Source Book
contents
part 1: intro to the source book
part 2: about the box
part 3: piece by piece
part 4: bibliography
1 intro to sourcebook
Every experiment is a situation in which the end is unknown; it is tentative, indeterminate, something that may fail. An experiment may produce only a restatement of the obvious or yield unexpected insights. The indeterminacy of its outcome is part of excitement.
-stanley milgram
After looking through the box of material and choosing any number of pieces for you or someone else to activate, the rules of playing become yours to define. Therefore, it isn’t necessary to read this Source Book in order to perform through the contents of the box. The aim of this booklet is to create possible structures and to offer additional knowledge regarding each piece within the box.
The Source Book may be referred to for suggestions, for insight on a particular piece, or even insight on the project as a whole (intentions, process, etc.). It may be used only as often as you wish.
Essentially, you may read some, all or none of this sourcebook.
2 about the box
The material in the box, as well as the box itself, was all
inspired through research on three initial source subjects: Mata Hari,
William James Sidis, and Stanley Milgram (for more information on these
three figures, refer to bio cards in the loose materials section of
the box).
The material that has collected has taken the form of scripted dialogue,
abstract prints, music notation, gesture suggestions and other variations
all intending to provoke an artistic act by anyone who chooses to play.
The period of research allowed the following of reference paths from
one source to another. For example, the William Sidis research led to
Franz Anton Mesmer through a connection with his father Boris Sidis’
work in hypnotism (A diagram tracking the direction of the subject trails
can be found in the bibliographic diagram in section 4).
So just as the research continued to extend itself further and further
from the source material, it also stayed unified by a thread of connections
like Milgram’s Small World experiment (see Milgram bio card).
The process of developing the instructions from the research is replicated
in the activation of the pieces into creative events by others; thus
a further extension of the source material.
Even the idea of storing the contents in a box structure was influenced
by the Milgram reading: Aaron Platt was given the instruction to build
the box with Milgram’s famous shock-box in mind. Minna Philips
later painted the box using Malevich’s unnerving crooked squares.
The material within the box has been separated into four sections:
.Pre-performance folder
.Performance folder
.Post-performance folder
.Loose material
The primary reason the pieces have been broken up into these sections
is to emphasize that the pieces need not be activated in any unified
time or place. They may be done well before a specified performance
date or performed several miles from the specified venue with or without
documentation. Think freedom, go.
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3 Piece by Piece
The number sequence in the upper right-hand corner of the pages
corresponds to the matching sequence found in this Source Book.
One may refer to the matching numbers in this book to find further instructions
about a chosen piece.
00001 Matalogue #1. this was the first piece written for
the box. The mysterious, die-hard conservative group called F.A.S.H.I.O.N.
never appears in the material again. Feel free to create more for them.
00002 Baptismal Torture. this piece may be performed in connection
with #00054. There are many reasons for torture: to gain information,
to punish, to force a change in belief or loyalties, to intimidate a
community, for own pleasure…
00003 Three Songs. in Milgram obedience experiments, one
of the subjects that believed they were hurting the other “volunteer”
could not disobey the order to inflict pain on the innocent and protesting
victim, but instead, he switched down the shock-producing levers with
“great care”.
00004 for Cheerleaders. This chant was inspired by a Smog song
that was playing as I was reading about violent acts performed by Chicago
police.
00005 Scene for Puppet and Electronics (woodcut). this is
from a still of a Czech theatre duo named Klauniada. Very post-apocalypse.
00006 Voice over with Sound Effects. Boris Sidis loved his daughter
Helena and thought she would have been so intelligent had she not been
a girl. She was not given the same progressive home-teaching that was
provided by Boris to her brother William.
00007 Translate. since there are few linguistic universals
and no synonymous terms, a high level of inaccuracy enters
into any translational procedure. And don’t forget, meaning isn’t
the only element to extract through translation.
00008 Medical Percussion Sounds. developed by Leopold Auenbrugger
(1722-1809), medical percussion is still used (though rarely) in examining
the lungs, abdomen, and even the heart. The general technique
consists of striking two short blows, bending only at the wrist, onto
the examining area. The basic medical percussion sounds are tympanic,
resonant, and dull. all areas have their according sounds that refer
to their normal, or abnormal state.
00009 Theatre; “a director could be…”
the moment of time that is to be portrayed need not be any particular
time, historical or personal. Just play time, it’s better than
character.
00010 Matalogue #2. the idea of coats as a motifs came to
me in the Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore Maryland where they display
a coat made by a psychiatric patient from Tennessee named Myrellen.
The coat seemed to function as an elaborate visual journal for the woman
who later lost all memory of making the coat.
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00011 Espionage (linocut). In 1917 federal government passed the
Espionage Act making opposition to the draft or to enlistment punishable
by a fine of up to ten thousand dollars and twenty years in prison.
It also gave the government power o ban radical literature from the
mail. Offenses under the act included “profane, scurrilous, and
abusive language”, and any activities that could be construed
as anti-American.
00012 Figure 18; Acquaintances of S. graph theory
is concerned with the mathematical treatment of networks. It provides
a convenient way to represent the structure of acquaintanceships.
00013 Costume Design. Anastasia Long is a poet and fashion
thinker in Buffalo, Ny.
00014 How to Take Part in History. this could be used as
a study of social contact in American society.
00015 Experiment Diagram. a person coming to our laboratory will
be ordered to act against another individual in increasingly severe
fashion. Accordingly, the pressures for disobedience will build up.
At a point not known beforehand, the subject may refuse to carry out
this command, withdrawing from the experiment. Behavior prior to this
rupture is termed obedience. The point of rupture is called disobedience
and may occur sooner or later in the sequence of commands, providing
the needed measure.
00016 for Three or More Voices. Mrs. Rosenblum takes pleasure
in describing her background: she graduated from the University of
Wisconsin more than twenty years ago, she does volunteer work with juvenile
delinquents once a week and has been active in the local Girl Scouts
organization and the PTA. She was nervous not because the man was being
hurt but because she was responsible for hurting him. She is not really
against punishment per se but only against her infliction of it. If
it just ‘happens’, it is acceptable.
00017 Phase of Cuckoo. this may be used in connection with
#00013 to further enhance the costumes.
00018 Photography as Social Influence. One may inquire, for example,
into the effects of a camera’s presence on social behavior. One
reasonable hypothesis is that prosocial behavior is encouraged and antisocial
behavior is inhibited when people are aware that they are being
photographed. One of my students recently compared the size of contributions
to medical charity by individuals who are photographed and those
who are not as they make their donations. She found that the presence
of the camera, people give substantially larger donations. She also
found that antisocial behavior is also inhibited: Substantially more
vehicles stop at an intersection when a person is present taking pictures
than when the person is there without a camera.
00019 San Cristobal De Las Casas, Mexico. this article was
lifted from CNN.COM in April of 2003.
00020 “NA TA KA CHA.” this piece was first performed
in November 2002 by Matt Sahr who made suggested this as code phrase
for the notorious F.A.S.H.I.O.N. group.
00021 Figure 18.2; Network of Acquaintances. when my sister
and I first came to New York from a small city, we used to amuse ourselves
with a game we called Messages. The idea was to pick two wildly
dissimilar individuals- say a head hunter in the Solomon Islands and
a cobbler in Rock Island, Illinois- and assume that one had to get a
message to the other by word of mouth; then we would each silently figure
out a plausible, or at least possible, chain of persons through which
the messages could go. The one who could make the shortest plausible
chain of messengers won. The head hunter would speak to the head man
in his village, who would speak to the trader who came to buy copra,
who would speak to the Australian patrol officer when he came through,
who would tell the man who was next slated to go to Melbourne on leave,
etc. Down at the other end, the cobbler would hear from his priest,
who got it from the Mayor, who got it from the state senator, who got
it from the governor, etc. We soon had these close-to-home messengers
down to a routine for almost everybody we could conjure up.
00022 “Remember these word combinations…”
the lesson conducted by the subject in Milgram’s obedience experiment
was a paired-associate learning task. The subject would read a series
of word pairs to the learner, and then read the first word of the pair
along with four terms. The learner was to indicate which of the four
terms had originally been paired with the first word. The learner was
shocked with increasing voltage for every incorrect response.
00023 Background Music. when I opened the copier lid to photocopy
images from The Prodigy (see bibliography), I found sheet music for
the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song with which I created this
musical pastiche.
00024 Ouija Scene. the modern Ouija is marketed as a game.
Elijah Bond invented the Ouija in 1892. He sold the patent to William
Field who founded the Southern Novelty Company in Baltimore, Maryland.
In the field of parapsychology, use of the Ouija is considered a form
of automatism or unconscious activity that picks up and amplifies information
from the subconscious mind.
00025 Dramatis Personae. in 1784, at the height of Franz
Anton Mesmer’s popularity, a French burlesque was performed entitled
The Baquet of Health. The entire farcical romp is included in the appendix
of Buranelli’s book (refer to bibliography).
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00026 Solo for Electronics. first performed by Carol Anne
Perini, November 2002. Note: this may be read as a solo for an artist
manipulating electronics, or a solo for the electronics themselves.
00027 For Mozart. Dr. Mesmer patronized young Mozart who
later includes Mesmer in his opera Cosi Fan Tutte. Mesmer himself could
be heard playing the glass harmonica in his Society of Harmony.
00028 Film. (A Mongoose Kills a Cobra). This piece can be
used in connection with any other piece. It may be used as a meditation,
a threat, a texture…
00029 Matalogue #3. this monologue may connect with #00031;
the monologue preceding the scene. Mata Hari’s father bought
her a carriage pulled by goats for her sixth birthday.
00030 Locate and Arrange. following this idea of cut and pasting
from relevant sources, please feel free to add your own piece to the
box. Participate in its evolution of content.
00031 Hypnotism Scenario. people may spontaneously enter hypnosis
under many different circumstances: when they are sick, endangered or
frightened. Even in daily occasions of recalling a tune, remembering
repetitive visual images, words of a poem, or reviewing any other sequential
event.
00032 Costume. these are some of the phrases used in describing
the appearance of William James Sidis as an adult. He would also eat
very quickly, one course at a time, without speaking.
00033 Sound Stimuli. Stanley Milgram performed a conformity experiment
in which a subject, seated among seven others, indicated which one of
four tones was longer than the rest. All the tones were actually the
same length, but because the other seven planted ‘volunteers’
purposely gave the wrong answer, many of the subjects conformed with
the bogus majority.
00034 We’ll Give You A Free… this may be reproduced,
embellished even, and posted around the city and/or the event.
00035 Stand up for Something. maintaining a fixed standing
position was a common form of torture used by the KGB. Many can withstand
the pain of long standing, but eventually all succumb to circulatory
failure it produces.
00036 “kids like to pretend…” (diagram).
Mata Hari’s children were victims of a possible poisoning. Mata
Hari entered their room after hearing them screaming in pain. They were
convulsing and twisting grotesquely as they cried. Little Norman died
covered in bizarre black vomit. Her little girl Non made a full recovery.
Although her children didn’t like being poisoned, so many kids
enjoy it when you instruct them to act like they’ve been poisoned.
00037 Blocking. in addition to this image, you may pick
other images found in any of the books listed in the bibliography and
use it however you wish.
00038 “Perform any action while..” (booklet) this
booklet is composed of the stage directions that were initially part
of the Mata Hari monologues (see #’s 00001, 00010, 00029, 00040)
but where later removed and collected in the booklet. They may be put
back in the monologues in any location.
00039 Erotica. This piece, inspired by Kyle Roxbury’s classic
novel of erotic hypnotic adventures (see bibliography), may be used
in connection with the film in # 00028.
00040 Matalogue #4. the best way to grasp the human significance
of photography is not to think of camera, film, and tripod as external
to human nature, but as evolutionary developments as much a part of
human nature as the opposable thumbs; photography as an additional memory
cartridge for our minds. How would you like to be documented?
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00041 for Music Box Motors. first performed November, 2002 using
music-box motor and eyeglass screwdriver.
00042 Read Quietly, Answer Out Loud. quaestio: the judicial
inquiry which permitted the use of torture. In French la question was
synonymous with la torture.
00043 Film/Video; “A director..” this piece may be
integrated with any of Mata Hari’s monologues or scenes.
00044 Four Dances. these may not be dances for human bodies.
these may not even be dances.
00045 Another Psychological Scene. torture aimed at the
victim’s mind is often as effective as the use of brutal force.
Mock executions, for example, while causing no physical harm, can cause
extreme mental anguish. Humiliation adds an additional layer to the
torture, producing self-loathing in the prisoner, again with little
effort to the torturer. In the 1970’s police in Northern Ireland
humiliated subjects by riding them like horses, and tickling them.
00046 Song for William James Sidis. I initially performed this
song in February, 2002. It was sung through a long tube.
00047 Dramatis Personae. Frank Folupa was the pseudonym
used by William Sidis when he would write about his obsessive hobby:
collecting streetcar transfers. In 1926 his book, “Notes on the
Collection of Transfers”, was published by a vanity press in Philadelphia.
His book (now out of print) ran to three hundred pages and was a scholarly
and laborious treatise on the origin, nature, and classification of
nothing more nor less than the slips of paper streetcar conductors hand
to passengers when they ask for transfers. Many a psychologist and analyst
must have been interested to read in the papers that he genius of the
precocious child who had astounded the academic world sixteen years
before had flowered in this bizarre fashion.
00048 Possible Titles. give one or more of the listed titles to
anything that needs (a new) one.
00049 Theatre; “at any point, a William…”
William Sidis had only one relationship that even remotely resembled
an intimate bond with a woman. They were only together for a short time,
and there was no serious physical exchange, yet he carried her photograph
with him for his entire life.
00050 With Bells. this was a ritual performed as part of
the public execution spectacle in Medieval Germany. For more information,
refer to #00068.
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00051 Individual in a Communicative Web. if influence is
to be exerted by one person on another, some message must pass from
the influencing source to its target, whether it be an eloquently persuasive
argument, a fleeting scowl, or the distal messages that modern technology
allows. By this fact, social psychology acquires scientific potential,
for what passes from one person to the next necessarily enters the public
and therefore measurable domain.
00052 Learning to Love You More. Learning to Love You More is
both a web site and a series of non-web presentations comprised of work
made by the general public in response to assignments given by artists
Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher and various guests. Accept an
assignment, complete it by following the simple but specific instructions,
send in the required report (photograph, CD, video, etc), see evidence
of your work posted on-line. http://www/learningtoloveyoumore.com/
00053 Orgone (woodcut). "ORGONE ENERGY. is a Primordial Cosmic
Energy; universally present and demonstrable visually, thermically,
electroscopically and by means of Geiger-Mueller counters. In the living
organism: Bio-energy, Life Energy. Discovered by Wilhelm Reich between
1936 and 1940."
00054 Collaboration is a Social Event. this may connect
with piece #00002, one follows the other. Collaboration is a social
event. be social. (prisoners survive by collaboration and conversation)
00055 Sound (imagine…) Stanley Milgram conducted early
studies of the effects of TV on antisocial behavior.
00056 How to be a Girl Named… I asked members of a Text
Construction workshop to provide me with the name, occupation, and two
sentence bio of somebody they were very close to at one point, but have
since lost communication.
00057 untitled comic strip (five squares). of the many quirky
inventions of William Sidis, the Perpetual Calendar was one with some
staying power. Its concentric disks allowed user to find the weekdays
for any given date.
00058 Prox Feedback Touch. may connect with #00062 as part
of an illness song.
00059 untitled comic strip (American flags). William Sidis was
arrested while carrying a red flag during a Communist rally in Roxbury.
When asked in court why he wasn’t carrying an American flag, he
stated the he was against the war and his belief was in a socialized
form of government. He also carried a miniature American flag in his
pocket for most of his life.
00060 Lecture Topic (the efficacy…) “In late
Postmodern America, television shows, movies, and sporting events have
all but eradicated performance efficacy. Long removed from the ritual
(the performance of community), we have become a collection of individuals
passively observing motion picture images of others simulating life.”
Gabriel Walker; Meta-Performance, An Inquiry Into Performance Efficacy.
00061 Part IV: Miami. for more information on this piece,
read about The Wooster Group production, LS.D. (…just the high
points…)
00062 Costume (Wear what you wear…). I wrote this
when someone told me of an experiment in which subjects chose outfits
they wore during certain moods and then were observed and tested while
wearing the different outfits over a three month span. The experiment
couldn’t break any ground in trying to determine whether the clothing
changed the mood or the mood chose the clothing.
00063 Architecture (create a sensory…) sensory isolation
is a great way to induce an artificial psychosis or episode of insanity.
In 1959 a sensory isolation experiment was conducted in which a hospital
recruited twenty volunteers and placed them in a room with a constant
noise. They were required to wear goggles that impaired vision and gloves
made of fur. They were paid for their experiences and ask to stay for
as long as possible. Two gave up after five hours. By the end of forty-eight
hours, two-thirds of the volunteers had quit, citing unbearable anxiety,
tension, and panic attacks.
00064 Wood Nymph Myth. The Unabomber (which stands for UNiversities
and Airlines BOMBings) had an obsession with wood: “…the
‘wood’ signature occurred several times in this bombing:
It was addressed to a Mr. Wood, the box was made of wood, it contained
wood pieces to act as shrapnel, and its publisher was Arbor House, whose
logo was a leaf. Moreover, the phony return address read Ravenswood
Street.”
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00065 Lecture Topic (did the Native…) William James
Sidis wrote a six-hundred page manuscript on the history of New England
which stated that “what is missing from New England history is
an account of what was already here when the White Man arrived here.”
Read more at http://www.sidis.net/indian-pilgrim.htm
00066 Precocious Publication. William Sidis created a zine
dedicated entirely to Peridromophilia. This was the term Sidis gave
to the hobby of collecting streetcar transfers. The zine lasted six
years and included jokes, transportation news, and a cartoon series
about the adventures of “General Phorm” who wielded a pointed
stick.
00067 Oracle. the most celebrated oracle, the oracle at
Delphi, was located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. To begin consultation,
the prophetess, in flowing robes and gold ornaments would enter and
take deep breaths of vapor until the trance supervened. Her face became
distorted, her voice shrill, her gestures spasmodic. She intoned words
that made no sense to the uninitiated- the kind of gibberish that has
been featured in the annals of hypnotism and abnormal psychology.
00068 The Punitive Theatre. this was an essay used in an Intercultural
Dramaturgy course.
4. bibliography
Bellerophon Staff, Infamous Women.
California: Bellerophon Books, 1992
Vincent Buranelli, The Wizard from Vienna.
New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan
1975
David B. Cheek, Hypnosis; The Application of Ideomotor Techniques. Boston:
Allyn and Bacon,
1994.
John Conroy, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People; The Dynamics of Torture.
New York: Knopf
2000
Raymond Durgnant & John Kobal. Greta Garbo.
New York: Dutton Vista, 1965.
Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
Karen Farrington, The History of Punishment and Torture.
New York: Hamlyn Publishing Group, 2001.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punishment:
The Birth of the Prison. New York, 1979.
Paulo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
New York: Continuum, 2000.
Glass Armonica. Ed. William Wilde Zeitler. 2003.
<http://www.glassarmonica.com/>
Sharon Gill, “The Mystifying Oracle.” The Ghost Web.
Ed. Dave Oester. 1998.
<http://www.ghostweb.com/ouija.html>
Michelle Hoffman, “On the Scaffold: The Public Punishment of the
Powerless.” Perspective. May1995. <http://www.digitas.harvard.edu/~perspy/old/issues/1995/may/foucault.html>
Henry Charles Lea. Torture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press,1973.
Russell W. Howe, Mata Hari. New York: Dodd, Mead 1986
Learning To Love You More. Ed. Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July. 2002.
<http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/>
Anastasia Long, “Begin.” Letter to the author. November,
2002.
Aaron Lowinger, Tawrin Baker, Eric Gelsinger, Damian Weber, They Are
Not Counted But Weighed. Buffalo, Ny: House Press, 2002
Mata Hari. Dir. George Fitzmaurice. Perf. Greta Garbo, Lionel Barrymore,
and Ramon Novarro. MGM, 1931.
Medical Percussion. Ed. Frank L. Urbano. 2000
<http://www.ecu.edu/intmedresidency/CurrentResidents/linical%20Signs/Medical%20Percussion.pdf>
Mitchell Merback, The Thief, the Cross, and the Wheel: Pain and the
Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Stanley Milgram, The Individual in a Social World. New York: Addison-Wesley,
1977
Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority. New York: Harper Torchbooks,
1983
Jim Morton, “Peridromophilia Unbound”. Pop Void issue 1
(1988). 10 February 1997
<http://members.aol.com/popvoid/sidid.html>
Myrellen, Myrellen’s Coat. Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, MD.
Denise Noe, “All About Mata Hari.” The Crime Library Court
T.V. 1999
<http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/spies/hari/1.html>
Edward Peters, Torture. New York: Basil Blackwell, Inc., 1986
Wilhelm Reich, The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality. New York: Farrar,
Straus, and Giroux, 1971.
Kyle Roxbury, The Voice of Erotica. San Diego: Greenleaf Classics, 1968
David Savran, Breaking the Rules. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press,
1986. Sidis Archives. Ed. Dan Mahoney. 2002
<http://www.sidis.net/>
The Small World. Ed. Manfred Kotchen. New Jersey: Ablex Publishing,
1989.
Cathy Spence, “Did the Indians Teach The Pilgrims Democracy?”
Ipswich Chronicle 5 September 1984.
< http://www.sidis.net/indian-pilgrim.htm>
Amy Wallace, The Prodigy. New York: E.P. Dutton 1986
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5. bibliographic tracking (relevant research)
Mata Hari
Mata Hari
(Howe)
Infamous Women
(Bellerophon)
All About Mata Hari
(Noe)
Mata Hari
(Fitzmaurice)
Greta Garbo
(Durgnant & Kobal)
Begin
(Long)
Myrellen’s Coat
(A.V.A.M.)
Stanley Milgram
Obedience to Authority
(Milgram)
Unspeakable Acts…
(Conroy)
Torture
(Lea)
Torture
(Peters)
History of Punishment…
(Farrington)
Art and Beauty in…
(Eco)
The Small World
(Milgram)
Individual In A Social World
(Milgram)
The Thief, The Cross..
(Merback)
Discipline and Punishment
(Foucault)
William James Sidis
The Prodigy
(Wallace)
Peridromophilia Unbound
(Morton)
Sidis Archives
(Mahoney)
Did the Indians Teach..
(Spence)
The Wizard of Vienna
(Buranelli)
Glass Armonica
(Zeitler)
Voice of Erotica
(Roxbury)
Mystifying Oracle
(Gill)
Medical Percussion
(Urbano)