Conceptual Blogging?

Went to the Spencer Museum of Art this afternoon. Saw the Warhol Heinz tomato sauce box. It was under plexiglass. In an art museum. And that has made all the difference.

There was also an exhibit of video art from Asia. In one work, a Korean man related the story of an old love affair that revolved around trains and train tracks. In an adjacent screen, a stage curtain opens onto a video of train tracks, on a screen within the screen you're watching. As we "move forward" along these tracks, the screen is framed by computer-generated track and scenery that prefectly matches the "actual video."

It occurred to me that one could just as easily install computer monitors that only showed one blog each - or showed blogs' being updated, using time-lapse photography. Might not be very entertaining, but it would make a point.

So, let us say that any blog can be understood as art, provided it is framed or contained by the institutions or social forms of art.

One of those "social frames" would be an MFA thesis. Why not put a blog in it? Plenty of works of conceptual art have been. Of course, if this is as far as it goes, then the thesis would itself be a kind of conceptual art/writing project. For such a project, it would be precisely the (deadpan) blog about your cats (or family or hobby) that would be called for, in order for it to follow the logic of other conceptual art projects.

Conversely, Warhol's Brillo boxes would not have the same effect if they'd been printed in flourescent colors with the lettering in off-kilter, blurry black ink. Then you'd know something was up, regardless of whether they were stacked in MoMA or in the stock room at the supermarket. If it were the latter, the structure (or inherent form) of the piece would produce its own mental frame: this is not what the thing that usually goes here looks like. As opposed to: the thing that looks like this does not usually go here (see preceding paragraph).

Either way, it seems like space/place - esp. public v. private is a crucial determinant. So the fact of your blog's being an MFA thesis would need to be made public in some way - perhaps by blogging on a streetcorner. And videotaping it, and then exhibiting or publishing that video somehow (as some performance art - whether in public or private space - might be videotaped and then shown as DVD or in a gallery).

Probably the best way to do it would be to make the blog reader/viewer constantly aware of the process of writing, approving, and submitting an MFA thesis that is a blog. Culminating in the diploma as a permanent feature in the side-bar. Like the "show invisibles" command in a word-processing program. Then content wouldn't be an issue, since the form would be the explicit conceptual (and visible) "frame."

Slow Blog? 2

All this talk about slowness is making me sleepy.

Nonetheless, since it's happening in the blogosphere, it got me to thinking about how we (I) spend our time. A lot of us read blogs b/c we're avoiding more unpleasant tasks. Sometimes blogging is that unpleasant "task." In other words, as with most labor-saving devices, blogs may be beefing up our to-do lists - making us busier, more frazzled, etc. Or they may (can) be a relief or time-out from those tasks. (You can see where I'm going with this, right? If so, please tell me, b/c I don't)

But seriously, folks - what if we all agreed to blog no more than 100 words per day - that's 3000 words per month, 36,000 words per year. That's a lot of words - to write or to read. On top of all the others we're writing and reading. Blog bites.

A reflection: going slowly shows you how fast you have to go to keep from falling farther and farther behind.

Less word - be happy yes!

This post is 183 words, including these words.

A Blog Hole

Instead of reading and writing blogs, I could be reading and writing _______. But really, I wonder how much imagination and thought are funneled into this form that formerly was expended on things like essays, poems, books, &c. There are writers who do some of their best writing for their blogs. And there are others who read everything (or appear to do so), including blogs. And what does happen when nobody can afford the utility bills any more? The missing link is the link after the last.

The NEXT BLOG

SIN LUGAR A DUDAS UNA DE LAS MAS HERMOSAS ETAPAS DE NUESTRAS VIDAS. SEA ESTE NUESTRO TESTIMONIO DE AGRADECIMIENTO A TODOS LAS PERSONAS QUE DE UNA U OTRA FORMA NOS FORMARON EN NUESTRAS VIDAS.

- no, not an Oscar speech it’s Glorioso 4^o c 1983 Rancagua College, somewhere in Colombia.

Blogito Ergo Dum

What - about 100K+ new blogs per day? Do the math - w/in the decade, no one will do anything but post and surf and read blogs. They say the Holocene Epoch is over and this is the Anthropocene, but in between is the Blogocene (not to be confused with the Poetrycene, which is already experiencing a massive extinction). Does anybody really like blogs? Or does everybody feel they have to have them to keep their name before the phantom public? Or to let all one's friends know all the things that you'd tell them if you picked up the phone. As Frank O'Hara points out, instead of writing a poem, you could just as easily be writing a blog. So why not!

Blogito Ergo Sum

Though as a nice electrical-engineering boy pointed out, I might be an A.I. blog generator. Sometimes I feel like that. I will generate a poem about it, like Data.

Fixing to go to the inaugural "Top City" reading to hear Kevin Rabas, veteran jazz poet (and musician), and Dennis Etzel, Jr., poet-programmer, who grows more flarfy every time I look around. When was the last time I went to a reading with poets who were both truly nice people? There's a thot for the day.