Here are some photos from our first day preparing for the upcoming Rise Industries residency at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry. We will be part 8 of the 100/10 (100 Days, 10 Visions) project series and plan to collaborate across time and space with our fellow Rise Industries members from around the globe.
Thank you Anna and Elaina for a great day today! Jeremy and I are so inspired that we haven’t left the studio since we got home.
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.
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These pieces, playing with the boundaries of frame, were super well crafted with a sense of humor and play in the escape from 2d.
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These books were presented in a glass case, and looked as if they had been sanded down or carefully cut and glued – creating a grain made up of the layers of pages and text.
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This amazing time-lapse, super close up video, created alien landscapes of spores and molds growing and evolving. The soundtrack really filled out the world presented, and it was pretty captivating to just stand and watch.
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The 8-bit sushi was the postcard image for the show, and summed up pretty well the collision of contemporary culture with a retro nod and respect for traditional cultural forms.
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In this video, a soundtrack triggers small electrodes attached to people’s faces, making them involuntarily twitch and shudder in a subtle and possibly slightly painful dance.
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This hat deserves a place at the Royal Wedding of William and Kate.
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Lastly, a dancing teddy bear which had a video camera hidden inside it was placed out on the sidewalk to capture pedestrians’ reactions. The videos were then displayed on the wall opposite the bear itself, which danced away the whole night.
I spent some time in the de Young museum up in San Francisco earlier this month, and was pretty impressed with their collection of landscape paintings. Here is a selection that caught my eye:
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Gustav Grunewald – “The Niagara River at the Cataract” and “Horshoe Falls from below the High Bank”, 1832
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Sandow Birk – Fog over San Quentin State Prison, 2001
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Thomas Hill – Mount Tallac from Lake Tahoe, 1880
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William Stanley Haseltine – Mont Saint Michel, 1868
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William Stanely Haseltine – Indian Rock, Narrangansett, Rhode Island, 1863
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William Stanely Haseltine – Ruins of the Roman Theater at Tarmorina, Sicily, 1889
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Frederic Edwin Church – Rainy Season in the Tropics, 1866
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Frederic Edwin Church – Rainy Season in the Tropics, 1866 (detail)
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William Bradford – Scene in the Arctic, 1880
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Thomas Cole – View Near the Village of Catskill, 1827
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Albert Bierstadt – View of Donner Lake, California, 1871-1872
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David Ligare, Still Life with Grape Juice and Sandwiches (Xenia), 1994
About a month ago I had one of those ideas that just arises, one that seems to be uncovered in the mind. I’m making it seem like it was some knock-your-socks-off idea, and, well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t but what it was was a clear idea; with a static video camera, shoot two matching clips during the same ten minutes of consecutive days.
Rise Industries forces aligned, (Might Morphin Power Risers are GO!), and I shot my consective days video in Boston and Jeremy and Michele shot theirs in LA. And that is what is shown below.
Two Nights- Los Angeles March 2011
Two days- Jamaica Plain Feb 28 2011, 4:11-4:21pm, March 1 2011, 4:11-4:21
We look from left to right for the inconsistencies in framing, as if trained to do so. And from this we get more information than what is contained in the frame, gestalt at work. We get iformation about what has happened in the interim, some snow has melted, and the camera has moved. Isn’t it strange how the tire tracks are tracks in the snow in the left, and negative tracks in the right? Ghost like, the day in between speaks to us when we put time together this way.
In Los Angeles, there was no snow to be melted, and the two shots are so similar that it is as if the 24 hours in between has melted instead. The inconsistencies in light, weather, and the movement of the air are highlighted instead, and even the air seems choreographed to rustle thorough the left tress, and then the right trees, as if doing a job.
In both, the passage of those twenty minutes reveals the light changing as the day approaches dusk. In the right shot in LA, dusk comes on as an intense pink glow. And it seems appropriate that this wild act of light has been recorded, because it seems to be performing on the second day because it missed the opportunity on the first.
Sound in LA is much more interesting because it was recorded outside, in Boston the camera was inside the house . In LA it is hard to distinguish the source of the sound until you have a visual cue to link it to. If there is no visual cue the sound works as a mending agent across the gulf of the two days.
To me the work is evokative, mysterious. It’s as if juxtaposing the two intervals opens a secret portal through which the very passage of time can communicate.
The Boston shots can be improved, would like to crop like LA shots (can’t do it in Final Cut Express) more to be done on this project. I’d like to see how it looks projected large or on large monitor. I’d like to try shooting with matching cameras. It is actually pretty complex if you watch all four shots at once. And at the beginning I actually intended to shoot a closeup as opposed to the more landscapey shots we did. I think we should try the closeup next. Another way I saw this was to have the right shot be live, and the left be 24 hours ago…..Mighty Morphin Power Risers, assemble! (wait I think that’s Voltron or something).
So here is a post to tell you to click on the link in the sidebar >>> that says RIPT (on the riseindustries.org page for those seeing this in FB). It has Tim’s brand new report on creative people and how they structure their time, and you should read it.
RIPT is a new feature, a series of reports that will come out from time to time on topics you need to know about!
I just got photos developed from our (Michele and I that is) trip this past summer to the Mammoth Lakes area. These are from my fabulous Yashica twin lens reflex, shooting medium format Kodak 160 film (natural color I think). I have got to shoot some more with this camera, love the detail it captures.
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!
View Larger Map
I am constructing my own lightweight backcountry backpack…
I was inspired by Ray Jardine’s book “Trail Life” to do it. Ray sells inexpensive “Ray-Way” kits on his website with which you can make all your own camping gear from scratch.
30 or 40 hours in, I’m about 2/3 completed now, with only a large purple extension collar to add to the top, a waist strap, and perhaps also a Rise Industries patch? When completed it will only weigh about 10oz, which is far lighter than any factory-made pack of similar capacity.
Doing this is making me wish that my music projects also came with step-by-step instruction guides!
Finally, here is the video documentation of my Mountain installation at Kristi Engle Gallery from earlier this year.
Mountain is an attempt to build a mountain using methods inspired by image mapping in 3d modeling software and Google Earth’s terrain view – composited video landscapes are projected onto a faceted construction, stretching the image out as it follows the shapes of the form. The video is in some places abstracted, distorted and pixilated, and in other places a clear representation of landscape.
Video shot at Kristi Engle Gallery during TBA, A Group Video Exhibition in 7 Parts.
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...
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