In the Fall of 1993 I collaborated on a project called Leaf Poem at Haystack Mt School of Craft. I was there as a participant in the Mass Art Haystack trip. I forget how many other kids were there, but we had a pile of fun. My partners in Leaf Poem were Bradford Holland and Ivan Seibel.
At the time, I was deeply interested in Chaos Theory. As a layman, and kinetic sculptor, I had a broad theoretical knowledge of the concept, and had already built some chaotic systems (To Be Linked Soon [TBLS]). I brought some of my tops (spinning tops) along for the getaway (TBLS), and was excited to explore the topic. After a night of drinks and discussion, we three decided on a plan to create Leaf Poem. It Also has influences from John Cage, Surrealism, Math, Beat Poetry, etc.
We found that we had a book about Complexity Theory amongst us. (I remember it was Bradford’s, forget the title). We created a game of dice to select words from the text of the book (I don’t remember the system, but you could probably imagine it). We used chance and some simple rules to select 100 words from the book. We found an adolescent sapling in the middle of a clearing on the Haystack grounds, and collected 50 leaves from around the area and wrote some of the selected words on each leaf in. We set up a grid of 20 x 20 1′ squares around the adolescent sapling made of ripped down 2×4 and twine. We used selected words to mark each row and column of the gird. One afternoon, Ivan used a long stick with a simple clothespin/string mechanism at the end and used it to drop each leaf from above the sapling. He would call out the word on the leaf as he dropped it. The leaves would fall and flutter and land somewhere in the grid, or outside of it. Bradford would use a long stick as a pointer to mark the location, and he would call out the words of the x and y coordinates that the leaf fell into. I would be writing all of the words Ivan and Bradford said in my sketchbook, and then I would read them out again as a line in the poem. We did the performance 4 times, once from each side of the grid, and so we ended up with a multitude of poems at the end. There was the poem in it’s entirety as it was performed. The poem from each side of the grid. Each leaf had 4 line poem associated with it, and each row and column fold fold fold fold fold.
Here are some photos that document the performance and the documentation we showed at Mass Art afterward.
This is a shot of the performance. I’m on the left, Ivan is middle, Bradford is Left.
This is the view of the piece in the gallery at Mass Art. On the left, there are maps made with blueprint grids. The top blueprint grids are the 4 performances with the words printed on paper and stuck to the blueprint with pins where they landed. The bottom blueprint grids are line drawings made with red thread and pins that follow the location of the leaf drops in order. In between are photographs (BW) of the performance, and at the bottom of each is the written poem. On the right are the 50 leaves. Each pressed under glass above the 4 line poem that it created.
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This is a close up of one of the framed leaf poems. They read:
space were scientists I it asked
space researchers school I was scientists
space at economy I so somehow
space so his I imagine innovations
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