Whiteout Theatre

Lately I have been thinking about the role of the unsaid in art. Well, kind of. I've actually been thinking about Four Thirty Three and humming The Sound of Silence. As I understand it, someone has tried the same chortle with a blank canvas at some point.

What's the point, you might ask? (Not about the Sound of Silence. That's an awesome song.) Well, you could argue that by putting a little blank in a frame, you're making a statement about framing, an attempt to divert attention to the artistic beauty of leaves and pies and fire hydrants. Sometimes, it's a statement about authorial intent and primarily of interest to the kind of academics who spend their budget on tea and biscuits rather than on lasers and steam engines (known in the trade as slackers). Sometimes, I like to think, it's a statement about the Emporer's New Clothes.

The real value of the unsaid, if you ask me, isn't about blank canvases and silent songs. You need material to make a framework, and the viewer fills in the gaps with their own virtual reality.

This, incidentally, is something that humans are already doing every waking moment- in fact, we do it on levels higher than the neorological: in evidence I present the fact that Homestar is reognisably human, and can display a wide range of emotions, depsite lacking almost every feature. I'd go so far as to say that our perceptions are "really" a spotlight, constantly darting from faces to hands and most everything else goes unnoticed.

More relevant to art, though, are the gaps we fill in our ridiculously non-sequiteur conversations and the agent thinking that is behind (among other things) animism, cartesian duality, and Freaky Friday.

So, not at all originally, I thought I'd take a piece of communication and destory some of it's message with some digital tipex. I think the new version carries a strong story not intended in the author's vision, because it is supplied by my (and hopefully your) social library.

I call it Li'l Suzy and the Pink Pistols¹. (For sanity reasons, it'll only display on the post page: click here if you don't see it.) For context, the original unexpurgated Li'l Suzy is here, but I warn you: I don't think she's half as cute when you can hear her.

1. I'm a bad internet citizen. A simple google-search would have taught me that the Pink Pistols name belongs to a real group of people. In fact, they are jolly interesting people who I may discuss at another time, though fans of terror and mayhem will be disappointed to learn that they don't seem to be out for the blood of every straight person. Instead it's self-defence, sense of belonging, rights of the idividual, blah blah blah. Since my original choice of name is misleading, how about... Li'l Suzy and The Isle of Saphos? Li'l Suzy and Her Audition fort Hallmark?²
2. I really hope that Hallmark don't object if I compare them to cute kids over-acting a U-rated love scene.