my wisest guides: one, an acrobat of the intellect; the other, an athlete of intuition. Both told me to slow it down. Thank you Chris and Sophie. I changed the twitch ration of the text change from 5000 to 7000 milliseconds: the text changes slower now. A slider is probly on its way. Parameter easing. Watched both versions first: found the quicker change just at the limit of the human cognitive range: ocular saccades from video to text almost tiring, like being forced to fast trot over sand-dunes. The 7 second reading gap for approx. 3-12 syllables, the goldilock’s appropriate data flow for this particular poem.
Trances emerge at this rate for me.
The triplet codon no.gap.here. form that persists thru the poem is a flexible quasi-constraint, An itch of a game of a toy. Inspired by seeing Nick Montfort at NT2 read REAM/RAME at the launch of bleuOrange while I was partially asleep (due to lack of sleep and heat, not due to Nick).
The video is from a rivulet in a ditch at the botanical gardens of Rio. The arm’s are yours. This is a normative future book model. Contemplative.between.algorithmic.
Bastion .:. Fertile Oblivion
Incessant. Regurgitated desire. Copyright packaging .
Luminous debris. Mercilessly scurrying.
Fertile oblivion. Succulence.
Bastion .:. Fertile Oblivion .:. 24 videos of an arcane hidden universe. Phrases looped on an interval that is out of synch with video loading. Serialist universe…. Running time: approx: 20 seconds to 4 minutes dependent of course on yr capacity for wonder, yr empathy with grime, and yr spare time.
Pulpy
Well, the other evening I just got an impulse to fill the big sink with transparent jello, a box of agar-agar, and a few packets of gelatin. Stirred it up and let it sit for a few hours until its surface responded to caresses with tiny palpitations. When asked (by Sophie) what I was going to film, I responded irritably and honestly: “No idea.”
The artistic process for me is similar to being led blind by an inexorable and impulsive guide through a vast darkness. The guide occasionally gives me matches to illuminate my localized region, but often disappears, leaving me in absolute darkness. During the guide’s absence, I stand there mute and impotent, helpless to move, paralyzed by my lack of perception. Eventually, the guide in the guise of inspiration reappears inside my body and suggests something. The suggestions often seem vaguely ludicrous (Example: “Fill thy sink with jello and wait“), are offered with no rationalization, insufficiently contextualized, can appear sorta insane and have no theoretical foundation. Yet, the suggestions all occur with a very recognizable autonomic effect: my skin tingles mildly, the idea has a strange resonant signature that is both calm and clear. I guess that similar things must happen to mystics or schizophrenics.
And thus Pulpy was born … (18 brief videos of disintegrating doodles done on scrap paper misprints… Running time: approx: 11 minutes.)
Eyes CU
You look deep into Things even as they itch, burn and bleed their way into You.
Then Things are inside You, looking out, open to comprehend why Is is.
But Things have lost their knowledge of Things, and now Is is lost.
And until Is is aware of itself all Things seem strange.
Mouthy — a parable in two parts.
So I managed to convince a few friends and a neighbor to stick their mouths in the sink and make bubbles. Built a soundtrack from their huffing breath beating against the water. Converted the single mouth video into a massive mouth doubled. And made it into internet drool.
Technically: the video is slowed to half-speed for purely aesthetic reasons; exported at a 30fps compression, its played at 15fps in order to allow the eye to recognize the volatile bubble field. (Thanks again to Sophie for suggesting this design change).
Mouths emerged from perforations in Mind. Eating seeing touching and being, all-in-one. I am what you’ve eaten. You are what I’ve eaten. All eaters will be eaten. The voracious universe innoculates us against caring. Our turn will come: to be fed, to be food. We drown in tiny nourishments. Drenched in words and food. Wombs in each mouth. Knowledge in every morsel. Tongues making time. Appetites creating space.
I will probably expand on this experiment in the coming weeks: add a voiceover, compose a real soundtrack, film more mouths, and focalize the rhythm. In other words, it is a seed.
Homage to Gary Hill
I’ve never seen a Gary Hill installation. Except for a 30 second clip of “Incidence of Catastrophe” online. But I am reading Gary Hill: Language Willing a book prepared in conjunction with an exhibit that toured Idaho, Arizona, Washington and Utah in 2003-5 .
Hill makes “experiential video”(p49) installations incorporating language. The compositions are formal, precise and visceral, performative and somehow clinically analytic. (Or at least this is what I glean from readings and the tiny clip)
The rental fees for screening are normative (i guess) for an arts archive, but a little bit more than i’d be prepared to pay as a solo citizen. The image below comes from the menu pricelist at Electronic Arts Intermix
So for the plebes (like myself) uninfected by a glimpse of Hill’s work, I offer this week’s sketch, another rough attempt to physicalize the letters: scratch mix wet paper print. I will reshoot this stuff and somehow incorporate it into the final mashup but the sketch offers a rough sense of its potential.
OLD SITE with full text and links to FLash