[-empyre-] getting things started

[Renate Terese Ferro]

Dear Junting, Xin, Weida, and David, 
 
Our -empyre-subscribers are looking forward to hearing more about your own work and research.  Thanks to Junting for sharing the work of Taiwanese poet, Hsia Yu’s publication, Pink Noise. For those of you who are not familiar with the self-published book of poetry, you might be interested to know that the book is comprised of pink and black ink texts on transparent pages.  Bound, the collection is stuffed inside of a stiff, transparent covering that is wrapped and bound with a transparent band.  
 
The exterior of the book is printed with this text from Hsia Yu, 
I’ve always wanted to make a transparent book, and after I had finished composing the 33 poems gathered here, I knew the time had come to make this book of poetry filled with “written noise” … Then I put it in an aquarium and a swimming pool and left it in the rain for days… This is a book that knows no limits and thus knows not to go too far.
 
Interested in how the circulation of found texts are embedded within the complications of cultural understanding and translation, I am also fascinated with how textual composites resonate within the spaces of the architectural confines they find themselves in. While Hsia Yu’s Pink Noise exists on the transparent pages of a bound book of hot pink and black, one copy of which was submerged in water, my composited text/net /installation Private Secrets/Public Lies, assimilates random inputted texts from willing participants in the form of secrets. The texts are manipulated, parsed, and construed within the networked architecture of a java program. As the piece moved from exhibitions in the US to Berlin to Chiapas, Mexico and Lima, Peru, issues of mistranslation and misunderstanding emerged.  (Remote users are still able to add secrets via the world wild web today at www.privatesecretspubliclies.net as long as they have the most current version of JAVA and that they use the web browser safari.)   

Thinking as well with you Junting this Sunday morning about WRITTEN NOISE and how the implications of these two text pieces can resonate with the concepts of slippage, misunderstandings and so much more. How does the architecture of reception whether in an aquarium/swimming pool or the vastness of the world –wide web has on noise music, noise pollution, and noise signal. 

Looking forward to hearing from you all. 
Signing out for now, 
Renate

Renate Ferro
Visiting Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Art
Tjaden Hall 306
rferro at cornell.edu