Commentaries - June 2013

Cartographies of Flight: The Marty Ehrlich Ensemble (program)

         

Marty Ehrlich - sax, clarinet, and flute
James Zollar - trumpet
Marc Ribot - guitar
Michael Formanek - bass
Nasheet Waits - drums
Erica Hunt - poet and reader
Charles Bernstein - poet and reader

BIRD: A World's Eye View
Lost Jazz Shrines Concert Series
Tribeca Arts Center, New York
May 31st, 2013

Christian Bök

Launch reading for Umlaut Machine: Selected visual works at the Kelly Writers House, November 18, 2009

Two Equal Texts
"Two Equal Textsˮ by Micah Lexier and Christian Bök

My very first assignment when I joined the PennSound team was to segment a recent reading by Christian Bök at the Kelly Writers House. It seems only fitting to start my Notes from PennSound commentary by returning to audio file that I cut my teeth on as I learned the ins and outs of PennSound's infrastructure, and to an author that has been unavoidable in discussions concerning performance, sound, experimentation, technology, word play, computational composition, 'pataphysics, unintentionality, intentionality, and semi-intentionality.

White mischief II

“Proxy” — someone authorized to act on behalf of another; an authority or power to act for another; a document giving such authority. Those are the defining terms with which most of us first learned the word, though we now live in a universe of proxy servers.

A proxy is a sort of trope.  All metaphors, composed of vehicle and tenor, are proxy enactments. A persona is a proxy. Ralph Ellison told us that there was no more powerful metaphor for the human condition than race in America.