jeff noon ......author of automated alice.....here is his manifesto........punk writer from manchester

here is a collage of jeff noons manifesto.....interspersed with my comments and words and images
Film-makers use jump cuts, freeze frames, slow motion. Musicians remix, scratch, sample. Can't we writers have some fun as well?
says jeff noon
who is the apollinaire of modern english writing????



visual artist do a similar thing....taking ideas....images....from other artista past and present....responding to things seen...read....over heard.......collage is a prime example of putting an image together....made from totally secondhand images....they have been selected though....for their intellectual content...or should i say for a subject matter that fits in with an idea.....or is in sympathy.....


Yet we live daily in a web of connections, all of us becoming adept at riding the multiple layers of information. This is the fluid society. Tracing pathways through this intricate landscape needs a different kind of narrative art. It is in this spirit of adventure that I envisage the post-future novel.


this is a mural that i have completed at zefa contempory art in almancil portugal...it is based on a novel by the nobel prize winning authur ...jose saramago....the novel is " the stone raft "....it is about cause and effect.......a man stands up from his chair and feels the earth tremor....a woman scratches a mark on the ground....a man throws a stone....a lady goes to the attic and finds a blue sock......all the dogs bark in ceberes.....at the same time a crack appears in a rock in the pyrenees......this is the start of an adventure..........i have included alice in my painting....she also visited a strange world.....here she is letting the characters in the sone raft out ....to start their journey.........
look at the recent novel House of Leaves, by th
Mark Z Danielewski
e American writer . More a vast, convoluted labyrinth than a simple book, House of Leaves contains wondrous delights on every page. There are poems, photographs, quotations, areas of text printed upside down, almost blank pages, footnotes, an index, a playful use of typography. The book also tells a great story. Searching for the narrative clues scattered throughout the text becomes an intense pleasure.
i havent read the book yet....but i am intrigued by the idea.... a kind of cabinet of curiousities.......
First of all, we have to accept that English writing has been far too slow in its adoption of avant-garde techniques, in comparison with popular music, art and films. The narrative fabric of the latest cult movie is woven through with jump cuts, freeze-frames, montage, slow motion shots, tracking shots, hand-held camera techniques, and the like. House, hip-hop and garage recordings contain elements of remixing, scratching and sampling........this very true.....who is the apollinaire of english prose.......
What are the prose equivalents of the tracking shot, the hyperlink, the remix, the freeze-frame?
Anybody who has enjoyed a good DJ set in a nightclub will attest to this sense of a story being unfolded through the music.
a dj plans his set but also responds to what is happening on the dance floor.....he has to have his ear finely tuned to pick up the vibe...........the set will develop....
There are no rules, only opportunities. Above all, imagine the pleasure gained from following the various stories through the mix. The book of Cobralingus contains my first explorations in this process of metamorphiction, each piece starting with a passage sampled from another writer.
a project with 4 writers in brighton


217 Babel Street | Introduction read on......open the front door and see what happens......




217 Babel Street is a web of interconnected stories set in a seaside apartment block. There are twenty apartments in the building. Each of the four writers works independently of the others, starting off stories from different rooms. New pages are produced by creating a link from a word or a phrase on a page that already exists. Writers can interrupt and take over each other’s stories, taking them in different directions. Month by month the narrative changes, expanding into new rooms, characters and situations, creating new pathways for readers to explore.

The front door allows access to any of the apartments, where the different stories begin. All characters mentioned in a given episode are listed at the bottom of the page. Clicking on these character links takes the reader to a page describing the character, as well as a list of all the pages in which they appear.




in the last year i read joanna lumleys book.....her life story.....it starts at the front door and we are led around the house room by room each one having a story or a memory......i know its not the same but there is a relationship......maybe superficial but there........for some time i have been pondering about being outside and looking in......from dark to light......who is in there....what is happening.......can we tell something of the occupants from the interior...within the last year i have taken a series of photographs of my house at night from the outside













i used the idea in the empire of light by magritte in the part of the stone raft where all the travellers are at marias house by the coast.....pedro orce goes of byhimself with the dog....they get to the beach and notice that the rocks look like stone boats.....i have made marias house somewhere that belongs to a twilight world of impossibilities day and night @ the same time....the nearest island is paper thin....impossible.........




creating the unknown.............




creating the unknown....obviously when you start a piece of work a painting or whatever you have an idea but not necessarily a blueprint of the way the final work will look....it is a journey...when you work by yourself you only have your own twists and turns to work with....when another artist is involved the unexpecxted will be thrown up as the work progresses parts you may like or think good for whatever reason or criteria....could be obliterated by the other person....you cant be precious........i like the unexpected.......you have to leave your armchair...your comfort zone......the postal project with paul was such an event....you had no control of what appeared in the postbox.....it was exciting and challenging..

..









i have just started a new collaborative collage project with a friend antonio dias.....12 canvases....6 each.....we start work then exchange them and continue to add until one of us decides its finished...we have no theme....only chance,,,,,the exquisite corpse is alive and well.......here is an example of one of them after 2 moves....












in 2004 i was involved in another project based on the exquisite corpse with an old friend and artist paul clifford.......




This body of work is a result of a collaboration between two travelling artists who share an empathy for surrealism and travelling. The work has been prompted by journeys made between several global locations, including Portugal, France, Germany, India, Cyprus, Spain, USA and North Yorkshire.


A series of several hundred mail art paintings have been created and posted in a reciprocal visual dialogue, that has resurrected the surrealist game of the "Exquisite Corpse" within a contemporary cultural context. The project explores and extends the potential of accidental encounters, using intervention from the world postal systems, with stamps, franking and official annotation becoming integral to the poetics of the image.

















mish mash............i havent used that prase or heard it for years....its got a ring to it....not as posh as juxtaposition......or as boring as mixed images..........mish mash splosh.......

synonyms.......Origin: Middle English misse-masche,

what is the definition of collage? col·lage (k-läzh, k-) n.


1.a. An artistic composition of materials and objects pasted over a surface, often with unifying lines and color.


1b. A work, such as a literary piece, composed of both borrowed and original material.


2. The art of creating such compositions.


3. An assemblage of diverse elements: a collage of conflicting memories.


v. col·laged, col·lag·ing, col·lages v.tr.


To paste (diverse materials) over a surface, thereby creating an artistic product. v.intr.


To create such an artistic product.









more " mish mash stuff" can be seen on another here on my blog.....