Project Ruori

It’s been about three weeks since we heard that we will be going to Boston to do a performance and installation at PURE.

Our proposal included an acrylic glass plinko machine (a la The Price is Right) and three hanging fabric cocoons. There will be a performer in each cocoon and a fourth performer dropping ping pong balls into the plinko machine. As the balls come out the three holes in the bottom of the machine, they will trigger the performers to change an ongoing soundscape in some way. Eventually, the person dropping the ping pong balls will replace himself with an automated device, the automated device will run out of balls, and the performers in the cocoons will leave behind the soundscape controllers for the audience to play with.

Tonight we had a short conversation with Laurie Anderson after she performed as Denison University’s 2006 convocation.

Melinda approaches Laurie Anderson.

Laurie Anderson: Hello.

Melinda: Hi! I’m Melinda.

Laurie Anderson shakes Melinda’s hand.

Melinda: And this is Steve.

Dearest Vostek,

Every time we hear someone mention the word technologies we mentally prepend “amazing…” and append “…that will drive our economy”.

This has increased overall conversational verbiage by 39.1%.

Thinking of you.

project ruori

So, a while ago I met the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson in a corn maze. He was chasing some kids around that appeared to be in his care in between muttering things like “This is like a Republican conundrum!”

Today at SIGGRAPH 2006 the phantom of Spalding Gray appeared in front of the booth in which Steve and I are functioning as ornaments. He was wearing 3-D glasses and delivered a short monologue about how he was from a suburb of Ohio. When asked where in Ohio, he said, “Manhattan”.

A moment after he left, Steve realized our mistake in not talking to him so I went after him armed with a DIY ruori sticker (the ruori URL and the words “You are a Winner!” written on a stolen Lufthansa baggage sticker) and explained that he had impressed us with his impromptu performance technique at our booth and after assuring him that I was not selling anything (nor was the website), and – after answering his inquiries about whether I was old enough to be admitted to SIGGRAPH (the minimum age is 16) – I gave him the sticker, accepted his obviously sarcastic thanks and handshake, and retreated, terrified and exhilirated, to the safe boringness of the booth.

M2: It’s funny that you mention mouths appearing where there were not mouths before. It was scary — when I was like, I don’t know, eight, nine, ten years old I had a recurring dream. This LITERALLY lasted for the better part of five or six YEARS, well into my adolescence, and it was always EXACTLY the same, as if were just a TAPE replaying every time.

The WORLD was FILLED with FACELESS CREATURES. Pretty much everything that was… mammalian… uh, was completely and totally FACEless – except these ROUND MOUTHS – perfectly round mouths – would appear from nowhere, generally in the forehead region, just LINED with these RAZOR-SHARP TEETH –

F3: That’s TERRIFYING!

M2: – LAMPREY-like.

F3: Yeah, I used to be obsessed with echinoderms because they have creepy little mouths like that.

M2: OH YEAH! And, and, like, the, this dream, like, basically, I was surrounded by these things, and some of them were like, vaguely recognizeable as like, people or creatures or animals that I KNEW throughout my life, and, and, there was no real sense of malice for the first good HALF of the dream; they were just kind of, AROUND. And then they started, like – but they stayed at a relative distance. Then, uh, in, er, uh, the, uh, middle-ish, uh, uh, uh, of the dream, or so, they started, uh, just, getting CLOSER. As I was going through all these different places they’re MUCH, MUCH CLOSER, and these MOUTHS start appearing. And they start coming TOWARD me.

F3: This sounds like the zombies in Zelda.

M2: Wuaouh, UEH, I, uh, maybe. This was BEFORE I ever played Zelda, so, but yeah, crazy-crazy.

But th- uh, the DREAM always ended the SAME WAY; uh, like, this MAN and, we-, uh, he’s in, like, a BOWLER hat, and he’s FACEless. And he takes off the bowler hat-

F3: Magritte! Your whole dream was about Magritte!

M2: Well, yeah, it IS very Magritte in that regard but- well, there’s no apple, but instead of an apple there’s this BIG FUCKING MOUTH, and he just, like, LEANS TOWARDS me, and I close my eyes and scream, and I open my eyes, and I’m on this LITTLE GREEN WOODEN DINGHY on the middle of an OCEAN, like, just, OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. And my MOM’S DOG, he was-

F3: Dinghy! (Laughs uncontrollably) Sorry!

M2: He was a BELOVED FAMILY PET. His name was Machette – my mom had THREE STANDARD POODLES named Machette. She brought her first one back-

F3: Like “machette”?

M2: Uh, well, uh, yes. FRENCH pronounciation of “like the word ‘machette’ ”.

Uh, she brought it back, uh, in the 1960s when she moved back – she’d been living in Paris and she moved back to the United States. She’d been working, uh, in the US NATO office, and uh, she was good friends with one of the French ambassadors, and when he moved to a new apartment he couldn’t keep his standard poodle, Machette, so he gave it to my mom; my mom kept her for a couple of years, moved back to the states, and she flew Machette back with her. And every time Machette died, she would get a new Machette.

So I always knew a black standard poodle, female, named Machette. This was like a staple… like a pinnacle… like a PILLAR of my CHILDHOOD, like, the ULTIMATE SAFETY, ‘cause there was always a dog named Machette.

And at the end of this dream, I’m in the middle of this OCean, no land in SIGHT, no sun, no clouds, just OMNIDIRECTIONAL LIGHT. And this faceless Machette comes up out of the water, puts both front legs on the edge of the boat, and this BIG MOUTH appears, and I was like WOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!!! and then I wake up.

And I literally had that dream once a month for five years.

Yeah. Fucked up. “Mouths appearing where there were not mouths before”… something so specific has to be in some… it has to hit on some eventual – some insecurity or something. I don’t know.

(Fin)

[M2 === Aaron] [F3 === Beth]

So the other day, I had this dream that I was flying back to Columbus, Ohio, to perform some sort of musical drama. The performance was, like, going to be in two weeks and it was like, not going to be performed in Columbus, but rather in Philadelphia, and the script was still incomplete, and we hadn’t, like, finished writing the music or practiced at all or anything.

So, when I arrived at Steve’s condo, Ashley and Ryan were, like, building some animal out of plastic and, like, filming it. Or something. This went on for a couple of days, except they were always filming different things, like Cheerios and Floam creatures and sea-urchins-that-look-nothing-like-sea-urchins. Made out of pipe cleaners.

So. We were going along, filming weird things and writing weird things – oh, and I think we might have been, like, keeping a blog of all this or something – when the guy who was going to play keyboard said he wasn’t coming, and we had to rewrite everything for four people instead of five – which we might have had to do anyway, cause, like, we were trying to maintain correspondence with the number of tines on a typical dinner fork.

Then we started having these rehearsals. And I think one night during one of these rehearsals, I was going to, like, chant some lyrics or something, and then Steve started waving his hands above his head, which I recognized as the universal signal for “dance like a robot,” so I started, you know, dancing like a robot. And then the music stopped and Steve was like, “What are you doing?! That was your cue to come in!!”

Anyway, one day Steve and I went to the airport, where Beth was, and it was weird because I knew immediately who she was even though I had never met her in person before. Then we picked up Aaron at his house in Newark, and he started driving and then we realized that we were going west, and for some reason, we, like, didn’t want to be going in that direction, so we turned around.

So we were, like, driving somewhere at night and it was dark, you know, because it was night, and all of a sudden, we were in, like, this dark tunnel and Ace of Base started playing really loudly and the car windows rolled down. Then the sun came up and we like found this hotel in Philadelphia, and it had a toaster that didn’t really toast things, so I brought the untoasted bread to our room and fell asleep on the floor for two hours.

Then we were, like, at this old house that was called an “arts center” and this guy who called himself Dr. T was, like, projecting some really crazy fractals and Hindu gods on this screen, and I almost became hypnotized and, like, had to go out and get some fresh air.

And then, we, like, did the show, you know, and there were people watching and clapping once in a while, and afterward, someone came up and told us that it was “fun.”

Well, you know, even though that was over, we were still kind of trapped in Philadelphia, so we wandered around in Chinatown and bought some fake fruit to keep the projectors company, took a trip to New Jersey, and ate at the Great American Diner Pub.

The next day, we were back at the arts center and had to do some visuals for some other musicians who were there, so we were, like, putting some postmodern evil flashing teapots up on the screen, and after that, we went outside. While we were standing there, I was suddenly having a panic attack from all the mind torture, so I bummed a cigarette off of this guy, and you know, it was just like being in Germany, because I was standing there smoking with other people who were smoking.

We were almost ready to get out of there, but then the van started clicking, and it turned out that, like, besides trying to communicate with us from the Twilight Zone, the van’s battery was dead. So we had to jump it, which was difficult because it was dark, you know, and we couldn’t see. But Michael Victor lent us a flashlight and we got things working, and we left to go to Perkins. Except that it wasn’t Perkins, it was just an overly-airconditioned diner where old men go to talk about killing their wives.

Well, finally, we escaped and were driving back to Columbus, stopping along the way to pick up a Christian selfhelp book about how eugenics is good and how identifying your complicated, unpredictable, genetically-inherited temperament will help you find your vocation and marry a beautiful wife.

Then in the end, the whole thing turned out to be some sort of moralstory about why you should never leave your whale in the desert because, you know, it’s kinda useless there.

I would like to thank Steve for allowing me into his home and letting me be part of something really special.

The last couple weeks have been an amazing experience. I was able to learn so much. From the stop motion animations, the sound recordings, and the video syncing. It all let me part of something creative and unique.

Highlights of the trip:

• Any time spent down in the mine.
• Highway coasting behind semis.
• Rocking out with our voices in the car.
• Dinner with Briggs.
• Denison Tour.
• Whit’s custard shop.
• The cat gun.
• Being able to perform in front of people in Philadelphia (albeit behind a computer).
• Setting up and learning about the sound system.
• Blogging.
• Creating.

And the quote of the trip: “This is the Denison bridge, where many a student has tried to kill himself and failed.” - Steve (while pointing at 12-foot-high footbridge)

The day was busy as we were getting everything finalized and written for the final rehearsal tonight.

Sometime in the day we ate lunch at a Chinese fast foodish place. Everything is a blur before lunch. Mostly what I remember from the morning is: viola stand made, Ashley finished up arranging some songs, Steve finalized the last video patch, Tina finished editing all the final set lists…the amount of finished tasks goes on.

Aaron arrived early and he began to get everything programmed into the drum pad. Steve finished up sequencing a couple songs so we could start rehearsing them as he continued sequencing more songs.

We rehearsed the songs, and the captioning system.

More songs were rehearsed.

At around 9 pm, a complete, full, all the way through, run, was done. It was a bit sloppy in spots, mostly on scene changes and what not. But, overall, it went relatively smooth.

Another scene change run was done. Thoughts were inputted and changed.

A packing list is currently being made, while the morning plans are being scripted.

Car 1: Green Dodge Minivan (Ashley, Ryan, and almost all of the equipment) Estimated time of departure from Steve’s: 12:00 pm EDT Estimated time of arrival to Hotel: 8:00 pm EDT

Car 2: White Toyota Prius (Steve, Tina, Aaron and Beth) Estimated time of departure from Steve’s: 6:00 pm EDT Estimated time of arrival to Columbus Airport: 6:30 pm EDT Estimated time of arrival to Aaron’s: 8:00 pm EDT Estimated time of arrival at Hotel: 4:00 am EDT

Awakening was delayed as Ashley and I slept past the alarm.

I was greeted in the kitchen by Tina’s already-brewed coffee. She stated it might be too strong, but it was just what the doctor ordered.

Steve was busy sequencing and Tina was creating a book cover for one of our props. So, not being needed, Ashley and I headed to joannfabric to pick up some velcro to secure the Mac minis to the projectors. We chose the industrial version. A trip was also made to Kroger to pick up some bread and fortune cookies for props.

Upon returning, I practiced the subcaptioning, as Tina sang. Steve and Ashley were composing new songs at that time.

We finally recieved news back that we could not use a local outdoor ampitheater because they would not unlock the power outlets for us. The outlets were for “their” use only. We could still practice there, but no power…

Feeling dejected, Tina searched for new parks, and then we tried to go hunt them down. We succesfully found two, however neither park had power outlets in or near their covered shelter. The third alleged park is m.i.a.

We returned home with another sense of dejection. However, Ashley and Steve had both finished up with their two songs. So, in rejoice, we went to go practice them. They went well, some parts needed some adjusting too.

Aaron arrived and our drummer man was here. He set up, and we began rocking out. His drumming skills amazed me, mostly on how quick he could pick up the bassline for each song, and then learn it and memorize it.

A couple dry runs were done of the script. I got to practice video for each non-musical scene. Things went well.

Aaron brought his commodore 64 to generate sounds to be used during the performance.

Currently a midnight snack is being eaten. Whether work has ended for the night has yet to be discussed.

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