Savannah Niles-- Proposal.

I want to pursue two bodies of work in parallel: one inside the computer and inside language, and the other outside the computer and largely outside language. In my practice currently I experience difficulty bridging these two interests and ways of working; I hope that by intentionally exploring each side of this coin separately, I can find a point at which both relate. These ideas are so far inchoate, but interests that come to mind as related to the investigations I intend to conduct are:

1.) Translation and language: I’d like to continue pursuing my interests in 3D scanning and printing, processes I think of as translations, and which I’m interested in connecting to language. I am also interested in the inconsistencies and difficulties of switching between systems of symbols, such as languages, or code and speakable language. I will consider writing and programming as investigations in these interests.

2.) Honesty: Often, biases, assumptions, and subjective judgments challenge a thinker’s honesty—it’s nearly impossible to arrive at objective conclusions, or unbiased data. Computers are capable of doing this, but not their operators. This to me is an important difference between the kind of work and methods of working that can be accomplished in a digital world versus non-digital media. This is a difference I’d like to explore. I also see language as a frequent barrier to honest ways of working, since language can justify, rationalize, and obscure decisions. My interest in honesty thus likewise relates to my interest in language.

All this is to say that I want to question the honesty of my work all the time.

3.) Memory: Personal memory is the anti-data, I think: it’s not quantized, it’s not honest or objective, and it’s not universal. But, like a computer system relies on heaps of numerals and calculations to execute decisions, we too depend on and carry with us personal memory as a kind of emotional dataset. So much language is devoted to the expression of this “data”—this is all interesting to me as an artist and a programmer, and a human.

Ultimately I want to make work that reflects an interest in what it means to be a human, particularly in a technological age.

I want to end this proposal with a poem by Wallace Stevens that is central to my thinking and practice, called “the Idea of Order at Key West”:

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.

The water never formed to mind or voice,

Like a body wholly body, fluttering

Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion

Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,

That was not ours although we understood,

Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.

The song and water were not medleyed sound

Even if what she sang was what she heard,

Since what she sang was uttered word by word.

It may be that in all her phrases stirred

The grinding water and the gasping wind;

But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.

The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea

Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.

Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew

It was the spirit that we sought and knew

That we should ask this often as she sang.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea

That rose, or even colored by many waves;

If it was only the outer voice of sky

And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,

However clear, it would have been deep air,

The heaving speech of air, a summer sound

Repeated in a summer without end

And sound alone. But it was more than that,

More even than her voice, and ours, among

The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,

Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped

On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres

Of sky and sea.

It was her voice that made

The sky acutest at its vanishing.

She measured to the hour its solitude.

She was the single artificer of the world

In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,

Whatever self it had, became the self

That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,

As we beheld her striding there alone,

Knew that there never was a world for her

Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,

Why, when the singing ended and we turned

Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,

The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,

As the night descended, tilting in the air,

Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,

Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,

Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,

The maker's rage to order words of the sea,

Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,

And of ourselves and of our origins,

In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.