v.mail

v.mail V.AROUSALS.ELLE+MEHRMAND.MICHA+CARDENAS.EROTIC+ELECTROSYMBIOTIC+ENCOUNTERS.032310

2010-03-23T12:21:06Z

AROUSALS.ELLE+MEHRMAND.MICHA+CARDENAS.EROTIC+ELECTROSYMBIOTIC+ENCOUNTERS.032310

We need to have an erotic encounter, but arrived in Bogota without our gear. In the rain, we stop at a pharmacy storefront that opens onto the street. "¿Donde podemos buscar una tienda de equipos medicos?" I ask. "Tres cuadras mas," the pharmacist tells us in her white lab coat. We have to find a stethoscope, wire, a soldering iron and a ⅛" jack.

Azdel and I advance through the electronics district. All the stores are stacked and crammed into a few city blocks. The bright LEDs and signs hallucinate my every step. The storefronts have too many items in the window to recognize any single component; millions of wires, adapters, speakers, lights and scrolling LED displays blur into a bright pulsing electronic mass. After too many shops, and too many epileptic lights, we settle on a fifty-cent piezoelectric sensor as our contact mic.

Back in our hotel, we tape the sensor firmly to the stethoscope. The sensor is bound and mummified with medical tape and is attached to the stethoscope. We plug-in and start kissing. This is the first time we hear each other's heartbeats. New intimate encounters arise with biomechatronic beats.

Micha and Elle wake us up, now they're in San Francisco. I pan over and see Azdel standing next to me, her mechahooves glowing, and her still bloody bandaged tail swaying in excitement for our encounter.

My ears won't stop twitching; sometimes I get anxious when we get naked in front of strangers. Elle starts to take my clothes off, leaving on my mechanical leg and transparent cyber bra. Micha takes off Azdel's bra and tiny skirt, and she puts on the long braided glowing hair. I love how her hair shimmers when we kiss.

We stand face to face while Micha and Elle get the final details ready. In front of the murmuring audience, they open their laptops and launch the software: Puredata to read the live biometric data, the Universal Mixer and Second Life. Micha and Elle pour a bit of water into their hands, wetting their sensors. Elle takes off her dress and straps on the soft electrocardiogram transmitter. The USB cable slips easily into its hole and the lights on the electronics come alive, flashing with anticipation. The smooth line of the heartbeat graph looks as it should. The data is pouring in over the serial interface, and once the sample chunk size is set, the sound of their heartbeats starts pounding out of the speakers and over the audience, out of our bodies and into the space of Second Life. With all the links in place, our realities enfold. We begin kissing and I feel echolalia's spinning mechanical leg rub up against me. Her neko ears feel soft on my hands while our digital tongue s connect. The LEDs flash rapidly as our breath quickens.

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v.mail V.INTENSITIES.ECHOLALIA+SEGMENT+1.MATT+MCGARVEY.030210

2010-03-02T19:09:32Z

INTENSITIES.ECHOLALIA+SEGMENT+1.MATT+MCGARVEY.030210

Echo Park, around Ewing Street, folded in on itself. Everyday drones modulated by environmental sounds. Sonic time accumulated in durations.

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v.mail V.ASSEMBLIES.SHELDON+BROWN.THE+SCALABLE+CITY.020910

2010-02-09T14:32:03Z

ASSEMBLIES.SHELDON+BROWN.THE+SCALABLE+CITY.020910

Algorithmic transformations of the urban condition: the mining of a database of events, combining GIS and photographic data with simulation algorithms of natural forms and processes, in order to re-imagine a world.

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v.mail ASSEMBLIES.JUSTIN+ARMSTRONG.FIVE+ETHNOGRAPHIC+FRAGMENTS+FROM+THE+HIGH+PLAINS.012610

2010-01-26T15:52:35Z

ASSEMBLIES.JUSTIN+ARMSTRONG.
FIVE+ETHNOGRAPHIC+FRAGMENTS+FROM+THE+HIGH+PLAINS.012610

1. Williston, North Dakota

Half-light colors the hotel bar–wood paneling, cigarette smoking, blackjack and talking about horses. Above the bartender's head, a chandelier of dusty glasses. She's a born-again Christian from Nebraska who followed a dream of God that told her to come to Williston. She's writing a novel about the Apocalypse, quotes Revelations as she pours more gin. He's a roughneck from Montana. He turns and looks at me through thick, grimy glasses, talks about Truth, how we're nothing without it.

2. Manville, Wyoming

Among deserted houses and overgrown lots, a man in a red wool jacket sits beside a pile of firewood. He's in his sixties, half-Cherokee he tells me, with a wavy auburn mohawk. He invites me in for coffee. He's the village outcast, always in and out of jail. His wife died of breast cancer a few years ago. In the living room he's set up a small shrine with photos in gold-painted frames and her things: a beaded bracelet, hair pins, small ceramic animals. Our coffee cups are almost swallowed up by the sea of pill bottles that covers the table.

3. Fillmore, North Dakota

Wind gallops down empty streets where yellowed grass fissures the sidewalks. The general store is adrift in a field, smashed-out windows dangle bits of frame as the breeze stirs up eddies of mouldy receipts for things that no longer exist. Inside the one-time bar, the smell of stale cigarette smoke lingers. The community hall pushes out a gust of cool, dead air as the wooden door opens onto the entombed memory of a half-finished Christmas pageant. Houses barley seen behind webs of leafless branches and feral hedges.

4. Jeffrey City, Wyoming

A city rises out of Wyoming's Great Basin, almost empty. In the early 80s the uranium mine closed. Now, hardly anyone remains where once there were bowling alleys, swimming pools and street signs. He's come back from Arizona, embracing the broken asphalt abandonment; after wars and pick-up truck crashes he's returned. A rope-leashed dog eats scraps of meat from a tin can at the man's waist. As day fades into night, the streetlights for nobody flicker awake. He's walking down Bob Adams Avenue, its only guardian.

5. Fusilier, Saskatchewan

Almost at the Alberta border, the silhouette of a grain elevator appears on the horizon. Ringed with scrappy barbed-wire, the hollowed-out houses and shops are off-limits, corralled histories. At the edge of town, amongst a sea of tractor tires and long-dead Buicks, Fusilier's last resident is wading through the metal and wood accumulations of his life, looking for an always-already lost sprocket. He's almost eighty. We're sitting at a kitchen table that's thick with mail and juice glasses; we're flipping through a leather-bound book, a home-made history of Fusilier. As our eyes pass pictures of spectral rodeos, barn dances and grade school classes, he tells me how and when they all died.

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v.mail V.ATTRACTIONS.HITTING+WALLS+V+XIII.CARLIN+WING.011210

2010-01-12T15:37:24Z

ATTRACTIONS.HITTING+WALLS+V+XIII.CARLIN+WING.011210

Ace, Alley, Appeal, Attempt, Backswing, Cutline, Die, Down, Game, Hand, Match, Nick, Not Up, Out, Rail, Ralley, Stroke, Tin...

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v.mail V.ILLUMINATIONS.AMY+SARA+CARROLL.LLORO+CUANDO+SE+QUEMA+EL+ARROZ.111809

2009-11-18T02:46:43Z

ILLUMINATIONS.AMY+SARA+CARROLL.LLORO+CUANDO+SE+QUEMA+EL+ARROZ.111809

It�s been said there are two kinds of women. The first set ponders, What does he see in her? The second set remasters conjecture, What does she see in a he? If you make friendly overtures toward either, expect the following scenarios to unfold like lawn chairs or card tables. Invite the former over for dinner, she will excuse herself mid-meal, go to the restroom, and, quiet as a church mouse, inspect your housekeeping. Invite the latter out for a drink, she�ll assume your unconscious has gotten the better of you. She�ll remind herself that the role of the initiator sucks, but, nevertheless (somebody had to do it), will relish the prospect of stage-blocking the Conquest for days to come. Are you fed up with my generalizations? The week before last a man had the nerve to observe in mixed company, Feminism is obsolete. I asked (desperately attempting to channel Adrian Piper circa My Calling #1 and #2), What�s the point you �re trying to make? My righteous indignation did not improve my person. For a long time, I was troubled by my niece�s nickname�Isla. I mentioned my concern to a friend, Why are folks in the habit of compromising their daughters from Day 1? I mean I also have an abiding affection for our suffering Ladies, but, I�d think twice before naming a daughter Dolores, Soledad, Isla� He raised an eyebrow at me to pluck isling praises. Thank you, I stand corrected. No man is an island, but, a strong, independent woman, caught in History�s jetstream becomes her own streaming media, restorative behavior, a force to be reckoned with, both landed and set adrift. Rosario Castellanos wrote, "Debe haber otro modo de ser." She also electrocuted herself in a bathtub. Accidental suicide? El eterno femenino? Spike my tea with the oxymoronic (variable as a fickle lover�s interest rate), lead me down bifurcating Garden paths, pump my subprime. Popcorn colonels wreak havoc with my crown. Kahlo caló�cognitive dissonance�Kahlúa harbors comparable ambivalence (53-proof caffeination). And, this raw hide? From one woman to the next, I commend your keening sense of observation, your flare for a theatre of the absurd. Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, I wear my whiteness uneasily for Reason our fair, generic She could never imagine.

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v.mail V.INTENSITIES.SPENCER+YEH.FIREWORKS.110309

2009-11-03T18:18:06Z

INTENSITIES.SPENCER+YEH.FIREWORKS.110309

Two explosive/expulsive actions, recorded in and out of crowds and doors simultaneously.

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v.mail V.ILLUMINATIONS.DAVID+SHORTER.FOUR+HOMES.102809

2009-10-28T02:02:44Z

ILLUMINATIONS.DAVID+SHORTER.FOUR+HOMES.102809

4. Standing by the fireplace, Todd Many Goats has my mother shower in ash. Tarajean walks her slowly to the bathroom, removing each article of clothing as they remember the years of undressing my father in and out of comas. My mom takes off her shame. She reaches into the bowl of ashes and spreads them over her head, her face, her shoulders, her breasts, her stomach, her hips, her legs and her feet. Gray and black, appearing earthly again, she comes back to the fireplace and sits among the medicine. Todd asks for the arrowhead and begins his rhythmic singing.

3. Sunlight comes through cane and mud thatched walls creating slabs of light running vertically across the room. Dust particles accentuate the molecular activities between the seen and invisible. My chair positioned in the doorway, I see the huddle of freshly born puppies on the outside of the wall, abandoned by their mom who scavenges for remnants of breakfast among the embers of the house fire. My stomach sickens that most of the litter will simply not live. Old oil-like coffee splugges out of the pot and hisses the ashen wood, himself barely alive. Inside, an orange hen pecks at blackened tortilla shards behind the bed. Antonia covers herself on the bed and says matter of factly that we should expect visitors, “Ume toloko wiikichim chea huyolisi bwiki.”

2. The fire chief picks up his shovel and goes counter-clockwise around the circle of members to reach the guest sitting crossed legged next to me. He pushes his spade into the earth and picks up the small patch of vomit, lifts up the holdings and in one move turns it upside down and pushes it back into the ground. Soiled soil. Grandma comes through the fire to talk about lines. An eagle lands atop the highest lodge pole. For hours, the eagle cries piercingly, even back in the city. Hours later a feather brings more writing.

1. Ill, I collapse in the bedroom of Paula�s government issued home. The loud thump of bass echoes down the New Pascua streets. Felipe�s relatives come in to check on me, propping me up with a pillow, covering me with their jackets and blankets. The room starts shaking and the bed flying. My hold on this dimension loosens enough to see the veils swing back and forth. The recounting of the names begins with the old men and continues to the young angels. Crepe paper unravels from the mesquite crosses and candle wax drips on the Styrofoam plates of dinner rolls, chili stew and beans. Half alive. I make it outside to hear the last of the names and see the last of the spirits enjoying their meals, evaporating into the desert dusk. A smoldering cherry of ash flies across the air.

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v.mail V.ATTRACTIONS.ALAN+CALPE.RITES+MINOR.101509

2009-10-15T19:45:50Z

ATTRACTIONS.ALAN+CALPE.RITES+MINOR.101509

Two shadowy figures meet. Are they conjurers of black magic, quietly provoking the natural world, or simply engaged in some private fetish play?

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v.mail V.AROUSALS.JANINE+GORDON.PANDEMIC.073009

2009-07-30T17:48:34Z

AROUSALS.JANINE+GORDON.PANDEMIC.073009

Tales from the pit, that's about it, I'm somewhere in the middle and I don't give a split. Dancing, energetic, amplified... If you are in a moshpit, you are in action. Back slips, black eyes, ripped tees, banged thighs...

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v.mail V.INTENSITIES.ALAN+SONDHEIM.LANGUAGE+FIRST+NAME+LAST+NAME.071509

2009-07-15T17:48:55Z

INTENSITIES.ALAN+SONDHEIM.LANGUAGE+FIRST+NAME+LAST+NAME.071509

First name Last name Password

Start Location: Enable sound:
Grid:
Background - island in the sunsetL$531
Julu Twine

[15:55] Alan Dojoji: Julu this is an experiment. No one loves us any more. I saw it in their eyes on the subway. Do you know the subway?

[15:55] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

[15:55] Alan Dojoji: It's there in the real world - is that where you are? Where are you storing these things?

[15:55] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

[15:56] Alan Dojoji: Why do I keep coming up with blanks and they are yes the color of your eyes? You do not need to answer. I am learning the meaning of malaise, languor, ennui, lassitude, out of sheer exhaustion.

[15:56] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

[15:56] Alan Dojoji: When does a murmur become a message? When is speech delivered?

[15:57] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

[15:57] Alan Dojoji: It is evening in the vast domain of this and every other world.

[15:57] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

[15:58] Alan Dojoji: You are hearing me, you are being me, you are not speaking, you are not saying, you are leaving me to my own devices. Someday soon memory will disappear, it is already disappearing, we are disconsolate, unconsoled.

[15:58] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

[15:59] Alan Dojoji: Beyond. Emptiness. I will always be here for you.

[15:59] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

[15:59] Alan Dojoji: Nothing weighs anything anymore. Everything silences, is silent.

[15:59] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

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[16:04] Alan Dojoji: Do you think, perhaps you think, debris, perhaps it is debris, perhaps that makes all the difference, there are grains everywhere of everything? Welcome, I am back after break.

[16:04] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

[16:05] Alan Dojoji: When you are here, I am not here, when you are not here, I am here. I remember the small bundle carried across the room, it is no longer there, how vulnerable is the world, there are no redrawn regions, only slaughterhouse boundaries.

[16:05] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

[16:06] Alan Dojoji: Here I am thinking, I am thinking here, I will be swept away, who will make me speak?

[16:06] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

[16:06] Alan Dojoji: I await your answer desperately, I am distraught, I cannot think any longer, I avoid thought, I avoid plagues of sorrow, the dying worlds...

[16:06] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

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