For those who didn’t read my last post, I will be doing on project on gay rights. I am going to create a chapbook. My book will contain found text. What I am going to do is collect the language and refashion it. Appropriate it with a sensibility that feels right to me as the artist, in creating a piece that meaningfully explores homosexuality. Since my last post, after having thought about what I direction I ought to take and discussing the project with some of you guys, I am trying to stay away from scripting the piece. So that I’m not having pre-conceived notions about message or the ultimate goal here. I think the nature of the project is to help me find something or learn something in the process. So I can figure out interesting ways to include the material, and hopefully make my own self-discoveries in the writing process.
I will be extracting language from speeches, possibly gay rights legislation, and interviews (historical and modern interviews I can find as well as interviews I personally conduct with homosexual individuals & people who are passionate about gay rights). I’ve redirected my project in this way, so that the art dictates the message and not the other way around. Though I do have my opinions and personal ideas about prejudice towards gays, I realize that I don’t want my project to appear as though I am trying to be pedagogical. I can sense that it wouldn’t be satisfying to create (as writer) or experience (as reader) an artwork with a message that is so obviously preordained.
I think when dealing with found language, I will have to be especially careful with how I construct it visually. I’m thinking about form and how, in representing the language, it might be interesting to play with procedural techniques like chance operations. I this way the reader will participate in extracting his/her own meanings from the text. I am thinking that I would use chance operations with articles, speeches, and newspaper clippings. If any of you guys have any good ideas for specific chance operations, that would be great! For the interviews I conduct, however, I don’t think I will be using chance operation because I want to capture the human element of the interviews without interfering in a way that alters the heart of the language. With this, I’ll be interested in my own visual representation, and I’m hoping that my own emotional and personal opinions about homosexuality resonate with the language I gather.
I have started composing music for the CD. For those who don’t know, I’m planning on composing a piano score that will go with the book. The music will reflect my current emotional ‘ness.’ Not how I feel now, but how I feel when I’m playing the piano. I think I will probably record it after I have gathered all of my language. I want the music to reflect the language. That way, to me, the music won’t be arbitrary; rather there will be personal meaning in each note.
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It sounds like you have a lot of work ahead of you. I don't know what chance operation is but I'm sure it will be interesting. I am curious about how you will use interviews to create found art that still contains the message and your feelings on the subject. I feel like that would just be restating what that person said. In other words, I though creating found poetry means changing someone else's words to mean something else. I was thinking you could use people with positive and negative feelings about homosexuality and then change it so that the negative is positive. But that isn't the way you want to go. I'm concerned that what you create will more more someone else's messages rather than your own. Just keep that in mind as you move forward and you probably won't have a problem. Can't wait to hear the music though.
ReplyDeleteI think found poetry and work is really cool, and the benefit of chance operations is in the reader taking the material and being completely sold on the message you're putting across. After all, if you've gone across this stuff randomly, and a message emerges, then it simply has to be there, there's no interpretation about it. I think this can be really effective in letting the medium really speak for itself; they don't have to worry about you or your agenda. I like mixing it with human interviews...this puts a sort of what 'they' have to say, very objective (the found poetry) and what 'we' have to say, also objective, words out of others mouths. Finally, you put yourself into the work with your own interpretation through the music, and the emotion that comes with that.I think it's a great way of keeping objective, saying some powerful stuff, and still finding a way to put yourself into the work.
ReplyDeleteZach -
ReplyDeleteI think when it comes to chance operations you have to pick something reletivlysimple and stick with it. What some people have done is picked a number, and then gone through the piece (in your case, an article or a speech) counting the words until you arrive at the chosen number, and then you write down the word that you landed on.
EX:Nubmer 4
The green grass waved slowly.
You would write down waved. The problem with this is you can end up landing forever on "the" or "and" and it can make the piece sound very different than you wanted it to. Another option is picking phrases, and count those. It can turn out a little more interesting that way. Or you could use the blackout method and start marking out articles. OR pick a shape (geometiccal) and use that to mark articles.
Even if you decide to select text yourself, I think that this project has a lot of potential.