[from Not Nothing by Ray Johnson]

23 Sept 2015 > dear Inurnet — thawt to go for a run this morning on the mall b4 membering the pope = here —

28 Sept > saw The Jesus + Mary Chain last nite — our 1° time @ the 9:30 club – a place we member reading about in the heyday of 80s hardcore — tho not in the same place any more — the originul spot now fittingly occupied by a J Crew — pretty much sums up the District nowadays (that + Ann Taylor Loft for the female perspective) — the new 9:30 too big for our tastes (on the order of Webster Hall for a NYC comparison) + overkill on the flashy light show – they shd focus more on boosting sound – not nearly loud enuff for JAMC — we never did see them back in the day but Pyschocandy = 1 of those LPs we played til it wore down + we had to buy another — like most bands that reunite to make a comeback (w/ the exception of Swans) they came off a bit as a sold-out parody of themselves — but still they rock —

> bin writing a piece «about» Ark Codex ±0 that Ricochet editions aksed us for — so taking a break from other things to get back into the Ark mindset — seriously feels like some1 else wrote it a decade ago – that it authored itself + has its own life now—

> bin reading Not Nothing by Ray Johnson – tho «reading» is not the apt term for it — the experience more akin to finding a box of letters + keepsakes from a dead brother — Johnson pioneered the field of mail art — specifickly the NY Correspondance School – a name he later eschewed – his relationship w/ fluxus the same – best left undefined — to Johnson a 1 on 1 correspondence w/ his circlul of friends = the ultimate art — a lost art form for sure – nowadays ppl spread thinner + thinner across virtual social networks – only ppl we know who still write paper-based letters = Gordon Lish + Guy Beining (recently in Sleepingfish) — Not Nothing made us nostalgic not just for such 1 on 1 interaction but for 1 of a kind art made on paper (if even just scraps) – typed ± written by hand – interspersed w/ collage + frottage etc — in a similure vein to wut we tried to do w/ SSES SSES ^SSEY —

«They put this rubber thing in Edie Sedgwick's mouth and she gets shock treatment.»

> these letters + scraps he sent to the likes uv Joseph Cornell + Yoko Ono + Robert Motherwell + John Cage etc...  pretty much any1 that = any1 in the NY art scene uv the 50-80s —

«Dear Mr. Derrida—I once rec'd a letter from Diane Arbus. The envelope contained a raisin.»

> had no idea ppl used the term snail mail in 1978 – @ a snail's pace compared to what other type of mail? + «any scrap is a scrap of information.» — material evidence — he also references dead cats quite a bit – sumthin to do w/ Schrödinger? — opening an envelope to collapse the wave fcn — if alive today wd RJ blog + use twitter ± instagram? — or wd he realize still that the increase in # of readers/viewers of a message diminishes the value? — we think of wat we do here along the same lines tho we send these messages to no 1 in particular – to an anonymous future version of our self — + we have the luxury of editing after the act – tho this makes it a very diffrent artform – our brains @ this pt rewired in a generations time —

30 Sept > went to Baltimore yesterday – commuted by train w/ our better-½ who does the commute 2x weekly —

along the way to Charm City

powering an intent to communicate

> while our better-½ worked we went to an Edward Tufte presentation on presenting data — bootstrappingly strange when u think about it — presenting on presenting — lots of ppl (guessing 300) + felt more bizness oriented – not many artist/writer types frum wut we cd tell — didnt bring our computer so took notes by hand — actualy the notebook we used an old 1 from Rome that had a map of Rome that we liked cuz on the front side we cd see where we lived (near Isola Tiberina) + on the backside the area near Ponte Sisto — a similar map of which Tufte referenced from 1 of his books —

our notebook (left) + Tufte's reproduction of Nolli's 1748 map of the same area of Rome (+ yes Tufte = correct in that that part of the Tiber = tranquil so need not have such heavy inking)

> wont bother to transcribe our findings here — not sure how much information the lecture carried — better to just read his books — purhaps in future posts weel discuss them here (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information we already blogged about sum here) — a lot of wot he talked about taken verbatim from his books – @ times felt like that scene in Magnolia when Tom Cruise says «got to your blue booklets ... i mean, got to your white books» — not that Tufte = a massagynist dick (to the contrary quite soft-spoken) but that same sort of cheese-whiz Ted Talk feel to the presentation — the 1 thing he talked about that purhaps he doesnt mention in his books = credibility — beyond just the presenting of your data – need to = transparent + in the end it all amounts to the underlying content — u can put pearls on a pig but s/he still = a pig — also u got to walk the walk + talk the talk — best exemplified in that all of Tufte's book = self-published — why? — same raison as us — cuz he wanted them made exactly as he wanted them made — he also talked about mode indifference — how we shd not even need to become aware of the existence of an operating system or aps — ideally we shd have an all-in-1 document-based interface (like writing/drawing by hand) — anyway — more on Tufte in a future post purhaps —

> after went up Charles st to Pen + Quill (aptly named for Cal A Mari) – had oysters then trained home —

Baltimore

a wall witch we already captured part uv here

2 Oct > October arrived w/ cold + rain — apparently (according to ComCast) the Inurnet + rain = mutually xclusive — dont know how to work the heater in this new place – plenty cold that our incised zinc Ark Codex plate shrunk + fell from its frame @ sum pt in the night — still dwelling on Tufte – how to minimize our entropy (± maximize – depending on your purspective) in every respect — to maximize information flow —