An-My Lê: Small Wars

(rehearsal)


these military tents, vehicles, etc.
 just staked out in a featureless desert
 -- really gives a feeling of makeshift,
    arbitrary imposed structure  ---->  culture, human actions and thoughts

    - would be a good setting for a game  ----> reminds me of IvoryDrive's Black
      (alternative to floating raft setting)


one of those soldiers there lying in the shade of the camouflage
 reminds me of my dad when he was younger


setting up facades, models, in the desert
 for simulated training environments
  - physical, not digital  ----> in the desert


The camouflage really does make them blend in.
It would be hard to see while driving through
the desert, eyes getting bored, skipping over things

  - hiding in the gaps of attention
 

(reenactment)

I like those bamboo and forest photos


Snipers - a lot of pictures of those
    It's an interestingly different role
    and way of approaching gun combat
    - hidden, but not really that much  ----> gaps of attention?  ----> desert/jungle

the Distant Flare photo is interesting




Kim Jones: A Retrospective

books and covers - paths, portals, symbols in the mind
    - living, organic, growing, moving book covers?
      how does that change things?

        ----> showing an instance of dynamics of the system that is described within


playing wargames on maps  ----> Tufte
 "work on it, get tired of it, work on it more"
  - long-term devotion to a creative construction, miniature garden  ----> viki

      ----> similar to Civ2 micromanagement and slow pace
            - keeping higher levels of organization in mind,
              but individually controlling the smallest parts


I like those weird stick/clutter/adhesive costumes
  - good for ragdoll?
  - MMO customization?  ----> Katamari


"indeterminate form" "biomorphic forms" "hybrid creatures"

  - one must map out Jones' particular symbolic language,
    his "personal idiom of figures, animals, and forms"
    to understand possible or intended meanings

    ----> connection to "homeless, camouflaged soldiers, peasants,
          or any number of mystic figures found in religions worldwide"  ----> Raven?


Installation art is a good source for miniature garden,
anthropomorphic, symbolically rich, minimal constructions


stick interweavings similar to jungle/forest  ----> Bug


war games become abstract, mathematical structures when you zoom out,
 like cellular automata


particle trails connecting the elements of this installation,
 depicting dynamics of their relationships, and also in their
 individual operation  ----> Dust in The Amber Spyglass


putting books, meaning-rich pictures
 into crevices and hidden surfaces
 in ordinary physical objects and landscapes
  - the objects without secret books all point to the special one
    somehow, in their arrangement or orientation

Having to lie down, or crouch, or whatever
to engage with whatever material is hidden there,
can bring or force a particular physical context to the situation,
which is usually seen as uncontrollable in the design of digital content




Shu: Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art

Gutters - in comics, in books  ----> rooms in architecture


Books used to have a lot more different forms, before perhaps
economic processes pushed it to a local maximum?
    - When a new medium is invented, many forms emerge,
      each as guesses of what might work

  - scroll (continuous) -> no gutters?
  - pleated (accordion) -> gutters partly there
  - pages (normal book) -> gutters permanent between pages


Ink can make letters visible, or cover them up and distort them

distortion of discrete signals vs. continous?
  - what happens when the interpreting rules, the context, changes?


What feelings are contained in the flow
and halting and reversing of line in written characters?
  - alternative to interpreting visually, it's kinesthetic.


Sketch books are another sort of book


Paper cutting (like with an X-acto blade)
could be a way to do Northwest Coast art


using the stacked pages of books as a blank substrate
 on which the results of a process could be recorded  ----> like burning patterns


letting ink build up beyond its use within the context of books,
 and let it take on a life of its own - like the magic books in Discworld


putting the reading of an image in an explicitly sequential form
 by putting parts of it on each page


Where does ink get its power? Partly in the materials and processes
used to manufacture it.
  - similarly with paper


"encyclopedic"


Different languages, different writing systems,
different cultural approaches to books, text


Silk worms, living letters


The book, "transmits knowledge but does not guarantee its authenticity."
    - what would a book be like that does guarantee its authenticity?


Tools, instruments, for writing and printing
  - specialness, valuableness, preciousness of objects 
    - containing stories within? worlds? hints of them?

    a chunk of stone forming interesting spaces and patterns,
     held by a stand  ----> stands, frames = important


Early Chinese characters were very round and smooth, lacking tension.
The modern characters are angular and hold much more distretely understandable
tension and flow, like traditional Northwest Coast art


Sleeping books
  - as architectural ruins
  - active cultural objects, carriers of social messages,
    eventually become dead relics
  - "vulnerability of memory and history"

How would this look anthropomorphized,
like in Discworld's Unseen University library?

  What does it describe?
  - pathways in the universal possibility space,
    ant trails formed but fading away