Free creativity in the construction of all moments and events of life is the only poetry it can acknowledge, the poetry made by all, the beginning of the revolutionary festival.

[On the Poverty of Student Life, Situationist International and the Students of Strasbourg, November 1966]

This is documentation of a SFØ Event entitled CGØ Ambassador, where the highest ranking player in Chicago made a visit to California:

On November 21st, between the hours of 1 and 7PM, Dax Tran-Caffee agreed to meet with members of the SFØ community, but imposed the following rule: conversants would avoid using any formalized language (such as writing, sign language, or morse code). Participants were asked to bring materials of their choice to facilitate communication.

His intent with this directive was to preserve the element of distance and mystery that exists between people who have only known eachother through the internet.


SFØ Ambassadors:
zemaluco
The Actor
Tiny Dancer
Ash Clayton
Media Misfit
Anna One
Loki
Lara Black
Lank




Conversation with Zemaluco: gin rummy, four-story house of cards




Conversation with The Actor: numerically coded alphabet, [photographic conversation], sharpie drawing, paper crane



[not documented: drum conversation with Ash Clayton, handshake with Tiny Dancer]




Conversation with Media Misfit: coded alphabet


[Media Misfit's coded alphabet]




Conversation with Anna One: drawing, photographs, lots of pointing, [an attempted sharpie moustache]


[Pictoral conversation with Anna One]




Conversation with Loki: pipe cleaners, [dominoes w/Lara Black]




Conversation with Lara Black: tramp bouquet, music, exquisite corpse, [chocolate], origami collaboration, [dominoes w/Loki]



[Exquisite Corpse with Lara Black]




Conversation with Lank: dominoes, feeding of a hand spider, paper puppet

SFØ Ambassadors' responses to the CGØ Embassay visit:

zemaluco:
due to some scheduling conflicts and spontaneous incoherence regarding communication with unrelated parties, EBØ (east bay zero) did not visit the Ambassador as a unified front in the late afternoon. instead of visiting "the keen artist formerly known as villain" much later in the day, ze decided to take advantage and wrest control over the day's dead time. this meant visiting gaylord's coffee house quickly, about 1pm.

arriving a little after the hour, (fault of those damn near unwalkable piedmontish avenues), the k.a.f.k.a. v. was dressed sharply and prepared with all manner of accoutrements for communication and documentation. also, i noticed an odd satchel lying on the ground, belonging to him, the likes of which i've never seen. lacking formidable on-the-fly artistic skills, and having discovered the night before that playing cards had not yet been suggested as means of conversation, yrs truly was prepared with two decks of cartes 'royales'. since patter (the verbal) is such a vital ingredient to magical flights of visual fancy when practicing card trickery, we settled for other modes (see above).

sitting at opposite sides of an dysfunctional pac-man retro arcade game (yes, we lost 75 cents but were refunded 50) we could see that no jeux de video would be had - and so de cartes it was. after shuffling, i left the cards on the table, and the ambassador politely offered a cut.

now, i must say, the game was probably boring as seen from the outside, boring beyond belief (we certainly didn't attract anyone else's attention til much later). nonetheless, i enjoyed the 'silent' conversation for what it offered. dumb it was not. lack of verbality forces one to express with the eyes, the hands, the ears, the anything - but it also forces one to pay close, close attention to the other communicator. the simple game of gin rummy left us distracted, as many a card game will do; the kafkav was neurotically looking at the door to everyone who entered, as i was neurotically looking at everyone in the place to see who was up to what. the score wasn't so relevant, though as i recall, i was beaten rather soundly: what was substantial was that i hadn't had a chance to observe his personality at any length, outside of digital representations. i'll admit, now: after repeated attempts at undermining him in the past, i was rather won over by this official visit. let it be known that a peace exists between oak and chi zeros.

the real zinger wasn't the rummy. t kafka v grew tired of point mongering almost as fast as yrs truly. somehow, then, a strange game of face card rivalries, blotting queens, and ruffian jacks was borne of the last of the straights and threes-of-a-kind. were we crafting a narrative? still trying to claim as many aces as allowed? somehow it felt like a seventeenth-century bout of calvinball, muted but nimble. the kings and aces fortressed our fair queens as the pawns drew swords against attacking jokers....

ahem, beg your pardon, i was reading too much into it again. soon this game ended, as well. and tkafkav made an excellent move. two hands, two cards.... vertically. we learned lessons quickly about new cards and friction. also about collaborative motion and holding one's breath. the house of kings and queens stood just long enough, before some other players arrived, offering alternatively rich vocabularies.....


The Actor:
It was nice to meet some other players, that seems to be a trend among us BrentwoodØ players lately. My most memorable moment of this task would have to be The Bandit teaching me how to do a peace crane. First off, I had no idea what we were doing with that newspaper, and I didn't figure it out untill we were about 3 steps away from completing it. The peace cranes were traded, and now there is a BWØ crane with the Bandit, and a CGØ peace crane with me. Peace was had all around!


Tiny Dancer:
When I first saw this task posted I wanted to participate, but being as new as I was I was to shy to sign up. I thought it would be best if I let myself get more aquainted with this SF0 before I went out and met with such amazing players like The Bandit. Though I had thought of a few ways that I might have interviwed him if given the chance. (Being that my name is Tiny Dancer I think my choice of speech might be a little obvious!) Lucky enough for me my good friends The Actor and Ash Clayton had both signed up for times to meet with the CG0 ambassador on a day we had decided to go to San Fransico. I think I was just as excited as they were, even though I thought I was only going to be watching. We knew we were in the right place when we noticed the Bandits calling card in the window. We walked in to find a beautiful 4 story high card tower being built by nonother than The Bandit and zemaluco themselves. The Actor was next to be interviewed. I was amazed at how quickly The Bandit followed The Actors example. Not only did he understand what The Actor was trying to convey but he was able to state his answers faster than I could keep up with. Ash Clayton was next. They had to go outside for his interview due to lack of room in the establishment. The two began their interview amix of drumming and dancing that took the onlookers by suprise. It ended with The Bandit silently shaking the hands of all those who had gathered around. Luckly enough for me, I was one of them.

Ash Clayton:


Media Misfit:


Anna One:


Loki:
Although I've admired the Ambassador's art and words, I haven't directly engaged him in the way I have some other players, and I know essentially nothing about his personal life. Carrying on a dumb conversation with a near stranger is a fascinating experience; much more challenging than the games of abstract-charades I've played with close friends in the past or brief interactions with Anna One during a few minutes of overlap.

With The Bandit, I found myself struggling to keep up my side of the conversation. The amount of work required to express an idea left me fumbling for worthwhile conversational gambits. At the same time, my natural tendency to shy away from asking personal questions ruled out a whole class of straightforward factual exchanges. For some reason, it never occurred to me to break away from structured dialogue. After seeing some of the other conversations, I'm struck by the power of the less conversational interactions: in particular Laura's origami and Lank's puppetry.

We started out exchanging some basic small-talk: his trip to the bay area, the number of people he'd met earlier in the day, and trading kudos for some previous task completions. I told him that I'd lived in Chicago in the past, and we traded opinions of the city and some points of interest. He asked where I live, and how I earn a living. Even after switching to drawing on paper, I'm pretty sure I failed to communicate the later properly. I expect he emerged from the conversation convinced that I work from home and have something to do with radio broadcasting, both of which are rather far from the truth.

There were a few other occasions where it became clear that we were interpreting things quite differently. At one point I was convinced he was advocating burning down Hyde Park, which seemed rather surprising, at least without any background context. Talking things over with Anna One later, we came to the conclusion he had in fact changed topics and was discussing the structure of SF0.

Later on, as Laura Black's conversation came to a close and we waited for Lank (instantly and universally symbolized by a horizontal hand held about a foot above the speaker's head), I was invited to join in a game of Dominos. Having never played before, I had the fascinating experience of learning the game in silence. My teachers were both very patient. (Not to mention gracious when, overcome with the excitement of a rule worked out while sipping, I spit coffee onto them.) Within a few rounds I understood piece placement and the importance of fives. It took several more to work out the ways in which a five could be decomposed, and roughly half the game before I gathered that one earned more points for multiples of five. By the end of the game I had everything worked out - although I was always wary of unseen rules not yet exercised. (You played a 17, therefore you lose!)

I found watching the silent conversations of some other players really interesting. Facial expressions and hand movements become hyper-exaggerated, and there's an intensity to the conversation you rarely see in ordinary interactions. The total disregard all the other patrons in the cafe payed to the event was also striking. I didn't catch a single non-player watching, even during some pretty rowdy pantomime and puppetry.


Lara Black:
Its a very lucky thing that I live right around the corner from the predetermined gathering spot for the CGZero ambassadors meet and greet, because the hours leading up to my conversation with the Bandit were a bit of a frenzied mess. After signing up for the 4 to 5pm time slot, I foolishly tried to squeeze a trip to the laundromat into the time that I should have been spending preparing my materials, and thus was frantically writing liner notes and throwing inks and brushes and pens and chocolates and audio equipment into my bag as the hands of time rounded 4:30pm. I was going to be late; as usual.

I scrambled to get everything together and rushed over to Gaylords as quickly as I could manage, negotiating the trek with an awkward and heavy bag of tricks on a pair of 2.5 inch pumps (flats are woefully malapropos footwear for a diplomatic summit, you know) and was relieved to find the Bandit engaged in a conversation involving pipe-cleaners and Loki, with seemingly no other players in waiting, at 4:45pm. Phew.

I ordered a medium Americano to stay, doctored it up with some soymilk and honey, and awaited my turn to engage with Dax. I am generally very shy about meeting new people, and an event like this, while monumentally appealing in theory, is not something that I would normally be likely to sign myself up for. However, Dax and I had been in correspondence for a bit over a number of topics and proposed collaborations of the non-task variety (gasp!) and I felt it would be incredibly foolish not to take advantage of this chance to put a face to a fondly regarded, but relatively unfamiliar, internet-based entity. Plus I wouldnt have to talk (a skill which I havent managed to refine all that much in my 26 years or so of practice) and that took a lot of the pressure off.

In reading his write up of this task, I was really intrigued to see the bit about his intent being to maintain the distance and mystery that are inherent in interpersonal relationships that exist only in the internet! This was not apparent to me before reading the praxis, and I must admit that my intent in signing up for the event was quite the opposite. I would be curious to know the level to which he feels he was successful in this attempt, as I feel that my time spent in his presence this past weekend smashed any feelings of disconnect or distance I felt in regards to our interaction with white hot laser beams of chaotic good. Fortunately for all involved, I do not think the same could be said in regards to the element of mystery surrounding the character now known as the Bandit :)

To break the ice, I brought the Ambassador a bouquet of flowers and herbs picked from various locations around my neighborhood, and in doing so unknowingly completed a task that he himself had submitted and which had been un-pre-retired only a few days earlier. (An unfortunate(?) aside: although Tramp Bouquet fits quite flawlessly into my philosophy on the way things ought to transpire in the world, my U of A affiliation prevents me from signing up for it. Whenever this happens, which is awfully frequently, I am forced to conclude that I will need to align myself with a rival group when the next era rolls around!) I also brought him some chocolates (2), and a CD containing a playlist that I had put together as a soundtrack for our conversation. This playlist secreted one additional gift, in the form of a song that I had written and recorded specifically for the occasion, detailing a fantastic train journey that the ambassador himself had taken to Montana some time ago (see track one below). The look of complete surprise on his face when it started to play made the time put into the song well worth the effort, though we may never know if that look of surprise came in response to the fact that I'd produced the song at all, or in response to the fact that I had written and recorded an entire song without ever having bothered to determine the correct pronunciation of its subject's name :)

As for my conversation with the Ambassador, I settled on a game of exquisite corpse; two games in fact. One we played in my sketchbook, and the other we laid down on a sheet of loose leaf stationary so that Dax could take it with him back to Chicago. This format seemed like a good way for the two of us to have a discourse with one another without having to rely too heavily on literal interpretation or specific modes of language. Conceptual was decidedly the way to go for this task.

The game from my sketchbook. i did the first and third segments, Dax did the second and fourth. The order is reversed on the game on the sheet of stationary.

After we finished our exquisite corpses, the Bandit pulled out an unassuming sheet of white printer paper, and fashioned it into a square and I knew that origami was coming! We had had several conversations about paper cranes recently, so I figured it had something to do with that, but I was not expecting the next twist, in which he prompted me to put one hand behind my back (by doing the same) so that we could craft the bird collaboratively. Not in steps as in my games of exquisite corpse, but simultaneously, as one pair of hands.

At the time it was a fun surprise that resulted in a lot of silent laughter and some near misses with paper cuts, but watching the video, I am completely arrested by the beauty of it. Without sound or context, the two isolated hands working together in unison to create the delicate crane are a heartbreaking testament to both the limitations and rewards of collaboration.

When the crane was completed, Lank had still not arrived, so Dax and I taught Loki to play dominos. Maybe it was beginners luck, but Loki swabbed the deck with both of us :)

Later, after the code of silence was lifted, a small group of us went to dinner together at a small Caribbean restaurant where we met up with some old friends of Daxs and ate a lot of incredibly tasty cornbread in a less than demure fashion. The evening went on in its various ways, with guitars, cars, sing-alongs, Challah bread, painted on beards, drawings of sullen children, hand gestures, smiles, and laughter until it reached its natural end around 3:30am.

I couldnt be more pleased with the experience.



Lank:



------

Lara Black brought a playlist with some obscure private-press recordings (and two sets of earphones) to listen to while we conversed. I have selected to share a few of the tracks for your listening pleasure: