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Saturday
April 4, 2009

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Anyone surprised by the current global mess either has
forgotten or never read Kurt Vonnegut's Fates Worse
than Death
, in which the author damningly laments the
ongoing gutting of America instigated by Reagan the
Deregulator. But it's not his politics which has kept me
reading and rereading Vonnegut for 25 years. It's his
recurring message that for people to be happy, they
need to be part of an extended family, whether by blood
or "artificially" bound by a common interest. Tonight's
PROJECTOR PROJECT was a kind of family reunion, with
a bunch of Bring Your Own Projector veterans welcoming
newly adopted members of the tribe. The idea is simple:
Invite people with an intense interest in projecting images
on bare gallery walls and let the experiment run its course.
It was--for me at least--a mind-expanding evening. So
much of my attention is narrow, focused on one discrete
task after another. There's something about watching multiple
and often overlapping images which breaks one out of the
usual tunnelvision. Inhibitive sequential patterning is over-
ridden by a zoomed-out state which coolly perceives the
whole without getting hung up on individual threads. Next
morning it felt as if someone had flung open my windows.
The effect, alas, was fleeting, so I hope we do it again soon.
 

                 

Thank you, participants!
Thanks to all who lugged, plugged, and rolled.