To Persuade, Move and Delight

LA-based media artist Jordan Crandall recently announced the launch of a new online journal called Version, which responds to the artist's desire to collect and share short missives rooted in philosophy, art, cultural studies or any other field but that intersect with contemporary lived life. Version, explains the "About" section, "presents scenes, incidents, encounters, and sensory experiences drawn from everyday life, in which concepts are not only elaborated but enacted." In terms of format, each "item" must adhere to strict constraints: 500 words, 5 images or 50 seconds. There are currently nine projects in Version, including Benjamin Bratton's "Stacks" (pictured here), consisting of five images, each containing strips and blocks of images that are themselves broken into repeated near-grids. While it's tempting to try to discern each fragment's identity, it's more pleasurable to simply witness the play of color, pattern and repetition. Lucky Dragons, an LA-based collaborative effort by Sarah Rara and Luke Fischbeck, offers a breathy song, while Leslie Stern's submission is the deliciously wordy "Wormy Words" text. Here, herrings become words that stand in for ideas in a passage that wiggles back and forth through gardening, writing, thinking and being. The piece ends with a provocative line: "Between calculus and chance, you play a game, aiming always, like that wily old weeder Cicero, to persuade and move and delight." Exactly - and that may indeed be Crandall's game with Versionas well, to persuade, move and delight.