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Idle in the Saved Night (silent)
Posted on May 11th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: art, improv, live visuals, music, nyc, performance, philosophy, programming, show, theater.
Tonight, I’ll be performing at Bunker at SubTonic, the 2nd show of a developing performance called Idle in the Saved Night, inspired by the writings of Deborah Levitt. It’s a mixed piece for live visuals and acting. In a nutshell, I’ll be playing video (of mental patients from the 40s) from my laptop to the projector, standing in front of the projection screen …acting funny… and capturing my strange behavior and gestures with a live camera, which’ll then get chopped up and spit back out to the screen on top of me. It will be divine. And since the music at SubTonic is curated separately from the visuals, I’ll be doing it mute. Instead of speaking the texts I’ve gathered for the videos, I’ll run them on the screen as text. ‘Twill be an interesting challenge.
By the way, I highly recommend EyeWash tonight. Most of the visual acts will be getting physical: from performance art to burlesque to unique interfaces. This is good. For did John not say, let’s get into physical/ Let me hear your body talk? Should be swell. I’ll be there if I get my patch ready in time.
This just in, a great show to see Saturday night featuring my Gunshow-mate Ryan Sturt:
Have you ever seen Showgirls? Pretty crappy right? What would make it better you ask? If it were done with sockpuppets! Yup. I’m in a sockpuppet version of Showgirls. It’s been running for a few years in Chicago and played in New York in 2002, and now it’s back in our city with fresh jokes and extra filth. It’s every Saturday night at 8pm until the end of June.
It’s super raunchy. The puppets will dance your face off! I’m playing a couple different characters in it, and the character voice stuff has been a lot of fun.
Come if you can!
For more info, directions, and tickets, here’s the flyer and the ticket link:
vade// will play at the Bunker as well — he has been absolutely tearing it up lately with his visuals — just brilliant work. He played at {R} A K E at Monkeytown with Larry 7 on Wednesday, an unusual pairing that kept them both on their toes. It was gorgeous. The entire evening was, to be precise, ecstatic. Now you know I am often accused of hyperbole and over-enthusiasm and to this I would retort: wake up! The world is full of beauty and interest and commonality if you’re paying attention. I pay attention. Hence, I enjoy things more fully, perhaps, than the next human.
Joyful details of which I speak, of {R} A K E, the evening of electro-acoustic music and visuals run by Satoshi Takeishi, Shoko Nagai and Adam Kendall:
- the first act was Kato Hideki (solo bass guitar) and Giles Hendrix* (video). Kato was exceptionally sensitive to his instrument and the sound in the room. He drew unusual sounds out of the bass, from the lightest of touches with a bow to heavy slams of his fist against the body, punctuated with long, deliberate silences. Giles’ visuals were equally slow and exploratory. I must admit I went into a trance/fell asleep at some points, which sounds bad but felt great: I drifted lightly in and out of the sound and light. As I suspected, Kato uses a custom tuning system based on prime numbers. I suspected it was different — not that it was prime.
How can I describe Vortex’s music? Words fail me. It was an ecstatic experience. Satoshi is a percussionist but not limited to struck instruments — he also played the waterphone with a bow that night. Shoko plays keyboards and (what I can only describe as) Pan pipes. They both do some Max/MSP manipulation and layering of the sound, which seems to run on auto-pilot mostly. Each time I’ve heard them play it’s been a unique performance, an environment of sound created entirely of the moment. Unlike many musicians, they respond to your visuals when you play with them; I feel honored that my first visual gig was with them at {R} A K E. Wednesday they played with visuals by Shimpei Takeda, who used only a video camera, a flashlight and a jar of water to make a truly beautiful light show. Chika whispered to me that it reminded her of my work with live camera, which is quite a flattering comparison. Seeing it gave me a shove to do a similar work with water and bubbles I’ve had in mind for a while.
It was an evening of synaesthesia, the visuals and the music combined - to use the oft-abused word — in synergy. The last act was no exception. Anton (vade//) and Larry 7 played the room like a drum. Monkeytown’s back room, if you haven’t seen it, is a hard-walled cube with projections on each wall. A visualist can easily blind the audience and break the mood with the combined light from the four projectors and I’ve been thankful for my earplugs on several occasions when the audio artists have found the resonant frequency of the room and made it ring how I imagine the inside of the fuel chamber of the Space Shuttle must sound. (Alright, that last was definitely hyperbole.) However, Larry 7 and vade// did no such thing. Larry, who I’m told used to work for Andy Warhol, played with a bunch of analogue electronics, tube amps, a multi-stringed instrument with mics on it, and four mics arranged in a cross on a rotating turntable. Also quite difficult to describe. Let’s just say he succeeded in his aim, “to set up situations where he has almost no control over what happens, so he can be entertained along with the audience.” Anton’s setup is as digital as Larry’s is analogue — just a laptop — and he usually doesn’t take his MIDI keyboard along so it’s all controlled with the mouse and keyboard.
Again, beautiful stuff. I almost stayed home to program but I’m so glad I went. Time to program now: the patch for tonight is almost ready. I rebuilt it from scratch to make sure I got the order of operations right.
* note: I am very envious of Giles’ domain name.
Addendum
If you don’t bother to read my del.icio.us links in the spliced feed, you’ll have missed a great listening opportunity: an album of Radiohead covers called Exit Music - Songs with Radio Heads. I particularly recommend the cover of Just by Mark Ronson and Alex Greenwald, which reveals the hidden funk of RH with handclaps, djembe and sexy horn blasts. My Flickr photos are also in the spliced feed and I’m just about to upload a shitload of cameraphone pics featuring the flowers of which I spoke yesterday. Name the purple pom-pom, s’il vous plait.
Stay Loyal, Ponyboy
Posted on May 9th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: VJ, history, multimedia, music.
Loyal, that is, to songs of passion from the Middle Ages. Yes! The new Asteria album Soyes Loyal is out and it is beautiful. My dear friends Eric Redlinger and Sylvia Rhyne have released their 2nd album of secular music — love songs — from 15th century Europe, arranged for soprano, tenor and lute. You can hear a few of the tracks now on their site — try Ne Je Ne Dors — and you’ll be able to stream the whole album soon on Magnatune, their record label. Here’s another track from their first album, Quant La Doulce Jouvencelle.
Analog video art doubleplus good
Posted on May 8th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: art, family, live visuals, maintenance, music, nyc, performance, programming, show, video art, videoartists, visualists.
I saw Flipped Chips at Galapagos tonight, a show of video art by contemporary artists and pioneers like Nam June Paik, Bill Etra and Matthew Schlanger. Works that stood out to me: Matthew Schlanger (beautiful synthesis, all built from oscillators); Karl Klomp, with music by toktek (simple distortion of a vid of a dog, triggered by audio, the results seemed so violent); Jon Satrom (nice sprite rip stuff with a sense of humor); Defanti/Sandin (really pretty and mesmerizing math psychedelia with a charming how-we-do-it video at the beginning); noteNdo / Johnny Beverley 1989! / Jeff, who I played with at the big chiptunes show back in October (excellent textures from hacking the NES). And there was a great Bit Shifter track with Jeff’s video. Speaking of which, Bit Shifter has a new album out and so does David Sugar!
Man I’m tired.
Anyway, to finish up — great stuff. It drove this home:
- it’s all simple things added together. no magic.
- minds are pattern recognition engines.
- the best stuff is elusive and evocative.
Also, I had a fun idea for projections @ Galapagos that I’m going to bounce off of CJ. Now I can crash. Thank Jeebus. I’m still not recovered from the end of the semester pushzzzzzz….
An explanation of what SHARE is
Posted on April 7th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: art, code, community, improv, live visuals, manifesto, music, nyc, performance, philosophy, share.
Since Daniel Smith called it excellent, I thought I’d post this explanation of SHARE that I sent to a Houston Press journalist last night, just in case any y’all are confused. (Notice the “y’all”? I never used to say that when I lived in Texas — I made a point of it. I’m a bit less uptight than I was in high school. A bit.)
SHARE hosts open jams for audio and visual artists. Anyone can come and participate. We provide the infrastructure: multichannel audio mixing and amplification, video projectors and screens, and the expertise to help first-timers learn the basics of audio and visual performance. Share is completely content-agnostic: you can play anything you want on any instrument you can carry in. No structure is imposed on the jam by the Share team. Rather, we encourage structure to emerge from the participants in the jam. Although our audio infrastructure is designed to allow electronic musicians play together, people bring many different kinds of instruments, from traditional/acoustic to electronic to homemade to far-out. No one conducts or actively mixes the sound so the performers communicate the old-fashioned way: by listening to each other and following the flow of the improvisation. Some people prepare extensively, laying down tracks at home to try them out in the mix at Share. Others do almost no pre-recording or pre-structuring apart from practice — like jazz musicians.
I’ve seen Share participants make sound with violins, cellos, laptops, guitars, double basses, lutes, Gameboys, hand drums, kit drums, contact microphones affixed to plastic waterfalls, homemade noiseboxes, analog synthesizers, microphones, circuit-bent toys, keyboards, beatbox, voice, and something in a bright green custom fiberglass body called the Green Bean*. Likewise, the video participants use laptops, cameras, movie clips, film, slide projectors, flashlights, lightboxes, custom screens, DVD players, paper dioramas and more. Then there’s the really far out stuff: motion and light sensors worn by dancers, communicating their movements to audio and visual performers who use the sensor data to affect the sound and light. The distinction between media gets blurred. The separation between performer and audience breaks down and changes.
That’s not the half of it, of course.
* Made by Randy Jones. Really nice guy. Very helpful on the Max/MSP/Jitter mailing lists.
WANK
Posted on March 26th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: music.
I call WANK on Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I am officially forever done with Pink Floyd’s The Wall, possibly the world’s top-selling wanky concept album. Delete, delete. No longer will Pink Floyd’sThe Wall’s epic, humorless wankery stain my hard drives.
> and the worms sank into his brain
Thanks for the pick-me-up, Gilmour et al. Pbbbbbt to you and your indulgent depression-rock forever. Pbbbbt to your Freudian pop psych.
Of course, the movie had some good spots, as you might expect from a 95 minute music video. Pinky drinking the toilet water was pretty great. But when Goodbye Cruel World came around on shuffle the other day, it rubbed me the wrong way with 40 grit sandpaper. Wank. Delete*.
Also receiving the thumb’s down tonight is Easy Mac EXTREME CHEESE. It tastes like they’ve added gypsum dust to it. Back to regular Easy Mac I go.
Thus do I arbit.
* Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here can stay. And I have never heard any Syd Barret-era Floyd. Shameful, I know. You may send me mp3s now.
nb
Partially inspired by Scaryduck’s Whiskey Alpha November Kilo post. Funniest blog there is.
Argh
Posted on March 19th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: art, family, music, nyc, performance, show.
Fuck me. Fuck me busy me.
I got home from seeing V for Vendetta tonight (excellent, chilling, apropos) to find my computer still playing WFMU. Some beautiful piano pieces in a peculiar tuning. Comes the station break and I find out who it was: some of Michael Harrison’s Music for Harmonically Tuned Piano. It rang a bell and I swore, fuck fuck fuck. Because I’d read about it in one of Keiko’s weekly recommendation emails. Because Harrison’s REVELATION: for Harmonically Tuned Piano was performed in its entirety at Experimental Intermedia on Thursday, while I was busy working for the New School and then coding Jitter patches. What is a harmonically tuned piano?
>In 1986, Harrison created the “harmonic piano,” an extensively modified seven-foot grand piano with the ability to alternate between two different tunings, thus creating the possibility to play 24 notes per octave on a conventional keyboard.
Here is a sample of Harrison’s work as I am sneaky sneaky.
Argh, again, argh. I could have seen the man himself performing for 90 minutes for $15! Anywho, speaking of being things you shouldn’t miss if you value your ability to not say fuck a lot, I’m performing Monday night with 60+ other artists to benefit David Linton, a friend and pillar of the NY art world. See above.