Upon entering the Christian Marclay exhibition at the Whitney Museum the first thing I noticed was tens of chairs scattered throughout the space. It looked as though they had been intentionally placed in chaotic orbits around two stations, one for live performance, another was a large video projection with colorful shapes superimposed on the imagery. Aside from the large chalkboard wall lined with musical staff and covered with graffiti, the chairs were the most participatory part of the exhibition. Also on display were a several works made over the course of the last couple decades, but the majority of the pieces were recent. Most of what was shown were performance scores meant to provoke action in curated musicians, but not the general public. The sense of scrappy irony that drove a lot of the young, downtown art scene in New York during the 1980’s is quite apparent in his earlier performance works, which were projected on the walls in a back room, and remnants displayed in vitrines for protection.

The musical scores of Christian Marclay range from video works meticulously edited to create dynamics and rhythms that could be interpreted by musicians, to collages of found objects, to onomatopoetic text. The visual content of some of these performance scores were quite engaging, as well, which added yet another dimension of interpretation for the musicians. This ‘other dimension’ was noticeable in his sculptural works, the clothing scores, the vast assemblies of found paper objects with musical notation, the kitschy bells, the perceived score of which seems to be the size, shape, weight and whatever the handcrafted design evokes. The other dimension is the intention behind the work, the constructed experience. How would a musician respond not only to the occasionally readable marks of musical notation, but also to the colorful imagery, design elements, and so forth that jockey for space on the glossy magazine paper? These are all ‘readable’ scores, the tension palpable between form and content. In fact, anything can be a readable score if the musician is open-minded enough and practiced in improvisation.

As a dancer and artist working with improvisation in performance, I was interested in the scores as legible objects that could tease movement from my body. Having worked with many different kinds of scores in performance, I was keenly aware of my internal response to the notation dots hovering next to the tacky fruit drawings on a wavy musical staff. While I am an amateur musician and cannot read music, I have worked extensively with musicians, sound artists and recorded music. When I hear sound or music my body reacts as another part being played, like how tap-dancers are considered percussionists; I invoke the semi-silent musician in me who adds a contrapuntal visual component to the soundscape. It is no different when I encounter objects, architecture, text, or other bodies. Surely I was not the only one, besides the curated set of professionals, who came to that exhibit and was compelled to perform the scores.

However, the prohibitive institutional context in which these visceral scores were presented killed the impulse to perform before it could be released. There was no space demarcated by the artist or the museum for the viewer to interpret the scores in their own way. For me this was the biggest disappointment of the exhibition. While Marclay seemed to be pushing for a score that could live beyond performance as an objet d’art, a score is only alive when a person is activates it or is activated by it. Not allowing physical and artistic space for enthusiastic individuals from the public to express their own interpretations of the scores felt authoritarian and exclusive, which was ironic to me because Marclay seemed so open to allowing the professional artists to take his work and run with it, relatively unsupervised. From my semi-insider perspective this diminished the brilliant openness with which Marclay approaches the form of his artistic expression, as well as the idea of improvisation in general. The chalkboard wall was an attempt at crowd sourcing material for a ‘collaborative’ score, but it appeared to be afterthought, a minimal outlet for the viewers’ behavioral response to the space. People could add to the exhibition by chalking the wall, but could not play it; they could not play. What could otherwise have been an incredible experiment in viewer participation became flattened by the perpetuation of the long-standing (but not unchallenged) functional schism between art producer and art consumer. It made me ask the question of whether or not Marclay is detaching from his forebears in experimental art, which are primarily Beuys and Fluxus, according to Wikipedia. In line with those histories, anyone can be an artist.

As I explored the Marclay exhibition, the biggest development I saw in his work was a value shift from raw, uninhibited, experiments in counter-culture inspired by the punk movement to a refined, established system of signification set within the confines of the visual art world. Maybe this is a natural progression for most artists who ‘make-it’, but that does not change the fact that there is a loss, as well as a gain. When I have attempted to ossify into choreography ideas or movement created through improvisation or Authentic Movement, I notice the loss and the gain. What gets lost when refining or setting a work made through improvisatory processes is the impromptu decision-making, the inclusion of new ideas. The work becomes contained. This does not constitute a loss of value. It is a trade-off. What is gained is a nearly repeatable unit that is of a known quantity, a set of firm decisions for how to communicate content. Both choices have their own vernacular, though they pull from one another. The use of scored improvisation in Marclay’s more recent works has lost the gritty urgency of the 1980’s, but gained the resources and depth of polished work nurtured by institutional bodies.

Whether or not the exhibition was successful in engaging the public to the degree that would have satisfied a person like me, it had a vitality that only occurs when improvisation is used as a means to an end. The unresolved issue was one of participation versus consumption, which I address in my own work by using the tool of improvisation not only as a means, but also as an end.

This is the updated list of projects I’m planning, as they exist in my head right now. It’s really hard to make the transition from pure envisioning and writing to actually making. It’s like a giant turd one puts off releasing in anticipation of the pain and suffering. It only gets worse. Sometimes there is pleasure in pain, but I’d rather have the stuff I think talk to the stuff I make, and vice versa, back and forth, forever.

The real world rarely measures up to the way things are in raw imagery in my head. There is a compromise with real space that is similar to the compromise that happens when a raw work or raw performance is developed and refined– the trade-off is ecstatic rawness for intention and design. It’s very hard to do both, especially in improvisatory performance where the excitement one perceives when it’s known the artist is composing in real-time, the raw decision-making process is very difficult to maintain through the refining and editing process. I’m dragging on… more on those ideas later. Now, onto the ideas:

1) The rat costume. This costume will be used to enact scenarios and behavior in a variety of contexts, from unmitigated street interaction, to composed fairytale, to a series of syllogisms that deal with duality of contemporary rats as perceived by humans, hated vermin or clever pet, etc. This costume is also meant to reference the notion that more mediation is more effective/better– more technology will enhance experience, more immersion will create deeper meaning.

A question: to what extent does the artist/researcher go to understand the subject? In this case, and in the cases of Timothy Treadwell and Barbara Smuts, there are very few boundaries between the studier and the studied. Treadwell’s work with Grizzlies and Smuts’s work with baboons read closer to the work of ethnographers like Napoleon Chagnon, who spent time with the Yanomamo in the Amazon. There is nothing distant or objective about embedded observation/study. In my case I make performances with the intention of someday showing something to someone. The assumption is that building a new skin for myself will enable me to expand the boundaries of my body as it exists in space, to have the rat costume be an extension of my body the way a car or a horse does. Since I cannot shrink myself to the size of the rat to enter their colony, I will present myself to them as the Rat King, largest of them all, to see if I can gain their allegiance. I will present myself to the public and see if I can gain their acceptance. To see as the rat sees, to hear as the rat hears…

I blogged about some technical aspects here and here. These posts deal primarily with how to make the jaw mechanism. I also want to make pan tilt servo systems for the eyes, which will be micro cameras I will use for vision. The video imagery captured by the cameras will be displayed on micro TFT screens in front of my eyes, stereoscopically, and with night vision via IR LEDs. I already built this part of the system last year (see my banner above!) thanks to this Instructibles tutorial. To add to the head portion of the rat costume, I want to make a self-contained hearing/vocalization system with microphones, speakers and headphones. I also intend to make a system by which I can eat and drink through the mouth of the rat head. On the other end of the costume is a tail, possibly operated by servos to make it swish back and forth, and with a hinge at the base to accommodate sitting up, like a tripod. Lastly, I intend to construct an excretory system to allow me to urinate and defecate out while encased in the rat costume. With all my basic bodily functions taken care of, I could conceivably spend weeks in the costume, taking breaks only to recharge batteries (I could sleep at those times), depending on my level of endurance.

Probably one of my influences in this decision comes from artist Oleg Kulik, who spent time as a dog in a gallery in Soho, titled “I Bite America and America Bites Me,” and obvious nod to influential artist, Joseph Beuys, who spent a week with a coyote in a gallery in Soho, titled “I Like America and America Likes Me.” Here’s a video of Beuys talking about it, with clips of the installation (the full film is on view at the MoMA). The skin of my rat costume might be interchangeable depending on which version of rattus norvegicus I want to represent– for example, a “sewer” rat, an albino lab rat, a lilac rex fur fancy rat. The lab rat skin might have chunks missing, open wounds, velcro points for attaching equipment or probes. A transgenic rat could be hairless, or covered in human hair. The fancy rat could have a diamond harness. The very act of skinning the rat costume could be a process incorporated into the “performance”. I’m envisioning a robust wearable object.  Another interesting aspect that may end up playing a role is that the well-known Hindu deity of wisdom and intellect, Ganesha, is sometimes transported in the belly of a giant rat, and is usually depicted with rats at his feet. It might be interesting explore that idea further in light of the fact that I’ll be inside a giant rat. Tenuous, maybe.

2) The rat catcher. At the end of March I’ll be participating in the Rodent Academy, a free course offered to “train private pest control professionals, building owners, landlords, restaurant operators.” It’s taught by Robert Corrigan, PhD, a rodentologist who is often called in to solve rodent infestation problems and design campaigns toward rodent control in urban settings. I’ve been granted special dispensation to participate in the class. With this class I intend to create a human persona that I can don, like a pair of coveralls, in order to complete a specific task. The task is to kill a rat and use the body in some sculptural way (maybe a mechanized way). I am unopposed to killing animals in a meaningful or purposeful way. Though I have been in the presence of plenty of dead and dying animals, and have held them as they exhale their life, I have never killed an animal myself, with my hands. Certainly that is a product of growing up in the city, and not killing the meat I eat. My relationship to animals thus far has remained in the realm of pets and veterinary practice. Being able to attribute this act to a different person, a role played by me, I imagine I can offset the feelings of guilt and psychological trauma that come with casting oneself as a killer. There will also be aspects of this prong of the rat project that deal with the Warrior’s Code, which appears in this blog post about the Animals/People mid-term.

Why would I feel guilty or have psychological trauma? Aren’t non-pet rats vermin that nobody cares about? Isn’t there a lot of money spent on effectively killing rats? What’s the big deal?

In my life I’ve had nine pet rats, three from pet stores who most likely would have sold them as snake food, two tiny orphan lab rats from my high school who would have died (we hand raised them on Mother’s Milk), and four left over lab rats who would have been sent away for snake food. My intuition tells me to live and let live. Death saddens me. This is in direct conflict with my lifestyle as a meat eater. I’m interested in this dissonance, but to justify killing a rat for art is very difficult. Finding a rat that’s already dead was more desirable but has it’s disadvantages and relies on chance. Since city rats have few if any natural predators, the pest control professional takes on this role. Casting myself in the role of a pest control professional creates a diametrically opposed relationship between me and the rat. I can excuse the act. What I do with the body has yet to be determined.

3) The documentary. I’m interested in playing with narrative forms as a way to encapsulate the disconnected array of projects I’m instigating, to unify them under one name. Given the fact that I intend to pretend I’m something other than myself, a false documentary about an artist or a person who needs to make the projects above in order to understand his own obsession with rats sounds about right. I’d be playing exaggerated versions of myself. I’m interested in finding sincerity in lies, taking a page from Herzog’s idea of the ecstatic truth, “There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.” When attempting to make a true-to-life documentary account, it is impossible not to inject falsities to a certain degree. It is endemic to the form of cinema– the conscious serial arrangement or exclusion of content in time.

I have seen a lot of documentaries/mockumentaries, but have read little about the form, so these are my assumptions. The difference between a false documentary and a mockumentary is the depth to which the untruth is executed– in a mockumentary the content is not based in true reality, it’s all the made-up characters playing in scripted situations (Christopher Guest is a master of this, as are Ricky Gervais and the American version of The Office). The newer blends of mockumentary include incorporating unsuspecting real people into the story (Andy Kaufman’s I’m From Hollywood, Sasha Baron-Cohen’s work as Borat and Bruno, etc), and these forms blend truth and fiction in such a way that the viewer is aware of the pretense, and the object of humor is realized by exposing taboo opinions of unwitting participants. The teams of John Stuart and Steven Colbert use this technique when interviewing people. A lot happens in editing too. Not to paint myself a particular shade, but the documentary I want to make is something between the work of Andy Kaufman, Herzog’s Grizzly Man, and In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, a true story transposed into the novel form, which is typically associated with fiction. The story is assembled by Capote who acts as a medium, giving voice to events that include central figures, but told from the outside, distantly, despite Capote’s role in the conclusion.

Documentation is a very difficult subject when it comes to performance and time-based art. What is a document of a performance? What is the performance without documentation? I suppose this project falls under the same taxonomy as Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle, rather than the new work of Tino Seghal currently at the Guggenheim. I don’t think I’ll make portraits.

This is a post I meant to finish several weeks ago, but never did. I’ll post it now in the interest of showing how ideas are developing over time, but keep in mind a fair amount of the individual project information is stale. The first two projects are less likely now (though I still intend to taxidermize a rat).

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This rat project is blooming. It feels good to be back tilling the fields after 7 months of fallow with no ideas. I’m still in the mental soup stage, in which I let my free associative brain wander and build connections on its own. This is a crucial stage and can’t be forced. If I try to BE CREATIVE and come up with ideas nothing will happen. It works best when I sit there and daydream, just let my subconscious drive the car and hold the map. It’s not a passive process. It’s like imagining your childhood bedroom in three dimensions and as much detail as possible. It’s like traveling through your neighborhood like a mental Google maps car with a third eye. How much detail can you see? This is when the wildest ideas come and censorship has no apparent role.

This envisioning inevitably produces solid images. The project as it exists in my head now is finished, wrapped up and presentable. What’s in my head is shallow, however, and nothing like the way it will really turn out, but that’s how I move through artistic processes: backwards revisions, like remembering the future. The trick is to be flexible in my thinking so the project can evolve on its own. For this, I allow decisions to be made based on coincidences and confirmations, I follow the serendipitous and the correlative signs that have no place in critical or logical progression of thought. Since I’m neither a scientist nor a truth-seeking artist, necessarily, an allegiance to the empirical is not needed. In a certain way, I have very little interest in truth since fiction can illicit the same emotional responses; a narrative discourse can be truthful without a basis in reality. I thank several artists and writers for this realization, most notably Roland Barthes, Deborah Hay and Omer Fast.

Now onto rats.

There are several projects I’m pursuing that all fall under the rat umbrella. Again, these ideas are imagined final products that help me understand the process as I move through. These are quite literal, with very little nuance. Not all of them will happen as depicted below, and there will be more that come up along the way.  Some of these may never happen at all! Here’s what I have so far:

1. Rat Abortion Apparatus: how to solve the rat problem. Picture this: a brown rat splayed on its back with it’s limbs stretched and pinned back. Brown fur is real, taxidermized from an NYC rat. The mouth is opening and closing ,the limbs are shuddering. A person is allowed to operate the controls, one of which operates a scalpel. Vivisection. The scalpel makes a T-cut from sternum to anus, like in an autopsy. Another control pries the incision open exposing the insides of the rat are exposed, but rather than guts there are countless rat fetuses made of green plastic. The control panel reminiscent of a back-hoe controls a scooper that excavates the rat. It seems rather real even though it is a simulation. The scooper is able to remove several fetuses at once, kind of like one of those games at the arcade that drops a mechanized hand onto a stuffed animal and drops it into a chute. Not a delicate process– brutal, direct, destructive. An antechamber behind the rat is filled with more plastic fetuses that are pushed upward as more are emptied. People can take home their prize. The apparatus distances the person from the repercussions of their actions, it emphasizes the machine as an enabler of gross activity. The entire interface could be viewed through a spy camera, which would add a layer of difficulty as well as distance. This may also draw parallels to surgery on humans. Is that a can of worms worth opening? I’m currently researching how to successfully taxidermize a rat. I have no interest in a store-bought rat or any other rat I would have to kill myself or know that someone killed for this purpose or something similar (feeding a snake or a science experiment). I am interested in a rat that I would find on the street, fresh, poisoned or maybe killed by a dog (I’ve seen this happen in Washington Sq. Park). There is a certain amount of respect and duty I feel towards rats as a species, and rather than using a produced rat, I’d rather use a rat that is the equivalent of road-kill in the country. A wild NYC rat A rat that wouldn’t have to die if we humans were not here. A rat that wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for us.
2. Rat Spermicide: sterilizes, safe and easy to use. Oral. Pellet form. A plastic bottle that looks like it could contain over-the-counter drugs like Advil. A safe alternative to poison. Sprinkle the same as poison, in safe area away from children and pets. Make a mold of a bottle, print label stickers with corporate design. Pellets are little, colorful, candy-like. Make a flowchart for use a la nyc.gov. This could also reference the fact that we humans have our own birth control problems. Why is the onus on the female to protect herself by taking birth control or telling the man to wear a condom? There should have been a male pill long, long ago. Here it is, but with obnoxious comments like: “It is time for men to have some control. I think it would empower men and deter some women out there from their nefarious plans…” According to Caroline Bragdon, an official at the NYC Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene with whom I spoke on the phone recently, the city has already tried sterilization as a means to control the rat population, but it didn’t work as well as simply killing the rats. One rat can breed hundreds of rats in the lifespan. Humane number reduction/control was trumped by simplicity and efficiency.
3. The rat costume. (will write more later)
4. Tracking wild rats in NYC using RFID, and camera traps. (will write more later)
5. A series of new rat trap designs based on the current relationship we have with rats. (more later)

I am taking this assignment in a looser way than may have been intended. I’m defining pop culture as anything in the media public domain that may have been seen by many people, or a persona perpetuated by a well-known image.

Rat. It’s the animal I’ve chosen for the “three views of an animal” assignment. It’s one of the universally reviled, thwarted, killed, mocked, and shunned species that exists on Earth today. I am choosing to show the rat as a being of the light rather than the dark, as a public servant hero (in the case of rats that detect landmines), underground art hero (as in the spray stencils of Banksy), and symbol of solidarity against corruption (as in the giant inflatable rats that union workers rally around).

There are places in the world where nobody lives or tills the field, or goes for walks, because there are active landmines from old wars. Starting in 2003, rats (primarily large Gambian pouched rats) were trained to sniff out explosive material in small areas with the hope they could be of service in safe mine detection. The rat was chosen for its size (too light to set off a mine), for its superior sense of smell, low cost maintenance, intelligence and ability to be trained, and ability to navigate space. A small team of rats and handlers can cover a much larger tract in a shorter period of time, in fact, they, “can check an area a man would take two days to cover in 30 minutes.” Far from being “vermin” these rats are saving the lives and limbs of children, adults, livestock and wildlife. Here is a recent article about the humanitarian organization that works in the field. Here is a paper that focuses on methodology.

This image says it all. Underground art hero, Banksy (not to be confused with Blek le Rat), is mysterious as ever. His real name and origin are not well-known, even Wikipedia the Great has very little information about this graffiti art star. One of the reasons he is so popular is that he blurs the line between art and criminal activity, and certainly the rat has ever been charged with misdemeanor upon petty larceny. His images are subliminal, happened upon, like a rat scratching behind the wall, or underneath your bed. One of the recurring personas found in his work is the anarchist rat, seemingly a self-portrait, a clandestine rebel. His art requires the talents of a rat, sneaking around, avoiding detection and detention (especially when making something like this and this) yet the work is for the public viewer not the private buyer. There is no signature except style. The rat in Bansky’s work functions not only as dark knight, critical of The Man, but also functions as a system of values to aspire to:  don’t sell out motherfucker.

The worker unions are plenty and powerful. They have huge influence on corporations, politicians and the course of history. Belonging to a union ensures a worker that certain expectations about pay, hours, safety and quality of life will be met. When an employer does not meet these expectations, or does not hire union labor, the giant inflatable rat descends upon their auspices to show what kind of “rat” runs the place or works there. While originally intended to mock, scare and call attention to such “scum,” the giant air-filled rodent seems to have become a symbol of fidelity around which to rally for a common cause. This representation of a loathed creature has been adopted and re-casted as a political mascot. But ‘lo, the rat was reported “endangered” in NY back in 2005– and was protected as “free” in NJ, according to the first amendment (which was ratified on Dec 15th 1791). Here is a quote within a quote about the rat from this article:

Does the Rat work? “Usually, employers go bonkers when they see it across from their property,” says Randy Mayhew, organizing director of Laborers International Union of North America, which employs about 20 rats. “It’s an effective piece of street theater,” says Peter Jones, executive director of the Labor Heritage Foundation.

So the rat has apparently added to its repertoire. The inflatable rat has also made it out of the political arena and into art and infamy, fascination and cult following.

Other occurrences of rats I considered looking into were:

Splinter

year of the rat

Ratatouille

Templeton

Rat (The Rotter)

Ben (the sequel to Willard)

Rat King from Nutcracker

And this rat king, which is when a large group of rats gets their tails tangled and wreak havoc. Reports date back to the 16th century.

Rat Fink

Skimming the internets looking for whatever I can feast my eyes on, I found this crazy paper written by Carolyn Kurle, a researcher in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at UC, Santa Cruz. Written in 2003 it’s an account of her fieldwork in the Aleutian Islands, trying to establish the impact of invasive species (Norway rat, same as what we have in NYC) on intertidal flora and fauna (crabs, algae, seabirds). Her conclusion is that the invasive rat species, while not entirely destructive, has decimated a large swath of the native species and steps should be taken to eradicate them. It’s not named Rat Island for nothing.

Aleutian Islands, Rat Island close-up

Interestingly, rats have been successfully eradicated from over 240 islands worldwide to preserve native wildlife. I guess that’s one way to make-up for the problems we cause with our own migration… I downloaded the paper from her website, read it and emailed her with questions pertaining to my NYC rat project. Her enthusiastic response is below. I sent a follow up, also below, and will update this post with further correspondences.

1/17/10
Dear Miss Kurle,

My name is Arturo Vidich and I am a graduate student at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. I am embarking on a (more…)

First week back at ITP, and already planning for projects outside. This semester I’m planning to be smart about it. If possible, the non-ITP projects will be supported and informed by the classes I’m taking and colleagues, who have skillz.

Last week I received a call for submission for the iLab residency, which is one of the many offerings of iLand, an arts organization that brings movement practitioners, artists, and scientists together for collaborative projects that deal with the New  York City landscape and its inhabitants. I’m friends with Jennifer Monson, the director of iLand, so I’m familiar with the organization. As soon as I read the call, though, something massive clicked into place and I envisioned a project.

RATS.

The Norway rat is not indigenous to New York. They were brought over on ships from Europe centuries ago, landed on multiple sites along the waterfront and planted themselves quite successfully. Currently the Norway rat is the most successful species on the planet second to humans, they live on every continent except Antarctica, and have infested many small islands around the world with disastrous results. What is a day in the life of an NYC rat really like? How do we live with rats? What do they mean to us and how far are we willing to acknowledge them? I want to problematize this ongoing relationship we have with rats, show that it is not so cut-and-dry that they are “evil”. When a species is demonized it makes it very easy to eradicate them. This project is not meant to be an exclusively scientific endeavor– there will be some sort of artistic output that take a closer look into the lives of these long-stigmatized immigrants of the New York underworld through the lenses of wildlife tracking science, and literary or cultural metaphor as movement and text.

I am hoping Wildlife Observation Tools class led by Tom Igoe will give me insight into the methods of obtaining behavioral and movement data. Telemetric devices are expensive and I’d like to try building my own.  The interest in tracking wild rats in New York City to find out more about their secret social lives when they’re out and about, as well as in the burrow. To this end, I’m eager to figure out if there is a way to attach a video capture device as well.

Current areas of interest/questions:

-Documentation is something I’m thinking about differently than how it is usually done.  Part of the project I’m envisioning is an experimental approach to documentation using video and still photography, as well as raw data from tracking devices. How the documenter uses his or her body could be planned or self-directed based on play and animal behavior. I’m imagining something like “authentic documentation”. This is how I work when I document others, so I would probably be deeply involved in the execution of that particular aspect. That said, I’m interested in partnering up with someone who is damn good with cameras for the times I’m otherwise occupied.

-Rats can sometimes get out of collars and chew through harnesses, so I am looking into biodegradable/ingestible glue solutions to affix the tracking devices. That way I don’t have to catch the same rat twice– the device will fall off on its own, and on the off chance the device is found it can be returned. Another option I’m looking into is a harness or collar that has a biodegradable clasp that will cause it to fall off within 7-14 days. Anesthesia is usually a controlled substance. How to trap and anesthetize rats?

-Given the short nature of the study period (a few weeks this summer), a stronger signal with a shorter battery life would seem to make sense. The area I’m going to cover (pending rat movement range assessments) will probably not be very large, but I’m concerned about on-board data storage when the rats go into enclosed areas– I want to be sure that as much in-burrow activity as possible will be stored for logging later when the rat emerges. This is essential for video as well. Is that even possible?

-The Brooklyn Greenway Initiative seems like the right place for this project, given that the Norway rat is not indigenous to New York. I am going to email one of the leaders of the iniative, Meg Fellerath to see if she’d have time to discuss the Greenway in more depth, in terms of sites, permissions, and other ideas. She is interested in having one of the two iLab residency projects take place on the Greenway.

-I am planning to collaborate with an urban wildlife specialist or New York wildlife historian, a programmer, a rodent-specialized veterinarian, a technologist who knows about tracking devices, and maybe others, or people who know about more than one area mentioned above (multi-taskers). Since the residency is aimed at producing collaborations, I am not thinking about an end product just yet.  I’m eager to get other people on board so the project can evolve and take a more well-rounded, solid shape in reality.

I have been in touch with some rat scientists and companies that produce telemetric tracking devices. Email responses to follow in a later post.

I really liked the McCluhan reading, the first two chapters from Understanding Media. I was impressed how well he wrote about the impact of media on his contemporary society just as media had become second nature. His ideas of hot media and cool media made me think of how that applies to the central media in our current society. Twitter, of course, or the Internet, or TIVO, or Google Maps, YouTube, Second Life. (more…)

On September 27th I took the D train up to Yankee Stadium with Michael Edgecumbe to see the Tree Museum on the Grand Concourse, in the Bronx. I had a few small expectations about how it would be displayed, how the information would be constructed so the average person could interact easily. I heard the trees were hard to find because the plaques were mounted on the ground, small circles on the pavement at the base of the tree. I hadn’t really heard anything about how the information would be communicated, or what it was about exactly. I purposefully decided not to read about it before so I could have a passerby’s first impression.

(more…)