Posts Tagged ‘Friends’

« Older Entries

Towards an Understanding of Social Revolution in the Digital Age – Credit Markets

Monday, December 7th, 2009

The genius of late post-industrial capitalism can be seen in the appearance of the expansion of wealth through the development of “credit markets” (or more accurately debt markets). At the end of WWII the United States had the highest national debt (adjusted for inflation) in its history, before or since. While that debt serviced the economy in terms of creating industries focused on mobilizing against the threat of militaristic expansion from Germany, Italy, and Japan, when the dust settled the debt still remained. Something had to be done. In the intervening years that debt was shifted from the government to the working class through the expansion of debt markets in a similar way that the “threat” of the Axis powers was shifted to the Communist bloc to maintain and expand those military industries we had just created.

For the citizen turned consumer things like education, large quantities of consumer goods, and home “ownership” were no longer available only to the bourgeoisie (the owners of the means of production or the proverbial millionaire next door). Through the use of consumer debt, capital was given the appearance of shifting from the owners of the means of production to the workers (while some form of this has always existed the quantitative expansion caused a qualitative shift by making debt not only all pervasive, but the default assumption behind market actions). What happened was a decentralization of the “company store” allowing the working class to purchase goods beyond their means and, as a result, bind themselves inextricably to the lender. Buying in installments became increasingly commonplace, as did taking out loans in excess of one’s entire net worth for the privilege of having to do all the maintenance on one’s residence, and eventually owning a property that, when accounting for inflation, was worth what was paid for it. In short what was opened up with the expansion of debt markets was indentured servitude for the 20th century.

Once debts and assets are accounted for these workers lived with the outward appearance of the bourgeoisie and yet their personal net worth was near zero to negative. Traditionally we would call a person with a negative net worth poor. Now however we offered them the opportunity of working for the system rather than sending them to a debtor’s prison. This expansion of debt markets put much of the working class under house arrest, able to move more or less freely but suffering under the yoke of consumer debt. Because of the debt (and its commensurate lifestyle), these people now had “more to lose,” they become even more invested in maintaining the status quo, and any revolutionary potential is wiped out by the hope of owning this year’s newest gadget. At a surface level things had improved. More people had more stuff. This “expansion of the middle class” seemingly gave opportunity to millions. Yet a quick look under the hood shows a radically different picture.

The working class was now divided between those engaging with the debt markets and those living within their means. The proletariat became alienated from itself. This alienation made it unable to recognize itself due to the difference in lifestyle. Those whose lives had taken on the appearance of the bourgeoisie began to don the class actions and assumptions of bourgeois values. “Free Markets,” rugged individualism, profit as the ultimate good, and other class values of those who own the means of production got infused with the thinking of the self-alienated working class. Markets became freer, consumer debt expanded, the rights of corporations (huge pockets of wealth) began to take on a status equal to, if not greater than, that of the individual human subject.

The working class became reduced to the status of a consumer with a bank card. In short, Trotsky’s goal of reducing the human subject to a working number came to fruition through our credit cards. After September 11, 2001 we were told that our duty as citizens of the United States was to shop. Our rightful place in the order of things was nothing more than that of a consumer of goods and debt. Perhaps George W. Bush was a communist sleeper agent a la Phillip K. Dick’s Radio Free Albemuth, for he did more than most to trun Trotsky’s vision into a reality. And all the while, the rich became richer.

The profit motive was the motive. In that rhetorical action of this nation’s former President the ethical basis of this country was shifted to place profit and wealth as the pinnacle of human achievement. To quote Eric B. and Rakim, “Stop smiling. Still don’t nothing move but the money.” And money did move, as well as the labor power of the, now masked, working class, directly into the accounts of the bourgeois money lenders. Credit, of the scale and sophistication we have today, is a fairly new development. Even as late as 1948 the capitalist system was based around actual ownership.

The opening of new commons is in large part a reaction to this tendency of debt (and the illusionistic possibility it offers) to lay its noose around the neck of the worker. A simple rejection of debt markets is not enough to overcome its totalizing effect. Rather an alternate system which operates from an entirely different ethical foundation is needed. A system which recognizes the primacy of the human subject as subject provides the possibility of resisting the dehumanizing tendency of contemporary capitalism. But nothing will be possible so long as the self-alienation of the proletariat is maintained by the powers that be.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in theory | No Comments »

Towards an Understanding of Social Revolution in the Digital Age – The Free Commons

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Last week I opened up the possibility that true social revolution in our contemporary age might not take the form of open revolt against state power and economic infrastructure. Rather, true revolt occurs within the realm of the interpersonal. It is exactly the place outside state control wherein we are free to exercise our existence however we see fit.

In these days of advertising everywhere we go and near absolute control of our cultural choices by economic and market forces that would have us do their bidding rather than follow our own will it is difficult indeed to see a place for human Being outside the market place. To see the self as more than consumer is increasingly difficult every day. Thus I suggested that “[i]n a world increasingly mediated by technologies that give the appearance of connection, while fostering distance and misunderstanding, perhaps the most radical act we can take is to carve time out of our schedules to meet another being face to face and find out who they truly are.” Radical action then is a reclaiming, a taking back, of our authentic and unmediated reality.

While this can happen to powerful effect in interpersonal relations we need not limit ourselves to this domain. Certainly interpersonal authenticity is a foundation. But while we work on our foundations we must have a vision of where we are going from here. Just like a return to direct and authentic interactions allow us to revision the entire social sphere away from the prescribed modes of being thrust upon us by corporate interests so too can we revision economic life as well.

For this revisioning to be successful we must move beyond the commodity fetishism of contemporary life. The bling bling culture we have been sold, and sadly bought into all too willingly, can be circumnavigated. For our survival as beings who are more than their bank card numbers we must. Slavoj Zizek indicates a turn in this direction when he states that:

[T]he Left should adopt a different, apparently more modest, but in fact much more radical strategy: to withdraw from state power and focus on directly transforming the very texture of social life, everyday practices which sustain the entire social structure . . . Any radical social change must be anti-fetishistic in its approach . . . our passive endurement of power constitutes it, we do not obey and fear because it is in itself so powerful; on the contrary, power appears powerful because we treat it as such. This fact opens up the space for a magical passive revolution which, instead of directly confronting power, gradually undermines it through the subterranean digging of the mole, through abstaining from participation in the everyday rituals and practices that sustain it.

One level of this revisioning of social life lies in the economic realm and specifically the exchange of goods and services between individuals. While one could make a case for the democratizing effects of ebay or craigslist a more radical manifestation of this potential lies in Freecycle.

Freecycle provides an alternative to our disposable culture that could have potentially systemic repercussions. It not only removes any mediation between agents (people interact directly with one another) but the very notion of, and potential for, capitalization has been removed. The core essence is the free exchange of goods. Because the system has no monetary incentive there is a tendency to heighten the authenticity with which these interactions occur. I know someone, for example, who gives items away to the person with the best story or most compelling need (rather than first responder, which would favor those with high tech gadgets, and the commensurate disposable income that goes with them).

In a similar vein to Freecycle are community gardens. Here the basic unit of production, the growing of food, is brought back into a communal mode of being. People come together to share in an activity which provides direct benefit to them and their fellow human. At the same time these action occur outside the realm of traditional economic forces. Similar too is the rise of urban farming as well as formal and informal trading between these urban farmers.

The above, as well as clothing swaps, book swaps, and other such activities, not only keep otherwise disposable items out of landfills, but bring people together to share time and space as human beings. Because the old “commons” have all been appropriated by private interests it has been necessary to open new terrain to common use.

Of similar import to these local manifestations of open commons is the rise of the open source movement and specifically creative commons. Here is a direct opening of a commons area out of a closed environment. Copyright is a closed system by design. The intent was to keep intellectual property held by its creator. Over time that has expanded ad infinitum until now genetic material which has existed inside organisms for millions of years can be “owned” by a corporation. Copyleft is open by design. With creative commons a public space has been opened up and created within the otherwise closed system. While software is the most well known aspect of creative commons, music is increasingly released under CC licenses as is a lot of writing, including this blog.

Each idea listed here provides a possible escape vector out of the misery of the disposable culture we have been sold. While it is possible that these may simply be recouperated into the economic engines of post-industrial capitalism, they none the less provide a rupture point which might be exploited to bring about a fundamental shift in society’s ethical orientation towards itself. Escaping the reality proposed by the corporate interests is necessary before we, the human subjects in this experiment, are deemed disposable too.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in theory | No Comments »

Towards an Understanding of Social Revolution in the Digital Age

Friday, November 27th, 2009

Camille de Toledo’s advocacy for a “lucid romanticism” in his book Coming of Age at the End of History is a deeply impassioned quest for an alternative to the distant ironic veneer which goes for social engagement these days. While his rhetoric falls a little too firmly in the French existentialist vein of experiencing social problems as a physical sickness within one’s own body (Nausea was inspiring at 20, but a bit old hat to me now) the intent is squarely directed in the right direction.

Through the dissolving and decentering of power in the contemporary age any attempt at revolt, revolution, or rethinking, becomes dissipated. Unions have no power because factories simply move to another country. Governments are so compromised by their entanglements with private concerns like banks, insurance companies, and the like that with any push they recede into nothingness. There is no there there having already fragmented its existence into a multiplicity of nonexistent actors. Mortgages are bundled, chopped, and sold while the displaced homeowner can’t tell if it was the original lender, the investment bankers, the lack of government oversight, or their own greed that should have a finger pointed at it.

Perhaps the time of finger pointing has ended.

The idealism of the 19th and 20th centuries ended in brutal totalitarian misery or dinseyfied antiseptic wastelands. The failures of the past have made us unable, or more likely unwilling, to engage in enterprise that necessitate hope as fuel. Even elections won on the idea of hope are fast seen as the sloganeering and false promises for which they truly are. We are so desperate for hope in the world that anyone who comes by offering a way out of this capitalist misery is immediately followed with all our enthusiasm and vigor. We embrace fundamentalists because we hear in their voice a possible antidote for the reckless totalizing effects of post-industrial capitalism.

We have grown afraid in our comfortable settings of new gadgets from China and the latest plastic monstrosity of design. We are afraid both of where we are, that somehow this life as consumer has robbed us of our basic human potential, and also afraid that any attempt to break free of its stronghold would upset the precarious balance of our comfort and land us in an even deeper misery. So we choose a misery of the soul over a misery of the body in an attempt to find some semblance of sure footing in a world increasingly geared towards the well being and care of corporations and institutions.

But even our fundamentalists have failed us. For they do not want to toss out the whole order. They do not want a revaluation of values. What they advocate is the exact same world with a different rhetoric. The Christian fundamentalists want the same world we have now, but in the name of Jesus. The Muslim fundamentalists want the same world we have now, but in the name of Allah. The Atheist fundamentalists want the same world we have now, but in the name of Science. Just as the fascist movements of the early 20th century failed to reformulate society, but rather reinforced the status quo this time in the name of race or industry, so too do our modern fascists and our contemporary fundamentalists not want to truly upset the sitting order.

The sickness lies much deeper than any of these movements would be willing to acknowledge. Deeper even than Toledo is willing to admit. The fracture point does not lie at the day or night that one goes to religious services. The fracture point does not lie at the choice to protest or stay home. Rather, the fracture point lies at the basic unit of human interaction. Too easily do we let ourselves off the hook in our interpersonal relationships. Too easily do we allow our fellow human to be determined and defined by epithets ascribed to them rather than existing in their true being. We are an artist, or a parent, or a child, or a boss, or a worker. We are never a being. No wonder then that we live in a world which caters to objects (multi-national corporations, consumers) and gives only passing lip service to subjects.

In short we have given up our very core existence for the comfort of self as adjective. Once we reduce the human experience to easily definable boxes we no longer have to concern ourselves with the complexity of human Being. Once the social Other has been defined and ascribed with understandable attributes we can sit back and relax at our understanding. This causes us to continually be surprised when the individual acts in a way counter to the labels we, or they, have placed upon them. We end up in a continual state of shock at our fellow beings and must, out of necessity, shut down and distance ourselves.

The process begins so simply. With a question and an answer: “What do you do?” “Well I am a doctor.” And there the door has been both opened and shut. Action has been translated into adjective. Being, the infinite questioning of existence, has been replaced with definition. When asked “what do you do?” we rarely, if ever, reply with “I spend as much time as possible with the woman I love while working in an art form that I feel passionately connected to.”

I am as guilty of this as anyone. More than three decades of socialization has taught me to define and limit myself within the social sphere. I have been trained through various channels of social power to behave, even when rebelling, in a mode appropriate to social functioning. For even rebellion is necessary to define the social order and thus make it understandable. The anti-consumerist punk makes safe, secure, legitimate, and possible the consumerist middle-class. The peace, love, unity, and respect espoused by the raver is like a sad inverted mirror held up to a culture based on war, division, recklessness, and solipsistic egotism.

Perhaps true resistance to the totalizing effects of contemporary capitalism are, like Toledo suggests, not in the field of physical open revolt. Perhaps true revolution is an inner revolution. Perhaps we need a social revolution, not on the superficial order of the fundamentalists, but rather on the deep and real level of the interpersonal. Toledo sees revolt and revolution occurring in the world of ideas. But it must be brought one degree closer. A step before language. Authentic interrelating of two beings. In a world increasingly mediated by technologies that give the appearance of connection, while fostering distance and misunderstanding, perhaps the most radical act we can take is to carve time out of our schedules to meet another being face to face and find out who they truly are.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in theory | No Comments »

The Power of Networks

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

I used to think that work came about by talent alone. As if getting a gig were as simple as sending off a few resumes and portfolios and waiting for the phone to ring off the hook with offers. Clearly I knew how good my work was, so of course anyone who saw the work would think the same. While there is some objectivity and I have received a handful of gigs from the aforementioned method the vast majority of work I have had over the years came from my network of friends and colleagues. In fact, I can only think of two instances where I merely sent my resume and portfolio and was offered work.

Right out of NYU I took a job as the lighting assistant at San Francisco Opera. I got the job through one of my mentors. There I met several directors who I have since worked with. Numerous projects I did in the first few years came through classmates of mine or other people I met through school. Of course as projects occur there is a whole new group to interact with. The director, for example, hires me for a show. Then the producers of that show enjoy my work enough to hire me for another project with them. The director on that show likes the work enough to bring me on to a third project. And so it goes.

I have seen many incredibly talented people sit by without work because they felt, as I once did, that it will suddenly appear. It might, but more than likely the next gig will come from a friend or colleague or mentor. Speaking with numerous freelancers across disciplines I have found this to be true although especially in collaborative art forms like theater, opera and dance. There are many mistakes that one could make but one of the most important things to do is simply get out there.

I often joke about how my job really breaks down to hanging out with people all day. While I say this in jest, there is a degree of truth to it. The social dynamic that goes into a work of performance is as important as the work itself. The relationships between the various artists forge insights into the piece at hand that makes the work itself stronger. The lunches and dinners between technical rehearsals are as vital as those rehearsals themselves.

Opening night parties, fundraisers, and so forth, all serve to bring people together and form relationships which thus create a kind of emotional shorthand that allows you, as artists, to cut past the superficialities and dive more fully into the piece at hand.

I know numerous people in the tech industries who swear by LinkedIn, Twitter and the like for networking for jobs. Perhaps that works in the performing arts, although I must say, as connected as I am on-line, by and large I have not known that to be the case. What I do know is that by maintaining and continually building relationships with my friends work comes my way. Networking is not a matter of asking everyone you know for work. It is simply a matter of spending time with people whose company you enjoy.

Perhaps networking as a verb is a misnomer. The network exists. We are simply actors within a preexisting network who, through our socializing, increase and expand that network. Occasionally the network drives work from one person to another within it.

Working in the arts is never easy and the money is rarely good. Just as doing work that you are not invested in is a waste of your, and everyone else’s, time, so too is working with people you do not enjoy. Because so much of the product is the process, to ignore that is to miss a major component of creating the work itself.

I hear people often speak in terms like “exploiting your social network” and other such things. My experience is much different. In fact if you feed your relationships and friendships your network will end up exploiting your talents and keep you busy with engaging and interesting projects. Nurturing those relationships is the key to a healthy career. But once you have the gig you need to prove your worth. That is where the talent comes in.

I am in a curious position right now. After building up my network for 7+ years in New York I suddenly found myself without it. Having relocated from one part of the country to another my network had to be rebuilt. It did not take long to notice its absence and begin working to fill that void.

While it could be said that I am networking, more to the point, I am finding interesting people to spend my time with. I am going out to look at work that appeals to and engages me artistically. While some projects have come my way through this of greater import is making new friends, deepening relationships, and finding interesting and engaging new art.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in business | 2 Comments »

Thoughtful accidents

Monday, January 21st, 2008

I have been corresponding with my friend Jeff recently about the implications of this post from a little while ago. He brought up a good argument that in light of how the post was written makes a lot of sense. Essentially his contention came with my use of the the word thought, or rather the necessity of “thinking” in art. His reading of my words came down to me espousing the pre-thinking of a work through to its conclusion without variance. In this sense I wholeheartedly agree with him.

Because, he points out, the accidental or the “mistake” is one of the greatest elements of the creative process. When a plan for a work is set in motion and some rupture or other occurs that breaks the flow and redirects the work into another direction the artist must be able to respond to this situation or the work begins to falter. Not only do I think this is good, I think it necessary. At the same time it means thinking through the whole meaning of a work such that when those moments arise, the challenge can be met.

Thinking need not be an abstract intellectual pursuit either. I use the word thinking in a broad sense here as a reasoned awareness towards the work. After all, I have been violently accused of being unthinking in the past because of my belief in the importance of action before theory. Becasue theory must be grounded in practice. The former derived from the latter.

One of my favorite artists is John Cage whose work centers around the unknown, the accident. His works allows for accidents to occur within a clearly designed and well thought out framework. In so doing he allows for random ruptures to occur, while at the same time intelligently thinking through the entirety of the work.

Randomness is something I not only enjoy but encourage in my own process. Although much of my training had to do with figuring through every detail of a design, I like to construct my light plots such that there is a lot of flexibility in them. During the process for any play some preconceived notion is going to fail. It just happens. That is the nature of the work itself. By allowing for sufficient movement within a predetermined structure, when these moments inevitably happen, they can be responded to quickly and intelligently rather than causing the entire process to break down.

Making space for the inevitability of accidents allows a work to grow in response to its environment. It makes the whole thing dynamic and expansive in a very necessary way. How these allowances are made and what happens when accidents arise necessitates a strong visionary thinking artist to best craft the situation to enhance the work as a whole.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Free to choose

Thursday, January 17th, 2008

I had coffee with my friend Mark yesterday and we had a great chat about what it takes to be a lighting designer. Mark was a year a head of me at NYU and it was good to sit down and be able to go through everything that is going on for me in relation to my current questions about design and being a designer. Largely, his thinking was very much in line with my own and it was comforting to know these questions I currently find myself asking are pretty much par for the course in this crazy freelance design world.

There is a certain narrative that was driven into us in grad school. Essentially that came down to one’s design work and the “being a designer” as a kind of existential statement upon ones self. One IS a designer. As if the very core being is that of a designer rather than design being an activity one engages in, an attribute ascribed to ones being.

We talked of practicalities, things like how to manage a fluctuating flexible income. But of more import was looking at our relation, as people, to the work that we do. A question one mentor of mine always asks is “What kind of life do you want?” There are many paths one can take with regard to being a designer, or not. How do you want to live? It is important to refocus the question upon one’s larger self and to maintain some degree of distance from the work. To not get so bound up in it that there is nothing but the work. In essence, one must live.

It is so easy to get bound up in the work to the point that this reflection never happens. But it is important to engage in it. To realize that the self and the work are two different things. That I could walk away from it and not suffer some existential loss. Rather it would just be change. And change can be good.

Doing projects because I want to rather than “need to” has been an important realization for me. It has an amazingly freeing quality to it. Taking on those projects that are interesting to me rather than everything that can fit into my calendar makes the whole process feel a lot more sane. Rediscovering for myself why I do lighting design and what I want out of life is a wonderful feeling. Rather than the sense that it is a closed statement, it now feels like an open question. So much can happen. And that is wonderful!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in design | 2 Comments »

Quality Control

Sunday, January 13th, 2008

I went to see Terminus yesterday with my friend Gisela the director of the Antigone that I lit this past summer in Rumania. Terminus was a very good show, I was pleased to get a chance to see it.

Afterwards we got to talking about theatre and why we work and the work that we do. A lot of the discussion centered around what I was talking about the other day. Not so much the money part as the art part.

As an artist I am limited in the work I do by the jobs that I am hired for. Given that, how do I do the work I am interested in? Some of this is the professional equivalent of putting light where it is supposed to be. Or rather, taking it away from where it shouldn’t be.

This comes down to a matter of quality control. Branding. That is, rather than taking every project that fits into my calendar, only taking those projects that fit into my larger vision. My penchant for the philosophic may lead some to think this means I am only interested in abstract intellectual work. This is not the case at all. I have done and am interested in a wide range of material and find the dynamic range of my projects to be exciting. Currently I am seeking out commercial work to balance against the more artsy stuff I have done until now. It is important to me that the projects I work on are both artistically and financially satisfying.

I have mentioned before a piece of advice given to me by a former teacher, “There are three reasons for doing a show; the art, the people and the money. So long as any two are present it is worth taking the project.” I have been following this advice since hearing it and find it to be a generally good rule of thumb. The interesting thing in relation to what is going on for me now is not so much that I am changing the rules upon which I operate. Rather, I am reevaluating the underlying criteria upon which I base decisions made by those rules.

I feel that the lighting design I am most interested in has a distinct underlying sensibility to it. This is not necessarily the compositions per se as that varies by the specifics of the projects, but more as an outlook upon the larger work. A worldview.

Maintaining that viewpoint in my work, while operating in a freelance situation, necessitates being selective in terms of the contracts I take on. It means holding all the work I do to certain aesthetic and production standards and ensuring that my name only gets associated with projects that I am supportive of.

Some of this is what led me to redesign my portfolio and blog layout. I wanted to ensure that the public face I am putting out to the world reflects more accurately the work that I do. The new looks gives better focus to the images and shows them off to much greater effect.

This new look is more selective. It gives a cleaner and clearer focus to the content. And this focus is what my work is about. Much like photography, my lighting is a framing device to give clear focus to the moment at hand and show it off for all its depth, complexity and precision. Such a vision needs work that allows that vision room to play. The production standards must be high enough and/or the content must be sufficiently deep, complex and precise in order for the lighting to have the most significant impact.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in business, design | No Comments »

fifteen minutes of coffee

Saturday, December 1st, 2007

My eating habits exposed for all the world to see.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in meta | 2 Comments »

Style is always in Fashion

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

Style is always an interesting aspect of creating a play. I mean there are “Style Plays” where the content is the style. There are plays set firmly in a certain genre, where the style of the piece is integral to the story telling. And then there is the more ambiguous aspects of style where it is an aid to storytelling but rather than being integral or inherent is more a matter of illuminating certain aspects of the piece that may not be so readily apparent.

Lovers and Executioners is interesting in terms of style. The play itself does not fall evenly into preconceived notions of genre. Originally written contemporaneously to Mollier it has some structural elements that resonate strongly with that kind of theatre. The use of rhyming couplets for example. The plot however, feels a lot more like a Shakespeare play. Take into account that we are using a modern translation and it becomes a contemporary reworking of a classical story.

So already there is a lot going on there in terms of style just in the language. This is true emotionally as well. The play really runs the gamut from nearly operatic melodrama to hard emotional realism. It is playful and cruel. Soft and hard. In the end quite an emotional roller coaster.

Josh and I, and the rest of the design team, have been working to create a visual world that allows the audience access to all these components. The set is a series of painted flats made to look like dimensional scenery. It is a very classic style with a fairly modern sensibility. Depending upon the staging it allows for very real moments to be played as well as some truly high comic and melodramatic moments as well.

In working through the lighting for this piece it was necessary to find the right balance of realism and theatricality. Even in the most real moments on stage it is necessary to be very clear that we remain in the world of a play. We are never trying to hide that fact.

Further, we wanted the lighting to have a semblance of the classical just as the scenery does. To that end we have components that are very modern and fit right in with the currents of contemporary theatrical lighting design. We also have components harkening back to the classical time the play was written, like footlights. Further, with all the fights and other choreographed movement I was interested in injecting the piece with a dance flavor so much of the lighting has been thought through from a dance perspective and worked into the light plot in that way.

A big concern with this play was that because the visual style is so important to what we are doing with the piece it is as necessary to light the scenery and clothes as it is the actors faces. A balance had to be struck that would at once afford us clear visibility of the actors but also show off the clothes against the set. And the set against the action. This may seem obvious, but finding what this balance is can often be a bit of a trick.

We go in for focus tonight and it will be nice to see all these pieces come together. I am really looking forward to lighting this play over the next several days. It is such a wonderful and delightful visual world to inhabit it should be a lot of fun. Plus being reunited with Josh who I have not worked with since 2001 has been a lot of fun.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in design, theatre | No Comments »

Content with meaning

Wednesday, October 24th, 2007

I had drinks with my friends Jeff and Pilar last night. It was a lot of fun. Jeff may well be the smartest person I know. I know a lot of smart people. I know a lot of really smart people. Really smart people.

It is always an interesting experience interfacing with his brain. When our thought patterns mesh it is a great meeting of the minds. A fabulous time. Then there are the times where he is so far beyond my level of conceptual thinking that I can only sit back and admire. Last night was one of those times.

Topics of conversation ranged from general catching up to art, music, porn, drinking, mutual friends, Bay Area weather, etc. etc. A typical night at the bar.

The issue of aesthetics is such a personal one. It is always interesting to talk to other artists about how they see the world. Hearing them speak about how they see and then looking at their work can be such an intense experience.

I remember hearing Richard Foreman talk about his first video project. How it was such a radical departure from his earlier work. A real aesthetic rupture. Then I saw the piece. To my reckoning it was a Richard Foreman piece with video. But to him this was such a radical shift that it necessitated a revaluation of aesthetics and meaning.

The disparity between what I heard and what I saw caused me to realize how intense his vision is. That the way he sees the world is so specific that what to me appears a small change is to him a tectonic shift of cosmic proportions.

This is the essential nature of art. It is the expression of a worldview. A specific way of seeing. A visual representation of a Being in the world.

Art is a physics of presence. It is the geometry of identity.

Concepts become thin and tangled here at the edges.

Theatre is in many ways a perfect art form for the 21st century. It is inherently collaborative and relies upon the contributions of many. Like web 2.0 the content and the form are distinct and interchangeable. A single script can be placed in any of an infinite number of visual, aural and spatial contexts. The script remains static, but its meaning shifts as its context shifts. Content and meaning are two independent variables along a matrix of experience.

So too a conversation shifts as the surrounding context transforms. As the bar fills, the sun sets, food and alcohol are consumed, the nature of the language alters. Same people, different context. Thus different content.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in meta, theory | 2 Comments »

« Older Entries
Creative Commons License

All text on this site, unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. All other rights reserved.