meditations on memory: we need total coverage

Memory is something that has become the one thing I think about the most in the last 5 or 6 years. It is at the heart of the work that I create. And questions about it tend to enter my mind more frequently than those having to do with any other topic. That’s not to say that I don’t think about anything else, I just tend to think about memory a lot. More specifically, it is the minds “construction” of memories that interests me most of all. Memory is not a linear retelling of one particular event or events, but rather an amalgamation of an infinitesimal myriad of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and experiences referenced and cross-referenced between completely different parts of our brains. Details become fuzzy and “plot points” are brought to the forefront, like a revolving door memories fade in and out of our minds. If I have a memory in which I know there was a chair in the corner, can my mind call up that particular chair? Or do our minds edit and in place of that chair is there a chair that I may have known around the same time? Or is it replaced with my idea of a generic chair, or an ideal chair? These are the things that really get to me? Are our memories faulty cameras? Things that are fresh in your mind tend to have more vividness and eventually you lose memories as you gain new ones. I can remember almost every minute of every day of the last week in 2007. And, I can only imagine that at this time last year I could recall those past three days in 2006. But now that it is a year later where are all of those memories of last year September 26th-29th? We decide which memories are important to keep and which ones are to be discarded. What I ate for lunch on July 27th in 1998 is not as important as what I did on my 21st birthday, so, July 27th, 1998 gets pushed out while March 24 th,2001 takes up residence in my subconscious. How much of our memory these days is reliable? As our culture drives attention spans lower it’s not completely outlandish to think that our memories become shortened as a result. In our world of digital still and video cameras, life blogs, YouTube, Myspace, and countless other documentarian gadgets there is no need for us to train our memories. We’ve built artificial ones. As print becomes less and less popular and the internet grows, it is likely we will become more and more dependent on computer networks to be the custodians of our history.

more notes on post-modernism: all you have to do is show up something is bound to happen

Last night I attended an event at Rubber Gloves Recording Studio in Denton.  I wasn’t going to go out, but then I recanted at the last minute.  The name of said event was “Short Attention Span Theater,” and it is hosted by a friend of mine that works at another local bar.  The concept for this “happening” is a simple one, “you call it YouTube,” which is really a catchy phrase.  Basically what happens is everyone at the bar writes their YouTube requests on a community sheet of cardstock and the list is compiled into a favorites list.  While the list is being compiled music is played, a movie (last night was “Chungking Express,” with subtitles) plays in the background, and the patrons get a chance to converse.  After about 20 minutes of scouring YT for the chosen clips, the music fades out and  the clips are shown (some highlights included; A profile of the wrestler known as The Ultimate Warrior, “The Hard Gay”, “Jesus Music”, and “Gay Top Gun”).  This process is repeated throughout the night as many times as needed.  I’m glad I went out.  More bars in more cities should have events like this.  An exercise in post-modernity does a body good.  Even if the participant isn’t aware that they are contributing to a post-modern moment (though I think a few of my fellow patrons might have been in on the joke).  It’s just interesting to me and kind of makes me giggle to myself, that here we are building a social network around a social network that is built around a social network (I think I may have lost some people).  Online social networks deconstruct the processes of real life social networks and simplify them into units or elements (friends, comments, favorites etc.), a visual language.  In that bar last night we were essentially doing the same thing to a social network that social networks do to us.  We took the simplification of our own social network (YouTube), simplified it (cardstock with requests) and extrapolated it back out into its original form (socializing at the bar between videos, providing a forum to share videos and meet people).  So maybe that’s not as awesome to anyone else as it is to me.  But I believe that it’s something that is worth thinking about.  We live in a post-modern world and it’s important to take a step back and appreciate that every once in a while.  The doors are wide open.  The playing field is infinite.  And we’re just starting to come into our own.  What we were doing at a bar in Denton on a Wednesday night was significant.  We weren’t doing it because it was significant.  It was significant because we were doing it.  Sometimes all you have to do is show up something is bound to happen.

more notes on post-modernism: situational narcisism and 15 minute orgasms

What is Identity? Is it how we see ourselves? Is it how we present ourselves? Or is it how other people see us?. This is an idea I’ve been grappling with over the last few days. This idea that the internet is a place full of people that may or may not (I think that a lot of the time it is the latter) be who they present themselves to be. This morning while waiting for my car to get looked at I was reading an old issue of the New Yorker. The article was “It should happen to you” by Ben McGrath. The article revolves around Stevie Ryan, a struggling actress that made the “Little Loca,” video’s on YouTube. It also talks about some of the other videos on YouTube that have been exposed as being frauds and then the creators enjoy pseudo-fame. Lonelygirl15 , turned out to be the handiwork of filmmakers who saw YouTube as a “new art form”. Has the internet become a new canvas for digital artists to create they’re post-modern theses? I’ve got to say just thinking about students in art schools across the united states concocting elaborate performance pieces based around the mundane existence of a fabricated personality tickles me and makes me giggle. It’s perfect and I’m kicking myself for not thinking about it. What better to deconstruct than culture and social interaction? Breaking down our preconceived notions of truth and reality. I think we may be onto something. Lifelogging, is the name of the game these days and there’s no way to know what reality exists and which realities are manufactured. Manufactured online personalities, it’s fun to say. And, the bottom line here is that there is no room for these budding artists to get to “know” the audience that has made them famous. There is only what the audience thinks about what the artist has put into this digital world. Comments, vote for me, and so on and so forth ad nauseum (a practice I would condemn if I could say that I wasn’t guilty of it myself). Situational narcissism, Andy Warhol was right his 15 minutes of fame prophecy has come true, and our cultures definition of fame has changed drastically (who links you if you google yourself, how many people have watched your YT video, which season of The Real world were you on again, Seattle or Austin?). All it takes is making it onto the main page of YouTube. Whether that be by sheer virtue of your talent as an amateur filmmaker or by the merit that you have the time to vote for yourself every hour of everyday is up to you, the sky is the limit, the world is your oyster. Or, of course, you could apply to be on a reality show (America still likes those right). And as the cameras and screens keep reproducing at exponential rates (which is a whole other conversation about what your laptop and your tv are doing when you’re not around), we will all one day be able to live our lives in the public eye. It’s times like these that I wish Orwell was still around. He’d be so proud of us.

I told you it’d look better burned to the ground

There has been a lot of talk swirling around the blogs lately (or maybe I’m just catching up with it now) about online dating sites and love in general. Or maybe I’ve just noticed it more lately. As human beings we all just want to find that one relationship that defines us. Where everything is easy and there’s no work involved because you’re just both so relieved to have one another. The kind of relationship that Salt and Pepper have (the spices not the 80’s supergroup). Salt and Pepper are your two friends that won’t stop making kissy faces at each other even though you’ve told them to stop it and that it makes you uncomfortable. They’ve been together for years but they still call each other by their pet names and say things like “no, you’re the greatest”. You never (ok, so I don’t want to say never because of the internet blog grammar Illuminati) but you seldom ever find one and not the other. You would never see a table with just salt and no pepper and you would never find “tubular” salt packets without the mini-packets of pepper close by. They never leave each others side. We’ve all have (or have had) friends like this. I guess when we become

 

So I caved…

I decided to uproot my blogger and join the fine folks here at WordPress…one of the designers I work with is bidding on a project which requires the addition of a blog for patients of heart transplants…I did some research and decided to migrate. Not that I was really that attached to the blogger but I had just gotten everything set up like I like it. But just like an apartment by the time you really get comfortable in one place, you find something better. My next move will be to my own domain justin-strickland.com and that should be coming up soon. Until then keep watching for posts…and maybe I’ll get a comment…one can only hope

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more notes on the peculiar position of modern man

I was thinking about the internet dating schemes that have seemed to become so popular these days with 8 million kinds of compatibility and so on and so forth.Match.com, Eharmony.com, and I got to thinking. I believe that the match.coms and the eharmony.coms of the world could pose a much more sinister threat and be much more corrosive to society as a whole. Online dating sites may not even be the whole problem. social networks (Myspace, Facebook), MMORPG’s (Everquest, World of Warcraft). Do all of these things trivialize the benefit of real face to face interaction? I mean for all the good that they do and I have heard of people finding real happiness with another human being on the internet, they kind of take the guess work out of what we call “romance”. They are the fast food of the dating world, and could they do to human interaction what

 

stuff i’m digging…

Heart of Darkness
Vernon Fisher
Sep 7 – Oct 7, 2007

Opening Reception
For the Artist
Friday, Sep 7
6:00 – 8:00 pmDUNN AND BROWN CONTEMPORARY 5020 Tracy Street Dallas TX 75205

Vernon Fisher has another show up at the Dunn and Brown Contemporary, and always it’s really good. I Studied under this guy at UNT and to this day it still blows me away how fresh and relevant his work is. The way he takes these disparate elements and marries them together using composition and juxtaposition still really speaks to me. Of course I may be biased seeing as though I build images in a very similar way but this guy is really at the top of his game and never ceases to amaze me if you’re in Dallas it’s worth a look-see.

The internet has destroyed communication while at the same revolutionizing the way people communicate. Now we can speak in bad grammar to people we don’t know in countries we don’t care about, or instead of having meaningful conversations with just one person face to face we can have serveral surface level conversations with a whole huge group of people and never have to see them at all…isn’t technology great?
…match.com…eharmony.com…that eharmony.com place freaks me out. I’m convinced they are going to find out that the compatablity tests are hooking people up with distant cousins. Ever notice how much alike those people look? It’s scary…and those match.com ads that are just the girls staring at you through the computer..Is that supposed to be reassuring?…Who needs to go to the bar anymore, when i can try and marry a cam whore who might be my cousin? (thanks to grant for helping me with this rant).

Sometimes I wonder what everyone else is thinking about. What is the average ammount of thought that people put into their everyday lives? If you’re anything like me, I think all the time, about really random things too. I wonder if stupid people know that their stupid. Why do people who can’t sing always think they can, and people who can sing always think they can’t? How does stupid shit get on TV? You would think someone somewhere would have put their hand up and addressed the pink elephant in the room. “Yes, Bob, you had a question,” “Just what kind of brain damage does everyone here have? I don’t think putting Jim Belushi in another sitcom where he plays a douchebag is going to help our ratings”. Sadly honesty has become a lost art here in America.

working it out…

I think the worst thing about having a boring office job IS the fact that it is a boring office job. How tech support companies make money and stay open is beyond me. I’d say you’d be hard-pressed to say we generate any REAL work here. I for instance do maybe 2 hours of REAL, honest to god work here in an 8 hour shift. The rest of my time is spent trying to invent new ways to NOT work. The internet proxies at these places are always downright oppressive. You can’t get to anything good, so you’re forced to read every article that’s ever been written on wikipedia, and CNN.com. That really only gets you so far into the day. Sometimes I find myself trying to sleep just so the time will pass. Blogs sometimes get you through the day, but eventually you’ve read all of the “older posts” and then you have to wait for them to be updated. So you update your own blog with a bunch of useless crap about how your job sucks, while you wait for somebody else to update their blog about how much their job sucks. Technology has brought us so far.