Friday, April 30, 2010

Thursday, April 29, 2010

I'm beginning to brush up on all things "mathematical poetry." The Kaz Maslanka installation was a smashing success. (And it's so nice to be able to say "smashing success" and really mean it.) I'm excited to see what Kaz brings to the Rhythm of Structure event. And I'm excited at the prospect that Bob Grumman might be coming up from his home in FL. I've only met Bob once before and only briefly. Here is a link to an essay I wrote on Bob's "Mathemaku" poetry, it's entitled:

Notes on Bob Grumman's Mathemaku and on Mathematical Poetry Generally.

That essay will give you an idea of what I think of and of how I construe "mathematical poetry" (as basically a "making permanent of the transitory," which is what I maintain poetry does generally). Soon I'll post some samples of my own "mathematical poetry," along with a brief essay explaining it, and that'll be a sort of preview of the perspective or angle I'll be bringing to my responses to the "Mathematical Graffiti" at the Rhythm of Structure show. And I'll be posting about John Sims, the curator, mastermind and impresario behind this whole thing! So if you're reading this and you're at all interested, stay tuned. . . .



















Follow Rhythm of Structure on Facebook and at the Bowery Poetry Club.

Click here, please, for an article on the Rhythm of Structure series in Art in America and for a photo of John Sims with the former Poet Laureate Mark Strand.   And here, from an article in Nature, is John Sims on math and the arts:



















Saturday, April 10, 2010

Last night I made it over to The LAB Gallery for the opening of Morgan O’Hara’s SPRING LAB, her latest site-specific drawing which is part of her ongoing “Live Transmissions” series.

“Live Transmissions” are made by a process in which O’Hara, with a pencil in each hand, records the left and right hand movements of an observed subject performing a task. Drawing methodically with multiple razor-sharp pencils and both hands, as time-based performance, O’Hara condenses movement into accumulations of graphite line. Such tasks have included knitting a sweater, a farmer’s wife digging up asparagus, a musician performing on piano and street pavers setting paving stones. The result is an abstracted map of the subject’s gestures.



















“Movement of the hands of
 Conductor Riccardo Chailly” 
while conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Mahler’s Symphony No 4. 
first movement, 
Carnegie Hall, New York City, 10 February 2000.

Here’s a video of the installation.

Morgan O’Hara

O’Hara’s works impress me as being neat and articulate.