Author: MK

The ancient art of falconry is the practice of taking wild quarry in its natural state with a trained bird of prey. Falconers must work with their birds daily, and many hours of training, feeding and care may result in a few exhilarating moments of watching the bird hurtle towards the earth at over a hundred and fifty miles per hour to make a kill.

I have found in falconry a pattern that is similar to the pattern in the work I am currently creating. This work is based on the relationship between humans and computers mediated by voice-recognition software. I am concerned with the poetics of making my computer understand my voice, and the elusive qualities of spoken language. It is not a search for the meaning of spoken words, but rather a shared meaning. The dialogue between my computer and I is intended to expose a fundamental aspect of language itself – meaning arises from common use. It is possible for a language to have only two speakers. I have trained my computer to understand my very particular mode of speaking, and I in turn can understand and interpret the flawed output it produces. Though no one else may understand our customized dialogue, based on our intimate understanding of each other’s flaws, perhaps we (my computer and I) can create a common discourse.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

– William Butler Yeats, excerpt from “The Second Coming”, 1921.

In Yeats’ poem, a rupture has occurred in an ancient practice, the partnership of man and beast through the art of falconry. Taming a wild creature to the extent that it becomes a hunting instrument that can be used by man takes years of practice, and this process is very much an exchange between man and bird. This exchange is captured quite nicely by an old adage in falconry: “who is training who?”

The falconer’s cry must be heard to be effective; as the voice must be understood by the computer to produce a result. Any art or craft requires dedication, and any relationship between two radically different entities results in each partner shaping the other, and meticulously creating a shared understanding. Man’s relationship with beast or machine is an ongoing process, and much patience and training may result in some form of mutual dialogue between the two. To engage in these crafts also means one must understand the stakes: years of effort may yield little or no progress, and an error at a crucial moment may be catastrophic.

New Year’s has always been my least favourite holiday, mostly because of the contrived, over-priced parties that result, and the fact that the change from one calendar year to the next seems, well, insignificant. How about celebrating the end of the fiscal year instead? I picture a group of well-dressed accountants throwing their year-end reports in the air as they sip brandy. At least the end of the fiscal year has some import, whereas I can’t say the same for the switch from December to January.

Once the confetti has been thrown and strangers have been kissed, people often turn to two things: reflecting on the previous year, and making resolution lists. For some art-related musings on 2004, I’m pleased to direct you to Sally McKay’s annual Top Tens, where Sally’s readers, (myself included), submit their 2004 art highlights.

As for resolutions for 2005, I’d like to share with you the statistical trends of New Year’s resolutions, as compiled by myGoals.com. Here is a pretty pie chart of the top categories of this year’s resolutions, as recorded my myGoals.com’s users.

Reading some of the resolutions on the myGoals.com website is an interesting window into how banal, tragic, or funny some of our preoccupations can be: “To do a back walkover”, “To eat lunch”, “To be faithful”, “To stop spending money on motivational tapes”, “To organize my closet”, “To replace the dead cypress trees”, etc.

As we can see, the “Health and Fitness” category tops the charts, and a little further reading reveals that the top resolution in that category is “Lose ten pounds”. Career-related resolutions took a 5% tumble this year, resulting in a second place standing. Sadly, it seems that “Family and Relationships” gained no percentage points this year, leaving it in sixth place as a category. A little reading between the lines of the resolutions posted here provides a rather unflattering portrait, where losing ten pounds takes priority over working on relationships, and organizing the closet is a more popular notion than spending time with family. Here’s hoping that your personal resolution list, whatever it is, includes a few thoughts of others amid the typical personal goals.

The sketchbook is a sort of artistic ground zero; a starting point where artists embark on a path towards a final piece, or use the form of drawing as an end in itself. Frustrated artists turn back to the sketchbook to start over. Artists who are on a roll refer to old sketches and create new ones to continue to expand ideas.

It is with this in mind that I take note of Antarctica Dispatches, a project by Simon Faithfull. He’s currently travelling with the British Antarctic Survey, and using a Palm Pilot as a sketchpad, uploading a new picture each day. The sketches are a bit crude, and very spare, with much white space surrounding few details. The drawings are compelling because the “imperfections” in the method of working with the Palm Pilot highlight the difficulties in the process of drawing to accurately portray a certain reality or sensibility. It might seem nearly impossible to represent or express the vast emptiness of Antarctica, and so it’s poetic to limit one’s tools to the point where it actually is impossible, and submit yourself to the process of rendering fragments of this imposing territory on the tiny screen of a Palm Pilot.

I find this project interesting for its imposition of severe limits on a very open, basic artistic technique, to represent a difficult subject. I’m reminded of Glenn Gould’s radio documentary, The Idea of North, wherein Gould explores his fixation on the stark Canadian North by applying the musical technique of counterpoint to create a dense thicket of voices describing their experiences of the North. These territories of ice that occur throughout the globe seem to inspire artists to rethink fundamental forms: in Gould’s case, the radio documentary, and in Faithfull’s case, the sketchpad. This stark geography begs fundamental questions, and artists must respond radically.

In a recent article on BBC News, artist David Hockney said: “It is time for us to look at how images are made, to place greater value on drawings and draughtsmanship.” (emphasis mine). Like the emptiness of the North, the blank piece of paper and the silence of the recording booth offer a blank slate upon which we can examine fundamentals. This barrenness offers space for the magical moment of creation, when something comes of nothing.

Even if you are not a TV executive that’s long on ambition but short on show ideas, you will like my friend Joanna Briggs’ new blog.

Entitled “Good Ideas Make Bad Television”, the blog allows Joanna to generously share her absurd, funny, and often incredibly detailed ideas for television shows. She also invites you to steal the ideas and turn them into real TV shows, no credit to Joanna required. I think my favourite idea so far is CSI: Forensic Accounting. Who knew accounting could be so exciting? But now, I see the potential.