EL wire (electroluminescent wire)

Tonight I ran at and then after dusk, the dark coming down fast and complete like the largest velvet curtain on a stage.

I wanted my terrier Cliff (or Cliftopher, as Bailey sometimes calls him) to see me and run to me in the dark and not get eaten by a coyote (him, but also me) and so I grabbed my purple EL wire (electroluminescent wire) and stuck one end in my pocket and wrapped it around my neck in coils (somehow I imagined the electrical version of those African necklaces that stack under the chin) and put the light on solid (not blink not strobe) and ran.

My relationship with cars and pedestrians was different; cars never didn't see me I believe, and ditto for those walking their dogs in the dark (and thus not scaring said dog walkers by rushing onto/by them in the dark while running). And when I looked sideways I saw the briefest reflection of my own light in my glasses, and also the tiny aura of light being cast by the torso-length strip of EL.

Of course Burning Man is some few days away, and suddenly I thought of that 40,000 metropolis which is not but which shall soon be, and the sheer amount of light people rock at dark (for very very good and utilitarian, as well as costume, reasons). Somehow if i can see you, and better yet, if I can see you and your color and wiring shapes suggest that you are not a threat and possibly an entertainment, this is more friendly making than if we are in dark places sliding by each other with that fear that clings to the unseen and unknown.

Lighting is one of those categories that is both utterly mundane (what style of light fixture should we get? you never want nice things! these steam punk lights are just what we need for the anteroom and the parlor!) and utterly, well, utterly nonmundane (imagine the changes in human beings when they could see after the sun went down, see in their homes and then on their streets; imagine the worship of light a la the Franciscans, the Impressionists, the great photographers). I imagined for a moment people filling in a third position at night; not known, and not invisible/threatening/unknown, and then...unknown but lit.

Of course using EL at night says a) you may be a burner, to those who know burners, and b) you are not operating by the usual rules of life after dark. Also, c) you may be in the circus, or a circus, and therefore something entertaining may happen. What else does it signify and what would it look like if people began to link up by lighting themselves? What would tribal lighting look like?

Finally, I had a vision of what my Burner jacket for this year should look like: EL wire on the back, in the shape of

@

I'm currently doing small amounts of research on what it might mean to wear a sign that indicates where so many things are at. And I'm curious to see what people might make of this mundane symbol when it is lit at night, hovering five feet off of the desert floor and moving.

So, the mundane cyborg of light, circulating in a simple technological loop but a more complex and complicated cultural loop.

Oh. And in case you needed to know, here are some of the names by which the @ goes:

apenstaartje - Dutch for "monkey's tail"

snabel - Danish for "elephant's trunk"

kissanhnta - Finnish for "cat's tail"

klammeraffe - German for "hanging monkey"

papaki - Greek for "little duck"

kukac - Hungarian for "worm"

dalphaengi - Korean for "snail"

grisehale - Norwegian for "pig's tail"

sobachka - Russian for "little dog"

The Wiki article has a huge list of such names, and points out that:

"On the final episode of the second series of BBC Radio 4 show The Museum of Curiosity, recorded in London on 19 May, 2009 and broadcast on 8 June, 2009, author Philip Pullman added the category of "things that were invented for one purpose, but are used for another" to the museum's collection. As an example, Pullman referred to @."

But what I was most intrigued by was the notion that this @ symbol, included on the 1885 American Underwood typewriter keyboard, had such an exciting second career as an email God (beginning in 1971, with programmer Ray Tomlinson as the man behind the symbol). The Wiki article argues that the @ is often perceived in other languages as denoting "The Internet", computerization, or modernization in general.

So I think writing the @ in EL is the way to begin conversations about cyborgs, the Internet, the modern, technology, and the nature of writing with light.