First addtion to the choir

This last weekend I started the recording process for my project. I recorded two tracks of my mom singing as well as two tracks of me singing. Over spring break I hope to capture my dad's voice as well as my friends, Shannon and Angela. Saturday morning I will be recording my friend Charlie Looker, his band Extra Life will be on tour from new york and will coming and playing my loft space tomorrow night. Getting very excited :)

Burial Pix

Burial Site Update: These pants have made it through 2 snow storms and they are still hanging!

In the Realm of the Unreal

Perhaps the greatest example of mapping time.

Henry Darger, a seemingly poor Chicago hospital janitor, is the author of the longest novel of all time (discovered in his apartment after his death in 1973)

The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion is a 15,145 page book complete with over 700 illustrations.

Each day Darger, who lived alone and was an institutionalized orphan growing up, worked on his magnus opus as well as meticulously recording the weather and writing in his diary. He had no friends or family, and no one knew of his life's work until his died at the age of 81.

Abandoned Country Club in Westchester County, NY

I was fortunate enough to tour an abandoned (due to foreclosure) country club in Armonk, NY this weekend. The Canyon Club was having an estate sale and I managed to slip away into the men's locker room downstairs area. This creepy Shining-esque place had a sombre and foreboding/foreclosed mood but provided for great photographs.

The Burial and the Music Box

I'm finally getting around to posting pictures of what I buried... my old cell phone in a glass box. I had this cell phone for 4 years (and it somehow still works!), so there are a lot of memories on it. I have a ton of photos from this phone, some of which bring back painful memories, and some of which make me laugh. Here are just a couple:

I've been changing ideas a lot, but this past weekend I found an amazing old music box at Kiwanis, and I really want to do something with it. Here's a video I took of it while it's playing music:

Red Water Balloon Burst in slow motion

This is cool video
I like to share with class

Findings in Abandoned Buildings in Detroit

cutting up the goods

I went through the song and cut out all the different variations of the verse and left only the parts I wanted, which is the woman singing...

"that's alright, that's alright, that's alright, it will be alright,
since my soul gots a seat up in the kingdom that's alright."

I think I like the idea of leaving the song real short on the album, it is only a minute and 17 seconds, which I think could be a very good thing. I am going to wait and see, I can easily just loop the woman's voice a few more measures if need be. I also had to go through and kind of cut up some of these sections to get them more in a steady tempo.

I had planned to add my vocals as well, but since I have came down with this cold I can't sing at all, so I am going to have to wait until this weeked to add someones vocals, perhaps my mother.

Bentley Historical Library

This is the master plan for Domino's Farms from 1984. It's sort of interesting that there is a scale for the actual artifact... mapping the map that maps the farm.


And on a different note, the idea that free time is important in learning seems (to me) to be related to recent studies of embodied cognition. According to this recent article, our body understands abstract concepts physically... when we think about the past we lean back, when we are asked to recall a prior misdeed we are more likely to ask for an antiseptic cloth, and pantomiming mathematical movements helps us understand them. Of course we must be able to act upon newly imparted knowledge in order to fully process them. We literally store memory throughout our bodies, so in some ways our bodies are maps of our lives.

An Interestingly Mapped Collection of Strange Items For Sale

American Science & Surplus in Chicago. Get something cool today!

Support SITA SINGS THE BLUES! (and Creative Commons and join Limited Fork Theory in celebrating the Collaborative Nature of all things)

(poster from Indo-American Arts Council)
Nina Paley generously gives her beautiful film Sita Sings the Blues to us, all of us, noting that as part of culture (made of components of culture, which includes dreams), it belongs to us already, is an assemblage, an extension of parts of human experience and human interactions with all things human and all things not human. Idea itself is in part response to that which spawns it; some existing information in some form is at part of idea's heart (as it is in this clever heart umbrella from my design pick.com):




How wonderful it is for the human community to link in inspiration and response; negatively or positively we connect, configure, and reconfigure, making a map of human experience that exposes what is marvelous about us and what is not (at times, according to principles of some temporary configurations, interchangeable).

No matter how brief the configuration in which connections succeeds, I am grateful that it occurs, and I accept that for the possibility of sublime connection the possibility of brutal connections must be risked. Indeed; perception itself is configurable, winners and losers in the same situation. If there is connection, then all possible forms of connections will manifest on some scale in some location for some duration of time. Forms that are not possible will not manifest. Once a form manifests, that form is possible. Forms not possible in this configuration of now many become possible in the now of other circumstances. And what is not possible in a now of other circumstances will not manifest.

The seeking of interaction, a form of connection, that must occur in Limited Fork Theory, the study of interacting systems on any scale in any location for any duration of time; and the participation in interactions found are the context and focus of my ambition. Perhaps study and participation in some as yet undetermined number (so much falls between the tines of the limited fork, so I cannot be sure of anything, even that there is slippage —an incredible probability of slippage, but I have no proof of exactly what flips between the tines, for to know what slips is to have information that slippage denies; to know what falls through tines would be a form of catching what slips. I assume slippage, but what might disprove slippage I believe has slipped through the tines that themselves sponsor my adherence to slippage probability). Therefore: share, share, share!
This post (and forkergirl's other posts in this blog) joins Nina Paley in being made available for re/continued use with a creative commons share alike license:


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.



As most of us (to whom Sita Sings the Blues belongs) still exist in circumstances that require us to have a source or sources of income, Nina Paley is not prospering from free distribution of her wonderful film, so please consider supporting the ethics of sharing and collaborative building (the collaborative is a prevailing nature of things, it would seem, according to Limited Fork Theory, among other tools of perception/understanding) by making a donation at the Sita Sings the Blues site and/or by purchasing some of the products at Question Copyright.com Perhaps a Copyleft Tee shirt or a Valmiki Violin Shirt or jewelry, stickers, etc.

Nothing but praises for Sita Sings the Blues and Nina Paley!


No better example of Limited Fork Theory in action!

The Burial of Mrs. Cowsephine Jonas

Cowsephine has been with me for a while. She was one of the first keychains that I purchased for my keychain collection. When I got my driver's license, it was difficult choosing between all of my prized keychains, but I finally decided on Cowsephine. She lit up and mooed so valiantly that I couldn't stand to leave her in the cluttered box. Cowsephine treated me well, despite the death of her battery and the deterioration of her spots. Alas, it is time to put her to rest, and let her mingle with the ground. Here are some pictures of her final days here on Earth.

It's Alright

My project is going to be a lengthy process of collecting voices, specifically all the relationships I have made over the years living here in this dimension. I have been really badly wanting to do a song on the new record I am working on to have a choir of all my friends and family that can sing and capture their voices singing over this old gospel song that I found and instantly felt a kinship with. The idea is to map out this imaginary space where all these people's voices I love can exist together all at once, which really you would never really get to hear in your lifetime, maybe at your funeral.

burial

my vans over the years:

Stop Frame Animation

I like to watch this stop frame animation.

Enjoy it.

my burial items

Time Trials!