WEDNESDAYS i'm-n-love OPEN PLATFORM

Love is im/possible

2009-09-07T20:20:00.000-07:00

Brave are those who choose to fall in love at times like this. A world gripped by financial pandemic: salvaging the excesses of speculation and general mistrust. Paranoia has itself turned into that everyday art object, fashionably molded into a convenient excuse for self-reflexive meta- practice. As if it were a thing in itself, self-sufficient in form. Then by means of an obvious reaction to all that is evil and skeptic, comes the easy pendulum to new age mysticism or astrological cosmic superstition in the ever-noble search for the authentic and pure that will seduce us back into the primordial struggle of our forebears. Or drawn by the allure of arbitrary random events because it’s never easy making decisions. At some point, the hard task of choosing sides becomes inevitable hence the admission to ambiguity.

Indeed it was of a logical admission to ambiguity we took when we launched Wednesdays I’m-n-love Open Platform (W.O.P) Residency. A playful response to the usual Friday night out in town, let-your-hair loose and everything else hang, why not on a mid-week hump day. Still, because grips of productivity are unavoidable, work almost always finds itself in play. Possibly true for the swarms of workaholics rushing around the city or full-time bum artists who’ve long abandoned the distinctions of work and non-work, or those part-timers wondering when they will ever have enough time and space to play.

An offshoot sibling of its predecessor of mid-week anarchic gathering of artists and non-artist associates, WOP Residency was borne out of an instinctual intelligent guess premised on the creative community’s need for breathing space. Only this time, it takes place on mid-week Wednesdays. Almost there but not quite. The residency proposes a space to hold, if not temporally house creative experimentation, artistic tendencies, research agendas and critical play minus the high-pressure requirements of a proper exhibition, performance, or manuscript. This, and the sometimes, slippery function bequeath of art openings and events that also double as informal avenues to network and forge creative intellectual connections among like-minded kindred: artists, thinkers, talkers, students, and voyeurs. It is almost tempting to say that these gatherings have become mere ‘excuse’ for communal meetings (sans the bohemian overtone) where meaningful artistic relationships are formed.

Yet, excuse or no excuse, informed observations have led us to suspect that despite the litter of creative action happening almost everyday in Manila, spaces and platforms for discursive critical practice, artistic interaction and exchange remain scant. Or, they have probably never existed formally at all. And those informal platforms that have transpired in the 90s towards early 2000 at artist-run spaces like Big Sky Mind, Surrounded By Water, Third Space and Future Prospects are nearly, if not completely, unheard of among current ‘art followers.’ Fast-forward to newly established/short-lived alternative spaces constantly struggling to present what is new or alternative.

Truly the emergence of artist-run-spaces the last ten years has dramatically shifted the politics of art production and representation in Philippine contemporary art practice. Where artists, by way of self-organized endeavors have sought to define parallel initiatives that are not only responsive or relevant to their specific conditions but also a means to enable the local artistic/creative community in the absence of structural/institutional support for art and culture. What probably sets the Manila situation apart from the rest of independently initiated cultural actions is that the lack of institutional support (private or public) failed to derail artistic growth and cultural production but has in fact become a key motivational factor to mobilize. Hence, the DIY, guerilla personality attenuated to such ‘movement.’ Yet while this enriches vibrancy of art in the city this also puts most of us in a fragile uncertainty. Because of its private, spur-of-the-moment nature, these initiatives are perpetually threatened by discontinuity, what with the lack of proper documentation and historiography. These platforms would at best run 2-3 years only to be shelved in art historical amnesia. Such is the need to indentify artistic-cultural management programs and strategies that will have more sustainable and meaningful impact to general cultural production. Perhaps even aspiring for that utopic ideal to shape cultural politics.

Ambitions are of course there to be pursued and held. So with the same adolescent raging free falling hormones that WOP attempts to fill in the gap between creating and presenting. And carve out a niche purely orientated towards a process and non-media based creative practice–an overdue peripheral call to amplify the ambient hiss of ‘useless’ banter and play, meanwhile daring to say that this is the point and it is actually enough. Dismantling the conventions of artistic production, cultural management and conditions of spectatorship. A proposal to counterpoint the existing modes of ‘work.’ Undeniably, it must be the informality of Green Papaya’s organizational structure that allows us more leeway to spew out aphorisms premised on hunches. Yet, W.O.P refuses to be reduced as an artsy bohemian night out in the town where artistic and exotic types click beer bottles and indulge in nonsensical banter. Instead it bravely attempts to establish a platform that tinkers upon the question of how art can be by emphasizing praxis over object, disorientation over perception, procedure over representation, and process over mimicry. Simultaneously putting in place a framework that addresses the necessity of discursive art practice in Manila.

Originally conceived as an informal, loose, anarchic and spontaneous weekly gathering, WOP Residency arose from the need to put in place sustainable artistic programming borne out of the fragile and uncertain future that constantly face independent creative spaces. The rationale of WOP is to develop creative strategies that address the common challenge of sustaining an artistic platform while effectively managing the resources available to us. At the same time, taking cognizance of the changing body of art practitioners and scholars whose practices digress the once easy category of artist and curator. The platform envisions a meeting ground where the selected artists/researchers negotiate the exigencies of artistic production, curatorial intervention and cultural management by way of a creative residency that also supports their own personal artistic motivations and growth.

Initiated in 2007 as one-night affair to lubricate social, critical and scholarly connections among a tight-knit community of artists living in Manila who share similar concerns and momentum as regards to contemporary art practice. It modestly started out with the usual screenings, jam sessions artist conversations among musicians, filmmakers, poets, performing and visual artists. Quickly evolving into much –anticipated weekly gathering for interventionist tactics, multidisciplinary interaction and collaborations in varying artistic stages: with script readings, improvisation jams, lecture-demonstration, live talk shows and even ping-pong nights. It has since played a central role in the cultural and artistic life of the local community. Opening up spaces to discuss and participate in strategies that bridge the gap of managing independent initiatives whilst promoting creative-artistic agendas.

In April 2008, an open call for proposals, research and artistic tendencies was disseminated to the community of artists, students, cultural workers and emerging scholars of the field. It has been received with enthusiasm, considering that WOP remains to be the only multidisciplinary residency program in Manila, a megalopolis of eleven million people. With the support of Arts Network Asia, (ANA) six young artist/researchers from the fields of visual arts, literature, video, dance and the academe were then selected; each of them given two months to work at/in/with Green Papaya. While the program seeks to support the participants’ creative production they were highly advised to do so within the frame of co-curating a weekly public program. The artists shall also assist in documenting and archiving these events, meanwhile soliciting their reflexive insights on an online blog (http://wednesdaysmnlove.blogspot.com). All the outputs of six resident artists will be presented in a book to be published later on, when additional funding for publication has been secured. The six artists chosen follows: Angelo V. Suarez, Diego Maranan, Mark Salvatus, Andrea Teran, Martha Atienza and Jed Escueta.

The WOP Residency program stood as a partial survey of multidisciplinary modalities current in creative practice and artistic research. With each resident unwittingly mapping out the modes of ‘work’ in their respective fields, communities and peers, who were also invited to participate within the frame of each residency. Meanwhile threshing out particular thematic issues in aesthetic-artistic practice, community-based art projects, tactical interventionist propositions that presently motivate artistic practice and art actions.

The deliberate stratagem to suspend ‘output’ over process has allowed them to destabilize the conventional frames of understanding how artistic practice can be made relevant and contextualizes itself in social and cultural production. Bridging public misperception that art always need be finished, object-oriented or expressive. Diego Maranan’s The Visible, Invisible for instance, was orientated towards developing data visualization models to organize subjective experiences and qualitative data into concrete, coherent visual forms. During which he held intensive one-on-one workshops with people from across disciplines (art, social sciences, grassroots advocacy) to identify appropriate visual materials that would effectively communicate their ideas to their intended public. Maranan, who also teaches at the University of the Philippines Open University, utilized the residency as a means to further refine his methodology in developing visualization techniques that had practical application in the fields of social advocacy, communication research and building information database and portals. Towards the end of his residency he delivered a paper, concurrently presented at the Annual Southeast Asia Cinema Conference (ASEACC), proposing an online portal to Philippine Independent Cinema using visualization techniques.

Similarly teasing tactical interventionist propositions are Mark Salvatus and Angelo V. Suarez’s, that both tackle the liquefying limits of varied aesthetic artistic practices.Mark Salvatus’ Neo-Urban Plan initiated public online forum on how to intervene the city that elicited equally sensible, silly and utopic responses from people living in Manila. At which time he also invited varied urban guerilla movements (graffiti artists, flickr photo bugs, parkors, activist-architects) to present the work they do at Green Papaya, inadvertently subverting the institutional frame of a typical ‘art’ gallery situation meanwhile reasserting the scope of creative practice outside the established frames. Equally delimiting those that lie inside and outside of what we know as ‘art.’ Invited Flickr photo bug Gem Urdaneta, who has been collecting images of the metro and never considered her practice as art presented images of a neglected city prompted the members of the audience into a spontaneous guessing game evoking collective memories of a fast-changing yet still decrepit city. Perhaps a covert proposal to re-territorialize the easy position of ‘marginal’ and mainstream. Likewise, architect-activists from TAO-Pilipinas, an NGO of professionals in architecture and urban planning advocating efficient, sound design and sustainable housing projects for poor communities underpinned the inexhaustible links between art and sustainable development.

Meanwhile, Angelo V. Suarez’s Street Smarts that partly progressed into Words are Things hints at the tenuous perimeters of language and visual production through a rather oblique reframing of creative practices that traverse the easy frames of literary, poetry, visual, procedural and performative. In effect sketching ruptures that are obversely meant to bridge the material divide between text and object. Yet instead of opting for the simplistic almost cliché juxtapositions of poetry and painting, or poetry and moving image, or poetry and sound, or poetry and movement–that clutter the creative scene–he chooses to instead re-contextualize current artistic and creative modalities that already propose the intermediality of text and object. Unwittingly mapping out a marginal practice in poetry that foregrounds language as a material object and inversely a visual practice that undermines language production. Bea Camacho’s contribution to this series, a small rectangular piece of cardboard saying “Person Reading a Label / Bea Camacho / 2008” in a regular gallery-wall-type-demeanor, for example calls attention to language’s relationship with the visual and spatial. Likewise, Adam David’s playful forays into the verbo-visual process of cut-ups and erasures towards textual production suggest the visual process of writing. Where writing is a process of absence and presence, new media artist Pow Martinez’s YouTube intervention reveal “that an act of writing didn’t need an actual act of writing–that is putting words together in a deliberately fresh and discursive manner (A. Suarez).” Martinez played John Cage’s famous piece 4’33 while superimposing comments found at the comment stream, reactions that extended from silly to serious, non-sense to profound and plain confusion to awe.

Suarez’s residency clearly outlines the advantage of maintaining an open/flexible structure for an artist-in-residency program. Having subsumed his initial proposal, Street Smarts, in favor of a project that seemingly grew organically on its own as a matter of identifying the existing creative modalities that support/frame, whether directly or peripherally, his own artistic research and motivations. Street Smarts was initially intended to be presented as part-performance and part-textual/aural document as conceptual poem of recorded/transcriptions of conversations between himself and taxi drivers in Manila. While meant as discursive and linguistic investigation of social production of conversation, dialog, and poem(?), the work simultaneously points out the idea of multiple authorship and micro-politics of cultural production between artists and (its) public, who are also unsuspecting conspirators. In the process of his investigation, Words are Things came about as a result of “examining the larger field of poetry that examines the material in local practice. Instead of phrase against phrase, practice against practice is juxtaposed, as are forms against forms–where Green Papaya, known primarily as a locus for visual art, is turned into a venue for linguistic and poetic discourse. (A.Suarez).” In this situation, the artist deliberately takes on the sometimes deceptive role-playing accorded to artist-curators, whose creative practice actually inform each distinctive realm of work.

In the similar vein that Andrea Teran’s Monthly Period Readings evolved from straightforward reading sessions into more concentrated and intimate conversations between two writers as an avenue to draw attention to poetics, styles and motivations that either set the selected writers apart or closer to each other. The conversations, which were open to the public, pried open what were only merely private intimations that writers have with them self/selves. These reading, and listening sessions ran every last Wednesday of the month for a period of one year, established not only a venue to publicly present the current takings of a select group of writers but ruptured a platform where ‘talk’ was given complete priority over ‘product’ which drew in a regular following composed of literature students, enthusiast and practitioners in Philippine contemporary literature. These sessions, sometimes extending till late, attest to the need of continually carving out discussion spaces in the city. For the past year, Teran has organized conversations between Adam David and Conchitina Cruz, Lawrence Ypil and Pocholo Goitia, Daryll Delgado and Israfel Fagela, Marguerite de Leon and Yol Jamendang, Nicolas Pichay and Khavn de la Cruz, Norman Wilwayco and Andrea Teran, Mabi David and Mark Cayanan.

Talk, sharing, time and space are surely aspects of any creative practice that are easily taken-for-granted. At least in Manila, where art spaces have become mere presentational spaces exclusively occupied with mimicry and representational nature of contemporary art if only to capture that ubiquitous wild animal called the art market. And hence the necessity of creating niche spaces that offer parallel approaches in how to do art. This is specifically the positive void that WOP Residency aims to fill to enable a dynamic and progressive community of contemporary art practitioners. Encompassing the staid liminal categories between media and non-media based art. Martha Atienza’s When Routine Is All There Is particularly underlines the need, and conversely the lack, of platforms for self-referential and reflexive artistic practice. Atienza who lives between Holland and Bantayan Island, used her residency to reflect upon the process of creation itself without the burden of defining a final ‘work.’ Her artistic process itself echoes the similar situation wherein there is a lot of waiting to capture everyday anomalies in video and allowing the narrative to emerge minus the daunting signature of an auteur. In this process the narrative becomes a conspired, silently agreed upon contract between the minutely mediated moving images and audience. During her residency, Atienza showed works-in-progress probing upon feedback and reaction of peers, creative community and the audience. Again emphasizing the communicative potential of art to break barriers and initiate connections.

Lastly, Jed Escueta’s Mama Don’t Take My Kodachrome Away brings us back to the almost forgotten practice of photography wrought by the easy-speak of digital quick fix phenomena of photo bugs that swarm cyberspace–almost a primordial call to bring back to photography to art as endangered by trendy self-expressionism. His stubborn insistence on darkroom techniques complimented by an insider documentary archiving of the underground punk scene pulls the community back in the role of the artist as an autonomous observer and purveyor of the everyday. Silent but equally potent storyteller of that which we don’t normally see. Breaking down appearances in a critical appeal to either see appearances as what they simply are or contextualize essence outside their presumed surface.

Because love is always that tricky act of giving and misconstrued belief of receiving that Wednesday’s I’m-n-love Open Platform Residency effectively engaged the creative community and rejuvenate its silent vibrancy towards more sustainable means. Pushing it to see and use what has in fact always been there: that the artist’s own motivations and tendencies. In effect proposing to maximize resources that have always been readily available to us, without having to worry about producing something new or alternative but instead to deepen cracks and ruptures that are waiting to be activated.

w.o.p june 24 CLOSING PARTY! dizzitt lovers

2009-06-21T21:44:00.000-07:00

THE CLOSING PARTY! WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM
June 24 / bar opens 6PM
Featuring JED ESCUETA’S Unknown A.D. with live performances by The Beauty of Doubt / Granada / Todas / Republika de Lata / Pink Cow / Einstein Chakras

Sometimes, we never really realize that those feverish delirious bouts of spontaneity could ever reach their plateau. Perhaps the temptation to be divine and immortal are to blame. Or even the comfortable proximity of weekly debaucheries which keep us hopeful despite the throngs of the ordinary workforce, to whom we also belong, forcibly incorporated to compromise play in exchange of those seemingly safe Friday night outs. It is hard to imagine how we have managed to take over the reigns of Friday in exchange for our anarchic Wednesday-hump-day love affairs. And as far as love affairs (the same way little get away adventures) are concerned, we all know that they too eventually reach that unbearable lightness. Some get married and the others move on to other adventures.

What started out as spur of the moment let's do this out of boredom affair has grown into much loved and awaited weekly gathering. A million thanks to all of you: doers, talkers, voyeurs and hangers-on alike. Not to mention those newly initiated virgins who also made our sober nights interesting. It's almost hard to believe that it's over–but it is, we are approaching the end. Not with sorrow, regret, melancholia, sentimental cheesy songs nor relief but with a party! What else?!

So join us as we close Jed Escueta's Mama Don't Take My Kodachrome Away with his final project Unknown A.D., an arduous photo documentation of the all around Pinoy punk degenerate and underground scene accumulated over the years. And yes to bid Wednesdays-m-Love a final adieu. To all of you who have patiently followed it and to some of you who have never made it. Nevertheless, we will agree that the ride was indisputably a big one for the books. So we all better be there!!! Catch the live performances of The Beauty of Doubt, Granada, Todas, Republika de Lata, Pink Cow and Einstein Chakras. This is your last chance to make it. Never say die for tomorrow we drink!

The WOP Residency Program is supported by Arts Network Asia. www.artsnetworkasia.org http://wednesdaysmnlove.blogspot.com

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City
Phone/Fax 7941628 Mobile 0926 6635606
greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com
www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

w.o.p JUNE 3 | Jed Escueta MEDIA BLITZ

2009-06-16T16:43:00.000-07:00

MAMA DON’T TAKE MY KODACHROME AWAY WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM
JED ESCUETA / Media Blitz
June 17 / bar opens 6pm

In the midst of the normal and the ordinary, the inevitable deviation is what matters. And it is inevitable-- we have all done something that becomes one for the books, where we pay homage to the rock star and his neon lights, sex, booze and rock and roll, shredding (not walking!) the edge, throttling life to a blinding height. But living fast and dying young is not so much the issue. What is being revealed is the individual's conviction to stray and to meander yet arrive at a resolution which poses as a seductive alternative to the norm. It is also a question of identity-- distilling oneself in a vast world surely makes use of some degree of rebellion, finding out what drives us, what makes us tick, how we innovate our victories, how we fall to our failures.

In Media Blitz, Jed Escueta revisits the roots of his practice through punk music and culture through a screening of a video documentary of the legendary punk band, The Germs. Is there only one way to be, one way to go about things? Whether music, religion or in this case, Escueta's practice, the existence of the possibility to deflect what is expected proves otherwise. So come and join us as we beat the midweek blues this Wednesday at Green Papaya for a movie and the usual chill out session to follow. See you there! (ZD)

The WOP Residency Progran is supPorted by Arts Network Asia. www.artsnetworkasia.org http://wednesdaysmnlove.blogspot.com www.artsnetworkasia.org

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City Phone/Fax 7941628
greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com info@greenpapayaartprojects.org
www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

w.o.p JUNE 3 | Jed Escueta SMELL HUSTLE

2009-06-01T05:31:00.001-07:00

JED ESCUETA / Smell Hustle / June 3 / bar opens 6pm

"What interests us are the circumstances." Perhaps the innate curiosity of the familiar that sustain our motion towards the dreadful leap of faith in the known. A deliberate suspension of disbelief in order to give second, or even a third, life to the ordinary. For example, waking up in the same side of the bed whilst noticing the subtle shift in the incessant barking of the dogs next door. Or the newly painted jeep you take every morning to work. Perhaps even the new brew that sits on your breakfast counter. At times, what matter are these little seeming divinities plucked out of the unconscious brought to life by nothing else than circumstances. A collaborative work between god and the devil. And when walking a foreign street, our elders have repeatedly reminded us to trust your instincts and follow the scent that leads you. Its hard to ignore the compelling truth in age-old wisdom of the pagan who pays his respect to every tree, mound and living creature that crosses its path.

As we immerse in Jed Escueta's varied concerns in the photographic practice, he further takes us in to the privacy of his intuit: a day he woke up to a storm, mother's plants, the pet dog taking a piss break. Seemingly banal events that probably contain some David Lynch-ian anomaly to it. In Smell Hustle, the third installment of his WOP residency, Escueta pronounces the invisible boundaries of a photograph. Capturing the danger zones that we don't normally notice. As always and now with the rainy days back there is more reason to chill out and be cozy this Wednesday. Also to catch is the artist's weekly intoxicating brew. Join us as we jump start a heavy week of activities at Green Papaya.

The WOP Residency Program is supported by Arts Network Asia www.artsnetworkasia.org

Heads up: June 5-6 (Friday and Saturday), watch out for the continuing series of Open Studio Sessions of Gangan Ensemble with visiting Malaysian experimental sound artists Yong Yandsen and Kok Siew-Wai.

w.o.p MAY 27 | JED ESCUETA + ANDREA TERAN'S Monthly Period Readings

2009-05-25T22:10:00.000-07:00

WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM, MAY 27 / BAR OPENS 6PM

JED ESCUETA’S FORGOTTEN NUTS TURN INTO TREES runs until May 30,
PIRATE SATELLITE of NU 107 spins for the evening

ANDREA TERAN’S MONTHLY PERIOD READING
features NICOLAS PICHAY and KHAVN DE LA CRUZ IN CONVERSATION

DAVID GRIGGS’ NEW YORK LONDON PARIS ROME MANILA CITY JAIL runs until May 30

Those ready to fill-in the blank notecards lying on top of the table have gathered enough dust to stand for years of memory accumulation. Along with the phone call missed, deadline that has passed, and unsent postcards. Perpetual motion covers up the little god-like details sitting in the feverish bed of habit and comfortable metaphors. Is there indeed no time to stop and smell the flowers? Or the freshly pressed morning coffee waiting in the kitchen? Like the mythical hunter occupied with capturing the horizon to take back home, time is a slippery animal to conquer yet also a nomad equally fascinated with predictable monotony. And its faithful followers determined to outrun it, only to be disappointed perhaps or mesmerized by the prey. Frozen, stuck in a moment but oblivious to its eventual end.

End is far from near but we hear it approaching as Jed Escueta approaches the second half of his residency his photo installation Forgotten Nuts Turn Into Trees is still up for those who have failed to catch it the previous week. And because we like quiet evenings that mutate into crazy evening gatherings, Pirate Satellite of NU 107 joins us to spin the evening away. If you thought that was all, there’s more! Andrea Teran’s Monthly Period Reading returns all dressed up, prim and proper. Then maybe not. Tomorrow catch filmmaker-maverick-indie-man-of-the-world artist Khavn de la Cruz and award winning playwright Nicolas Pichay in conversation with each other as they wrestle the world of narrative, drama, cinema or even each other. See you, see you its another Wednesday to be in love!

The Wednesdays Open Platform residency is supported by Arts Network Asia www.artsnetworkasia.org David Griggs's residency and exhibition is supported by Asialink and The Australian Embassy in the Philippines

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City
Phone 0926 6635606
greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com info@greenpapayaartprojects.org www.greenpapayaartprojects.org
http://papayapost.blogspot.com

w.o.p MAY 20| Jed Escueta FORGOTTEN NUTS TURN INTO TREES

2009-05-19T05:12:00.000-07:00

JED ESCUETA / Forgotten Nuts Turn into Trees

Wednesdays Open Platform / May 20 / Bar Opens 6PM

It's just as well that any law for memory has been repealed. Perhaps they just change, as most things are inclined to do, funneled through every individual pair of eyes.

In this case, it is with Forgotten Nuts Turn into Trees that photographs serve not only as the quintessential time capsules that they are, but also move into the peculiarities of a time bomb, wherein 3...2...1 what was once just a picture, explodes into something beyond a memento and lands in the light of shifting perspective. On the other end of it is the rediscovery of what was left behind during those few seconds when the flash bursts, resulting in an unapologetically simple picture... luminous in its rawness. In the looking back that occurs, each piece of suspended time and reality sprouts into new life, whether through introspection or conversation, throttling and permeating ones consciousness.

This Wednesday, Jed Escueta mounts his second exhibition as artist-in-residence. For another round of non-linear rumination, we invite all the usual suspects (and then some) to help kick off May's second WOP offering. So come! Buried somewhere in the night's speeding headlights and the slow burning cigarette is space to draw out the past and let it spark yet again. Let us maneuver through and around both retrospection and reconstruction, amidst the vibrating engines and tires that careen upon the little street most of us have all come to make our pit stop for the week. And if you haven't had a taste of Papaya, make this your first! We'll be waiting! (ZD)

The WOP Residency Progran is suported by Arts Network Asia www.artsnetworkasia.org http:// wednesdaysmnlove.blogspot.com

David Griggs’ New York London Paris Rome Manila City Jail runs until May 30, 2009

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City Phone/Fax 632 7941628
greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com info@greenpapayaartprojects.org
www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

w.o.p MAY 13| Jed Escuta MAMA DON'T TAKE MY KODACHROME AWAY

2009-05-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

MAMA DON'T TAKE MY KODACHROME AWAY / JED ESCUETA
WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM
BAR OPENS 2PM

If you missed last week's W.O.P comeback then wonder no longer. Yes, anticipation rocked and shook the house as avid followers, fans and hangers on braved the rains to join in some good 'ol dancing to jumpstart Jed Escueta's WOP residency Mama, Don't Take My Kodachrome Away. Time passes by quickly when you're having fun as Coffeebreak Island chased it away with two straight hours of non-stop moves and tunes. It was of course also an added pleasure to have on view years of collected photographs and snapshots. Meanwhile, David Griggs' opening last Friday was equally met by boisterous though slightly subdued crowd.

Surely, the string of last week's events have left most of us nursing the occasional hella' of a hangover so it is with a little prudence that we continue on with Fool Fool Around ongoing until May 16. This Wednesday we opt for the rather quiet but potentially potent chill out and hanging around so do drop by to catch the current exhibitions on view.

New York London Paris Rome Manila City Jail by David Griggs ongoing until May 30, 2009

w.o.p MAY 6 | Jed Escuta MAMA DON'T TAKE MY KODACHROME AWAY

2009-05-04T01:37:00.000-07:00

MAMA DON’T TAKE MY KODACHROME AWAY
Jed Escueta / Fool Fool Around / May 6 / Bar Opens 7PM
WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM

Coffeebreak Island
FREE ENTRANCE / 9PM

It is probably the dead-pan and yet hard-hitting raw quality of an insider's gesture that lend a photograph its near testimonial authenticity that keeps the viewer drawn–a gaze arrested into that single moment in time. Similarly akin to the useless yet priceless souvenir objects kept in this little tin box to be opened occasionally as proof of life and reality. What distinctly sets a photograph apart from all the others is not simply its capacity to overcome memory, imagination, and the faithful reconstruction of the past nor of the world but its ability to constitute reality in a past state, being at once the past and the real (R.Barthes). An experience that is dare say, religious and mythical. Easy (and hard) it may to consecrate an inimitable aura to the flood of images that confront us every Kbps, thanks to the proliferation of overnight photographers phenomena that litter the cyberspace, there remains a handful whose fascination for the
mechanical, chemical and mythological process of photography. A fascination, infectious to disregard. And lurking among the few devotees is Jed Escueta who has instead meticulously taken to doing it the old-school way, sifting through films, negatives and silver-gelatin prints. In Mama Don't Take Away my Kodachrome, the last of Green Papaya's series of WOP Residency, Escueta lays out his specific concerns in the almost forgotten practice of photography. Playing the role of both an insider and outsider. One thinks of a lost alchemy.

Forgotten it is not, as he opens his two-month stint with what is a long overdue tribute to one of the best bands in the Philippines, Coffeebreak Island. Not only unearthing a collection of photographs gathered since 2003 but what best way to launch ceremonial things but with a night of nasty good 'ol dancing, beat and music. No summer has not yet passed, so island dwellers party with us. Don't be fooled just because the beach seems nowhere in sight of the unbearable metro doesn't mean we're no island fools. So come lets Fool fool around!

The WOP Residency Progran is suported by Arts Network Asia. http:// wednesdaysmnlove.blogspot.com www.artsnetworkasia.org

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City Phone 0926 6635606
greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com info@greenpapayaartprojects.org
www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

w.o.p APRIL 22 | Martha Atienza MAN IN SUIT Artist Talk

2009-04-21T03:38:00.000-07:00

WHEN ROUTINE IS ALL THERE IS
WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM
Martha Atienza ARTIST-TALK, 8PM, APRIL 22 BAR OPENS 7PM

Surely as the rains gently counter the yearly hellish summer heat there is no escape from the occasional nostalgia finding its way in the newly wet and slippery pavements. Little mud puddles that seem like pools of reflection of a thirsty city. Creeping like a vein meanwhile marking the passage of time, a season to another. Even routine eventually loops it's way out into a new cycle of repetition, that is probably what they make out of the inevitable. And despite the lack of any clear seasonal change here in the islands, we almost always somehow look the sublime in the eye and overtake its slippery grip.

If you think you missed it, think again because here is your chance to catch Martha Atienza's exhibit/installation Man In Suit before she heads off and caps her six-month long stay in the tropics. As all appropriate closing ceremonies, this one will not pass by without the ceremonial artist-talk. This Wednesday, Martha tackles the poetics and malleability of this touring work as it makes it's last Manila round. So, better catch this, lest you miss out on the opportunity of intimate creative interaction.

Man in Suit APRIL 1 | MARTHA ATIENZA

2009-03-30T17:35:00.000-07:00

Man in Suit MARTHA ATIENZA
Opening 6PM, April 1 (Wednesday) EXHIBITION RUNS UNTIL APRIL 22, 2009

Hardly noticeable are the minute details disguised in the hysteria of the ordinary. Anomalies that easily pass off for their sheer congruity with the world, seemingly in complete agreement with the necessary order of 'how things should be.' In fact the routine second look-subtextual reading no longer holds true. For what are all those manuals on looking for, if not to raise a generation of spectators generally preoccupied with that which is hidden in a picture. Is it not almost tempting to say that nobody trusts anybody these days? Because appearances are constantly interrogated if not meticulously pried upon if only to squeeze out every signification there is. Perhaps, Martha Atienza's Man In Suit might as well be an exercise in weighing appearances and silent test of the malleability of 'things as they are.' What could be a more fitting analogy than a peasant dressed in such clothing reminiscent of excess and formality to perform the most utilitarian and laborious of tasks such as baking bread or feeding chickens? And what of the beauty-queen-in-disguise vying for a spot among thirteen revered statues of the apostles and Christ? As the outsider attempts to bridge the obvious gap of difference what transpires is an even more amplified gap of anomaly from itself. Then the mundane becomes even more unbearably ordinary, where we are asked to not look for more meaning but to accept meaning that stares right back at us because "things do not simply appear, they appear to appear."

Marking the midway phase of her residency, Martha Atienza opens her video-installation Man In Suite this Wednesday coupled with the laborious pickings of last months spent in an island you know where. So before you even think of retreating into that well-known dead days of Lent, come over and be equally faced with the similar introspection not into the unknown but into that place that we have always known.

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS 41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City
Phone/Fax 7941628 Mobile 0926 6635606
greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com www.greenpapayaartprojects.org

GALLERY HOURS: WED-SAT 2-6 PM / SHOW WINDOW HOURS: FRI-SAT 6PM-MIDNIGHT

w.o.p MAR 4| Martha Atienza WHEN ROUTINE.... + JOHN TORRES + MAILES KANAPI

2009-03-15T09:34:00.000-07:00

WHEN ROUTINE IS ALL THERE IS WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM MARCH 18

SCREENINGS, CONVERSATIONS, PERFORMANCE

MARTHA ATIENZA WITH JOHN TORRES AND MAILES KANAPI

A conversation is a communication by two, three, or more people; a social skill easily dismissed as ‘not difficult’ for most individuals; and in some respects held in the ideal container of wants, should bes and could have beens. The rhythm pre-determined by the number of particular variables usually depending on the amount of sleep, intoxication, history and pollution carried by the body in between intermittent waking. Habit on the other hand refers to an acquired behavior which often occurs automatically. Of course, while mostly pronounced, it is also the least noticeable among the high tenor of visual informations that pass for normality. These actions, or background noise, find their way into conversations to effect a general feeling of understanding.

No. What exists between these two are nothing but parallel but only an irksome gap. Nevertheless, these are two words we are obviously fond of. Because we cannot have enough of it, we are resuscitating our live talk show-artist conversations with Martha Atienza and John Torres, as Martha continues to make sense of what her new temporal condition is all about. Because habit, routine and anomalies are things the two share. Only John brings out the camera more often than she does. But we all know that by now. Meanwhile, to add yet another strand to this already tempting treat is theater actress par excellance Mailes Kanapi whose never before heard nor seen text/ual production will finally come out to play. Summer has officially begun, haven’t you noticed those ants gnawing at your kitchen counter?

w.o.p MAR11 Martha Atienza | WHEN ROUTINE IS ALL THERE IS + video conversation with GERRY TAN

2009-03-10T00:24:00.000-07:00

WHEN ROUTINE IS ALL THERE IS | WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM
MARCH 11 BAR OPENS 7PM

Those tedious afternoon walks around the street corner and habitual dips in the pool seem like nothing but constructive distractions from the compelling need to work. Still somewhat comforting that ‘work’ nowadays could easily mimic ‘play’ while placed under watchful and suspicious eyes of the neighbors. But how much waiting does it take for a picture to reveal itself? And how much watching does it entail to notice the anomalies undisguised in its very appearance?

Last week’s intimate but hefty evening menu of screenings perhaps rekindled the neglected intuition of ‘watching’ with Martha Atienza’s presentation of her previous works and Conrado Velasco’s current electronic fixations. A evening of yin and yang, clichés aside. But definitely no cliche was interaction among students, enthusiasts and artists themselves that have sparked new connections. This Wednesday we move on with Martha’s w.o.p residency as she screens the things that she has been working on the past months in the island. To be complemented with video conversation of sorts with Gerry Tan’s own video pickings: Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go) by Swiss Duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss; Sunrise and Sunset; and his own video work Aparition. Never mind the crippling heat and that its too early in the week to party for things such as these may only come far and between.

WOP IS SUPPORTED BY ARTS NETWORK ASIA (ANA)

w.o.p FEB 25| Mark Salvatus CONNECTING URBAN SPACES

2009-02-23T19:12:00.000-08:00

CONNECTING URBAN SPACES / WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM
ARTS NETWORK ASIA (ANA) INTERPHASE
MEDIA ARTS MANILA (MAM) FIELD TRIP

FEBRUARY 25, BAR OPENS 7PM, ANA RECEPTION AT 8PM, MAM FIELD TRIP AT 9PM

Surely it has been said many times over that nothing lasts forever. No matter how strongly we delay such encounter, it is also at the same time inevitable. But endings are nothing but mere temporal constraints, fluid at the same time malleable. The means to transgress the boundaries will persist but not to be approached without caution. Mark Salvatus caps off his two month W.O.P residency, delivering a state-of-the-metro sorts for his last presentation. And because we like things to be auspiciously arranged according to the arbitrary arrangement of planetary constellation, be prepared for a hearty evening of talks, presentations, food, booze and sound as Arts Network Asia (ANA) throws a little reception for the evening. Lastly, Media Arts Manila (MAM) pays us a little visit with an excursion of field recordings and soundscapes of corporeal and imagined environments. So do pay us a visit, there is much in store for everyone in the family.

CONNECTING URBAN SPACES WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM February 18

2009-02-15T16:20:00.001-08:00

It is easy to dismiss virtual environments as pale renditions of our alternate lives, utopian visions and replacements for interpersonal interaction but its inevitability remains. While junkies attest to its necessity, cynics remain doubtful. And yet no doubt there is comfort in knowing that no one lives in isolation any longer. Almost dreadful in fact, you can run but never hide. Could it be true that each one of us will always long for some kind of connection no matter how strange, circumstantial, perverse or 'unreal' it is. Our favorite wise man once said that appearances work in so far to sustain our belief. Then there is also that question of increasing homogeneity masked behind divergence, plurality and open societies.

There remains the disputable dictum: the devil is in the details. Or is it god? Unknown to most, new nomadic communities have been cropping up thanks to that new dystopian universe called the web. This Wednesday as growing networks both oblique and congruent slide into each other's reality, Mark Salvatus continues with his residency presenting the online project Connecting Urban Spaces together with a nomadic artistic community built the last two years. If you are beginning to get used to our incessant calls to go out and get over the hump, here we are again calling out its never late nor too early the week to go out.

Words Are Things was something | Angelo Suarez

2009-02-05T22:17:00.000-08:00

In part contrary to Green Papaya's expectations, what began on August 6 as my residency project was not STREET SMARTS as I had originally proposed but WORDS ARE THINGS, a brief survey of a marginal practice in poetry that foregrounds language as a material object (pliable, physically manipulable, can occupy space, has potential for literal weight, i.e., w/ visual, aural, textural aspects, produced by physical processes). It is under this survey w/c the less ambitious (& more personal) STREET SMARTS has been temporarily subsumed.

Part-performance in its act of engaging taxi drivers in conversation as they drive, & part-textual/aural document as conceptual poem in the recording/transcription of these conversations, STREET SMARTS in itself was intended to be a play on parataxis—a technique employed by contemporary poets where words &/or phrases are violently wrenched from syntactical convention & juxtaposed against similarly dislodged words &/or phrases for an effect that is more or less accidental.

Incidentally, the bilingual imagination can take the word "parataxis" itself as composed of two units: "para," w/c in Filipino is an expression exclaimed when one hails a cab; & "taxi," w/c is the cab itself, a public vehicle one rides to reach any point of the Metro. When a passenger & a driver are conjoined in a single cab, parataxis occurs not just on the level of language itself but also on the level on which people as linguistic subjects exist: such that two discourses—each already heterogeneous in itself—wrestle w/ each other for prominence, & the micro-politics of conversation emerges. Whose utterance overtakes whose—the driver's, or the passenger's? Who drives the conversation forward, who allows himself to be verbally driven?

While STREET SMARTS already takes on parataxis as a kind of conceit (that is, as an extended metaphor or framework) that takes off from what is normatively perceived as language & toward linguistic subjects or bodies, its technique of juxtaposition is appropriated by WORDS ARE THINGS in examining the larger field of poetry that emphasizes the material in local practice. Instead of phrase against phrase, practice against practice is juxtaposed, as are forms against forms—where Green Papaya, known primarily as a locus of discourse for visual art, is turned into a venue for linguistic & poetic discourse.

August 6, for example, saw accidental collaborations between myself & guest Belgian artist Angelo Vermeulen, as well as between young prose stylist Pocholo Goitia & renegade filmmaker John Torres. After screening a short film that relied heavily on language-use as dialogue, Vermeulen sampled from his vast collection of 8-bit music to accompany my reading of selected transcripts from STREET SMARTS, conjuring a barely intelligible soundscape in w/c text juts in & out. Torres on the other hand screened a short film adaptation of Goitia's text "The Maximalist," & using his idiosyncratic technique of collaging found footage w/ deadpan voice-overs made a subdued display of irony by using 'factual' docu-type imagery to convey a wholly fictitious story. Also featured that night were Adam David's playful forays into the verbo-visual processes of cut-ups & erasures toward textual production, & the performance of a balagtasan—that is, a traditional form of verse debate in rhyme, in w/c a topic or issue is volunteered by the audience on the spot—by renowned performance poet Vim Nadera as well as Michael Coroza & Teo Antonio.

The following week presented a fun fiesta of forms, w/ Raya Martin at the helm showing a couple of short films. The series' 1^st text-installation was care of conceptual artist Bea Camacho, whose small label on the wall posited the label's reader to be her artwork, the small rectangular piece of cardboard saying "Person Reading a Label / Bea Camacho / 2008" in regular gallery-wall-type demeanor, calling attention to language's relationship with the visual/spatial as exemplified by conceptualist practice. Then as Khavn dela Cruz explored the medium of pop song as poetry against the backdrop of a silent film, multimedia artist Mark Salvatus in an off-site—or, perhaps more appropriately, translocal—performance sent SMS messages to people present at the gallery that repeatedly exclaimed "Text pollution." The night was once again capped by a reading of more transcripts from STREET SMARTS w/ 8-bit music by Vermeulen.

While certainly not the series' 1^st off-center performance (performances, after all, mostly use either a stage or at least a symbolic, provisional one to keep a distinct divide between performer & audience in the subtle micro-politics of theater), Buen Calubayan's patience-trying work of erasure was the series' 1^st durational performance. It went on for hours on Green Papaya's 2^nd floor on August 27, in a quiet corner where the occasional curious passerby would peer into what he's laboring over: Ironically spelling out the word "bibe" (Tagalog term for "duck") by erasing those letters w/ white paint from the entirety of his small Bible. For this night, however, Calubayan was content w/ finishing only the 1^st chapter, Genesis, as if to wryly declare, "In the beginning, there was light, sure, but there was no duck," inadvertently bringing to mind local churchside images of ducklings caged in glass, warmed by a lightbulb, sold to moms w/ hopeful kids for a few pesos. As this was happening, looped in a single TV in another corner was a video collage by video artist Jay Pacena, whose commercially released music videos were collaged & played in reverse, turning the song lyrics into an unintelligible wall of regurgitated sounds. Also, between Calubayan's & Pacena's works was a performance by Costantino Zicarelli who, after a brief trip to Australia w/ his ex-girlfriend, rambled for an hour about his travel, each tale punctuated by a strange mixture of deliberate dullness & shyness. True to poetry's convention of asserting a kind of constraint to give textual production form (what are sound patterns such as rhyme if not constraints?), his rambling was never as haphazard as it seemed, guided by a careful, linear progression of travel photos—mostly personal, occasionally intimate or even silly—he would project on the wall, presenting poetry where one would suspect there wasn't any. Following Zicarelli was a performance by Kaye O'yek, whose visceral spraying of perfume into her mouth as she repetitively spoke—tho bordering on the kind of masochistic melodrama that has been plaguing much of local performance art over the years—provided an effective counterpoint to the current state of Philippine letters, composed mostly of flowery utterances that are paradoxically malodorous.

New media artist Pow Martinez met our September 3 installment w/ much laughter solicited from the audience. Appropriating content from YouTube, Martinez revealed the way STREET SMARTS would too that an act of writing didn't need an actual act of writing—that is, of putting words together in a deliberately fresh & discursive manner. Instead, already extant words could be, again & again, wrenched from their original contexts & reframed in foreign contexts to reinvigorate them w/ new potentials for signification. While playing a YouTube video of John Cage's most notorious piece, Martinez highlighted w/o discrimination all the comments that could be found in YouTube's comments stream that related to the video—sundry reactions that ranged from plain confusion & utter anger to faux intellection & humble illumination. Following him was Mideo Cruz, whose semi-elaborate preparation for his performance was uncharacteristic: Known for large-scale performances that are often outright critiques of consumerist society, Cruz this time quietly meditated on the disparity between what is said & what is heard. From the sidelines, he would pump air into a small balloon attached to a chair; & as the balloon enlarged, the looped video projected onto its surface was made more visible: A close-up of Cruz's mouth saying something over & over, depicting lips that moved but no sound came out. This went on for minutes till the balloon was large enough to pop; & when it did, small sheets of paper scattered from inside it, containing a short phrase in Latin w/ religious undertones. Whether what was written was what Cruz was uttering onscreen would remain unknown, possibly an allusion to what Christians would call "the mystery of the Word." After that, poets Mikael Co & Waps San Diego came onstage to discuss a series of procedural writing collaborations they had been religiously doing w/ a group of other writers every week. Their constant insistence that these collaborations were mere writing exercises & not actual poems, however, could be symptomatic of the mainstream writing community's unfortunate suspicion of the merits of both process-based (rather than discursive, insight-driven) & collaborative (rather than individualistic, highly idiosyncratic) poetry—a suspicion WORDS ARE THINGS had wanted to help get rid of. Closing the night was a performance of more pop songs depicting heartache by Khavn dela Cruz in simultaneous counterpoint w/ my lautgedicht or textsound achieved thru procedural erasures of poems by Ophelia Dimalanta, an old poet whose poetry had been typecast for decades as primarily erotic, to whom the performance was an anti-erotic tribute. Interestingly, Donna Miranda spontaneously joined the fray, sitting on a chair w/ sheets of paper, furiously jotting down the few words her ears would catch w/ clarity from dela Cruz's lyrics.

September 10 saw Norberto Roldan's work occupying Green Papaya's 2nd floor while presentations were happening downstairs. Who said painting was a static enterprise? At event's beginning, people were invited to view the painting upstairs—a bleak depiction of an historic tragedy—one that would eventually be replaced by another, equally bleak, painting in serial continuity while people began to trickle out of the gallery towards the end of the night. Some people noticed the change; some didn't. But the performance's off-centeredness was highlighted by the notion that some people didn't even know there were changes—an explicit critique of the apathetic mind where landmark occurrences could be but marginal concerns, & simultaneously also an implicit critique of every artist's tragically burgeoning ego in the context of highly commercialized, catastrophic art economies: a lesson on hubris both historic & personal. Downstairs, Pocholo Goitia discussed w/ collaborator Allan Pormento an ongoing project involving depersonalizing Goitia's online networking accounts, particularly his Friendster one, where—by slowly replacing Goitia's self w/ a balloon-headed simulation of himself—issues of virtual vulnerability were tackled as well as fleeting moments of online trust, rhizomatic constructions of identity, & alternative modes of narrative production where rather than thru prose one could engage the act of emplotment by means of the User Profile. To cap the night off, Donna Miranda performed by making use of two chairs & masking tape: the latter to set an overt distinction between audience & stage, & the former to subtly invite the audience to penetrate the boundary, to come in & sit in one of the chairs. The other chair was reserved for Miranda, who had planned on interviewing &/or getting interviewed by whoever would sit in the vacant chair, but no one eventually did—possibly a symptom of how deep the divide between audience & performer was, & always is.

The following week, the entire night was devoted to a large-scale performance by Costantino Zicarelli, titled "God Made Pasta So I Could Waste It." Proficient in the various ways of cooking pasta, Zicarelli's Italian father & Filipino mother made a demonstration in faux cooking-show-fashion how to prepare different sauces for the fettuccine they had brought, each giving not just useful cooking tips but as well as little anecdotes about life at home, how it was living w/ their son Costantino, etc. Once in a while, Zicarelli would intervene to ask questions that were at once irrelevant & irreverent, such as "Papa, what do you think of contemporary Philippine Art?" to w/c his father would reply by addressing the audience composed mostly of writers & artists, "He asks me the same question every night." The performance ended with the Zicarelli family distributing food they made on the spot to the people present inside the gallery—as if in a generous display of charity that both conjured & ridiculed the age-old notion of the 'starving artist.' But there's a kind of reversal at work here, one that entailed a kind condescension where feeding starving artists was equated w/ wasting pasta, implying not so much that we should let artists starve but perhaps that we should let the cliché of the fauxhemian 'starving artist' die.

Jeff Carnay, Camille Banzon, Tengal Drilon, Joel Toledo, & Marie La Viña punctuate the whole series of POEMS ARE THINGS on September 24, preceded by a performance by Donna Miranda in collaboration w/ new media artist Ria Muñoz where, utilizing Miranda's body as locus for movement, language almost literally danced w/ sound: In one continuous gesture, it was the mouth & tongue enunciating words in her reading that continued the work began by her feet. And when her mouth stopped, it was my own mouth that carried on the action w/ a reading of another transcript from STREET SMARTS, providing a new textual backdrop to Miranda & Muñoz's performance. Carnay, in another masochistic fit not unlike O'yek's weeks prior, performed the traditional punishment for children where they're made to kneel on rough rock salt while surrounding him were photocopied photographs of the person to whom the work was addressed, the blurred black-&-white face made creepier by a parody of The Lord's Prayer being chanted in the background. To continue the carnivalesque strain began w/ dance & ritualistic pain, Banzon followed w/ a solemn ode to a friend who had been going thru tough times, her face covered w/ a mask in an attempt to ironize the confessional quality of her writing by masking her identity. Then past Toledo & La Viña's continuation of the discussion initiated by Co & San Diego regarding collaborative, procedural poetics (still however w/ the same disclaimer that these projects were exercises rather than actual poems in themselves), the night was wrapped up by a set of instructions penned by Drilon to be carried out by myself, w/c simply involved me passing around a glass of milk after labeling the glass "Made in China"—a sly allusion to the supposed 'milk scare' that had spread around the world from China, where the fatal compound melamine was feared to had have contaminated volumes upon volumes of exported milk products.

w.o.p FEB 4 | Mark Salvatus URBAN PLAN

2009-02-02T19:11:00.000-08:00

URBAN PLAN WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM February 4 When the notorious writing on the wall "No to work" appeared on the streets of Paris in the 60s little did we think that in the 21st century thousands of people would loose their jobs everyday. As of yesterday close to 11,000 overseas migrant workers were laid off in Macau. Meanwhile, the Department of Labor predicts that 800,000 workers in export-oriented industries such as electronic are at risk of losing their livelihood because of the global financial crises. The easy speak of crisis versus opportunities won't be so easy to grasp. The little obscure group of situationists in France must be boisterous and laughing secretly over wine, saying 'we told you so.' Obviously the only solution is to succumb and drift. To drop out of work and leisure and be drawn by the attractions of a ravaged terrain and encounters we find in the psycho-geographic subversion of crass cosmopolitanism. And because it is almost obvious that we have exhausted 'the world' it is only but logical to drop out and turn our heads away. Instead, listening to secret hum-drum of promoting sustainable communities. No this is not about buying those 'green' fabrics, environment friendly designer tote/shopping bags or even buying franchise coffee beans grown by poor farmers in Africa. This Wednesday, Mark Salvatus invites Philippine FreeRunners, TAO-Pilipinas, Diego Maranan and YP-Design Challenge Winners to present their winning designs to make the world a better place. Undeniably love will heal the world. So, come and feel the love! No, don't wait till that barbaric Valentines day, it may all be too late.

Spinoffs from my residency

2009-01-27T21:34:00.000-08:00

So my WOP residency is really beginning to spin off some great opportunities. Green Papaya, ANA: you rock.

http://www.ayalatbi.org/KT/2009-01-Maranan.html

I'm hoping these ideas also get to grassroots organizations at some point. I suddenly remember the conversation I had with Lori Almirez and perhaps collaborating with IBON Foundation.

w.o.p JAN 28 | Mark Salvatus URBAN PLAN + Andrea Teran MONTHLY PERIOD READINGS

2009-01-26T18:25:00.000-08:00

Feeble attempts to conjecture cosmic collisions and astrological fluctuations should be shamelessly dismissed as purely superstitious. In no way can the backward movement of Mercury towards the sun affect interpersonal communication, business, travel and the like. Delays and introspection are of course, caused by more sinister emergent events such as a freak road accident, broken alarm clocks, crowded commuter trains, engine trouble, a new US president, police raid or even the partial eclipse of the sun. Still the only thing that can derail utopian visions of urban life can come from lack of inspiration or sleep, perhaps. So come over this Wednesday as we continue to sketch the cities we love most as Mark Salvatus invites Kristoffer Ardeña, Jay Pacena, Mannet Villariba and Wesley Valenzuela for another weekly affair. And because nothing is ever enough, Andrea Teran's Monthly Period Readings come back after a two months hiatus (thanks to that overdrawn holiday back in 2008) hosting Writers in Conversation between Mabi David and Mark Cayanan. As usual we expect you to beat that midweek hump, see you on Wednesday.

URBAN PLAN WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM JANUARY 21, BAR OPENS 7PM

2009-01-20T02:08:00.000-08:00

URBAN PLAN
WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM JANUARY 21, BAR OPENS 7PM

The reason for those jarring calls of apocalyptic renewal lies not in the obvious impossibility of tranquil afternoon strolls by the bay but in the delicate breakdown of city dwellers navigating the land-locked streets of Manila. Meanwhile, the cool pleasant breeze fails to soothe the mad morning rush. Drifting is probably not a bad idea after all. Perhaps an ultimate act manifest of the resolve to reject the all-encompassing aim towards productivity. Again, we take yet another undisclosed tour of the Metro this Wednesday as Mark Salvatus' Neo-Urban Plan brings us into the underbelly of our beloved city/ies with video screenings, stencils, skateboard deck art, and slide presentations by BCBruta (Barcelona), Vermon Yo, Okto+Ferdz and Veejay Villafranca. Come, be warm and coozy this Wednesday night at Green Papaya.

Looking good, emo pic and some annoying comments

2009-01-05T04:42:00.000-08:00

I'm really excited for the first presentation of Urban Plan on Wednesday! ;-)

*Email and blogging brigade!- I was surprised when the Cordillera Artist e-group sent an e-invite about the Urban Plan- its cool that they are sending it to a lot of people, but when I opened the mail- waaah! my emo pic was on the banner! maybe they got it from my flickr account- well what the heck!

thanks also to some Blogs

Plus63
Illustration Pinoy

*There are some good and annoying feedbacks about the Neo-Urban Call- what can you expect!

The good ones came from the people i know, who are also in the local art circle- and they wanted to share some ideas too! like Isa Lorenzo, Don Salubayba, etc... and we will be expecting their plans on the upcoming presentations...

The annoying one was from a post on a forum/tag board message on Pilipinas Street Plan

5 Jan 09, 09:04

SNORT: matanong ko lng kng ano ung silbi ng NEO-URBAN PLANNER? makka 2long ba un sa pag unlad ng ating bansa? reply nman po

SNORT: ang isang mali sa ginagawa ng "NEO-URBAN PLANNER ay hndi sinasabe kung ano ang solusyon sa URBAN POOR na ngyayare sa pinas.. ang ginagawa lng nila eh tumulong para mapa unlad ang bansa.. "panandalian

5 Jan 09, 14:36

SNORT: kasi po na isip ko lng na kung art proj. un.. medyo hindi sha mkaka 2long sa pag unlad ng bansa

I replied on his posts and invited him to present his plan...

By the way, read this article from Inquirer.net

MMDA chief tickled pink by fence critics

See you!

1) Photo: Libertad LRT Station (went to AIM for a project)

w.o.p JAN 7 | Mark Salvatus URBAN PLAN

2009-01-01T20:19:00.000-08:00

JANUARY 7, BAR OPENS 7PM
WOP RESIDENT MARK SALVATUS WITH
GEM URDANETA, BUEN CALUBAYAN AND JONG PAIREZ

"Kidnap someone and make them happy." Wear your Sunday best and catch a ferry ride along Pasig River. Remember to close your eyes, lest you miss out on devilish details of history. Stroll along the least navigated paths; under the bridge; the dark, crowded, and rowdy eskinita and leave your markings. Never mind the looming disorientation, burning heat of the sun nor the sticky pungent city smells, our stories are woven in the streets. Our lives unfolding between the public and private. Should it all be too much to bear, there is nothing else left to do but throw kisses in the air. If you can't beat them don't even try.

How do we write the city? In varying degrees of love and hate? Mark Salvatus, WOP resident, embarks on a stroll of our beloved cities to investigate how artists, creatives, by-standers, and the public see the city in different perspectives. Taking a step further and begging committed actions. Yes, opinions will be strongly solicited. Kicking off his eight-week residency is an introduction to Neo-Urban Planner along with a presentation from Gem Urdaneta, sound installation from Buen Calubayan and Jong Pairez's Postal Box Project. The holidays are finally over, we can be normal once again! See you for the initial installment of Urban Plan.

Neo-Urban Plan

2008-12-29T03:15:00.000-08:00

I'm really excited about my upcoming residency at Green Papaya- and here are some things that I am preparing while on a holiday break:

1) I created a new blog for the Neo-Urban Plan http://neourbanplanner.blogspot.com/ where all the submitted plans will be archived.

2) I already emailed Jem and Buen Calubayan for the first presentation on January 7.

3) Donna and Lena suggested we invite Paulo Alcazaren as a reactor to the neo-urban plan presentations, got his email from philstar.com and hope to hear from him soon!

4) Samantha Orui, an architect collaborator from Sao Paulo for the Connecting Urban Spaces project send a video message about her work for the exhibition. She showed me an object with water inside- hmmm interesting.

Meanwhile, checkout Green Papaya on Google Maps
zoom! zoom! zoom! so you can locate your house too!

View Larger Map

MARK SALVATUS | Urban Plan January 7 - February 18, 2009

2008-12-28T16:55:00.000-08:00

What if you were tasked to take over MMDA and make a new urban plan? What would you do? What would you change? Be creative! It can be simple to grand/utopian plan...serious to fun-unrealisitic one...grab your camera, roam the city and see what you can do....

Urbanization

In a 1975 survey, one out of three people all over the world live in urban areas, with most of the 1.5 billion "urbanites" living in districts with less than a million residents. (Many of these urban dwellers, in fact, live in communities with a population of less than 5,000). Over the years, the urban residency has swelled significantly that half of the world's population is living in cities. Parallel to this growth in urban population (and the continuous rise of smaller cities) is the emergence of "mega-cities" – urban areas of no less than 10 million people.

Between 1975 and 2005, the number of mega-cities has grwon from a meager three (two of which were in industrialised, first-world countries) to a record-breaking 20 (with 15 of them belonging to developing nations).
SOURCE: United Nations Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2005 Revision (2006).

Layers

In East Asia alone, more than 2 million people have moved into urban areas. The rapid exodus to these specific areas indicates more opportunities in wealth and a chance for a better future for some. In the Philippines, where the Metero Manila region is the official hub of economy, education and contemporary culture, more and more people from the rural areas are moving into the city to try their luck. Away from home, these people would often bring their customs and traditions with them as they settle in the metro; thus making their rural culture an integral part of the urban setting.

There are layers upopn layes of old and new structures; chaos on the streets; graffiti, political and apolitical alike; street vendors; MMDA gigantic billboards; and an overwhelming influence of Western cosmopolitanism–malls in every district, pocket shanties, layers of sound –among others. And in the last 3 decades, Metro Manila has become problematic region in terms of urban planning, drainage systems, pollution, over-population–problems that affect the city dwellers negatively.

Urbanist

Having lived in Manila for more than a decade, the projects I propose for W.O.P revolve around urbanism and urban culture, how artists, creatives and populace see their city in varying perspectives. I will be doing personal and collaborative works that will be presented as exhibitions, screening, talks, etc.

What is our role in changing the city?
We shall make a new urban plan for our city. We are the neo-urban planners

PROJECTS: THE CITY AS OUR CREATIVE JUICE

Neo-Urban Planner

This will be an online project. I shall create a multiply or blogger account wherein I will ask people living in the city (Manila, Cebu, Davao, etc) to take a photo of certain area that they want to 'improve.' They will become urban planners. Creativity in all forms, ways that are intrinsic and integral to the daily life of the city, is encouraged. Just put yourselves in the shoes of the current MMDA chairman. Be creative and innovative. No pink please.... The projects will be presented every Wednesday. The person who submitted a plan will be invited to present and discuss what he thinks should be improved. The collected photos and proposals form the people who participated on the online call will be used for a future exhibit or publication.

email your proposals and plans to: markrams@yahoo.com with the subject "Neo Urban Plan"

Street Art Locator

I will make a map of street art in Metro Manila (by using printed maps or Google maps). This will seve as a guide to "streetsy" tours in the Metro. This will also be presented during the weekly WOP presentation.

Connecting Urban Spaces

The project Connecting Urban Spaces was first exhibied in Brazil in 2007 as an online art production. This project culminated in a collaborative show between artists from different cities in different countries.

The artists created a "virtual office" where they investigated, discussed and developed multimedia artworks about cityscapes and urban environments to produce a physical show. IN wline with the idea to connect and research these urban spaces in the nomadic perspective that the artists are working with, they documented their environments using digital technology such as photography, video, and sound for four months.

In 2009, the project will be a collaborative effort among artist-run organizations: web-based group Wooloo.org from Germany, Emma THomas Gallery from Brazil and Green Papaya Art Projects in the Philippines.

Participating artists are: Adriano Casanova (Brazil/UK), Rafael Surani (Brazil/France), Nick Buer (UK), Aline Vond der Assen (Germany), Constant Dullart (Holand), Raquel Kogan (Brazil), Mark Salvatus (Philippines), Samantha Orui (Brazil), Marcus Bastos (Brazil), Klega (Holland)

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Mark Salvatus is a cross-disciplinary artist based in Manila and Lucban, Philippines. He graduated cum laude at UST College of Fine Arts & Design in 2003 and currently taking up MFA at the same university. In 2007 he was granted a scholarship by the Spanish Program for Cultural Cooperation by the Ministry of Spain in Barcelona. His works have been presented in different galleries, museums and festival in the Philippines and abroad including the CCP, Ateneo Art Gallery, Domestico '08, Madrid; Urban Jealousie-Roaming Biennal of Tehran, Can Serrrat Centro de Actividades Artisticas, Barcelona; Goyang Art Studio Gallery in Seoul; LaVitrine Gallery in Maribor, Slovenia; (ATVP) Contemporary Art in Sydney, STISI in Bandung, Indonesia; No Space and Wunderspaze in Thailand and at the National Contemporary Center of Contemporary Art in Moscow.

He is currently teaching at the Kalayaan College of Humanities and Communications in Marikina, Philippines.

WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM RESIDENCY Progress Report

2008-12-27T20:51:00.000-08:00

Artists/managers of independent art spaces generally don’t receive formal arts management training though they are often leading cultural organisations that employ many people and exercise great influence and creative force in the local context . (Managing Cultural Centers, ASEF 2008)

Conceived as informal, loose, anarchic and spontaneous weekly gathering, the Wednesday Open Platform Residency (WOP) arose from the urgent need for a structured sustainable artistic program especially borne of the fragile and uncertain future that constantly face independent creative spaces like Green Papaya Art Projects. The rationale of the WOP is to develop creative strategies that address the common challenge of sustaining an artistic platform whilst effectively managing the limited resources available to us. At the same time, it aims to recognize the changing face of young-emerging Filipino art practitioners and scholars whose practice transgress the once easy category of artist and curator. The platform envisions a meeting ground where the selected artists/researchers negotiate the exigencies of artistic production, curatorial intervention and cultural management, through a creative residency that also supports their own personal artistic motivations and growth.

Background

Initiated in 2007 as one-night affair to lubricate social, critical and scholarly connections among a tight-knit community of artists living in Manila who share similar concerns and momentum as regards to contemporary art practice. It modestly started out with the usual screenings, jam sessions artist conversations among musicians, filmmakers, performing and visual artists. Then evolving into much –anticipated weekly gathering for interventionist tactics, cross-disciplinary interaction and collaborations in varying artistic stages: with script readings, improvisation jams, lecture-demonstration, live talk shows and even ping-pong nights. It has since played a central role in the cultural and artistic life of the local community. Opening up spaces to discuss and participate in strategies that bridge the gap of managing independent initiatives whilst promoting creative-artistic agendas.

In April 2008, an open call for proposals, research and artistic tendencies was disseminated to the community of artists, students, cultural workers and emerging scholars of the field. It has been received with enthusiasm, considering that WOP remains to be the only multidisciplinary residency program in Manila, a megalopolis of eleven million people. With the support of Arts Network Asia, (ANA) six young artist/researchers from the fields of visual arts, literature, video, dance and the academe were then selected; each of them given two months to work at/in/with Green Papaya. While the program seeks to support the participants’ creative production they are advised to do so within the frame of co-curating a weekly public program as well. The artists shall also assist in documenting and archiving these events, meanwhile soliciting their reflexive insights on an online blog (http://wednesdaysmnlove.blogspot.com). All the outputs of six resident artists will be presented in a book to be published after one year.

The residencies

The first residency took off in August 6 with Angelo Suarez’s Street Smarts. Street Smarts delves into the process that entails the production of text and ‘act of writing.’ The project revolves around the production of language, its practice, deceit and performativity. During the residency, Suarez took a psychogeographic tour of the city, documenting and/or provoking a series of textual tango with taxi drivers in the metro. The work probes into the idea of multiple authorship and the politics of cultural production that between the artist (himself) and the cab drivers he met during the duration of the project. Meanwhile supporting the frame of this research Poem are things, bring together local artists whose works and practice traverse the literary, performative and visual boundaries through weekly readings, performances, screenings, installations and critical play . Unwittingly mapping out existing performance practice, discourse, methodology and production of text within the local art community. The residency ran from August 6 to September 24. Report of the artist here.

The second residency followed, from October 1 to November 26 with Diego Maranan’s Visible Invisible, a creative research project proposing data visualization models useful for social and cultural advocacy. Maranan who is is both an artist and educator teaching at the University of the Philippines, used the residency to propose parallel working methods for social scientists, educators, cultural workers and artists working in the field of knowledge and cultural production. Central to his two-month residency were the one-on-one interactions he had with practitioners from various fields, giving technical advice and support on web design, data visualization, maximizing open-source portals and data management for advocacy. His report appears below

Andrea Teran’s residency Monthly Period Readings slightly veers from the proposed WOP residency rhythm. Instead she runs a once-month reading program in lieu of the straight two-month weekly programming, of which shall run for one year. The Monthly Period Readings started last December 2007, held every last Wednesday of each month established as a venue for a group of writers to read their current takings. However with the support received from ANA, Teran proposed to shift the focus of the readings to feature two young writers in conversation with each other as an avenue to discuss their poetics, styles, motivations, etc. The conversations are open to a public audience who are also invited to glimpse and engage into their artistic processes. For detailed report please go to here.

During the past four months, Teran has organized conversations between Adam David and Conchita Cruz, Lawrence Ypil and Pocholo Goita, Daryll Delgado and Israfel Fagela, and Marguerite de Leon and Yol Jamenda. These reading sessions continue to be followed by regular audience composed of students, enthusiasts and practitioners of Philippine contemporary literature. As of the present, the WOP Monthly Period Readings remains as the only intense discursive platform in Manila that is open to the public. Teran proposes to publish the conversation transcripts to be included in the WOP book at the end of the project.

PROGRESS NOTES | Monthly Period Readings by Andrea Teran

2008-12-08T18:40:00.000-08:00

Held every last Wendnesday of each month, the Monthly Period Readings has evolved gradually ever since it started in December 2007. Initially a venue for a group of writers to read their works, it began in March 2008 to feature one writer a month, in an interview regarding his/her works, poetics, styles, etc. Ever since July however, the format has again changed to a conversation between two writers: now both share their works with the audience, comment on the other's style, ask each other questions, and ultimately, invite their audience into their processes. This level of participation, not to mention variety has led to some very captivating conversations, lasting anywhere from 50 minutes to over two hours.

This latest format has been infinitely more illuminating, if not interesting to say the least. For example, the conversations between Delgado (a fictionist) and Fagela (a songwriter) became both conversations about influences and the everyday "epiphanies" that lead to a particular song or story, and an impromptu acoustic act by Fagela. Ypil and Goitia, a poet and a fictionist, respectively, started with the necessary differences in style required by poetry and fiction, but ultimately arrived at the question of language. What was more interesting was that the direction of this particular conversation was led by questions from a rapt audience.

The last conversation held November, proves to be the most fascinating so far. De Leon, a short story writer, and Jamendang, a blogger/non-fictionist, was chosen primarily the humor in their works, although both write in very different ways. For one, de Leon writes in English, and is often (mis)labeled as one who explores only upper-middle class issues, while Jamending writes in Filipino, and admittedly, caters to issues of the pop culture and the masses. However, despite these disparate topics, both employ humor with unmistakable deft to get their individual points across. Tone and diction were explored and thoroughly debated in the beginning, while the considerable uses of humor as a way of distancing, as well as a statement of rebellion/discontent capped the night to everyone's satisfaction despite the late hour.

The following were the conversation line-up the past four months:

August - Adam David interviewed by Conchitina Cruz
September - Lawrence Ypil and Pocholo Goitia
October - Daryll Delgado and Israfel Fagela
November - Marguerite de Leon and Yol Jamendang

My report for ANA

2008-12-02T04:13:00.000-08:00

I chose to spend the eight Wednesdays I was given to focus on the theme and discipline of data visualization. While most kinds of data visualization practices deal with aggregate information obtained using using various data harvesting techniques, I was interested in seeing if coherent and cogent views on the world could generated from subjective experiences quantified as data, such as those collected by psychologists in quantitative studies of human behavior.
I had created a detailed plan for those eight weeks, which I documented on a website dedicated my residency. However, during the course of the eight weeks, several pressing projects came up, the most important of which was a paper that I had to present for the 5th Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference. Initially, I wasn't quite sure what to write for that paper, but because of the work I was doing for my residency, I decided to use data visualization as the central theme, which resulted in a proposal for creating a portal into Philippine independent cinema. The techniques I proposed for this portal can be easily extended to all kinds of film communities.

During my residency, I held three public discussions: one at the start to express my intended approach to the residency, one in the middle to discuss a particular application of data visualization to supporting initiatives to build international networks of choreographers, and one at the end to present my ASEACC paper.
I also held intense, 1-on-1 discussions with people from across disciplines (arts, social sciences, grassroots advocacy) who dropped by on those Wednesday evenings. We discussed possibilities for data visualization---the presentation of data as an aesthetic form---to support the work they were interested in.
Most of my findings and my output has been documented on the Wednesdays I'm in Love Open Platform blog. For a detailed look at myprocess and output, please refer to http://wednesdaysmnlove.blogspot.com/search/label/Diego%20Maranan

My thanks goes to Arts Network Asia and Green Papaya Art Projects.

Postmorteming

2008-11-30T21:19:00.000-08:00

If I were to identify unique features in my residency, I would have to say that it would be the intense one-on-one discussions I've had punctuated by intimate but still intense presentations. The one-on-one discussions were an unexpected bonus. I realized early on that almost no one would come to my Wednesday development nights, except the outliers of the arts and general community. I took advantage of other events, particularly the well-attended and

In hindsight, my original vision of those developments depended on my gathering an army of programmers, which now seems sily given that I had spent so little time doing outreach to programmers. If I were to do keep on working on this, that's exactly what I would have done.

Yeah, actually, this explains why Carlos Celdran called the work I did "conceptual", which nearly horrified the shit out of me since I had never conceived myself as a conceptual artist, and I don't have a lot of positive associations with the notion. Then again, it only goes to show how little I know of art history.

Throughout these 8 weeks, I feel like I have better appreciation for what artists here are trying to do and why they're doing it. They're trying to find new forms, and yet the act of consciously breaking away from forms inevitably ends up summoning other, possibly forgotten, kinds of forms.

Conversations I've had: With Aya Fabros: she suggests juxtaposing headlines from newspapers against trends in, I don't know, maybe conversations held over the internet. "Because people share the same kind of space of lived experiences," she suggests, "they might be following the 'same trajectory' as the larger conditions. O baka naman, kebs lang." She pointed out something interested: Jung collaborated with Pauli. Whether or not their collaboration generated anything startling or useful, the fact that they did collaborate kind of legitimizes the connections they've seen between such disparate fields as Jungian psychology and quantum physics. Aya's poing was that there could be universal consciousness(es) that are mappable using the kinds of techniques I'm interested in developing.

I find it so incredibly difficult to articulate what I'm trying to do, and I'm not sure whether it's because I don't know what I'm doing, or whether, as Soliman puts it, I would be locking into words a kind of process that is better left untransformed into spoken, written language.

Breadth turned on its side is depth.

"create rooms to engage in art" too engaged in issues of survival

get people to value more things as art, as craft

"you don't need other people to tell you your own stories"

~

Proposal for a portal to Philippine Cinema using data visualization techniques

On the last night of my residency, I presented to about 15 people the portion of the ASEACC paper that I co-write with Jasmine Trice. It seemed well-received, and there was a lot of critical discussion. People raised (rightly) the perennial issue of the digital divide: doesn't my project further marginalize or invisibilize filmmakers who have no web presence? I pointed out that discourses on the digital divide fall in one of two camps: either the Internet opens new spaces that allows individuals to participate in the circulative practices of information-creation and consumption, or it provides yet another new way to separate the haves from the have-nots. If anything, it's possible that visualizing the web presence of Philippine cinematic presences might be able to highlight precisely this digital divide.

~

Notes from my conversation with Sol Hidalgo:

Visualizing information to make it more digestible is pedagogically problematic in that it might provide learning shortcuts. Visualizations could be jump off points, not the central tools for learning. Predigesting information: in times of urgency, where time is not a luxury, maybe predigesting information is necessary. When should you allow the "luxury" of digesting for themselves information? How does one make that leap to mash data together or create a new synthesis?

visit the invisible, visible website for the schedule of events and for more information about this residency

Week ... uh... dammit

2008-11-19T03:36:00.000-08:00

I'm losing track of time. Deadlines are blending with each other. It seems like there August was followed by September, October, then Deadlinemonthber.

Tonight was the night I was supposed to be working on my ASEACC presentation tomorrow and start sketching out the lecture I'm giving for the Center for International Studies at the University of the Philippines. I ended up talking with Fumi Yokobori of NPO Dance Box about Philippine contemporary dance. I felt a bit like a faker, though... more later...

visit the invisible, visible website for the schedule of events and for more information about this residency

w.o.p NOV 19 DIEGO MARANAN | The Visible, Invisible

2008-11-17T17:32:00.000-08:00

When data visualization goes wrong

2008-11-11T07:39:00.000-08:00

Breaking News: Series Of Concentric Circles Emanating From Glowing Red Dot

Visualizing circulating phenomena in Philippine cinema using web data

2008-11-08T23:27:00.000-08:00

I just finished my contribution to the ASEACC '08 paper that Jasmine Nadua Trice and I are writing. Woohoo! I'll include this in my residency output.

VISIT THE INVISIBLE, VISIBLE WEBSITE FOR THE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS AND FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS RESIDENCY

no more mysteries | WOP November 5

2008-11-02T18:27:00.001-08:00

NO MORE MYSTERIES THIS WEDNESDAY

Admittedly October was indeed a whole month of partying-hell month. Yes, we have survived the dizzying and yet gratifying storm of exhibition openings, talks, festivals, tributes, launchings, and receptions. Thanks to undying testimonials of love. As usual the rains have been unpredictable and before early Christmas carols seal off our sensitivities we bring you another mind-fuck evening as we host another screening of Dahci Ma's Mysteries of Nature (this one's for those of you who missed it the last two times).

Meanwhile, openness is a reality not one of us can escape. It feeds on the machine of our times, like a leech sucking the blood out of us, nevertheless creating for reflection, subversion and communication. Diego Maranan speaks about Open Source Dance Project, a tool for licensing and sharing choreography as one possible way to build global community of dancers and track the flow of choreographic ideas using the Web.

This one's almost a dance night and we have been waiting for you fanatics to come out of the cave to play. You know you want to! After drinks with the artists shall follow.

Week 5

2008-10-29T00:57:00.000-07:00

Oh dear. Oh dear. So much work to do. Today is Google API night.

Just finished a very rough version of the Green Papaya Site. It's built using Google Sites. (I did say it was very rough.) Basically, it's the quickest way I know how to introduce Donna and Peewee to managing their own content.

~

Just had a talk with Lori Almirez. She...

... has been working for the Jesuit Communication Foundation at the Ateneo University, an organization that provides multimedia training to Catholic organizations. They recently held a four-Saturday workshop on "e-advocacy" for non-profits, not all of whom (I gather) were faith-based. (An old friend of mine, filmmaker Ditsi Carolino, was one of the participants.) Lori asked some of the individuals to fill out a "Data Visualization for Advocacy" training needs assessment form. (I can't she believe she just took the initiative and did this. It's fantastic.)
.... has been in touch with a Waray anti-mining group, one of whom made a film about it.
... has connections with a group somehow interested or working with issues of water privatization.
... has connections with the Ibon Foundation, a research organization that produces all sorts of quantitative and qualitative data related to the Philippines, and produces reports and other publications.

We talked about many things. She's interested in popularizing through education certain kinds of issues which rarely make it in mainstream curricula. I proposed that one way to go about it is to present them partly as science education issues. For instance, issues around mining and struggles of communities in mining towns could be integrated in a syllabus about geography, geology, etc. Data visualization could play a part in helping explain science-related ideas, as well as link it to relevant data about human activity.

Something... a niggling thought. Thinking about the classifications of data visualizations I made. Some visualizations unpack complexity, some reveal underlying patternsin large amounts of data. When I talk about "Data Visualization for Advocacy" a lot of the kind of work that I want to do is more about unpacking complexity. One thing I'm really interested in is instead of advocating for a certain issue per se and presenting data that only favors one side of the debate... (Update 31 Oct: Yes, I want to boost this idea. Visualizations can complicate notions, as it were. )

I remember a quote I read many years ago on a poster at the LGBTQ center in Vancouver, something about how the greatest evil is sitting on the fence in the time of greatest need. I don't know how much I would subscribe in that.

At any rate,

design+science+education = lots of work being done
art+design+science+advocacy = not so much?

~
My goal for the end of today is to finish all the google map api tutorials. Then I take a nap. Then I mark papers.

~

VISIT THE INVISIBLE, VISIBLE WEBSITE FOR THE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS AND FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS RESIDENCY

w.o.p OCT 29 | MONTHLY PERIOD READINGS + Diego Maranan Invisible Visible

2008-10-28T01:41:00.000-07:00

Eureka 1

2008-10-23T21:37:00.000-07:00

I think... I think I know what it is that I want to do. I want to string together a series of data and create story about individuals and societies. I think I want to pull together all sorts of different graphs, data charts, narratives, interviews, and weave it together, centered around the life of... Lebanon, the little dog tied to the tree.

I think I'm going to need to start developing some mad development and design skills.

VISIT THE INVISIBLE, VISIBLE WEBSITE FOR THE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS AND FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS RESIDENCY

Numbers that matter

2008-10-23T20:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I went out on a date. (Really, I assure you, this post is relevant to my residency.) Over beer, my date told me an incredible story about how his (now ex-) boyfriend pursued him incessantly at a time of his life when my date didn't realize he liked men. The guy sent him flowers and txted him invitations to lunch. Then they broke up. Then the guy got a women pregnant. Then the women gave birth on my date's birthday. Then the guy gets into a car accident and gets killed.

Ok, I guess that story is only peripheral to my point, which is this: the stories often told when visualizing statistical data are kind of like shorthand stories that describe aggregate experiences. Data visualization of human behavior points to the triumphant popularization of social science, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

But there are so many interesting personal stories out there, stories of intense significance, that get lost in aggreggate, social data. The artists that I've met in Manila recently have waxed ecstatic over Jonathan Harris and his evocative but---ironically enough---affectively distant project on emotions collected over the Web, We Feel Fine; what I found more interesting was the Whale Hunt, his 2007 experiment in storytelling.

Numbers. Numbers provide the basis for data visualization. What kind of "important numbers" can we extract from individual lives? In the Whale Hunt, Jonathan Harris experimented with trying to quantify the perception of time and linking it heightened emotions. He subdivided time into elastic but well-defined intervals that became shorter and shorter as the experience becomes more heightened.

How do "individually important numbers" relate to "social/aggreggate important numbers"? This is still the avenue I seem to be stuck on when trying to realize the vision of "data visualization for advocacy".

But does it have to be that?

VISIT THE INVISIBLE, VISIBLE WEBSITE FOR THE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS AND FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS RESIDENCY

Halfway through

2008-10-22T04:24:00.000-07:00

I originally planned to be doing an interim presentation of what I've done so far, but I've accomplished far less than what I would have wanted. For one thing, I haven't been able to live up to my promise to work 2-7 pm every Wednesday and Thursday at Green Papaya on visualization stuff. So far it has just been convenient for me to work at home or in my office. Plus I have a backlog of stuff from my day job to do. I still need to finish marking all the papers and giving students their grades, plus I need to develop large sections of a course on designing and assessing educational multimedia by this Saturday! Tomorrow, I have a workshop to conduct, plus my lola's birthday to attend, then dinner out. Friday I have dinner with fellow faculty, then straight to Laguna to work with Raul and Arjan on our research on Web 2.0 and everyday life in the Philippines.

I'm also getting increasingly worried by the credit crunch. When I really started to hear what analysts are saying about how things are going to look "next year", I finally clued in to what is happening. Even if the markets stabilize themselves soon, effects are going to spread like a ripple (or, perhaps more accurately, like a tidal wave) forward through time and cartographic space. Actually, it would be a good idea to take all the data related to market fluctuations and turn it into a visualization. I wish I knew more about who trades with whom... or what kind of economic or trade connections would be relevant to following the fluctuations of the market.

Anyway, tonight I have to make a couple of decisions. How much do I still want to pursue Antipode? I need to double check with Donna whether she has data related to the kind of audience we can pull into Green Papaya.

My residency has been very quiet and very low impact. For me, this is certainly a Good Thing. I feel like I can work on some important issues through. Blogging on this residency has been very useful. I can only hope that Peewee and Donna, who run Green Papaya, haven't been alarmed with how uneventful the past few weeks have been; they seem to have been under a great deal of stress lately.

But this is just a lot of fretting. Must move on. :)

Ok, tonight, I will flesh out the audience specs for Antipode a bit more. I'll continue where I left off last week learning about the Google Map API. I'll narrow the scope of my literature review. I'll read one visualization paper and make notes. And then I'll call it quits.

I was looking for tools I could use to indicate where my Facebook friends were on a map (to show the folks at iTrixx(. No luck yet, but I did come across this neat tool for visualizing your FB network.

VISIT THE INVISIBLE, VISIBLE WEBSITE FOR THE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS AND FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS RESIDENCY

w.o.p OCTOBER 22 DIEGO MARANAN | The Visible, Invisible

2008-10-19T20:24:00.000-07:00

Weekend thoughts

2008-10-19T00:07:00.000-07:00

Jong Pairez brought to my attention Zanny Begg's work. I'm glad he did.

Last Wednesday, I was talking with a painter who I've only met recently at Green Papaya Miko Sandejas. I feel ashamed because a) I can't remember his name; b) I was kind of dismissive of a lecture he brought to my attention that he had heard earlier in the day on Veritas.org, about how Christianity has been instrumental in the development of Western science. I really need to control my knee-jerk reaction against Christians and Christianity. Ashamed, I went to check out the site two days later. I'm clearly still not an exemplar of religious tolerance, since the first lecture I downloaded for listening Os Guinness' "The One Unanswerable Objection to the Christian Faith: Christians".

If you're reading this, painter dude, pasensya ka na!

I'm beginning to get a good sense of what I want to do as one of the things I want to present. I'm kind of regretting having to work so much on interactive floor display thing, which was kind of a spinoff from the original Wii remote motion tracking idea I had.

VISIT THE INVISIBLE, VISIBLE WEBSITE FOR THE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS AND FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS RESIDENCY

Visualizing past communities

2008-10-18T01:43:00.000-07:00

A letter to Chng Nai Rui :

Vikram Seth translated (or helped translate) the poems of three T'ang dynasty poets. One of the poets (I can't remember which one) wrote frequently about traveling and leaving, which presented more problems then as it does now. Friends visiting from distant lands could not assure their host of a second visit. In some ways, it's fantastic that we (or those who can afford it, at least) have the luxury of mobility. On the other hand, I think we've lost something beautiful and poignant when we can choose to avoid difficult, permanent goodbyes.

But this is all tangential to your point, which is more about the traveler/immigrant immersed in societies and communities. Yeah, definitely: different spaces, different levels, different kinds of interactions. I wish there was a way to be able to talk about or visualize these new possibilities... actually, I suppose that's one of the things I could work on [in my residency]!

To prepare for my move to Canada next year, I've been practising something for the past year or so. I've been consciously superimposing my "Canadian headspaces"—the internal worlds I carried within while I lived in Vancouver, Montreal, and Victoria—with whatever my current headspace is at any given time. I try to summon emotions and ideas from that North American past to the here and now, and I work with both sets of headspaces at the same time. I suppose what I'm trying to do is come up with more unified approaches to interacting with (and inhabiting) the world as a whole.

I think this experiment has suggested some concrete strategies I can use. For example, I have resolved to drop as much of my North American accent as I can when I return to canada, but also not try to force it out my speech patterns while living in Manila.

I'm hoping that I can generate complementary strategies to building what you so accurately call "'temporary' communities of mutual support".

VISIT THE INVISIBLE, VISIBLE WEBSITE FOR THE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS AND FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS RESIDENCY

More Conversations

2008-10-15T05:51:00.000-07:00

Tad Ermitaño:

Multiple indicators (happiness/sadness, amount of garbage) can be used to illustrate a point
Lots of pizzas ordered at the white house => late night meetings => national emergencies
An investigative approach to the data; inferential approach

When I told Tad that one problem in the Philippines is the lack of available, reliable data, he responds by pointing out that (and it's hard to remember exactly how he strung his arguments together) that the lack of data (or, rather, lack of order) protects anarchic, counter-cultural expressions.

VISIT THE INVISIBLE, VISIBLE WEBSITE FOR THE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS AND FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS RESIDENCY

Week 3: iTrixx, planning, et al

2008-10-15T03:19:00.001-07:00

I'm here in the space. Things have been moved around. Peewee has set up a kind of space that is closer to a reception area than an office. I like the widened field of view. We'll see if it works out. So far, so good.

Today, I:

read up on some programming principles
planned the rest of my output

My output:

Visualization: Review of theory
Visualization: Compilation of best practices and examples
ASEACC map
Processing Story

I think what I need for each then is kind of a separate account for each of these.

I met up with iTrixx (finally!) earlier this week. (Was it just Monday?) And they want to see what what kind of exposure they'll be getting for an installation.

	Number	Profile	Marketing strategy
Students from UP Open University, including my own students	At least 30	18-50 years old; most are professionals in their respective fields who are interested in continuing education	Email invites; Invites through social networking sites;
Students from elementary schools + their parents	At least 20	[Diego to fill this up]	[Diego to fill this up]
Green Papaya Art Community	???	???	???
Professors from University of the Philippines Diliman, Ateneo in social sciences, humanities, technology	at least 8	[Diego to fill this up]	[Diego to fill this up]
Writers' Night Community	20-30 + their students	faculty, professionals, and students from UP and Ateneo (the host of the event;	The writers' night is a regularly scheduled event at Green Papaya;
???	???	???	???
???	???	???	???

Other people who will learn about

Other possible lead: invite bloggers to review this (although I think I've already made myself a little unpopular with a couple of prominent bloggers).

Fete de la Wasaque is happening right now and, unbelievably enough, I am able to really really work. Somehow, this auditory assault is allowing me to concentrate. Amazing.

What I've accomplished today (related to this residency)

talked to andrea and donna about trying to get profiles for antipodes night
tried google maps API tutorial. Oodles more to go.
talked to the Libre Lahat group to display their work here
talked to painter guy and Tad
watched Fete de la Wasaque

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Wasak and rigor

2008-10-08T06:11:00.000-07:00

This came in my inbox today.

Air Traffic Worldwide 24HR from kouko a on Vimeo.

Had a good talk with Anna Gonzales last night. We talked about our various disciplines---architecture for her, computing science for me---as kind of structuring devices that help with the art-making, storytelling, and community organizing that we do. They impose the rigor that we need in our work.

Both intellectual and disciplinal rigor need to be developed in a lot of the younger (and not-so-young) artists that produce work at Green Papaya. There's a local term that gets thrown about at independent art events I've seen: wasak, which Lourd de Veyra somewhat formalized in Green Papaya's latest publication. The term has great explanatory power and it's useful if viewed as a phase in the evolution of a creative community, but it has the potential of becoming a mere excuse for self-indulgence.

Anna reminds me how people will interact and interpret the creative space a work carves (a building in her case, a digital landscape in mine) differently. When I showed her Hello Manila, she brings up the subject of Zen. "If you take a step back [from the visualization] the distance between any two extremes becomes insignificant, and the manic back-and-forthing resolves into a kind of stillness. It helps to have a perspective about how small we really are." I changed a few variables in the Processing code and revised the visualization to show if I interpreted her idea correctly, which was a useful exercise because I was able to confirm that, in fact, I didn't!

"Movement is important. You die when you don't move," Anna reminds me. "The more you move, the stiller it gets."

I think Hello Manila can evolve into a storytelling tool based on the many conversations I've had over the course of this residency.

I show her the book Siteless, since I am completely in love with the book. She flips through it nonchalantly. "I'm cynical about shapes." (That was my phrase of the day.) I suppose I could be, too.

~

I got an email from mathematician Fidel Nemenzo this morning. He's been very helpful linking me up with May Lim, a physicist at UP who is interested statistical visualizations, but who also did some research on global pattern formation and ethnic violence. I've put her paper on the list of work I need to read.

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Storytelling

2008-10-08T03:29:00.000-07:00

I came in earlier this afternoon to set up my office. Looks like I'm all set. About 80 of my books about art, technology, performance, and sociology (plus a good selection of my books from childhood!) are on display and ready for sharing. Next week, a space at the back of the second floor will open up where Donna will be moving her current workspace into. Then I'll move into hers.

I met Alma Quinto---who conducts workshops with marginalized communities---this afternoon, and she pointed out something that I started to realize about early last week and now is so obvious I can't understand why I've never said it out loud: visualizing psychological data as I did in Hello Manila can be used to aid in the telling of a story. Again, this is another way to use this technology for advocacy.

It seems that one of the questions is, "How is data visualization useful? Can it be a tool for telling stories that will move people to action, or change the way they look at the world? Or can it be a tool for telling their own stories?"

Ok, so here's what will have to happen. I will have to use this residency to work on the interactive project that film scholar and colleague Jasmine Trice has proposed we work on for our presentation in the Annual Southeast Asian Cinema Conference this November. In a nutshell, it's a map of Filipino independent cinema, but with critical perspectives. I think first thing I need is to put down a set of requirement specifications. Then I'll have to look at the different APIs that I would need to use. Programmableweb.com will be probably be invaluable. Then I would also need to take a look at existing data: how well can we populate this visualization with data that already exists? I will really need to talk with other film makers.

(Damn, I should have gone to .MOV! I've been so exhausted with teaching my class that I didn't make it to a single night.)

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Planning for tomorrow

2008-10-07T04:58:00.000-07:00

Ok. So tomorrow, I need to:

Go to the gym in the morning
Move all my books and my lamp to GP
Set up the "whiteboard"
Call iTrixx for that exhibit for the last week of the residency!
Flesh out the timeline in even more detail.

I think I know what I need to do for the residency:

Work on the mashup for the ASEACC conference
Work on the "personal story projects"
Work on a visualization for education paper (write abstract)
Use (3) as a foundation for a longer publication I want to make about art+technology+education

I need a process by which to collect stories and describe visualizations.

Some themes:

"Using data visualization techniques to tell stories" (to tell stories? or to allow people to tell *their* stories)

"Using visualizations to resolve or expand on ambiguous or ambivalent points in a discourse"

I'm quite excited.

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List of readings

2008-10-07T04:34:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the readings I'm hoping to go through during the residency. This is going to be an evolving list.

How-To's / Visualization for Beginners

“Tactical Technology Collective,” http://www.tacticaltech.org/.
John Emerson, “Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design” (Tactical Technology Collective, January 2008), http://www.tacticaltech.org/infodesign.
“The Work of Edward Tufte and Graphics Press,” http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/index.
“Flickr Photo Download: periodic table of visualization methods,” http://flickr.com/photos/colby/352895722/sizes/o/.

Books

Edward R. Tufte, Beautiful Evidence (Graphics Press, 2006).
Edward R. Tufte, Envisioning Information (Graphics Press, 1990).
Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees, 2005.
“Graphs, Maps, Trees - Franco Moretti: an overview of the reviews and critical reactions,” http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/morettif/graphs.htm.
Stephen Few, Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data (O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2006).
Robert L. Harris, Information Graphics: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference, 1st ed. (Oxford University Press, USA, 2000).
Colin Ware, Information Visualization, Second Edition: Perception for Design, 2nd ed. (Morgan Kaufmann, 2004).
Ira Greenberg, Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art, 1st ed. (friends of ED, 2007).
Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition, 2nd ed. (Graphics Press, 2001).
Edward R. Tufte, Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative (Graphics Press, 1997).
Paul Mijksenaar, Visual Function: an Introduction to Information Design (010 Publishers, 1997).
Charles D. Hansen and Chris R. Johnson, Visualization Handbook, 1st ed. (Academic Press, 2004).
Ben Fry, Visualizing Data (O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2008).

Examples

“131 - US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs,” Strange Maps, June 10, 2007, http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/06/10/131-us-states-renamed-for-countries-with-similar-gdps/.
Greenpeace, “Exxon Secrets,” Exxonsecrets.org, http://www.exxonsecrets.org/maps.php.
“Magnetosphere revisited (audio by Tosca) on Vimeo,” http://vimeo.com/169308.
“MAKE: Blog: Apple's new iTunes visualizer & the open source Processing language,” http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/09/apples_new_itunes_visuali.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890.
Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, “Map of demonstrations August-September 2007 - ALTSEAN Burma,” ALTSEAN-BURMA, http://www.altsean.org/Photogalleries/ProtestsMap.php.
Froz Gobo, “Much Better,” apostropher, June 27, 2007, http://www.apostropher.com/blog/archives/003827.html.
“ProgrammableWeb - Mashups, APIs, and the Web as Platform,” http://www.programmableweb.com/.
“Tactical Technology Collective,” http://www.tacticaltech.org/.
Golan Levin, Kamal Nigam, and Jonathan Feinberg, “The Dumpster,” February 14, 2006, http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/bvs/thedumpster.htm.
Just Vision, “Timeline,” Just Vision, http://justvision.org/en/timeline.
Walter Rafelsberger, “Twitter Conversations Map,” visualcomplexity.com, 2008, http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project_details.cfm?id=600&index=600&domain=.
UP Open University, “"What is Multimedia?" These results show how often these words came up in 19 of your responses in the discussion forum,” MMS100: Introduction to Multimedia Studies (1st Semester, 2008), http://sites.google.com/a/upou.edu.ph/mms100/course-outline/sfg987srtew4rtf/whatismultimediaresults.
Alisa Miller, Why we know less than ever about the world, TED2008 (Monterey, California, 2007), http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/alisa_miller_shares_the_news_about_the_news.html.
“yugop.com,” http://yugop.com/.

Tools for Visualization

Adam Ostrow , “16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools,” Mashable: Social Networking News, http://mashable.com/2007/05/15/16-awesome-data-visualization-tools/.
“Gapminder - Home,” http://www.gapminder.org/.
“Many Eyes,” http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/home.
“Processing 1.0 (BETA),” http://processing.org/.
“ProgrammableWeb - Mashups, APIs, and the Web as Platform,” http://www.programmableweb.com/.
“SocialAction,” http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/socialaction/.
“The Visualization Toolkit,” http://www.vtk.org/.
“Visual Understanding Environment,” http://vue.tufts.edu/.
“vvvv: a multipurpose toolkit : vvvv : a multipurpose toolkit,” http://vvvv.org/tiki-index.php.

Papers, Presentations, and other Research

“2000 IEEE Conference on Information Visualization. An International Conference on Computer Visualization and Graphics,” in Information Visualization, 2000. Proceedings. IEEE International Conference on, 2000, doi:10.1109/IV.2000.859728.
T.J. Jankun-Kelly, Kwan-Liu Ma, and M. Gertz, “A Model and Framework for Visualization Exploration,” Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on 13, no. 2 (2007): 357-369, doi:10.1109/VISUAL.1992.235232.
R. Sisneros et al., “A Multi-Level Cache Model for Run-Time Optimization of Remote Visualization,” Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on 13, no. 5 (2007): 991-1003, doi:10.1109/TVCG.2007.1046.
E.H.-H. Chi et al., “A spreadsheet approach to information visualization,” in Information Visualization, 1997. Proceedings., IEEE Symposium on, 1997, 17-24, doi:10.1109/INFVIS.1997.636761.
D.H. House, A.S. Bair, and C. Ware, “An approach to the perceptual optimization of complex visualizations,” Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on 12, no. 4 (2006): 509-521, doi:10.1109/38.865874.
J.M. Favre and J. Hahn, “An object oriented design for the visualization of multi-variable data objects,” in Visualization, 1994., Visualization '94, Proceedings., IEEE Conference on, 1994, 318-325, CP35, doi:10.1109/VISUAL.1994.346303.
Ed Huai-Hsin Chi and J.T. Riedl, “An operator interaction framework for visualization systems,” in Information Visualization, 1998. Proceedings. IEEE Symposium on, 1998, 63-70, doi:10.1109/INFVIS.1998.729560.
K. Nakakoji, A. Takashima, and Y. Yamamoto, “Cognitive effects of animated visualization in exploratory visual data analysis,” in Information Visualisation, 2001. Proceedings. Fifth International Conference on, 2001, 77-84, doi:10.1109/IV.2001.942042.
D.P.J. Goodburn and R.J. Vernik, “Deploying systems visualisation environments: an agent-based approach,” in Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information Engineering Systems, 1999. Third International Conference, 1999, 26-29, doi:10.1109/KES.1999.820111.
S.-O. Tergan and T. Keller, “Digital concept mapping in learning contexts: integrating knowledge, arguments and information resources,” in Information Visualisation, 2005. Proceedings. Ninth International Conference on, 2005, 371-376.
W. Schnotz, “Enabling, Facilitating, and Inhibiting Effects in Learning from Animated Pictures,” Proceedings of the International Workshop on Dynamic Visualizations and Learning (2002).
D. Weiskopf et al., “Explanatory and illustrative visualization of special and general relativity,” Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on 12, no. 4 (2006): 522-534.
M. Mukherjee and L. B. Holder, “Graph-based data mining on social networks,” Workshop on Link Analysis and Group Detection (in conj. with KDD) (2004).
A. D'Amico and M. Kocka, “Information assurance visualizations for specific stages of situational awareness and intended uses: lessons learned,” in Visualization for Computer Security, 2005. (VizSEC 05). IEEE Workshop on, 2005, 107-112, doi:10.1109/VISUAL.2005.1532781.
Adam Perer and Ben Shneiderman, “Integrating Statistics and Visualization: Case Studies of
Gaining Clarity during Exploratory Data Analysis,” in Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (presented at the CHI 2008, Florence, Italy, 2008), http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/2008-03/2008-03.pdf.
R. Smeulders and A. Heijs, “Interactive visualization of high dimensional marketing data in the financial industry,” in Information Visualisation, 2005. Proceedings. Ninth International Conference on, 2005, 814-817, doi:10.1109/IV.2005.66.
R.A. Burkhard, “Learning from architects: the difference between knowledge visualization and information visualization,” in Information Visualisation, 2004. IV 2004. Proceedings. Eighth International Conference on, 2004, 519-524, doi:10.1109/IV.2004.1320194.
C. Seifert et al., “On the Beauty and Usability of Tag Clouds,” in Information Visualisation, 2008. IV '08. 12th International Conference, 2008, 17-25.
D. House, A. Bair, and C. Ware, “On the optimization of visualizations of complex phenomena,” in Visualization, 2005. VIS 05. IEEE, 2005, 87-94, doi:10.1109/VISUAL.2005.1532782.
M. Novotny and H. Hauser, “Outlier-Preserving Focus+Context Visualization in Parallel Coordinates,” Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on 12, no. 5 (2006): 893-900, doi:10.1109/TVCG.2006.170.
“Proceedings IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (Cat. No.98TB100258),” in Information Visualization, 1998. Proceedings. IEEE Symposium on, 1998, doi:10.1109/IV.2004.1320194.
“Proceedings of Seventh Annual IEEE Visualization '96,” in Visualization '96. Proceedings., 1996, 3, doi:10.1109/TVCG.2008.69.
“Proceedings Visualization '98 (Cat. No.98CB36276),” in Visualization '98. Proceedings, 1998, 3, doi:10.1109/VISUAL.1998.745279.
“Proceedings Visualization '99 (Cat. No.99CB37067),” in Visualization '99. Proceedings, 1999, 0_1.
“Proceedings. 1998 IEEE Conference on Information Visualization. An International Conference on Computer Visualization and Graphics (Cat. No.98TB100246),” in Information Visualization, 1998. Proceedings. 1998 IEEE Conference on, 1998, doi:10.1109/IV.1998.694191.
“Proceedings. Visualization '92 (Cat. No.92CH3201-1),” in Visualization, 1992. Visualization '92, Proceedings., IEEE Conference on, 1992, doi:10.1109/TVCG.2007.28.
M.E. Tudoreanu, D. Hart, and G.-C. Roman, “Reshapeable visualizations,” in Multimedia Software Engineering, 2000. Proceedings. International Symposium on, 2000, 245-250.
J.A. Cottam and A. Lumsdaine, “Stencil: A Conceptual Model for Representation and Interaction,” in Information Visualisation, 2008. IV '08. 12th International Conference, 2008, 51-56, doi:10.1109/IV.2008.66.
B. Shneiderman, “The eyes have it: a task by data type taxonomy for information visualizations,” in Visual Languages, 1996. Proceedings., IEEE Symposium on, 1996, 336-343, doi:10.1109/VL.1996.545307.
J.J. van Wijk, “The value of visualization,” in Visualization, 2005. VIS 05. IEEE, 2005, 79-86, doi:10.1109/VIZSEC.2005.1532072.
S. Douglas, C. Hundhausen, and D. McKeown, “Toward empirically-based software visualization languages,” in Visual Languages, Proceedings., 11th IEEE International Symposium on, 1995, 342-349, doi:10.1109/VL.1995.520828.
C. North, “Toward measuring visualization insight,” Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE 26, no. 3 (2006): 6-9, doi:10.1109/MCG.2006.70.
A. Lau and A.V. Moere, “Towards a Model of Information Aesthetics in Information Visualization,” in Information Visualization, 2007. IV '07. 11th International Conference, 2007, 87-92.
C. Hundhausen and S. Douglas, “Using visualizations to learn algorithms: should students construct their own, or view an expert's?,” in Visual Languages, 2000. Proceedings. 2000 IEEE International Symposium on, 2000, 21-28, doi:10.1109/VL.2000.874346.
J.J. van Wijk, “Views on Visualization,” Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on 12, no. 4 (2006): 1000-433, doi:10.1109/TVCG.2006.80.
J. Sweller, “Visualisation and Instructional Design,” Proceedings of the International Workshop on Dynamic Visualizations and Learning (2002): 1501-1510.
Hu Jiawei, A. Bailey, and A. Sutcliffe, “Visualisation design knowledge reuse,” in Information Visualisation, 2004. IV 2004. Proceedings. Eighth International Conference on, 2004, 745-751, doi:10.1109/IV.2004.1320225.
R. Kosara, “Visualization Criticism - The Missing Link Between Information Visualization and Art,” in Information Visualization, 2007. IV '07. 11th International Conference, 2007, 631-636, doi:10.1109/IV.2007.130.
D. Weiskopf et al., “Visualization in the Einstein Year 2005: a case study on explanatory and illustrative visualization of relativity and astrophysics,” in Visualization, 2005. VIS 05. IEEE, 2005, 583-590, doi:10.1109/VISUAL.2005.1532845.
C. North, N. Conklin, and V. Saini, “Visualization schemas for flexible information visualization,” in Information Visualization, 2002. INFOVIS 2002. IEEE Symposium on, 2002, 15-22, doi:10.1109/INFVIS.2002.1173142.
K.-L. Ma, “Visualizing visualizations. User interfaces for managing and exploring scientific visualization data,” Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE 20, no. 5 (2000): 16-19, doi:10.1109/TVCG.2006.58.

Art as Research

Ronald J. Chenail, “"But is it research?":
A Review of Patricia Leavy’s Method Meets Art: Arts-Based
Research Practice,” The Weekly Qualitative Report 1, no. 2 (October 2, 2008), http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/WQR/leavy.pdf.
Shaun McNiff, Art-Based Research: Shaun McNiff, 1st ed. (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1998).
Patricia Leavy, Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice, 1st ed. (The Guilford Press, 2008).
Four Arrows (AKA Don Trent Jacobs), The Authentic Dissertation: Alternative Ways of Knowing, Research and Representation, 1st ed. (Routledge, 2008).
Orit Simhoni, “The False Witness: Artistic Research on Stage,” The Qualitative Report 13, no. 3 (September 2008): 353-378.

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Notes from brown bag lecture I gave at the Psychology Department

2008-10-05T23:39:00.000-07:00

I reprised the two talks I gave in Week 1 to a group from the Psych Department at UP Diliman. Again, their feedback was very useful. Here are my rough notes, which would probably be incomprehensible to anyone else than me:

students sometimes lose the message in the attempt to visualize data
dapat siyang ipasok kasi students are required not just to gather data but to present data

perhaps they would value the data more
comm research has
50%

hindi kailangang vertical
transgender, sexual fluidity among women
men stable, women less stable?

chei needs internet
focus on leaders?
not everyone in the community is equal
political psychology
lookign at people with lots of social interaction
sagada, manicurista ng town who highly connected

citations: who cites who, which fields get ignored
faculty inbreeding

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OfficeKo, AklatanMo: Mga libro

2008-10-02T19:11:00.001-07:00

This is what you can expect to find at my office in Green Papaya.

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Week 1: Presentation for tonight

2008-10-01T08:47:00.000-07:00

This is what I'm going to be presenting tonight. (For tonight, I'll be changing the presentation a bit and replacing the cover slide. But essentially, it's the same thing.)

Visualizing Data: Making Sense of an Information-Rich World

visit the invisible, visible website for the schedule of events and for more information about this residency

Things I need to do

2008-09-30T05:58:00.000-07:00

I think these are some absolutely crucial things I need to do during my residency hours

Literature review
Write funding proposal for PhilICT research grant
Do ASEACC

visit the invisible, visible website for the schedule of events and for more information about this residency

One day more

2008-09-29T16:56:00.000-07:00

I'm 87.9% done downloading the consumer edition of The Corporation and donating a small fee for its use through the movie's website.

I think there has never been a better time to screen this movie than right in the middle of the US financial crisis. Does anyone else feel (un)lucky enough to witness the start of the fall of a major empire? Or is my awe premature? Somehow I don't think it is. Katherine Dodds writes on the website of a project associated (I'm not exactly sure how, but it is) with The Corporation:

French President Sarkozy says the days when "the all powerful market is always right are over". The Real News Network spoke to economist and historian Dr. Michael Hudson who says that it's not a "bailout" but a "giveaway" and will create a new kleptocracy of billionaires.

Surely there are visualizations that have been generated about the US economy and the $700 billion (failed) bailout plan.

11:33 pm
The financial disaster has spread to the Asian stock market. "It's a very very bleak picture," says one analyst on the BBC.

On a completely different note, I'm wondering whether I should also transport my desktop to the space...

visit the invisible, visible website for the schedule of events and for more information about this residency

Psychology and visualization, part 2

2008-09-29T01:30:00.000-07:00

I showed three psychology faculty the visualization I had created on mapping shifts in emotional or cognitive states. They lots of interesting feedback on possible uses for describing what they called resilience. The way the moving line disappears could reflect a constantly changing measure of resilience, or something to that effect. Someone noticed that the decay rate of the tail was constant, which it doesn't have to be; in real life, the ability to "erase the past" as it were changes through time. (Whoever pointed this out had an excellent eye.)

I think with this alone I have enough to go on for the next several weeks. To link it to advocacy, I think we might just need to present an individual's graph alongside someone else's. As they pointed out, measures of normalcy are statistical. Rae Macapagal was interested in visualizing a triangulation method used to visualize and determine compatibility. Chei Billedo was interested in love as a biochemical process. (I should probably forward her the talk by Helen Fisher about love on TED Talks.)

Maybe we could do some of cross-cultural comparisons? I wonder what kind of data is available.

I'm beginning to suspect that just about any data, in the hands of a good information designer, can be made not only interesting, but a point of departure for a social justice and advocacy agenda.

visit the invisible, visible website for the schedule of events and for more information about this residency

DIEGO MARANAN | Invisible, Visible

2008-09-28T19:43:00.000-07:00

Diego Maranan is an educator working in the fields of dance. Past work includes research in translating dance notation into computer animation with Tom Calvert (Credo Interactive, Canada) and Ilene Fox (Dance Notation Bureau, USA); investigating qualities of human movement in SecondLife.com avatars with choreographer Sara Coffin as Dance Lab residents at the Scotiabank Dance Centre (Canada); and his continuing development of a framework for licensing and sharing choreography under a Creative Commons license, which he presented at the 2007 New Forms Festival in Vancouver. He has worked with artists professionally in the field of information technology on both sides of the Pacific and has conducted workshops in Canada, Japan and the Philippines. Diego received his BSc in Contemporary Dance and Computing Science from Simon Fraser University (Canada) in 2005 ad has received several academic distinctions, including a four-year Gordon Shrum International Scholarship at Simon Fraser, a University of the Philippines Oblation Award offer, a Canadian Information Processing Student of the Year nomination, and a 2006 Holy Body Tattoo Emerging Artist for British Columbia honourable mention. The Invisible, Visible is the second in a series of w.o.p Residency. Talk starts at 7 PM.

A few days to go

2008-09-28T08:19:00.000-07:00

I'm procrastinating big time, but somehow I'm not sure what exactly I'm trying to put off.

At least what's clear is that on Wednesday I need to present two talks. The first talk I still need to edit from the talk I gave with Angelo. The second one I need to rehearse, possibly edit.

I guess I don't exactly know what's going to go on during my residency until after I start. I don't know how much I should advertise the opening. Really, I suppose this residency is for me. During my last meeting with Donna and Peewee, they assured me that this residency is supposed to support whatever is that I need to do. So really I should take their word for it.

What I need to do is refine some of the personal visualizations I've already done. Make them consistent. Create a presentation based entirely on visualizations. I need to sketch them.

visit the invisible, visible website for the schedule of events and for more information about this residency

Mini-projects to do: An initial list

2008-09-26T23:45:00.000-07:00

Open Source Dance (particularly if Jon and other UPOU-OSD group members can join)
Plaridel
Jasmine's proposal for our paper for the ASEACC:
i know what i wanna write for the conference panel, it's gonna be experimental ish. about a proposal i want to put together for the asian cultural council. it's basically about making something that would be like a 'map' of philippine cinema, posted online, that would involve clips, interviews, etc. kind of like google maps but separate from that..kind of like doing a theoretical analysis of a non-existing, or proposed text or something. anyway, i wonder if it would be possible to use google earth tools but have it seem like a totally separate website?
A set of personal visualizations about psychology (collaborate with Eric Manalastas)
Something with the Wiimote

Of course what makes most sense is for me to concentrate on ASEACC.

Just finished meeting with 3 students pretty much in a row. Whoa. It was amazing but exhausting. I'll have to ask one of my students (who'll be meeting me this week) whether they can meet me at Green Papaya.

visit the invisible, visible website for the schedule of events and for more information about this residency

Notes I've taken, links I've saved about visualization or art+technology+advocacy

2008-09-24T09:40:00.000-07:00

http://sites.google.com/site/diegomarananprojects/ongoing/visualization/blog
http://delicious.com/dmaranan/visualization
http://delicious.com/dmaranan/artandscience
http://delicious.com/dmaranan/artandtechnology
http://delicious.com/dmaranan/artandpolitics

visit the invisible, visible website for the schedule of events and for more information about this residency

Still waiting for iTrixx

2008-09-24T02:00:00.001-07:00

So my grand plans for an interactive exhibit at the end of the residency, Traces/Antipode, continue to be on hold. I'm still waiting for the people at iTrixx to respond. If it doesn't push through, that's ok. Then I can concentrate on making interactive visualizations, I suppose. The problem is that I suggested the Traces/Antipode be held on November 26, but it's poetry night that night. The readings are usually held on the second floor, and I really really want Traces/Antipode to be on the second floor, and that it will be there for all of the night. So I moved it to the 26th.

I hope it pushes through.

Between the two, I think Antipode is more interesting than Traces. Funny, since the ideas behind Traces were kind of the original ideas behind this entire residency in the first place, andWe now that's begun to fade away. I guess I'm really not that interested in social networking sites, after all...

Thought: maybe one of the outputs of the residency would be a visualization tool, not necessarily a set of visualizations. We'll see. I guess it'll depend on what the initial survey reveals.

Tonight is Angelo's last night at GP. Too bad I wasn't able to attend all his other nights, though at least I was there on that stormy night when almost no one came. :S The weather is clear, which means people will probably go, which means it might be crazy.

visit the invisible, visible website for the schedule of events and for more information about this residency

Psychology and visualization

2008-09-23T22:18:00.001-07:00

Visualizing the subjective

Had a good conversation with Eric Manalastas, a psychology prof at UP. I told him what I was trying to do, which he then described as an attempt to "make concrete the subjective experience", which in turn kind of reminds me of the discourse in the field of knowledge management of "trasforming implicit knowledge into explicit knowledge". He showed me some fascinating graphs of mood swings (x-axis = time, y-axis = spectrum of negative/positive affect) from the psychology textbook he was using for his class, and they were exactly like one of the visualizations I had been working on. I felt a kind of vindication about it.

Perhaps visualizing the subjective experience can help us realize that whatever it is you're feeling, you share it with other people. He brought up the notions of "pluralistic ignorance" and "false uniqueness".

if a behavior is positive, people think it's unique
if a behavior is negative, people think that "everybody does this" "everyone else is having sex like i am" voting: "I'm the only one who bothered to vote"

Shift work and the evolution of the 24-hour day

Another area that could benefit from visualization is the labor market. One could visualize the amount of sleep that workers get, correlate that with well-being, maybe compare that with sleep patterns in other work areas or in other countries. I asked him if there is data available for the Philippines, and he said that it was easy enough to collect it ourselves/myself. Diary methodology.

Eric had another astute observation. Because of the call center phenomenon, patterns of consumption are changing. Visualization of how daily life has changed because of shift work could have policy implications, or at least make a compelling case for businesses (and government services!) to cater to the night shift. After all, night-shift people need the same kind social resources that the diurnal population needs during the day.

Visualizing data related to labor migration

More insights from Eric. Obviously, when members of a family are forced to large amount of time apart, the dynamics of that family change. But it's not just the length of time that matter; way they synchronize "together" time, when during the year it happens, the certainty (or lack thereof) in knowing that it's going to happen again... all of these matter.

I definitely need to have conversations with migrant labor specialists.

Visualizing how other people perceive reality

Back to turning subjective experience into explicit knowledhe. Eric suggested that people perceptions of the "out group", the Other, is an interesting phenomenon.

Ask Christians, "How big is the Muslims population?"
Ask heterosexual people, "How big is the LGBT population?"

Still to develop

It was getting kind of late, so neither of us could figure out how exactly this could benefit from visualization, but Eric pointed out that there's a lot of interest right now about the "short collective memory of Filipinos". People seem to forget their political stances, for instance.... Maybe we could visualize that fuzziness of memory... something about improving our historical memory...

visit the invisible, visible website for the schedule of events and for more information about this residency

"The Invisible, Visible" site done!

2008-09-23T22:06:00.000-07:00

Well, almost done. I still have to fill in the details for each week, but the site's basic structure is there: theinvisiblevisible.diegomaranan.com

But in case that doesn't work (it takes a while for the CNAME mappings to update), try http://sites.google.com/a/diegomaranan.com/green-papaya-residency/

Getting excited but overwhelmed. I'm particularly looking forward to moving my office to the GP space.

w.o.p SEPT 24| ANGELO SUAREZ final episode + ANDREA TERAN's MONTHLY PERIOD Readings

2008-09-23T21:37:00.001-07:00

w.o.p SEPT 17| ANGELO SUAREZ hosts COSTANTINO ZICARELLI

2008-09-23T21:33:00.000-07:00

w.o.p SEPT 10 | ANGELO SUAREZ Street Smarts

2008-09-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

w.o.p SEPT 3 | ANGELO SUAREZ Street Smarts

2008-09-23T20:29:00.000-07:00

w.o.p AUG 27 | ANGELO SUAREZ Street Smarts

2008-09-23T20:22:00.000-07:00

w.o.p AUG 13 | ANGELO SUAREZ Street Smarts

2008-09-23T19:46:00.001-07:00

w.o.p AUG 6 | ANGELO SUAREZ Street Smarts

2008-09-23T19:41:00.000-07:00

ANGELO SUAREZ | STREET SMARTS

2008-09-23T19:07:00.000-07:00

First of all, this work is seemingly literary in nature, though visual in appeal and performative execution. The work in this sense appears more to be in the line of what may well be termed intermedia poetics. The project per se will be comprised of performance–or shall we say, the process that entail the production of a long conceptual poem–and the material products will not exactly be artwork themselves but documents of these performances–records without which the performances will lose their textual/poetic value.

In short, these performances aimed toward 1) completion of a book containing a long poem contextualized by accompanying photographic documents, and 2) audio-vial documents (phototexts, photos, looped audio recordings) that may be exhibited later on.

What is the text then that seems to be at the heart of Street Smarts? It will be a series of transcribed conversations with local taxi drivers for the duration of a ride. Prior to transcription of course, conversations are to be recorded in audio. The poem or conceptual text will be highly improvisatory in this sense, interrogating the notion of multiple authorship: its textual tango between the artist and the cab drivers, and either of whom can take leadership in the conversation.

During the residency, performance as a language practice or its deceit will be mapped by inviting local artists whose works/practice traverses the literary, performative and visual boundaries through weekly readings, performances, screenings, installations and critical play. Street Smarts will run from August 13 to September 24.

Angelo Suarez, 23 graduated from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines, where he is completing his Master's degree in Communication on a scholarship grant. Advocating collaborative verbo-visual performance and intermedia poetics, he co-authored the recently launched typographic project Dissonant Umbrellas: Notes Toward a Gesamtkunswerk with nine visual artists. He is also slated to release his fourth book in collaboration with veteran painter Emmanuel Garibay, titled Crux which problematizes the problem between image and language. He also wrote the poetry books else it was purely girls and The Nymph of MTV, for which he received the National Book Award from the Manila Critics Circle and the Bridges of Struga Poetry Prize from UNESCO and the Republic of Macedonia. He has also received prizes from the Maningning Miclat and Carlos Palanca Foundations for his poetry. Currently he works as an advertising copywriter and part-time teacher.