On the process:

The fundamental idea that cuts across the entire Cell Phone Stories series is to not simply refigure the museum via remote technology but to use the museum and the technology as an opportunity to refigure the ways we conceptualize, order, scale and make tangible culture.

The conceit that the museum could provide both and art and larger-than-art opportunity has been with me since I saw Harold Szeeman’s Austria im Rosennetz show in, I believe, 1997. The show turned the museum into a carefully constructed junkyard: everything from fairground bric a brac, scraps of paper, larger than life cinema, Freud’s this and that, etc, etc. Szeemann really used the foundational fact that the museum was a cultural depository, and from that starting point did not simply reshuffle the deck of culture in a predictable manner, but provided a platform to rethink the entirety of a century’s history.

Each episode of the Cell Phone Stories series makes an acute contribution to this overall aim. The kicker, of course is the cell phone dimension. We no longer produce an epic history at an epic scale, but address the epic according to the conceit that you can hold the whole world in your cell phoned-hand. I will give a few examples from my own miniseries, Only For Dummies, Punctured Utopia of the 21st Century to illustrate how I wished to put these ambitions into play.

To a certain extent, these questions had already been in my work most specifically the feature length videos The Amazing Voyage of Raymond Roussel and Gustave Flaubert and The Machine that Killed Bad People. I’m sure it was this work that motivated Michael Govan to invite me to do a series on refiguring the museum and history. In the machine I had used the syntax of CNN to retell the histories of the television revolutions of the late 80s.  What I wanted to do is use elements of the procedure of Facebook: to juxtapose, displace, have people interrupt conversations, have them enter from odd angles. I was interesting in having people from very different worlds in one place, to quote, use video and photos, and operate under the conceit of friendship to tell one of the crucial stories of the 20th century; the hope and dream for heaven on earth, Utopia.

I selected examples that had a strong presence at LACMA: the Soviet Revolution, Hollywood and Bauhaus.  I focus on these variants of utopias highlighting different dimensions of the utopian project in each of the episodes; dramatic upheaval and radical change in the Soviet example, the phantasy and dreamlike immersive quality in Hollywood cinema, the  “Over the Rainbowness”, and Utopia becoming a school of practical implementation through the Bauhaus.

The largest difficulty I faced in using the Facebook conceit was that both its formatting and usage are in constant flux. At first, I thought I would be creating quizzes and games, but they actually went out of fashion during the course of the project. Something that came into play during the course of CPS was conceptual tagging on Facebook. For instance, you tag a friend in a song that reminds you of them. They needn’t have the song or even have heard the song.

An example I used was the exchange between Bertolt Brecht and Mayakovsky where Brecht sends a message to Mayakovsky saying that he has tagged him in a play—and that play is Galileo.There is a section in Brecht’s Galileo that embodied the pursuit of truth in face  of dire social and political  ramifications. In my cell phone example, Mayakovsky is “tagged” because his life seems to embody a similar dilemma albeit in a very different context than Galileo. Mayakovsky then gives his response via one of his poems. This type of conceptual tagging, a very different use of quotation, and the mobilization of the Facebook syntax for a very different semantics were things that worked out very well in my  Dummy cycle.

The choice in the series of using only common forms of cell phone software (jpg, email, Twitter, voicemail, Facebook, pdf) rather than inventing  new formats comes  from my belief that  creativity tends to be abandoned too soon in a form. All forms tend to develop extensive opportunities and options that then become standardized. That’s just good business. At the moment of standardization the options are at the maximum, but the variation of usage has become tiresome and predictable. My thought was that giving it another go, breaking down and refiguring usage of a powerful communication tool (in my example, Facebook) could yield tremendous creative opportunity.

Now that I’ve tried to lay out some of the epic ambitions of the  CPS project through the example  of my lunatic cycle, I’d like to focus on a few of the  particular achievements of the talented people that contributed to the series.

My fellow phonies had the  good sense to scale their pieces to the contractual usage time of the cell phone user. I will use each of their contributions to illustrate  a conceptual issue I feel they address very well. Of course, their pieces mean much more and other things , but I will leave that exposition to others.

THE WHOLE WORLD IS IN YOUR HANDS

The scale in the two  Barry’s’ pieces (Barry Yourgrau and Barry Gifford) is very interesting. On one hand, you have Barry Yourgrau, who is a type of conjurer. He puts nothing  in his hand, closes his fist  then opens his fist and a beautiful multicolored bird flies out. It expands into a story delicate and full of imagination. Barry Gifford takes something, puts it in his hand, squeezes it and squeezes it, makes it tighter and more compressed. When he opens his hand, it’s a compressed item but it’s also beautiful and radiant, as when Superman changes a piece of coal into a diamond. His work is both tender and Wild at Heart, and it’s this unique combination that makes it so special. I thought we ended up with two writers who were perfect in making the cell phone sing; different  like Tebaldi and Callas, but both beautiful.

LIVE AT LACMA, BUT NOT IN FRONT OF YOUR VERY EYES

Rich Bott’s live Twitter piece focused on resolution  of a detective story at LACMA. The piece interested me because the information we have about the detective story is accessed obliquely through the phone. There are jpgs, live video feed and these weird SMS and Twitter messages given in telegram mode. The audience receives occasional glimpses seen from  too close or too far, juxtaposed with fragmentary text messages that all take in in the very space in which we are standing. The result is a series of intriguing aesthetic fragments of the experience of the museum , but at the same time an interesting set of clues available to us to compete with the detective to solve the crime

AFTERALL IT IS A PHONE

Kianga Ford’s use of the phone message I find interesting  because it foregrounds that in mobile-to-mobile communication, location is extremely variable and the participants are subject to very different experiences and etiquettes. I almost always, when calling, try to figure out what type of situation the person I’m calling is in by picking up sound cues. Are they in a public space, there home , a restaurant, their car? Where they are radically changes what I say and for how long. In Kianga’s pieces, ideally, the user is situated in a  specific place in the museum and the message heard is coming from a space that  engages their space in an interesting way. In her Japanese piece, we stand in front of an object at LACMA and the message comes as she is walking in the place of origin of the object. Indeed, Kianga uses the phone as a platform for a “sound work” – her soundscape being both elaborate and riveting

AND WHAT LANGUAGE ARE THEY SPEAKING?

Adrienne Ferrari’s series, Tweet Jane Ditty, uses a 40-something unemployed educated woman as the central protagonist who daydreams imagined Twitter conversations ala the Secret Life of Walter Mitty. They are not her wishes for success, glamour and sexual conquest, but what may be done and what might happen in LACMA’s non-art or not-yet-art spaces. What I wish to foreground about her piece is its use of Twitter to produce a colorful eccentric compressed “for users only” conversation. The side of Twitter that interests me is not it’s massive communicative potential but it’s ability to generate new ways of saying writing. Twitter can produce a rich poetic and uniquely expressive vernacular. At its best, this is thrilling, but it takes energy to unpack. We thought these pieces had a hidden treasure quality and we invite you to discover them in our archive on this blog.

RESURRECTING THE DEAD

Now the Mulleavy sisters of Rodarte produced the audience award winner of CPS. What’s not to like? What interested me in their piece was the sense of excavating the museum, digging into it’s bowels and transforming from LACMA’s holdings a series of ever-so-lovely contemporary Schemata designs even better than Cinderella’s little helpers convert the ever-so-yesterday into things worthy of the Belle of the Ball.  The capacity to conjure such elegance and transcendence from a “mere jpg” was a clear slam-dunk.

THIS IS REALLY LIVE!

I feel the live Twitter piece of Rainn Wilson is best seen in relation to the comedy of Andy Kaufman, “omg  this is live and in public “! What is the limit of what can be said and done  in the name of  professional performance and in a live context? I felt Rainn Wilson playing off his  popular Twitter identity and moving it toward an Andy Kaufman dead pan “did he really say or do that?” was taking Rainn’s profile to an interesting edge. In an art context, one must remember that the boundaries of “good taste ” are an important component of what we now take as high art. There is a strong and diverse lineage of work that questioned the threshold of acceptability from Dada  through Surrealism and onward to (in a more American context) the work of Paul McCarthy. This going through a red light, past  the boundary of proper behavior, is what interested me in Rainn’s piece. The role of art surely includes pushing the publicly unsaid to the said in a challenging manner. It is also important to remember that, when originally performed,  the work of Dada and Surrealism was felt to be a success by the artists if it produced dramatic and even negative response — and it did. It is only now, decades later, that  we simply accept this  type of  contestation of “proper behavior” as a topic worthy of a museum context.

In closing I’d like to  thank my Cher LACMA Phonies, Amy Heibel, Erin Wright and Rita Gonzalez, for their support, initiative, intelligence and diligence on the series and thank all the contributors for their eclectic and intelligent responses. I’m very proud of the work done for the series.

–Steve Fagin

http://www.lacma.org/gifford.pd.

Andy Warhol, Black and White Disaster, 1962. Copyright Andy Warhol Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Name Jane Ditty

Bio A fit and fortyish fantasist laid off from my job at Pipeline Partners, LLC and while I do not dress to the nines, I do dress well. I, also, pride myself on my politeness. If people are nice to me then I am always nice to them in return. I use my time between internet crawls and job searches tweeting out an imaginarium of scenarios. Where I ask myself what if like if(x)then(y)or(z) and then my hopes, my fears, my dreams.

Location The lobby of my imagination, where I can play myself as a star of stage or multiple screens. I can take me out to the ball game or take me out to the gym. Today, yoga will do. Hmm, I wonder? What is the tally for transformation?
What’s happening? Today, I think workout but imagine myself a museum.

LAChron
Extra, Extra! Tweet all about it! The LACMA Revolution continues! Find your phones and grab your towels. It’s about to get hot.
1:58 PM Jun 19

LACMA
The purge is on. Coddle time is over. Now, it’s time to sweat.–JD
2:00 PM Jun 19

LACMA
RIGHT NOW – The Resnick Pavilion is now The Resnick Shala. Polygons be gone. New Millennium sculpture begins now!–JD
2:00 PM Jun 19

Culturecupcake
Talk about hot! RT @ The Resnick Pavilion is now The Resnick Shala. New Millennium sculpture begins now.
2:00 PM Jun 19

PetelikesPink
Ooh, yoga. I love yoga.  Do we get all white mats, too?
2:01 PM Jun 19

HEALTHYHULK
HULK HEART ALL WHITE MATS! SHOW OFF COLOR HULK SKIN! IT NOT EASY BEING GREEN!
2:02 PM Jun 19

LACMA
Everyone! Ujjayi breathing now! In and out, slow and steady. That’s right. Refocus and remain calm. Yoga is revelation not revolution.–JD
2:05 PM Jun 19

OmShanti
@LACMA Revelation? Try transformation. Yoga is for the strong not the weak. Just look at Madonna’s arms.
2:06 PM Jun 19

LACMA
ANNOUNCEMENT – LACMA appoints OmShanti as Director of Transformation. After all, where is there no pain. There is no gain.–JD
2:09 PM Jun 19

Culturecupcake
Tweet Flash! LACMA in a fever! OmShanti made Director of Transformation. What next? Director of Day Dreaming?
2:12 PM Jun 19

BuzzkillJones
Director of Transformation? Sheesh, just bring on the lotus flowers, why don’t you? What happened to art? You know A-R-T, ART.
2:13 PM Jun 19

LACMA
Ooh, thanks @Culturecupcake. RT @Culturecupcake Director of Day Dreaming. I like that. Maybe, next time?–JD
2:14 PM Jun 19

DayLAC
RT@ LACMA Director of Dreaming? What? Snap to @LACMA! This is LA. What about cynical one-liners? What about the readymade?
2:17 PM Jun 19

PetelikesPink
@DayLAC Wow, maybe you and Buzzkill should go on a date together. What a couple of Debbie Downers.
2:18 PM Jun 19

LACMA
ANNOUNCEMENT – Free admission until October 1 for bringing an artwork of your own making to LACMA. Influence allowed. Urinals not!–JD
2:25 PM Jun 19

BuzzkillJones
@LACMA It’s too hard, it’s too hard. I can’t do it. I’m melting, I’m melting.
2:26 PM Jun 19

HEALTHYHULK
ENOUGH TALK! MORE SWEAT! ART AND HEALTH TOO MUCH SAME PROBLEM! TOO MUCH THINK! NOT ENOUGH DO!
2:28 PM Jun 19

PetelikesPink
@ HEALTHY HULK TOO MUCH THINK? What about quality versus quantity? What about Duchamp? What about ideas and not mere visual products?
2:30 PM Jun 19

OmShanti
What about if instead of moving our lips? We move our breath and then our minds?
2:30 PM Jun 19

DayLAC
The revolution sweats? Is the pursuit of chess a lost cause? Should art start getting physical and stop getting smart?
2:34 PM Jun 19

LACMA
@DayLAC YES! YES! YES!  Art should be more like a workout than a chess match. It should take one out of their head not trap them in it.–JD
2:36 PM Jun 19

LACMA
@DayLAC More like in the service of Sporting Images and less like The Pure Beauty of Figure and Landscape.–JD
2:36 PM Jun 19

LACMA
@DayLAC Hot topics, literal not topics that get hot, metonymical.–JD
2:36 PM Jun 19

BuzzkillJones
@LACMA So, what are you suggesting? That all I have to do is sweat?
2:38 PM Jun 19

OmShanti
@BuzzkillJones Well . . .Yoga and Art are both practices and you know how to get to Carnegie Hall, don’t you?
2:41 PM Jun 19

Culturecupcake
Is practice, practice, practice the new hot, hot, hot? What happened to whimsy and caprice? What happened to fun and really cool sunglasses?
2:44 PM Jun 19

PetelikesPink:
Umm, hello! Animal crackers? Ongoing Transformation? Crispy Pata? Live Jazz? Cell Phone Stories? Is a little sweat equity too much to ask?
2:45 PM Jun 19

Until Next Time

]]> http://cellphonestories.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/8-26-2010-adrienne-ferrari/feed/ 0 cellphonestories http://cellphonestories.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/8-19-2010/ http://cellphonestories.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/8-19-2010/#comments Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:06:14 +0000 cellphonestories http://cellphonestories.wordpress.com/?p=89 Continue reading →]]> Artist Kianga Ford launched the second episode in her series called You Are Here…a movement, an act, an episode, an ecology. Designed as a site-specific audio experience at the Pavilion for Japanese Art at LACMA, the first part, Way to the Buddha, is designed to accompany visitors as they enter the Pavilion for Japanese Art and ascend the ramp leading to the top. The second part, Way to the Bridge, leads from the top of the ramp to the paintings of Uji Bridge on the lowest level of the Pavilion. The piece was inspired by Ford’s travels during her residency in Japan, where she saw the Uji Bridge and the Hall of the Bosatsus. The text is from Lonely Planet. Original music, courtesy of Emily Lacy.

Way to the Buddha

Way to the Bridge

Name Jane Ditty

Bio A fit and fortyish fantasist laid off from my job at Pipeline Partners, LLC and while I do not dress to the nines, I do dress well. I, also, pride myself on my politeness. If people are nice to me then I am always nice to them in return. I use my time between internet crawls and job searches tweeting out an imaginarium of scenarios. Where I ask myself what if like if(x)then(y)or(z) and then my hopes, my fears, my dreams.

Location The lobby of my imagination, where I can play myself as a star of stage or multiple screens. I can take me out to the ball game or order take out. Today, El Bulli will do. Hmm, I wonder? What is the FedEx expense for foam?

What’s happening? Today, I think food but imagine myself a museum.

lacma

DayLAC
In complete SoCal style Artist feed trumps @ LACMA feed! Hold onto your phones,
whole lotta drop out is about to occur!
11.42 AM Jun 19

LACMA
@DayLAC Dropout ?! I don’t need no stinkin’ dropout. What I need is food!
#forgethungerartistletstalkhungryartist –JD
11.45 AM Jun 19

LACMA
First stop on the conquest express, Plaza Café! Every revolution starts with a healthy breakfast or really cool sunglasses. Your pick.—JD
11.45 AM Jun 19

PetelikesPink
I hear they have the best bacon, blue cheese burger, EVAH and right now, don’t you think you deserve it? #cmonyouknowyouwantone #LACMA
11.48 AM Jun 19

HEALTHYHULK
HULK SMASH! HULK NO BACON BLUE CHEES BURGER! MAKE HULK TOO HUGE FOR TINY PURPLE SHORTS! REMEMBER LA POWER DETERMINED BY ABSENCE OF MASS!
11.50 AM Jun 19

LACMA
@HEALTHYHULK First new rule: All women must be a size six or larger to come to LACMA. #LACMA #newrules #realwomenloveLACMA –JD
11.54 AM Jun 19

LACHRON
RT@ LACMA New Rule: All women must be at least a size six to even come onto LACMA campus. #frontpage #chaosreigns #donutshopriotspossible
12.00 PM Jun 19

mewantcupcake
@LACMA Me come down with measuring tape. Me figure whose size six and who’s not. Me become @LACMA’s new Admissions Director. @DayLAC #FF
12.03 PM Jun 19

LACMA
Now tweet this, now tweet this: Cupcake Monster @LACMA’s New Admissions Director. Free Bullseye sponsored measuring at 12:00PM.@eateat –JD
12.05 PM Jun 19

DayLAC
LA art world suddenly embraces whimsy and caprice. RT @LACMA appoints Cupcake Monster Director of Admissions. #thedayironydied #NOWAY!
12.11 PM Jun 19

Culturecupcake
Tweet flash! RT @ LACMA Cupcake Monster appointed @ LACMA’s New Director of Admissions. #hollywoodrejoices #artworldconfused #thinnolongerin
12.11 PM Jun 19

LACMA
Entrance to LACMA is now free to all women size 6 and up. Everyone else now go to the Plaza Café for FREE milk and cupcakes! –JD
12.15 PM Jun 19

HEALTHYHULK
HULK MAKE DEAL WITH DEVIL WILLING TO SIGN OFF ON CUPCAKES BUT . . . NOT MILK HULK SAY WHAT ABOUT ALLERGIES AND INTOLERANCE
12.18 PM Jun 19

PetelikesPink
@ Healthy Hulk Yes, what about intolerance? I have frequently wondered that myself especially since I am hideously allergic to white bread.
12.21 PM Jun 19

PetelikesPink
@LACMA, No matter how sweet the tooth. Museum goers cannot live on cupcakes and soy milk alone. #hanowiknowyourweakness #newnamelexluther
12.22 PM Jun 19

LACMA
@PetelikesPink Point taken. RT @PetelikesPink No matter how sweet the tooth. Museum goers cannot live on cupcakes and soy milk alone –JD
12.22 PM Jun 19

mewantcupcakes
@LACMA @PetelikesPink Me thinks you both wrong. Me says show me the data. Cupcakes with milk perfect meal. @eatthisandthat #cisforcupcake
12.23 PM Jun 19

LACMA
Now Tweet this, now Tweet this:@LACMA announces café menu changes. Sponsored by @CompleteFoods alternative milks now added to the menu.–JD
12.35 PM Jun 19

LACMA
Plus cupcakes and milks of all sorts, the café will also feature animal crackers and champagne BUT that’s it. No more menu additions. –JD
12.35 PM Jun 19

LACMA
Also, to increase tolerance, all museum goers will be made to watch Curt McDowell and George Kuchar’s Thundercrack! NO EXCEPTIONS!—JD
12.36 PM Jun 19

DayLAC
RT @LACMA To increase tolerance museum goers must watch Curt McDowell and George Kuchar’s Thundercrack! NO EXCEPTIONS! #encore #LGBT<3LACMA
12.38 PM Jun 19

LACMA
And last but not least, I’m appointing mewantcrispypata as the NEW Development Director because if Crispy can’t get it done. No one can. –JD
12.39 PM Jun 19

Mewantcupcake
@LACMA Me love mewantcrispypata. She so cute.
#becausewhenallissaidanddonethereisnothingbetterthanalittlecrispypata
12.43 PM Jun 19