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Dragonfly Dream
wonder what Ray Johnson is thinking?
June 17, 2001 08:11PM
<HTML>sitting here doing mail art in multipules I just wondered what Ray might be thinking of all of us, our mail art....</HTML>
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Merlin
Re: wonder what Ray Johnson is thinking?
June 17, 2001 08:46PM
<HTML>He would think:

"oh what beautiful persons with hearts filled with love, I ever had
been in search of, while sending my kind of art out, now they are
building up a worldwide (he)artwork online too"

I am absolutely shure about this!!!

Works sent by Ray are stored in official Museums here, I can
post if wantet - but some postcards are like some bits of a complete
program .. just only traces... The Mail Art Organism is alive!


He maybe stumbled into the harbour - `cause he got no "real"
feedback about what he startet - recognice - Ray is only one!
Father of mailart in this time between others, he?d been disappointed
he shouldn?t!!!

He (between others) founded our free contacts in art.

A new view to art and to the world - to my neighbour like you are.

Isn?t this - incidentely happened- worth for declare Ray,
or you or me to be holy?

ok art is no religion.

and my typing seems to becom blasphemic now.

the globe is not signposted - lifes aint too.

so - it is the question, just what to do just now ... every
day new - I think.

Love to you Dragonfly,
really love from heart.

I know.

Merlin</HTML>
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bb
Re: wonder what Ray Johnson is thinking?
June 18, 2001 09:55PM
<HTML>Ray wouldn't like it. He clearly didn't like the electyronic communication and loved the handwork of collage</HTML>
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Merlin
Re: wonder what Ray Johnson is thinking?
June 22, 2001 11:01PM
<HTML>Ray will not think like he did again, he is dead,

U want to post what U are thinking / life / art x-periences here.

why not U just do exac+ly this?

`cause thinking "merlin" is any electronic faker?

forget it!

- gave one platform for mailartists ownly...


posting your thoughts - they are red worldwide now, but

it is anykind of offtopic ?cause this is an electronic forum
about MAILART!!! -

ONE TOOL to x--change about just MAILART!!!

THIS WEBSITE IS NOT MAILART!

I hope U understood - I ever did....

It is only one! tool!

f*cking my target to give free x-change by using the
anonymous name "bb" - and....

maybe angry or ill, but if I hurt you anyway, post it!

Asking for adresses (SNAILMAIL) and more by myself
is nothing more than searching for contacts and giving
it in mailart.

your are not "bb" and or if - you are, your identity should
be wellknown or - deleted by users ignoring your postings,
even I am not censoring it.

We care not about "fine art"
it?s the artist who is "fine"

... your (real) name!

Merlin</HTML>
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Merlin
Re: Ray Johnson / at &gt;hamburg
June 22, 2001 11:10PM
<HTML>If U want a Museum Cataloge including some of the first postcards sent by Ray Johnson , stored at Hamburg - post your real snailmailadress here, I will send it to you - I don?t need this book anymore.

You are not posting any creative ideas or links or any artwork!

Yes you are testing....

but - you will get no real answer before you gave no real
question!

one answer for one question you never asked:


the falcon will kick out the faked crow.


sign - not given.</HTML>
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M
Re: wonder what Ray Johnson is thinking?
June 22, 2001 11:27PM
<HTML>if U call Ray Johnsons artworks collages you can call this bored
the worstwilde newsfeeder too!!

Ray?s Ideas had been really new! his "(h)(e)artworks - in reality,
real had been and are pure @!#$! / while others did this before,
others after , others better - WORLDWIDE!

IMHO!!

OK U like this Icon but nothingbut any racoon that put something
into the machinery - in his time it had been mail!

Don?t try to teach me about Ray instead of setting up pages about
is work and posting here the links leading to this!!!

Yes I studied history of art - encluding the art of R. J.

Seems you are living in America?

Typically Informated about art worldwide it seems...

Especially art and mailart-! history......

U did never understand that "mailart" is one way to learn
more about the world than your hometown and backyardarea
or your state , country, what your pressident allows and......

now you are fucking this board for nothing.....

what about posting good con+a+c+s instead?

I never called souls like


yours</HTML>
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bb
Merlin, shut up!
June 23, 2001 02:52PM
<HTML>Merlin, you seem to act like the person who knows it all. The Internet is an open forum. I choose to act like I do.

I know Ray quite well, maybe even better than you. Also know some of his close friends who told me he always hated computers.</HTML>
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Bill Wilson
Re: Merlin, shut up!
June 23, 2001 11:35PM
<HTML>Perhaps the "close friends" of Ray Johnson have mentioned to you that for him art was a friendly endeavor in which one did not add pain to anyone's pain; nobody made a profit on anyone else; and one would say nothing that would end the conversation (as "shut up!" might do).</HTML>
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bb
provocation
June 24, 2001 02:11PM
<HTML>the term 'shut up' was used to provoke. It worked.</HTML>
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Merlin
Re: provocation
June 25, 2001 11:22PM
<HTML>Yes it worked,

you know your world, I know mine

But - should this mean:

"You go your way I go mine"

(goodby - we don?t fit together)?

or are we both a kind of trolls
trolling around here?

or are we both... ...

I am hating computers too - kicking them,
and hey the shitbox works again! (hardware
sometimes need some hard kick)

I don?t like your bb sign your faked e-mail your
ide that you are anonymous in internet,

you are not.

Merlin</HTML>
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M
Re: wonder what Ray Johnson is thinking?
June 22, 2001 11:46PM
<HTML>so- maybe U?ll follow the steps of Ray, stepping out of elected
and tronic medias -
just not posting here!

Instead send mail like Ray and me - out by snail - for discussions,
art x-change and more.

or start snail - projects like Marta Aitchinson from England -
or...
#


you post like any Troll in cyberwar -

this bords are not protected you know-

but...


they are protected by.....
.......
and

......

so keep your polemic ass off or in - but with
true soul !

x-posing URL-self like I do!

C.U.
later

Alligator
-
for a while
Crocodile.

Merlin</HTML>
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M
Re: wonder what Ray Johnson is thinking?
June 22, 2001 11:50PM
<HTML>so why U want to take part of Ray instead here, telling-
he never would use this kind of technology while just using
it while posting here?

M.-</HTML>
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Bill Wilson
Re: wonder what Ray Johnson is thinking?
June 23, 2001 11:16PM
<HTML>On the theme of Ray Johnson in relations with mechanical means of reproduction, while I would not presume to define his attitude in the early 1960s, I can provide evidence for some activities. Frequently I drove him to IBM around 1am, the hour when Toby Spiselman was scheduled to use a computer with the Gerber Plotter. Time with a computer was so expensive that machines were used throughout the night. Following her programs on punchcards, the Gerber Plotter could draw on special paper with a stylus, very slowly. At least once Toby experimented with a design provided by an artist, Ann Ubinger Wilson, so that the computer and a visual art intersected and/or collided at a rather early stage. I photographed a few such visits, as when accompanied by Alison Knowles and Dick Higgins. Evidence survives in other ways: 1) Ray sent a sheet of Gerber Plotter paper transposed into mailart to either John Dodd or Dale Joe (that sheet now in my archives); the punchcards circulated within mailart, with Diane di Prima mailing a card to Ray Johnson like a postcard (and other examples in my archives); Ray and/or Toby gave boxes of the chads punched from the cards to May Wilson, who, working only with objects given to her by friends, used the tiny pieces of stiff paper in some jars as a random filler, something that shakes as freely as confetti, yet with numerals on it from its business-like past. Certainly mechanical interferences with the transmission and reproduction of visual information were an expressive resource for Ray, not a threat to authentic visual communications. Thus later, when he received a grant, Ray rented a photocopy machine (he was excited by the first mention of a photocopy machine available to us, maybe 1961-62, so I took pornography he wanted copied to the Library of City College, where too many people gathered to see the novel machine in use). As early as 1958 he had designed a book jacket with a photograph of a face that had been reduced to two colors, even as earlier, when adapting a photograph of Rimbaud in 1956, he had trouble persuading the printer that he wanted less visual information in the photograph, rather than more. The effect on that cover, which is still in print, is to call attention to the mechanical mediations as such, following an example set perhaps fifteen years earlier by Marcel Duchamp in reproducing a photograph with the Ben Day dots emphatically visible. The visual thinking about surfaces manifest in his art and in his life do not so far seem to have a correlative in communication with the computer, so that problems, which are opportunities for invention and discovery, remain. While I would not presume to define the thoughts of a person who has died, I can say in my own person that Ray?s values, which include the gift, the free work of art, and a sometimes anonymous network of people relaying verbal and visual materials for the immediate fun of it, are responsibly elaborated within the virtual Network, otherwise you would not be reading my sentence.</HTML>
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Dragonfly Dream
Thanks Bill!
June 24, 2001 04:47PM
<HTML>I often post as to get some responses, I am curious. I wonder why folks get so angry at each other. What is the point?
I try not to provoke and yet it sees a simple post will get folks riled up and mad. It was a joy to read your post Bill, thank you!

~Dragonfly Dream
PMB#286, 223 N.Guadalupe
Santa Fe,New Mexico
87501 USA
ALMP#10, ACE#388, MPPC#790-L119
[www.dragonflydream.com]

"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk." --Thomas Edison.</HTML>
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Merlin
Re: Thanks Bill!
June 25, 2001 11:32PM
<HTML>Seems some people,
especially artists,

need sometimes some discussions first ,
this board is just made (wisely) for.

So - nothing is wrong here - Noone set rules.

We (we!) are learning about - had some diskussions
and struggle for instance with the now master of
the invitationboard - after this and after free
boards break down - i invited him by myself to
work for it if he want near me with similar rights
on his own board we set up.

It works and leads to agreements sometimes to
love , to sympathy ever at last.

I did not use finest words but clearely descrybing
my opinion without any hiding of miself.

So if I am running this board free , allowing uploads,
anonymous IP?s and more - I have to watch it and
to check what posters motives are.

Without deleting what I don?t like - it leads to some
discussions - maybe to love at least.

yours

Merlin</HTML>
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honoria
Re: wonder what Ray Johnson is thinking?
June 27, 2001 05:52PM
<HTML>Bill, you have posted a wonderful picture of Ray and technology as well as adding your own insights. Thank you! I would like to add your post to my bibliography for a dissertation about the effects of the Internet on the mail art network. The content of the post points to relevant history and the post itself, its place on this board, here in this topic, is an example of how information attractors form patterns in message board formats.

I only spoke to Ray Johnson one time. He called me in 1994 to ask about computers. I guess he heard from someone that I was researching the Internet and was exploring possible mail art parallels in text-based virtual reality worlds. I was so flabbergasted to be speaking to Ray Johnson himself that I don't remember much of the actual conversation but Ray asked about networked computers. I told him what I saw as common threads between mail art and networking via computers. The Net was not such a graphical place at that time so I told him that shareware and multi-user dimensions shared some gifting attitudes, playfulness, and permeableness with the mail art network.

The other thing I remember is Ray said he was thinking of starting a correspondence school for every state and asked if I interested in being in the Texas Correspondence School. I said Yes, I was honored.</HTML>
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jcsynthetics
Re: wonder what Ray Johnson is thinking?
June 24, 2001 09:20PM
<HTML>im wondering ....is it important to a mail artist what ray johnson is thinking about mail art anymore..what his view on what we all do within mail art would be...........is it perhapse more important that we may be concerned with oppinion about the practice today that can be based on oppinions of the past.................

but yes i do wonder what ray johnson would be thinking about mail art today all the same.............ive been practicing for only 5 years and never had the privalage of corresponding with him......</HTML>
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Bill Wilson
Re: wonder what Ray Johnson is thinking?
June 26, 2001 12:32AM
<HTML>Ray Johnson acted in his life and participated in his arts in behalf of his aesthetic and ethical values. His visual and verbal style was the farther elaboration of religio-philosophic thoughts, many of them prompted by Buddhism. Once, for a purification ritual in which one swallows a long white string, linking mouth to anus, he found that he had no long piece of white string. Immediately he tied several pieces together, painted them white, and then swallowed that thin convolving poem. In mailart he valued spontaneities, improvisations, unrehearsed gestures, and a haiku-like moment of fresh apprehension. For him, at its best a piece of mailart arriving at his address marked that moment with its specificity the way another moment might be marked by an evanescent scent, an ephemeral taste, a fleeting touch, a vanishing sight or a transient sound. Responding to a question from Nam June Paik in ?64-?65, he typed his response, #13, ?I wait, not for time to finish my work, but for time to indicate something one would not have expected to occur.? Elsewhere I have quoted Robert Frost, in his poem ?The Most of It,? explaining the desire of a lunging animalmoody smiley

?He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.?

The mailart Ray responded to was usually something he would not have expected to occur, prompting him to play a game of relays in the mails as counter-love, original response.</HTML>
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David Cammack
Re: wonder what Ray Johnson is thinking?
June 30, 2001 05:27AM
<HTML>Some people here tend to be very religious in their consumption of art/mail art. I hope Ray Johnson would be discusted by all this sentimental crap. Wouldn't it be nice if mail artists put down their artists tools for once and took care of their real responsiblities in life, like taking care of their offspring and homes........</HTML>
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Sandragons
Re: wonder what Ray Johnson is thinking?
June 30, 2001 06:37AM
<HTML>Are mail art and responsibility mutually exclusive? Maybe they can both be done in a balanced way so that they enhance one another?

Sandragons</HTML>
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honoria
Re: wonder what Ray Johnson is thinking?
July 01, 2001 02:55AM
<HTML>Hey David,
-
History is not necessarily sentiment.
Sharing some real interactions with Ray Johnson on a mail art list is not sentimental crap. Think of it more as relevant historical reflections.
-
Responsibility is not ignored.
I don't know any mail artists who quit their day jobs to devote themselves to mail art, do you? In fact, one of the beauties of mail art is that you can fit making and sending it in and around the many daily responsibilities of life. Creating small art objects and sending them in the mail allows people who ARE caring for others a chance to participate in a world art scene. It is the gallery artists who must strive for a successful career in the arts, focus on themselves as important, market and sell their own importance, work full time to be noticed, not mail artists. For example, I have a full time job and have raised a son as a single mom. I work and I work hard. Mail art serves as a connection to serious aesthetic communication while I am balancing responsibilities at home, at work and in research.
-
Look to real mail artists for your data.
I don't know where you get your vision of the slacker mail artist as the stereotype you portray in your post, but you might read some mail art interviews on TAM to have a more realistic picture -- most of the interviews mention the artist's occupation, family, and other responsibilities in relation to their mail art activities.
-
This is the best thread on the list right now. Since I'm studying mail art and the Internet the story of Ray Johnson sneaking into the IBM lab is especially fascinating.
-
Go complain about something else.</HTML>
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jcsynthetics/philip vw
Re: wonder what Ray Johnson is thinking?
July 08, 2001 11:36AM
<HTML>im not rely that concerned with what ray may be thinking....as far as i understand it he is dead and so no longer can think. it is up to those who are living to express oppinion

i dont have much in the way of sentimentality, saying this i archive, though i do this so as to have a record of how mail art is constantly changing, perhapse if u want to put it down to anything perhapse posterity and ego, but not being sentimental

archiving doccuments a history, it is always a good thing to be aware of that

as for looking after family and home.........well im sure we all do that to a level that suits us and the family/home mutualy, as we do with mail art...we all know our personal level to which we can be consumed by the eternal network</HTML>
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