Description

Two turds speak silently through the soles of their magnetic shoes. They issue a channel of dot matrix printer paper between them. Entering the scene, a one-legged rat with half a turd brain interrupts their channel of communication. Moving back and forth between the turds, the rat stops at each magnet and uses metal hole punches to gnaw through the paper, one layer at a time. Meanwhile, inside a turd, a rainbow-colored yogi with magnets on her hands and feet attaches and detaches her body from rainbow-colored metal panels on the walls and floor. These sequences of connections and disconnections erode her body's integrity.

Statement

Stick to It! is a video derived from a live performance and is part of an ongoing series of works in which I perform as computer bugs. The project arose from my realization that the rat in Michel Serres' book, Le Parasite, is none other than a mammalian computer bug. The word "parasite" can refer to biological or social relationships, but in French it also carries the meaning of "static" or "noise." Serres diagrams a situation in which a parasitic rat invades the classical sender/message/receiver diagram from Information Theory. The rat is the figure of noise infecting the channel of communication, unbalancing the seemingly symmetrical relationship between interlocutors.

I am attracted to computer bugs for their ability to create perverse successes out of failures. Bugs wreck havoc in official systems by thriving, like biological bug infestations, in excess of those systems. At the expense of "proper behavior," computer bugs generate opportunities for irrational adaptations and emergent playfulness.

Click here for documentation of the original performance version of Stick To It!.