Audio: Ronald Johnson’s “ARK 38, Ariel’s Songs to Prospero” /  by James belflower

I’m very excited to see access to the audio file of Ronald Johnson’s ARK 38 “Ariel’s Songs to Prospero” available (thanks Peter!). I was looking for this during my dissertation chapter on Ronald’s cookbooks! This is a wonderful addition to the recent reissue of Ark by Flood Editions.

Ronald Johnson's papers are held at the Kenneth Spencer Research Collection at the University of Kansas Libraries. His books are published in the U.S. by Flood Editions. Send all inquiries to peter [at] luxhominem [dot] com.

Below is a link to the recording of “ARK 38, Ariel’s Songs to Prospero,” for Dorothy Neal, recorded with Roger Gans at KQED in San Francisco in the early 1980s. It is “constructed out of recordings of songs of the birds of eastern United States,” according to Johnson.

Power Electronics and Media Myth /  by James belflower

A great find today on Ubu Web: “Toward a Sound Ecstatic Electronica: The Rationale Behind Tellus Issues “Power Electronics” and “Media Myth” by Joseph Nechvatal. Though Nechvatal originally wrote the essay for Tellus #13 in the 80s Power Electronics heyday, he revised it again in 2000. I’m impressed with how apt its notion of sound as an ecstatic critique of reductive social constructions is for today’s noise music progenitors. There is a wonderful listening list also. Check it out!

Film Poem Published in Barzakh Magazine | With Walden /  by James belflower

My new film poem is in great company in the new alumni issue of Barzakh Magazine! With Walden employs improvised video, field recordings, drawings, and poetry to grapple with the claustrophobic vigor of love in the first months of fatherhood.

Post ALA Panel Notes: Ronald Johnson's Formal, Transgeneric, and Multimedia Innovations /  by James belflower

For the American Literature Association’s 2019 conference, Mark Scroggins organized a panel of wonderful papers that explored Johnson’s monumentalizing urge, gastrophilosophy, and sound art. It was a privilege presenting with…

  • Sally Connolly: “Formal Innovation and Ergodic Invitation in Ronald Johnson’s ‘Blocks to Be Arranged in a Pyramid: In Memoriam AIDS’.”

  • Devin King: “The Invisible Spire: Ronald Johnson’s ARK 38 and Bay Area Radio Drama.”

The excellent panel presentations helped me decide to start the book I’ve been toying with, a study of Ronald Johnson’s gastrophilosophy. My panel paper explored taste at the bookends of his publishing career, from his first book of poetry, A Line of Poetry a Row of Trees (1967) to his most comprehensive cookbook, The American Table: More Than 400 Recipes That Make Accessible for the First Time the Full Richness of American Regional Cooking. There is so much more, however, mixed throughout his oeuvre. His monument at the beginning of ARK to the Native staple “Bison Bison Bison,” his comparison of the brain to an orange, a critique of Columbus’s misunderstanding of the variegation of Native Corn, a taste of Thoreau’s “Wild Apples,” and a taste of William Bartram’s bitter orange salad dressings. I’ll explore all of these and more. I’ll let you know when the book is out!

L to R: James, Nathan, Devin, Mark. Disclaimer: The Bukowski Bar choice was not based on the quality of his poetry but of the beer list.

L to R: James, Nathan, Devin, Mark. Disclaimer: The Bukowski Bar choice was not based on the quality of his poetry but of the beer list.

New VR art on Arrhythmicity, grab your goggles! /  by James belflower

I have some new digital art in the VR exhibition at Arrhythmicity. Make sure you have your VR goggles, it's immersive! It runs until 5.15.18 and is made by dalpfozs.

“My digtial collages are done exclusively on the iPhone 6 using apps such as Decim8, Pixel is Data, and Photoshop Mix to glitch, distort, and errorize found text and images.
The excerpts from the series I have attached explore a vocabulary new to me, child rearing. The fragmented, sometimes illegible words floating through these collages speak to the radical transformations to communication that characterize the birth partner experience”

My work appears with Zeppra, Bryan Meador, Sarawut Chutiwongpeti, Momma Tried, Udit Mahajan, and Endam Nihan. And don't forget to check out previous exhibitions!

“arrhythmicity - curatorial statements
eRR0R

an exploration of the fertility of errors, with works by:
15.03.2018 - 15.04.2018: Marcelina Wellmer, Kevin Brophy, osvaldo cibils, Simon Hutchinson, cleo miao, jah justice, Sian Fan, Noah Travis Phillips
15.04.2018 - 15.05.2018: Bryan Meador, Endam Nihan, James Belflower, Momma Tried, Sarawut Chutiwongpeti, Udit Mahajan, Zeppra
15.05.2018 - 15.06.2018: Bianca Hockensmith, Claude Heiland-Allen, David Lisbon, Jonathan Kiritharan, Nick Montfort

the exhibition developed starting from the following open call for very short audio (.mp3 - max. 30s) and images (.jpg - max. 500kb):
in a world that covers its flaws in the blinding light of universal truths and institutionally reinforced regimes of visibility, we are interested in the fertile shades opened up by errors. the antiseptic intellectual environment our societies try to achieve, while arguably “healthy” and “safe” for the established values, has the huge disadvantage of obscuring any fundamentally different modes of existence. we are looking for submissions that explore the fertility of errors and question our inherited worldview.”
— http://www.dalpofzs.com/