Dennis Hollingsworth

YAM Shakedown

First, the YAMS had a plan, now a shakedown.

Notes on YAM:

[Notes in outline, pending revision...]

The Genesis story. Who are the YAMS? Andrew Hahn, Jason Meadows, headliner YAMMERS. fil r?ting is onboard. I'd like to get Sean Cassidy onboard, he's a natural YAM. I'm the YAMAGER.

(YAM as the echo of CIC)
Once a friend asked what I would do if I had his community gallery space for a month as a guest artist.

I'd make another Combat Information Center, CIC: take the gallery space, paint it flat black, fashion light lockers at the entrance and exit, fill the room with tables and flat screens, red lights, even edge lit plexiglass status boards if I could find a way to rescue them from nostalgia. Multiple, overlapping information sources would fill the room, and from this, models or maquettes would be built under the lights, stirring in architecture into the mix.

The problems with that idea.
(the inspiration is fine, the notion of the execution was problematic)
propensity to be bogged down in fabrication
the burden of preconceptions and prior knowledge
individual expression vs teamwork
over-literal mapping on CIC as a model (friendly/unknown/hostile) a soldier/sailor is an instrument of the nation state, an aspect of an entity, hence "GI", the artist is a sovereign

YAM as a kismet engine
using the internet, multiple browsers, multiple sources of information, overlap and collage of sound and vision, limited only by bandwidth, vulnerable to the caprice and capacity of the various servers around the world that trade data packets at variable speeds? incident and coincident rule
the kismet engine generates the power of beautiful moments

the human propensity of projection, to see pattern where none is previously structured, the uses of post rationalization : a self discovery process,
But our perception of the world is not all projection, there are genuine incidents and coincidences in life. Somehow if monkeys could type out Hamlet, given an infinite amount of time, then it might be possible that something much more modest in scale can be generated (far, far short of the monumentality of Hamlet? towards the other end of the scale, for example, a simple yet ironic match between moving image and music) theoretically, this could be made to happen with some enhanced frequency.

What's kismet?
1. fate: fate or destiny
2. Allah's will: in Islam, the will of Allah
Synonyms: fate, fortune, luck, destiny, lot, doom, portion, providence, end, karma

The difference between luck and kismet?
G-d.

Shipmates Dale Olsen and Glenn Eastes in the CIC of the USS Truxtun, 1976.