I have been fooling around with a contact mic that I made over at Machine Project last week in their workshop, and had an idea for modifying the sound of a metronome live via guitar pedal delay and synth effects. So – this is what I worked up today. It sounds a bit better live, I need to get a mic closer to the amp, not near the metronome to pick up more of the modified sound, but it looks better with my little point-n-shoot at this angle. I have been working on a bunch of sound sculpture projects lately, so there are more to come along these lines.
Our lighting designer, R. Christopher Stokes, took some beautiful photos at dress rehearsal. Things are looking good and we are all excited about the performances this weekend. Check it out!
shot by R. Christopher Stokes, 6/3/10
Walks Through Walls
by Caleb Hammond
Two Nights:
8:30 pm, Friday June 4th and Saturday June 5th
for tickets, call 310-315-1459
or purchase online at www.highwaysperformance.org
Michele and I have been working on set and media design for Caleb Hammond’s experimental theater project Walks Through Walls over the past months, and production is ramping up for the upcoming show:
Walks Through Walls Highways Performance Space
at 18th Street Arts Center
1651 18th Street
Santa Monica, CA 90404 8:30 pm, June 4th and 5th
for tickets, call 310-315-1459
or purchase online at www.highwaysperformance.org
tickets are $20/$15
Walks Through Walls is written and directed by Caleb Hammond
it features performances by Susan Josephs, Amber Skalski, Tim Ottman, Ceasar F. Barajas and Samantha Gregg
Set, video and sound design by Rise Industries (Jeremy J. Quinn and Michele Jaquis)
Costume Design by Ben Rosenberg
Lighting Design by Christopher Stokes
Director’s Assistants: Nathalie Sanchez, Andrea Dominguez
Production Assistants: Hanna Kovenock, Jonathan Stofenmacher, Alex Becerra
From Caleb:
Walks Through Walls is a transcendent installation/performance piece investigating the human condition as an expressionistic landscape of continually disappearing experiences of agony and ecstasy.
It is a portrait in motion of the ephemerality of memory and desire created by boldly physical actors enmeshed in a canvas of beautiful theatrical imagery and sound.
Performers careen and slide through space, accompanied by a mesmerizing mantra-like fugue of poetic text that is spoken, projected, and heard echoing in the sound design. Walks Through Walls is part sound and video installation piece, part performance art, part poetry made flesh.
We have developed a minimal set to shape the space and provide depth for movements, which will also provide surfaces for the video projections.
Onto these structures, we will be layering four channels of video and a soundscape that intertwines with the performers’ actions and dialogue.
The central text, a long, multi-voice poem of fragmented narratives, beauty and chaos, is presented throughout the work as projected text, spoken dialogue, audio and video interpretations, and recorded monologues in both video or on the soundtrack.
The result is that the text shifts through the piece, echoing in the many media presented to the audience, fractured and recombined over and over again for the duration of the performance.
Here are some images from the early rehearsals and production:
Tim Ottman, rehearsing in test makeup
Ben Rosenberg applying test makeup to Amber Skalski
Ben Rosenberg applying test makeup to Tim Ottman
Susan Josephs and Amber Skalski at first rehearsal
Caleb Hammond and Tim Ottman confer while Michele Jaquis and Hannah Kovenock look on
My video installation, Anza-Borrego Expanded Landscape, is showing in a storefront in Long beach this month. It was actually installed in a different storefront down there last month, but I have reconfigured it and moved it to a new one, and this installation is a much better version of it, if I do say so myself. This is part of the Inspired by TED show, and is up in coordination with the TED Conference happening now at the Long Beach Convention Center.
There is a reception tonight, check the Facebook page for more info. See the Phantom Galleries LA Long Beach page here.
Reception: February 13, 2010 for 2nd Sat Art Walk 6-10 pm, 170 N Promenade, 309 Pine ave, Elm and 3rd
Its at the Pike down in Long Beach, which is where Aquarium Way hits Paseo just a block from the Conference Center. My location is across from Sharkys Mexican food and next to the Coldstone. So get some ice cream I guess. Its very subtle and looks like a dark window at first, so keep your eyes peeled. Mapped here.
In case you can’t make it down to Long Beach in time, here are some videos:
Lately I have been experimenting with a slew of different audio tools, both hardware and software – analogue and digital. Eventually the ideas and methods will work their way into this project, Matter Management‘s Vivarium, which I am doing sound design for. It will be constructed, birthed, and will die in the Sci-Arc Gallery, and is the creation of MM’s CEO Juan Azulay. The sound portion of the Vivarium takes on the identity of a sort of organic and machine hybrid synthesizer with many layers of interactivity.
This little test is a tongue-in-cheek software and MIDI input test (using a simple controller to alter several different parameters in how the sounds are shaped or generated) using the 80′s ballad The Captain of Her Heart by Double, a variable sine wave, and an ethereal audio track of my creation as its main audio inputs. Later on the controllers will all be sensors, and the sound will be – shall we say more brooding and insectile? The video up there was created using Akira Rabelais‘ intriguing software, Argeïphontes Lyre, which I have also been messing around with lately. Its rather difficult to get something intentional out of it (for me), but quite easy to find pleasant surprises when you just let it go ahead and do what it does (which, incidentally, is not actually obvious on the first, second or sometimes third tries).
This Tuesday, December 8, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education will be voting on whether or not to cut 50% of all elementary arts education, with 100% cut the following school year. We cannot let this happen!
Please sign this petition and forward it on to anyone you know. This is too important to ignore, so make some noise and spread the word!
Rise Industries will be participating in the Arts District Open Studio Tours
This Saturday, December 5th from Noon- 7:00 pm
We are located at 837 Traction Ave. Suite 307, Los Angeles 90013 on the third floor. Traction is diagonally between 4th and Alameda, right next door to SCI-Arc.
Come on by and check out our space and some of our ongoing and recent work. We will be hanging out and perhaps rocking some impromptu sound performances with fellow Rise member Michael Feldman. Mike will also bring some of his recent works for you to check out.
We will have some prints and CDs or DVDs for sale as well.
There will be a shuttle/limo taking people around to the different open studio sites, and there will also be an after party at EAST 3RD STEAKHOUSE from 7pm to 2pm hosted by Edgar Varela and Jerico
LOFTS AND STUDIOS PARTICIPATING:
Traction Avenue Lofts (traction Avenue), Neptune Building (E. 3rd Street), Art Share LA (with group exhibition, holiday Bazaar and children performances 1pm and 5pm, Crazy Gideon store front (Traction Ave), Café Metropol (3rd Street) , 900 Building (1st/Vignes), River Front Loft (Santa Fe Ave), Toy Warehouse Loft (Santa Fe Ave), Barker Block, Toy Factory Lofts – Daniel Lahoda Fine Arts – Biscuit Lofts – 1820 Studios – LACE building (Industrial Street), Factory Place Lofts (Factory Place), EVFA (on Alameda, Seaton Street Lofts (Seaton Street)
The documentary film I mixed and composed some of the music for, No Subtitles Necessary: László & Vilmos, is making it’s network premiere Tonight @ 10PM on PBS as part of the Independent Lens series.
I was exploring some optical effects the other day through video – shooting some random video using various found lenses and glass objects stuck in front of the camera. Have to experiment a bit more with these methods, but here are some glimpses. Subject matter, strangely enough, was Michele playing Katamari and the living room floor.
I like how on the last one here, her face appears now and again out of the swirling colors… or maybe its not that apparent, I can’t really tell anymore from watching it too many times.
Here are a couple of short videos I made last week. One, Vinyl Timing, was for a weekend project contest over at Vimeo. I experimented with some time distortion on my record player with a couple of audio and visual indicators of the record time and real time. The other, Yashica Viewfinder, is a test shot through the viewfinder of a borrowed Yashica B twin lens reflex camera. I hope to work on some more video using this technique, and yeah, I will frame that better next time.
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