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• 1 2019-02-17T21:41:46+00:00 I Rock 11 plain 2019-02-19T19:02:15+00:00 The verb to rock means to compose with rocks, to play with rocks, to put them in the garden, to form them into words.
  
  Pierre Jardin's rudimentary statement,
  his initial written gesture,
  making the minimal declaration,
  was "I rock!"--which presents
  the present act "I rock"
  and juxtaposes stones as letters
  to rock denoting "rock,"
  so that the reader says a word
  for an object that they see,
  as if act and rock united in
  a performative statement
  that refers to nothing
  beyond itself.
  
  The statement progressed from 
  a rudely fashioned rebus,
  to using the small case i and
  exclamation point to fashion
  a visual palindrome.
  
  The symmetry between signifiers
  is repeated in the mirroring blue & beige colors
  divided by a line mimicking the yin yang symbol.
  "I rock" was thereby connected
  to a Taoist sensibility,
  connoting an act of Zen gardening.
  
  "I ROCK!" then became a bold claim,
  broadcasted as a text message
  transmitted by a Stone Age tool.
  
  And finally, "iRock"
  evolved into an app
  for the iStone,
  at no cost to consumer
  or the environment.
   
• 1 2019-03-02T22:32:58+00:00 The Petriverse as Screen 2 plain 2019-03-02T22:36:39+00:00 A signature facet of Pierre Jardin's Petric Poetics entails using the garden space as a pseudo-screen on which to write stony text messages.  Judging by the reactions of strollers-by, Pierre’s poetic practice of replacing pixels with petri-verse perplexes or pleases people.  Jardin’s petri-text messages pose as propositions planned to provoke profound pondering of pronounced and comprehensive questions such as: How is texting changing the way we think about language?  What new ways of writing are evolving from texting?  There is an immediacy to texting–people often write about what they are doing (“I’m just leaving”), or the effect that a received message had on them (“LOL”).  Similarly, Pierre’s petri-text points to itself; it not only boasts that petri-texts are cool (they are “rocking”), but also suggests that texting with stones could be called “rocking” rather than writing….
  More conceptually, Pierre’s petri-text messages focus on the physical dimension of messaging. Text messages are sent and read quickly and then disposed of; consequently, they create an impression that they have no materiality. Text messages are weightless, impermanent, quickly discarded or deleted. But they are not immaterial, in many senses. Text messages cost money and use energy, something to which Pierre points by saying that (unlike the i-Phone) his rocking text app and i-Stone technology are free and green. Text messaging is also far from immaterial in the sense of being insignificant in impact, as they can cause fatal car crashes. (The latter fact inspired Werner Herzog to make a documentary!)
  
  Perhaps Pierre’s petri-text messages may precipitate a passerby to consider the material world dimensions of text messaging.   And if not, well, hopefully the person will enjoy the "121" chat and walk away thinking that passing the petriverse is "aap" ("always a pleasure").