Kimono our place!

[imomus]

A little party was held last night watashi no tokoro on the Karl-Marx-Allee for twenty or so optimally funky Berlin-based people. Featuring Kaori and Mika, Mr and Mrs Cameron, Jason Forrest / Donna Summer, Jim Backhouse from Resonance FM, some friendly wheatpasters with a big bucket of wheatpaste, Craig Robinson and Hanni, Andrew Cannon, Eric, Lupo and Rika from Belleville (where I'll be playing a little show next Sunday), Mario Canario and Anne Laplantine.



Click the photo for a video of the highpoint of the party: our terrifying initiation ceremony into The Order of The White Igloo. Those who pass are sent to meet The White Archer. Those who fail are sent to meet him twice.

Comments

[slinka.livejournal.com]

How was that striated effect on the last image done? It's wonderful.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's actually a fault that's developed on my digital camera. It does produce some pretty amazing effects. Luckily the camera works okay if I hit it against the wall before taking the photo. But I'm sure before long it will be all striations, or back to normal, or just die. So I'm enjoy the stripes while they last!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Striation fans, get your White Archer wallpaper here (http://www.imomus.com/whitearcher.jpeg)!

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Nick,
Do you remember Stuart Paterson from the RSAMD? Any idea what he's doing now?
Cheers
Alasdair

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I never went to the RSAMD, though my sister did, so she might know... Don't remember Stuart, but will ask sis.

you kids are gonna suffocate somebody!

[(Anonymous)]

poor igloo guy.... covered in asian babes and a layer of plastic. hmmmm. sounds like a Momus song.

not-so-random X-Files quote...

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Clyde Bruckman: You know there are worse ways to go, but I can't think of a more undignified way than autoerotic asphyxiation.
Mulder: Why are you telling me that?
Bruckman: Look, forget I mentioned it. It's none of my business.

Chalking for WiFi Hobos

[hateforblayne.livejournal.com]

In relation to yesterdays post...

http://www.blackbeltjones.com/warchalking/index2.html

It's a hobo chalk language for telling others about WiFi networks.

[(Anonymous)]

i wonder how click opera would have read if john kerry had won.

-immenselbst

The White Archer

[rciaodree.livejournal.com]

I hesitate to ask, but what happens to the initiate when s/he meets the White Archer?

The White Archer, I take it, has no relation to the Green Arrow?

http://www.greenarrowfansite.com/

oFFiCiaL_w0rLd_LaNgUagE

[(Anonymous)]

Here's the seminal pop/design group, Delaware's, take on misused English (a subject that came up in the last post):
http://www.delaware.gr.jp/TEXT/txt_world_languag_e.html (http://www.delaware.gr.jp/TEXT/txt_world_languag_e.html)

And this one is a wonderful manifesto:
http://www.delaware.gr.jp/TEXT/txt_skip_e.html (http://www.delaware.gr.jp/TEXT/txt_skip_e.html)

Enjoy,
Sean T.

Re: oFFiCiaL_w0rLd_LaNgUagE

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Delaware write:

we +hink +he official world language is no+ +he english of na+ive_speakers,
i+'s +he simple_english of non_na+ive_speakers, isn'+ i+!?

This is a very interesting insight. I speak this simplified English a lot because I live mostly with non-English speakers. Basil Bernstein would have called this 'Restricted Code'. But in my case it's not a class issue, or a question of limited education; I tend to censor local inflections and difficult or slangy phrases because I need to find the universality of the lowest common dominator. In fact, just about the only place I use Extended Code is on the internet, when I'm writing.

Re: oFFiCiaL_w0rLd_LaNgUagE

[(Anonymous)]

Is this ever frustrating? Do you feel that your relationships with non-English speaking friends and lovers suffer due to an overly simplified vocabulary? Or, on the contrary, does this serve to promote the textural/sensual exchanges?

Sean T.

Re: oFFiCiaL_w0rLd_LaNgUagE

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's not either/or, it's and/and. The downside is restricted conversation. The upside is the textural / sensual emphasis. But, just as I think I can deal with the experience of living in Japan better than many gaijin because I've always been somewhat alienated at home and feel no more so in Japan, so I can deal with the restricted communication because I almost never feel that the kind of things I think about are getting across, even to native English speakers or people from my own background. In fact, Click Opera is a kind of overspill, a vast reservoir of all the things that are going on in my brain, but I just wouldn't bother trying to inflict on the people who are physically around me, because I feel they wouldn't
a) understand or
b) care.

There are exceptions, of course. Anne Laplantine is someone I think cares and understands about the kind of issues I do. Toog too. Steve Lafreniere in New York. One of the great joys of being in NY was being able to talk, talk, talk to art students, journalists, artists, and know they were basically on the same page. I never really felt that in England. The English were too self-conscious about class, too conservative, too intellectually phlegmatic and passive aggressive to be able to, or want to, talk that kind of talk. Scots, though, can. My friend Alasdair in Tokyo, Pat Kane, Neill Martin... anyway, sorry for the roll call... People here in Click Opera have absolutely fitted the 'extended code' description, which is why I'm so invested in these pages and these dialogues we have here.

Re: oFFiCiaL_w0rLd_LaNgUagE

[w-e-quimby.livejournal.com]

Aww. <3

Re: oFFiCiaL_w0rLd_LaNgUagE

[(Anonymous)]

"Extended code" is a very nice way to describe the conversation taking place here. For me it's a chance to share the kind of private thoughts that might be constued as embarrassing or may even sound pretentious once out in the air, but actually are very important to our interior life. I think this is why blogging is the success it is because it lows a convergence of the private/public in the form of a diary. The mental gymnastics involved with following some of the more philosophical discussions here are also addictive. I am thankful to Nick for expending so much energy on these pages and marvel at his energy and ingenuity. For the community of people who come here (and obviously see the world in such an extended way) having others to share and debate it with is wonderful. It's the kind of discussion that one remembers fondly from the days of extended education (which in my case was art school) and which can often disappear when making a living is the mindset. Thanks for the mental expansion. There is a whole entry lurking within this thread I think....

Richard G

Re: oFFiCiaL_w0rLd_LaNgUagE

[rciaodree.livejournal.com]

Many gracias, compadre Momus.

We lap up the overspill.

Everyone understands moosique a bit. And design.

Re: oFFiCiaL_w0rLd_LaNgUagE

[rciaodree.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's true. We people here in the Big Apple like to talk. We have a term for it: there's a "chattering class" out here, mostly in the D.C.-N.Y.-Boston Amtrak corridor.

We (lawyers, consultants, journalists, authors, conceptual artists, professors, bloggers, pundits) talk about the world. Meanwhile, the heartland frowns at all our nattering. They're planting soy, slaughtering hogs, and building trucks (well, sometimes), while we write letters to the NY Review of Books.

Re: oFFiCiaL_w0rLd_LaNgUagE

[rciaodree.livejournal.com]

I like the image of overspill. It implies a container. As Lewis Mumsford (The City in History, Technics and Civilization) wrote, a container can only function as a container if it changes less quickly than the materials it contains, and which surround it.

Momus's mind as a container--a somewhat fixed framework into which various materials are poured. To remain coherent, the mind must maintain a certain structure and integrity. It cannot dissolve into the surrounding milieu. Something happens to materials poured into the container of Momus's head. Perhaps it's something like a chemistry laboratory, and chemical reactions take place, and bonds are broken, formed, exploded, new molecules created. Interesting question as to whether the theory of conservation of energy and mass applies to the open system of Momus's mind.

But then there is the question of choice and will. Or are those decided--in our vastly simplified hydraulic system we're cartooning here--by the materials that went in early on, which established the base formula with which all later materials would be greeted when introduced into the chamber of Momus's mind.

What am I going on about?

[(Anonymous)]

Hello Momus, did you know Peter Carey is publishing a book about Japan? Here's an excerpt:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1359795,00.html

(I can already see you bristling at Carey's high/low art assumptions)