Alternate universes

I think I had a breakthrough about UV tonight.

I was listening to Terry Gross interview a physicist about the real possibility of parallel universes. It's crazy, listen to it here.

Suddenly I had a thought – what if Uncanny Valley isn't based on sense memories from childhood – what if it's our sense memories from an alternate childhood? An alternate/parallel universe?

This is akin to the “H2M alternate history” idea. But I feel like it goes deeper – alternate history not just as a wacky other version of our past, but a version of what could have happened – and maybe is happening, alongside us. Suddenly the twin/aliens make sense to me – they aren't the embodiment of our past, they are alternate selves, existing alongside us, suddenly made visible.

Am I the only one who is super excited about this idea???? It brings the disparate ideas of UV together for me.

When I think about "alternate memories", for H2M or my own life, I find that what I brainstorm and speculate about spells out very clearly my fears and hopes and regrets and wishes. The moments I immediately think about are the times when my life could have gone one way or another – turning points, which maybe at the time didn't seem momentous, but do in retrospect.

Here are some examples from H2M and my life -- they aren't really sense memories, but I think we could easily do writing exercises to come up with sense memories from our alternate lives.

H2M in an alternate universe:
 
→ Jonathan founded Hand2Mouth Theatre in Poland in 1999, after spending a year interning with famed troupe Biuro Podrozy. Their first piece, created by Walters and Polish actors Ida Z, Magda D, and Patryk C, was an outdoor/visual spectacle mixing the life of American slave/revolutionary Nat Turner with the surreal writings of Polish poet Bruno Schulz.
 
→ In 2006, H2M created Catacombs which was an underground hit amongst the so called “creative class”. Hand2Mouth was hired by Wieden Kennedy to create a similar installation, and after portions of this performance were featured in a Nike ad, Hand2Mouth partnered with Nike and W K to create Rooftops, a performance/ installation that took place on Portland rooftops.
 
→ The company broke up after creating Everyone Who Looks Like You, a performance using material from their own families and personal lives that was by all accounts a catastrophic failure. After a showing in May 2009 in the Goldsmith Building in which Carol Wells called the show “a harmonic convergence of the bad,” Jonathan and Faith moved to New York, Julie moved to Chicago to attend graduate school, Liz created a solo performance about her relationship with her brother called My Heart is like a Closed Terrarium, Jerry started a performance festival called Life is a Party, and Erin disappeared into the Alaskan wilderness.
 
Some events in my alternate life:
 
→ I started playing guitar in 5th grade (and never took up the trumpet), and my senior year of high school I joined jazz band as a bass player.
 
→ I stayed in Lansing after graduating from college, and got a job working at Barnes & Noble while acting in plays at Riverwalk Theater and playing bass with Lansing jazz/funk band Steppin In It.
 
→ After I started dating Jonathan in 2001, I stopped working with Hand2Mouth, and became active in poetry circles instead. In 2008 I published a book of poems based on the German fairy tale Undine. 

Watch Tarkovsky films for free!

I just found this website where you can watch ALL of Tarkovsky's films for free!

http://www.openculture.com/2010/07/tarkovksy.html

Awesome! Enjoy.

NASA's best/worst sci fi movies

NASA just named the most realistic & unrealistic sci-fi films of all time. Interesting. I can back them up on "2012." According to NASA,  "The agency is getting so many questions from people terrified that the world is going to end in 2012 that we have had to put up a special website to challenge the myths. We have never had to do this before."

Worst Sci-Fi Movies

1. 2012 (2009)
2. The Core (2003)
3. Armageddon (1998)
4. Volcano (1997)
5. Chain Reaction (1996)
6. The 6th Day (2000)
7. What the #$*! Do We Know? (2004)

Most Realistic Films

1. Gattaca (1997)
2. Contact (1997)
3. Metropolis (1927)
4. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
5. Woman in the Moon (1929)
6. The Thing from Another World (1951)
7. Jurassic Park (1993)

Interviewing grandparents

I came across this on Yes! Magazine, and it reminded me first of Erin's show (where's THAT blog?), and then I thought it could be a tool for us to generate material for UV too, if we want to.

Tell Me Your Stories  bridges the distance—both geographical and relational—between young people and older people through recording oral history interviews. The project offers curriculum, interview templates, and sample projects to help your students conduct interviews with elders from their families or community, and have conversations that may touch their hearts, and, perhaps, be life-changing.

They have online classes in how to interview your grandma, how to prepare, what questions to ask, what equipment you'll need... it's pretty awesome.

The Uncanny

While looking up quotes about "the uncanny valley" for the press release, I found this essay by Freud on The Uncanny and thought it would complement our dream material. Read it here: http://people.emich.edu/acoykenda/uncanny1.htm

O Superman

At the request of Ms. Lizzy Lou, here is the queen herself:

Proust Questionnare

This text came in last week in an etude and then popped up in improv. To me it proves that M. Proust was wacky and self-obsessed/reflexive (in a terrific way) from the very begining.

"The young Marcel was asked to fill out questionnaires at two social events: one when he was 13, another when he was 20. Proust did not invent this party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them. At the birthday party of Antoinette Felix-Faure, the 13-year-old Marcel was asked to answer the following questions in the birthday book, and here's what he said:"


What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
To be separated from Mama

Where would you like to live?
In the country of the Ideal, or, rather, of my ideal

What is your idea of earthly happiness?
To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, a French theater

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
To a life deprived of the works of genius

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Those of romance and poetry, those who are the expression of an ideal rather than an imitation of the real

Who are your favorite characters in history?
A mixture of Socrates, Pericles, Mahomet, Pliny the Younger and Augustin Thierry

Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
A woman of genius leading an ordinary life

Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Those who are more than women without ceasing to be womanly; everything that is tender, poetic, pure and in every way beautiful

Your favorite painter?
Meissonier

Your favorite musician?
Mozart

The quality you most admire in a man?
Intelligence, moral sense

The quality you most admire in a woman?
Gentleness, naturalness, intelligence

Your favorite virtue?
All virtues that are not limited to a sect: the universal virtues

Your favorite occupation?
Reading, dreaming, and writing verse

Who would you have liked to be?
Since the question does not arise, I prefer not to answer it. All the same, I should very much have liked to be Pliny the Younger.


Seven years after the first questionnaire, Proust was asked, at another social event, to fill out another; the questions are much the same, but the answers somewhat different, indicative of his traits at 20:


Your most marked characteristic?
A craving to be loved, or, to be more precise, to be caressed and spoiled rather than to be admired

The quality you most like in a man?
Feminine charm

The quality you most like in a woman?
A man's virtues, and frankness in friendship

What do you most value in your friends?
Tenderness - provided they possess a physical charm which makes their tenderness worth having

What is your principle defect?
Lack of understanding; weakness of will

What is your favorite occupation?
Loving

What is your dream of happiness?
Not, I fear, a very elevated one. I really haven't the courage to say what it is, and if I did I should probably destroy it by the mere fact of putting it into words.

What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
Never to have known my mother or my grandmother

What would you like to be?
Myself - as those whom I admire would like me to be

In what country would you like to live?
One where certain things that I want would be realized - and where feelings of tenderness would always be reciprocated. [Proust's underlining]

What is your favorite color?
Beauty lies not in colors but in thier harmony

What is your favorite flower?
Hers - but apart from that, all

What is your favorite bird?
The swallow

Who are your favorite prose writers?
At the moment, Anatole France and Pierre Loti

Who are your favoite poets?
Baudelaire and Alfred de Vigny

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Hamlet

Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Phedre (crossed out) Berenice

Who are your favorite composers?
Beethoven, Wagner, Shuhmann

Who are your favorite painters?
Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt

Who are your heroes in real life?
Monsieur Darlu, Monsieur Boutroux (professors)

Who are your favorite heroines of history?
Cleopatra

What are your favorite names?
I only have one at a time

What is it you most dislike?
My own worst qualities

What historical figures do you most despise?
I am not sufficiently educated to say

What event in military history do you most admire?
My own enlistment as a volunteer!

What reform do you most admire?
(no response)

What natural gift would you most like to possess?
Will power and irresistible charm

How would you like to die?
A better man than I am, and much beloved

What is your present state of mind?
Annoyance at having to think about myself in order to answer these questions

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
Those that I understand

What is your motto?
I prefer not to say, for fear it might bring me bad luck.

Fever Ray

I've been meaning to post these for a while. They're definitely still in the creepy, menacing, uncanny vein, but they do it so damn well. Both of these videos start outdoors and then move indoors where it seems as though something has gone or is about to go very very wrong.

"If I Had a Heart"
Note the dog.

"Stranger Than Kindness"
I love the look of all those lamps juxtaposed with the lasers.

Little Prince

The Little Prince on Google Books.

Afrofuturism

In doing some research on Afrofuturism today I found this website (with an incredible graphic on the splash page).

It's got links to audio samples and some history of afrofuturism.

This got me thinking I should look into the music of George Clinton / Parliament, Grace Jones and our old friend Sun Ra (remember Julie's Space is the Place etude back in Project X days???).

So here are some of the fruits of my labors:

George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Mothership Connection:



This is the video for Grace Jones' Corporate Cannibal, pretty trippy:

"I'm a man eating machine. You won't hear me laughing as I terminate your day. You can't trace my footsteps as I walk the other way. I'm a man eating machine. A man, man eating machine."

And... uh, here is Grace Jones singing Little Drummer Boy on PeeWee's Playhouse. Yes.



Sun Ra, Space is the Place -- I cannot explain this video but you should watch it:



Ok, just have one more...

Wu Tang Clan's Killer Bees video:

More Maya Deren

Thanks for bringing Maya Deren into the conversation, Jules. I also love Ritual in Transfigured Time. The first section is very "domestic surreal" with that crazy yarn. And I also love the stops and starts she puts into the party scene. The gestural choreography of that sequence is just so damn sensual, all the social touching.

Meshes of the Afternoon

I can't believe I keep forgetting to bring this in!

This is one of my absolute favorite movies and gets right at the heart of shifting perspectives/transforming time. She is really a pioneer of the possibilites of film and what editing can do for (non)narrative narration. If you are not already obsessed with Maya Deren, please get ready for it to begin.



Note the twin images!


Maya Deren also made some amazing films of Haitian ritual dancing, but that may be for another show....

The Color of Pomegranates

I've been hesitating to bring in Sergei Parajanov's film "The Color of Pomegrates" as we are fairly seeped in high-art and delicously slow images. But! I can't get some of his strange images and tableaux-vivant out of my head and I thought to share. One thing I like about Parajanov, and this film in particular, is what comes across as an odd sense of humour, born I imagine, from his inspiration of illuminated Armenian miniatures. He wrote: "I wanted to create that inner dynamic that comes from inside the picture, the forms and the dramaturgy of colour."

Despite the often very long takes, there is a quickness to his ideas; it seems he felt very comfortable putting a many small ideas into a picture, which opposes nicely to Tarkovsky who felt very comfortable exploring a single idea for a very long time.

Please note the chicken.


This has loads of images but not the real soundtrack. PLEASE turn off the sound and put on anything else, or nothing at all.

The Neverending Story

So, last night as we were talking about sources I suddenly realized a great source from my childhood: The Neverending Story.

I saw it first when I was seven. My mom took my friend Aaron and I to the movies, and he was so scared he ran out of the movie theater and we had to leave.

Here's the clip where they first explain The Nothing and that the Empress is dying.

There just might be one chance! The plains people who hunt the purple buffalo have among them a great warrior, and he alone has a chance to fight The Nothing and save us. He is our only hope. His name is Atreyu.

At 6:13 in that clip you can see the horrible creature with the green eyes roaring in his cave. That's the point when Aaron ran out of the theater.

This next clip starts with the most heartbreaking scene of all time -- when Atreyu's horse Artax gives up and sinks into the deadly swamp of sadness. Damn. I just cried again, watching it.



And you can also watch the MUSIC VIDEO that was made from the title song, it's pretty amazing too.

March 16 Rehearsal Notes

Space Project
March 16th Rehearsal
MilePost 5
Jonathan, Faith, Julie, Scott, Jerry, Liz

To Do List:
- Ripping of DVD to .avi's. (or stack of DVD's?)
- Binder for show material
- Look on Craigslist for mic stands,
- Notetakers...post Etudes, try and capture text, reference what text used/notations
- RCA Small Wonder, download sound codecs
- Printer PAPER!
- Multiple copies of text

Rehearsal Schedule:

7:00 - Revisit Etudes
8:15 - Break
8:30 - Review Source Material
9:00 - New Etudes
9:30 - Review Sequences (Notes from Movement Sequences)
- Focus on Blocking Notes, way things were done
- What material Jonathan can access regularly. Video, RCA Small Wonder clips, clips from movies

Rehearsal notes 3/7/10

SPACE PROJECT REHEARSAL
Sunday, March 7th, 2010
Milepost 5
Jonathan, Julie, Faith, Maesie, Jerry, Jeb, Liz, Scott

HOMEWORK:
- Source Material for (Sunday (Intros))
- Etude, Mirror Clip. Approximate flow of images as if your own life. Hyper-realize it. (Wednesday)
- React to Proust, Etude (Wed/Thurs)

ACTION ITEMS:
1) Monitor for Wednesday (julie or Liz)
2) (Jonathan) Microphones
3) (Jonathan) Contact List
4) (Jonathan) Email James about getting video working and sound card
5) Buy rechargeable 2 9V, 4 AA batteries (Liz)

Notes After the jump...

"In Search of Lost Time" Excerpts

Here are all the excerpts I've brought in from In Search of Lost Time.

Note: Roman numerals after each excerpt refer to the individual books within In Search of Lost Time (e.g., Sodom and Gomorrah is the fourth book, so IV).

The first very long excerpt is the famous “madeleine episode” from the end of the first book, Swann’s Way, but reformatted by Charles Mee.

I believe that all of these excerpts are from the older C.K. Scott Moncrieff translation, not the newer Lydia Davis translation.

Excerpts after the jump...

Tarkovsky Freakdown

DUDES. I rest my case.

Stalker:


Nostalghia (bonus: pregnant lady!):


Strangely, I can't find any good clips from Solaris.

I was going to post some clips from interviews with Tarkovsky but they're pretty boring, actually. I'll see if I can find an interesting one. Maybe a graduation speech at my alma mater, MSU.

Oh plus I had an idea for a more narrowed type of source: using only dream sequences from Tarkovsky (or other trippy 70s sci fi films) as source material. Then we could call the show "Only the Dream Sequences".

That's all, folks.

How the Future predicts Sciene Fiction

Interesting post from a local SF writer david levine who spent time at the Mars research station in Utah (where Jay Scheib also spent time prepping for his show... link below, really great photos and info)

link... jay scheib


link... david levine

Excerpt from the Article.

We science fiction writers aren't futurists. SF needn't even be set in the future, and even when it is, we're not necessarily trying to create an accurate model of what we believe is the most likely future—we're just trying to write an entertaining and thought-provoking story. To this end, we'll often create an exaggerated, stylized, or dramatized vision of the future designed either to make a point or simply to provide a more interesting story. Rather than being rigorous attempts at accurate prediction, science fiction futures tend to fall into one or more of the following literary categories:

Cautionary tales emphasize the negative consequences of some aspect of present life. These dystopias are often prompted by the words "If this goes on…"

Thought experiments focus on the possible effects of some current or projected event, technology, or trend. These stories ask the question "What if?" They are distinguished from cautionary tales in that they explore both positive and negative impacts of the trend; they are distinguished from predictions in that they do not necessarily focus on the most likely outcome.

Literalized metaphors examine an aspect of our world by taking a metaphor and making it concrete. Examples include using space aliens to address alienation, using clones to discuss conformity, and using a location on a distant planet as a metaphor for personal isolation. Metaphors such as these are used in non-science fiction as well, of course, but in SF the aliens, clones, or distant planets are literally rather than figuratively present in the world of the story.

Explorations of new science and technology simply use some new advance as the basis of a story. "What's in New Scientist today will be in Analog next year." Often in these stories something goes wrong with the new technology, but this is often done simply to create an exciting story rather than to criticize. An example is Arthur C. Clarke's A Fall of Moondust, which is basically a disaster movie based on the latest theories about the composition of the lunar surface (theories that later turned out to be incorrect).

sources notes from sunday (marc's)

My reactions/interests from Sunday source sharing:

Many Waters --> mythical transformation as dense narrative of imagery, juxtaposition of myth/fable/religious history with time-travel.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet--->epic language. conjuring. spell casting. proclamations

Smell---> possible to express the experience of a smell or touch, but using other senses. could we, limited to what we can present on stage, find exciting ways to tap into other senses. (helen keller) I like the idea of smelling rituals, perhaps very strange atrificial rituals. Also like the pheromone chapter, idea of powerful pheromones being manipulated in the future part of a narrative... is SMELL the fourth dimension?

Husband Salting ----> again, I like the idea of performing strange rituals on stage, not necessarily ones that have actually happened, but weird variations and reworkings of them, trying to maintain their absurd essence. More quirky historical ritual research?

Calvino - Castle/Tarot-----> Like the idea of some sort of complex code through which narrative is revealed. Also, the tarot images have such strange potency on their own, then add the layer of distinct meaning, then the layer or the meaning driving action--an interesting way of driving events forward

The Mirror---->moments were most dreamlike/notable when 1) reactions to stimuli are distant or not in line with how you'd expect the character to respond and 2) world starts to deteriorate in uncanny ways hinting at a fiction, but not quite a full dissociation

Solaris----> similar to the mirror, disconnects between stimuli and response seems to build strangeness. also, visual variations (b&w, distortion, contrast) can pull you into a very different world

Future Primitive----> "complexity inter-penetrative in ways not previously imagined", return to the old ways not in conflict with the march of technology. Technology as context and tool of knowledge, but does not contain the knowledge itself, only signs of the knowledge.

Vermillion Sands---->could we envision a mundane future?

Source.html + text----->staging dreamscapes. all the photos appear to be vast worlds, devoid of certain identifying details, and always extreme- color, haze, shadow, silhouette

Hericletus----> repetition of same wisdom over the ages. harping on same themes. summation of knowledge into short imperatives of wisdom

Visit to Lost World--->cultural fetishizing in a distant other world? A feigned reality out of context, an mimesis of the mythos.

Another Bystander--->will we vanish from memory completely? can we theatricalize that?

Remembrance of Times Past------> last four stanzas. ability to use isolated personal/small experience in great detail as analogous illustration of larger philosophical point.