You see, Dad, Professor McLuhan says the environment that man creates becomes his medium for defining his role in it. The invention of type created linear, or sequential, thought, seperating thought from action. Now with TV and folk singing, thought and action are closer and social involvement is greater. We again live in a village. Get it?”
(1969, The New Yorker Magazine)
“Gene Tryp” is an anagram of Peer Gynt. Throughout 1969, Roger McGuinn, front man of the Byrds, was developing a country-rock musical adaption of Henrik Ibsen's dramatic play. The intended title of the never staged production was “Gene Tryp.” Peer Gynt, Ibsen's original dramatic poem, blended surrealist elements of folklore with unromantic realism.
This artist book is loosely shaped by the five acts of Ibsen's poem. McGuinn's title serves as key words for a thread of online material that brings together ideas of folk, New Media, Wittgenstein, Marshall McLuhan, language, psychadelia, byrds, deers, horses, and airplanes.
