of the past

1. (a) skeletal barebones textual intercourse with an intelligent building - formation of an in-appropriate language with which to carry out this intercourse (b) construction of a multi-screen projection-installation to run independently of user with addedContent running a fragmented socio-political commentary (c) online textual reference perhaps via search-engine(s) - archived bot accumulation of source material emptied and refilled to timetabled instruction

By-m-by haus bilong-yu bilong mi
description of work-in-progress at ‘TextLab’
trAce Online Writing Centre
Nottingham Trent University 2003

2. Kiss the Bony Structure is a work for the Internet built upon an earlier work The Word beyond Speech an interactive text inspired by OuLiPo and the work of Georges Perec

in Kiss the Bony Structure words refuse meaning and interpretation instead offering themselves as playful exercises . frames fold in on themselves lists course across the screen words reveal themselves as simply combinations of letters awaiting formal application . text is offered as a game a system of exchange between author and reader offering redirection rather than reward in response to participation

the work draws attention to the ways in which structures and processes of the computer medium may manipulate reception and understanding and was in part developed from the study of the conceptual structures or network languages which provide systems analysts with their ubiquitous working models : in the spirit of OuLiPo the work imitates chance while obeying a law

if this structure or code is the message it is a message-site carefully arranged as a response to both the Internet as a repository for use-ful-less information and to its potential to constitute a new language experience beyond speech

the bony structure of the title refers to an academic conceit that aesthetics is the bony grammar of Art

Jeff Instone is a verteran der Textkunst who has moved on from written paintings and drawings and whose work has been variously described as “strange scribblings” BBC, ‘curious and dull’ Time Out, ‘an artist…not worth his salt’ The Guardian, and as ‘exploring the leading edge of digital textworks : stylish - insightful and witty’ The Cyberspace Lexicon

Kiss the Bony Structure is an unRest( ) work by Jeff Instone with contributions from Julian Weaver in residence at Camerawork with support from the National Lottery through the Arts Council of England, Southern Arts International Initiatives, and Backspace 1996

3. vacant lots are odd and lovely places found in both urban and rural districts . starting out a more or less cleared space a lot will grow and develop like some giant bacon onion and potato pie layer upon layer folding and mixing confined within an indifferent conventional surrounding . in and on such conjugal sites comparatively unrestricted natural growth may enjoy an often long term relationship with the detritus of manufactured productivity - Herstory and History - plaintive achingly beautiful places surviving fitfully dismissed as eyesores by the eyes-right : boxed in by clearly defined capital parts forced to give way to development and emphatic construction only to become renascent elsewhere - confirming that despite the march and machinations of time the thousand weed Reich will live on

Echoes written paintings Matt’s Gallery 1987