Over the course of the week I have utilized the prompt in a diaristic fashion, but realized that the prompt doesn’t function well for me. As an introvert I don’t believe in over sharing. So, I’ve retooled it to function differently; hopefully to similar effect to actually reach the core of the ideas in which your questions probe. The following framework capitalizes on both chronology and efficiency to hopefully produce a kind of mission statement fully encompassing a telos. So as follows I’ve compartmentalized my responses into pre-production, production, and post-production. This will be a mapping of DUOX’s current project Boy’dega: Edited4Syndication; it will destroy my midstream expectations and engender an objective distance. Rendering our tedious activity into a set of coordinates hopefully to which I have to never go again.
In the midst of the Artists Space show, we had an idea to extend the show beyond the gallery and wanted to create a supplemental for it. It somehow involved Gaëtan Dugas, the Patient Zero for AIDS. He was to function as a type of contaminant or an alteration, because we built the show around the Larkin Company known for hygiene products, catalogue purchase incentives, and benevolence to their work force. We wanted something to balance it, create a symmetry. Daniel’s mentioning of Dugas, prompted me to start writing about this fabled character based on a few attributes of communicable diseases and a set of influential people. We wanted to treat infection and ingestion as modes of production. During that same time, we had been looking at a lot of text written on the analogies established between biology and technology such as: virality, memes, and the correlation established between the human brain and computers, DNA and information theory. We weren’t able to bring that counter work into fruition until now and we are currently in the middle of it. And Daniel had been establishing an archive of write ups and images.
In the summer of 2012, I started working with Schwarz on sounds to score the project. At one point we thought it would just be videos with a voiceover taken from the packet we made for the Larkin show, then we realized it had to be a more sophisticated mapping that actually brought people into the texture of the narrative. And then it had to be that too, narrative. So when Daniel moved back from New York last September, we started working on all the preliminaries and contacting those we wanted to participate. It seems like the project has taken on its own timeline, its own dynamic. It grew legs.
We thought it would be a simple u just put up the website and u make sculptures for the show, but we went through growing pains and there were so many amazing things I got to read and watch as an excuse for the construction of this project. TV shows became research, because I had to become intensely aware of the tropes contained in them to build characters. Some of my favorite shows to watch on binge were: The Big Bang Theory, Once Upon a Time, Heroes, The Wire, and Arrested Development. These shows present amazing archetype studies, interwoven storylines, and complicated chronology. September Jason Mittell was also watched again during the course of this week. He is a Professor that teaches about Media specifically television and his talk on Forensic Fandom inspired some of the direction in the project. It helped shape some of the questions we needed to formulate to in regards to address the narrative. Crime documentaries along with those of the video game also have been on heavy rotation during this process.
Essays that stand out over the course of the production of this project are: The Aesthetics of Violence: Crime as Urban Spectacle in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Promises of Monsters by Donna Haraway, and Godard and Counter-Cinema.
Two 150-page PDFs later, we are in the midst of production, still moving forward towards an invisible deadline.
We are currently in production for BE4SYN. and in choosing to work completely digitally we wanted to create new levels of accessibility for the viewer. I’ve been watching a lot of Black Ops videos games as well as game walk throughs to influence some of the construction for the early part of the site and to somehow consider a user instead of a viewer. Some of the primary hurdles during this time were deadlines and scheduling conflicts. But we have more work to do than not. We’re hoping that through this mapping we can produce a place for us like fashion house to pull from a principle DNA that feels long established prior. We want to also create a work that could rest in a space of ambiguity hiding its hierarchy as an artwork, and at the same time uses analogy and association hopefully to avoid one to one relationships. We burned through 8 hours today mostly silent for six of them due to the fact the construction was insanely tedious. I went through trying to name 22 episodes to give our program the illusion of at least one full season. drafting titles like Bodymore,The Electricity of Faith and Transmission, The Recuperation and The Mist. I choose this format of the antecedent because it felt like some of the key issues we’re attempting to highlight in terms of proliferation and mutation, a kind of one spin off.
The night prior I watched ?uestlove discuss classic albums and their follow ups as he coined them the departure album, and somehow I wondered if we were compelled to create a work that felt a complete deviation from which we are accustomed. Trying to convince people through the whole process this has been an error on our part. People claim that you can do whatever you want, but they also mean with in the old bounds you’ve established. This project has to be done differently.
A WEBSITE is UNDER CONSTRUCTION, The actors have had their table reads.
SENSES LIST
There were two driving forces for this project as a whole. The first of which is to appropriate the model of a fashion house and to establish a DNA. This is the core aesthetic, the ideology, and the values associated with said house. Hopefully, the site can continue to grow and be a sort of repository for us to draw ideas from for the physical shows and to establish some sort of history. This isn’t what the project is about, but why we felt it was necessary to make it, a thing that one has to rid themselves of when they venture into a collaborative. We would like in the future for DUOX to function as a moniker that can be taken on by other artist acting as creative directors so that our artistic practice is carried on posthumously. George C. Williams writes, “The gene is a packet of information and not an object.” This idea has function as a mantra for me because it is something that I’ve believed about our work since we started making it, We knew that breaking objects up changed the reading of the work dramatically. And we would also like to extend the play we’ve been having with analogizing the collaborative with various partnership types: parents, designers, couples, design firms, etc.
I CAN ACTUALLY GO ON A VACATION.
With no maybes in sight.
Ohio has good malls. They all look like outside towns that Disney made.
It is so much hotter now than when I was a kid. I did like that mouth to poop to mouth thing you were reading earlier. About recycling your own poop back into your mouth. I’m sure it is something people always think about. Let's get organized.
It was funny when he was saying let's get organized, let's sell back our trash so everyone has something to sell. Then earlier today I was hearing about these kiosks at the mall where you take your old electronics and exchange them for cash. So we did get organized. But politicians want to shut them down because they think it is causing robberies. I wonder how much money you get for a new phone. More money than what you paid for it?
Apple is now doing this push to put as many mobile phones in the hands of third world nations.
I don’t want to see their Instagrams.
But I think what they are doing is giving away reclaimed old iPhones.
The phones from the mall. Do they give them away?
I think so.
I felt really bad when that fat queen was accosting us.
Lacoste-ing us.
I felt really bad because obviously he was drunk and wanted a cigarette, and then he tried to get cute in an aggressive, old way. I had a deep darkness in my heart because I can’t imagine what it is like to age.
Russell Brand's suggestion is to use your balls like a canvas by pulling them tight to draw your portrait on them. And then ball* them back up and you will see what you look like when you're older. He called it the Dorian Gray effect, or something.
Anyway, it was just sad to see someone try and have a rapport with someone else through a really fucked up, drunk bad joke state. He must be 50 to 55.
He should be at his prime. Karl just turned 80. Look at her.
I know, it should be like that. But when I went to motion him to Be Gone, I didn’t want to say You're old and these jokes don’t hold….
No, Malc said that.
I know. Which was true. But it probably wasn’t that fun for him.
Well, we didn’t bully him out of the blue; she approached us in a really ridiculous way.
I just didn’t like how it went down. I didn’t like someone's dignity being diminished.
He diminished it before he even approached us. Maybe what you feel bad about was the way he treats himself, getting really wasted everyday. He was really end-of-the-line by the time he got to us. I don’t feel bad; everyone has to deal with that for themselves.
Why strip someone's dignity away just because they are feeling bad about their situation.
That was just gay banter. Why strip it away?
It seems like what we did the other night was really easy.
Maybe we did it for each other. Like a way to protect each other. But in gay banter there is truth. So rather than sitting him down for a real talk, the finer points just come out in a fight. Haha. Maybe the only thing we learned from Paris Is Burning. “You have to go to the finer points”. Hahaha. It is a mean way of telling someone what is going on in their life. He seemed to be asking for it.
I felt really bad for him. In general. He seemed to have had a really sad experience.
Crushed by the entire gay experience.
Granted, maybe his gay experience was probably nothing like ours.
Doesn’t he organize the Pride parade? He was saying he really wants control and a voice for the scene.
But maybe he also lost a lot of friends. He is like a veteran.
A tragic gay experience. That’s not the way to deal with it. But I don’t even look at it like that.
I don’t know, maybe it is up to us to take care of the people that would have taken care of us if they had lived.
I guess I agree, but not in this situation. I don’t think you have talked him into another situation at the point he was at.
I think you could have. The easy thing to do was be loud and aggressive, which is just gay people's way, today. I felt like there was a component missing. Because remember when he did that really sensi impromptu performance at the Drinkery, where he just put his hands against the wall and looked over his shoulder.
Oh yah, the frisked Marilyn in Maryland.
We liked him then.
I mean, if he wants to be fucked up and rude, I’m into that; I will go along with it. I don’t know how to feel about it.
After it all went down, I saw him inside leaning on the bar looking tragic. Not in a funny gay way but in a human tragic way. I just wanted to go up to him and say I know you’re really fucked up and sad about a lot of things that have happened in your past and just say sorry.
But his reads were pretty bad.
I can’t remember what he said.
Just tons of stuff about Tupperware. All tops and no bottoms. No... all bottoms and no tops. I don’t know if that joke would have been funny in its time.
It was a stretch. No one has a relationship to Tupperware. He certainly had a relation to leftovers. Leftover clothes, leftover jokes, and leftover dinners.
We used to always get "faggot" out the car window. Are people less homophobic now? Or maybe we dress less gay.
I think you used to dress more homeless.
Homeless doesn’t get you called gay.
Yes it does. Remember that goth girl in Welcome to the Dollhouse that outs Dawn for making a pass at her? And she is totally lying. I will never build my body up. It is such a waste of space and time.
GG was saying…
Now were saying GG for Gaga. Lord.
GG was saying she lets the crew take down the castle on her tour in front of the audience.
Its called "breaking it down."
So it feels like a prop.
Those are not her ideas.
They are, at the point when its like I want to put a castle on stage. Not that it doesn’t matter where it came from. A lot of good ideas are bad sounding and vice versa. A lot of people have ideas and do nothing with them. At least she did something. It seems like people are afraid to pursue their ideas. One thing I thought was so funny is when she tried to build a relationship between the red sole of a Louboutin and the red tail lights of a car.
Did you see the set for Rodarte?
Yeah, they had red and blue tube lighting on the ground. Because the collection was inspired by sunset in LA, and that's how they interpreted the freeway. Anyway GG lays on the trunk of a car and puts her heels up over her head to mirror a tail light. She says she thinks in images this way.
She totally does not.
You just see it that way.
I’m just reciting what she says in interviews. I didn’t make this up.
You seem to be focusing a lot on what other people are doing.
Maybe its just what I talk to you about. What do you mean I’m focusing on other people.
You are describing Gaga’s practice in terms of DUOX. I never think she is fully aware of the accidents that come out of her and her team. The things you like about her are the things DUOX cares about.
Huh? Yeah, I guess. LOL. You think I give her too much credit?
Yes. Which is fine...
Being a popstar is more fun than being an artist. You get to do more stuff. Uh oh. Are you having a full meltdown?
No. I guess I get mad that Björk didn’t go as hard as Gaga.
Malc said a good thing the other day about Björk. Which was she made really good music early in her career but now makes really good framing device choices but less good music.
I agree with that.
Björk has better videos. I never talk about Gaga’s videos; just her use of props on stage and like walking from the hotel to the car. In relationship to her new single. Like that pig nose. Maybe I don’t want to be a popstar because artists don’t have to cater to so many demands. Just the idea.
They can say, “Oh we don’t store your biometric information, we don’t store your thumbprint anywhere.”
This is basically for the cops so they don’t have to thumbprint anybody. They can just look at the Verizon information that was already sold to them.
Exactly. Totally. Like this thumb unlocked this phone and had a conversation about XYZ.
Right. Now just make sure you only say really important things.
It probably doesn’t even matter if you choose to scan your thumb or not. Like if the functionality is there; it probably takes your fingerprint anyway.
Probably. Just from being on your phone.
Yeah.
That is so crazy!
They make it seem like a choice. But is isn’t. I imagine it isn’t going to be at some point.
Of course this is like the genius thing. Where everyone does their own incriminating. Incriminating their own self. They sign up for all their own things. Now the cops won’t need to fingerprint anyone. There was this department of the NYPD that took CIA field tactics that they have used abroad where the cops go out as civilians to gather information and target people. But they were looking for suspicious activity among Muslims. The idea was that cops could catch a crime before it was committed. So the cops would talk to people, overhear conversations. And when they decided to shut down the program all they had gathered was a list of good Muslim restaurants and that middle-aged Muslim men would gather in this particular park in mid afternoon to play chess. So it didn’t work the way they had hoped. Now it’s being applied to gangs in New York. The cops pretend to be women and friend request gang members online.
There is a little place over by NYU that isn’t necessarily a Muslim hangout but it’s middle eastern food called WaWa. WaWa cafe.
Wait. why do we know that?
We’ve walked by it before, I took a picture of it once.
WaWa well!
WaWa Well, kids!
Did you see those pictures that Anoushe uploaded? She must have gotten stung. Did you see her arm? It was bubbly.
Did you see that she had been uploading all day. Uploading just tons of rashes. Just tons of everybody just fucked up. It was not her though.
No, but I thought the one of her arm was her, but she had been uploading pictures of peoples faces that had blown up from bee stings. That happened to me. I didn’t realized that that doesn’t happen to everyone. That actually it is just an allergic reaction. Which I have.
You thought that everyone who got stung would swell up like that?
I mean I just got stung on my face.
Oh, I thought if you get stung on your face that is what happened.
Was that little boy her?
I don’t think so.
It was saying "Anoushe has changed His profile photo." I thought it was funny because of course she would want to click He.
I like when she said, “I got a phone again” and shared a link to Facebook—the site—as her message.
I was interested in those photos because all I had been seeing was like Fashion Week, Instagram, picnic, mason jar cocktails blah blah blah and then her pictures. It felt like she infiltrated the feed. It cut through pretty well. Because there is that one Russian kid who uploads when he is on a meth trip or something. When he just goes crazy and uploads like 700 photographs and you can’t scroll enough to get rid of it.
I don’t know him.
You’re like, it will be over, it will be over soon. This happens like once a month. He must work really hard at that.
Well, now that you can just drag and drop.
Oh, right you can just do it all.
Right.
But normally it would upload and couch it in a group, not a line.
No, I’m just saying, it’s not like it’s a big deal to upload a photo now because you can just drag from desktop, drag from desktop.
If you are looking into a mirror and jerking off do you think you look hotter to yourself right before you cum?
No.
These have been the funnest two weeks working on the project. I’ve been having such a good time. We watched so many video games today. We just watched people narrating their game play. We watched Call of Duty. Which is the most beautiful game.
We have the second one that came out.
Oh, really?
Yeah. That’s what I bought when I got Xbox.
Well whatever is out now is so gorgeous. The characters have like cast shadows and smoke and smog that reacts to the players. When you swim, the fish move out of your way, like in a specific way. They have really detailed fingernails with dirt under them and arm hair that looks really good. And blood. I’m sure anyone who has grown up playing games is not that impressed.
Last time I had visited back home, I stayed with my brother in what was at the time a guest bedroom.
Now it is a sex dungeon!
No! Now it is where baby Taylor Danielle’s room is.
She sleeps in a sex dungeon? She must love shit play.
Stop!
It’s true, she does!
No, she doesn’t.
Pee and shit. Both. She likes to keep it in her diaper all day.
Anyway, Tommy had his TV and Xbox in there and there was a bed. So I just stayed in there for two days playing Call of Duty. It was so fun. So fun.
I didn’t know you did that.
Malc was saying we should just stay in and drink wine and play video games since we don’t like leaving the house anyway.
I mean it probably is really fun.
It seemed so fun. It’s so fun because I was watching these four guys play and they are annoying. But they were working together, solving problems.
Uh huh. I forgot when this was. Could I have actually had this game for Xbox? No. I was playing James Bond. I played it for like three days straight. It was so fun and engrossing.
Were you Sean Connery?
No, it was after that.
How do they treat girls in the game?
I don’t remember any of that. Just the shooting and the jumping up on platforms.
You wore platforms?
No, boxes.
You wore boxes?
First person shooter.
How long are these games supposed to take? Because they were saying it would take 20 hours to complete. But I thought they were supposed to take like a month.
I was saying to Malc, both of us didn’t care about video games growing up and we both knew we were bad at them. Other people were always playing them around us. But now I find the narrative really engaging. I watch them like a movie. Thats the funny thing; they are so much better than movies.
They make them like that.
I know, they always will talk about its development saying like, “We’re really pushing the narrative over the action, were trying to balance it”. But they do a lot of stuff I didn’t realize to make the final game. They’re be filming on a huge sound stage with green screen and dots on their face. They had this dog on a leash they were filming for Call of Duty.
It’s a big business.
We are hoping for an Xbox expo here. An Xbox expo inside of a gay wedding expo. I would go to that. I was saying I would start a gay gaming company.
Gays love a game.
I actually don’t enjoy the tropes of gaming. I love how they look tho. Everything is too often metally and the girls are always doing the girl thing.
The girls are always just boobs walking around.
I like the environments a lot, but why does everyone have the same armor and the same weapons and the same mesh. So I was saying, like, is there a game that just does ~Community building~ ??
Malc said Sims. But that not pretty enough.
I used to love Sims. When I had my first computer and it had that double disk loading every game. It seemed at the time really complex and really graphically rich, but it wasn’t. It was like a 16 bit.
It’s not even rich in any way.
I don’t know what it is like now. It was always like isometric viewpoint, you know? Is that what it is called? Everything is in that one fixed perspective. But there are versions of that now that aren’t Sims that are a lot more rich. I mean World of Warcraft is like that. I’m sure Second Life isn’t a thing anymore, but...
You don’t think?
I really don’t hear anything about it, but it could be a very closed community.
It is a community built by one. No, nevermind.
It is kind of like Sims but more full-on.
There is this new television show on the SciFi Network that was built in conjunction with a video game. It was really ambitious in the platforms it uses. If you play the video game to a certain point you are considered as a real character for the next season on the show.
Nuh uh...
Yes. But it has already happened. People are already becoming new characters. The television show just writes them into the script. But it happens simultaneously. I don’t know exactly how…
The character you play becomes a character in the show?
If you do well enough and participate. It is like an incentive to play the game. It's like as you play and the show unfolds, you get more information about the game. But I don’t know how the game could influence the show immediately. I think the way the game influences the show is like: once the show wraps they take some information from the game.
On these games where you play over a network or you play inside of a world with people who are elsewhere, there is a lot of talking with each other.
Like headset or like…
Yeah, headset and also chatting. It probably provides a lot of fodder for interactions that can be written into a script or developed into a script.
It’s funny because there was one we watched for a really long time and the player chooses from five or six ways the character could respond in a conversation. But you can go back and re-choose if you didn’t like how the next five minutes played out. So it’s weird because they definitely write all the options, but maybe they don’t know the outcomes or all the possible combinations. But when we were watching it, the guy was choosing the most boring responses. I go choose that one and he would choose the one I didn’t care about. They were in that exact replica of that diner in Brooklyn. That Mexican one. But I guess all diners look like that. A metal Twinkie.
It’s like a prefab thing.
There was also a lava pit right outside. But the players were really working together. Often people write off games as being violent equals bad. But these are douches who are actually working really hard towards one goal and solving problems. I think that has to have some real world benefit.
Singularity.
No! Normal stuff. Not advanced but basic almost. Really basic things. I think the game caught up to more social media nuances or something. People really seem to feel like they are participating in something meaningful. Like you have to help each other so you don’t die.
I’ve never played in a game like that. I don’t know what it is like.
I only played Myst with my sister when we would visit my grandma in Florida. I would be in control of the left side of the keyboard and the space bar. And she would do the arrows and the shift key that would fire.
But you guys were at the same computer right?
I was always yelling FIRE!
That is like a four-hands piano concerto. Where two people sit on the same bench and play.
That is a nice idea.
What’s really crazy is that there are some compositions for multiple pianos. They are really special, and of course it is really expensive to put this on. Because you have to get two pianos and two really good pianists.
Like Gaga and Elton John. Did you see that old performance?
Who cares.
Why is it expensive to put two pianos on stage? There is nothing else to get except a piano.
I mean the pianos have to be really nice, and they both have to be tuned ,and then you have to get two piano players who are adept at playing complicated music that gets put into these things. But it is kind of an exciting thing to see 2 pianos or 4 pianos or 6 pianos on the stage at once.
That is nice.
They are gigantic.
Because one time Gaga jumps down a fire shoot, like a chimney. And then she came out dusty, and her and Elton John were playing, each at their own piano. And Terence Koh had decorated the top with those Monster hands. Or I’m sure they weren’t Monster’s hands, but she thought they were.
Oh I remember that. I was thinking today about hands as decorative objects. You know how, what is her name, Kelly Wearstler constantly has like gilded disembodied body parts. It is such a ghoulish, macabre... like it’s cute when it is just a little bit here and there, but she does it for every room.
Like she will stack this table with 50 different hands?
Yeah, or like a party bar.
What is a party bar?
You know like a bar where people put their snacks together on a plate and get their drinks. And there were just hands and shit and legs coming out of there. I’m like, alright can I just fucking get my drink?
I wouldn’t hate that. You hated it?
It’s so ghoulish.
What do you mean, Halloweeny?
Yeah, kind of. Like ghoulish "camp."
Well, the people in the Congo often use monkey’s hands as ashtrays.
Mhmm.
You knew that?
Yeah, I know a lot of stuff.
I thought you only knew about music.
Maybe that’s why I can’t get fucking raise. Because they think I only know about "how to code." A lot of the things I try to say are things that I've been saying for five years. Constantly trying to drag people into the PRESENT... not even the future!
What was that thing you sent to me about the present? That quote you sent me from like the 1700s.
Oh, I didn’t know it was from the 1700s. “Artists who carry a belligerent knowledge of the present make new technologies look like old art.” Something like that.
Your socks are very high today.
I kind of like higher socks with sandals now.
For hire.
Maybe they can get a raise.
Maybe they already have.
I’ve seen a couple people on Twitter recently using ‘Ya feel meh.’ I don’t know why. Maybe when you say it, it just enters the air.
Give it money! The DUOX gets the money! It’s in the air now.
DUOX will become fully funded plus then some!
And gets to go do fun stuff in a YSL boot.
Just one though. You have to hop around.
The fashion singularity.
It is weird that One Direction always gets asked what superpower would you have. And then they are asked which question they are sick of being asked. And they say superhero question. They the interviewer asked what question do they wish they would be asked. And they say why would we wish to be asked questions. They think they are getting outside the format but don’t realize they are still in it.
Oh ya, meta wishes. You can’t ask a genie to give you more wishes. In Gödel Escher Bach when someone asks for a meta wish, they say we have to pass it up to the meta GOD. Capital G.O.D., which stands for God Over Djinn. But you’re asking a Djinn, so... It means, like, "genie." Or a lesser GOD.
God is a gig. Love is a rhythm, life is a dance floor, I am a DJ.
And you are an asshole.
And I have charted #1 on the Billboard Top 100. I’m P!nk you haven’t heard of me in a while.
You can’t Google me because my vowel is just an exclamation point.
You know that reggaeton beat we would always hear in Brooklyn.
Oh yah, is it just like everyone is listening to Britney.
I don’t know. Thinking back now when I would hear it, I don’t think they were actually listening to the same song. But I could only hear the beat so it sounded like the same song. But it is actually the fact that a lot of the songs they listen to had that beat. You couldn’t hear any of the tones or the lyrics. But the drums always did the same thing.
Why would you want that.
It is just a genre of music.
So everyone is listening to the same genre.
It’s no different from any other genre.
It must be much more recognizable.
But like you know, lets say dubstep always has the same qualities. The way reggaeton does. But all dubstep songs share the same beat quality.
Do you think Madonna has said to herself, “Ok, this is my last world tour; I’m too old”
Hum, I think she’ll do another tour at least. I don’t see her going to Vegas and doing a show there. If anything she will do a lot more world tours but be less physically active on stage.
I really like when Britney was helicoptered into Las Vegas for her residence and on the ground were a ton of fans. They were holding cards over their heads that rotated between three Britney show flyers. It looked like those rasterbations we made for Artists Space. But it is also a good idea for The Khroma Klub project, next.
