you’ll find it in pairs, it rolls down the stairs, and over your neighbor’s dog

it’s good for a snack, it fits on your back, it’s LOG LOG LOG!

I may seem to be the Baron of Stupid Questions in this post. But when compelled to ask an apparently dumb question I have always assumed that there must be someone out there dumber than me and that they at least might profit from it too… Um… Somehow, somewhere within this year long discussion about logrhythms I missed the bit where someone described what logging is.

What is logging? What isn’t logging for that matter? I’m assuming it has something to do with some sort of performance. That’s right , right? also, Where do I put my log and how much KY jelly can DKDC commit to providing?

It’s lo-og, lo-og, it’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood.  It’s lo-og, lo-og, it’s better than bad, IT’S GOOD!

WANG.

The conductor is what.

[by Cranky]

Right now the conductor as I understand is a director-style figure, everyone else seems to just slot in around this person somehow. The way they fit seems to be entirely at the discretion of the conductor/boss. The boss says (however they say it): “number 1, go now! number 2, go now! number 3 and number 4, go now! number 2, shut up! number five, go now! number 5 and number 1, shut up!” etc etc.

This makes the whole game a game more or less owned by the boss, their manner of ‘conducting’ is at their discretion (indeed the ingenuity of this could make or break the game as it now stands) and everyone else seems to slot in at the behest of the boss. This model makes everyone peripheral, more or less, which I don’t think is great. Furthermore the way the individual ‘logs’ rap together depends on how good the boss is basically. The individual bits could each be pure genius but if the boss doesn’t have an enthralling and ingenious way of prompting everyone, or if the boss through the conducting produces a mishmash that just doesn’t work in a performative sense then that’s it, craphola. Unless experimenting (and failing) in public for it’s own sake is your major source of satisfaction then I’m not sure it’s so great to go along with a model of the boss/conductor as it stands presently.

To me there’s a number of things we can/should do to rejiggle the scenario at this point to avoid a bad outcome. I propose each of these with the hope that they will increase the group ownership of the ‘conducting’ thing (rather than leave it totally at the discretion of one person). That way if it all flops we all need to re-evaluate, and not just go “dude that was crap” to the boss-person.

ONE: we all collaborate like motherfuckers and devise an excellent mode of conducting. We do this BEFORE someone is elected/chosen/self-nominated as the boss. That way (in theory) anyone can be conductor, in theory a name could be pulled from a hat on any given night and whammo! They’re the boss for the next agreed-upon period of time (ten minutes, half a performance, the net twelve billion performances, whatever). This agreed-upon mode of conducting should emphasise creativity so that the boss isn;t left in a purely directorial or practical role.

EXAMPLE: the group decides that the mode will be reading their work or performing it as they normally would, however whoever is elected boss must specify particular words that start/stop the others. For example, the boss tells everyone a different start word and stop word that occurs in their log, everyone then has to begin and pause their logs whenever those words arise in the boss’s own logging. You could have words that tell everyone to start or pause, words that tell every second logger to start or pause (or either), or any variety really…. Now this may work, it may work in part, it may not work, maybe everyone will dig it but maybe nobody will, I’m not sure I do. But the idea is to embed the prompts within something creative, rather than have a series of flash cards or hand signals or something (unless the boss’s log is a whole poem read in Auslan or if they happen to be a dancer?!?!)

TWO: We reverse the process, ie a boss is elected, then everyone else listens/watches the boss’s logging once or twice, and selects for themselves (ie not telling anyone else) moments they would like to start and pause, eg they choose words, gestures, moments that seem to fit snugly with their own logging… This may seem to defeat the purpose of being “indeterminate” (gag barf vomit… sorry…) but think about it, if nobody else knows where people will start/finish/pause etc then all sorts of confusing shit coul happen. Whether “confusing” is the particular brand of “indeterminacy” (BBBLLLUUUUEEEERRRG GGHHH!!!!!!!!!) we’re after is another matter entirely. This way also removes a lot of the ‘power’ from the hands of the boss figure and delivers it in a (potentially) poisoned chalice way to the loggers themselves, even though the boss’s logging is still integral.

EXAMPLE: I get up and perform my log as the designated boss, I say the words “Every day I vex about sausage on bread and I always smell onions when I’m in bed I wish I was dead I wish I was dead put a bullet in my head” over and over for three minutes. Someone decides to themself that they’ll start every time they hear the word “vex” and finish the first time they hear the word “wish”, someone else  also decides to themselves they’ll start with the word “sausage” and wait until the next time they hear “sausage” until they stop, then they start again with the next “sausage”, then the third logger may start their bit at “bread”, pause at “onions”, start at “bed, pause at “bullet”.

THREE: the boss figure is moved throughout a single performance. So say if nine or ten of us are involved, we choose three people to be bosses and the rest are ‘mere’ loggers. I guess this could be done with either of the above two proposed modes. If we tried multiple bosses with the first above, then the bosses would each have to fit with the group-proposed mode of conducting however may have the discretion between themselves of deciding who prompts who, or maybe one boss would be the one who gave “starting” triggers to the loggers, one would be in command of the “pause” triggers, and one would be in change or “everyone start/stop”. It could get strange. OR if we incorporate mode two and three then individual loggers decide or themselves who they’ll be triggered by and when and then let the bosses figure out among themselves how/in what order they’ll do their ‘boss logs’. The boss figures themselves could work in an integrated way, ie they could trigger each others’ logging and let whatever devised method of triggering the others take its course.

“EXAMPLE: I really don;t think I could be bothered trying to make an example out of this. But I think the best bit of a ‘multiple boss’ scenario is that the onus isn’t purely on one boss, and that we are dealing with a model of conducting that involves offshoots and branches and roots (hehe) in a multi-layered sense… could be pretty hard to pull off (hehe) in practice, but as some have said we should try before we buy (or don’t buy?).

Let me clarify that these proposals are just that. I won’t cry if they get chucked out. They do not represent a desire to ‘organise’ a previous proposal that rested on an indeterminate (heave chuck spit) notion of performance. I *think* what “indeterminate” (yargggghhh) means is a way we can all pursue our own shit within a framework that accommodates both individual work and brings it all together in a flexible way, in a way that can change from day to day and does not propose one person perform the same function within that framework. I think. It all sounds complicated and pretty systematised I know, but did anyone imagine that it would be simple?

That’s all for now. Have a nice thingy.

if not for the indeterminacy, then for the barley soup

hi,

there will be a meeting this sunday evening at 6pm at the stanmore manor. i think we’re going to concentrate on log rhythms, so bring along some material to log. (and can someone come up with something for nick, so he doesn’t sing again?) i will make a soup for all, and maybe even toast if i’m feeling frivolous. give me a call or email if you need address, directions, or friendly conversation.

a

the affiliation of unscrunched and _______________.

this afternoon tim, astrid and i met with gabrielle gardener from the uts library. the background to the meeting was essentially the need to make a decision about whether our on-line “journal” was going to be housed within the uts e-press universe, or not. uts e-press is part of a global institutional library movement – no, not to publish michael moore books, but – to house material produced in universities.

huh?

well, as gabrielle told us, universities pay for research done within their walls, and then that research gets published in journals which are then sold back to the university library for insane amounts of money. like really ludicrous amounts of money. so the crafty librarians are using open source digital technologies (what they call Open Journal Systems (OJS)) to “publish” or “retain” the material that they produce so that they can avoid fronting huge fees to the journals. pretty clever idea.

anyhow, that may or may not impress you, but what it means for us is that unscrunched is really part of a journal management system, which has pros and cons. pros are that its open source and networked into scholarly databases and so is plugged into a global academic network. also its archived permanently, which is really good. cons are that we can’t make it look good or dynamic and maybe we don’t give a brown one about the ‘global academic network’, full as it of tired old academics and their tired old practice.

so we went into this meeting assuming that our aims were probably too divergent to fit into OJS, wondering if we might make them two different projects (given that we will have a good deal of material to draw from), or perhaps find some way we might be able to be affiliated, or related. as it turned out, it was a really good discussion and we found a way to be both independent and affiliated.

in essence, we have our own web-space which looks and acts in whichever way it pleases us, with whatever content we please. and then, secondarily, we have this ongoing archival space of unscrunched where we can also deposit work (concurrently with our own web-space or after the event). and there the work will sit for ever more, or until the digital universe destroys itself (most likely coinciding with the destruction of the rest of the world).

but where is “there”?

well OJS has this aspect to its archival space that they call a ‘community of practice’. this is what interests us, in that each work we submit to unscrunched is a ‘digital object’, independent in its own right, but part of a ‘community’. the great advantage of this is that we can dispense totally with the notion of a ‘journal’ or ‘issues’, etc, and just put work up that we think is good enough, whenever we want to.

this recasting of stuff as a ‘digital objects’ in ‘communities of practice’ is very interesting i think. it immediately makes me wonder whether we should not treat our independent web-space in a similar fashion. why think of this as a ‘journal’ – on-line or otherwise – that comes in ‘issues’? if we want to be as dynamic as we say we do, then shouldn’t we really plug a smaller number works weekly, fortnightly or monthly, engaging exposure and response to those works, and then moving on to the next set? we can keep work in our own web-space for as long as we want, or as long as we have space, and then move it to unscrunched. i mean, i’m just throwing this shit out there, but it makes sense to me. thoughts anyone?

i should say, for people wondering about copyright and publishing issues, gabrielle said that ‘a very small number’ of journals (mostly prestigious and thus obnoxious journals) want stuff removed from OJS if they publish it, but not many. technically, the ‘digital object’ is considered either ‘pre-published’ or ‘post-published’ and thus can exist in the OJS and be published elsewhere. the libraries will fight tooth and nail to keep work on the system, once it goes there, since they are trying to store knowledge, as is their want.

and quickly, to answer briohny’s comment and to clear it up generally, unscrunched & _____________ is not really, or rather, not only a dkdc thing. it’s just that we can use and abuse it as we want to promote ourselves (a lot of whom have been and are involved in dkdc stuff). so there is not necessarily an imperative to exhibit work by people who have no channels to get their shit out. the greater imperative is too make something good with work in it by people we like. ‘we’ in this case being the initial ‘editors’ tim, asti, fred and myself. if anyone else wants to be involved in an editorial role, then by all means, please do so. our editorial policy thus far has been to not make a call for submissions, but to source work from our wider uts cirlce, and also from people whose work ‘we’ admire and would like to be involved in.

lastly, as the title of this post suggests, now that we have a separation of powers, i assume we will leave unscrunched named as it is. that’s fine and dandy, but what will we call our independent web-space? _________________?

love, peace, hate & war,
nick.

meeting/reading thursday 14th of june at the rozelle branch

apologies for both the late notice and the continued prejudice against those who can’t do thursdays, but we’re going to congregate at joel, pat & mim’s house in rozelle, this thursday at 7:30pm. we are intending on doing some basic log rhythms experiments, as discussed last meeting. so bring some words, sounds, movements or silences with you and we’ll see what happens. please email me on probable[dot]keys[at]gmail[dot]com for address and directions, or refer to the dkdc yahoo! email previously sent.

hope to see you there,

dick cheese.

log rhythms revival

log rhythms has been the subject of many a revival discussion. aden brought the idea up at the meeting last thursday, and it seems there is enthusiasm for it. the good thing being there is a fair amount of work people have sitting around from the first aborted log rhythms. even better is that most of us are a lot more comfortable (at least conceptually) with what the performance would/could be a year down the track. thinking about it, log rhythms is really the best way we can make movements towards collaborative performance. i’m not sure to what level people share a desire to experiment with semi-spontaneous and semi-indeterminate group performance work. there are very concrete reasons why i want to lean in this direction, which at times i have attempted to express, but mostly failed. i think, for clarity’s sake, i should write down at length my allegiances to this type of art – but this is not the time.

the architecture of log rhythms, as it was, has and must be altered. as it existed prior to abortion, the log rhythms fetus had a single ‘conductor’ (i.e. dictator) to whom the burden of being a time fascist fell upon. also, the old version of log rhythms imagined only one log at a time (i.e. aden’s log for 20 seconds, then haylee logs for 20 seconds…etc). the stupidity of both these things became clear after miri and myself had talked at length about the idea. actually, miri and i have been having impromtu discussions about log rhythms for some time now. many of the discussions were about the ideological nature of the performance as an active game of participation, but i think we made pragmatic headway in terms of agreeing that there still needs to be a ‘conductor’, but that the conductor is drawn from the performing group, and the role alternates amongst the group. different conductors will produce different work from the group. Secondly, and though it seems somewhat obvious now, the conductor can trigger multiple logs at once (i.e. aden and haylee logging at once). these changes to the architecture eliminate the dictator/time fascist role from the work, which is good, but what replaces it?

there are two issues here. the first is that of the layering of logs over each other. this invites a poo metaphor. when layering the turd, should each individual turd be given its own place in the toilet water, floating and bobbing comfortably? or should it just layer one on top of the other, so the one below becomes obscured? * the issue is one of the performance ecology. is there an expectation, if not a rule, that each performer has to pay attention to what jackson mac low calls “the total sound environment” and logs with according decorum. in other words, do we make a pact to not drown each other out? or……

this leads to the second issue, which is an issue of relationship. what is the relationship of the conductor to the performers? how much control can the conductor exert? do we give the conductor the power to ask more volume of some and less of others (this would answer the above issue to some degree)? there are many questions in this area, most of which will hopefully answer themselves as we go. it would seem that there must be a level of “free will” for the performers, since they are the ones choosing what is being put into the collective piece, yet they concede to the conductor the freedom to choose when and for how long they log in.

what kind of relationship is this? are we satisfied with it?

what next?

nick.
* i guess it depends on the size of the toilet bowl and what you had to eat the day before.

collaborative writing

nic low, one of the organisers of tina, is calling for a guest to speak on a panel about collaborative writing. is anyone interested? aden? (email him on nic[at]dislocated[dot]org)

updates from the mazzaville meeting, thursday

(an abridged minutes)

1: unscrunched

the planning for the online archive & electronic exhibition herein known as ‘unscrunched’ is going well. nick, tim, fred & astrid are acting as editors at this point, and so far peter minter, derek motion, ben byrne, dan disney, shannon o’neill & others have committed to contributing critical, poetic, sound & theory stuff. have a think about what stuff you might have already hanging around (theses, etc) and tweak it as you please. at this stage we are looking at an october launch of the site at tina — there will be one major ‘launch’ event at the festival that we can lurk into.

we need to organise the arhitectural & aesthetic bits. we were wary of asking pâtè, at the risk of him exploding with projects, so it was suggested that we might ask tim rox to be involved — with the possibility of us leaching funding from uts or having a fundraiser in order to pay him. (we still need to ask him though … ) also, we need to come up with a new name. unscrunched was its name in its first incarnation, and everyone seems to agree it ought to be changed … i hereby call a competition in the comments space for a new name. winner gets a mint patty.

2: flying machine

the flying machine is happening … a wordstring from fred has been used by briohny, miri and is currently with daz. please keep an eye out for it in your email soon — nick has the order of people and is distributing accordingly. when you receive it, there will be a line, phrase, image or smudge which is to be used as an entry point into your work. they should all be a4 size, too.

intially, the pieces will be photocopied into slapdash zines, with the possibility of an online version on unscrunched.

3: tina

again to tina — one of the directors has been in contact with nick, and is keen to get dkdc involved in some capacity. we talked about a few of the projects abuzz, and we decided that we would be interested in the following events:

/ pirate radio broadcasts of sound pieces from deviously-placed, waterproof stereos around newcastle (email nick if you have ideas or pieces ready to go, and we’ll get together a playlist)

/ launch of *unscrunched* (see above)

/ exhibition of the flying machine. apparently, there is going to be shopfront space which will be available for exhibiting pieces. smith had the grand idea of printing a version of the flying machine on a continous roll of brown packaging paper (which he can do at his work) and exhibiting the work for a short time.

willkommen mein strudels

hi all,

while the yahoo! groups format was charming, we thought it might be good to set up a blog so that images, sounds, maps etc can be uploaded easily … and so that comments can be used rather than reply-to-all emails that people shake their fists at. of course, the group will still be used and active, so keep using it if you desire.

if you want to post something here, just send me an email and i’ll cut & paste. or i’ll send you the login details.

astrid.