Jeff S

How Concepts Become Sentences

I have always heard people describe advanced level comprehension of foreign language as being able to "think in French," or Spanish, or English. In truth, there exists an abstract language of thought, entirely separate of and independent from "speech" language. (Language in this instance refers to the cognitive systems involved in communication, not just audible speech)
If this "mentalese" (Steven Pinker's term for this thought language) precedes language in the hierarchy of conceptual representation, language is nothing more than a tool for translation, as good or bad as any other. This runs in the face of the intellectual groundswell, which tends to emphasize "traditional," language-prioritized media over the dangerous TV/Film/Video/Computer black arts.

Here is a loose, unacademic, stereotypical matrix of how new and old media are often represented:

Good	Bad
Reading	TV
The Theater (including Broadway Musicals)	the Commercial Cinema (including Will Smith movies)
Talking to real People	The Internet

These beliefs assume the supremacy of language as a valuable educational and communicative tool, which it certainly is. But is it the most efficient? Is language the best translator for the various "concepts" that form the underlying language of our thought?

There is an unusual, standardized film grammar for illustrating all of the elements in the universe, given the time constraints of an Intro segment on a video or film. Sequencing an apple, a cat, a little kid and an astronaut is certainly no match for creating a reference book filled with pages of description for an apple, a cat, a little kid and an astronaut. But there is something eminently human about representing "everything" in the span of a few seconds. In fact, it is what we have to do everyday to efficiently interact.
(I sometimes imagine what a society without assumptions would look like; in a lot of my work, it is difficult to avoid this guilty pleasure of starting from absolute zero)

Isla de Las Flores by Jorge Furtado

This film is one of many which use the technique of semantic/elemental/Gestalt representation, where each shot corresponds to a "thing," not unlike a word in a sentence. In many of these movies, there is an accompanying narration, but in truth, they work just as well without. They are sort of like Dick and Jane children's books, usually using this simplistic style to further complicated opinions.
I am sick of the school of criticism which accuses the "MTV generation" of throwing away drama in favor of simple or sexy images (like Isla de Las Flores). I am not convinced that drama, fake conversation between fake characters, is really that great, anyways. If images, tied together so as to form some transcendent meaning, give us quicker access to profound thought, then why not accept these images, these things, these visual representations of the thought language, as powerful and beautiful and necessary.

I Lost Power Today

No Power Jam / Hit my Head on a Cabinet (2.5 MB)

Today, while watching tv, the power to my house was interrupted for 15 minutes or so.
This is enough time to completely miss the arraignment portion of Law and Order (The Street => The Courtroom).
I gathered up all the analog noisemakers I could

Jonas Mekas, John Kilduff, beautiful restrictions

If question and answer sessions at art lectures were football games, "How would you describe your creative process?" would be the most popular play of all time.
The "correct" answers to this question usually summarize how and where artist get their ideas, and explain the technical details of how these ideas are executed. This model of creative production assumes that conception and creation are essentially the same thing, which is unrealistic. I have never heard someone describe how, after coming up with the next great idea, they sat on it for five years before doing anything. If creation is beautiful, then creative roadblocks must not be worth mentioning.
Jonas Mekas and John Kilduff (of Lets Paint TV), two of my favorite artists from 2006, have turned this impasse between creation and conception into art. The results are strange and wonderful.



Jonas Mekas is "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema," and the founding member of the institution where I work. His work is diaristic, and he is perhaps best-known for his portrayals of 1960's and 70's counterculture (featuring John Lennon, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg etc). Refusing to be relegated to the past, he has made a promise to make one film a day, available for free online, for the entire year of 2007. Highly reccomended.
Mekas switched from film to video some time ago, but in an interview on WPS1, he describes how film forced him to shoot in the short, tiny bursts that have come to define his aesthetic. I was struck by this insight; film-making can be arduous and costly, and film-makers are constantly confronted with failure. Real creativity knows no restrictions, though, and Jonas Mekas is as good an example of this as any. Content must dictate process, and there is never a good excuse for not making something.



John Kilduff's show, "Let's Paint, Exercise and Make Blended Drinks TV", is the ultimate test of idea and execution. A painter by trade, Kilduff has come to internet fame through this phenomenal cable access show, which has him painting while exercising and making blended drinks, along with any number of other activities. Here is one of his videos. Seeing is believing.
Kilduff explains that painting while running on a treadmill erases the "the primary stumbling block that prevents most people from expressing themselves on canvas, the fear of making mistakes". In a literal sense, it is difficult to dilly dally with your art when you are creating things while running on a treadmill, blending drinks, or preparing a chicken.

Two Bests, 06

The Best Photos of 2006!
The above image was created by giving each photo in the best of 2006 equal opacity.

And as an extra treat, I read through every single blog on this site in 2006. A lot of great stuff. What's not included: a lot of the Creative/Academic writings that were posted, which are equally as great but outside the scope of this summation, and for which you should check out the blogs of Dave J, Jason C, and Joel F. Here are my favorite entries, from each of the blogs:

Bess W - clean sheets.
A statement of intent for a soon-to-be traveler. Can a blog be motivation for action? Ooh, or better yet, once motivated, will she blog it all? We will have to see.

Bryant - stinkasaurus rex
Some blogs are best described as Koans. The sentiment is universal, words efficient, happy sentence(s).

Dave J - Every day I'm hustlin'.
The best personal writing floats freely between subjectivity and objectivity. Even given Dave's recent goal of purely conceptual writing, he always manages to slip in a few, wonderful tidbits (bittids?). I'm probably not the best judge of Dave's writing, as I have the extremely lucky privelege of hearing his ideas, pre-publication (in blog form, or otherwise). Bias aside, this blog weaved together several ideas and joke patterns with factual information, wrapped up in poesy. If there was an ideal "form" for blogs that retain subjectivity, it would likely look like this.

Jason C - Into the 2 Dub 6.
Jason may have single-handedly saved Wandyteeth as a community, with his October/November 30 days of blogging challenge. At some point he started signing his blogs ("luv"!), posting sounds from his band Moon Crew, posting paintings, and writing because it is good. This blog precedes all of that, and as he notes, could be interpreted as a "downer". For me though, the concluding ontomontapeia predicts all the great stuff he has done this year, and I wonder if his new year's assessment of human life has changed at all.

Jmac and cheese - Shit.
Some people say that a great blog takes time and is neccesarily arduous, but I think this proves otherwise.

Joel F - That Boy Needs Therapy
A lot of the internet proves difficult to translate into the real world, absent another real person. The rare instance of real world emotion concerning the internet tends to be transcendent. "The lessons are different, but they definitely mirror each other" is an important note; change happens, but it is interesting to see how said change might have been nascent all along. His story of illegal parking and Ginger's note only underlines this fact. I laughed out loud.

Liz G - BibbityBoBi
Quality in blogs is often more important than quantity, best put by Bess W. A journey into the strange world of queer labels and self-self-assessment "But that -- there! -- is it self-censorship?" My favorite part is the capitalization.

Naimul - Macchiato: also slang for repeat offender
I always wonder whether or not references should be treated as secret doors from the conservatory to the billiard room or happy creative accidents. Does the diligent writer seek out diligent sleuths or diligent transcribers? You'll have to ask Naimul, because I expect that he will drop many more nuggets of mystery. Know that there are no such things as synonyms, and sometimes images in a blog are references the writer himself may not even perceive. I'll leave that one to be deciphered.

Rob - I hope your stepson doesn't eat the fish
"I asked him 'What is the point in writing if I can't share it with other people?'. He told me that is a great question, and there is only a personal answer." Rob's confused response to a strident start; I am a sucker for writing about the process.

Ryan S - So You Want To Be Famous, Huh?
Taking the zeitgeist of Chuck Norris with him, Ryan cooks up a plan for straight-to-video celebrity. Not sure that this ever panned out. Not sure that it needed to, either.

Supple Towel Cuddle - Stats & Pot
Semi-scientific, quasi-forensic, rambling analysis of a uniquely Omahan police incident. Ramble, in this instance, is a great thing.

Tim M - the drawing & winner...
Tim's epic winner selection video/images; I would obviously favor anything community inclusive, but something about this was magical. A moment of slowed down internet time!