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as smoothed in the places that yield (the words with textureas the reading directions say), themselves nothing less than exhibit notes: what kind of text has directions? the hypnotic, the Eventualists ’stimulus framed in the mirrored eye (viz.Sergio Lombardo, Specchio tachistoscopicocon stimulazione a sognure, 1979),the shape of the mind later seen in dreams, the text of water where Bridal Veil Falls (Basho’s Uramino -taki) smooths the sandstone shelf in 100million drumming fingers of light. replaces itself. If with the book we are always printing-always opening another text unreasonably composed of the same gestures-with electronic text we are always painting, each screen unreasonablywashing away what was and replacing it with itself. The eye never rests upon it, though we are apt to feel the finger can touch it. The feel for electronic text is constant and plastic, the transubstantiated smear which, like silly putty, gives way to liquid or, like a painter’s acrylics,forms into still encapsulated light. We are always painting. The electronic is not at all the touch of the uncertain reader who-like a child poking at a line of ants or lining up raisins-runs a finger along each cast line of print. Rather, it is touch certain, like holding moths, feeling the velvety resistance as the wing’sscales slip o f f against the press of the fingers, dusting the whorls of the fingertip at whose root the hooked tangle of a zipper row of pincers clings, below that next to the clasped, now transparent wings, dangles the segmented leathery body, the husk of the idea dangling as palpable as Plato’s dry forms, yet a worm still wet within, exploding with damp, phosphor light should you squish it open. I wanted to create text which gave way(s) before the touch, which could be caressed into motion or repose without end. It began with a brown composition : a compact lunch (cylinder of applejuice, chevron stack of two corn beef halves on rye, tube of Dijon, rectangle of Heath bar) brought to me by a slim-hipped, taupe woman I know only as a mystery of texture. Thus the initial mystery was a problem in formal composition : ”you think of me as brown not ice,”the character says, texture becoming your text becoming textual yearning . (The Italian art critic Miriam Mirolla dreamed and drew herself with chocolate lipstick after the Specchio tachistoscopicoand “washappy for the sweetness of it.”) ajernoonis likewise Print stays itself, electronic text what followsfrom what we see in ourselves ,the morning after a dark dream: “Iwant to say that I may have seen my son die this morning,”the second screen begins. Note 1. Michael Joyce, apemoon, a sloly (Cambridge, MA: Easrgate Systems, 1987). Aflenoon, a rtoly is a hypertextual novel that runs on all Macintosh Plus or more powerful computers. HOME ON THE RANGE Kimberly Kelzer, 6031 Claremont Ave. #5, Oakland, CA 94718, U.S.A. My work is derived from things as I see ’em-a vision shaped by the life of an average (?),single, Californian “girl,” born in the 1950s.I was raised by Dick andJane, Barbie and Ken, and Roy and Dale, only to discover that I was adopted . Boy, did this burst a bubble! Home on the Range (jewelry box, 1991) (Fig. 2) is a piece, from what I think may become my myth-busting series, about that “bubble’-that toogood -to-be-true American mom, homemaker , apple pie, happily-ever-after myth-blown away. I grew up expecting to graduate from my toy E-2Bake Oven to the role of mom in the kitchen. You know, aJune Cleaver. Only my Fig. 2. Kimberly Kelzer,Home on the Rmtge,jewelrybox aluminum,neon, Plexiglas,rubber, plastic, 36 x 22 x 20 i n ,1991. Kitchen technologyand the WildWest converge in asculpturemade with contemporary materials. of POP^, plywood, reality was that of failed, less than idealistic relationships, working a 9-to-5job (now often 8 a.m. to 10p.m.), and p.b. andj.’son burnt toast for dinner. In 1986,I moved to the East Coast to attend graduate school. I missed my golden state of California so much that I began to...

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