notes “LIVE” Noah Travis Phillips

Nonlinear, rhizomatic, …

2017

speculation

digital detritus

unstable currency

ocean of images

surfeit simulacra

implicates itself

“poor images”

systemic, networks, patchworks.

unpredictability, emergence,

relativity, precarity,

lack of control

radicality, otherness,

heterogeneity

software & hardware, medium specificity

technique

it's own relationship (with labor)

practice

spectacle

hates digital entropy

outrun obsolescence

stable ground for value (capital)

analog craft / avant-garde technology

pyrotechnics

complexity, expertise

sustainability,

artisanal values, craft,

applied skills, engineering,

collaboration, personality, personalisation

dedication, truth, authenticity,

precision,

connection,

progress,

materials,

infrastructure, circuitry, supply chains,

representation,

politics,

precarity,

illegal software, code,

working conditions,

Theory?

An undifferentiated space for ideas…

S P A C E

Arrow pointing downward

Unseen

(im)permanent collection

New space

Denver Art Museum, North Building redesign model render

“Sword in the Stone” proposal

This is a piece I made in 2010, in Salt Lake City, Utah,

Very bright lights (& water?) projected from the roof

Involved with some gallery there…

Pointing toward the Spiral Jetty,

A cloud of light, like smoke, like young & high

Like psychedelic and magical

David Bowie, the hero & a Bjork skateboard

They are riding the skateboard?

The skateboard is taller

The position of Bowie’s hands makes for a nice transition in orientation, like dancing

Bowie is under the water, beneath Bjork

He is blocking his view down her shirt, holding his heart, she is lovingly observing him, embracing him

This strip is 6ft long (I am 6ft tall)

What is motivating its movement?

(maybe wind?

Some kind of XY axis

determined by some physical data from NTP, recorded previously)

Lit by 34 bright green lights, in a black space

< Voiceover >

Dystopian: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

...Dystopias aren't 'bad places' they are bad societies. Society is the problem - never the solution. That's the message. Every single time.

...Here's the obvious: decades of ubiquitous visions of secular failure ceded truly optimistic alternatives to fanatics shilling paradise.

...has drowning us in grim visions of neoliberal totalitarianism stopes (or even slowed) corporate consolidation of power?

maybe it just primed us for it -- “inevitable”

yes, it clearly has, so why do we keep telling the same story with secular society itself as the ultimate villain?

...did 1984 help us, at any time since it was published, stopped (or even slowed) the slide towards total surveillance?

...the burden of proof is on the dystopians: show us the positive effect that carpet bombing the collective imagination has had.

...Dystopias have had the opposite effect its defenders promise: making us thankful for the status quo, no matter how terrible it gets.

...Robinson's visions of society aren't particularly optimistic, much rosy - they just are as unrelentingly negative as everything else.

...Dystopia is so much the commercial & academic default, Kim Stanley Robinson apologetically describes himself as an "accidental utopian".

...The evidence is in: an Era of Dystopic Fiction, hasn't made the world a better place or girded us against creeps like Trump and Le Pen.

...We've lived through over 40 years of dystopian fiction dominating our visions of the future (especially in film), that is an entire ERA.

The most long held, and common defense of Dystopic fiction is that they scares us off bad paths - prevents terrible futures. I don't buy it.

Every year the culture of peace grows deeper and more robust than the culture of war; our songs, art and tech is more fun and beautiful.

Xerox Phaser 7750GX \m/

Archeological,

Searching for, uncovering,

Ending up with more questions than answers (inevitable speculation)

From specific and personal to universal (as a means of accessing the archetypal)

When something from a distant (deep) past and a culture on the other side of the world Feel personal and familiar,

Combining my personal things SYMBOLS with the past, with the historical, facsimile

Categories blurring

Anxiety about the material

Interpretation, in search of meaning

Meaning for who? The artist / the viewers

… and then this as some kind of stage?

costume, prop(s), background,