And now for something ALL of our readers can check out, no matter where you are located. I have a few experimental audio tracks in this great audio art show at 323 Projects, which is a phone number gallery hosting audio art, created and run by Tucker Neel. So all you have to do to listen, is dial (323) 843-4652!
(323) 843-4652!!!! (323) 843-4652!!!! (323) 843-4652!!!! (323) 843-4652!!!! (323) 843-4652!!!! (323) 843-4652!!!! (323) 843-4652!!!!
Call now! Call later! Call sixteen times a day! Serious, do that, because you will get a different artist every 15 minutes so there will be a new piece to listen to each time you call. There is also a schedule posted, if you want to try and hit a specific artist.
Here is a link to the schedule.
Check out 323 Projects’ web site for a list of all the artists involved, and links to their own websites.
Today Sarah Rushford arrived and moved in to the Lab with us. Getting cozy in there. She and Michele did a tour of the facilities, and then hunted around the physical archive for some optical toys to play around with. They pulled some opaque projectors, a Super 8 Cartridge Projector (!), and some stereoscope viewers and slides. They started working on stereoscopic video… hope to get some of that working tomorrow.
I stopped by the art supply store to get a big beam compass so I could complete my Graticule drawing – the arc centers were going way beyond any tool I had around and the string trick wasn’t so precise. I also picked up some copper leaf. Will see where that ends up. Ran into some problems while drawing latitude – apparently you cant divide an arc into 9 segments using geometry. I spend a while stuck on that and did some research, then resorted to measuring the arc with a string, pulling the string straight to get a line, and dividing that line. Then I used that spacing to divide up the arc (transferred by divider). Whew. Drawing the latitude arcs is turning out to be slow, so I hope to finish that tomorrow.
Last night, after getting home from ICI, I started messing around with Quartz Composer and a plug-in for it called Rutt Etra 2.0.1, which is a digital version of the video synthesizer of the same name from the 1970s. It will basically create 3D scan-line renderings of images, with the Z-axis heights based on how bright parts of the image are. Took me a long time to figure out the simple syntax for Composer, and get anything to come out of it – but then, it was super easy to manipulate once running. Not sure yet what I will do with this effect, but I like it.
That last image there is based on the video I posted yesterday, of shadows on the fountain sculpture.
Michele and I spent most of the day working in the lab at ICI today, and doing a bit of research. I pulled a few books about longitude, mapping and a great science text called The Study of The Physical World that had some explanations of the different map projections of the world. I decided to try drawing one of these, using only a compass, divider and straightedge (no measuring). Actually, I wanted to draw only the graticule – the grid of latitude and longitude. Naturally, I started with the easiest to construct by hand – The Globular Projection. It’s basically two hemisphere views (as seen in old Atlases and earth science texts) laid out in circles tangent to each other. All was going great, until I had to figure out how to find the centers of the lines of longitude. Took me a bit to learn how to construct an arc that will pass through three given points, but once I had that down, it was on with the repetition. I still have the latitude lines to lay out tomorrow. I am hoping my precision gets better as this goes on – my lines were pretty fuzzy, and I had to improvise a couple of long compasses for the center points that went way off the page. String worked best.
Around late afternoon I noticed the light coming in through the trees was pretty amazing, so I went around the place shooting short videos wherever the shadows landed. Will work them into something else down the road I am sure.
Michele spent the day editing video that was shot over ten years ago on two different cross country trips (flying W->E in July 1999 and driving E->W in June 2000). She also remade the timecards to include a column for John Kim’s Metric Standard Time. We’ll have to wait for John to arrive to figure out the conversion.
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.
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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.
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!
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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...
Hi everyone-
Between Feb. 2009 and Dec. 2010, I spoke to residents about what they hoped/feared might happen in the future; collected official governmental and city plans; and think-tank vision statements– and created a history of the future based on what I found.
I’ll be presenting this information at the Nave Gallery this Saturday and Sunday. There will be a timeline that you can read– and add predictions to. At the reception, there will be a short talk by futurist Seth Itzkan; theremin music by Adam Schutzman; and something I call “Future-aoke”– where people can step up on the mic for a few minutes, and share their thoughts on the future. Gallery website:
HOURS
Saturday, Feb. 5, 1 p.m.-9 p.m.
Sunday, Feb. 6, 1 p.m.-5 p.m.
Opening reception, Saturday at 6 p.m.
The Nave is at 155 Powderhouse Blvd., Somerville.
Hope you can make it!
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.
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