tammytoes

A couple of years ago, my friend Joe tipped me off to a great use of corporate meetings: poetry!  Crafting poetry using only the words or phrases spoken at a meeting (and, if you like, only in the order spoken or repeated).  This is much better than even buzzword bingo, and has the added advantage of making you pay very. close. attention. to everything said.  I wrote a fair bit of meeting poetry during my last few months in the non-profit management world, but have largely discarded the practice as a freelancer.

While sifting through closet junk, I just stumbled upon what I consider to be my greatest meeting poem, composed about two years ago during a marathon day of meetings (Entenmann’s for breakfast, take-out for lunch, fun size candy bars for afternoon snack…).  This poem was created from words and phrases as they were spoken or repeated.  (People actually repeat a lot of what’s said at meetings, after all).

Posted here well after the fact for all the world to read.

(It’s long, so it’s after the jump…)

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This afternoon, I went to see a matinee performance of Nearly Ninety, a new work by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company to celebrate Merce’s 90th birthday.  Sonic Youth and John Paul Jones wrote and performed the music in collaboration for the event.  They performed it in a giant, futuristic soundship treehouse.  I can’t really describe it any better than that, and I don’t think I should try.  The music was dissonant, oddly joyful despite being dark, and very lovely.

But I went for the dancing.  I would have gone for the dancing even if there had been no music at all.

I can’t even pretend to have an extensive knowledge of dance, but I know just enough to know who inspires me.  And I am inspired by Merce Cunningham. Inspired by his dedication to exploration of movement, inspired by the strength and grace he requires of his dancers, and inspired by his lifetime of collaboration (and partnership) with John Cage.  I’ve seen his work on video and read quite about about him (I actually completed an undergrad paper on his work a long time ago).  But I’ve never seen any of his choreography performed live prior to this. And I feel blessed – finally – to have seen his work.  It was moving and challenging and strange and strong and warm and angular and engaging.

It was also the most relaxing artistic experience I’ve had in a very long time.  Lacking narrative, independent of words and story, the interplay between movement and music purely accidental (serendipity!): such welcome change.  I’ve missed relaxing and enjoying.  I’ve traded those wholesale for criticism and assessment, in so many ways.

How marvelous to be returned, again, to wonder-eyed spectator.

Thank you, Merce.

This was the small collage I made from the Nearly Ninety/BAM Program.

I’ve started making small collages.  Small, short burts of cutting and gluing, mostly of words.  I’m wondering if it’s a good idea to share them?

Kacie Kinzer’s human-robot interaction project, Tweenbots, is a brilliant combination of sharp theory, smart questions, and engaging (nay, supercute!) implementation.

“…The fact that this ad-hoc crowdsourcing was driven primarily by human empathy for an anthropomorphized object. The journey the Tweenbots take each time they are released in the city becomes a story of people’s willingness to engage with a creature that mirrors human characteristics of vulnerability, of being lost, and of having intention without the means of achieving its goal alone.”

I love this exploration of human-robot interaction.  I also love that it proves, once again, that this place is a friendly place.  (Yes, New Yorkers might tell you what they think you need to know, even if it’s not what you really need to know.  It comes from the heart…)

Tweenbots!