339. booed usic & group armageddon

- Garfield Artworks, Pittsburgh, us@

- Saturday, November 19, 2005, 8:30PM - 12midnight

- I had made a vaudeo w/ both English & Spanish explanatory titles running thru it called "booed usic" detailing my activities under that name from 1984 to 1988. This was made especially to be used as a part of my presentation at the DINA "Influencers" festival in Barcelona, Spain, at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) on Friday, April 2, 2004 (see entry 334). That presentation having been such a source of frustration for me I was eagerly anticipating an attempt to present it more correctly. Here was my opportunity. For years, I've been plotting w/ my friend Fabio Roberti (see entries 187, 193, 198, & 317) to bring our mutual friend, percussionist Michael Evans, to Pittsburgh to perform & for Fabio to possibly come along & do something too. Sometime around the summer or fall of 2004, my old friend Daniel Higgs had been in Pittsburgh performing w/ his band Lungfish & he'd asked me whether I'd like to do something together. So this seemed like a good time to pull all these threads together. Since Michael was going to come, it ALSO seemed like a good time for me to rebuild my long-neglected Erector Set percussion & to bring out ALL of my percussion equipment - including a glass marimba I'd gotten thanks to Michael Pestel & Neil Feather's Small Nondo. The former had been made by a Japanese student of Michael's named Yukiko (sorry, I probably never met her & don't know her last name & I doubt that Michael remembers it either) who moved back to Japan w/o taking it w/ her. The latter is one of 3 Nondos that Neil's made & is the only one of its size. I'd NEVER used all this equipment in one gig before. For a projection surface, I stretched the spandex screen that I'd made for the Volunteers Collective "A Year of Sundays" Release Party @ the Chatham College Swimming Pool (entry 247) & a standard portable tripod screen was put near the front of the stage, audience left. The stage was otherwise covered w/ all the percussion equipment. In front of the stage to audience left was all of Michael's percussion arranged so Michael could play it facing the audience. In front of the stage to audience right were my electronics: DX27S keyboard, ASR-X Pro sampler, a pitch-to-MIDI converter, a radio mic, & a sampler/mixer arranged so I'd play it facing the stage. Behind me were 3 16mm projectors to be manned by Fabio & a video projector.

The evening began w/ the "booed usic" vaudeo projected to the tripod screen. This consists of footage from booed usic at t he telectropheremoanin'quinquennial (entry 62), my "6 Fingers Crossed Country T.Ore/Tour" (entries 74, 75, & 80 in particular), pirate tv premier of "6 Fingers Crossed Country T.Ore/Tour" vaudeo (entry 100), Easter Island Bunny Booed Usic (entry 101), Generic As-Beenism (entry 102), Tent's Muir (entry 110), "More English" (entry 111), & Murraygate Busking (entry 114). Unfortunately, about 5:00 into this the DVD switched to the track w/ the irrelevant "Neoist Guide Dog" movie on it & then moved back to the "booed usic" track's beginning. Not off to a good start. As I'd planned out on a timings sheet, after roughly the 1st 5:17 I started playing my Mechanically Repetitive / Re-Recorded Records samples. I played the samples off & on according to plan - allowing parts of the "booed usic" soundtrack to be at the fore at key points where some text was to be heard. After the explanation of the "booed usic busking unit" (explained at length in previous entries, such as entry 104, & elsewhere) at what should've been 26:04, I started playing my newest set of samples made from the Gnome ribbon & knob controlled synthesizer. This latter was made from a kit by Terrence Dougherty - who had then given it to me back in early 1992. After Jean-Luc Bonspiel's intro to Generic As-Beenism's premier at the Ultimatum II Festival in 1987, I started playing the Erector Set & then moved on to the glass marimba.

Given that the purpose of this document is to describe my own part of the evening, I'll give short shrift to the others by saying that: Michael Evans played a wonderful 26:47 percussion set while Fabio used the 3 16mm projectors to show various found films (presented mostly silent) - including a documentary about dadaism. Michael stopped playing just as Fabio's 3 projectors tripped the power-strip he was plugged into. It was a nice accidental simultaneity.

Fabio then screened his new shortened edit of his Avant Garde Showcase. For the purposes of describing my whole take on the evening, this was particularly significant because of its spoofing of 1950s Avant Garde culture.

Daniel Higgs read some poetry next & then played a fantastic guitar solo that struck me as heavily Indian influenced. I was astonished at how much he had his chops down. He then introduced our impending collective improv as a "Group Armageddon" & I've chosen to stick w/ that name.

SO, for the end, Michael & Daniel played percussion & I played samples & percussion. I also activated the samples by playing a kazoo that was radio-miked that triggered the pitch-to-MIDI converter. Fabio showed more found films. This section lasted for about 34:00. Greg Pierce shot mini-DV footage of it & etta cetera recorded the sound w/ mini-disc. I made a quasi-documentary of the event called history in the making..

This latter brings me to my over-all impression of the night. A local music reporter for the Pittsburgh City Paper had promoted the event because he likes Daniel's performing. Ending his promotion he mentioned that we'd be presenting the group improv at the end & wrote that it might be a "disaster" or "history in the making" but that he'd opt for the latter. I appreciate that he gave us this promotional plug but I was thinking of things differently.

For me, the gig was important because it was bringing together friends that I'd been wanting to do things w/ but, especially in the case of Daniel, who I'd known for 25 years, I hadn't really worked w/ before. As such, it was exciting. HOWEVER, I didn't feel that we were necessarily breaking any new ground. After all, my "booed usic" presentation involved my updating & referring projects of mine from 20 years earlier. I even wore the zipper pants (made in 1984) & the zipper jacket (made in 1988) the wearing of wch had framed much of that era for me. I don't wear them very often anymore - even though I did pretty frequently up until fairly recently. Also, the evening's emphasis on percussion & found films was hardly an innovation. Daniel's guitar solo, great though I think it was, was still not spectacularly new. All in all, for me, the event was alotof fun (& alotof work) & the attendees seemed to enjoy it substantially, BUT, it was in many ways a self-conscious outgrowth of avant garde culture of the 50s & 60s rather than anything qualifying as "history in the making". Hence my earlier comment to the effect that Fabio's spoof was particularly appropriate. Nonetheless, I had a great time!

333. Harps & Angles (new duet version)

- Brew House, Pittsburgh, us@

- Friday, March 26, 2004

- See entries 324, 325 & 328. This was the 1st time I ever applied for funding & received it. A whopping $400 from which was subtracted $150 for expenses. I had edited an approximately 30 minute 'performance' version of the vaudeo documentary that my collaborator & I had made of the original installation & the related 'performances' & other uses of it. Only 2 of the piano tables were installed for this & instead of having surveillance cameras mounted over them we used 2 mini-dv camcorders. The tables were facing each other in front of an audience seated on bleachers. The mixed together image from their 2 cameras was projected behind them to the left on a screen. We began by having the prepared tape projected onto the right side of the screen with its soundtrack audible. This played for several minutes & then my collaborator, Who is Like God? (Pestel), & I entered from the audience rear & assumed our positions at the piano harps. WiLG?(P) was wearing somewhat ordinary clothes but had spiked his hair with blue gel which was also covering most of his visible skin. I was wearing the brightly colored turkey feather covered outfit that I'd made for the Harps & Angles Quartet 3 described in 328. The vaudeo sound was potted down for the remainder. We played the harps by rubbing glass bricks along the strings producing an eerie & dense high-pitched resonance & then gradually switched to other methods of sounding the strings & other objects that we were using. As usual, WiLG?(P) & I occasionally coordinated our movements so that special visuals would result in the superimposition projection. After 20 minutes or so of this, I switched to playing samples of the Harps & Angles Quartet 2. As such, I left the overhead shot. This left WiLG?(P) to dominate the performative element which he did wonderfully with such touchs as playing small whistle-like instruments with his nose while climbing about on his piano-harp table top. Near the end the Videonics video mixer that we were using to combine the overhead images was set to its demo mode so that it could quickly cyle thru its selection of wipes to make the left projection more spectacular. Then WiLG?(P) & I wound up 2 fake birds in cages that then 'sang' & we climbed onto the tables in a precomposed manner. When the vaudeo ended I turned off the mixer so that both images stopped around the same time & the whole shebang ended.

325. Harps & Angles Quartet #2

- Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh, us@

- Friday, March 21, 2003, 6:40 - 7:05PM

- "Harps & Angles" is an installation credited to "Who is like God?s" & made for the Pittsburgh Biennial. Michael Pestel (see 199, 200, 203, 206, 242, 243, 245, 246, 247, 273, & 312) told me that he was planning to make an installation using piano harps from upright pianos turned into tabletops. He proposed that I be part of a series of performances using these harps. Thinking about this, I proposed that surveillance cameras be mounted over the harp table tops & that the images from these be superimposed over each other & projected into a pool of water which would reflect the projection. I further proposed that each of the harps be miked & that their sound be amplified thru speakers in the pool so that the water would ripple as response to the sound which would then cause the projection reflection to be altered by the ripples. Thusly, the sound generated by the harps would effect their own projected image & make an integrated result. I eventually proposed that this be called "Harps & Angles" as a reference to the piano harps & the camera angles as well as a joking reference to the common image of "angels & harps".

Michael Pestel proposed that instead of calling myself "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE", as I ordinarily would, that we make a name that refers to both of our given 1st names being "Michael". Since the meaning of Michael is sometimes said to be "Who is like God?", I proposed furthering the joking religious reference of the title by calling ourselves "Who is like God?s" as a sort of plural Michael that gave me a reason for using the unusual linguistic arrangement of punctuation within a word. Of course, I also preferred this because Michael is the only name I know of that's sometimes said to be a question.

In the resultant installation, the tables are arranged in a straight line slightly over 2 feet apart with the superimposition projection visible on the wall in front of where players would typically stand as well as projected into the water table placed in the corner of the room to the right of this. The water table was made to be approximately the same size as the piano harp tables. Pittsburgh electronic music composer & sound installation maker Jeremy Boyle gave us substantial advice on how to waterproof & place the speakers. Because of brightness in surrounding rooms, the reflection from the water table surface is too washed out. Given that this water table was an experiment, we discovered that it didn't work very well except when feedback was created. Bass feedback generated patterns on the surface of the water that Michael & I refer to as something like "Islamic tiles". I find these intricate geometrical patterns on the water completely fascinating. Michael placed weighted springs on these compass-point-placed speakers, which are mounted on the bottom of the table with their waterproofed surfaces exposed to the water, & a shell in the middle. The springs help conduct the sound to the surface & the placement of the shell can change the shape of the patterns. We discovered that many factors effect the substantialness of the patterns - such as how many people are standing on the floor around the table. Too many people apparently tend to dampen the conduction of the feedback thru the floorboards & to lessen or completely obliterate the patterns.

- This was the 2nd of 5 planned performances in this installation. For this, the quartet consisted of the usual "Who is like God?s" duo (myself & Michael Pestel (see 199, 200, 203, 206, 242, 243, 245, 246, 247, 273, 312, & 324)) + Elise Springer & Hyla Willis. Given the problems of the 1st quartet from the night before, we rehearsed this a bit so that there'd be more sensitivity between players. We began by simultaneously pulling off the covering black clothes from the piano harp table tops. Then Elise placed her hands in the middle, the upper register area, & the lower register area - followed by the other 3 players doing the same (one at a time) except that we ended by scraping the lowest string. Then we all 4 tried to do the same procedure simultaneously so that our hands would overlap in the projected image. In the improvisation that followed we cued solo w/ backing vamp sections by tossing a screw onto the piano table of the selected soloist. Players dropped out to facilitate duos & trios by standing back from their tables. 6 approaches to sounding the harps were chosen in advance as ones that we would try to collectively use in occasional unison: striking with mallets, plucking, strumming, sounding while tuning, activating by dropping objects onto the harp(s), & scraping. If someone were to use these techniques & someone else were to notice then the noticing person was to consider following suit to try to instigate everyone's doing so. I started the feedback & Michael, once again, climbed on his harp while the rest of us mimed massaging, tickling, & scratching him. We ended with the wind-up penguin toys walking on the strings while we walked away.

This time the audience refrained from attacking the piano harps until after we were done. HOWEVER, they were even MORE FEROCIOUS in doing so than they had been the previous night! With as many as maybe 10 people playing the harps at once they proceeded to hit the harps as hard as they could while they screamed. One guy used a rolling pin that had been used in the uncert as a large slide to vehemently hit the wood of the piano harp until Michael asked him to stop. The total lack of dynamic variety & subtlety in the audience's attack on the harps was truly astonishing. It was like watching a pack of monsters unleashed. They seemed to enjoy themselves immensely.

321. Breakthroughs in Sprocket Science

- Jefferson presents.. @ Backward on Forward, Pittsburgh, us@

- Saturday, November 23, 2002, 8:10 - 11:20PM

- This was the most ambitious screening I've attempted so far. Below is a somewhat rewritten version of a promotional letter that I sent to a local newspaper:

"Lamar "Chip" Layfield

Carol

Pat Brown

tentatively, a convenience"

This film is highly significant to me not just because it's my 1st one but because right off the bat I made something absolutely perverse in terms of what people usually expect from films. It's a super-8mm gambling game, there's audience participation - in fact, without audience participation it doesn't get shown. The 'REAL' content of the film is very peripheral to where one might expect it to be. 'Nuff said.

2nd, I'll screen 8 VERSIONS SIMULTANEOUSLY of my movie entitled "Subtitles" [It turned out to be 7]. "Subtitles" is a project I started in 1980. The most recent version has been made especially for this screening. It's somewhat akin to so-called "language-centered writing" in the sense that it discombobulates symbols & recontextualizes them in so-called "non-transparent" syntax - ie: I originally took super-8 home movie versions of (mostly) cheesy SF movies & reorganized the scenes into categories such as: "paranoia" & "dissolves" - thusly removing them from their original dramatic narrative flow. Things became MUCH MORE COMPLICATED. I like to say that this movie doesn't have a title, it has a subtitle, which is "Subtitles". The implication is that the movie itself has become a translation for another movie that exists as a larger phantom. The various versions to be presented were originally mostly shot in 8mm, super-8, unsplit 8mm, & 16mm. They'll be presented in 16mm & VHS here.

3rd, "back by popular demand" (Gordon requested it & Jim complimented it to me at a party) is my fake porn super-8 peep show movie made as Tim Ore in collaboration with Dick Hertz: "Balling Tim Ore is Best". Dick & I worked as "peep show mechanics" at 2 large porn places. Our job was to edit together something like 32 new peep show movies from stock footage every week. We made this one as a disorienting spoof for unwary masturbators & actually snuck it into a peep show where it ran for 2 weeks 24 hours a day. Tim Ore was tha name I used when I lived in BalTimOre since the city was kind enough to make itself a giant sex ad for myself. I'll show the peep show marquees that're left in my collection that Dick & I made too.

4th, "Bob Cobbing". This 16mm monstrosity will be correctly projected on a spandex screen that can be manipulated to make the film even more mind-boggling than it already is. If I do say so myself, this is a technical masterpiece. Step aside you canonized lazy structuralists. I took an early morning educational tv show of the type that must've bored people who then had to go to work but who watched it as a form of college class & CONCEPTUALLY VANDALIZED IT. Every second of this film is manipulated differently. I'm not exaggerating when I say that very, VERY few films have ever been made this laboriously.

5th, "Volunteers Collective". Approximately the same piece was presented at the Public Health building on Pitt's campus to a crowd of about 7 people (see entry 313). Considering how ambitious it is, I hope I get better attendance this time. The ANARKANIAN goes into the audience with the MYSTERY SUITCASE which triggers sounds by remote control as it opens & closes. The anarkanian dances & the sound dances with it. The anarkanian provides a live bit of CONCRETE MIXING to the projected VHS document of CircumSubstantial Playing - site specific improvisations in a swimming pool, at a NUDIST MASK PARTY, with FROTHING CATATONIC SIAMESE TWINS, in a boulder field, in a barnfull of Harry Bertoia's sound sculptures. There's a very rich mix going on here - both formally & conceptually.

6th, we come to that most wonderful of all mediums: the filmstrip. Filmstrips were mainly used for educational & industrial purposes without much formal innovation. Those days are behind us. Here we have my collaboration with the ever-wonderful ETTA CETERA: "Death Bed Aerobics" - a dual projection. Ever wonder how to prepare for death? "Death Bed Aerobics" makes it seem like a snap.

&, finally, my most recently completed movie (except for the specially made version of "Subtitles"): "Cuntralia". When I made it I hesitated to ever screen it in Pittsburgh. That's how personal & embarrassing it is (actually, I've made more embarrassing things but we won't discuss those now, eh?). But, no, I can't resist. This is my tale of SEXUAL OBSESSION WHICH I TRULY BELIEVED ALMOST KILLED ME. Yes, the 1st day I started editing this began a downward spiral that eventually lead to the ER. See it now, because, as with the rest of this program, you'll probably never get a 2nd chance.

For the majority of the night I wore my Tim Ore outfit - except during the "Volunteers Collective" portion. For that section I used a new set of samples culled from 61 sequenced pieces that I'd made between '94 & '97. That connected the suitcase sounds more directly to the samples. One of the most remarkable things about this evening for me is that I had to borrow about at least $30,000 worth of equipment to do it from at least 3 or 4 institutions & both managed to do so & managed to have nothing go wrong! Fortunately, my wish for a larger audience came true & the place was full w/ about 50 people.

319. In Memory of Jerry Hunt (w/ a nod to Charles Tomlinson Griffes' "The White Peacock") #1

- Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, us@

- Saturday, November 9, 2002, 3:02-3:34PM

- The Warhol films that I project in the theater of the Warhol museum are rarely watched for long by anyone. Most people seem to find them very boring. The film I was showing this day was the silent "Blow Job" - a shot of a guy's face while he's supposedly getting his cock sucked by a changing crew of gay artists. His expression doesn't change much, he mainly tilts his head back every once in a while as a presumed indication of excitement. After his presumed orgasm, he lights a cigarette near the end of the film. On this & the following day, an upright piano had been left in the theater near the screen - a leftover from some recent music events. When I started the film, there was no audience so I decided to play a piano "accompaniment" to it for my own amusement. I played in a somewhat 'flowery' 19th century romantic style, using flourishes, various scales, & drama, etc.. An audience member entered & I explained what I was doing & asked him if he minded. He didn't reply & only stayed for a few minutes - as is typical. After 12 minutes or so of this I got bored & stopped playing & returned to the projection booth. A couple of minutes later, 5 people entered & I decided to play for them with no explanation. As I passed by them en route to the piano, I heard the usual expression of boredom. One of the girls was saying something like "whatever!" & they seemed as if they might get up & leave. The theater was dark except for the screen & the exit signs & I sat at the piano & tried to play in as captivatingly romantic a style as I could (being not a great pianist by any means!) - & doing a passable job (I thought). I played for about 17 minutes & ended with a dramatic chordal crescendo just as the character in the movie lit his cigarette. I then left. The audience stayed throughout my playing & others may have come & gone. After I stopped playing, the audience almost immediately got up & left even though the film hadn't ended yet. This was a guerrilla uncert in that I'm sure that it wouldn't've been approved of by museum hierarchy & I, of course, had no intention of asking for 'permission'. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that my playing was what kept the 5 people there interested.

I decided to retroactively entitle this as I have in honor of the story that composer/performer Jerry Hunt would sometimes play pieces from his experimental classical repertoire, such as music by Stockhausen, when playing piano at a strip club. The story goes that he had to be protected by a chicken-wire cage to prevent projectiles from the audience from hitting him. The nod to Griffes' piece also ties into the combination of the gay sex (of "Blow Job") & what I call "Low Classical Usic" insofar as Griffes was an early 20th century gay composer who was live-in lovers with a cop & whose "The White Peacock" title was, I'm told, some sort of gay cruising reference.

315. Multiple Projection Light Show (of Sorts) #07

- Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, us@

- Friday, September 14, 2002

- Yet again, (see entries 298, 299, 302, 306, 308, & 314), as a part of my job as an Andy Warhol Museum projectionist, I showed films as background to bands in the theater. This time, the bands were Beam (from Pittsburgh) & Spaceheads (from London?). Since I'd played on the same bill as Beam (entry 311) & had enjoyed them & since I hate just doing the "same old shit" & since the bands hadn't just requested particular Warhol films (yawn), I decided to do something that I'd wanted to do for awhile but had wanted the museum to pay me extra for (but had never bothered to hustle): to bring my broken WJX-12 video mixer & to use my own materials specially designed for such instances.

For Beam, I started with video footage of trees blown about by a storm - projected by 2 projectors - 1 image inside the other. This was augmented by highly masked Warhol Screen Tests reels 14 & 15 to the left & right. The masking resulted in the projections being very small & in their revealing little more than eyes & the areas surrounding them. I later projected Screen Test reel 16 centrally. I changed the video to my own "Wallpaper Video" of the News American building being demolished in BalTimOre. Since there were 2 video projectors being used, there were interesting moments of phasing. I used the broken video mixer to render the larger image negative (& otherwise effected) to be in contrast to the smaller video image (located upper central). I eventually switched to "F.R.E.D. S. L.I.S.B.E.R.G.E.R." - entirely macro footage from a warehouse where I'd lived.

For Spaceheads, I used a tape called "Feedback" which pulsated nicely in sync with their beat. This was augmented by reels 1 & 12 of Warhol's "Chelsea Girls" which feature Nico. These reels were chosen because Spacehead had requested something with Nico because they'd played with her. The Nico footage at times matched with the feedback in such a way so that it appeared as if the feedback was a thought balloon emanating from Nico's head without any thoughts being inside. I also used my own "Concrete Mixing #1 (Technosensualist version)" as projection material &, eventually, reel 1 of Warhol's "Sleep". I was highly active in use of the broken video mixer (which had as an input footage from a camcorder aimed at the stage) so that there was substantial rhythmic sync between what I was doing & both Beam & Spaceheads. This was possibly the most successful & popular band light show projection I've presented.

312. Guitarists Anonymous #4

- Backward on Forward, Pittsburgh, us@

- Saturday, March 16, 2002, 7:53 - 8:28PM

- See entries 309, 310, & 311 for the preceding 3 Guitarists Anonymous presentations. By now, the 60+ slide presentation which had been used in 311 had 80 slides, & the filmstrip used in 310 had been improved somewhat. I'd also made a vaudeo that combined these 2 w/ footage shot by Kent Bye (as part of making a documentary about me) of 309 + a Rehabilitation Center scene w/ ethnomusicologist & well-rounded musician Eric Myers (see 155, 157, 161, & 171), Alex Van Ness (who assisted w/ 271), & Linda Gielec + an improvisation w/ great multi-instrumentalist Michael Pestel (see 199, 200, 203, 206, 242, 243, 245, 246, 247, & 273) in his instrument-filled apartment. The filmstrip was projected by Mark Gunderson, using various playful projection techniques, to the left; the vaudeo was in the middle; & Gordon Nelson projected the slides approximately every 24 seconds on the right.

I began, as usual, by asking guitarists in the audience to identify themselves & pointed out that I'd have to "torture" the recidivists that I saw present. The projections were then started. The vaudeo & the guitar samples were fed into the sampling mixer. Usually the vaudeo soundtrack was kept down. It was brought up during selected Rehab scenes, selected instrument playing with Michael Pestel, & brief snippets of the duets with Daryl Fleming & Greg Pierce. I played the samples as the main soundtrack to this triple projection & sample looped selections with the mixer including something that included the statement "I didn't fuck that ex-Moonie for nothing" - an actual reference to my life included in the Rehab scene. At 2 points I took the Grossinator (a toy used as a 'torture' instrument in the Rehab scene that pronounces 'gross' statements like "I'm going to make a horrible gross fart!") & played a statement from it into the ears of 2 people who'd identified themselves as guitarists. At the end, the Grossinator was allowed to make the last statement to the hypothetical guitarists who hadn't quit the habit yet.

Following me on the bill were Impercept (a Pittsburgh-based laptop performer) & Scientifically Speaking with Irene Moon (a Lexington-based entymologist lounge & noise performer) who was accompanied by the electronics band SICK HOUR.

307. CircumSubstantial Playing & Blindfolded Tourism

- Mattress Factory -> thru the streets -> Wittamy Do(ugh)Boys secret place -> thru the streets, Pittsburgh, us@

- Friday, August 10th, 2001, 7 to 9:00PM

- In the basement of the Mattress Factory I set up chairs so that winding walkways went between them. At the front, there were 3 projection screens with the 2 side screens angled at about 30 degrees in relation to the central one + 3 video projectors & VCRs. In front of those was a table covered with electronic instruments including a pitch-to-MIDI converter, a radio mic receiver, a sampler, a keyboard, a mixer to channel the VCRs' sounds, an end mixer/sampler, an effects unit, a MIDI-patcher, & a CD player.

As the vaudience arrived, the room was very dark except for a flashlight that I carried. I was wearing my Anarkanian silver & multi-tentacled 'spacesuit' (see entry 300) & I ushered people thru the confusing pathways. I also had a hidden radio mic & transmitter into which I made sounds that were sent into the pitch-to-MIDI converter & then used to trigger samples. The 196 seconds of samples were all taken from the computer edit of my published Volunteers Collective "Yr of Sundays" tape (see entries 237, 238, 240, 242, 245, & 246 for related descriptions).

After about 10 minutes, I started the video projections - the 3 half-hour sections of my "Volunteers Collective" movie presented simultaneously. The samples & vaudeo footage were related - often from the same sessions. The mix was set so that the sound from the imagery on the left screen was heard only in the left channel, the sound from the imagery on the right was only in the right & the middle imagery's sound was in both channels. The left speaker was front left & the right speaker was back right - to exaggerate the stereo separation. After the vaudeo started, I continued to meander thru the seating aisles with the flashlight & making triggering sounds for another 5 minutes & then eventually went to the electronics table for more complex sound generating & mixing possibilities.

For the remaining 25 minutes of the projections, I mixed the soundtracks, played the samples, looped short tracks on the "Yr of Sundays" CD that was being played, added effects, & recorded & played back looped samples on the final mixer/sampler. The mixing was done in such a way so that only selected parts of the soundtracks were audible. As such, a vaudience member trying to associate sounds with images would have to be constantly searching for the connections. At a few key points, the samples I played were related to the visuals. Hence, when the 2 scenes of the implosion of a downtown Pittsburgh building (500 Wood Street) were shown (footage provided by Sharyn Frederick - see entries 192, 197, 200, 242, 246, & 247; sound provided by Michael Johnsen - see entries 191, 192, 197, 199, 200, 201, 204, 242, & 263) I'd play a sample of the implosion & exaggerate it even further with effects processing to increase the drama.

Throughout, my face & bodyshape (to a minor extent) were disguised by the 'spacesuit' - & I hadn't spoken. When the projections ended, I turned to the vaudience & explained that that (highly dense & disorienting section) had been the "orientation". In a sense, it was, because most of the footage was relevant to CircumSubstantial Playing & presented Volunteers Collective participants playing site-specifically. As such, the vaudience had been prepped for having a CircumSubstantial encounter of their own - which led to my then expressing my hope that they would continue on to the next part which would consist of their being blindfolded & taken on a fieldtrip to an undisclosed location. Just my speaking after the intense unusualness of all those very varied sounds must have been a somewhat shocking contrast. The fieldtrip plan had been widely publicized in many of the local 'news'papers, thru the internet, & thru mailings but I didn't expect many people to be willing to undergo such an experience. Was I in for a surprise! EVERYONE THERE, except maybe for one couple with children, WANTED TO DO THIS!! Over 60 people! Go figure.

They all filed out & up to the parking lot where various vans & cars waited to transport them. There were 9 drivers: Steve, Julia, Jessica, Bill, Stephanie, Michael, Brieanne, Jennifer, & Sara. I got out of my 'spacesuit' so that I was just wearing fairly ordinary grubby summer clothes. I went with the 1st van with Steve from the Mattress Factory driving, my friend John with a camcorder, & Franka Bruns (a reporter/photographer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) as well as perhaps 9 vaudience members - all blindfolded. Most of the MF drivers had been on a rehearsal run earlier that day to prepare them for what they were expected to do now.

I'd spent more than 50 hours making a 19 minute recording (which I ended up calling "CarCophony") meant to be played during this drive. This was made from over 125 car-related sound effects organized so that their playing would be subtle at 1st & then exaggeratedly obvious overkill. A rough outline of the structure is as follows:

Sparse Sneaky Beginning: 00:00:000-02:43.050

Subtly Silly 1st Continuous Miscellaneous Scenario into Gas Station: 02:43.051-05:44.583

Big Crash Scene: 05:44.584-07:22.804

Aftermath of Crash w/ Bad Batteries: 07:22.805-09:13.888

Motorcycles: 09:13.889-11:35.019

Miscellaneous Traffic Sounds Obviously Effected & Edited: 11:35.020-13:11.939

Approaching Peace at Last..: 13:11.940-15:00.004

..blown by the Races: 15:00.005-17:00.005

Final Car Wash: 17:00.006-19:00.000

In the html version of this text a more in-depth analysis of this can be read by clicking on the CarCophony Plan link. These sound effects were taken (without permission - please forgive me! I love sound effects!) from: Excelsior Sound FX 200 Sound Effects (green box) Volumes 1 & 2, Excelsior Sound FX 200 Sound Effects (orange box) Volume 1, Audio Fidelity (AFSD 5890) Demonstration & Sound Effects Record, BBC Sound Effects: DISASTERS, Sound Effects Volume 4, Lars Eastholm's Sound Effects Volume 3: AUTOMOBILES, Robert Hall Sound Effects 48/49 & 75, "the exciting racing sounds of Grand Prix challenge of champions", & BBC Sound Effects Library 5: Transport. I also recorded & integrated a test run of the trip with the assistance of my friend Joy.

The drivers were instructed to emphasize parts of the "CarCophony" by driving in response to it. So, eg, during the "Aftermath of Crash w/ Bad Batteries", I signalled to Steve that he should stop the van & jerk the car forward as the battery sounds sputtered. I'd timed the drive at 14:28 so the recording took this into consideration by having certain sounds, such as the passing of a diesel lorry, happen when the vehicle would probably be stopped at a light or stop-sign. The timing was also intended to result in the car "Races" section (a very dense & speed-change altered part) occurring around the time that people would be arriving at the undisclosed location so that as they would exit the vehicles they'd be surrounded by loud Grand Prix car sounds.

When the blindfoldees arrived, they were helped out of the vehicles by the 16+ guides/ushers: Mike, Greg, Cory, Woody, Chris, Cerrina, Ron, Joy, Miriam, John, Neo, Tate, Sharyn, Mel, GLF Dave, & Ben, etc. Many of these ushers had clear-plastic masks covering their faces & other masks on the backs of their heads. Ron was bare-chested except for a very stripper-esque fringy bra. The audience had their hands placed on the shoulders of the guides in front of them & the guides then walked & gave them forewarnings of upcoming obstacles to be careful of: curbs & steps & the like. Ironically, many of those ushering have participated in such celebratory political activities as "Reclaim the Streets" - now classified by the Police State's very own FBI in its typical despicable Draconian fashion as "terrorist". Yeah, right. As such, many of the blindfolded were being cared for by so-called "terrorists" & not a hair was harmed. The FBI are the terrorists.

The audience was led into a building & down some steps into a mysterious large space. This area had been lovingly constructed by the Wittamy Do(ugh)Boys (Mike, Greg, Dave, & friends) out of mostly found materials over more than a year. In the interest of keeping this experience continuingly mysterious for any audience members who might find this description somewhere, I'll leave this telling somewhat vague. Three or 4 hairy dogs wandered around rubbing past & adding to the sensations. The blindfolded were led around a deep pit in which 6 masked nudists were making sounds intended to be of difficult-to-ascertain origin. I had anticipated that if people were to peek from under the eye-coverings they'd be further surprised & confused by this sight. Only a very few people peeked! Maybe only one person peeked into the pit! Apparently, they preferred to totally cooperate with what they thought they were expected to do! Once again, I was shocked! The pit crew consisted of etta (who was the coordinator of this end of the activities - see most of the entries from 207 to 300), Swifty, Fruity Dave, Nicole, Spat (see # 305), & Wynne.

Franka, the Post-Gazette reporter, took photos from the pit vantage point & one of them was printed in the paper on the following Monday. Imagine the surprise of the blindfoldees when they finally got to see this aspect of what they could only hear at the time! In the photo, Miriam (a slender maid with a "Sunday-best" hat on) is leading a young blindfolded man on an apparent ledge while 2 troll-like figures are seen in the pit below - one holding a frying pan. The scene looks like a precarious hero's journey from a fairy tale.

The people were then led back out to be driven back to the MF. As they were leaving, I played various mostly whale, animal, & bird sounds over the pirate radio & added audience-specific voice-overs that could be heard via the radios in their vehicles. As the whale sounds played, I told the blindfoldees leaving that they'd just been temporarily altered so that they could be underwater & that if they'd peeped they would've seen rare undersea creatures. For people leaving in a car, I claimed that we'd just broken into the zoo. For others, I said that they'd just been blindfolded by anarchists & taken to an undisclosed location & returned UNHARMED & mentioned that if we'd been the government they might not've been so well-treated. As an elaborate edit I'd made of bird sounds played (from the "Us Animals" CD I'd made mentioned in 305), I explained that all the driving around had just been to confuse people & that they'd really just gone to the National Aviary nearby to the MF. All of these stories were meant to further expand their imaginings of what had happened.

The drivers had been told that the audience could be encouraged to remove their blindfolds when they got far enough away from the secret place. I expected the blindfoldees to be uncomfortable & wanted them to be able to be free as quickly as they could be without ruining the experience. At least 2 people opted in favor of keeping them on all the way back to the Mattress Factory so that they could more fully experience the mystery! Bravo!

Many, MANY thanks to the MF for being so open to supporting such a 'lunatic fringe' project, to the sizeable crew for being so generous with their time & energy (& so TRUSTWORTHY), &, especially, to the BLINDFOLDED AUDIENCE for taking the risk!! Thanks also to Jarrett & Owen & etta for additional camerawork & to all those not mentioned elsewhere specifically by name such as George, Barbara, Jean, & Maggie, etc..

303. SNAFU = Situation Normal: All Fucked-Up

- Film Kitchen, Melwood Screening Room, Pittsburgh Filmmakers, Pittsburgh, us@

- Tuesday, March 13, 2001

- I'd been trying to have the Film Kitchen present 1 of my feature-length movies since about October of 1999 to no avail. Bill O'Driscoll, the FK's curator, programs the FK so that there are usually short pieces by 2 or more people in an attempt to reach a broad audience. As such, he thought that a long movie, especially a long experimental movie, would be too difficult for those targetted. Eventually we compromised on my screening all 3 reels of my 16mm feature "The 'Official' John Lennon's Erection As Blocking Our View Homage & Cheese Sandwich" simultaneously with me mixing the sound live & providing live commentary.

Screening this film at all is a challenge. I can't afford to get a print made so I only have the originals with sound separate. The originals have an ENORMOUS amount of splices & direct-on-film manipulation such as taped on garphics & holes punched in - all of which increase projection problems. In the crowded projection booth we set up the 3 projectors. It had originally been my intention to have the 3 projections flushly side-by-side without any overlaps but the lenses available didn't permit this. Reel 1 was projected on the upper left, reel 2 was in the lower middle, & reel 3 was in the upper right. Some of the corners overlapped slightly. The soundtracks for each reel were on separate CDs to be played thru a mixer receiving input from 3 CD players & a mic.

After the lens problem was solved as best as we could, I moved onto the sound & the 2nd problem appeared: the output jacks of CD player 1 had bad connections. That player was replaced. Projector 1 was threaded & it didn't work either & was replaced. Because of the different lengths & natures of each of the 3 reels, the plan was to have the middle reel project alone for 8 minutes, then joined by the right reel, & finally joined by the left reel a minute after that. We started the middle projector & the bulb IMMEDIATELY blew so we stopped it. This was fucked-up thing #4 & we hadn't even gotten a chance to start yet. Ah, yes! I informed the audience that this was ok because it was an appropriate SNAFU, Situation Normal: All Fucked-Up. We replaced that projector & tried again & the film tore within a few seconds & we had to stop again. Fuck-Up #5. Again the SNAFU was referred to & we began again. This time leaving the soundtrack out-of-sync for expediency's sake. Fuck-Up #6.

Reel 3 has text throughout most of its sound. The 1st text lasts for about 12 minutes & begins as follows below. It pretty much sums up the projection situation:

Fucked.

Fuck-Up.

Fuck-Ups.

Fucked-Up.

Fucking-Up.

Totally Fucked.

Fucked-Upedness

S.N.A.F.U.: Situation Normal: All Fucked-Up

F.U.B.A.R.: Fucked-Up Beyond All Recognition

F.U.B.B.: Fucked-Up Beyond Belief

F.U.M.T.U.: Fucked-Up More Than Usual

J.A.N.F.U.: Joint Army & Navy Fuck-Up

S.A.P.F.U.: Surpassing All Previous Fuck-Ups

S.U.S.F.U.: Situation Unchanged: Still Fucked-Up

T.A.R.F.U.: Things Are Really Fucked-Up

I could be called a fuck-up. I could even be said to have made being a fuck-up into my modus operandi. Then again, the opposite could be said w/ equal accuracy. Whatever. Some people study how to do things so that they can do them "right". By doing it "right" they're often doing it in the same way that someone before them has done it - or building on what's been previously done by expanding its understood logic. Other people just go ahead & do something making mistakes left, right, & center - recklessly pursuing their own vision, despite unpromising conditions, in the hopes of, at least, retaining their own personality, complete w/ quirks, & in the hopes of twisting their mistakes into unforseen advantages.

As a film & vaudeo maker, I shine the most as a fuck-up. Then again, I shine the most as someone who can get an enormous amount done w/ almost no money. As of this writing, I've made about 200 movies. My total expenses for all of them together has been around $11,000.00! Many of them are fucked-up. But, perhaps, this "feature-length" 16mm film entitled The "Official" John Lennon's Erection As Blocking Our View Homage & Cheese Sandwich is my magnum-opus of fucked-upedness. If this film is recognized for nothing else, perhaps it'll become a prime catalog of mistakes.

Given the above, all fuck-ups of the projecting were immediately contextualized as fitting right in. The projectors were stopped & started - sometimes because of problems with the film running thru poorly, sometimes just in an attempt to re-sync the sound & images. Everytime this happened it came across as another fuck-up & sometimes I made commentary to that effect. Everything went splendidly! Once again, the forces of frustration were frustrated!

296. Puppetistas Press Conference

- Ministry of Puppetganda, Philadelphia, us@

- Friday, July 28, 2000

- The Puppetistas were/are a loose-knit group of Puppeteers & fellow travellers who had rented a huge warehouse called the Ministry of Puppetganda in West Philly to enable large-scale puppet-making in preparation for resistance to the Republican National Convention. Several HUNDRED puppets were made - probably by at least 100 people. These included 137 8 foot skeletons representing every person on death row whose death warrant George Bush, the Republican candidate for president, had signed as Governor of Texas. Each skeleton was to have a condemned person's name on it. These were to be used in demonstrations to drive home the point that Bush is BLOODTHIRSTY. Other puppets & such-like included large peanuts w/ the names of corporate campaign donors carrying bags of money (to show who pays for the Republican Elephant), mice (to scare away the Elephant), jail-bar masks (to protest the Prison-Industrial Complex), & a multitude of other such calculatedly critically pointed symbols. These were eventually destroyed by the police before they could be shown publically. But that's a different story.

A press conference was held at the Ministry for print & electronic media. The idea was to have the conference be given by puppets. I thought this was a great idea & got involved at the last minute as the facillitator. I wore a cardboard 'dollar bill' on my shoulders that Rita Rodentia (see entry 266 & a slew of others) & I had made there the day before as part of our "Money Against Capitalism" project (see entry 286). The 4 Puppetistas were General Mr Sir Pentagon (a man w/ a Pentagon for a head - &, therefore, a hole in his head - representing the Military-Industrial Complex), the Shoddy Elephant (a small sock puppet - representing grassroots organizing & NOT a political party), Dr Monsanto (another sock puppet - w/ teeth that kept falling out - representing 'science' out-of-control & intoxicated by its own arrogance), & the Uber-Sock (a large sock that covered the Puppetista's whole body - the Uber Sock, we're told, was created by Dr Monsanto as an obediant replacement to those troublesome human beings & it NEVER SMELLS - alas, the Uber-Sock was out-of-control & ran amok growling nonsense - Dr Monsanto's attempt to control nature backfired, eh?). Participants ran around dressed as the mice & as the peanuts holding bags of money. A mobile percussion station was played to punctuate the conference. The press arrayed itself. I didn't pay attention to who they were but I'm told that Fox-TV was there & so was C-Span. A print reporter was the only one who could think of any questions to ask. The other reporters are pathetic: ill-informed & uninspired. The puppets stayed in character: General Pentagon puffed his chest (metaphorically) & spouted his ideology. The Shoddy Elephant tried to convey alternative environmentally & socially friendly options, Dr Monsanto tried to control the Uber-Sock as it frustrated his uber-mindedness. The guy from Fox-TV finally asked a question. He wanted to know my name. I told him that that's irrelevant & that we preferred to address issue-oriented questions. He said "Bless you" & left, mid-conference, supposedly telling someone on his way out that this was "the worst press conference he's ever seen." I'm told by several people on the streets later that they saw C-Span's airing of the whole 20+ minutes of it.

291. Conjuring (a.k.a. "Mad Scientist Duet & Sonic Tag Team Wrestling Match")

- Planet Cafe, Make It Up Club, Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia

- Tuesday, May 30, 2000

- I began by giving a pompous & highly exaggerated speech about the importance of Warren Burt (see 282, 284, & 289) & myself (amplified thru a mike on a mike stand) - giving a history of all the people that we'd supposedly studied with - including: Wagner, Harry Partch, Conlon Nancarrow, John Cage, & many others.. The purpose of the speech was to irritain the audience into wishing I'd shut up. This was finally interupted by Warren calling me from a mobile phone to a mobile phone I was carrying. The use of mobile phones was partially inspired by my annoyance at their omnipresence in Australia. I excused myself & answered the phone & then pretended that it was for someone in the audience.

I had a radio-mike attached to the front of my clothes. This mike sent a signal to a pitch-to-MIDI-converter which, in turn, sent a MIDI signal into Warren's laptop computer so that they could activate 4 banks/patches of samples that Warren had patched together. Which bank was activated when was controlled by Warren. All of the banks were organized into 4 pitch ranges meant to be activated by my vocals: a low drone range for the lowest pitch I was capable of (meant to be sounded as a sustained note), my normal speaking voice range, my falsetto range, & my whistling range. The agreed-upon 1st bank had been structured by Warren & myself so that the drone would trigger scat singing either by Eddie Jefferson or an unknown woman; my normal speaking pitches would activate 19 possible words organized so that their pitches ascended in correspondence to the words' alphabetical order. A 2 second delay preceded each of these words so that they could appear as if in conversational response to my own speaking. This 1st patch was drawn from various people's voices & the vocabulary was (perhaps roughly):

Conservative

Dawesses ["Dresses" lisped]

Face

Flat out

Function

How will you eat?

Insanity runs in my family.

Kick

On the floor

Organ

Precious

Puritanism

Radio

Rock

Same

Sample

Totally illogical

What's up?

You see

My falsetto voice triggered the broadest range of samples & my whistling activated all sine waves (of varying forms: ie: multiple sine waves simultaneously, glissandi, etc..). All of the work done creating these samples was by Warren. Each of these ranges was conceptually mutually exclusive. As such, there were only words in the normal speaking voice range & nowhere else & only sine waves in the whistling range & nowhere else, etc..

Independent of me, Warren had created the other 3 patches without my knowing what the samples in the drone, falsetto, & whistling ranges were as of the time of this presentation. Shortly prior to beginning, he presented me with a list of the vocabularies. Whether these new words had alphabetic pitch correspondences (as with the 1st patch) is unkown to me. These last 3 lists are presented here as they were presented to me & are, therefore, not in alphabetic order:

Patch 2: Cinema People

Alive

Alligators

Awful Silly

Boys

Capers

Cigarette Lighter

Clothes [male voice]

Clothes [female voice]

Dracula

Good

Guess

Handbag

Have to kill

I feel bad

They eat

Victory

Washstands

Well

Wonder Dog

Patch 3: Humphrey Bogart

Bad

Drinking your lunch

Cross Examine

Looking

Kid

Rocco

Less

Dying

The-uh

Made

Dreams

'tuff ["Stuff" without the "S"]

Decide

Maybe

Get

Buried

Here

Manners

Myself

Patch 4: Vineta's words

Abstract

Assertive

Caricature

Complex

Elbows

Eyes

Falsetto

Fast

Gibberish

Gentle

Hysterical

Limp

Nonsequitur

Relaxed

Rhythmic

Shy

Simple

Squirmy

Vehemence

The delay time preceding each of these words varied from patch to patch.

When my mobile phone rang & I answered it, I passed it to a member of the audience saying that I thought it was for them. When I made sounds into the radio mike & triggered samples from Warren's laptop patches these were played out from the laptop's speakers into Warren's mobile phone mouthpiece &, from there, to the earpiece of the receiving phone. At this beginning stage, the samples were only faintly audible to the audience coming from the deliberately muffled laptop speaker & from the mobile phone earpiece. After passing the phone to the 1st audience member chosen, I took it back & asked if had been for them - acting confused about what was going on. I then talked into the phone again as if talking to someone & pretended that I'd gotten further info about who 'the call' might be for & then continued to pass the phone thru the audience.

After a few minutes of this, I returned to the mike stand & blithered a bit more. This was subtly interupted by Warren then phoning our friend in the audience Steve Charman's mobile phone. They proceeded to have a fairly ordinary conversation. Steve knew that something was going to happen with his mobile because he'd been asked to bring it but he hadn't been prepped otherwise. His conversation was as if he was trying not to be too loud for fear of interupting the 'performance' he was attending.

Finally, the laptop was plugged into the PA & the triggered samples were loudly audible. I started this part off with saying, in falsetto, something like "I've been having all sorts of technical problems here so I think I need to do some free association." This was meant to prep the audience for my saying words from the vocabularies & then having words from the same vocabularies, but said by different people, be sounded shortly thereafter. The majority of the words I spoke from this point on were drawn from the patch vocabularies. I both stayed near the standing mike so that my vocal sounds could be occasionally amplified along with the samples & wandered thru the room so that they would be most audible to be people in my vicinity. It was probably clear to the audience that my vocals were activating the sounds but exactly how it was being done would've been difficult to determine. Two studio recordings of this last section were later recorded.

At one point I wandered down the front steps of the Planet Cafe & into the restaurant area below just as 2 people looking for the 'performance' entered the front door. I was cupping my hands around the radio mike & making a variety of sounds & saying vocabulary words as I walked thru the restaurant & then up the back stairs to the performance space again. I was later told by the 2 people who entered at this point something like "we knew we'd found what we wanted when we saw you doing that & then went upstairs & realized that your vocals were somehow connected to the samples." The person who told me this was quite enthusiastic. To people in the restaurant unaware that a 'performance' was happening, I might've seemed like a mysterious 'deranged' person muttering to myself.

At other points, I wandered thru the audience putting the radio mike in front of audience members' mouths to try to get them to attempt to trigger samples themselves. At least one person was loath to do so, presumably shy about her abilities as a performer, so I took back the mike & said "Just say NO to microphones!"

Given the technical vagaries of this process, the pitch-to-MIDI conversion (etc) was hardly 'perfect'. The converter (with, perhaps the 'assistance' of the radio mike's somewhat inaccurate transmission, etc) didn't necessarily 'interpret' my attempted pitches as what I intended them to be & there was a tendency for systemic feedback & other difficult to control extraneous pitch-to-MIDI info resulted in a somewhat less clear sequence & mix of samples than what Warren & I were aiming for. Nonetheless, the whole process was a stimulating CONJURAL process in the sense that my 'chanting' into 'thin air' brought forth 'spirits'.

289. Tantrum

- Planet Cafe upstairs, Melbourne, Australia

- Thursday, May 18, 2000, 8:30-11:30PM

- This was a collaboration organized by Steven Ball. It was advertised as a "non-stop experimental film video sound cabaret". The participants were myself, etta cetera (see most of the entries from 207 on - mentioning Jen Lahn, etta cetera, or maybe even Rita Rodentia), Steven, Warren Burt (see entries 282-285, & 287), Dirk de Bruyn, Virginia Fraser, Paul Rodgers, & Lee Smith. Most of these people have been making films &/or videos for a long time. Many have extensive experience with direct-on-film films & with multi-projector installations & "performances". This collection of skills added up to one the most satisfyingly complex sound-&-visuals projection events I've ever been part of.

The evening was complicated somewhat further for me by my being exposed to Chlorine Gas Poisoning. This lead to a visit to the hospital prior to the evening's presentation. It was a highly unpleasant experience that made me have a new sympathy for those in trench warfare during 'World War I'. Just imagine: the gas rolls over into the trench, the skin boils off, the throat blisters & the person suffocates. Fortunately for me, I came nowhere close to that but it DID effect my mood for the night.

The main stage is off to the audience's left & has its front cutting diagonally across the rectangular corner of the room - making it a triangle. A smaller stage/storage area is to the left of that & over the front stairwell. Paul Rodgers set up a very large white screen that could be both rear & front projected onto. This stretched across the entire front of the stage & mirrored its diagonal on the other half of the room. I set up a white spandex screen across the front of the smaller stage over the steps - this could also be used for both rear & front projecting. There were 2 video projectors rear projecting - one for each of the 2 halves of Paul's "V"ed screen. These were set so that they projected mirror images of each other - in other words, one was set to compensate for the rear projection by reversing the left-right orientation & the other wasn't. There were one or 2, probably super-8, projectors aimed from the end of the little stage across the stairwell to the wall at the top of the steps. There were at least 3 super-8 projectors behind Paul's screen & at least 3 16mm projectors at audience right set up to project from the front.

Attendees climbed steps to reach the space. At the top, they saw films projected - possibly super-8 loops by Lee. They received a hand-out with a chart that gave the order of the evening:

Haarlem

Lee Smith

Elwood Evening Improvisations

Warren Burt

Janet's Antarctica

Dirk de Bruyn / Warren Burt

Bob Cobbing

tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

From Scratch

Virginia Fraser

Vegetable States/Leaves / Hairfarmer

Virginia Fraser / etta cetera

An Abstract Phase

Steven Ball

Transmit

Paul Rodgers

The Truth About the Dimensionally Challenged

etta cetera

TANTRUM

Since this was intended to be "non-stop", each section flowed into the next - usually with some sort of overlapping projection. Warren played his laptop during both his video, "Elwood..", & during his collaboration with Dirk, "Janet's Antarctica", that followed. Dirk started his multi-projection towards the end of "Elwood..". Virginia's "Vegetable.." showed on the left screen & etta's "Hairfarmer" was screened simultaneously on the right. Paul's "Transmit" continued into etta's "The Truth.." & most of us did something during the final "TANTRUM", etc..

An early version (single-layer) of my 16mm film "Bob Cobbing" had been transferred to vaudeo by projecting it onto a spandex screen which was heavily manipulated to mutate the projection - making it look like it was breathing, eg. This was shot with a video camera with a wide-angle lens from a dramatic angle from below to create a "fish-eye" effect. The resultant transfer looks somewhat like a tv set that's gone biomorphic. This transfer was projected via both video projectors & the sound from it was sent to the PA. The final 16mm version of "Bob Cobbing" (double-layer) was initially projected overtop the audience-left video-projection.

I began playing electronics in addition to the pre-recorded soundtrack from the small stage - behind the spandex screen. I played a CD Player, a Kawai K1m wave-table synthesizer, the DH-100 Digital Horn, etc.. I was wearing the S.P.C.S.M.E.F. killer whale outfit & my severed head hat. etta made my shadow dance on the spandex with a flashlight. I came out from behind the screens & read the S.P.C.S.M.E.F. text (see 248) while etta went to the left video projector & played with blocking its light. In the meantime, at the 16mm projector on the right, Virginia did the same to its projection. The result was that both the superimposed projections had different parts dominate depending upon the positions of etta's & Virginia's hands.

After I finished reading the speech, I went behind the screen & etta got into the killer whale suit & her mask of Ganesa (the elephant-headed Hindu god that etta stars as in our movie "Don't Walk Backwards" that we were then making) & plastic flowers garland & began to dance to an "Official" sequence of the "Worm Charming Usic" CAMU (see various "Official" entries). I made her shadow appear with the flashlight. She crawled under the screen & I followed her out front with the flashlight. Ganesa went into the audience & caressed people with her copious trunk & then returned under the screen.

I started panning the 16mm projection across the full span of the screens - eventually leaving it in the middle of the "V" so that it was distorted by a widthwise stretching. I then returned to the small stage where I returned to playing electronics while etta spontaneously shadow-signed in AMSLAM after the video-projections stopped. Since the vaudeo was shorter than the 16mm (thanks to equipment speed inaccuracies, etc..), the vaudeo stopped considerably before the 16mm so an excerpt from my "Color Bars" was projected followed by the beginning of a pre-finished-soundtrack version of my "Diszey Spots" until the 16mm ended & all were cut off.

In the final "TANTRUM", Virginia discretely projected a super-8 film of hers onto a small area of the lower left screen while my/Monty Cantsin's "Transparent SMILE - Monty Cantsin Performing with White Colours" was projected onto the uppper right of the left screen along with projections from Dirk & Paul. Paul projected a super-8 on the right screen & someone screened video too. Paul used a wonderful projection machine of his creation in the middle. Paul played an analog synthesizer, Warren played laptop, & I played my electronics. I threw a tantrum in the middle of the front screaming "I WANT TO THROW A TANTRUM!, I WANT TO THROW A TANTRUM!" while jumping up & down with my hands in fists - eventually falling to the floor & kicking & finally disappearing under the screen. The evening ended with a dedication to Steven who was leaving Australia soon thereafter for his country of origin (England), possibly for good, after having been active in the experimental film & video scene in Melbourne for many years.

288. Anarchist World This Week

- 3CR Radio Station, Melbourne, Australia

- Wednesday, May 17, 2000

- Our friend Michael (see 286) is the sidekick for this radio program hosted by Joe. Michael invited etta (see most of the entries from 207 on - mentioning Jen Lahn, etta cetera, or maybe even Rita Rodentia) & me to be guests. When we met Joe before the program started, he immediately tried to arouse an 'attitude' in us by agressively calling us "clowns" & "Americans" & saying that he hated clowns & Americans, etc.. At 1st we were a bit taken aback but it didn't take long to figure out what his game was. We were scheduled to come on during the middle of the program so etta & I conspired a bit beforehand. When we entered the studio, I had a camcorder on my shoulder & started putting Joe on the defensive before he had a chance to do the same to us. Every crack he tried to make I countered with accusations about the authenticity of his anarchism. He asked what I had on my shoulder (the camcorder) & I expressed my shock at his not knowing that it was something to steal his soul with so that I could edit it & use it against him.

Neoism & Low Classical Usic were discussed. etta & I explained Money Against Capitalism (see 286 again) & put forth the idea that everyone should have their picture on the money & that everyone should collect them all. Of course, no-one should have to pay for this. To show Joe that Money Against Capitalism has already implemented this plan, we showed Joe 2 $50 notes with our pictures on them. Since the listening audience, obviously, couldn't see our proof, we described what they were missing. This latter was embellished by fake astonishment at some sort of dramatic physical transformation that Michael was going thru. A portion of track 8 from our RATical RATio - pRAT 1 CD, "Station Identification: For Radio Play Only", was played while I read the relevant section from the accompanying issue of the STREET RAT (#2). We departed with me shouting "You'll never see us alive again!" - &, as far as I 'know', Joe never has.

286. Money Against Capitalism

- the Streets, in front of the Stock Exchange, at the 8 Hour Workday Monument, etc, Melbourne, Australia

- Monday, May 1, 2000

- May Day is a worker's holiday created in honor of the struggle by political activists in the late 19th century in the USA to get the 8 hour workday instead of the 12 to 14 hours that exploited workers were typically forced into. This was achieved at great sacrifice & effort. The rich don't give it up easy now do they? In Chicago, some of the anarchists primarily responsible for agitating for this were executed in a frame-up job connected with a bombing of police who were using the usual brutality to break up a demonstration. These anarchists became known as the Haymarket martyrs. As I recall, 4 of them were hung & one of them commited suicide with dynamite in his mouth - rather than allow the state to kill him.

In Australia, this holiday is "officially" "celebrated" on a Sunday so that workers don't get off work. Ain't that some shit, yo?! THIS May Day protest, however, was celebrated on a Monday - when the 1st of May actually fell. etta (see most of the entries from 207 on - mentioning Jen Lahn, etta cetera, or maybe even Rita Rodentia) & our fellow activist Doyle & another woman whose name I forget & I had made a slew of props out of cardboard for this. There were figures of businessmen with $s for eyes, pro-environmentalist & anti-globalization signs, a "I reckon it's time for revolution" speech bubble, etc.. What etta & I were most excited by were our new Money Against Capitalism outfits. etta was dressed as a coin - with her head where the queen's would be & with text that read "Queen E-Lousy-Debt" around the rim. I was a $10 note - with my head where the male's head would ordinarily be. We shouted various things like "Money Against Capitalism!" & "We're tired of being in the hands of the few!". etta shouted that she wanted to be back in the fountains again. Both of us expressed how tired we were of being locked up in Swiss bank vaults. We wanted to be out in the streets partying!

We started at the main post office where the usual speeches that have the rabble-rousing quality of Muzak were made. Then we marched to the stock exchange where etta & I & our friends shouted the Jewish Disses (see entry 283) & various other spontaneous slogans far from the "Hey Ho" mold. One marcher broke into a lovely cannibalistic song proposing recipes made from burning the whole capitalistic lot. We arrived at the Stock Exchange, which was protected by a line of police on horses, & speeches were made in front of it. I threw in my speech-makin' 2¢ worth as a representative of Money Against Capitalism. Thus ended the socialist-planned protest.

Anarchists proposed marching further to the 8 hour workday monument. This was put up "for a vote". Why, I'll never know. The response seemed to be enthusiastic enough & away we went - receiving very little resistance from the cops. On the last leg of the journey, they didn't even bother to follow us. When we arrived at the monument, it was felt by a minority that it would be a good idea to block the road. After all, there weren't even any cops around to prevent it. I was part of this minority. Reclaim the Streets!

A group of about 15 of us blocked traffic in 2 of the 3 lanes & got into various interactions with drivers while the rest sat around on the grass - picnicing, I suppose. etta & our allie, Lochlan, danced around a limo & other vehicles. Our friend from Ska TV, Ameriko, & our future allies, Michael & Matt, sat in the street & kvetched about how lame they thought the majority were being for not participating. I shouted out "Honk if you hate capitalism!" & other such ploys intended to recontextualize any driver hostility. Surprisingly, many drivers seemed to honk in solidarity with us. A psychotic road-raged few acted as if they'd run us over if we didn't move. No-one was hurt & a group of us adjourned to a bar for some alcoholic celebrating.

281. Unknown Neoist Bust Installation Ceremony

- at the south wall surrounding Government House, Adelaide, Australia

- Wednesday, April 5, 2000

- There had been e-mail discussions for about 15 months between people in several countries about having an Adelaide-based Neoist Apartment Festival. etta cetera (see most of the entries from 207 on - mentioning Jen Lahn, etta cetera, or maybe even Rita Rodentia) & I flew to Australia originally motivated by the intention of participating in this hypothetical festival - even though we 'knew' from correspondence that it had no substantial basis. The following description, & all other entries relevant to this festival, are excerpted from:

A Report on the 1st Non-Existent International Neoist Apartment Festival

in Adelaide, South Australia

from Monday, March 20th, 000 'til Saturday, March 25th, 000

(With additional action on Tuesday & Wednesday, April 4 & 5, 000)

written by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

[etta cetera & I arrived in Adelaide on Sunday, March 19th & were met at the airport by festival conspirators Karen Eliot & Jen. I never saw Jen again in connection with any neoist activities. A vegetarian barbecue had been proposed for later that day as a festival planning session but that seemed unlikely to happen so the main event of the day was a visit to the former Adelaide Gaol where the Tap 000 Theatre was scheduled to perform (amongst others) & where I was scheduled to UNCERTIZE & to screen a video version of "Bob Cobbing".

Few, or no, VAUDIENCE members arrived, my sampler wouldn't work, the Tap 000 performance was cancelled, The Band That Couldn't Plough Straight played, & etta & I were severely jet-lagged, but I managed to stay awake long enough to screen "Bob Cobbing" anyway to a not-completely rapt small group.

Throughout this 1st day, it had become obvious that there was little or no interest in the long-awaited 1st Australian Neoist Festival that etta & I had been planning to attend for over a year & that we'd travelled over halfway around the world for (having taken the long way via Malaysia). All of Karen's attempts to organize planning sessions had been fairly ill-attended & fruitless. All of Karen's phonecalls to clubs & such-like places to try to set up UNCERTS, SO-CALLED WHATEVERS, & such-like had been unreturned. Given these circumstances, I proposed that we dub the festival the 1st NON-EXISTENT INTERNATIONAL NEOIST APARTMENT FESTIVAL IN THE YEAR 000 worth travelling over halfway 'round the world for. After all, who wants to travel that far just for your ordinary, everyday Neoist Apartment Festival when you can go to the 1st NON-EXISTENT one instead?

It was decided that the Non-Existent Festival would consist of SECRET MEETINGS partially publicized thru messages passed via SECRET HANDSHAKES.]

We returned to Adelaide on Saturday, April Fool's Day. On Tuesday, April 4th, we assembled the Unknown Neoist Bust Mold sections & began to pour the hydrostone & plaster cast. This continued on Wednesday, April 5th, & Karen, Robyn, etta, & I took the bust to its intended new home along the North Terrace road by the Government House walls & dug a hole in the ground near the busy sidewalk/bus-stop where we planted it atop its post. A laminated text panel underneath 'explained' it thusly:

THE UNKNOWN NEOIST

The Unknown Neoist is a transparency sharing a garden plot with the Unknown Solderer. Free to cum & go in the Dreaming, they A&B Roll both Normal & Original as it suits their leisure. We are gathered here today to set our rightful place at the table of the elements.

- a composite gone-bust authorized by the honorable so-&-so

I played sound effects with the player belt, we flamed steam irons & read the text aloud. People stopped & watched us & read the text & asked us questions. When we were done, we drove around the block & vaudeoed the strip of busts culminating in our own. As we passed a guy reading the panel, I shouted out: "Neoism's a town with a population of 12 with a bar in it!" (my new favorite definition of Neoism - inspired by having visited the town of William Creek between Lake Eyre & Coober Pedy in the outback). The man turned around & looked at us thoroughly perplexed & we drove off.

279. 4th Secret Meeting of the 1st Non-Existent International Neoist Apartment Festival in the Year 000 - Anti-Neoist Rally

- Streets of Adelaide, Australia

- Friday, March 24, 2000, 1PM

- There had been e-mail discussions for about 15 months between people in several countries about having an Adelaide-based Neoist Apartment Festival. etta cetera (see most of the entries from 207 on - mentioning Jen Lahn, etta cetera, or maybe even Rita Rodentia) & I flew to Australia originally motivated by the intention of participating in this hypothetical festival - even though we 'knew' from correspondence that it had no substantial basis. The following description, & all other entries relevant to this festival, are excerpted from:

A Report on the 1st Non-Existent International Neoist Apartment Festival

in Adelaide, South Australia

from Monday, March 20th, 000 'til Saturday, March 25th, 000

(With additional action on Tuesday & Wednesday, April 4 & 5, 000)

written by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

[etta cetera & I arrived in Adelaide on Sunday, March 19th & were met at the airport by festival conspirators Karen Eliot & Jen. I never saw Jen again in connection with any neoist activities. A vegetarian barbecue had been proposed for later that day as a festival planning session but that seemed unlikely to happen so the main event of the day was a visit to the former Adelaide Gaol where the Tap 000 Theatre was scheduled to perform (amongst others) & where I was scheduled to UNCERTIZE & to screen a video version of "Bob Cobbing". Few, or no, VAUDIENCE members arrived, my sampler wouldn't work, the Tap 000 performance was cancelled, The Band That Couldn't Plough Straight played, & etta & I were severely jet-lagged, but I managed to stay awake long enough to screen "Bob Cobbing" anyway to a not-completely rapt small group.

Throughout this 1st day, it had become obvious that there was little or no interest in the long-awaited 1st Australian Neoist Festival that etta & I had been planning to attend for over a year & that we'd travelled over halfway around the world for (having taken the long way via Malaysia). All of Karen's attempts to organize planning sessions had been fairly ill-attended & fruitless. All of Karen's phonecalls to clubs & such-like places to try to set up UNCERTS, SO-CALLED WHATEVERS, & such-like had been unreturned. Given these circumstances, I proposed that we dub the festival the 1st NON-EXISTENT INTERNATIONAL NEOIST APARTMENT FESTIVAL IN THE YEAR 000 worth travelling over halfway 'round the world for. After all, who wants to travel that far just for your ordinary, everyday Neoist Apartment Festival when you can go to the 1st NON-EXISTENT one instead?

It was decided that the Non-Existent Festival would consist of SECRET MEETINGS partially publicized thru messages passed via SECRET HANDSHAKES.]

As usual Secret Handshake Messages were exchanged: "Anti-Neoist Rally - Down with the "Quit your job" leafletters!". These were rubber stamped with: "Work Will Make You Free Trade". The instruction had been to "Meet at the north side of the fountain in Victoria Square @ 1:00PM Friday March 23rd" Readers were further informed that "It's Always 1 O'Clock in Anti-Neoism." Somewhat to my surprise, there were 2 new Anti-Neoists awaiting: John & Ebony - in addition to Rick & Bird-E (who'd proposed this Anti-Neoist Rally & who'd established his personality as an anti-neoist more than anyone else in Adelaide so far) &, of course, etta & myself: as the Anti-Neoists - with Karen as that dagnabbed Neoist attempting to hand out leaflets. Bird-E had a banner that read "Contemporary Culture is Fantastic" & etta & I brought cardboard signs that read "Karen Eliot is a Front Covering Monty Cantsin's Back" (when I'd chant from this I'd usually add: "& Luther Blissett's Behind It All!"), "Neoists are Worse than Multi-National Corporations", "Stop Neoists from Pissing in Your Gene Pool", etc.. Walking on the King William St sidewalk, we passed thru dense groups of pedestrians while Karen attempted to give out the "Quit your job"s. The Anti-Neoists harangued everyone around with things like "Don't take the pamphlet! Neoism is evil!" & if people asked what Neoism was, I said things like "Neoism's against everything you stand for!" - keeping everything vaguely tautological to try to maintain a purist propagandistic emotionally charged but otherwise empty stance. The result of this reverse psychology was that many more people than usual took the pamphlets & I even saw people sitting around reading them to each other in apparent wonder. Whenever anyone wouldn't take them, I loudly lauded them for being an Anti-Neoist. The idea of "It's Always 1 O'Clock in Anti-Neoism" was developed into the idea of working straight thru without a lunchbreak & workers were encouraged to do so & to WORK HARDER. Chants contrary to the usual 'leftist' ones were created - like: "More Cars, Less Bikes", "Bring Back the Vietnam War", &, etta's personal favorite, "Everything's OK!". Ardent attempts to convert people to Anti-Neoism were made. One man approached etta with a "Quit.." pamphlet & said something like: "People shouldn't quit their jobs! They should get jobs & join society!" - to which she replied: "That's what we think too! It's that Neoist over there who's against us!". John kept rhetorically asking: "Would you like fries with that?". Finally, we reached the steps of Adelaide's Parliament where the Anti-Neoists mounted their/our signs & continued to harrass Karen. When s/he ran out of pamphlets s/he continued to hand out with the "Unknown Neoist for Lord Mayor" posters that etta & I had made & which had been sporadically posted & given away in the preceeding days. A policeman came & recognized Rick from a previous demonstration. They had a friendly chat & I approached the officer & thanked him for coming & told him that we needed more of his kind on the Anti-Neoist side & begged him to bring more police along with him the next time. He received this all in good humor & left saying that if we had any trouble with any other police that we should come to him & he'd smooth it out. The Secret Handshake Message for the day had the following:

"Down With the Down-Under Neoists! Tired of Neoists PISSING IN YOUR GENE POOL? Crash Their 5th Secret Meeting of Their Stupid 1st Non-Existent International Neoist Apartment festival in the Year Zero Zero Zero @ Victoria Square @ 1:00PM Saturday March 25th & Show Them What's What!".

What wasn't mentioned in the above was that this was the starting point of Adelaide's 1st "Reclaim the Streets" (although at least 1 similar event had previously occurred) which was also being coorganized by Karen Eliot.

277. 2nd Secret Meeting of the 1st Non-Existent International Neoist Apartment Festival in the Year 000

- 3D Community Radio Station, Adelaide, Australia

- Wednesday, March 22, 2000

- There had been e-mail discussions for about 15 months between people in several countries about having an Adelaide-based Neoist Apartment Festival. etta cetera (see most of the entries from 207 on - mentioning Jen Lahn, etta cetera, or maybe even Rita Rodentia) & I flew to Australia originally motivated by the intention of participating in this hypothetical festival - even though we 'knew' from correspondence that it had no substantial basis. The following description, & all other entries relevant to this festival, are excerpted from:

A Report on the 1st Non-Existent International Neoist Apartment Festival

in Adelaide, South Australia

from Monday, March 20th, 000 'til Saturday, March 25th, 000

(With additional action on Tuesday & Wednesday, April 4 & 5, 000)

written by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

[etta cetera & I arrived in Adelaide on Sunday, March 19th & were met at the airport by festival conspirators Karen Eliot & Jen. I never saw Jen again in connection with any neoist activities. A vegetarian barbecue had been proposed for later that day as a festival planning session but that seemed unlikely to happen so the main event of the day was a visit to the former Adelaide Gaol where the Tap 000 Theatre was scheduled to perform (amongst others) & where I was scheduled to UNCERTIZE & to screen a video version of "Bob Cobbing". Few, or no, VAUDIENCE members arrived, my sampler wouldn't work, the Tap 000 performance was cancelled, The Band That Couldn't Plough Straight played, & etta & I were severely jet-lagged, but I managed to stay awake long enough to screen "Bob Cobbing" anyway to a not-completely rapt small group.

Throughout this 1st day, it had become obvious that there was little or no interest in the long-awaited 1st Australian Neoist Festival that etta & I had been planning to attend for over a year & that we'd travelled over halfway around the world for (having taken the long way via Malaysia). All of Karen's attempts to organize planning sessions had been fairly ill-attended & fruitless. All of Karen's phonecalls to clubs & such-like places to try to set up UNCERTS, SO-CALLED WHATEVERS, & such-like had been unreturned. Given these circumstances, I proposed that we dub the festival the 1st NON-EXISTENT INTERNATIONAL NEOIST APARTMENT FESTIVAL IN THE YEAR 000 worth travelling over halfway 'round the world for. After all, who wants to travel that far just for your ordinary, everyday Neoist Apartment Festival when you can go to the 1st NON-EXISTENT one instead?

It was decided that the Non-Existent Festival would consist of SECRET MEETINGS partially publicized thru messages passed via SECRET HANDSHAKES.]

The plan for Wednesday's Secret Meeting had been for Karen to take people into a storm drain where etta & I were to be waiting in a candle-lit & incense infused space with a portable sound system & with etta as the naked & painted HUMAN SYNTHESIZER to be demonstrated by me & available for playing by all the attendees. However, when the day arrived, it was pouring. Karen, etta, & I rode our bikes (etta's & mine generously loaned to us by 101 BIKES - a service that fixes bikes & sells them CHEAP for a token price like $52 Australian) to the rendevous & got completely soaked. etta's laborious Human Synthesizer paint-job got totally smeared. When we reached the stormdrain, it had maybe 6 inches of water. Within 10 minutes it had about 3 feet of water. 5 Minutes later, it had rapids that were overflowing its vertical containing walls. If we had gone in earlier, we might've drowned. As a last-minute alternative to the stormdrain, we decided to have the secret meeting on the radio if the people at 3D would allow it. Karen & I went there & talked with various people - eventually asking for permission from the Station Manager. It was quite a challenge for my charm to explain that we were in the midst of having the 1st NON-EXISTENT INTERNATIONAL NEOIST APARTMENT FESTIVAL & that our plans to have our Secret Meeting in the stormdrain had been foiled by the rain & that we wanted to have our Secret Meeting over the air (&, therefore, audible to the general public) as an alternative because we thought it was FUNNY &, uh, is that ok? It's to the enormous credit of the 3D personnel & their true COMMUNITY SPIRIT that they were amenable to the idea & @ 6:00PM (when else?) we began the 2nd Secret Meeting broadcast as a part of the show hosted by Hannah called something like "Drive-Time" & aimed at people driving home from work. Hannah was completely bemused & thoroughly friendly & cooperative as I played sound effects from my PLAYER-BELT, played the HUMAN SYNTHESIZER, discussed the 1st NON-EXISTENT INTERNATIONAL NEOIST APARTMENT FESTIVAL & our plans & details for the 3rd Secret Meeting to be convened the next day (Thursday, March 22nd) @ double 6:00 (more commonly known as "noon") in front of the Church of Scientology on Waymouth Street, exchanged Secret Handshake Messages, & interviewed the attendees that Karen led to the studio window (since station rules didn't allow them to enter the building). Karen played didjeridoo, Rick (as the representative of Pope Fred) spoke in ways determined by text on prepared cards (such as categories like "dogmatic statement"), Bird-E appeared & got slotted into the role of ANTI-NEOIST, Roman said a few words, & a woman happened by who may've refused to speak. After the radio show ended, we moved to a nearby pub (minus Hannah) where further conspirings & speeches occurred.

271. Making Odd-Ball Sports History by Uncertizing by Playing a Game of Black Rectangle over the Eye

- Ottobar, Baltimore, us@

- Sunday, February 6, 2000, 10:30-1:00PM

- I organized this evening. I had a self-inking rubber-stamp made with an image of a boy's face with a black rectangle over his eye taken from my filmstrip entitled "The Postman Always Rings the Homunculous of Woody Allen & Hollis Frampton, Twice" with "Black Rectangle over the eye" written underneath it. I rubber-stamped this around downtown Baltimore & near & in the Ottobar to subtly establish the image & the "game" name in advance.

The program began with Scott Larson playing his one-man band "Abomination". I had made an 8'X8' white Spandex screen for rear projecting onto & this was erected at the front of the stage at a slight angle. John Evans then projected a 16mm film of his by bouncing the projection off a mirror so the image could be larger than the shallow stage depth would've otherwise allowed. John Dierker improvised a tenor sax soundtrack to the film, which was otherwise silent.

"Black Rectangle over the eye" was introduced thru a screening of "The Postman.." filmstrip & a pamphlet relevant to the strip was handed out to the vaudience by etta cetera (a.k.a. Jen Lahn & Rita Rodentia - see most of the recent entries - starting at 207 with Jen Lahn mention).

Midway up the screen on either side were 2 2' slits for John Dierker & myself to stick our torsos out of from behind. Wearing rubber costume versions of towering Thai hats, I explained something like "that there's nothing like wearing ersatz Thai hats to make me feel like playing a game of Black Rectangle.." & we began. I played a digital horn controlling a wave-table synthesizer & played a loop on a CD that I'd specially contructed for such purposes. etta rear-projected the "Where We're" filmstrip (mentioned in 269) in the upper middle of the screen (without its soundtrack). John Evans projected my 16mm film "How Orgone Cinema Treats its Visiting Filmmakers" overtop my head - following the same projection technique used in the Music Gallery premier of John Henry Nyenhuis' & my "Bogus Piano Concerto" (see entry 194). John Dierker played tenor sax. This "game" was in 17 parts & John D had specific pitch sets & styles to play in during parts 2-9 after which he could play mostly free-form. At the entry to the 3rd part, Dave Scheper began shining a flashlight around & thru his "Codzilla" sculpture to shadow-project on the entire screen. This is a "junk-metal" sculpture of something resembling a codfish skeleton standing about 5' tall on its tail. The shadow was very dramatic & dynamic. Highlights of this were when etta cetera confronted Codzilla with a hand-shadow of a dog profile & when she 'fed' Codzilla a beer. At various points, John D & I would take black rectangles of tape & place them above our eyes - sometimes acting as if we were somehow 'triumphant' - such as by raising a fist & shouting "YEAH!". At the end, I announced that John D had won the game.

This was followed by a projection of Etta's "The Truth About the Dimensionally Challenged" & then by my "Shuffle Mode" (in filmstrip versions). The evening ended with a trio improv played by Scott, John D, & myself.

269. Generic Tour & "Where We're" Premier

- Neoist Festival, from the Milk Coffee Bar thru the streets & into the HQ of the Whitechapel Fishmonger Faction, Windsor, Ontario, CacaNada

- Sunday, November 28, 1999, 1:20-3:50PM

- Unannounced, I led a few people on a Generic Tour using language similar to that described in entry 266. When we reached the HQ of the Whitechapel Fishmonger Faction (the apartment of festival organizer Chris Mangin) there was supposed to be playing on tvs thruout the apartment a vaudeo transfer of my 2:03:30 filmstrip "Where We're" that has as its soundtrack an edit of the same materials used for 266 + footage from the same & many other things. Unfortunately, the equipment wasn't there yet so the vaudeo didn't start until about 10 minutes after our arrival. Having memorized the soundtrack somewhat I would occasionally say something anticipatory of what was to come in it. Unexciting as this description may seem, I put an enormous amount of work into preparing for this. Footage was shot of the Tour by Monty Cantsin which will be edited into another version of "Where We're".

254. Attention-ExSpanDex #1

- Normal's Books & Records, Baltimore, us@

- Saturday, September 26, 1998

- This was the 1st presentation of a cross-country tour which I retrospectively dubbed the "Attention-ExSpanDex Tour" mainly because most of the vaudiences couldn't endure the lengths of the programs. Entries 254-261 are from this tour. All but 259 meet the attention-span-expanding criteria. Most of the presentations involved multiple projections of super-8mm, 16mm, slides, filmstrips, VHS (projected &/or on TVs) + talking & other 'live actions':

How Orgone Cinema Treats Its Visiting Filmmakers

- 5:40 - 16mm & VHS - January '95

Presented simultaneously with a dramatic reading of the generic S.P.C.S.M.E.F. Speech (see the prototypical speech in 248) whilst wearing the Killer Whale Outfit over the Cloud Suit + the severed head hat (see the description in 250).

Department of Failures - 2:30 - VHS - November 11, '95

Diszey Spots - 11:20 - 16mm & VHS - October-December '93

The Postman Always Rings the Homunculous of Woody Allen & Hollis Frampton Twice

- 8:24 - 35mm filmstrip & audio cassette - July '96

Grounded! - 6:00 - 16mm & VHS - May '95

Peterson's Restaurant - 14:56 - 16mm & VHS - 1st 1/2 of '95

Air Drops - 19:30 - VHS & 35mm filmstrip - September '97 - September '98

This being the rough draft of the quasi-documentation of entries of 241 & 253, a couple leftover paper airplanes from the 2nd Air Drop were flown into the audience at certain points.

Funny Farm Summit Meeting - 14:00 - 16mm & VHS - August '94 - July '95

The Department of Maybe Presents: Problem Solving Demonstration

- 55:00 - VHS - November 4, '95

This was the audience-participatory section which I found to be surprisingly well received. See entry 196 for a previous description.

Death Bed Aerobics - 4:45 - 2 35mm filmstrips & audio tape - July '98

See the description in 249. A difference being that instead of wearing the funeral home softball team t-shirt, I was wearing a plastic chest with glow-in-the-dark bones on it. This 'skeleton' & my right thigh's glow-in-the-dark dust-mite tattoo were charged up with a black-light to be shown to the vaudience as the finalé. "Death Bed Aerobics" was presented everywhere during this tour except at a screening (not listed here) at the San Francisco Art Institute sponsored by the San Francisco Cinematheque.

Thanks to John Berndt for arranging this.

253. Air Drop #2: Code Name: Alpha Alpha Alpha

- Overtop Carnegie-Mellon University & environs, Pittsburgh, us@

- Friday, September 4th, 1998, 1:30 to 2:30PM

- This was (as the above title indicates) the 2nd in a series. For more info relevant to this 1 (like a rough description of the type of paper plane used) see entry 241. One of the main differences between this & its predecessor is that it was done mainly in the name of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts & not Le Groupe Absence. The day started with a phone call at 8AM from the pilot, Delta Bravo, saying that the weather in Baltimore was too misty for him to take off as early as he'd planned. We

waited an hour to find out how the weather would change. Delta called back & said that it was clearing & that he'd leave around 10:30 & that we should meet him at the Allegheny Airport near Pittsburgh between 12 & 12:30. I called the ground cameraperson, Mike Juliet, to tell him that we'd be starting 2 hours later than I'd originally told him but I only got his answering machine.

12:15 & Juliet Lima, Sierra Lima Foxtrot November, & I (tANGO, aLPHA cHARLIE) arrived at the airport. Delta had just arrived. I was wearing sky camouflage with the front covered with a hundred or so square buttons with images of sky & clouds on them. Sierra was wearing a flight suit. We had a video camera, 2 35mm still cameras, a tape recorder, & a half-frame 35mm camera (for shooting filmstrips).

We shot various footage of each other & the plane & loaded the 950 paper planes (etc) in (unobtrusively packed in a shoulder bag & a small box so that they wouldn't attract too much attention from airport personnel). Delta ran thru his various technical checks & we boarded the plane & got ready for take-off.

Then the camcorder ceased to work. I later realized that a connection in the camcorder power had ceased to work & that the tape had then jammed. I tried changing batteries to no avail. Since we were about to take off, I gave up on the camcorder & decided to concentrate on the filmstrip camera while Sierra shot slides & Juliet shot stills. As the plane lifted off the ground, the filmstrip camera jammed! This had been working perfectly 'til then & I still have no idea why the film wouldn't advance & the camera wouldn't take any more pictures. There were still about 20 pictures left on the roll (out of 48 available).

In the noisy airplane, Delta had asked us to maintain silence while he communicated with the radio tower. I tried to communicate thru gestures to Sierra that I wanted her to rewind her slide film & take it out of her camera so that I could put it in the filmstrip camera & keep on shooting with that. She misunderstood, rewound the film too far so that it no longer had a tongue sticking out for rethreading, & handed me her camera instead. THEN she understood & began frantically trying to pry open the film cannister without exposing the film inside so that the tongue could be gotten out & the film could be loaded in my camera. The film got mangled & that was more or less the end of that roll. Down to ONE still camera &, hopefully, the ground camcorder! At least we got some good audio recording off the plane's sound system.

In the meantime, the plane was circling around the targetted drop area: the campus of Carnegie-Mellon University - picked because it's near an easily identifiable landmark (the Cathedral of Learning), because it has much open space for the planes to land on, & because there would be alotof people milling around outside. Juliet & I had put a "Missed Connections" in the City Paper (a weekly paper in many cities in the US) that read as follows:

UFOS ON CMU

You: Contactee, Me: Alien. I'll be landing again on the CMU campus Friday, September 4, around noon. Will you be there or what? Our mating will decide the fate of the human race. Remember, Home Skiing is like Yard Sailing.

"Missed Connections" or "Mis-Connecteds" or "I Saw Yous" (etc) are usually used by people who met someone briefly or just saw them somewhere without meeting them & who want to meet them again. A typical example might be something like "I saw you at Station Square. You had a red sports car & we kept looking at each other. Your friend Jennie introduced us but then you had to go. Can we meet again?"

Juliet & I had given a reading the week before (under the names of Party Teen on Couch #2 etta cetera - see entry 252) where we'd read Mis-Connecteds that our gang (the Kneehighs) had placed in various papers around the US (mainly Baltimore & Pittsburgh). This was partially to SEED the audience's mind in the hope that they'd read the next week's Mis-Connecteds & see the "UFOS ON CMU" one.

ANYWAY, we dropped the 950 paper airplanes over the campus - not sure whether we were actually hitting the target or not. The planes were of a type that flies loop-de-loops - chosen so that they'd stay in the air a fairly long time to increase the chances of people seeing them. We could see them flying all over the place. They looked great! We could see that many of them had landed on a golf course in Schenley Park next to CMU.

We returned to the airport, Delta flew back to B-More, & the rest of us headed back to P-Burgh to drop the film off to be developed & to head to the CMU campus to find out how many of the planes, if any, had made it there. We got there & were happy to find THAT THEY WERE EVERYWHERE!! The drop had actually been ON-TARGET! This's not an easy thing to do when you're flying in excess of 100mph & have other wind factors to take into consideration. We walked around & asked groups of students near where we saw planes if they'd seen the planes come down. None of them had. When we told them that we'd just flown over & that we'd dropped a thousand paper planes onto the campus, they expressed no curiousity AT ALL! They mostly stared dully or hostilely at me & made no move to even look at the pointed-out nearby planes. We didn't find any witnesses to tape-record an interview with & Mike Juliet was nowhere around to be found.

We went to the golf course next & there were paper planes everywhere. I went up to a few golfers who were surrounded by the papers & asked them if they'd seen them come down. They hadn't seen them & hadn't even noticed them all around them!? One guy did pick one up to read it & carried it off with him. We finally found a group of old men sitting around in the shade by the golf course building & one of them had seen the planes come down. They had a couple of the planes there with them. I asked the witness if he minded that I record an interview with him & he said he didn't want to be recorded because he was wanted by the police. I didn't believe this (or that my recording him would matter) but I respected his request & didn't record him. We talked substantially about the project. I explained the AAA somewhat to him - reading the slogans off the plane & talking about some of them somewhat.

The main AAA text on the plane was somewhat like this:

FREE ADMISSION TO RAVE IN SPACE!*

The Asssociation of

Autonomous Astronauts has launched

an information War against

the present-day state, corporate

and military monopoly of space travel.

What we need today is

an independent, community-based

space exploration program,

one that is not restricted by military,

scientific or corporate interests.

Only those that attempt the impossible will achieve the absurd.

The AAA moves in several directions at once.

Death to goverment space agencies everywhere.

All power to the Association of Autonomous Astronauts!

Space Travel - By Any Means Necessary

Dreamtime Is Upon Us!

Here Comes Everybody!

Space is the place.

The Christian millenium is right around the corner... may their world end with it!

Space travel is necessary - evolution implies it

Sex in space is necessary - evolution demands it

The Association of Autonomous Astronauts

is making the future happen.

The AAA asks, 'What is the point of going into space

only to replicate life on planet earth?'

Everything you ever wanted on planet earth, and never

received, will be yours in outer space.

http://www.t0.or.at/aaa

http:/www.deepdisc.com/aaa

http://www.uncarved.demon.co.uk

*must provide own transportation

The planes also had 5 rubber-stamps + an individual frame of super-8 film from my MIKE FILM project on each of them. The MIKE FILM was accompanied by my Baltimore P. O. Box address. One of the stampings read: Home Skiing is like Yard Sailing - an obscure reference to a fake attempt to start a silly fad thru the TV Hospital (see entries 178 - 184) & another tie-in to the "Missed Connection".

The old man that we talked with said that he thought that most people wouldn't be able to understand what it was all about & that if they'd even look at the planes they'd just throw them away in confusion. He seemed to understand the slogan "Only those that attempt the impossible will achieve the absurd" the most easily. He wanted to know if we were a "cult". I told him no.

Juliet & I had to leave to go to work. We stopped back at our house 1st & found that Mike Juliet had dropped off his camcorder footage. He had left his house at 7:30AM & hadn't gotten my message that the flight was starting late. As such, he'd waited at CMU between 10:45 & 1:30 & then gone inside to try to call me. When he came out the planes were everywhere. He'd missed the drop. He shot footage of people completely ignoring the planes laying around. Amazing.

Despite the footage fuck-ups & the lack of interest in the targetted audience, I'm happy that we managed to actually hit the target & to pull it off in general. To me, most people are hopeless robopaths - too busy following orders, being normal & being stupid to ever notice or care about anything unusual in their environment. This was an attempted seeding. It largely feel on (metaphorically) rocky ground: in the midst of hopelessly (?) dull people. College students: REACTIONARY MUDDLE AMERICA. Nonetheless, with a drop this large who knows who it may've reached. 4 website addresses were included. MAYBE SOMEBODY will check out the websites as a result. MAYBE SOMEBODY will have their mind tweaked a little. I'm sure the old men at the golf course did.

251. Urban Myth of the Force That Prevents Building on the Railway Lands

- Railway Lands Central & West, Toronto, CacaNada

- Saturday, August 22, 1998, 9:30PM to 1:30AM

- There's a fairly large area of 'prime real estate' near the Toronto Harbor between Spadina (to the East) & Bathurst (to the West) & Front St (to the North) & the Gardiner Expressway (to the South) that's currently (as of August '98) a fenced-in grassland occupied by 10 or so 'hobos', a slew of insects, some foxes, & some deer, etc.. This area is right next to the Sky Dome (Toronto's sports & concert arena) & the CN Tower (a very tall tourist attraction) & is slated for 'development' by Hong Kong based Terry Hui. Hui is quoted in a business magazine as saying "Our Motivation is just to create some wealth for everyone." This, by building condos (or what have you) to replace the grasslands. Oh Really? Somehow I don't imagine that the people already living in this area are going to get any wealthier by being forced off the land. I always wonder about this type of 'visionary' economic thinking. There is NO WAY that I can think of to "create some wealth for everyone". There is simply a limited amount of wealth to be distributed & in ANY capitalist economic scheme this wealth is taken from the poor & snapped up by the rich. On the other hand, an equalization of the wealth by having the rich GIVE BACK what they've stolen from the poor IS POSSIBLE. This, however, would not be creating "some wealth for everyone". A notice posted at the edge of the grasslands read as follows:

CITY OF TORONTO NOTICE

AN APPLICATION HAS BEEN SUBMITTED TO THE CITY BY GRAND ADEX DEVELOPMENTS FOR AN OFFICIAL PLAN AMENDMENT AND REZONING TO PERMIT A MIXED USE DEVELOPMENT COMPRISING RESIDENTIAL, COMMERCIAL, AND OPEN SPACE USES AT A DENSITY OF 629,655 m2 IN TOTAL GROSS FLOOR AREA AND INCLUDES PROPERTIES IN THE AREAS KNOWN AS THE RAILWAY LANDS CENTRAL AND RAILWAY LANDS WEST.

IF MORE INFORMATION IS REQUIRED CALL: THE CITY OF TORONTO URBAN DEVELOPMENT SERVICE AT 392-7333

I rewrote this sign to read:

CITY OF TORONTO NOTICE

AN APPLICATION HAS BEEN SUBMITTED TO THE CITY BY A CAUCUS OF THE NO-NO CLASS FOR AN OFFICIAL PLAN AMENDMENT AND UNZONING TO ADVOCATE AN EXPANSION OF THESE GRASSLANDS TO INCREASE THEIR CURRENT DENSITY OF GROSS FLOOR AREA FROM ITS 629,655 m2 SO THAT IT MAY OVERGROW THE CN TOWER, THE SKY DOME AND THE RAILWAY LANDS WASTE IN ORDER TO CREATE A RULING CLASS FREE ZONE.

IF LESS INFORMATION IS REQUIRED CALL: THE CITY OF TORONTO URBAN ENVELOPMENT SERVICE AT 760-3466

& pasted (with the assistance of etta cetera & Jubal Brown) the revised sign over the original one. The new phone # was the info line for the "Po-Po: Into the Wasteland" series that this action was part of. The "Wasteland" events are illegal actions organized by Jubal Brown & AMEN! in which mostly 'abandoned' urban spaces are used for an evening. The previous 4 had been in buildings. Thanks to the EXTREMELY GENEROUS GIFT of Cinecycle operator Martin Heath of a filmstrip camera & a multitude of lenses, etta & I then proceeded to make a filmstrip having the appearance of a history of the area entitled "A History of the Toronto Railway Lands Central & West - Part 3". For this we photographed pictures & such-like in the special collections section of the Toronto Reference Library & the Metro Urban Affairs Library (thanks to the very helpful librarians) + the grasslands & our new sign, etc.. After a shot of the Hui quote mentioned above we had a shot of an ad that read "Now Anyone Can Get A Cellphone" with grafitti under it reading "Even the Homeless?". On the night of the event, I was sitting by the new sign ushering people to under the Spadina bridge where things were to start when police pulled up - ostensibly because of a complaint of people on the railroad tracks. They said they didn't want to break up our party but that they wanted to make sure no-one crossed the tracks. They went under the bridge, where perhaps 80 to 100 people were assembled, & snooped around - eventually finding some explosives of Steven Rife (the fire performer for the evening). After forcing him into a demonstration of what he was going to do, the police (astonishingly enough) left without further interference. This may've been because they were under instructions to not have confrontations with the anarchists in town for the Active Resistance gathering (a similar event to which from 10 years previous had been somewhat violent) which this event was somewhat related to. After they left, I presented the filmstrip - introducing it as a found historical strip for which I didn't have the soundtrack. Throughout the strip, the graphics used in my Pictogrameting action (see 198) were interspersed without explanation next to & on top of the historical illustrations. When asked what they meant, I said I didn't know. As the strip progressed, I gradually made it more obvious that this was no ordinary history by reading the bogus NOTICE aloud & by pointing out the Hui quote & the grafitti. When the filmstrip ended, people thought that my presentation was over & they were led thru the grasslands to the main area where events were to happen. In the meantime, I rushed to put on my player belt (see 207 etc) & to grab the Pictogramet Sign & to put on some taped together plants to use as camouflage. Then I scurried around the perimeter of the people - sometimes showing the sign & sometimes getting close enough for people to hear the tapes. While this was happening, etta cetera mixed with the crowd spreading the rumor that there was an Urban Myth that a force existed in the field that prevented building there. The basic idea was to establish the pictograms as an historical presence thru the filmstrip & to then have the pictograms come alive in the actual space as a peripheral phenomena that never came close enough to be clearly perceived & to tie it all together with the Urban Myth.

247. Volunteers Collective "A Year of Sundays" Release Party @ the Chatham College Swimming Pool

- Chatham College Swimming Pool in the (former) Mellon Mansion, Pittsburgh, us@

- Sunday, March 29th, 1998, 8 to 9:30PM

- The Volunteers Collective is a project started in '89 (see entries 120, 122, 176, 237, 238, 240, 242, 245, & 246) that's gone thru various phases since then - the phase most recently preceding this event being 2 monthly series. A series on the1st Tuesday of every month @ the Red Room @ Normal's Store/Performance-Space started in January of 1997 & a series on the last Sunday of every month (in theory) @ various sites in Pennsylvania started in March of 1997. This was the release party for the Widémouth cassette (#18) entitled "A Year of Sundays" from this latter. It was intended to be a climax to the series since I've somewhat decided to not work within the Volunteers Collective context anymore. This decision was made largely to disassociate myself from the Baltimore VC which doesn't seem to have a conceptual orientation along the lines of what I'm currently most interested in. My preference is for what I'm provisionally calling "CircumSubstantial Playing" - meaning playing in which the whole circumstances under which the playing occurs is created/found & concentrated on as the primary stimulus for substance to be improvised out of. Such an approach factors in social & physical elements as being of high importance & isn't necessarily concerned with "music". "Music"-production seeming to be the main point of the Baltimore VC series. I advertised this event with the following e-mail notice:

Sunday, March 29th, 1998, at 8PM, in the Chatham College Swimming Pool located in the lower depths of what was the Mellon Mansion, people who think they might have fun doing such a thing (or something or another) will gather in the pool with street clothes on (no bathing suits PLEASE) to make sound while a smoke machine fogs up the area. I'm asking people to bring metal salad mixing bowls to float with candles in them - to also be used as percussion instruments. It's also suggested that waterproof sound makers be brought. As if that's not enough, the pool lights will be off so at various times & in various combinations the lighting will consist of the candles, a strobe light, & a (hopeful) video projection of (a so-far unedited) edit/compilation of the (presumably) complete Volunteers Collective footage - which is quite alot. This vaudeo will be projected onto the smoke, at least, & (dubiously) onto a screen planted above or in the pool as well - resulting in a perplexity of reflections. I'll probably bring masks to be worn by those not afraid to have their perceptions further confused. This is not advised for people inclined towards DROWNING under oddball sports conditions!

I did manage to complete the vaudeo edit - with sound from 23 sessions & visuals from 19. The selections used were highly fragmented & usually short & structured with substantial black space around the actual shot & separating sections so that they would project onto different parts of the screen, so that they would intrude suddenly, & so that they wouldn't play long enough to completely muddy the reverberant acoustic environment. The screen was made from white nylon Spandex & was approximately 10 feet high by 15 feet wide & was stretched perpendicular to the dividing line between the shallow & deep ends of the pool. Anything projected on it could be seen from both sides clearly. Wanting to have this be a potentially participatory experience for whoever might attend, this wasn't restricted to 'veteran' players to the exclusion of 'amateurs/students'. As such, a mix of the crude & the subtle was to be expected. Given that I started @ precisely 8PM & that most people wandered in after that, entering the room must've been disorienting. The strobe back-lit the screen & the video projection front-lit it. In the foggy dark, it was hard to see where you were walking & there were power cords & other objects around to be careful of. People danced in the strobe & the projection, played in the pool & wandered around the perimeter. There were big plastic water jugs as percussion & flotation devices + kickboards floating in the pool. I'd provided various small instruments, masks, & siamese twin outfits (which weren't used) & Jen Lahn & I provided 10 squeaky toys usually sold for dogs to play with. These were variously shaped, such as as a human foot, a chicken leg, etc.. Rachel Matthews & Sharyn Lee Frederick brought metal salad mixing bowls to float - one of which had a lit candle in it. Michael Pestel had arranged for the school to provide the fog machine, the Spandex, the strobe, the vaudeo projector, the pool, the VCR, & the sound system. We, unfortunately, had to pay a 'lifeguard' to be there who did next to nothing (including even be there all the time) & who was the only person present to be paid. The darkness & the chaos contributed to what I suspect was a conglomerate of quasi-autistic experiences for the attendees. I spent most of my time doing the lifeguard's job & making sure no-one drowned, tripped over wires, or otherwise hurt themselves, - as well as managing the technical end, etc.. Meanwhile, Carol danced, wearing a tutu, creating shadows - often in what I thought of as a 'dream-like' isolation from others @ the relatively uncluttered perimeter of the deep end. Jen Lahn slid across the floor on the leg-ends of a black velvet pants suit her mother had given her. I wore my "Hir Suit" (mechanic's coveralls with wigs attached) with a plastic "gorilla" chest bared & a large red sombrero. People wandered in & out - some mainly in there in the dark & possibly never even seeing who else was around them squeaking & screaming & throwing the water jugs at the walls. At least 23 people participated ranging in age from, perhaps, 13 to 46. These included those mentioned above + Ailecia Ruscin + Lowell + Margaret (?) & her son + Greg Pierce + Mark Tierney + Edgar Bucholtz + Terry + Ava Collins + many others whose names I don't know. My main criticisms might be that the live sound didn't always interest me & that the lighting wasn't disorienting enough. Nonetheless, given the dangers of the pool environment, I'm happy that we could push it as far as we did witho anyone getting hurt.

241. Air Drop #1: Code Name: Uniform Foxtrot Oscar

- overtop Baltimore, us@

- Saturday, September 28th, 1997, 3:30 to 4:30PM

- I (tANGO, aLPHA cHARLIE {Practicing Promotextual & Air Dresser}) plotted this action with pilot Delta Bravo. We decided to drop approximately 1,000 paper airplanes from a small plane over Baltimore - coincidentally simultaneous with the 2nd annual book fair being held in the Mount Vernon area there. Delta & I agreed to have a text printed on the planes that would vaguely give it the appearance of an advertisement & to use green paper to be suggestive of money. The basic text was:

"Free Ticket Out Of Baltimore

LIMITED OFFER!

Redeemable Anywhere Within City Limits

Le Groupe Absence"

This text was accompanied by drawings of a 'UFO' designed to go through an animated sequence with a punchline (of sorts)if & when the paper airplane's unfolded. I spent about 16 hours preparing for this by folding the airplanes. I was significantly assisted by many people - the most active of whom was Alpha Charlie who probably helped fold for about 6 hours or more. The paper plane type chosen was the one I remembered from my youth as the one most capable of flying acrobatically: a rectangle with 2 diagonal corners & 2 flaps. Delta Bravo & I sat in the front seats of the plane while Juliet Papa sat in the back vaudeoing. I opened the window next to my seat - very nervous about the 100+ m.p.h. winds grabbing at it while I did so. The planes were mainly dropped over Wyman Park (because a group of friends were waiting there as observers in an "X" shape) & over Mount Vernon because of the Book Fair. In the interest of a massive dumping, I held the window open over the fair while Juliet Papa dumped a garbage bag with about 350 to 400 of the planes out in rapid succession. The park observers said the planes could be seen reflecting the sun in a fabulous array of loop-de-loops. A ground search later yielded about 10 of the planes in the targetted areas. How many actually reached the ground (rather than tree & building tops) is hard to estimate. How many people saw them descend is as much a mystery to us as we assume the planes' purpose would be to anyone who did see or find them. It was my hope, as with many of my actions, that this would stimulate flights of the imagination & act counter to closed-minded-ness by providing a mystery for which there'd be no obvious solution. Alas, as 1 friend has pointed out to me, the typical human mental process seems to be to simply shove unsolved mysteries into the easiest available mental compartment, regardless of how ultimately unworkable it is, & to forget about them. Even a cult-of-the-mysterious-paper-airplanes would be preferable to that. "Le Groupe Absence" might be described as a 'patanational corporate mirage that I was once invited to be alien diplomat (or some such) for. This was my 1st action in its name.

240. Volunteers Collective @ Sonambient Theater

- Anonymous Family Reunion, Sonambient® Theater, Bally, us@

- Sunday, August 31st, 1997, afternoon

- This last session of interacting with the Bertoia sound sculpture environment had concert flute & accordion added to the instrumentation listed above. The participants were Anonymous (Pittsburgh), Anonymous (Pittsburgh), Anonymous (Baltimore), Anonymous (Baltimore), Anonymous (WFMU - the East Orange New Jersey free form radio station), Anonymous (WFMU), Anonymous (B