Greetings from San Francisco

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I have been lucky enough to be able to come and live in San Francisco for four months. This is such a nice occasion to discover a new place for myself and by myself I wanted to share this experience. But I do have some difficulty writing or typing for that matter so I found a transcription software built into the Mac and I’m doing it that way. Also, since my posts go to Facebook I can share this great experience.

So I’ve been here for slightly more than two weeks discovering the landscape finding my haunts and just looking at everything everything’s different. Everything is completely surprising. I am incredibly. Incredibly attracted to all the various people of various places all over the world who live in the city and it is so interesting to see how people live in a place like this with such a dense population.

I obviously will be posting pictures as a matter. It will be the best way to give you an idea of what I’m seeing and where I’m going and whatever it is I’m doing at whatever time. I have to say I have been spending quite a bit of time at City Lights the famous bookstore that is just down the street from me.

City Lights
This is the view of the Bay Bridge from the fire escape in my building.
Preparations for Chinese New Year are under way (Feb 15th)

Response to assignment 1

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I have asked students to produce work based on the concept of a manifesto. I decided, I should also complete that assignment.

The Manifesto of Psychedelia and Digital Fragmentation

The computer reinterprets all our interfaces and reshapes them in ways we recognize and appreciate, even recognize as real. But it also breaks it all up into little bits of data; I want to confuse data, create neurotic machines.

Impressions de l’académie

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One thing I always think about is the question of whether or not academic life is still relevant. Institutions have increasingly becoming top heavy while downloading more and more responsibilities down the ladder.

As an Academic, it appears to me that attendance to committee meetings has more value that a consistent and dynamic programme of research. Obviously “academic speak” is able to dissipate the impact of a radically changing place of “higher learning”.

A story comes to mind. As a student at l’Université de Moncton, I had a student job working with my printmaking professor, Jacques Arsenault (https://bit.ly/41p24o1). Those couple of months is when I understood what being an artist means.

So, he comes in one day with a bag full of French fries, we place them on a litho stone and run that under slight pressure. It took a while but we eventually built up enough fat deposit to produce a solid black. Then Jacques started scraping the surface (the colours come from doing this over and over). This is the work above and “fries” is actually in the title. The whole thing is based on Raymond Roussel’s, “Impressions d’Afrique”.

To me, it just seems that we no longer have those kinds of collaborative explorations between faculty and students. You can’t really enforce it; but it certainly should be given value and facilitated.

A Return To The Blog

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The Wringing in Your Ear

My postings tend to be sporadic, more regular while I am teaching (as I am now). I often wonder what exactly to write about, obviously I speak mostly about my work with short texts giving some context. This has not been really satisfying as I am not certain that can be called “writing”.

There is still going to be a work posted at the end but first a story.

It is a story about how I crossed from childhood to the harsh reality of the real world. I actually remember hearing a loud crack at that very moment. It was a Sunday morning 44 years ago, I was 12. I got up and went downstairs to make myself some breakfast (I have always been an early riser). My favourite cereal then was Rice Crispies.

My Dad was at the kitchen table drinking tea and playing solitaire as was his regular routine. I remember the sounds of the cereal popping and the flick of cards on the table. As always, the radio was on and tuned to CBC radio (when that still meant something).

But it was a special day and Terrence McKenna was making a report from Jonestown. This was two days after the mass suicide. McKenna was walking around the compound describing what he was seeing and his voice was muffled because he was holding a rag over his mouth and nose because of the smell. Any search online using Jonestown Massacre with give you many more details. In short a cult leader (Rev. Jim Jones) went psychotic and made his followers drink Kool-aid mixed with cyanide. 900 people died that day and I was no longer a child… forever.

The piece linked below was made early in my career at Grenfell and was my first foray into sound/video art. You will hear the voices of Jim Jones, Terrence McKenna, and excerpts of an old CBC television show called “Front Page Challenge” and of course my own voice fades in and out. This is by far the most obviously personal work I have made. Of course all work is personal in some respects but this one was almost autobiographical.