Go To Sleep

[ms-demeanor]

Performance art is good and listening to people who don't understand art talk about performance art is a unique type of torture.

[ms-demeanor]

Which is probably a thought that could be the core of a pretty fun, masturbatory piece of performance art.

[ms-demeanor]

Oh. Oh actually. Actually.

[ms-demeanor]

Okay, so the name of the piece is "It's what you make of it" and you have a setup that's a cross between a zoltar fortune-teller machine and a crank penny press. The room the piece is performed in has a warning about recording the performance and cautions the viewer to only interact with the piece of they consent to being recorded and photographed.

The artist is in the box, made up as a marionette and the viewer can use pulleys and switches to position the artist's limbs and to change the background and lighting of the box and can type a short prompt for the artist to repeat and act out verbatim.

The viewer has to drop a token (provided as part of the piece) into a coin slot and work a crank to complete the prompt. While the artist is acting out the prompt, the prompt is printed on a photo strip that includes a picture of the prompter (taken by a hidden webcam on the booth). One copy of the prompt and photo is spit out along with the cranked token (which has the phrase "it's what you make of it" and an image of a clown pressed into it) for the viewer to keep, one copy of the prompt and photo is spit out inside the booth where the artist can collect it after completing the prompt.

What the artist is going to do with the photo strip is not explained, the artist doesn't speak or move except as a response to a prompt.

[ms-demeanor]

People will prompt the artist to say "this is stupid." People will prompt the artist say explicit phrases, or to swear incessantly. People will prompt the artist to say slurs.

And they will walk away with their prompt attributed to them with their photo and a coin they used their energy to mint into a reminder that the art is what they made of it. And their creation is documented in the hands of the artist as well. What did they put into the world? What did they decide to say when they had a chance to say anything? What were they comfortable saying before they realized that someone would quote them on it? What did they make of it, and how would they feel if their photo was attached to their prompt in a book or video or somewhere that people might see it?

How did they approach the piece? How would they approach it a second time?

[ms-demeanor]

Also the artist goes hog fucking wild on the prompts. They're acted out *loudly* and melodramatically with as much emotion as the artist can put into the performance.

And whenever the machine is not in motion the artist is still and vacant, but the performance of the prompt involves as much eye contact and emoting as possible.

[ms-demeanor]

The piece is dead and meaningless until you approach it, and as soon as you start interacting with it it should become disconcertingly alive with your intention.

[everbright-mourning]

That sounds like an actual, literal nightmare I had as a kid where I fucked up giving instructions to a mimic-biological construct and didn't say anything b/c I didn't want to get in trouble and the construct was killed for not following the instructions correctly.

I absolutely would never want to be put in a situation where someone couldn't refuse my orders.

Well. Clearly as performance it it works already. I need to go drink of a cup of tea about this to stop being upset. I'm sure it would also make other people feel things they perhaps didn't realize they were going to feel.

[digitaldiscipline]

Marina Abramović, Rhythm 0 (1974)

[ms-demeanor]

This post was directly provoked by stumbling across a reddit thread of non-artsy people reacting to Rhythm 0.

[moveslikekeithrichards]

when i was a kid my Getting To Sleep technique was visualizing a child-sized shriveled up mummy with big piercing eyes that would stand silhouetted in the doorway & stare at me & probably attack if i so much as opened my eyes after getting into bed & this technique caused me to develop a lifelong nighttime-induced paranoia & it still takes me 2 hours to fall asleep. so i wouldnt recommend that

[anthonycolonthree]

(guy who's not getting anything done voice) I need to learn every skill and all information

[dumbdoegirl]

huh. i am both wound and blade. neat.

[beingharsh]

high as fuck lowballing never worn baby shoe listings

[dogpuppy]

[quoms]

The Catholic church is a thin veneer of aesthetics and religious dogma laid over the Western world's most ancient continuously operating bureaucracy. The issuing of an official Vatican-approved I'm Sorry form that SSPX members have to fill out and tick several checkboxes then get stamped for approval to have their excommunications reversed is more beautiful to me than any liturgy

[machine-unlearning]

The doping of graphene with a plethora of elements has been reported as enhancing its electrocatalytic performance. It has become almost a paradigm that the once fantastic graphene for electrocatalysis is not so fantastic anymore and that we need to add something to it (i.e., a dopant) to make it great again...

It seems that whatever “crap” we put into graphene, electrocatalysis increases. One may exaggerate only a little by saying that if we spit on graphene it becomes a better electrocatalyst. Having 84 reasonably stable elements (apart from noble gases and carbon), one can produce 84 articles on monoelemental doping of graphene; with two dopants we have 3486 possible combinations, with three dopants we can publish 95,284 combinations, and with four elements there are close to 2 × 106 combinations.

We demonstrate in the following text the meaninglessness of the never-ending co-doping of graphene. We decided to follow the hyperbole of ever multiplying dopants; however, instead of using expensive and toxic chemicals such as ammonia, fluorine, chlorine, boranes, etc., we took a page from the pre-Haber–Bosch era and sought natural materials for the fertilization of graphene and used guano as a dopant.

In summary, we demonstrated that bird dropping-treated graphenes indeed make graphene more electrocatalytic than nondoped graphene... Because doping graphene with cheap bird droppings produces more electrocatalytic materials than many complex multielemental doping procedures, we do not see any justification for such efforts, and we believe that researchers should focus their energy on other research directions. To conclude in a positive (and a bit satiric) tone, we speculate that the chemical composition of chicken guano can be tailored by feedstock (chick feed), and, therefore, the quality of the resulting doped catalyst can be further improved. We believe that there is potential for the bird dropping-doped graphene for fuel cells and in a hydrogen economy, and we believe that bird droppings can become a high-value-added product such as guano was in the past. One can only hope that with such dramatic advantages, no wars (even trade wars) will be started over bird droppings this time.

[depezblob]

[pissvortex]

[rottingfacade]

[weepingwidar]

Anthony Hurd (American, 1975) - You Have This Hold Over Me (2025)

[tockthewatchdog]

[autofuneral]

i come here from my home country of teusday, which is very very far indeed, and my old bones are tired. could i stay at your wednesday for the next 24 hours if you would be so kind?

[torstherapy]

[111111111yeah]

[making-friendos]

One must imagine Sisyphus happy

[captain-price-returns]

its truly unfortunate but the 4chan “>be me” format is the greatest advancement in comedic storytelling since the invention of the slide show

[bob-artist]

A battle between good and weevil