SHIFTER 14

edItor lIndSay BenedIct 1,2,7,12, 21

Sreshta Rit Premnath

aBhIShek hazra
Six Ways of Cuddling up to Serine 3-6
puBlISher
Bose Pacia Gallery

SreShta rIt premnath

Love Letter, July 21, 1969 8 - 11
ShIFter
www.shifter-magazine.com
shiftermail@gmail.com
joShua hart 13,14,19,22

on certaInty
www.oncertainty.net
pat palermo
Position Wanted 15 - 18

VIjay Iyer
A Listening Questionnaire 20

kIran SuBBaIah
Ants 24

Special thanks to Arani

and Shumita Bose for
supporting this project
on certaInty
 Shifter 14 • Benedict

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Shifter 14 • Hazra

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 Shifter 14 • Hazra

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Shifter 14 • Hazra

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Shifter 14 • Hazra
Our genome, we have been
told, is the carrier of vital
information. But what exactly
is this information? At a basic
functional level, you could view
an individual gene as a recipe
for a given protein. (Yes, it is an
old gastronomic metaphor.) A
complex cellular system reads
this recipe off the gene and
whips up the necessary protein.
A gene therefore is nothing but
a segment of a DNA molecule
that contains the information
required for the synthesis of
a given protein. And proteins,
as we know, are the workhorse
molecules of life that accomplish
a fascinating variety of crucial
tasks: everything from catalysing
chemical reactions to defending
the body and running the cellular
power station.
Now, just as those little boxes
on the hillside are made up of
ticky-tacky, proteins are made
up of amino acids. And there
are twenty different kinds of
amino acids. Without going
into (un)necessary detail, you
can imagine the DNA molecule
as a sequence of chemical
bases strung out in space in a
very particular way. Yes, that’s
the famous Double Helix, that
you now see everywhere from
screensavers to bus stations.
These DNA bases come in four
flavours: Adenine, Thymine,
Guanine and Cytosine – lovingly
nicknamed as A, T, G and C.
Therefore, you can imagine the
gene as a language with a four
lettered alphabet.
And like a finely tuned
thermostat, preferably with
Dutch engineering and Slavic
styling, there exists a precise
relationship between each of
these twenty amino acids and
the four chemical bases of the
DNA. In the genetic cookbook,
each amino acid is specified
by a sequence of three bases.
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The amino acid Glutamine,
for example, is specified by
the base sequence CAG (i.e
Cytosine - Adenine - Guanine).
Methionine is specified by AUG.
In case you are curious, there
is a handy name for these nifty
three lettered words: codon. So
essentially, each amino acid has
its own codon. However, it’s not
exactly a ‘single gene - single
amino acid’ scenario.
The interesting thing is that in
reality, a single amino acid can
be specified by more than one
codon. Codons specifying the
same amino acid are termed as
synonyms. Serine for example
is specified by six synonyms:
UCU, UCC, UCA, UCG, AGU, and
AGC. UUU and UUC are the two
synonyms for Phenylalanine.
Valine on the other hand is
specified by four codons.
Here, please don‘t get confused
by the presence of a new
alphabet, U, in the codon. The U
here is indicative of Uracil, the
base in RNA that corresponds
to the T (Thymine) in DNA and
yet differentiates RNA from
DNA. Since RNA plays a crucial,
intermediate role in transcribing
the code embedded in the DNA,
the codons are generally written
in terms of the RNA bases. At
least that is the convention that
molecular biologists seem to
have agreed upon.
The verdict, however is simple.
You can continue your haptic
exploration of Serine. You can
enjoy the furry pleasures of
running your fingers along the
bond angles and admire the
beauty of its hydroxyl group. You
can also speculate on the deep
linkages between Serine and
your Central Nervous System,
but don’t expect to discover a
seventh way. There can be only
six ways of cuddling up to Serine.
Shifter 14 • Benedict

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Shifter 14 • Premnath

Four and a half billion years ago

my shattered fragments recombined
to form you

You are the missing limb

that emerges at night to haunt me
with your floating memory

You pull me reminding me

of your severed connection
You glow from far away
But your surface is ash
You call me - come to me
Im still a part of you

But you are dead when I arrive

and I cannot breathe
You suck out my breath

When I reach you I realize

there is nothing
Or rather there is something
but it is dead
Or rather you are
nothing at its very limit
You are groundlessness
You exist when I desire you
but in front of you I am groundless
There is no I or you anymore

I can only name you

when I am far enough away
to see you in your entirety
When I reach you
You become unconstituted and
I forget your name

Or rather, from afar

You are the object of my desire
but when I reach you I realize
that you are not the cause

the cause of my desire remains

at the same distance

Yet you constitute

the curved space of my desire
Pulling me, sucking me in

Perhaps, the quickest way

to realize my desire
is to bypass you
to circulate around you

Maybe it is best
to postpone our encounter

More satisfaction is gained

by dancing around you

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Shifter 14 • Premnath

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 Shifter 14 • Premnath

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Shifter 14 • Premnath

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 Shifter 14 • Benedict

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Shifter 14 • Hart

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 Shifter 14 • Hart

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Shifter 14 • Palermo

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Shifter 14 • Palermo
Shifter 14 • Palermo

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 Shifter 14 • Palermo

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Shifter 14 • Hart

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Shifter 14 • Iyer A listening questionnaire

Vijay Iyer

This questionnaire may help you track, evaluate, and organize your own Are there unknowns in the music? Is there discovery in the music? If so, how
response to a musical experience. would you describe them?

Is there dialogue in this music? Is there narrative in this music? Is there

I. Situation
What is your own relationship to this musical occasion / performance / piece /
recording?
Who is creating and/or performing this music, and why? Who is listening to it,
and why?
What are the identity parameters by which you chose to describe the people
named in the above question?
Are the performers and/or audience homogeneous or heterogeneous with
respect to those same parameters?
Where is this music taking place, i.e. in what real or virtual space? How did this
space come to be?
How did these creators/performers come to occupy this space/place on this
occasion? What did they have to do to get here? How much did it cost them,
in money, time, and effort?
How did the listeners come to occupy this space/place on this occasion? What
did they have to do to get here? How much did it cost them, in money, time,
and effort?
Do these groups of people resemble the local surrounding community, or do
they seem to single out one sector of this community?
emotion in this music? Where is any of it located in the music, and how is it
expressed? What does it sound like?
Are the musicians challenging themselves or “reaching”? Does this matter to
you?
When you close your eyes, does the music sound the same or different? Is it
easier to listen to, or harder?
If you knew nothing about this music or its makers, would it sound the same or
different?
Would you say that you feel this music? What does it mean to you to feel
music? Does this matter to you?
Would you say that you understand this music? What does it mean to you to
understand music? Does this matter to you?
Would you say you know this music’s antecedents or points of reference,
musical and otherwise? If so, does that help you feel or understand it, according
to your answer to the previous question?
Would you say this music belongs to any particular genre(s), idiom(s), or
historical streams? If so, which one(s), and in what ways? How familiar are
they to you?

Do the performers and listeners have similar economic, ethnic, racial, cultural, III. Implications
linguistic, or age characteristics? How would you describe this music’s outcome or impact?

Is a certain identification (identity resonance) already in play before the first
sound is made or heard? Does it have to do with assumptions about identity?
If so, what are those assumptions?
Does the music’s environment seem more like a ritualistic space, somehow
separate from everyday life, or is it evidently more continuous with everyday
life? In what ways do the performers either enhance or efface this separation?
Do the performers acknowledge the listeners? Do they address the audience
verbally and/or musically? What function does this serve? Is it necessary?
II. Form
What is your first sensation with respect to this music?
Does the music perform, propose, or foster notions of community? Does it
celebrate individuals? Does it adhere to or reinforce an ideology? Does it
perform ethnicity? Does it purport universality? Does it make a show of its
competence, or mastery, or transgression, or experimentalism? Where does it
situate itself in the music world, and how?
Does this music have extramusical or “real-world” repercussions? If so, what are
they?
Do you feel that composers and musicians should engage with extramusical or
“real-world” concerns? If so, how might they do so? Does this music do any of
that?
Why does this particular music exist? What is it about, and what is it for?

What is happening in this music? What are its main parameters of expression?
How does it vary over time? In what ways does it remain invariant over time? IV. Summary
Please compile your answers, and any other relevant details about your overall
What are your emotional and physical responses while listening to this music? experience with this music, into a first-person narrative.
Do they change or evolve over time? How do they relate to what is happening
in the music?

How is this music constructed? Are its governing processes obvious or obscure?
Does this matter to you?

Is this music made by bodies? If so, are the bodies audible? How many bodies
are involved in this music? Do certain bodies dominate in this music? How
would you describe the relationships among the various audible bodies?

To what extent is this music happening in “real time”? Are its real-time aspects
highlighted or suppressed? Does this matter to you?

To what extent are you able to predict the events in this music? Does this
matter to you?

Are there multiple ways to listen to this music? Is the music open enough to
allow multiple aural perspectives? Does this matter to you?

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Shifter 14 • Benedict

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 Shifter 14 • Hart

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 Shifter is a topical magazine that was founded
in 2004 by Sreshta Rit Premnath. Premnath
continues to edit the magazine in collaboration
with guest editors.
Finding the internet to be the only inter-
continental “commons” that is not policed by
immigration policy, Shifter began as an online
ABOUT SHIFTER
magazine. It was conceived of as a topical
magazine so that dialogue remained centered
around ideas that were not in themselves
identitarian, and could be approached from
different directions.
Shifter attempts to create a platform where
individuals engaged in various fields including
Lindsay Benedict was born in Port Jefferson,
New York, and currently lives in Brooklyn.
She received a BA from Williams College, an
MFA from UC Berkeley and attended the
Whitney Independent Study Program.
Working in film, sound, performance, sewn text
and photographic essay, her projects request
exploration of social connections that demand
a further examination of contemporary life.
Often emotionally raw, the work is presented as
a fragment, question, or gesture. Benedict has
recently shown at PS 122 in Manhattan, the
Berkeley Art Museum, and in the Emergency
Biennial; she has screened at the Detroit Museum
of New Art (MONA), New Langton Arts in
San Francisco, and the Pacific Film Archive in
Berkeley, CA.
Joshua Hart was born in 1976, outside Los
Angeles, CA. He lives and works in Brooklyn,
NY. In 2006 Hart completed his MFA at Bard
College.
www.joshuahart.org
Abhishek Hazra is a visual artist based in
Bangalore. His work explores the intersections
between technology and culture through animated
shorts and performance pieces that often integrate
textual fragments drawn from real and fictional
scenarios. He is also interested in the social history
of scientific practices in colonial India.
BIOS
http://abhishekhazra.blogspot.com/
visual art, experimental writing, cultural theory,
philosophy and the sciences can view their work
in relation to each other without any hierarchy.
The online magazine remains free, once again to
circumvent the inequities of the global capitalist
marketplace.
For Roman Jakobson, a “shifter” is a term whose
meaning cannot be determined without referring
to the message that is being communicated
between a sender and a receiver. For example the
pronouns “I” and “you”, as well as words like
“here” and “now”, and the tenses, can only be
understood by reference to the context in which
they are uttered.
VIJAY IYER is a New York-based pianist,
composer, improviser, producer, and occasional
academic. He tours worldwide with his various
projects, and has released twelve albums as a leader
or co-leader.
Most commonly associated with jazz, he has also
composed orchestral and chamber works; scored
for film, theater, radio and television; collaborated
with poets and choreographers; and joined forces
with artists in hip-hop, rock, experimental,
electronic, and Indian classical musics.
Iyer received the Alpert Award in the Arts, the
New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship,
and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the
New York State Council on the Arts, Creative
Capital, the Cary Charitable Trust, American
Composers Forum, Chamber Music America,
and Meet The Composer. His writings appear
in Music Perception, Current Musicology, Journal
of Consciousness Studies, Critical Studies in
Improvisation, Journal of the Society for American
Music, and the anthologies Uptown Conversation:
The New Jazz Studies and Sound Unbound:
Sampling Digital Music and Culture.
www.vijay-iyer.com
Pat Palermo is an artist and cartoonist
currently living and working in Brooklyn.
He received a BFA from Ohio State University
and an MFA from Bard College in 2005.
His comic book, Cut Flowers, was a 2005
As this suggests, Shifter’s topics have often
focussed on issues of subjectivity and rupture
in language, and contributions reveal an equal
emphasis on visual and textual strategies. This
is a project open to change and failure and does
not depend on revenue. Each issue creates a
community of artists and writers who may not
have seen their work contextualized together, and
in this way hopes to open a dialogue amongst
them.
All issues, including this one, can be downloaded
from the website: shifter-magazine.com
recipient of the Xeric Grant for self-publishing
cartoonists. His work has been exhibited at Monya
Rowe Gallery (New York), Edward Mitterand
(Geneva), and Sutton Lane (Paris). He is currently
writing and drawing Live/Work, a serial comic
book set in the contemporary art world.
Sreshta Rit Premnath lives and works in
New York City. He is the founder and editor of
Shifter.
He received his BFA from The Cleveland Institute
of Art, his MFA from The Milton Avery Graduate
School of Fine Art at Bard College and was a 2008
studio fellow at The Whitney Independent Study
Program.
His work has been shown at Gallery SKE, in
Bangalore (India), Rotunda Gallery, Art in
General, Bose Pacia Gallery and Thomas Erben
Gallery in New York City.
www.circumscript.net
Kiran Subbaiah was born in India. He has
studied and worked at various art institutions in
India and Europe.
His creative production consists of 3-dimensional
objects, site/context-specific texts, short stories,
videos, and proposals for utilitarian objects. He
has been making computer-specific art-objects
since 1999.
http://www.geocities.com/antikiran
 Shifter 14 • Subbaiah

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