Words for Screen and Performer

The visual portion of a piece that Thomas Dexter and I created for MonkeyTown a few weeks ago, click below:

http://www.thomasdexter.com/WORDS/WORDS.html

Lights and Machines

So to kick off this post I want to quickly introduce you guys to the man and machine I will be performing with this April in Vienna that was made by Alex Chechile.  There will be a more in depth post about his machine and how it works and exactly what everything does. He took me for a quick tour of it on Sautrday evening when I went to watch him perform for the first time.

I can't even begin to tell you everything. It's a lot, it will be better when we get together and take up close pics and explanations. Stay tuned for that. It's a really mind blowing situation.

So I went to see Alex at a new space is Bushwick called "Jungle" I think. The art was meh but Alex's performance was pretty bad ass, even though the sound guy was being a jerk and kept messing with his levels.  Band sound guys have no class.

Went to a super secret location a couple days later to look at some splatters and scatters from some abandoned spaces.  Thanks to the recessions rents in NYC are starting to plummet and spaces around the city are becoming abandoned.  I went around with a friend to a building somewhere fantastic and searched for good splatters to embroider for the upcoming PHONOFEMME festival in Vienna:

paint on a wall
abandoned tape

abandoned rug

abandoned sprays
mas paint
abandoned holes
not random but similar to the abandoned holes, trying to think of an interesting way to incorporate the two with out being to kitchy, but may abandon the whole idea all together. 

this wall must have been near the back of a chair or a desk that made this marks on the wall.

MonkeyTown on Wednesday night with Thomas Dexter:

Earlier last week (or was it the week before? they're all blurring together) I worked with Thomas on recording some words on film that he could then work into video format and then create a score for me to improvise to for this performance....

set up with the other groups. we were last...
first was a quartet:

second was a duo:

then us. I will post the video that was used for the performance shortly, without my sounds, Thomas is getting it compressed so it own't take up so much space.....

first words---birds---


second word--

third---water

fourth--
I'm really not into Monkeytowns set up. They eat and drink while the performance is happening. Just not my thing...

fifth--sixth---last---

giving props to Thomas when it was all finished. Was only 15 minutes long, shorter than the rest of the sets. Just like I likes it...

Thursday I had a few meetings, the most important meeting was with Dawn of Aurora Lampworks: http://www.auroralampworks.com

She's quite talented. I recommend taking a look at her website for her case studies, she's worked with so many prestigious organizations. I'm honored that she was willing to work with a little shop like ours.

We want to re-do the lighting situation in our store, so she took us for a tour of her shop to show us what she was working on for other people then we went to our store to talk about motifs, size, where the power was etc...

some vintage restored lamps

An AMAZING 17th century candle lamp that she resotred to work with eletricity. The flowers are ceramic. This photo gives it no justice...

The first idea she had, a disk lamp (oversized) to bring some warmth into the store:

The second option, a sputnik type lamp possibly made of copper to be the center piece of the store with smaller sputniks floating around as if you're looking at the constellations....

some lightbulb displays..

up in her runway area, taking a look at more vintage restored pieces:

loved this one but is too smal for our high ceilings:

Dawn showing us another disk lamp, a possibility for the outside to show off our trunk and our sign:

loved these green light fixtures for the outside....

a copper disk, delish...

And lastly we have re-arranged the store (AGAIN!). I get tired of the set up easily. We replaced the dark wood shelves for a light colored door that we placed on crates to become a table to display our shoes. Really brightens up the store but now I need to paint the walls, get new light fixtures, make our poncho, make the back room into a suit area and move to a new apartment by the end of March! Ack!!!

now I'm sleepy...thank god....

xo

I Run But I Pursue

My first composed short film score with video artist David Gacs, performing artist Matthew Day and engineered by Thomas Dexter.

DIA by Day/ Bard by night

Onward with my photos. While we were at the museum this day working on sound design stuff we had an interesting meeting with the conservationist of the museum. She pretty much took us into each sculpture and showed the damage that has been done to each of them. Any hand mark, shoe mark, graffiti, yes, people wrote their names into some of them, animals....anything, even rubbing your shoulder on the side of the walls of the sculptures damage them and cannot be fixed. In my sculpture there are even shoe marks ABOVE your head from people that actually try to climb the sculpture. No class, so tragic.


Every once in a while they will close the gallery and spray water on the pieces to encourage oxidation like what you see below....

One of the things I love about the DIA:Beacon is it's representation of "chance art" and the idea of time and deterioration as part the work. So I was really inspired walking around the museum and seeing all of the Robert Smithson pieces. Here's a close up of his shards glass piece....this is an interesting idea about letting gravity control the look of the piece, very natural in approach, but when it was put in a "natural" setting it actually caused harm to the curious animals and some deer ended up cutting themselves while trying to understand what it was.

I'm really into rocks and salt lately. Everything I'm doing with my store is focused on this idea of random placement.



I really loved being surrounded by the Smithson pieces, but I couldn't help but notice the concrete floors and the shoe scuffs that surrounded each piece. So Cy Twombley.

While walking around the Serra gallery I was reminded of my favorite architect Louis Kahn and his approach of never adding a sealed finish to the walls of his buildings. Same as the Serra, the beauty of deterioration, one should see the flaws in the space. Some say that Louis Kahn had an affinity for this approach because as a child he was badly burned on his face that left large scars.

The Merce map of the Serra Gallery.

And now it's time for: WHAT'S INSIDE THOSE MICHAEL HEIZER'S???!!!!!!

Since we had the museum to ourselves we saw that the door to the Negative Sculptures from Michael Heizer was open. So we snuck in and I took some rare photos of the insides of the pieces. Normally you're only allowed to look from a partition and can never see the inside...

The Cube:
The Cone:

The Rectangle:
The Cylinder:
A random cart with lots of wires.
An old Leslie amp, we wanted to use them but they didn't work....nuts....

Off to Bard to perform for the summer MFA program.

The performance went really well. We each did one solo and then did a quartet type deal. It was short and sweet. Afterwards we had an open Q & A about our work. A lot of the students wanted to understand my approach and my equipment, so I started talking my work and how I no longer record any of my pieces because I am no longer focused on releasing my work, but rather concentrating on the moment. I was afraid that the guys wouldn't be open to the idea, but they were really into it and we had a really interesting discussion about recording and improvised music.

While we were discussing the issue of recording versus not recording, one student asked me to explain my process of my set up. So I figure that now would be a great time to show you guys how my set up works:

ON THE CHAIR- I always have a chair set up next to me with new records that I have purchased for each particular performance. In this group I have been playing with some "Non Such" recordings of Peruvian music and music from Chiapas. Also have been playing a record called "Groupies" which is a 1960's recording of a bunch of groupies talking about having sex with rockstars. It's AH-MAY-ZING!! And I've also been using a Peruvian record of singer Yma Sumac. Her voice was something crazy, like a 6 octave vocal range or something. When you slow a portion of the record down it makes a really nice warm tone, so I used that a lot.
So on the left side of my set up are pieces of records that I have broken apart from past performances. These pieces give me a nice dry sound when I need it. It's like the sonic version of a Robert Smithson piece. Where ever the pieces land is where they make their sound. It's one of my favorite things to do.
From broken pieces into 45's, some with the large middle hole, some without, they're good to use when I need to loop a regular LP. The one record with the red stuff is actually rubber paint that I slowly peeled off. When the rubber is pulled tawt it make little guitar noises that the needle picks up when its resting on the record.
Then it goes into my ruined records that I made in the beginning of my career. I have found that I no longer have to ruin any record I buy because I know exactly how to make what ever sound I want. I think these ruined guys have a nice plethora of sound to work with. It's definatley still part of my vocabulary.
To the right are sound effects records that I have collected over the years but haven't had a need to keep them by my side. But every once in a while I'll use them, it just depends on the moment.

Then there's the records on my lap, which conisists of about 15 records. Some are environment records, teaching children how to read, test tone records, records that Dieter cut for me for our performance in Vienna and many more. So there you have it, my set up. 

Here's a MIDI studio in the music department, reminded me of the good 'ol days in Audio school. It was funny, throughout the whole time I was at the college, I had this nagging feeling like I didn't finish my homework or something.

Marina Rosenfeld and her twins. Marina set up our performance at the school and we have been meaning to get together and talk shop, so it was nice to hang out with her after the performance:


Her little potatoes, running around.....

We had a picnic and it turned out that a German composer was visiting the school as a guest professor, so we had a nice little chat about how much I love Berlin and want to live there someday.


School food, wasn't too bad...

The kids loved the park and were so sweet running around and giggling.

After the long dat I went with Stephan back to Merce's studio in NYC and he took me to the catacombs of the studio. When I got there I was greeted by all of the instrument cases with Gordon Mumma's name on one case, conch shells that were originally John Cage's from decades past, and some instruments that once belonged to David Tudor. It was like an unintentional museum of contemporary music. Amazing...




So that's all for today, more tomorrow of the rest of the residency and photos of the performance itself.