It's Alive!

Last Friday, Benson I went by the San Jose Museum of Art to check out their Suburban Escape exhibit (about representations of Suburbia in art).

While there, we also stopped by the Edge Conditions exhibit, which was installed just before ZeroOne.

By far the most interesting piece that I saw in these exhibits (as well as a smaller one in the basement) was Listening Post. Essentially, Listening Post provides a glimpse into the consciousness of the Internet. It collects real-time conversations and presents snippets of them in intriguing ways. For example, it finds bits of conversations starting with "I like" or "I love" and, both reads them out using a male computerized voice and displays them as scrolling text on one of a collection of small panels. This is done over a background of soft techno-y music. For example, when I returned yesterday, some of the statements were:

• I like your pants.
• I love kids.
• I love men.
• I like being able to be contacted.
• I like Tony Blair.
• I like the name of this chatroom.
• I like terrorists.
• I like him bareback.
• I love dead Jesus lovers.
• I like to receive.
• I love Linux.

The way these are presented makes it difficult to really hear many of them. The synthetic voice messes up words sometimes, and people often have typos that the synthesized voice tries valiantly to pronounce. Although the text is also being displayed, it is being displayed only four letters at a time scrolling by, with many different statements scrolling at the same time, so it is hard to find the most recent one.

The effect is one of confusion, with just ephemeral glimpses into the worlds of other people. Combined, you end up getting a real sense of the enormity of humanity, the fact that at any moment there are billions of different lives going on with different thoughts, cares, concerns, et cetera. There's nothing new about this concept, but a work of art like this helps bring it into focus in your mind.

There are other sections of the work as well: longer phrases get read out overlapping each other; all of the panels fill with random four letter words; and different tones of the synthesized voice read out a series of words in a sing-songy manner. Although there is a separation between these different sections, they all end up having the same effect.

After the first visit (and during my second visit), I started to think about why I liked this piece more than most of the others I had seen. I realized the answer was that this piece of work was "alive." The creators had established a set of rules, and their art was applying those rules to the world as it is today. The work was ever changing.

An argument could be made that all good art is alive, because it involves a conversation between the audience and the art. How a picture is interpreted by an individual, at different times and in different settings. I can appreciate this, but to me the difference here is that there is a conversation of sorts between the audience and the art, but that the piece of art itself is static. (Okay, okay... sure, maybe the materials deteriorate over time such as many Eva Hesse works, but I enjoy those pieces of art for being alive as well.)

I'm not arguing that a piece of art being alive makes it better--only that I personally find it more appealing. Perhaps this comes from my background as an engineer, and my joy in seeing the interactions between things. In the case of Listening Post, the "aliveness" also comes from the Internet, something that is dominant in my life and work, making it even more interesting and, thus, appealing to me. My interest could also come from my time at the Media Lab, where we were all about presenting information in artistically appealing and interactive ways.

I was curious as to what happened to Listening Post at night, when there was no one around to hear or see it. (During the day, the synthesized voice and music bleeds into most of the museum.) I found out from one of the staff members that they shut it off at night. Funnily, I was a bit disappointed in this thinking that since the Internet doesn't sleep, the artwork shouldn't either. I realized that I was starting to assign qualities of life to the artwork, as if my thinking of the work as "alive" was going beyond the original sense I meant ("dynamic") and that I was thinking of it as an almost human channeler of the cacophony of the Internet.

Not much artwork can have this power over me.

I'm just glad we purchased a membership to the museum on that day, so that I can return whenever I want for free.

I'm Not Single

One of the most annoying things about being in a domestic partnership is how often there is no valid option for me on forms requiring a relationship status. I'm not single and I'm not married.

The most glaring example of this is at tax filing time where I have to check a box saying I am "single," not "Married, filing separately." For taxes, aside from the obvious fact that I'm not single, it also has a significant impact on the amount of taxes I pay. With my partner returning to school, this will become even more egregious--if we were married and I was the only person earning an income, my tax rate would decrease significantly. But since we're partnered, and neither the state nor federal government allow us to file jointly, my income tax rate stays the same.

But, at least in California, this is no longer the case. Schwarzenneger signed SB 1827, allowing domestic partners in California to file joint taxes.

Supporters and opponents note that in California, joint tax filing was essentially the only right given to married couples in the state that was not provided to domestic partnerships. Now, in the eyes of California law, our relationship is treated more or less the same.

Of course, because the federal government (and the Defense of Marriage Act, we still can't file federal taxes jointly. Because you transfer information from your federal to your state tax forms, this means that we have to fill out our federal forms twice. Once for "real," both indicating we're single. Then once as if we were filing jointly so that we can move the information over to the state forms. (What I'm least looking forward to in this exercise is finding out how many thousands of dollars extra we're paying because of this situation.)

Incidentally, DoMA also means that there are many federal benefits that straight married couples get that aren't offered to me and my partner. Even if we were married in, say, Massachusetts.

There is the argument that the government shouldn't be in the business of giving special rights to married/domestically partnered couples at all, and that doing so discriminates against single people. If the tax code is reworked so that this is the case, I wouldn't shed many tears.

Of course, the politics of this is interesting too. When I first heard about the bill, I didn't have much faith that Schwarzenegger would sign it. But part of me wondered if the newer, more moderate-looking Schwarzenegger might not kowtow to the religious right and realize that the current state of things was discriminatory. When I woke up this morning to find that he'd signed it, I gave a little cheer and thought to myself "maybe he's not such a bad guy after all."

It has been harder to feel the same rage toward the guy that I did during the recall, during the 2004 election when he was supporting Bush and appeared at the Republican convention, and during the disastrous propositions he tried to push through last year. This feeling isn't just because of him signing this bill; it seems to come from the fact that he at least appears to have learned being right-wing won't get him too far in this state and that it makes sense to govern from the center. Of course, after he wins re-election (which looks likely), there's nothing stopping him from switching back.

And, of course, Schwarzenegger did veto the gay marriage bill that got to him, using the twisted logic that the courts should decide the matter (the opposite of the right-wing position when the courts are favoring gay rights). Angelides, on the other hand, has said that he would sign a gay marriage bill. So, on this issue, Angelides still comes out ahead. But, I'm not as disappointed with the current state of the polls as I once might have been.