A plank of wood… a ghost, a log, a splinter: scenarios
March 2012 for MADERAPATIO, 1st printed edition
MADERAPATIO explores the subjective side of material reality. Updated on a constant basis, the site features the work of both emerging and established artists without relying on labels, disciplines or contexts. Each printed edition of their blog will focus on a material. WOOD is their first edition.
A plank of wood… a ghost, a log, a splinter: scenarios
The lights are low.
A psychedelic condition of enclosure… the wooden walls surround your body, creating false spaces you adjust to your own nature. A distorted sense of finitude. Not 'grounding' but 'walled in'. It's structure disturbs your aura, trust me. The structure creates your personality, drives you mad, inspires you. It's role is ever changing yet completely stiff. The life force, the OG shelter. A symbol of great magnitude and nothing all at once. Who thinks about wood? You slide gently across the waxed wooden floor.
Violins hum.
The permanence evades you. Yes, you can touch, carve into it's thickness. Carve your name. Set it in flames and there are consequences physically in your surroundings. Brush the keyboard with the tips of your fingers.
Your name has been carved into the structure of the net. A trace of your existence is growing at a rapid speed, archived, duplicated, remembered and stored. Not to mention felt.
The face in the tree, the tree spirit, harmony and other hippie things about trees… you look it up on-line. Read your horoscope on-line. Apparently tarot cards now work through digital means. They say they feel a tingle through the keyboard… that is why i had you brush it earlier.
Vibraphone.
There is no issue between real and unreal. I am at ease with AOL to pine cones. You continue to sit down in a wooden chair on the wooden floor.
"Ask Andy Goldsworthy about man-made."
A grain of wood becomes comforting to the audience, illuminate us.
Synaesthsia sets in as usual and there is no difference. Slambook.com slashed more wrists than razors. A Rihanna sample goes off, bouncing off the walls.
A mere comparison… the tangibility of the virtual. Your will is the deciding factor.
Q:Can ghosts inhabit the internet? Like can a ghost haunt a website or communicate through the internet?
A: I remember a movie about something like that a few years back where there was a haunted website that if you visited this ghost would hunt you down. I am very vague on the details, so it probably wasn't that good.
The carving reverses, engraving more than just your name. A spiritual journey through emptiness. Picture this, huge and daunting on a wall.
The new virtual is a will, the strength of the inner self… separation is needed so you will not understand until after you complete this text. Everything is wonderful and happy if you want it to be. You are amazing and beautiful if you interpret the tree's aura correctly. Choose your preferred interaction now. It's your ego.
To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes — a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance — with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self.
Jonathan Franzen, “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts“. New York Times, May 28, 2011 Caitlin Denny, December 2011.