I happenned to be in Zaragoza, Spain during the aimlessness project so I tried to take advantage of the fact that I was in a city where I had never been before. On my second day in Zaragoza, wshing I had taken the old map of Vienna a friend had given me, I rummaged around the room at my friend’s flat where I was staying to find an old map of Prague. The day was sunny and I was in good spirits, so I set off to navigate Zaragoza using a map of Prague.
Graham’s brief for this project was investigating the command line, in particular we were asked to come up with a clever one-liner. The reasoning behind this project was for us to think about and use media, in this instance the computer, that ubiquotus and most familiar object in a totally strange and new way. Graham’s idea of regimenting us through a form of defamiliarization, where the familiar becomes strange in order to be familiar again. Neither Eleanor nor I had ever used the command line, let alone Linux. So we made our way throught the dark and through the man pages, thinking about language and it’s place in the world, of machines, poetry machines, invoking the Oulipians, who themselves had made language strange by bringing in mathematical combinatory operations in order to liberate langauge.
awk ‘0 == (NR+1) % 7’ [source file.txt] > [target file.txt]
This is a simple linux poetry machine that prints every seventh line counting from line 1 in a source text file and writes the output to another text file. This one-liner program uses the BASH command ‘awk,’ a pattern-directed scanning and processing language that is part of the Unix operating system that can be used to process text-based data.
Anatomy of the command line:
‘==’ means Is equal. It is a conditional expression in awk for certain tests like if or while. ‘NR’ tells me the number of records, or the line number which I can use awk to only examine certain lines. ‘%’ means Literal. In this case the command prints every seventh line from the source file to the target file. This is a reference gate to the N+7 Oulipian operation that consists in replacing each noun (N) with the seventh following in a dictionary.
To make the command line work, I installed a virtual Linux machine on my computer running on parallels. Several texts were manipulated and presented in class. However awk also works fine from the mac terminal.
I ran the poetry machine on Balzac’s Sarrasine also of Barthes’ S/Z fame which is in the public domain. The choice of the text comes from my research interest in the role of the reader as active producer of text.
balzacmaschine.txt
garden of the mansion at which I was passing the evening. The trees,
a magnificent salon, with walls of silver and gold, with gleaming
voluptuous movements, made the laces and gauzes and silks swirl about
finishing touch to the vertigo of that multitude, intoxicated by all
repeated thousands of times in diverse ways, make Paris the most
“Oh, yes! It is nearly ten years since the Marechal de Carigliano sold
“They surely must.”
“Why, don’t you know?”
some retired couch. Never was a more promising mine laid open to
buccaneers?
combined in equal degree purity of tone, exquisite feeling, accuracy
assaults of time, and who seem at thirty-six more desirable than they
based upon comparisons, flatters the most sensitive self-esteem. A
maid crushes two of his fingers in the crack of a door. To love one of
young man was a living image of Antinous, with somewhat slighter
itself, have been for long a subject of wonderment in Paris. In no
are solved by algebraic equations, adventurers have many chances in
People of an observing turn, of the sort who are bent upon finding out
“Perhaps you will call me mad, but I cannot help thinking that my
mysterious individual. Without being precisely a vampire, a ghoul, a
few fashionable phrases, chose to see in the stranger some great
“that little old fellow’s a _Genoese head_!”
continuance of this family’s income. I remember that I once heard a
extraordinary personage the Comte de Saint-Germain.”
adopting a decidedly mysterious course of conduct with this old man,
greatest importance. Only Filippo, Marianina, Madame de Lanty, and an
the depths of an unknown sanctuary, this familiar spirit suddenly
ingenuous Marianina would cast a terrified glance at the old man, whom
expression in which servility and affection, submissiveness and
gratifies his whims and at the same time suspects mutiny. Some prying
themselves about the mystery.
old fellow who keeps out of sight and appears only at the equinoxes or
not know, and who passed out of hearing just as I was summarizing in
a young woman. I was stupefied at the picture presented to my eyes. By
evidently crept behind a long line of people who were listening
nobody. He had taken his place unceremoniously beside one of the most
hair, slightly crimped, and the floating ends of the sash.
silent and apparently causeless obstinacy to which very old persons
well. The young woman nervously pressed my hand, as if she were trying
“You can speak,” I replied; “he hears with great difficulty.”
creature for which no human language has a name, form without
thinness, the slenderness of his limbs, proved that he had always been
heart when a close scrutiny revealed the marks made by decrepitude
seemed rather a worthless rag than an ornament. In the centre of the
temples; the eyes were sunken in yellow orbits. The maxillary bones,
wrinkles everywhere, either circular like the ripples in the water
light with a lustre which disclosed a very well executed bit of
fingers, like the brilliants in a river of gems around a woman’s neck.
movements of those globes, no longer capable of reflecting a gleam,
eyes did not receive but gave forth light, who was sweet and fresh,
“And yet such marriages are often made in society!” I said to myself.
himself has come in search of me. But is he alive?”
succeeded by a convulsive little cough like a child’s, of a peculiar
companion threw herself on a divan, breathing fast with terror, not
ghosts to wander round her house?”
themselves in the right. “Oh! what a sweet boudoir!” she cried,
stretched out on a lion’s skin. The lamp, in an alabaster vase,
fact everything.
engravings, of pictures, of statues, wherein artists exaggerate human
from a statue of a woman.”
that moment we heard in the silence a woman’s footstep and the faint
boudoir to a door hidden in the hangings. Marianina knocked softly.
“_Addio, addio!_” she said, with the sweetest inflection of her young
silence we heard the sigh that came forth form his breast; he removed
She spied us.
“What does this mean?” queried my young partner. “Is he her husband? I
compassion for the tortures of the heart, and who, with the wit of the
of the South?”
“No,” she replied, with a pout; “I wish it done now.”
secret. To-morrow it may be that I will not listen to you.”
“Until to-morrow,” she said to me, as she left the ball about two
little salon, she on a couch, I on cushions almost at her feet,
“Speak.”
thousand francs, then considered a colossal fortune for an attorney in
Young Sarrasine, entrusted to the care of the Jesuits at an early age,
extraordinary ardor in his games. Whenever there was a contest of any
passage of Thucydides, sketched the teacher of mathematics, the
figures in the pictures which adorned the choir, or improvised, he
flagrant not to draw down chastisement on the artist. He had actually
Bouchardon’s studio. He worked all day and went about at night begging
to the old attorney’s good graces. The paternal wrath subsided in face
Bouchardon, foreseeing how violently the passions would some day rage
weapons, and the master did not acquire great influence over his pupil
brother, who did so much for art. Diderot praised Bouchardon’s pupil’s
and lived with his muse alone. If he went to the Comedie-Francaise, he
always badly dressed, and naturally so independent, so irregular in
imagination took fire beneath a sky of copper and at the sight of the
in the ecstatic state into which all youthful imaginations fall at the
harmonious strains. The languorous peculiarities of those skilfully
audience with infinite grace. The brilliant light, the enthusiasm of a
breast; from another her white shoulders; stealing the neck of that
and at the same time the most passionate judge. She had an expressive
the eyebrows and the nose, and the perfect oval of the face, the
“Sarrasine devoured with his eyes what seemed to him Pygmalion’s
desires. Sarrasine longed to rush upon the stage and seize that woman.
“‘To win her love or die!’ Such was the sentence Sarrasine pronounced
diabolical power enabled him to feel the breath of that voice, to
than once uttered an involuntary exclamation, extorted by the
goneness like the utter lack of strength which discourages a
principles in our existence. A prey to that first fever of love which
Sarrasine drew his mistress in all poses: he drew her unveiled,
trying the future with her, so to speak. The next day he sent his
Sarrasine. However, events surprised him when he was still under the
himself, like a Turk drunk with opium, a happiness as fruitful, as
unsociable sculptor would not allow his solitude, peopled as it was
mother, an uncle, a guardian, a family,–in a word, as he reflected
Marianina or her little old man in all this.”
passionate love, that his passion for La Zambinella’s voice would have
laughing at him in the wings. It is hard to say what violent measures
of too great ardor, ’she does not know the sort of domination to which
wrinkled hand.
Like the horses of the immortal gods described by Homer, the
maiden about to appear before her first lover. At the appointed hour,
“She led the Frenchman through several narrow streets and stopped in
was admitted to that mysterious apartment and found himself in a salon
face on the matter. He had hoped for a dimly lighted chamber, his
“‘_Vive la folie!_’ he cried. ‘_Signori e belle donne_, you will
beat when he spied a tiny foot in one of those slippers which–if you
a waist which outlined a slender figure, displayed to the best
disgusted beyond measure at finding himself unable to speak to her
to him that La Zambinella was almost a courtesan, and that he could
some restraint, and the sculptor was able to converse with the singer.
interpreted by the amorous artist as indicating extreme delicacy of
Sarrasine, who was too passionately in love to make fine speeches to
toward him. She had begun, it is true, by touching his foot with hers
ballads, Spanish _sequidillas_, and Neapolitan _canzonettes_.
impieties, invocations to the Blessed Virgin or the _Bambino_. One man
reflections concerning the future.
his heart. Vitagliani, who sat on his other side, filled his glass so
“‘If you come hear me,’ she said, ‘I shall be compelled to plunge
you act like a young prostitute who inflames the emotions in which she
Zambinella gave a bound like a young deer, and darted into the salon.
“‘But he will kill me!’
treasures of eloquence–that sorcerer, that friendly interpreter, whom
by the battle they had all been fighting against drowsiness, suddenly
“‘Are you ill?’ Sarrasine asked her. ‘Would you prefer to go home?’
“‘You are so delicate!’ rejoined Sarrasine, gazing in rapture at the
love me.’
friend to you, for I admire your strength of will and your character.
“‘If I should say a word, you would spurn me with horror.’
passionate caress.
“She smiled sadly, and murmured:
same eyes, the woman you love will be dead.’
the treasures of passion. Each word was a spur. At that moment, they
dead reptile with visible terror.
morning passed all too swiftly for the amorous sculptor, but it was
distance a number of men armed to the teeth, whose costume was by no
down.
indescribable charm to your character. I feel that I should detest a
people would make sport of you. It is impossible for me to shut the
more extravagant than the last. At nightfall, as he was going out to
Allegrain, you will lend me your assistance for a _coup de main_,
salon where La Zambinella was singing at that moment.
“‘She! what she?’ rejoined the old nobleman whom Sarrasine addressed.
of the Pope? It was I, monsieur, who endowed Zambinella with his
to him. A ghastly truth had found its way into his mind. He was
of the aria he was singing and sat down. Cardinal Cicognara, who had
the aria he had so capriciously broken off; but he sang badly, and
“‘It’s a woman,’ said Sarrasine, thinking that no one could overhear
measure. About midnight after wandering through the salons like a man
Zambinella, kidnaped by Sarrasine, soon found himself in a dark, bare
“‘Tell me the truth,’ he said, in a changed and hollow voice. ‘Are
“He did not finish the sentence.
“‘I ought to kill you!’ shouted Sarrasine, drawing his sword in an
“Sarrasine made a gesture of disgust, and turned his face away;
“‘A woman’s heart was to me a place of refuge, a fatherland. Have you
meaningless words to me, as to you. I shall never cease to think of
with a seal of imperfection. Monster! you, who can give life to
“‘An end of love! I am dead to all pleasure, to all human emotions!’
sculptor fell, pieced by three daggers.
“These ominous emissaries told Zambinella of the anxiety of his
“Madame, Cardinal Cicognara took possession of Zambinella’s statue and
“But this Zambinella, male or female–”
She came and looked me in the face, and said in an altered voice:
such a thing! I would turn pious to-morrow if I did not know that I
“Am I in the wrong?”
“Paris,” said she, “is an exceedingly hospitable place; it welcomes
For our first project, Graham asked us to take part in an act of poetic terrorism. The brief was to redesign labels of two common products found in the supermarket and put these products back on the shelves for the unsuspecting consumer. The strategy involved using FLOSS (free/libre/open source software) software to redesign the logos and corresponding graphics/writings that adorned the product. Particularly we were asked to use a vector based program for one, and a bitmap based program for the detourning of the labels. Silly little project, yes but sort of sets the tone for a year long discourse on ontological anarchism and such. The emphasis was to get ‘us’ out ‘there.’ This was the first project where Eleanor and I worked together.
I guess for me, Mort aux vaches wasn’t about to get overtly political. So the point of departure was a bottle of cough syrup i found at the supermarket, Parkinson’s KILKOF, hardly an anti-establishment hate product. The way the bottle looked struck me. It had bold, simple text that would be easy to manipulate. It made me think about the relationship between people and medicine. But also there was a small, emblematic head of Mr. Parkinson, assumingly the inventor of KILKOF on the face of the bottle, which could be manipulated.
We thought about what could be clandestine and what might go well with the old fashioned bottle of Kilkof. It had to be another bottle, we said. Eleanor spotted a shapely bottle of Omega oil, “the essential seed,” recommended by the Food Doctor. The pun on Food Doctor had to be made.
As a conceptual bridge between theory and practice, we wanted to play with the idea of ‘theory in a bottle’ where those suffering from a malady of the mind could potentially read their way back to health. Yet therein lies the rub. You can’t be given a prescription of theory in drinkable bottles as information is presented to young people nowadays. Reading should be problematic. While doing our research we came across a woodcut from 1549 called ’ship of fools’ (Narrenschiff).
The allegory, a parody itself of the ark of salvation is about a ship of raving madmen who are sailing directionless on the open sea, circumnavigating nothing. The practice of sending mad people off in ships figures in the writings of Michael Foucault in Madness and Civilization, his extended meditation on the history of madness in the western world. Criticism of psychiatry? Madness as comic punishment of madness? A mere prank? The idea became to rename the products, “Foucault’s COGITO” - Oral Solution for the relief of madness and it’s companion reader, if we can call it that “Thought Doctor” - Essential Read.
Naturally Mr. Parkinson’s head was replaced by Foucault’s, the barcode with the ISBN number of some edition of Madness and Civilization and date of first publication (1961) whilst the companion reader received a thorough theory endorsing: The thought doctor recommends a healthier way of thinking by the addition of philosophy, scepticism and critical thinking to your daily intake. Ingredients changed too to now include Foucault facts, words taken from his masterwork: delirium, confinement, discourse, madness, police.
Onto more pragmatic matters, i should say steaming a label off is not the easiest thing to do, but like most things in life, patience and perseverence goes a long way. This was certainly true for the Hazeldine family who with the help of Food Doctor lost a collective 41.5 pounds.
I redesigned the KILKOF label using gimp, the open source vector image editing program while Eleanor did the Food Doctor. Here are some photos of the transformation and the clandestine operation to replace them at the supermarket.
While engaging with the public may be an interesting proposition, I thought it would be equally interesting to write to the company that made the product. We thus decided to send a letter to Bell, Sons & Co. (Druggists), the company that sells KilKof and tell them about our project. Here is a facsmilie of the letter we wrote:
Bell, Sons & Co. (Druggists) Ltd.
Southport
PR9 9AL
Dear Sir/Madam,
We are Eleanor Jones and Nabil Ahmed and we took great interest in your product as a way of introducing critical thinking and it’s practice to the public at large.
We decided the best way to do this would be to replace the graphic designs utilized to market your product with the thoughts of the venerable yet difficult thinker of our time, Michael Foucault.
We then placed this “Theory in a bottle’ in the friendly supermarket which carries your product for the public to view who might perhaps attempt to purchase it.
We enclose photographs of our work for your perusal and sincerely hope you will find it as an exciting way to think (no pun intended) about your fine product.
Please feel free to write back to us with your thoughts.
Faithfully yours,
E.J. N.A.
London, October 7 2008
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Postscript: a month after we had completed the project, we happenned to be at the same supermarket, where to our surprise saw that Eleanor’s handywork was still on the shelves.
“In the city one could create new situation by, for example, linking up parts of the city, neighborhoods that were separated spatially.” - Guy Debord
“If you keep to where you know the roads are, you get some place, but you see less ‘nature’.” – Art & Language
As a relic of the history of industrialization, laundry is a problem that refuses to go away, as a domestic process that has been displaced from the home, the washer and dryer were a persistent symbol of the middle class economic well being. Yet in parts of East London, our adopted neighbourhood, the symbol of industrialization occupying street corners is a sign of urban-spatial decay.
Along with the situationist critique, our research into the historical and political aspects of laundries as a place to do wash, but mainly the Laundry as a place for women wage-labourers in Britain came the concept of the project, that of looking at ways of creating an assemblage that included the iconography of the worshipful company of launderes into a set of actions. And could these set of actions (wanderings) effect a social community organized around a particular technological process? How far can we expand the media ecology of laundries?
“It is clear that industrialization never completely eradicated the work of the autonomous washer woman who eked out a living in her home or that of her employer.”1
“The laundry industry was an important part of the nineteenth – century shift in the economy toward services. Laundry trade was labour intensive.”2
“The large number of small scale workshops and the widespread practice of giving outwork set the tone for much women’s employment in Victorian and Edwardian London. Laundry work is a major example of the traditionalist of metropolitan women’s employments reinforced by the structural circumstances of the London economy.”3
“FIGHT FOR INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS.”
We came across the Worshipful Company of Launderers while looking for institutions that represented laundries in Britain. The coat of arms for the company of launderers of the city of London did not come into existence until 1960 as a heraldic aggloremation of the industry’s origins that is suspect of Hobsbawm and Ranger’s thesis that many practices which are considered traditions are in fact quite recent inventions.4
The descriptive diagram or a matrix, borrows some ideas from the coat of arms as a way to make a working plan for the project and the social-political questions we asked ourselves i.e. the displacement of the traditional tools of female workers by mechanization and they in turn becoming machines, labor relations, and the shifting of domestic process to industrialization.
The idea of re-enacting history of laundry also meant that we had to make a journey. With the obvious relationship between water and washing in mind, this resonated with the connection to the origins of the act of laundry made on the bank of rivers, of simply agitating clothes to a molecular level, much like one of the figures in the coat of arms, Nausicca, daughter of King Alcinous in Homer’s Odyssey who meets and helps a shipwrecked Odysseus while doing a wash.
Earlier we had found a laundrette list of the UK Canal system that helped in creating a route for the journey.
An old map of Regents Canal.
Documentation was made with field recordings, video, conversations, text. Interested in the properties of water sounds and underwater sounds, we built a hydrophone that also worked as a free media tool.
Hydrophone Construction
Introduction:
Build plans for cheap underwater microphone.
Prerequisite skill: basic soldering.
Parts Needed.
Step 1
Cut Perspex in to 60mm circles or squares (your choice). Use a ruler and a Stanley knife to cut into the Perspex until it can be broken by hand- don’t go too quickly with this step! Also, be careful not to scratch the Perspex in the centre where the Piezo element will be – this will compromise sound quality. Lay O-ring on one side of the Perspex and draw a circle around it. Drill 4 holes halfway between the outside of the circle and the edge of the Perspex. Place Piezo disk inside the circle and mark on the other piece of Perspex the approximate place where the wires connect to the disk. Drill 1 hole at this mark point. Alternatively, you can get a local plastics supplier to do this for you.
Step 2
Use Sandpaper to roughen the area in the centre of the circle defined by the o-ring – this helps the epoxy adhesive work. Mix epoxy and place on Perspex. Glue Piezo disc brass side down. Use clamps to hold the Piezo in place, being careful to avoid the ceramic centre. Alternatively, use rubber bands. Wait an hour.
Step 3
Trim ends of Piezo leads. To about 5mm. Strip insulation off the ends, and tin with soldering iron. Strip ends of coaxial lead, remembering which coaxial wire you connect to positive (red) and negative (black). Solder ends of Piezo disk to ends of coaxial cable.
Step 4
Feed the O-ring around the other end of the coaxial cable until it rests around the Piezo disk. Feed the other end of coaxial cable through the hole in the centre of the other piece of Perspex until it rests against the o-ring. Important: make sure the hole in the Perspex remains outside the area of the cable where the Piezo leads meet the coaxial leads; the solder joint should remain inside the assembly case, and the insulation of the coaxial cable touching the rim of the hole.
Step 5
Bolt assembly together using the brass bolts and nuts. These should be “finger tight”; using hand tools to tighten the bolts may break the Perspex. Apply a good amount of epoxy to the hole out of which the cable is coming.
Step 6
Strip the insulation from the other end of the coaxial cable. Tin ends of positive and negative wires. Wire the positive end to pin 2 (signal) of the XLR, and wire the negative end to pin 1 (ground). Pin 3 can be wired to pin 1.
Step 7
You’re done! After waiting for the epoxy to dry, test your hydrophone – remember a preamp is necessary to boost the signal to line level for recording.
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