01-10-2018, 04:59 PM
Art is not beauty, it is the lie that leads to it. - Leonora Carrington
Hey!, you people from the future: These Challenges are forever! Feel free to add something new.
For links to all the Challenges, just click the P.S. button below:
![[Image: RabenHerrfurth_BrothersRavens.jpg]](http://wordbiscuit.com/im20/RabenHerrfurth_BrothersRavens.jpg)
Illustration for Seven Ravens by Oskar Herrfurth
From Our Queen's Official Proclamation:
"I, Queen Sofia, the Ruling Monarch of the Sovereign State of IIcelandia, the Norway of the North,
do hereby proclaim the beginning of IIce Station Zebra."
And as Officious Adviser to Her Grandiloquence, the Queen of IIcelandia, Head Chief Executive Head of
IIce Conspiracy Enterprises, and speaking for the other members of our management team* as well, let me say:
Hi.
IIce Station Zebra Challenge #1:
Write a poem, prose-poem, or prose piece using The Seven Ravens text
and the below version of the cut-up technique:
You can write and post as many as you want. Why not one prose and one poem?
Guidelines:
1. Use at least 25 words, though it can be as long as you want.
2. The entire piece is to be constructed from segments of three words or longer
taken from the text of The Seven Ravens.
Example of segments in bold. They must consist of at least three consecutive words:
There was once a man who had seven sons, and still he had
no daughter, however much he wished for one. At length his
wife again gave him hope of a child, and when it came into
the world it was a girl. The joy was great, but the child was
sickly and small, and had to be privately baptized on account of
its weakness.
3. Segments can be used more than once.
4. Gender, tense, and plurality may be changed:
"father sent the boys to the spring"
Can be changed to:
"mother sends the girl to the spring."
5. You may add or take out punctuation marks and any of these words:
the, a, an, and, or, but, yet, to, so, for
6. If you run into a frustrating problem, you can cheat.
(But remember: The gods are watching.)
Another Oskar Herrfurth illustration for The Seven Ravens:
![[Image: RabenHerrfurth_Stars.jpg]](http://wordbiscuit.com/im20/RabenHerrfurth_Stars.jpg)
All six illustrations can be found here.
and the below version of the cut-up technique:
You can write and post as many as you want. Why not one prose and one poem?
Guidelines:
1. Use at least 25 words, though it can be as long as you want.
2. The entire piece is to be constructed from segments of three words or longer
taken from the text of The Seven Ravens.
Example of segments in bold. They must consist of at least three consecutive words:
There was once a man who had seven sons, and still he had
no daughter, however much he wished for one. At length his
wife again gave him hope of a child, and when it came into
the world it was a girl. The joy was great, but the child was
sickly and small, and had to be privately baptized on account of
its weakness.
3. Segments can be used more than once.
4. Gender, tense, and plurality may be changed:
"father sent the boys to the spring"
Can be changed to:
"mother sends the girl to the spring."
5. You may add or take out punctuation marks and any of these words:
the, a, an, and, or, but, yet, to, so, for
6. If you run into a frustrating problem, you can cheat.
(But remember: The gods are watching.)
Another Oskar Herrfurth illustration for The Seven Ravens:
All six illustrations can be found here.
The Seven Ravens. text for Challenge 1:
The Seven Ravens
Taken from Children's and Household Tales, a collection of folktales collected
and first published in 1812 by the Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm.
There was once a man who had seven sons, and still he had
no daughter, however much he wished for one. At length his
wife again gave him hope of a child, and when it came into
the world it was a girl. The joy was great, but the child was
sickly and small, and had to be privately baptized on account of
its weakness. The father sent one of the boys in haste to the
spring to fetch water for the baptism. The other six went with
him, and as each of them wanted to be first to fill it, the jug
fell into the well. There they stood and did not know what to do,
and none of them dared to go home. As they still did not return,
the father grew impatient, and said, they have certainly forgotten
it while playing some game, the wicked boys. He became afraid that
the girl would have to die without being baptized, and in his
anger cried, I wish the boys were all turned into ravens. Hardly
was the word spoken before he heard a whirring of wings over his
head, looked up and saw seven coal-black ravens flying away.
The parents could not withdraw the curse, and however sad they
were at the loss of their seven sons, they still to some extent
comforted themselves with their dear little daughter, who soon
grew strong and every day became more beautiful. For a long time
she did not know that she had had brothers, for her parents were
careful not to mention them before her, but one day she
accidentally heard some people saying of herself, that the girl was
certainly beautiful, but that in reality she was to blame for the
misfortune which had befallen her seven brothers. Then she was much
troubled, and went to her father and mother and asked if it was
true that she had had brothers, and what had become of them. The
parents now dared keep the secret no longer, but said that what
had befallen her brothers was the will of heaven, and that her
birth had only been the innocent cause. But the maiden took it to
heart daily, and thought she must save her brothers. She had no
rest or peace until she set out secretly, and went forth into the
wide world to search for her brothers and set them free, let it
cost what it might. She took nothing with her but a little ring
belonging to her parents as a keepsake, a loaf of bread against
hunger, a little pitcher of water against thirst, and a little
chair as a provision against weariness.
And now she went continually onwards, far, far to the very end of
the world. Then she came to the sun, but it was too hot and
terrible, and devoured little children. Hastily she ran away, and
ran to the moon, but it was far too cold, and also awful and
malicious, and when it saw the child, it said, I smell, I smell
the flesh of men. At this she ran swiftly away, and came to the
stars, which were kind and good to her, and each of them sat on its
own particular little chair. But the morning star arose, and gave
her the drumstick of a chicken, and said, if you have not that
drumstick you can not open the glass mountain, and in the glass
mountain are your brothers.
The maiden took the drumstick, wrapped it carefully in a cloth,
and went onwards again until she came to the glass mountain. The
door was shut, and she thought she would take out the drumstick.
But when she undid the cloth, it was empty, and she had lost the
good star's present. What was she now to do. She wished to rescue
her brothers, and had no key to the glass mountain. The good
sister took a knife, cut off one of her little fingers, put it in
the door, and succeeded in opening it. When she had gone inside, a
little dwarf came to meet her, who said, my child, what are you
looking for. I am looking for my brothers, the seven ravens, she
replied. The dwarf said, the lord ravens are not at home, but if
you will wait here until they come, step in. Thereupon the little
dwarf carried the ravens' dinner in, on seven little plates, and
in seven little glasses, and the little sister ate a morsel from
each plate, and from each little glass she took a sip, but in the
last little glass she dropped the ring which she had brought away
with her.
Suddenly she heard a whirring of wings and a rushing through
the air, and then the little dwarf said, now the lord ravens are
flying home. Then they came, and wanted to eat and drink, and
looked for their little plates and glasses. Then said one after
the other, who has eaten something from my plate. Who has drunk
out of my little glass. It was a human mouth. And when the
seventh came to the bottom of the glass, the ring rolled against
his mouth. Then he looked at it, and saw that it was a ring
belonging to his father and mother, and said, God grant that our
sister may be here, and then we shall be free. When the maiden,
who was standing behind the door watching, heard that wish,
she came forth, and on this all the ravens were restored to their
human form again. And they embraced and kissed each other,
and went joyfully home.
END
Taken from Children's and Household Tales, a collection of folktales collected
and first published in 1812 by the Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm.
There was once a man who had seven sons, and still he had
no daughter, however much he wished for one. At length his
wife again gave him hope of a child, and when it came into
the world it was a girl. The joy was great, but the child was
sickly and small, and had to be privately baptized on account of
its weakness. The father sent one of the boys in haste to the
spring to fetch water for the baptism. The other six went with
him, and as each of them wanted to be first to fill it, the jug
fell into the well. There they stood and did not know what to do,
and none of them dared to go home. As they still did not return,
the father grew impatient, and said, they have certainly forgotten
it while playing some game, the wicked boys. He became afraid that
the girl would have to die without being baptized, and in his
anger cried, I wish the boys were all turned into ravens. Hardly
was the word spoken before he heard a whirring of wings over his
head, looked up and saw seven coal-black ravens flying away.
The parents could not withdraw the curse, and however sad they
were at the loss of their seven sons, they still to some extent
comforted themselves with their dear little daughter, who soon
grew strong and every day became more beautiful. For a long time
she did not know that she had had brothers, for her parents were
careful not to mention them before her, but one day she
accidentally heard some people saying of herself, that the girl was
certainly beautiful, but that in reality she was to blame for the
misfortune which had befallen her seven brothers. Then she was much
troubled, and went to her father and mother and asked if it was
true that she had had brothers, and what had become of them. The
parents now dared keep the secret no longer, but said that what
had befallen her brothers was the will of heaven, and that her
birth had only been the innocent cause. But the maiden took it to
heart daily, and thought she must save her brothers. She had no
rest or peace until she set out secretly, and went forth into the
wide world to search for her brothers and set them free, let it
cost what it might. She took nothing with her but a little ring
belonging to her parents as a keepsake, a loaf of bread against
hunger, a little pitcher of water against thirst, and a little
chair as a provision against weariness.
And now she went continually onwards, far, far to the very end of
the world. Then she came to the sun, but it was too hot and
terrible, and devoured little children. Hastily she ran away, and
ran to the moon, but it was far too cold, and also awful and
malicious, and when it saw the child, it said, I smell, I smell
the flesh of men. At this she ran swiftly away, and came to the
stars, which were kind and good to her, and each of them sat on its
own particular little chair. But the morning star arose, and gave
her the drumstick of a chicken, and said, if you have not that
drumstick you can not open the glass mountain, and in the glass
mountain are your brothers.
The maiden took the drumstick, wrapped it carefully in a cloth,
and went onwards again until she came to the glass mountain. The
door was shut, and she thought she would take out the drumstick.
But when she undid the cloth, it was empty, and she had lost the
good star's present. What was she now to do. She wished to rescue
her brothers, and had no key to the glass mountain. The good
sister took a knife, cut off one of her little fingers, put it in
the door, and succeeded in opening it. When she had gone inside, a
little dwarf came to meet her, who said, my child, what are you
looking for. I am looking for my brothers, the seven ravens, she
replied. The dwarf said, the lord ravens are not at home, but if
you will wait here until they come, step in. Thereupon the little
dwarf carried the ravens' dinner in, on seven little plates, and
in seven little glasses, and the little sister ate a morsel from
each plate, and from each little glass she took a sip, but in the
last little glass she dropped the ring which she had brought away
with her.
Suddenly she heard a whirring of wings and a rushing through
the air, and then the little dwarf said, now the lord ravens are
flying home. Then they came, and wanted to eat and drink, and
looked for their little plates and glasses. Then said one after
the other, who has eaten something from my plate. Who has drunk
out of my little glass. It was a human mouth. And when the
seventh came to the bottom of the glass, the ring rolled against
his mouth. Then he looked at it, and saw that it was a ring
belonging to his father and mother, and said, God grant that our
sister may be here, and then we shall be free. When the maiden,
who was standing behind the door watching, heard that wish,
she came forth, and on this all the ravens were restored to their
human form again. And they embraced and kissed each other,
and went joyfully home.
END
The Wikipedia article on the cut-up technique can be found here.
And:
What is the Cut-Up Method? by Ken Hollings, BBC Radio
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33254672
Generations of writers, artists and comedians have made new works by mashing together old works.
It can be a beautiful thing, writes Ken Hollings:
I can still recall the strange thrill I felt as a teenager coming across a paperback copy of William
Burroughs's The Soft Machine hidden amongst the comic books and men's magazines in a corner
shop spinner.
This was nothing, however, compared with the excitement of encountering in its pages not a novel
but a vivid literary hallucination, shocking and confrontational in its approach to language. Words
had been edited into weird new juxtapositions - sentences, paragraphs and whole pages cut up into
flickering images.
As an experimental technique, the cut-up method as applied by William Burroughs in his work from
the late 1950s onwards, already had a rich history. In fact, art in the age of mechanical reproduction
would have been unthinkable without it.
The cutting together of pre-existing material into radical juxtapositions closely followed the development
of a mass culture that had been busily recording itself in photography, newsprint, sound and moving
pictures since the start of the 20th Century.
In 1920, Tristan Tzara, one of the Dadaist movement's founders, published a short poem that advised
the reader to cut out the words from a newspaper article and pull them at random from a bag - the
result would make you "a writer of infinite originality and charming sensibility".
Photography and print contributed to the political photomontages of John Heartfield and Hannah Hoch,
both of whom were involved in Berlin Dada. The biting satire of their imagery, by turns raw, aggressive
and sophisticated, gave hints of what was to come.
The cutting together of pre-existing material into radical juxtapositions closely followed the development
of a mass culture that had been busily recording itself in photography, newsprint, sound and moving
pictures since the start of the 20th Century.
In 1920, Tristan Tzara, one of the Dadaist movement's founders, published a short poem that advised
the reader to cut out the words from a newspaper article and pull them at random from a bag - the result
would make you "a writer of infinite originality and charming sensibility".
Photography and print contributed to the political photomontages of John Heartfield and Hannah Hoch,
both of whom were involved in Berlin Dada. The biting satire of their imagery, by turns raw, aggressive
and sophisticated, gave hints of what was to come.
Cut to: English artist Brion Gysin in his room at the notorious Beat Hotel in Paris cutting picture mounts
atop a pile of old newspapers. Along the axis of each cut, the layers of sliced text formed themselves
into sequences of randomly juxtaposed words whose jumbled meaning had him laughing out loud.
Busily lashing together his breakthrough novel Naked Lunch in the room below, William Burroughs realised
the potential of Gysin's discovery. Applying the cut-up method to his own typescripts, he produced novels
that threw meaning back upon itself, scrambling the habitual organisation of words and images. The cut-up
became a more violent expression of the editing process - a breakthrough that looked forward to the point
at which text, sound and image are no longer separated from each other.
During the 1960s, thanks to the electronic revolution in mass communications, this happened at an
accelerating pace. Burroughs and Gysin, together with an early computer and sound recording expert Ian
Sommerville, experimented with how tape recorders and cameras can recombine words and images.
One outcome was The Third Mind, a collection of essays and collages dealing with the practical applications
of the cut-up to cultural and political change. Another was Cut Ups, an experimental short film made in 1966
by Burroughs and Gysin in collaboration with director Antony Balch who ran a couple of "adults-only" cinemas
in London.
The soundtrack comprises a small selection of recorded phrases, read by Burroughs and Gysin and repeated
in different combinations, while the actual footage has been chopped into a random sequence of actions and
scenes. According to Gysin, one cinema in Oxford Street stopped showing Cut Ups because so many customers
were leaving their belongings behind in their haste to walk out.
Around the same time that Cut Ups opened, Burroughs wrote of hearing a tape of cut-up news broadcasts called
The Drunken Newscaster and "laughing until I fell out of a chair". With a little patience and a lot of practice it was
possible to rearrange the words of a broadcast media item to convey a completely different message from the
one intended.
Editing techniques could involve either splicing magnetic tape with a razor blade or using the pause button on a
machine to create a smooth transition from one word to another, thereby making people say whatever you wanted
them to. "Reagan Speaks for Himself", assembled in the early 1980s by Doug Kahn from interviews given by the
then president of the US, gives the impression of a Hollywood actor struggling with a script.
Easy access to twin cassette decks and home computers in the late 1980s meant that the reworking of words,
sounds and images was open to anyone. Artists such as Vicky Bennett (aka People Like Us) in the UK and
Negativland in the US became adept at altering films, phone-ins and talk shows to offer surprising readings of
media events.
Meanwhile, British satirists Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris helped reorganise how people consumed broadcast
news with groundbreaking shows like On The Hour, which offered biting parodies of current affairs coverage, and
Blue Jam, a nightmare of the small hours seemingly intent upon unravelling the entire fabric of radio culture.
The cut-up's more deliberately comic applications have brought the method to a far wider audience than the earlier,
more random experiments of the literary avant-garde.
At the same time the proliferation of digital platforms has narrowed the divide between the two. The video cut-ups of
artist Lenka Clayton and media satirist Cassetteboy make use of different processes but share the same unsettling effect.
Clayton took every word of George W Bush's 2002 State of the Union address and rearranged them into strict alphabetical
order. Her resultant film, Qaeda, Quality, Question, Quickly, Quickly, Quiet, plays dispassionately with the statistical
frequency of certain terms, such as "America" and "terrorism", in what has become known as Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech.
Meanwhile Cassetteboy has trawled through transcripts of David Cameron's speeches at Conservative party conferences
to transform his speeches into a foul-mouthed gangsta rap. Both films represent remarkable technical achievements
while at the same time reducing our leading politicians to the status of yammering ventriloquist dummies.
Society, from the Dadaists onwards, seems to get the cut-ups it deserves.
END
And:
What is the Cut-Up Method? by Ken Hollings, BBC Radio
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33254672
Generations of writers, artists and comedians have made new works by mashing together old works.
It can be a beautiful thing, writes Ken Hollings:
I can still recall the strange thrill I felt as a teenager coming across a paperback copy of William
Burroughs's The Soft Machine hidden amongst the comic books and men's magazines in a corner
shop spinner.
This was nothing, however, compared with the excitement of encountering in its pages not a novel
but a vivid literary hallucination, shocking and confrontational in its approach to language. Words
had been edited into weird new juxtapositions - sentences, paragraphs and whole pages cut up into
flickering images.
As an experimental technique, the cut-up method as applied by William Burroughs in his work from
the late 1950s onwards, already had a rich history. In fact, art in the age of mechanical reproduction
would have been unthinkable without it.
The cutting together of pre-existing material into radical juxtapositions closely followed the development
of a mass culture that had been busily recording itself in photography, newsprint, sound and moving
pictures since the start of the 20th Century.
In 1920, Tristan Tzara, one of the Dadaist movement's founders, published a short poem that advised
the reader to cut out the words from a newspaper article and pull them at random from a bag - the
result would make you "a writer of infinite originality and charming sensibility".
Photography and print contributed to the political photomontages of John Heartfield and Hannah Hoch,
both of whom were involved in Berlin Dada. The biting satire of their imagery, by turns raw, aggressive
and sophisticated, gave hints of what was to come.
The cutting together of pre-existing material into radical juxtapositions closely followed the development
of a mass culture that had been busily recording itself in photography, newsprint, sound and moving
pictures since the start of the 20th Century.
In 1920, Tristan Tzara, one of the Dadaist movement's founders, published a short poem that advised
the reader to cut out the words from a newspaper article and pull them at random from a bag - the result
would make you "a writer of infinite originality and charming sensibility".
Photography and print contributed to the political photomontages of John Heartfield and Hannah Hoch,
both of whom were involved in Berlin Dada. The biting satire of their imagery, by turns raw, aggressive
and sophisticated, gave hints of what was to come.
Cut to: English artist Brion Gysin in his room at the notorious Beat Hotel in Paris cutting picture mounts
atop a pile of old newspapers. Along the axis of each cut, the layers of sliced text formed themselves
into sequences of randomly juxtaposed words whose jumbled meaning had him laughing out loud.
Busily lashing together his breakthrough novel Naked Lunch in the room below, William Burroughs realised
the potential of Gysin's discovery. Applying the cut-up method to his own typescripts, he produced novels
that threw meaning back upon itself, scrambling the habitual organisation of words and images. The cut-up
became a more violent expression of the editing process - a breakthrough that looked forward to the point
at which text, sound and image are no longer separated from each other.
During the 1960s, thanks to the electronic revolution in mass communications, this happened at an
accelerating pace. Burroughs and Gysin, together with an early computer and sound recording expert Ian
Sommerville, experimented with how tape recorders and cameras can recombine words and images.
One outcome was The Third Mind, a collection of essays and collages dealing with the practical applications
of the cut-up to cultural and political change. Another was Cut Ups, an experimental short film made in 1966
by Burroughs and Gysin in collaboration with director Antony Balch who ran a couple of "adults-only" cinemas
in London.
The soundtrack comprises a small selection of recorded phrases, read by Burroughs and Gysin and repeated
in different combinations, while the actual footage has been chopped into a random sequence of actions and
scenes. According to Gysin, one cinema in Oxford Street stopped showing Cut Ups because so many customers
were leaving their belongings behind in their haste to walk out.
Around the same time that Cut Ups opened, Burroughs wrote of hearing a tape of cut-up news broadcasts called
The Drunken Newscaster and "laughing until I fell out of a chair". With a little patience and a lot of practice it was
possible to rearrange the words of a broadcast media item to convey a completely different message from the
one intended.
Editing techniques could involve either splicing magnetic tape with a razor blade or using the pause button on a
machine to create a smooth transition from one word to another, thereby making people say whatever you wanted
them to. "Reagan Speaks for Himself", assembled in the early 1980s by Doug Kahn from interviews given by the
then president of the US, gives the impression of a Hollywood actor struggling with a script.
Easy access to twin cassette decks and home computers in the late 1980s meant that the reworking of words,
sounds and images was open to anyone. Artists such as Vicky Bennett (aka People Like Us) in the UK and
Negativland in the US became adept at altering films, phone-ins and talk shows to offer surprising readings of
media events.
Meanwhile, British satirists Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris helped reorganise how people consumed broadcast
news with groundbreaking shows like On The Hour, which offered biting parodies of current affairs coverage, and
Blue Jam, a nightmare of the small hours seemingly intent upon unravelling the entire fabric of radio culture.
The cut-up's more deliberately comic applications have brought the method to a far wider audience than the earlier,
more random experiments of the literary avant-garde.
At the same time the proliferation of digital platforms has narrowed the divide between the two. The video cut-ups of
artist Lenka Clayton and media satirist Cassetteboy make use of different processes but share the same unsettling effect.
Clayton took every word of George W Bush's 2002 State of the Union address and rearranged them into strict alphabetical
order. Her resultant film, Qaeda, Quality, Question, Quickly, Quickly, Quiet, plays dispassionately with the statistical
frequency of certain terms, such as "America" and "terrorism", in what has become known as Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech.
Meanwhile Cassetteboy has trawled through transcripts of David Cameron's speeches at Conservative party conferences
to transform his speeches into a foul-mouthed gangsta rap. Both films represent remarkable technical achievements
while at the same time reducing our leading politicians to the status of yammering ventriloquist dummies.
Society, from the Dadaists onwards, seems to get the cut-ups it deserves.
END
Challenges will be posted slightly before 6am GMT which is 1am in New York City,
6am in London, 2pm in Manila, 5pm in Sydney, and 7pm in Auckland.
There will be 8 challenges. The first challenge will be posted Wed Jan 10
with 7 more posted every 3 days i.e. Jan 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28, and 31.
6am in London, 2pm in Manila, 5pm in Sydney, and 7pm in Auckland.
There will be 8 challenges. The first challenge will be posted Wed Jan 10
with 7 more posted every 3 days i.e. Jan 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28, and 31.
*The Team:
rayheinrich: Head Chief Executive Head ( HCEH )
lizzie: Senior Executive Vice President for Creativity and Chaos ( VPCC )
quixilated: Executive Vice President for Narratives and Perplexity ( VPNP )
vagabond: Executive Vice President for Quonundra and Qwertyness ( VPQQ )
a brightly colored fungus that grows in bark inclusions
the title is gold,