111. O R M

There comes a point when our amusements and distractions co-alesce into larger shapes and concerns. At this point, we have grown uncomfortable, perhaps, with the elemental flow of image, text, and sound, outside of the more useful categorizations that might engender a commercial or expressive approach to mean-ing. We have achieved form.

But form remains nothing more than the succession and simulta-neity of events. To claim it’s more than that can lock our percep-tions and expectations into formulae, pattern, and other meaning-ful (or well-meaning) fabrications: the stories we tell ourselves, the endless seductions of ideas.

EXISTING

METAHYBRID

A. Existing Forms: The familiar, main-stream, and often ossified. Traditional Fine Arts (Visual Arts,), Cinema; Performing Arts—Music, Theatre, Dance, in any of their high-brow, middle-brow, and low brow manifestations, from total obscurity to total ubiquity; Narrative text (either fictive or non-fictive); poetic text.

B. Meta Forms: Disciplines slightly outside the production arena, with the capacity to alter the landscape, primarily in education and the development of critical texts.

C. Hybrid Forms: Evolutions beyond famil-iarity, extensions of culture and experience.

I include ‘EXISTING’ and ‘META’ forms because these are the jumping-off points for ‘HYBRID’ me-dia. They are established, recognizable, and need little explanation. They tend to also represent ar-eas in which the hybrid, experimental artist may be earning a living (and discussion of earning a living has never merited serious criticism, but, like, what-ever*).

A long-term arc describes the life of an expressive or communicative form. One such arc could de-scribe, say, cinema, which had its origins in short, evocative clips and novelty venues as artists, inven-tors, and those entranced by scientific inquiry be-gan toying with sequential images implying motion. While early fragments by the brothers Lumière told ‘stories’ of quotidian life in 52 second clips, Méliès began filming his magic acts, with their implication of concealment, revelation, and transformation, ce-menting the form’s nascent embrace of illusion. The

next 100 years of cinema were marked by the usual preoccupations with story, character, setting, nar-rative technique, and technology, and only recent interest in effects and 3D have returned cinema to its roots in magic and illusion (allthough narrative remains an entrenched, stifling component).

Through Meta-forms, decades of critical texts and examinations, as well as hundreds of films schools, commercial and fine art programs, and less formal venues for learning gave rise to wave after wave of schools of directing, acting, cinematography, etc. Only because the established form of cinema has had such a broad and deep history is it now ready to move to smaller, distributed screens, interactive games, ubiquitous installations, augmented realities and multiple ‘second acts’ in the world of mixable/performative media. Cinema has evolved—it is now ready for its hybrid close-up.

Since the march of forms from established to ex-perimental echoes the analysis/craft/synthesis process discussed earlier, there will no doubt be ambiguous mists and veils of meaning to help com-plicate and frustrate our investigation of hybrid forms. Nevertheless, we proceed.

_____________________________________ * Let us also recognize some practical concerns, especially if one is attempting to make some sort of living as an artist of whatever stripe: you will simply need to engineer a living, a means of support, usually unrelated to your pursuit. If you are independently wealthy, this does not apply. If not, you must figure out a way to earn enough money to live, and craft your remaining time and energy into meaningful production.

SYNCRETIC PERFORMANCE HORIZONS

The International festivals like Mapping VJing Festival [52], competitions like Ars Electronica [53], and vari-ous group exhibitions (The Interventionists at MassM-oCA, 2006 [54]) have been charting the evolution of contemporary performance involving (or enhanced by) digital media for the past 30 years. Since, like Sun-dance or Venice or Berlin for the independent film-maker, these are the venues to which it is essentially impossible to gain entry, there are a number of signifi-cant contributions taking place below the radar, forg-ing novel amalgams of technology and performance, bringing new life to previously ignored genres, and uncovering hidden meaning among the digital detritus. Many of these works possess an essentially syncretic character: their foundations include often contradic-tory and antagonistic, unresolved core principles, and yet they achieve unity.

IPOD OPERATICS:

Appropriating consumer technology as a means of creating an alternative form of music notation/theatrical instruction, this author has created vocal music and sponta-neous theatre using the Sony Walkman, then portable CD players, and currently iPods, to disseminate instructions for ensembles of various size, since that fabled year, 1983. His culminating work with this approach, the digital media opera Anatomy of Melancholy™ (2005), sets a claustophobic narrative involv-ing a trio of scientist/artists navigating love, betrayal, fame, and dystopia in a two-hour spectacle, with videojam dream interludes sprinkled throughout the three acts [55].

ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY™ (mmv) (EXCERPT FROM LIBRETTO)ACT 2 Scene 1: Booster Enters HeavenBooster enters heaven, which is actually a gymnasium with kids running around, screaming, and vomiting. They wear rubber animal masks and are constantly rolling bowling balls toward one another, which will knock down some of the children.NOTE: If this scene is performed by 2 CharliEs and 2 Tess’s, they are identically dressed. The scene can be performed by a minimum of 4 vocalists: Booster (tenor), CharliEs (bass/baritone), Tess (mezzo soprano), and Alligator/Elephant/Pig/Fish/Octopus (alto). So, there could be as many as 10 individual parts for this one scene.

Tess in Rooster Mask: Remember, long time ago, he was asked to look at this.CharliE in Dog Mask: He produced a document.Tess: He produced a document of a detached, separate process.Booster: What the goals were, what the problems were relative to the goals, the processes you would go through to achieve those goals.Tess: Our discussion started with the idea of function, and what is needed to make that work.Child in Elephant mask: He looked at some kind of gathering that created a sense of community.Tess: Informally, on a weekly basis. That idea was identified.

Booster: I have no social identity as a result. I need a critical mass of people around me to implement the procedures.Tess: He runs a staff meeting, it’s definitely not a seminar. Definitely not theoretical.Child in Pig mask: What are the needs to create a structurally viable organization?

Tess: This is the issue we need to address.Pig: Then what?Child in Alligator mask: Then it would be really nice to have a really rich set of offerings, without reaching a point of total insanity.Booster: Well, to serve this function, you could squeeze together some things, and reduce some things, which are not administratively mandated.Tess: There might be community meetings, and structural meetings, but not every week.Booster: What if we put those three things together in a sort of schematic sequence?

Tess: It would be easier to administer a multiple structure with functional settings.Pig: Well, that’s what I’ve held all along.Alligator: We aren’t changing things, we are

only changing what they’re called.Elephant: It’s a different way of naming what

we already do.Tess: Correct. We are already doing this, but

could we organize them in a different way.Pig: Correct. But remember, we are talking

about 51 opportunities, which is . . . a lot.Tess: If we can think about it this way, the vision is that the logistics would be more

possible.Booster: But this is still happening at the critique level, but not at the social level.Tess: There was discussion on this, but no

action.Booster: Correct. Yes, regrettably this was

an outcome of my discretion.Tess: Correct.

CharliE: We could be excitedly engaged in the work, if we don’t propose things that

don’t already exist, but in addition to the structure, if we think of the function behind

it.Tess: These things have not yet interfaced.Booster: That’s a lot of people involved in

the process.Tess: And the topics are to address everyone.

That’s a lot of excitement!CharliE: We said, OK, what if we offered two

opportunities per period. It provides an important function.

Tess: There’s a different and important criticism that replaces the conversation.CharliE: Plus, you might not need as many

local critique sections, if you look at it as part of the total load you need to take on...

Pig: If that were a one person area, then spreading it out over three periods, I’d only be meeting with them an hour and a half per

week.Booster: You’d still be spread out the same

way, but wait, we’re not done.Tess: Correct.

Background: GPS Tracking of Mau Mau Uprising by Cole Caswell; Lower Left, vitrine station; Right, Vin Pays, played by Kristopher Logan; Lower Right, Barak Olins, chef; Propaganda room of printed material by Megan O’Connell. Next page, Chad Chamberlain as Tabla Rasa. Photos by Miranda Clark.

Leon Johnson [56] has been creating landmark intermedia work since the 1990s. He describes BLUE HAMMER as:

“A performed future (which) conjures a virtual theatre of reclamation in the wake of the waning shadows of empire, remade and dismantled by the forensic potential of new communication tech-nologies. . . .”

He explains that while employing “. . . a range of technologies, including GPS anal-ysis of the colonization of the Belgium Congo, the heart of this project unfolds in a small-town television studio in the Mid-west, where an actor of a certain age, who professes to have theatrically toured, and exploited, an imaginary Africa now hosts a late-night show for television called BLUE HAMMER. His name is Vin Pays and he be-lieves there is a vivid connection between the Jacobean classic, The Dutchess of Malfi, Hammer horror movies and his fabulations

genre rehabilitation in

BLUE HAMMER: A TRANS-

of Colonial Africa. He has invited a mysterious guest to join him in his last hour, the former leading-lady of the African tour named Tabula Rasa, who appears only to disrupt and dispel, a kind of angel of death whose memories of Af-rica are harder to maintain than Vin’s nostalgia. Tabula co-ordinates a reckoning and choreo-graphs a trans-historical coup.”

HISTORICAL-BURLESQUE DINNER THEATRE

“The piece features real-time projected GPS analysis of colonial expan-sion in conjunction with Google Map orchestrated by collaborators in Cape Town. A secondary media stream features recreated video excerpts from Hammer horror films. In the midst of this mediated context the pri-mary action unfolds as a live taping of the television show BLUE HAMMER. Throughout the “show” specters from the past participate via live “ ‘call-in’ conversations and reckonings.” [57]

News Art:Transforming the Journalistic Moment

3D Fake NewsThe osmotic membrane between journalistic fact and poetic truth has never been more porous. This can be easily documented through a YouTube search under “Apple Daily” [58], the television production company from Taiwan responsible for creating the stunning new look of TV journalism. It’s fake, and it’s done with 3D animation software. A perfect confluence of technology and specula-tion, Apple Daily first broke onto the world stage with its urgent retelling of the Tiger Woods infidel-ity drama in December 2009 [59], with the hero’s fall from grace rendered with a full range of plastic facial expressions and body movements. Tiger even wears the same sporty grey striped shirt through-out most of the story.

Accidents, petty crimes, betrayal, bad behavior, and undiagnosed psychiatric conditions have all been examined through the cannily skewed lens of Apple Daily, at the rate of up to 20 animations per day, transmitting to us in machinima form the frailties of human behavior.

Allegories by Justin Novak [60] Abu Ghraib FigurinesWithout question, the most iconic visual event of the second Bush presidency is the image of jetliners smashing into the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York, against a painfully beautiful blue sky on September 11, 2001. The next most iconic set of images from that period is, arguably, the digital pho-tos taken by U.S. servicemen and women degrading and demoralizing their Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghirab prison. This supremely icky national mo-ment has been artfully transformed by artist and illustrator Justin Novak.

About his Allegories Novak writes:

This series of figurines, entitled Allegories, was first exhibited at Nancy Margolis Gallery in New York, in 2005.

The experiment was a straightforward one:Several of the infamous images of tortured de-tainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were selected and transformed into miniature fig-ures.

The staged nature of the original documenta-tion translates with an eerie fluidity into the sentimental affectations of the traditional ce-ramic figurine. Liberated from the context of photographic evidence, they transcend the nar-row polemic of the Iraqi occupation. The vision becomes more elusive.

The title “Allegories” suggests a deeper sym-bolic resonance in this narrative. The original photographic evidence incriminates the U.S. state security apparatus, but as allegorical fig-ures they perhaps question the ethos of the homeland itself.

DECONSTRUCTING THE BLOGISPHERE: WONKETTE.

Perhaps one of the most vibrant, unrestrained sources of what would pass as political discourse during this current cultural moment resides in the world of online comments to articles posted on truly the most significant, trenchant and unredeem-able site on the InterTubes, Wonkette [61]. Former-ly the most vibrant member of the Nick Denton family of blogs, Wonkette was originally written and edited by Anna Marie Cox, and is, at this writing, crafted by the impeccably irreverent musings of Ken Layne, Sarah Benincasa, et alia.

If Stewart and Colbert sculpt the most recogniz-able face of fake news, Wonkette (and her fearless commenters, The Wonketteers) provide the dirty, insightful, transcendent details. If there is any re-demption to be found on this sad, blue marble, it is posted on Wonkette.

Wonkette is the site that almost single-handedly de-fines snark, the sacred-cow-slaughtering, politically-incorrect conversational tone entirely possessed by the political left, wholly informed by deft humor and an encyclopaedic onslaught of adroit pop-cul-tural references. Do not try this at home!