I spent the afternoon at The ICI making our timecards and researching timezones.
Apparently The ICI is in its own timezone and calendar (note the Feb 24 stamp), while Rise Industries members are in Pacific Standard Time, Indian Standard Time, and Eastern Standard Time.
Over the next few weeks the whole crew at Rise Industries will be participating in a residency (some in person, some via mail/skype/phone/email) and show over at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry in west Los Angeles. We will be tracking the development of our various projects and excursions here of course.
Michele and I will start inhabiting their lab and gallery spaces this week, and get down to doing some research and interventions. Later this week Sarah Rushford will join us there, and we will be organizing information flows to and from the rest of our membership in order to get them involved. This whole undertaking will be experimental in a few different ways, especially as an experiment in modes of collaboration and attempts at cross-pollination of ideas. We shall see how it goes.
In the meantime, I have been tossing together some ideas and images related to our vague research directions of time and distance.
Since the Earth rotates at a steady rate of 360° per day, or 15° per hour, there is a direct relationship between time and longitude.
The vernal equinox itself precesses very slowly in a westward direction relative to the fixed stars, completing one revolution every 26,000 years approximately.
During the time needed by the Earth to complete a rotation around its axis (a sidereal day), the Earth moves a short distance (approximately 1°) along its orbit around the sun.
Therefore, after a sidereal day, the Earth still needs to rotate a small additional angular distance before the sun reaches its highest point. A solar day is, therefore, nearly 4 minutes longer than a sidereal day.
Locations (to date):
Munich, Germany
WGS84 48° 8′ 0″ N, 11° 34′ 0″ E
48.133333, 11.566667
Los Angeles, CA, USA
WGS84 34° 3′ 0″ N, 118° 15′ 0″ W
34.05, -118.25
Somerville, MA, USA
WGS84 42° 23′ 15″ N, 71° 6′ 0″ W
42.3875, -71.1
Boston, MA, USA
WGS84 42° 21′ 28″ N, 71° 3′ 42″ W
42.357778, -71.061667
Haridwar, India
WGS84 29° 57′ 36″ N, 78° 9′ 36″ E
29.96, 78.16
Before I get into this post for real, let me just say I have a backlog of photos from many great art shows and other events from the past year – and for whatever reason (something to do with either managing an apartment building project, or working on a play or two, or getting some installations done or some other such nonsense) I have not gotten around to posting anything about them at all. So, I am going to try and get this archive of stuff out into teh interwebs where people can actually see it. Since its been awhile for many of these, I may just put up my photos, or try and write some brief things about them. Either way, if you want more info on any, post in the comments and I will get to it.
With that out of the way, this one is more recent than some: the Wabi Savvy group show at Jaus gallery in West LA – Ichiro Irie’s fantastic little space on a suburban street across from the rock climbing gym. Wabi Savvy is a satellite exhibition of Gateway Japan Organized by Torrance Art Museum, and features over a dozen contemporary Japanese artists with the tag line “The image you already have of the warped Japanese sensibilities are probably all true”. The show opened right after the recent earthquake, then tsunami, then nuclear disaster in Japan – so Japan’s plight was already on everyone’s mind at the show which may have colored our perception of the works presented. The show ran from March 18 to May 1, 2011.
A very coherent show across many media, I found several standout works among the small collection.
My new public artwork Tomorrow is up in Glendale, and will be showing for several months. It is presented by Glendale Area Temporary Exhibitions (GATE) along with works by Srboohie Abajian, and P. Williams. This new text-based installation spans several storefront windows on Wilson Ave, inviting viewers to ponder the future. In addition to the large graphic, a video displaying quotations about tomorrow gives the work varied contexts.
The installation can be found at the corner of E. Wilson and Maryland, across from a small city parking lot. 116 E. Wilson Ave, to be precise. It should be easy to find, what with the giant yellow text and all. Don’t miss the video, its tucked into a niche near the middle door.
Big thanks out to Tucker Neel and Eric Qvale of GATE and David O. Johnson of Leaf Cutter Vinyl for making it happen!
Here are some photos from the show I had at the Nave Gallery for my “History of Somerville, 2010-2100″ community art project.
At the gallery.
Visitors could add their own predictions to the timeline.
About 40 new predictions were added during the show. In this photo, there are a number of hand-written notes on the wall.
This is the same wall, before the show.
At the reception, futurist Seth Itzkan gave a short talk about thinking about the future-- and then led us on a guided future-visioning exercise.
After futurist Seth Itzkan's talk, we had Future-aoke-- the open mic about the future. About a dozen brave, thoughtful souls got up, and spoke about their ideas and concerns about the future.
...Another Future-aoke speaker...
After Future-aoke, Neil Horsky and Anna Horsky played some music on instruments that haven't even been invented yet.
...and then there was Mingling...
My new video installation, Mountain, will be showing next week at Kristi Engle Gallery in Highland Park in Part 5 of her show TBD: A Group Video Exhibition in 7 Parts. Mountain is my attempt to build a mountain using methods inspired by image mapping in 3d modelling sofware and Google Earth’s terrain view – composited video landscapes are projected onto a faceted form, stretching the image out as it follows the shapes of the form. The video is in some places abstracted, distorted and pixelated, and in other places a clear representation of landscape.
The show will be open from the 23rd to the 29th (noon-6pm each day), with a reception on the 29th from 7-10pm. See here for a map.
The first four videos in my project “i dream in your language” will be included in Part 2 of TBA: A Group Video Show in 7 Parts at Kristi Engle Gallery, in Highland Park (North East LA). The opening is this Saturday Dec. 11, 7-10 pm, and the show is open everyday 12-6 pm through Dec. 18. View full schedule of this 7 part show here. For those of you out of town, you can watch the videos here.
I finally edited the video footage I shot of this past year’s Vivarium installation at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. The Vivarium is an installation by Matter Management exploring biology, technology and mythology in a complex architectural and multi-media environment. I developed the sound design for the project, which involved inventing a system to monitor the biology in the black pyramid and to use that data to both generate and modify audio signals. The sound included audio amplified from the biology itself, sounds I had previously recorded, and sounds generated by software using the data captured. I developed the data system using Max/MSP.
For more information on my sound design process, see my previous post Sound from Diagrams and The Vivarium.
When the official flyer from MOCA cautions that the use of earplugs is strongly recommended, you know something other than a bit of classical music in the park will be going on. This was the situation last weekend down in Los Angeles’ State Historic Park (screw that, I am still calling it The Cornfields) when MOCA organized a re-creation of Iannis Xenakis’ Persepolis, a multi-track experimental music/space/sound composition.
I rolled up late, because I did actually turn back to pick up my earplugs (musicians gotta protect the ears you know), but couldn’t find them. The place was pretty crowded when I got there, and the sun had recently set, so light was fading fast. Walking toward the park, you could hear a low thrum, and I followed the rest of the stragglers into the park. As luck, and most likely insurance riders, would have it, ear plugs were being handed out at a MOCA info table. I plugged em in, and walked into a landscape made of noise, grass, and crowd.
I am not sure I have fully digested this thing yet, but I can say for now that it was an experience, a physical, visual and audio experience on a pretty intense level. I tested pulling the earplugs out from time to time, as I was worried I was missing the highs of the sound. And it was loud, so very very loud. Sometimes bearable and OK, but without warning, a super high pitch would drift in and threaten permanent damage.
I wandered around, as the work sprawls over the park, with speakers on posts set up regularly spaced around the area. There were searchlights and fog machines, at first seemingly doing their own thing, but later working in concert with the sound to create a frenzy of stimuli.
Later there were pillars of fire. There was subtle sound in the giant noise, lots to keep you interested, and enough change to hold me there through the entire duration. It evolved, peaking with the sweeping searchlights, then backing off just a bit to hold for a while before it all simply stopped.
These videos are nothing like it, of course. But, they give you a glimpse into the idea. Sadly, I didn’t catch a shot of the Gold Line train cutting across the edge of the field right behind the huge crowd – which was very surreal.
Well, this is a very disjointed post, but like I say, I have not digested it yet. May write more on it later when I have thought about what exactly made this so spectacular. Or maybe I will keep that to myself.
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