mr. grigely

Even though I am officially on summer break, I am trying (often unsuccessfully) to keep my nose in my work. Tonight I did some research on Joseph Grigely, a deaf artist who uses the bits and scraps of papers he scribbles on in the midst of conversation as his art. I think I may have posted a quote from him a while back, nonetheless, I think he is worthy of this sequel.
A little clip from an interview:
JG: Many times, but it’s never quite come together in a way I liked. I’ve been using e-mail since 1987, back in the days of bitnet, and have come to rely on it as my primary mode of “distance” communication. It works beautifully for that. But e-mail is also very disembodied. It lacks the idiosyncratic inflections of speech or handwriting. Also, e-mail tends to be “complete,” in the sense that you have a full linear record of an exchange. In the "conversations" that I have with hearing people, my voice is missing, the nods and gestures are missing, the little lip-read bits are missing. What’s left is just this mass of fragments—like in White Noise—and the discontinuity somehow creates a sense of desire. I think this desire is fundamental for all art; it gives the viewer only so much. The trick for an e-mail project would be to find a way to create that kind of desire—not just to provide a trail of exchanges for people to follow but to generate a situation where they could take some pleasure in being lost.