Concerning Bladerunner and Electric Sheep

Alright, after hearing Bladerunner mentioned in scholarly ways for quite some time now, I figured I should revisit the 1982 Harrison Ford film that my brother was obsessed with and see why on earth a dark, rainy, futuristic movie featuring "replicants" was so darn important.

Let me acknowledge that all of this going to be a thing everyone else knew and I somehow missed, but bear with me anyway.

First, some on the movie.

The beginning is like a really bad detective story in which the narrator tells you things that are already going on. A lot of exlpication. "I was a bladerunner. blah blah" with this sultry music. "I'm not on the force anymore. You know I quit." etc. And sometimes the take-away messages are a little over-the-top, too, like "Too bad she won't live. But then, who does?" (repeated by Edward James Olmos in an echoing voice-over at the end. Or "I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in his last moments, he loved life more than ever, not just his own, but every life." After the android dies.

(Dead replicant, "retired" after she blasts through a whole bunch of plate glass windows, wearing nothing but a bra ensemble and a clear plastic coat, so you can see her wounds even through the coat) Also, what lovely colors, eh?

Something I'm not sure how to make sense of is the love scene between Deckard and Rachel, because he kisses her, she tries to leave, he grabs her violently, shakes her and says, "tell me to kiss you" and, as she is crying, she is obedient. So this idea of her being a slave is really overbearing and I wonder if she is supposed to seem like she has free will at all. She certainly has a vacant expression and much less tenacity than the other androids, especially, in the end, the German-looking one who shows real deep emotion or empathy or something. Rachel cries, but she is still pretty vacant. Anyway, when he returns to her sleeping on his bed/foldout couch whatever, he says "you love me." She dutifully replies "I love you." "You trust me." "I trust you." There is definitely the feeling that she is just saying that. How happy can she be? Apparently, this is a major difference with the book (Deckard is married in the book and does sleep with Rachel, but I don't think they end up together in any way.) In this movie, he takes her with him in a car and they drive to some magical sunshine hilly place, probably in california since I think they might be in San Fran or something for the tokyo/gotham-city-like rest of the movie. Anyway, is he just telling her what to think? Is that any different than the way they are programmed otherwise? Does "love" mean anything to an android? And yes, I'm sure someone has written a dissertation on this already but I haven't thought about it before. :)

(Sad replicant, returning to the side of his newly shot girlfriend)

The android howls, btw, when he is overcome with emotion at the loss of Priss (Daryl Hannah), and continues to howl throughout the rest of the film until he dies and, somewhat ridiculously, releases a white dove (or pigeon?) he's grabbed at some point on the roof. Anyway, he is also inexplicably wearing nothing but tight boxer-briefs or mini shorts for the remainder of the film, and he says a lovely thing about how all the things that happened to him in his life will disappear like tears in the rain. (It is perpetually raining). So are we to gather that being emotional is to be like an animal? It's also interesting the parallels made between Deckard and the android in the ending scenes, because the android breaks 2 of Deckard's fingers as payback for the death of the two female androids, and then lets him go, and shortly, the android jams a huge nail into his seizing hand, presumably to stop the death (?) that is beginning to set in? (he says "not yet!" and inflicts pain on himself perhaps to stay alive). Or perhaps just to feel? At any rate, both of them clutch and sieze their hands, and the hands seem to be awfully important, since the android earlier killed Tyrell, the inventor, by crushing his head with his bare hands, and then tightly grabs Deckard's hand in order to pull him up from the edge of the roof and save him. Anyway, they are both alternatively moaning or howling as well, Deckard when he tries to re-set his fingers, and the android, in his crazed running around the building, wolflike.

 

Also, the music (which was generally disturbing since it felt like a seedy saxophone solo in a bad dective movie most of the time, probably intentional, or just a product of the decade) was by Vangelis . . . and Vangelis, of course, did the music of Cosmos . . . and so Vangelis is now the soundtrack to science fiction or something. :)

Ok, so here's the big reveal to me. I had no idea that this movie was based (somewhat loosely) on the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (1968 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick) (AHHH! That's why this movie is so maniacally important to philosphers, etc.) And after reading more in detail about the synopsis of the book, I see why this has been so significant in terms of the identity and characteristics of humanity, as well as the identity and characteristics of animals, and why animal scholars throw this one out a lot. I also wager it has something to do with that wonderful title.

Here are a few important snippets from the wikipedia page:

"The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic near future, where the Earth and its populations have been damaged greatly by Nuclear War during World War Terminus. Most types of animals are endangered or extinct due to extreme radiation poisoning from the war. To own an animal is a sign of status, but what is emphasized more is the empathic emotions humans experience towards an animal." and "The U.N. encourages emigration to off-world colonies, in hope of preserving the human race from the terminal effects of the fallout. One emigration incentive is giving each emigrant an "andy" — a servant android.

The remaining populace live in cluttered, decaying cities wherein radiation poisoning sickens them and damages their genes. Animals are rare and people are expected to keep them and help preserve them. But many people turn towards the much cheaper synthetic, or electric, animals to keep up the pretense. Rick Deckard owned a sheep, but it died of tetanus, and he replaced it with a synthetic sheep." . . . "As android technology improved, bounty hunters had to apply an empathy test — the Voigt-Kampff — to distinguish humans from androids, by measuring empathetic responses, or lack thereof, from questions designed to evoke an emotional response, often including animal subjects and themes." "Deckard's story is paralleled by that of J.R. Isidore, a driver for an animal repair shop who cannot qualify to leave Earth and so lives alone, with little outside contact other than his Empathy Box. Pris Stratton moves into the building and the lonely Isidore attempts to befriend her. Pris proves to be a runaway android, identical in appearance to Rachael Rosen.

Deckard eventually retires all of the illegal androids, earning him a citation for the record number of kills in one day. He returns home to discover that Rachael Rosen killed his (real) pet goat by pushing it off the roof. He understands that Rachael was taking revenge, and is thankful that the loss is financial; the android could instead have killed his wife."

Finally, here is a totally lovely spinoff-- "Electric Sheep is a distributed computing project for animating and evolving fractal flames, which are in turn distributed to the networked computers, which display them as a screensaver. . . . The name "Electric Sheep" is taken from the title of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The title mirrors the nature of the project: computers (androids) who have started running the screensaver begin rendering (dreaming) the fractal movies (sheep)." (From wikipedia)

I love all of this. There are myriad cultural uses of the phrase "electric sheep" but kind of obscure and hidden in band lyrics. I feel like it calls out for more.

On Picturing the Beast, by Steve Baker

I actually wasn't able to finish this book, even after having it for MONTHS, because I just didn't have time once the semester started again. So it might be good to return to it in the future. But here are my notes anyway.

Introduction:
He's talking about a previous version of his text and says

"There was no shortage of literature about Disney animation or about animal symbolism in political cartoons and wartime propaganda, but this book's more idiosyncratic purpose was to suggest that the animal could only be considered, and understood, through its representations. There was no unmediated access to the "real" animal. . . As the original preface concludes, 'it should not simply be a matter of our studying what animals already signify in the culture but rather, through a benevolent manipulation, of exploring what animals mgiht yet be made to signify" (xvi)

Later, he says "Instead, the point is to emphasize that representations have a bearing on shaping that 'reality' and that the 'reality' can be addressed only through representations." (xvii)

He says that keeping questions open about animals, or raising more questions rather than answering them, no longer seems so idiosyncratic, and that this is really commonplace today.

I guess there was a poster, which I can't find online, done by the National Canine Defense League in GB, timed to coincide with the release of Disney's 102 Dalmatians (2000) that used the old phrase "a dog is for life, not just for Christmas" and showed a live dalmatian (labeled "dog" and a stuffed one labeled "toy" which obviously has some relationship to this whole thing of toy and cuddly and [my stuffed animal paintings, etc.]  . . yeah.

Zoo photos by Frank Noelker mentioned in the Steve Baker text . . .

Baker also talks about a New York Times feature on "the ubiquity of the animal in contemporary art" which I should probably find and read.

"The second development in the 1990's was that artists began to take animals altogether more seriously, and in doing so found ways of avoiding the familiar accusation of sentimentality. For some artists, such as Mark Dion in the United States and Olly and Suzi in the United Kingdom, their work was driven at least in part by their concern with environmentalism and the conservation of endangered species. Others, such as Sue Coe, Frank Noelker, and Britta Jaschinski, used their art to address the confinement or mistreatment of animals. Then of course there were many others, from Jeff Koons to Damien Hurst, who made frequent use of animal imagery, or of animals themselves, without necessarily having anything to say about them." xxvii

He notes that in the 1990's there was surely and increase in animal art, but that it had precedents beginning in the 70's with the rise of the contemporary animal rights movement (Wegman, Beuys)
Eduardo Kac did a piece where he had a lab in France genetically modify a rabbit to include a jellyfish gene that made her (named Alba) glow green when put under blue light. It was called "GFP Bunny" and was controversial. The caption next to the picture of this rabbit asks "Is Eduardo Kac to be condemned for creating a green fluorescent rabbit in the first place or hailed for his subsequent effort to liberate her from the research laboratory?" xxviii

xxx - Talks about the Marco Evaristti exhibition piece with the goldfish in blenders that offered people the chance to turn them on. Apparently, Peter Singer supported the art as raising the question of the power we have over animals. But a group of Minnesota artists founded the Justice for Animals Arts Guild (JAAG) to question this idea of using live animals in art, and to support the notion that the artist's ideas do not neccessariiy take precedence over the interests of the animals being used. "Alarmed at the manner in which living animals were used in certain art exhibitions, they were convinced that 'much could be accomplished by sensitizing the arts community.' Believing that animals must be understood to be 'beings' not 'ideas,' their immediate goal was to negotiate with state arts organizations and funding agencies for the institution of policies that would prevent the cruel or degrading use of living animals by contemporary artists."

ANIMAL USE IN ART! It's no wonder that there is some similarity in the way that art addresses animal issues and the way science does -- in both cases, animals are USED to further ideas or progress, oftentimes at their own expense.

Robin Schwartz did a book of primate portraits (primates living in people's homes) that I think maybe I might enjoy looking at.

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OK. I'm going to put this image here, even though I don't think this is quite the place where I thought of it. But I remember that, at some point, I had it in my head that I should make a dog that was big enough to lay next to or sit on, like a couch. I had this dog in mind:

But then I saw this thing, and this is totally what I was thinking:

Chapter 3 is about hatred of animals, use of animal imagery as derogatory, etc. Which I am not reading right now because I don't have time. :) A term I hadn't heard before is "theriomorphism" . . . a word that I am excited exists because its nice to have a word for this.

Chapter 4, is about the pleasure taken in animals, and in depictions of animals.
It reminds me of the idea of "talking animals" and how they abound in stories and narratives, and how truly strange it is when we refer to real living animals that can "talk" like parrots, or primates, dolphins, etc. Again, this connection to childhood. I think I do really want to make my puppet video. . . hmmm.

More on children and animals, "Received wisdom has it that the tendency to like, to care for and to identify with animals is essentially a childhood phenomenon, or, as it might often be more condescendingly expressed, a childish thing." 123

A love of animals is also often attributed to being "childish" and that animal lovers "never really grow up" (another slam on animal appreciation)

And I guess that's as far as I got.

On "Becoming Animal" -- Notes from the exhibition catalog

Becoming Animal: Contemporary Art in the Animal Kingdom at MASS MoCA
- exhibition catalog distributed by MIT Press, Massachussets Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass, copyright 2005

Exhibition organized by MASS MoCA and presented in North Adams from May 2005 through March 2006

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Curator Nato Thompson: introduction called Monstrous Empathy

"Artist Kathy High unveils the biological and suprisingly personal connections between laboratory rats and herself."

"how do we incorporate the new knowledge that the human genome is only a few strands away from that of a flea?" (8)

"The exhibition Becoming Animal takes a cue from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their seminal book A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980). When Deleuze and Guattari write of "becoming animal," they destabilize the strcit (and possibly artibraray_ boudnaries modernity established between humanity and the animal kingdom. Their sweeping notion of becoming takes on diverse fields such as "becoming geology", "becoming woman" and becoming imperceptible," but it as at its most acute with anaimals. Rahter than fixed and discreet, for Deleuze and Guattari the individual is an ever-shifting being, "a desring machine," that can take on a new forms of animal-ness (or an animal capable of taking conforms of human-ness. Similarly the term becoming bekjdka;fdslajflksja;kfl kah crap super boring and I don't care. . .

Georgio Agamben, "The Open: Man and Animal" 2004, might be something to look at. Thompson says this book traces the discussion of what is animal and what is human throughout history and talks about how we derive our meaning of who we are by defining "non-human" animals.
He says that Deleuze and Guattari challenge the "Cartesian notion of individuality--I think therefore I am--" and that this can be both "liberating" and very disturbing and challenging, bringing up the fears of hybrid human-animal type monsters, freaks, Chimeras, etc. that are very distressing to us. He mentions animal/human relationships being taboo "ever since" Eve is seen talking to the snake in the garden. Monstrous.

Donna Haraway is mentioned again. Hmm.

9 "However, radically sympathizing with the animal has had some of its strongest historical advocates in both art and zoology. As Giorgio Agamben traces animal theories of the great philosophers, he often focuses on the perspective of famed zoologist Jacob von Uexkull.

I get the sense that art and science are often posited against one another, or that art serves in some way as a critical lens on science, and science certainly imposes a judgement on the subjective realities of art. In his introductory essay, Thompson kind of says something like that, or maybe something that eludes to that dichotomy, referring to a long and descriptive quote by Jakob von Uexkull in Agamben's writing, he says "This gross explanation provides a tangible example of umwelt, and the underlying empathy feels more in cahoots with the art in this exhibition than with science." (10)


Joseph Beuys is mentioned - apparently, he founded the first political party for animals ("over one billion members" . . . mcdonalds?) and the the intro essay talks about his 2 most "notable performance pieces" the coyote one and this one where he cradles a dead rabbit and talks to it with his head covered in honey and gold leaf. "How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare" which looks so sweet and super scary. There is a little more discussion of this piece, how it explores attempting to communicate with animals by first thinking like them. . . . (??)
10 - Commentary on Kathy High and work that specifically addresses lab rats.
"Leaving behind traditional categories for understand the 'other,' we enter a radical space of emptathy. Artist Kathy High evokes this territory well with her autobiographic project aptly titled "Embracing Animal" (2004). Over the telphone, Kathy High ordered a apir of laboratory test rats whom she named Echo and Flowers. The rats had been previously micro-injected with human DNA that caused their autoimmune systems to be weakened. Their incapacitated immunce systems are biolgoically re-eingineered to make them susceptible to dieases such as reactive arthritis, psoriasis, and inflammaotry bowel disease. In the normal course of science, the rats would be sued as test subjects for drugs to treat humans."

"High, suffering from a chronic illness herself, understood that these rats were being used to find cures fo rpeople. Echo and Flwoers were not simply becoming human, they had become integrally locked in a genetic relationship with humanity. As apart of the project High cares for the pair of rats, treating them with homeopathic medicines.(5) Her installation consistst of a lovely home for Echo and Flowers as well as elongated test tubes outfitted with LCD monitors displaying images of fear and anxiety that pervade phsyical crossovers between human and animal: footage of werewolves, vampires, and bvestiality flickers at the bottom of the tubes."

he then eludes to Nietzche's "last purported moment of sanity as he lurched at a horse being beaten, held onto its neck, and wept uncontrollably."

Thompson makes the point, and I agree, that after the mapping of genome in 2000 and other major advances in biotechnology, films, literature, and art began to play out our many fears this burgeoning science. Cloning and eugenics . . . this is another very close relationship to science but a slightly different one than the ethical quesiton of using animals for research . . . more like a broader ethical question of whether this kind of advancement is really as great as we think in general. He also says that "many artists have eagerly seized the tools of biotechnology" . . "to shock audiences" (12)

Then talks about Patricia Piccinini (Australian artist) that uses silicone sculpting to make those incredibly realistic "uncanny" sculptures of hybrids and genetic creations. He talks about the "Still life with stem cells" 2002 which shows the little girl holding onto a lump of fleshy thing and a few other lumps around, and he says that she looks fondly at them and "These lumps too can be loved."

Another comparison with womens' rights ". . . both feminism and the causes of animals must share a concern with the ways that the Other become subordinate." Lynda Birke and Luciana Parisi, "Animals, Becoming," 1999 (on page 12)

He talks about how feminisim and post-colonialism "provide a semiotic perspective" and talks about how "Theorists like Donna Haraway have used this analysis to interrogate both these scientific, as well as language-based, distinctions. In her groundbreaking Cyborg Manifesto, Harraway sews together ritical theory and science with a deft warning: "The degree to which the principle of domination is ddeeply embedded in our natural sciences, espeically in these disciplines that seek to explain social groups and behavior, must not be undersreestimated. Arguing that one cannot trust the claim of pure empiricism in science, she outlines a complex method for allowing hybridity between animal, machine, human and social politics in general--the cyborg."

"Connecting the 'animal' to that of the feminist and post-colonial 'other' can easily lead to ridiculous conclusions. However, cultural moments of debasement and exploitation have often found resonance with the phrase, "we were treated like animals." This refrain positions the becoming animal as the lowest form of human existence. But what does it mean to treat someone like an animal? In political terms it would bean to revoke a person's basic human rights." (13) And then of course he goes into Agamben a bit

Thompson says "if anything stands out as the most durable explanation of the difference between human and animal, it is the ability to speak." (13)

Quotes a book called "Why Look at Animals" by John Berger.

Talks about how Mark Dion "has been a major contributor o what is now a common genre in contemporary art, that of the exploded wudnerkammern."

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Second introduction: "Of humans, animals, and monsters." by Christoph Cox

"Christoph Cox is Associate professor of Philosophy at Hampshire College. . . . editor at large at Cabinet magazine and writes regularly on contemporary art and music for Artforum, The Wire, and other magazines."

He has the greatest little point at the beginning here. I went "ooo!" when I read it. :)

"An art exhibition that unsettles the boundary between humans and animals presents a paradox. Art--and culture in general--is supposed to be precisely that which defines the boundary in the first place. Whatever our similarities to animals, the argument goes, artistic creativity and aesthetic appreciation are uniquely human."

This essay talks about the hybrid nature of humans (have earthly, half divine, Adam as combination of earth and divine breath, Plato of soma and psyche, Descartes and physical/metaphysical, etc.) and then says that after Darwin, we are more likely to admit our relationships to animals than try to connect ourselves to the divine. He goes on to say that after the "death of god" something else came to fill in this hole . . "the machine" and then has a really interesting bit about how machines are sort of using us to evolve and that they are as much a part of us as the shells of oysters. :\

He points out that "religious doctrine, philosophical speculation, political thought, and biological classification" and "Western morality" have all been aimed at denying our animal nature and surpassing or showing how we are more. We don't want to be "merely" animals. Simon Critchley says "There is something charming about an animal become human. . . " but "when the human becomes aniaml, then the effect is disgusting." (19)

Remember that "the first human act is naming and classifying" the animals in Genesis (and that part about God presenting Adam with the animals as potenital mates or partners and to name them, which seems so sweet to me for some reason)

Oh, funny. Edward Topsell wrote a very "anthropocentric" "Historie of Foure-Footed Beasts" that classified animals as "edible/inedible, wild/tame, useful/useless" which is hilarious to me. "inedible." :)

20 - talking about Darwin's contribution to not only "eliminating the boundaries between species; he also flattened the ancient hierarchy that placed humans at the top" and was adamant that evolution is not progressive, it does not have long range goals or advancements, that humans are no more advanced than other creatures, and that "natural selection is local and temporary" which is actually not something I've ever heard anyone articulate before. Because people (even in science) still use "higher mammals" etc. even though Darwin apparently forbade the use of "higher" or "lower" since its misleading. :)

Talks about the Island of Dr. Moreau which is apparently about him trying to make a human from aniamls by reproducing evolution. So he uses a gorilla. Didn't know that. :) H.G. Wells.

talks about how Deleuze's philosphies are strongly "informed by biological thought" and that for him and Felix Guatarri, there are no distinctions between animals/plants/minerals etc. but rather a continuum . . .

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Some interesting pieces mentioned:

Rachel Berwick apparently did a piece called may-por-e in which she taught a pair of parrots to speak this dead language (of the Maypure tribe) in Venezuela, because the story goes that the person to discover this language (Baron Von Humboldt) learned the language from the last surviving speaker - a parrot. This is totally cool and something I should look at. Parrot as conduit and repository of our lost languages. Hmm.

Artist Brian Conley (the one that did this crazy frog balloon thing) used to be an animal researcher, monitoring negative-conditioning studies with goldfish . . . and since he was responsible for killing the fish, he decided to feed them to a larger fish, which then grew too big for its tank and broke it and got out. :) He said he believed in science then and its power for good, but developed issues with that idea over time. He is also a founder of "Cabinet" magazine -- page 44 of the catalog is his interview.

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Mark Dion Interview

There is an interview with Mark Dion, which I put in another post.

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Kathy High Interview

Kathy High interview (66-67) which I think really relates to this question of sentimentality:

"Nato Thompson: I would like to get your opinion of a quotation by Steve Baker from his book The Postmodern Animal. Can you comment on the following:

"What does it mean, exactly, to say that postmodern artists and philosophers fear pets? It is not that they fear the creatures themselves (though they may feel contempt for them). It is closer to what has been called"anthropomorphobia'--a fear that they 'ay be accused of uncritical sentimentality' in their depiction or discussion of animals. They seem almost unanimous in regarding sentimentality as a bad thing."

Kathy High: People are crazy about animals. And there is a lot of fear (by arts/intellectuals) of being sentimental around animals. People project all kinds of desires onto their animals--to make pets into 'little humans" I, too, suffer from this fear and am sometime suspicious of my own work with my pets. I try not to think of my pets as 'human' but rather as non-human. They represent extensions of ourselves, symbolic and archetypical.

There is a constant struggle for me between earnestness and irony when talking about pets. It is easy to describe them sincerely, but one doesn't want to appear to 'sappy' (picture wide-eyed kitties painted on velvet) Pets are, at the same time, paradoxical and difficult to unravel (picture twitching paws and gnarled teeth, tongues lashing). I think there is pressure on contemporary artists to be ironic and critical. Somehow, today, sincerity--to me00takes a certain amount of bravery."

(she uses her pets in her other work, and also uses animal psychics and a lot of new-age medicine type stuff (which is of course quite at odds with science and so plays against that. But she says "Day-to-day I'm very pragmatic, rational person, but even as a child I was fascinated by occult texts, and I practiced hypnosis, astral projection and telepathy. I don't know why I did that. Maybe it was from the influence of TV shows like Bewtiched or The Prisoner and movies like Wizard of Oz. These programs were psychedelic, dreamlike programs of people who were". . . (66) she says she has always been interested in that, looking at it in a sort of anthropolgical way as a possible way of coping with our "sometimes rootless" American culture or fulfilling our need to believe in something beyond ourselves (which she finds appealing).

She has been treated with homeopathic and alternative medicines.

Oh, she also said that she is not an animal rights activist, but feels that the animals used in research should be acknowledged for their contributions to science. 67 "The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals states that laboratory rats . .. and mice . . . are not covered by the national regulatory governances and the Animal Welfare Act amended in 1985, and are not reviewed under the Regulatory Enforcement and Animal Care Inspection. In other words, lab rats and mice are not protected in the same ways that other animals such as cats, dogs, and monkeys are. There are probably over 20 million rats and mice in use for research in this country, making up more than 90 percent of the animals used in research but they are undocumented--no one knows their exact numbers. This defies a kind of contract we have with animals who participate in our lives."

transgenic rats.

The word "undocumented" also reminds me of the undocumented workers, illegal aliens, etc. who definitely figure into Agamben. :)

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Natalie Jeremijenko

Natalie Jeremijenko did a project where she re-engineered toy robotic dogs to sniff for environmental contaminants and then releases them in a pack to roam around and gather data. "Feral Robotic Dogs" project. I don't care for what it looks like, but the title, and the idea of a pack of these things brings me so much joy. :) (68). This was not part of the exhibition project, but her piece for that one was the bird perches that tell people to do things (an experiment in modifying human behavior). I also like this idea of taking experimental techniques on a group of museum-goers.

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Nicholas Lampert

Lampert talks about the Machine Animal Collages in his interview on 80 --
"Loosely, the collages speak of a world engulfed in its own technology. An uncertain future where genetic engineering, robotics, and science have run amok." and talks about these questions of when and how animals and machines merge (which again reminds me of descartes and clocks.) He says "Locust Tank is metaphoric of industrialism and capital rolling over the planet," but says he's not as nihilistic as the interviewer suggests because there he doesn't think it's impossible to stop this and we should just give up. He is closely associated with the punk scene and anarchism, though, and does a lot of street art. The talk about the Locust Tank one also in terms of militaristic design and conquering (and he asks if progres smeans conqueiring nature or letting it be and existing in harmony)

He also did these "meatscapes" and they discuss monuments as physical cultural memories -- "a phsyical antedote for cultural amnesia' which I like w/r/t the monument project :)

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Michael Oatman (not so interested in his bird-related painting things) does something he calls "maximum collage" which is really when is collections of crap get so massive that they become installations, so that a collage breaks out of that and becomes like this environment. I like that idea.

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Motohiko Odani

- his work in the show, a taxidermy baby deer with legs in traction, called "Erectro" 2003, the deer is described as "what may be the cutest and most endearing of all non-human animals." :)

And more "Odani's cute aesthetic becomes a transformed Garden of Edan in the short viedo loop "rompers" 2003, also featured in Becoming Animal" which has this candy and sugar kind of look but very subversive because the little girl in it is mutated with long toes and scary forehead and her dress is "dangerously short" and there is honey leaking from an orafice in the tree . . . so (92) I can see how this might be using cute aesthic, but definitely not in the way . . . its much more disturbing and therefore sort of undermined.

They ask him about the notion of cute in the interview, which he is quick to say is more about disabilities:
"What do you think the relationship is between cute and animals, and how do you use this as a source of inspiration?"

"I don't think baby animals are pure and innocent. In the case of baby animals born with disabilities by inheritance, mixed feelings run through me." (96) the rest of the interview focuses on the sexuality at play in the video and the sexuality associated with animals.

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Patricia Piccinini

I think cuteness might kind of relate, or at least she kind of makes these things somewhat sympathetic "Piccinici confesses familial emotions toward her hybrid sculptures" (98) but they are still very scary, i think, or disconcerting. It says her sculptures began with this announcement of a laboratory-developed, fully-synthetic strange of DNA "[Synthetic Organism1] SO1 will have no specific function, but once it is alive we can customize it." so she made these silicon-based sculptures.

She talks about the sculptures as though they were alive, in reference to their introspective gazes "They have their own worlds and their own concerns. They are, in the end, less interested in us than we are in them."

She also talks about "becomcing animal" as being about learning that our place is not what we think it is, acknowledging that we have all this in common with animals and even plants, etc. and the well-said idea that things we call "human traits" that we find in amails are just animal traits that we share in common. I agree with and like her position a a lot and think that this fundamental anthropocentrism is something that continually needs to be subverted (this goes back to Carl Sagan!! ;))

Makes me think of the phenomenon of the blog "cute overload" which is a very apt word choice because oftentimes the insanity of how unbelievably cute some animals can be is definitely an overload. Not sure why that is. :)

More on Mark Dion

I watched the Art21 interview with Mark Dion, where he talked in general about his practice and also about a couple of specific pieces. Here are my notes:

"I really identify with the mission of the museum, where you go somewhere to gain knowledge through things." I think I very much agree with that too.

"There are a lot of tools that an artist has that the scientist doesn't have. Humor, irony, metaphor. . . these are sort of the bread and butter of artists."

he did this piece about puffin colonies being infiltrated by tag-along rats -- so he tarred them and hung them from a tree -- the rats themselves came from a biological supply company . . . which isn't what they are about. He said they aren't supposed to read as lab rats int his case.

"I think for myself and for a number of artists, science really functions as our worldview. our relationship to science is very much like the renaissance relationship to theology." He sees the role of contemporary art as functioning as "critical foil to dominant culture"

And here is a quote about him on the Art21 site:
"The job of the artist, he says, is to go against the grain of dominant culture, to challenge perception and convention. Appropriating archaeological and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates works that question the distinctions between ‘objective’ (‘rational’) scientific methods and ‘subjective’ (‘irrational’) influences. The artist’s spectacular and often fantastical curiosity cabinets, modeled on Wunderkabinetts of the 16th Century, exalt atypical orderings of objects and specimens. "

---

There is also an interview with him in the catalog for the "Becoming Animal" exhibition.
(His piece in that show was the Library for the Birds of Massachussets or whatever)

Mark Dion: interview with him on page 52, on didactic style

[about him and collaborating with Bill Scherrerine]
"We felt that certain ecological calamity could be avoided by access to knowledge; that if people understood situations like the crisis in biodiversity, though habitat loss, they would act to alleviate the problem. Our didactic style expressed the notion that somehow the information is just not getting out. Now I am convinced that knowledge is not hte issue and that there is a profound lack of will. I grossly miscalculated the power of ideology, desire, coercion, superstition, and pure greed."

Later, "The presentation of captive animals is little different than the display of other riches and trophies." he talks about museums and zoos and the way they function to display the riches, resources, etc. of their owners . . . which makes me want to make highly jeweled, gorgeous, GLITTERY animals in cages as trophy displays of wealth . . . (53) and he says that another relationship between art museums and zoos are that rarity brings value. "There are very few Vermeers. There are very few pandas. Both bring in the masses." :) MAKE A GLITTER PANDA? Damn. That would be great. :) 

He also describes himself as pessimistic now about the lack of forseable progress in the environmental movement, admitting that we will probably just continue to beocme a less diverse, more boring, and more preciarious sort fo planet. :( But he has a "glimmer" of hope that keeps him making this kind of work and being engaged with these issues.

I think this work relates more maybe to conservation than scientific research specifically, though his other work definitely references science more directly.

On Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, edited by Cary Wolfe

What follows are notes from the book Zoontologies edited by Cary Wolfe. There is a good introduction by Wolfe, and then subsequent essays by a number of authors. I didn't take notes on or even read all of them, but I broke down the notes by essay.

Introduction: Cary Wolfe

He notes the "steady influence of the "hard" on the "human" sciences, of late, and . . . ". . . the radically changed place of the animal itself in areas outside the humanities. Indeed, the humanities are, in my view, now struggling to catch up with a radical revaluation of the status of the nonhuman animals that has taken place in society at large. A veritable explosion of work in areas such as cognitive ethology and field ecology has called into question our ability to use the old saws of anthropocentrism (language, tool use, the inheritance of cultural behaviors in wild animals such as apes, wolves, and elephants, have more or less permanently eroded the tidy divisions between human and nonhuman. And this, in turn, has led to a broad reopening of the question of the ethical status of animals in relation to the human-- an event whose importance is named but not really captures by the term animal rights. Indeed, as I have tried to show elsewhere, one of the central ironies of animal rights philosophy--an irony that points directly to the pressing need for this collection--is that its philosophical frame remains an essentially humanist one in its most important philosphers (utilitarianism in Peter Singers, neo-Kantianism in Tom Regan) thus effacing the very difference of the animal other that animal rights sought to respect in the first place." xii

So my thoughts on that are that this shift in the sciences that they point out is relatively new, and that if, as Wolfe suggests, humanities need to catch up then . . . this is why there is the relationship with science? gah.

xiv - note about one of the other essays (by Roof) "As he argues, belief in DNA would seem to require as well a belief in the commonality of all life, but at the same time 'faith in DNA also provides the illusion of mastery of all life located, via knowledge of DNA, in science and in the human.'. . . " As I think of this, it relates to this strong desire to master and know and understand, the kind of ownership that knowledge affords, which is central to the use of animals in science.

The comment about the use of animal imagery to denote lesser humans is mentioned by Wolfe in his introduction w/r/t a quote by Etienne Balibar "As Etinenne Balibar has observed, for example, "Every theoretical racism draws upon anthropological universals," underneath which we find "the persistent presence of the same 'question': that of the difference between humanity and animality" that is at work in the systematic 'bestialization' of individuals and racialized human groups." xx and later (xxi) talks about this essay published in the New York Times called "At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die" that" shows how the relations of hierarchy, dominations, and exploitation between humans and animals are uncannily and systematically reproduced in relations of class, race, and ethnicity among humans themselves." It's the last essay in the book and I haven't read it yet, but I want to because I imagine that it must be very difficult to sensitively compare humans and animals in the right way like the essay sets out to do (unfair labor practices is its topic, I think)

---

"In the Shadow of Wittenstein's Lion: Language, Ethics, and the Question of the Animal" by Cary Wolfe

Cary Wolfe also writes an essay called "In the Shadow of Wittenstein's Lion: Language, Ethics, and the Question of the Animal" which jumps off from a famous and "often misunderstood" statement by Wittgenstein : "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him." She admits she's not sure if she understands it . . . and I definitely don't. But this reminds me that this idea of language and, what I gather as the generation of who we are as a direct result of language (gleaned from the possibly inaccurate use of Wittgenstein in DFW "Broom of the Sysytem") and seems like perhaps something I might want to know about.

One little phrase he uses in this article that I really loved, for some reason, was "about our failure to be god."

Ummm. I'm not sure why I put a post-it note here, but Wolfe talks about Hearne's "contractarian view" which basically says that morality is a set of rules (a contract) that we essentially sign, and if we are unable to sign for ourselves and to be covered directly, it is only through the fact that those who have signed "love or cherish" us that we are protected. And so, in Hearne's words, "Those animals that enough people care about (companion animals, whales, baby seals, the American bald eagle) though they lack rights themselves, will be protected because of the sentimental interests of people." (6)

9 He quotes . . . someone else (and now I don't know who . . .I think it is Cavell)
"There is nothing to be read from that body, nothing the body is of; it does not go beyond itself, it expresses nothing. . . It does not matter to me now whether there turn out to be wheels and springs inside, or stuffing, or some subtler or messier mechanism . . . What this 'body' lacks is privacy . . . ." blah blah after that. I don't even know what this has to do with anything, but what I liked about it is obviously the part about wheels, springs, and stuffing.

I am reminded yet again that I haven't seen Blade Runner but it gets brought up ALL THE TIME in issues of postmoderism? or . . . something. And again in this article relating to the difference between animals, humans, and androids. :)

---

"From Extinction to Electronics" by Ursula K. Heise

She talks about electronically engineered animals that appear in films and literature, saying "Such representations of artificial animals touch upon a broad range of issues, from practical ones such as the domestication of animals, their use in scientific and military experiments, and their commodification in circuits of economic exchange, to more theoretical ones such as animal perception and cognition or the functioning of 'natural' evolutionary mechanisms in the context of technological innovation." 60

I should also think about how cuteness is justified by science, or explained by it, how science warns against anthropomorphization or "cuteness" itself as a pitfall of research and it is then used by people opposing scientific study -- the part of the reason for viewing animals so "callously" could be attributed to the fact that anthropormorphiszation is suspect and can skew scientific results . . .

Remember the "now classic science fiction novel" "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
In her section talking about Jurassic Park (which is really interesting, by the way) she points out how this idea of dinosaurs and ecology became so popular when we were becoming increasingly aware of our own impact on the world and the danger of continued extinctions. She mentions a book by W.J.T. Mitchell called "The Last Dinosaur Book" which I gather is a "survey on the long history of dinosaur representations" so this might be something I'd want to look at again.

---

"From Protista to DNA (and Back Again)" by Judith Roof

Kind of interesting essay relating Freud to DNA. . . She makes a couple of really interesting points that I hadn't thought of before. One is that single-celled organisms (like I've talked about before about crocodiles but somehow neglected the fact that bacteria are gagillion times older than crocodiles) exist today unchanged by millenia of evolution. And not only that, but they are essentially undying, because when they reproduce asexually, part of them continues on basically forever. Maybe not 100% scientifically accurate, but as I understand it, importnat to Freud's theoretical ideas (I guess he "appropriated Darwin" :) Anyway, another thing that came up is a phrase that I've heard before but forgotten about, and since it's a particularly elegant way of saying something kind of complex, I think I should remember to use it" "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" or the development of an individual mirrors the development of the entire species development. So, noting this, "Freud believed that traces of an animal past not only remain in the individual psyche, but remain and are indignantly denied in human culture."

Some general thoughts on science, sentimentality, and why I should not be a vet

Sentmentality

Melissa and I were talking about this, and I am really interested and concerned about why sentimentality is such a bad thing . . . because I think that there is a strong parallel between the scientific studies and their aversion to sentimentality and the same issue in the representation. It seems like it's hard for any scientist to resist the desire to describe the laboratory animals in these quite sentimental or human or at least personified sorts of ways -- to say -- I know in science we have to be more rigorous, but in my real life, let me tell you about how my dog wakes me up at night to show me a tick on the floor and ask me to pick it up. Or Irene Pepperberg. This is very much a problem in science, and I gather, in art, but it really is the way that relate to so many animals in our lives. So what does that mean?

On why I didn't become a vet, but why animals and science are still great

This whole process of looking at animals reminds me that I have liked animals and science for a really really long time. And it makes me wonder why this is such a recurring topic for me. At first, I thought drawing dogs was like some kind of sad, desperate attempt to return to something that I know or enjoy because of my incessant failure at everything else. But actually, I kind of don't think it's that. I think that science itself continues to be a thing that interests me because I long for the kind of rigor, "objectivity" and legitimacy that science affords. Like, being able to back things up with studies and things that are provable seems really attractive, understandably, in a world of such subjectivity as art.

But visiting the Vet Med open house the other day reminded me that there are reasons I didn't decide to go into veterinary medicine. I came to the conclusion that many times, people are wrong when they ask you what you like and tell you what you should do. Because even though I find science fascinating, want to read about animals, the day to day of being a vet would be possibly the worst thing ever. Because I saw the following things:

1. a video of an emergency c-section of a cow, 2. a photo of a horse intenstine full of bot fly larvae, and 3. the opportunity to touch (with gloves on) the rubber tendon of a severed horse leg (on ice) . . . i am again reminded of why I didn't take the path of veternary medicine. As it turns out, one can be incredibly interested in a topic and have no desire to actualy live the day to day of that field.

This is sort of the first time when what I am interested in doing and what I am doing feels really genuine to me. . . that my interest in it is not forced simply by feeling like "I should read this" or "I should make these things" but that I really want to know about them.

Lists of named, famous, or important subjects/individuals and some facts about them

Ok, so given this semi-random list of 10 animals that I would like to investigate some more, there are, of course particularly famous, almost iconic animal subjects involved in the research. I am not sure about crows or pigeons, but so far, there are some very famous individuals that I think are interesting in that they stand as symbols of their species and attain a level of fame and individualism that begins to set them apart or indicates being treated much more as a human rather than a more "expendable" animal. It's actually really interesting when you look at the wikipedia articles dedicated to these animals too and the way that they differ in the format of the article. It seems like it almost indicates a hierarchy . . . Because someone like Kanzi has a side bar that says date of birth and relatives (see below), while Washoe has no side-bar box, but has a photo of her researcher giving her eulogy. Even to eulogize such a creature is sort of amazing. Meanwhile, the dolphin Akeakamai has a sort of biological taxonomy box rather. I could just be coincidence, but it's interesting to see that there might be some difficulty in classifying these outstanding animals.

Anyway, here are some notable examples of each of these animals that I have found so far.

1. great apes / monkeys
   
   • Kanzi Bonobo - don't know how his name was chosen. Still alive.
   • Koko Gorilla - her name is short for "Hanabiko" which, in Japanese, means "fireworks child" because she was born on the 4th of July. Still alive. Note also in this article that it talks about her keeping pets (which is "not unique" but interesting with her, and also that she (or the lab, rather) was sued for sexual harassment because she insisted upon some female workers showing her their breasts and the researcher encouraged them to do so. That's a whole different thing, I guess. But kind of amazing.
   • Washoe Chimpanzee - named for the county in Nevada where she was raised. She was 42 when she died.
   • Nim Chimpsky Obvious. He died at 26 from a heart attack.
2. dolphins / whales
   
   • Akeakamai name in Hawaiian means "science" or "lover of wisdom" ("ake" = love, "akamai" = widsom). Died of cancer in 2003.
3. rats
4. pigs
5. crows / ravens (corvids)
   
   • Betty whose name I don't think means anything at all. Though I don't know.
6. parrots
   
   • Alex African Grey Parrot. Name stands for Avian Language EXperiment (or Learning Experiment) Died at 31 from artherosclerosis.
7. dogs
   
   • Rico is a Border Collie shown to know almost 250 different words
8. elephants
   
   • Kosik Not much info on him yet.
   • Batyr Name is name is a Turkic word meaning The Dashing Equestrian, The Man of Courage or The Athlete. Basically the saddest story I have ever heard - He lived in a zoo in Kazakhstan, died because his zookeepers accidentally gave him an overdose of drugs, and he never saw or heard another elephant in his entire life ("He died in 1993 having never seen or heard another elephant.") (The claimed he could speak vocally using his trunk to make noises). On the upside, his mama's name was Palm. And that is loveliest name I have ever heard.
   • Happy, which almost sounds like a joke given the sad elephant before, but Happy might actually be Happy, and was one of three elephants tested using a mirror.
9. octopus (octopi?)
10. pigeons

Naming is vital here. Some of these things were called "projects" . . . like "Project Nim" and "Project Washoe" which has that X-files kind of ring to it. Or very scienc-y, detached. The naming of ALEX is that way too, even though in her book, Irene Pepperberg I think admits (or at least in that Moth story she does) that she had a very close personal relationship to ALEX as well. And then there are those like Koko - "fireworks child" which is so lovely and sweet and humane.


To me, there is an enormously interesting distinction between using their names and their species name. And it makes me wonder how I should title those "portraits" or series of paintings. I could name the pieces like portraits of the invidial animals, with their real name, or their life span, or maybe just as their species name. What a difference that simple distinction would make. Both are accurate names for the animals, given to them by us, but that makes a huge difference. Can I do a series of both - copies perhaps or prints? that are simply named differently. But the same animal or image? How can I accomplish this so that the real question of the artwork isn't what is there in the image necessarily, but is in the naming, the language, which to me is kind of what this whole thing is about?

Animal Intelligence / Animal Cognition

I was listening to a Moth Podcast of Irene Pepperberg telling the story of her 20-odd years of research with her parrot named Alex. Among other things, she told some incredible anecdotes about the ways in which Alex totally surprised them in what he was able to put together on his own, including offering a phonic spelling of "N-U-T" before they actually taught him letters in order to express his desire for a nut. Anyway, Irene Pepperberg and Alex had a lot of coverage in the popular press and have several books out, so I feel like they themselves (Alex actually died) felt too close to the circus or sideshow thing at times . . . The point is, the story got me really excited about animal cognition research. :)

I began where most things begin--with a perusal of a Wikipedia page on the topic. I read the Wikipedia: Animal Cognition article, which turned out to be incredibly exciting and gave me a whole list of other things to look into. I wrote down a few quotes from the article, though, because some of which are just great as they are.

For instance, the mirror test: might be a fascinating thing to do with an artwork too . . .

"The best known research technique in this area is the mirror test devised by Gordon G. Gallup, in which an animal's skin is marked in some way while it is asleep or sedated, and it is then allowed to see its reflection in a mirror; if the animal spontaneously directs grooming behavior towards the mark, that is taken as an indication that it is aware of itself. Self-awareness, by this criterion, has been reported for chimpanzees and also for other great apes, the European Magpie,[7] some cetaceans and a solitary elephant, but not for monkeys. The mirror test has attracted controversy among some researchers because it is entirely focused on vision, the primary sense in humans, while other species rely more heavily on other senses such as the olfactory sense in dogs.[citation needed]"

"Some animals, including great apes, crows, dolphins, dogs, elephants, cats, pigs, rats, and parrots are still typically thought by laypeople as intelligent in ways that some other species of animal are not. For example, crows are attributed with human-like intelligence in the folklore of many cultures. A number of recent survey studies have demonstrated the consistency of these rankings between people in a given culture and indeed to a considerable extent across cultures.[16]"

This short note here sounds really promising to me. What if I do portraits or pieces of species representatives of each of these typically-thought-by-laypeople-as-intelligent animals? It gives purpose to the series of animals I choose.

"One question that can be asked coherently is how far different species are intelligent in the same ways as humans are, i.e., are their cognitive processes similar to ours. Not surprisingly, our closest biological relatives, the great apes, tend to do best on such an assessment. Among the birds, corvids and parrots have typically been found to perform well."

"Young chimpanzees have outperformed human college students in tasks requiring remembering numbers." That is SO GREAT.

Anyway, the Wikipedia article led me to look up some further examples of successful (and unsuccessful) attempts of training or teaching animals, especially this great story of Washoe the Chimpanzee, who learned sign-language. Apparently, she could reliably use 250 different signs, showed ability to combine signs in novel and meaningful ways, and did so best when she learned without external/classical-conditioning sort of motivation (rewards) though that's how they started teaching her. I LOVE the way these learning sessions were described.

"Washoe then tended to bring her arms together again, at which point the Gardners would reward her with more tickling. Over time, the Gardners required Washoe to be more precise with her arm and hand movements in order to elicit more tickling."

"In addition, they stopped the tickle rewards during instruction because these generally resulted in laughing breakdowns."

This relates really nicely with a TED Talk: Susan Savage-Rumbaugh on apes. She shows some AMAZING video of Bonobos learning things like making and putting out fires (which is really great given the whole "man is human because he can make fire" or something) but also how they have learned various communication skills like the comprehension of conversational English and the ability to draw pictograms/symbols (SYMBOLS!) that represent words or ideas. !! Ok, so there is a lot there to look at, but one thing she, or maybe Jane Goodall because I can't remember where I actually heard this, or maybe just in another Wikipedia article, they were saying that one reason why some of the language acquisition experiments didn't replicate well was because teaching language through classical conditioning is not an effective way of learning languages, and that it has been found that chimps/apes etc. learn languages far more effectively when they simply WANT to be able to communicate with individuals in their lives and learn through mimicry and a desire to participate. If that made sense. That seems to be the method Savage-Rimbaugh has taken, and the results are astounding.

This whole idea of animal cognition is fascinating, because it seems both really threatening to human's status as somehow separate or suprerior to other creatures, ut also really endearing and reassuring to know we are not alone. . . that there are billions more thinking and feeling living things on this planet than we perhaps previously gave credit to. it offers to demonstrate so much about what DOES make us human, then, or what factors have pushed us to develop in the strange and complex way that we have.

Jacob did point out during a discussion of all of this that perhaps the science is not as straightforward as it appears, and it is hard to really prove or quantify the kinds of progress in animal intelligence that is being posited. (Neither of us could figure out how they could reliably prove that pigeons out-perform humans on the Monty-Hall probability problem that quite intelligent humans notoriously get wrong or do not even comprehend.) A few days before, Jacob and I also had a discussion about whether or not animals other than humans can be said to commit suicide. According to Katie Gordon, their resident suicide researcher, humans are the only animals that take their own lives. But certainly you hear plenty of anecdotes of animals that, some more actively than others, find ways to stop living. The question of how conscious this decision is has real implications for the consciousness of animals (even though there are some who would argue that proving consciousness in humans is still pretty tricky.) I was reminded very recently of the documentary "The Cove" about dolphins in which the former dolphin trainer claims that one of the dolphins that played Flipper just swam into his arms and purposefully stopped breathing (since breathing is a conscious decision for dolphins) and therefore killed herself out of depression. Questions of these dividing lines - "Humans are the only animals that . . . " kill themselves, draw, have complex language, have sex for fun, kill each other for reasons other than food, use tools, etc. (all of which, I think, can be strongly undermined) is really interesting. I mean, I think our attempts to delineate our own uniqueness is a fascinating compulsion. It also seems really vital if we are to keep existing in the same kind of relationship to animals as we currently have (a system of "dominion" over the animals, right to eat them, own them, put them in zoos, etc.)

So much for now.

On Albert K. Bender

There is a really excellent radio piece by Paul Tough which he presented on the pilot episode of the Little Gray Book lectures in which he recounts his father's attempts to communicate with intelligent alien life forms. Through this story, which is both funny and touching and poetic in the way it deals with the irony of a person who has trouble communicating with people of this planet reaching out to beings from another, Tough also shares a lot of interesting history of the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. He includes the story of Albert K. Bender, the editor of "Space Review."

I'm pretty sure, though I can't place it in my brain, there have been episodes of the X-files devoted to this man, if not at least alluding to him.

This lead me to want to know more about Albert K. Bender.

From the website: Global Windows

"The Men in Black are beings who appear anywhere major UFO sightings take place. They threaten people who claim to have seen UFOs, and intimidate them into silence. They wear sunglasses. They wear black suits. They have olive complexions. They drive black mint-condition vintage luxury cars, or sometimes they fly in black helicopters. Some think that they are government agents. Some think that they are alien agents."

"In his book, The UFO Silencers, Timothy Beckley has attempted to provide an overview of important and representative MIB encounters. According to Beckley, MIB have been with us for many hundreds of years, speculating that such diverse characters from the history of witchcraft and folklore as the Elizabethan "Black Men", the Native American "Black Man" and late nineteenth century reports of malevolent traveling salesmen, might have been manifestations of what we now know as Men in Black."

"An odd incident in the history of the Men in Black is the strange case of Mr. O. H. Krill. 

Mr. Krill's writings first gained publicity some time in the late 1980's when a text file called "The O.H. Krill Papers" was placed on the ParaNet B.B.S. The file told the story of shadow governments in cooperation with gray aliens, secret underground bases, exchanges of human organs for alien technologies, and the like. He offers the following information on the Men in Black:


All things considered, UFO research has become pretty much of a circus today, and the most intriguing and controversial sideshow skirting the edges is the question of the "silencers," or the mysterious "Men in Black." There is a strong subliminal appeal in these accounts of visits by mysterious dark-suited figures (I have been visited myself, as have others I've known) attempting to silence UFO witnesses. A typical situation would be that a witness has a UFO sighting or UFO-related experience. Shortly thereafter he is visited by one or more "odd"-looking men who relate to him the minutest details of his experience, even though he has as yet told no one for fear of ridicule or other reasons.

The men warn him about spreading the story of his experience around and sometimes even threaten him personally, sometimes obliquely, sometimes directly. Any evidence, if it exists, is confiscated in one way or another. Sometimes the visit is for some totally meaningless reason and the subject of UFOs is hardly mentioned, if at all. But again, the men all seem to look alike.

We actually seem to find ourselves in close proximity to beings who obviously must be directly connected in some way with the objects themselves or the source behind them, yet they seem to be functioning unobtrusively within the framework of our own everyday existence.

The classic conception of an MIB is a man of indefinite age, medium height and dressed completely in black. He always has a black hat and often a black turtleneck sweater. They present an appearance often described as "strange" or "odd." They speak in a dull monotone voice, "like a computer," and are dark-complected with high cheekbones, thin lips, pointed chin, and eyes that are mildly slanted.

The visitors themselves are often on absurd missions. They have reportedly posed as salesmen, telephone repairmen or representatives from official or unofficial organizations. Their mode of transportation is usually large and expensive cars -- Buicks or Lincolns, sometimes Cadillacs, all black, of course.

I might note at this point that their physical appearance also has included beings that have pale-grayish skin, and that some of them have been seen to have blond hair, yet they wear the clothing and drive the cars previously described.

Their cars often operate with the headlights off, but ghostly purple or greenish glows illuminate the interior. Unusual insignia have been seen emblazoned on the doors and the license plates are always unidentifiable or untraceable.

The fabric of their clothes has been described as strangely "shiny" or thin, but not silky -- almost as if they have been cut from a new type of fabric.

Their often mechanical behavior has caused them to be described by some as being like robots or androids.

A lot of descriptions of some of these "folks" are pretty bizarre. A businessman's family in Wildwood, New Jersey, was visited by an unusually large man whose pants legs hiked up when he sat down, revealing a green wire grafted onto his skin and running up his leg.

There are other cases of MIB appearing on the other side of a wet, muddy field after a heavy rain, but having no mud whatever on their brightly shined shoes and in the bitter cold, out of nowhere, wearing only a thin coat. Their shoes and wallets all seem new and hardly broken in."

First of all, I like this sort of writing. "He is warned. The men leave, their squeaky clean black shoes oddly unscuffed and unmuddy. And he never publishes again." :) so ominous and odd. I like it :) It's very truncated and dramatic.

Anyway, the website continues:

"Though Krill proved to be a fraud, the Krill documents are still valuable as an illustration of the Men in Black legend. Lear and Grace did not pull the incidents described in the Krill files entirely out of thin air. The Krill files were really a parody of the most extreme and bizarre UFO stories that circulated among the circles of UFO enthusiasts, and it was the resemblance between the Krill files and supposedly legitimate reports of UFO-related  phenomena that made the Krill hoax so successful.

Among UFO enthusiasts, the Krill files were accepted as legitimate documents for many years. Copies of the files are still to be found on the Internet, often presented as legitimate documents from a legitimate source. These files have had an influence on the Men in Black legend in the imaginations of all that have read them, and certainly must have had an effect on many fabricated account of Men in Black phenomena. For this reason,   sections of the Krill document remain on this page."

All this stuff is about legitimation and reality, and something being real and provable or not, and belief . . . and to what extent we need proof of something, and all of it is great. :) It's also kind of dangerously overwhelming -- that you can go so far down the rabbit hole, and that so many people do and loose sight of what might be reality.

Here is some more, from http://realmib.tripod.com/bender.html

"Men in Black encounters are genarlly said to have begun in 1953 with the case of UFO Investigator Albert K. Bender. Bender was the founder of the International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB) and editor of a small publication called the "Space Review," that was dedicated to news of flying saucers. Late in the summer of 1953, Bender made a series of discoveries, which led him to believe that he had finally found the truth to the UFO cover-up. He had planned to reveal his findings in the October issue of the Space Review, but before the issue was published, Bender was visited by three "men dressed in black," who had already read the unpublished report and confirmed his findings. The "silencers" as he called them, scared Bender to the point where he did not publish the report, but left a warning: "We advise those engaged in saucer work to please be very cautious." Bender then suspended publishing on his publication and dissolved the IFSB."

More: (http://obscurantist.com/oma/bender-albert-k/

Associate of Gray Barker, whom he asked to be IFSB’s West Virginia chapter head and chief researcher.”It is suspected that Gray Barker pranked Albert Bender, dressing up with two friends in all black, warning Bender to stay away from UFOs. Barker persuaded Bender to go public with his story, resulting in the book Flying Saucers and the Three Men (1962).

And finally, this snippet, from - http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/jessup_marinov_einstein.htm.

In September of 1953, Albert K. Bender claimed that he had received certain information that provided the missing pieces for a theory concerning the origin of UFOs. He wrote it all down and sent it to a trusted friend. Shortly after, he received a visit from "Three Men." One of them held the letter he had written in his hand. They told him that he had, indeed, stumbled on the answer, and then they purportedly filled him in on the details. He became so ill he was unable to eat for three days. A couple of other UFO researchers, Dominick Lucchesi and August C. Roberts, tried to persuade Bender to talk. He would only repeat "I can't answer that."

Finally, in 1962, Bender declared that he would tell the story and wrote a book entitled Flying Saucers and the Three Men. It described astral projection to a secret base in Antarctica inhabited by male, female and bisexual creatures. Researchers were perplexed and wondered if the whole thing was just contrived to hide something more sinister. Lucchesi said that Bender was a "changed man" after the three men had visited him. He said "it was as if he had been lobotomized." Bender was obviously frightened, and suffered from extreme headaches whenever he even thought about speaking about his experiences and what the three men had told him. He withdrew completely from UFO research, and went to work managing a hotel, and refused to discuss anything about such matters ever again.

Not too many months after Bender's silencing, Edgar R. Jarrold, organizer of the Australian Flying Saucer Bureau, and Harold H. Fulton, head of Civilian Saucer Investigation of New Zealand, had received similar visits and disbanded their organizations. Just recently, I was informed of a fascinating case where another UFO discussion group was broken up by the arrival on the scene of a psychopathic "contactee" who later involved the leader of the group and several members in a murder. I hope to get a full report on this case soon and will keep the readers posted.

Two NASA fun-facts

Laurie Anderson was the first, and last, artist in residence at NASA. Hmmm.

NASA used vultures to find the remains of the space shuttle Columbia.

Connections: Specialness, balloons, and yes, Carl Sagan

OK. CONNECTION. The balloons of my previous work are about SPECIALNESS. Scratch that. Maybe ALL OF IT is about specialness. :) Things that are special and making you feel special. I think that is why the things that make me want to cry, make me want to cry. Special things mean they are the only, it means they are set aside and there is just that one, and there is such a HUGE desire in each of us, I think, to be special. But this is in total conflict with so much about what we know about the world. There is no privileged position because even "special" people are ordinary, and even special people get into car wrecks or plane crashes or get cancer. They are not protected from losing the things that are truly special, to them, their family and friends. And we are supposed to think that people are special, so then the only way to deal with things like knowing that 100,000 or however many people died in the earthquake in Haiti is to assume that the number of them makes the individuals less special, they seem less significant. That's what the numbers do for us. There is this extreme tension between wanting to be special, knowing that each individual is unique (a snow flake, if you will. . . which you shouldn't) and knowing that we are just one of a million species on earth. And now for the Carl Sagan connection (because you've been waiting and of course there is one). At the beginning of Pale Blue Dot, he goes through a very similar set of "demotions" that Robert Kruhlwich does on another episode of Radio Lab which recounts the history of humanity's place in the universe as we have seen it. It goes through a long list, essentially saying, "well, if we aren't at the center of the solar system, maybe our SOLAR system is the center of the galaxy!" etc. ad infinitum . .. down to our species being the only one that can do X, which we periodically change so that we are the top species, most important one, on the planet and ideally the ONLY one in the universe. But we are both heartbreakingly small and unique in that there might only be this one version of us anywhere, and horrifyingly mundane, just another planet around another star. Carl Sagan seems almost obsessed with teaching us this fact, that we are nothing, a speck on a speck on a speck, a "mote of dust" and that our egocentrism or earth-centrism or human-centrism is disguising reality. Every culture on Earth has believed that it was the chosen one, selected by God or even just by nature, as the pinnacle and most important. Even scientists fall prey to this desire to be SPECIAL. (All of this is illustrated much more eloquently, of course, by Carl Sagan). The point is that there is a very delicate balance, a struggle perhaps, between wanting desperately to be special and the heartbreaking knowledge that we are not. That there are "billions and billions" [sorry]. . . of human beings teeming on the planet but as each one of us is extinguished, it isn't really all that significant. It makes me think about this idea of pests and pets - the fine line between them - and the comment someone made in a critique which has stuck with me - that whenever we try to justify the killing of one particular group of people, we cast them as non-human ("cockroaches" often) and when we keep something as a pet, we make it more human, like our dogs. The more special something is, the tighter we hold to it, and the more plentiful, the easier it is to wipe them out, as a whole rather than individual, special parts.

This is, by the way, that famous pale blue dot photograph:

And here is an audio story of the anniversary of the "famous photograph that almost didn't happen" from NPR: An Alien View of Earth.

Also, here is an audio slideshow talking about those very changes in our perspective of ourselves from NPR: Views Of Earth From The Middle Ages To The Space Age.

Two related passages from Carl Sagan's "Broca's Brain"

Here are two quoted passages from Carl Sagan's book "Broca's Brain" that I found to be particularly moving for me and that, after writing them down, seem oddly related. They could, perhaps form the crux of a new piece? :) Who knows. Anyway:

from "Life in the Solar System" Chpater 12 of Carl Sagan's book "Broca's Brain"
A Quote from Anton van Leeuwenhoek

"On April 24th, 1676, observing this water by chance, I saw therein with great wonder unbelievably very many small animacules of various sorts; among others, some that were three to four times as long as broad. Their entire thickness was, in my judgment, not much thicker than one of the little hairs that cover the body of a louse. These creatures had very short, thin legs in front of the head (although I recognize no head, I speak of the head for the reason that this part always went forward during movement) . . . Close to the hindmost part lay a clear globule; and I judged that the very hindmost part was slightly cleft. These animacules are very cute while moving about, oftentimes tumbling all over."

I love this part (the bold emphasis is mine). . .to think of them as being very "cute" even if this is an old use of the word that no longer quite applies :) or has the same meaning

and then thi one p. 150- "The Sun's Family" from Carl Sagan's Broca's brain. In the beginning of this chapter, he describes what it might have been like for some outside intelligent being to watch the activity of Earth from afar (I think he ends with something about how "something interesting is happening on Earth lately" :))

". . . But nothing in those eons of time leaves the planet. And then the planet suddenly begins to fire tiny dispersals throughout the inner solar system, first in orbit around the Earth, then to the planet's blasted and lifeless natural satelite, the Moon. Six capsules--small, but larger than the rest--set down on the Moon, and from each, two tiny bipeds can be discerned, briefly exploring their surroundings and then hotfooting it back to the Earth, having extended tentatively a toe in the cosmic ocean. . . . ."

goes on to list alll the other probes and sateleites, etc. How charming, his view of us. I want to paint that, I think. The two tiny bipeds. :) it makes us seem so adorable.

This one makes me think of this image, which I have always loved but can't really say why.

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This is, by the way, the piece that emerged from these two quotes. I deeply loved making it, even if the drawing is not that great. And I keep wanting to go back to the place I was in when I made it, listening to the Brandenberg concertos.