mandalay

WI-SCI

silly string 

on friday night, i went with my bro to one of his prof's performance art things which she was calling WI-SCI. i thought i went in with a reasonably open mind, expecting the unexpected. i mean i saw the really horrible scene in "she's all that" where rachel leigh cook is dressed up in silver lame and freddie prinze jr does this horrible performance art piece with a hackey sack. so i thought ok this'll probably be weird and hopefully interesting.

when we arrived at the location (an east austin space which seemed to be the backyard of a warehouse recording studio), hardly anyone was there, ross' teacher was wearing a royal blue trucker's hat with WI-SCI printed on it and there were lots of white tables made out of peg board with multi-colored felt flags, scissors and crochet needles in the middle. we had a seat, she told us that there were no rules, would we like a drink? and asked what our favorite colors were, returning with water and different shades of blue yarn. ross and i sat. and sat. she came back as we sat in our pegboard stasis and told us that this was sort of like WI-FI, an exploration of string theory and we should choose our table and seek out networking possibilities. so not knowing what else to do, we picked up our plastic needles and yarn and proceeded to "sew" designs onto the table top. ross's tended to be a bit more loose and abstract whereas i went for symmetry and rather parabolic designs.

after about 25 minutes of this, we decided to explore our "networking" possibilities. after deliberating about who we should connect with, i got some bright yellow yarn and we began weaving a pseudo-web between our table and another. ross and i worked with great cooperation as one of us sewed between the tables and the other let out the slack to make sure we could get two or three lengths of yarn between each table. it seemed important that we keep it egocentric and connect things only from our table. then we went to another and then another, connecting with three other tables total, a tree, some chairs and even a barbeque pit. i don't know how much i really learned about "string theory" but i do have 34 mosquito bites to show for my efforts, as well as the knowledge that yes there are people out there weirder than me. the truth is, though, as we left, i had the feeling that maybe everyone else (the ones patterning their names, squares, loops and stars in red, orange, green, yellow, blue and multi-colored yarn while consuming free beer) was looking at me thinking that i was the nutjob. but i guess a person, like art, is mostly in the eye of the beholder.

posted by amanda @ 1:50 PM