Multimedia Arts
- Two shows at PS1
- Two cities
- Comfort and privacy...
- CCRMA; also other folks' pix
- Comics to go
- Getting out and around
Posted by
Andrea Donderi
Two shows ending at PS1 in Queens: Reprocessing Reality and Thirteen.
My parents, my brother and I, all in New York concurrently (not one of us lives there, though my parents did in the metrozoic era), headed out last weekend to PS1, the MOMA's outpost at a converted school in Queens. It's in a neighborhood full of empty lots, gas stations, strange old warehouses, and the occasional remnant of an incongruously elegant set of row houses. Even on a perfect breezy May afternoon the gravel approach to the museum was hot, dusty, and, in my dad's words, "bakey;" the Paragon Oil and Burners sign painted onto a huge old factory in the distance seemed oddly appropriate.
We made it to the tail end of two exhibits: Reprocessing Reality, a Swiss-sponsored international group show, and Thirteen, a collection of Chinese videos.
Both shows got my hopes up early by featuring what looked like a promising treatment of maps. I love maps! The first glimpse of Thirteen, a sort of teaser by the main entrance, showed a black-and-white Chinese map (I'd never seen a map with place names in Chinese before!) punctuated by musical staves and flickering red and grey dots. Meanwhile, over at Reprocessing Reality, several views of a globe suspended in the middle of the room were being projected out on the wall. As for the rest of the shows: well, you'll have to read the articles to find out more.
What lasted most clearly in my memory about the whole excursion -- the kind of hilarious and wonderful detail that endears a museum to you even more than the unexpectedly upbeat staff and the functioning bathroom in which the stall doors trigger surprise video -- was a tiny mousehole my brother spotted near the baseboards. Next to it, discreetly and realistically, someone had painted a mouse.
We made it to the tail end of two exhibits: Reprocessing Reality, a Swiss-sponsored international group show, and Thirteen, a collection of Chinese videos.
Both shows got my hopes up early by featuring what looked like a promising treatment of maps. I love maps! The first glimpse of Thirteen, a sort of teaser by the main entrance, showed a black-and-white Chinese map (I'd never seen a map with place names in Chinese before!) punctuated by musical staves and flickering red and grey dots. Meanwhile, over at Reprocessing Reality, several views of a globe suspended in the middle of the room were being projected out on the wall. As for the rest of the shows: well, you'll have to read the articles to find out more.
What lasted most clearly in my memory about the whole excursion -- the kind of hilarious and wonderful detail that endears a museum to you even more than the unexpectedly upbeat staff and the functioning bathroom in which the stall doors trigger surprise video -- was a tiny mousehole my brother spotted near the baseboards. Next to it, discreetly and realistically, someone had painted a mouse.
Posted by
Andrea Donderi
One city features extravagant mechanized spectacles this season; another offers a spectacle in itself.
I arrived in New York last night. The friends I'm staying with left for work just a little while ago; I'm looking out their window as I write this. Between the church to the left and the converted project tower to the right, there's a clear slice of view. The top half is sky with fast-moving clouds lit from underneath, framing a blue-grey row of buildings including the two iconic pointy ones from the zaniest days of American building; the middle third is the neighborhood: a school, a church, apartments, trees, pigeons flapping by, and the bright orange approach to the Williamsburg Bridge, with a stream of cars, trucks, buses, bicycles, and pedestrians heading over to Brooklyn. Peering directly down, there's a steady but unhurried paseo of people walking by with backpacks, baby strollers, shopping carts, wheelchairs, walkers, rollerblades, plastic bags from Macy's and Rite-Aid, and dogs. I can't help thinking about how cities themselves constitute spectacles of the highest order. I could sit and watch this for hours, if I didn't have to get out and find a few more things -- created with deliberate intent for our delight -- to note and tell you about.
Nevertheless, London is evidently gilding the lily this season, if that isn't too, well, floral an expression to use about enormous, galumphing, mechanized spectacles. Last month I mentioned Theo Jansen's Strandbeesten -- it'll be making an appearance in late June. Earlier this month, The Sultan's Elephant (featuring a giant wooden rocket shaped like a barrel, a sixteen-foot "little" girl, and a forty-two ton mechanized elephant) took over Waterloo Square, Trafalgar, and the Horse Guards Parade.
As always, I implore everyone to keep in touch and let me know about anything you'd like me to write about.
Nevertheless, London is evidently gilding the lily this season, if that isn't too, well, floral an expression to use about enormous, galumphing, mechanized spectacles. Last month I mentioned Theo Jansen's Strandbeesten -- it'll be making an appearance in late June. Earlier this month, The Sultan's Elephant (featuring a giant wooden rocket shaped like a barrel, a sixteen-foot "little" girl, and a forty-two ton mechanized elephant) took over Waterloo Square, Trafalgar, and the Horse Guards Parade.
As always, I implore everyone to keep in touch and let me know about anything you'd like me to write about.
Posted by
Andrea Donderi
Online diversions suit a tight schedule at home.
It's been a tough couple of weeks out here. As I mentioned last time, our two-month rainy stretch eventually did stop, but still haven't been out much because I've been looking after my very old cat. He's needed some fairly serious nursing care, and he made his final vet trip last night. So rather than concentrating on giant outdoor creations, phone-enabled street performances, urbanism in action, or festive events, I've most recently rounded up a set of online diversions you can enjoy in, or on, the comfort and privacy of your own sofa, desk, bed or comfy-chair, along with any animals you live with, human or otherwise.
They include a very nifty online version of a favorite folded-paper game, some beautifully animated folk tales, plus some words and gestures from William S. Burroughs. I hope you'll bear with me for also drawing your attention to a memorial tribute to a beloved animal.
The coming few weeks look like they're going to be fairly busy. I'll be out and about more, in several different cities; I'm hoping to let you know first-hand about several promising-looking live performances. Also, I'm looking forward to letting you know a little bit about the evolution of music visualization; I'll probably look at a pioneer of literary hypertext, too. Of course if you know of something you think I should write about, especially if it's something I can see in person either in northern California or in New York, please drop me a line and let me know!
They include a very nifty online version of a favorite folded-paper game, some beautifully animated folk tales, plus some words and gestures from William S. Burroughs. I hope you'll bear with me for also drawing your attention to a memorial tribute to a beloved animal.
The coming few weeks look like they're going to be fairly busy. I'll be out and about more, in several different cities; I'm hoping to let you know first-hand about several promising-looking live performances. Also, I'm looking forward to letting you know a little bit about the evolution of music visualization; I'll probably look at a pioneer of literary hypertext, too. Of course if you know of something you think I should write about, especially if it's something I can see in person either in northern California or in New York, please drop me a line and let me know!
Posted by
Andrea Donderi
1) Computer music at Stanford; 2) Things people do with old pictures.
A few days ago I promised a report on this weekend's Newstage festival at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.
I had a wonderful time. They're smart, thoughtful, deeply silly people, working on some very interesting stuff. They're celebrating twenty years at the Knoll, which is the magnificent building they inhabit; it was hit hard by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and for years the third floor was abandoned to barn owls. The barn owls still live there, but on the outside of the building, and the third floor is a wonderful, comfortable, acoustically terrific performance hall.
On another note entirely, the rain's stopped around here, and that means that it's now garage sale season. I try to avert my eyes, because I have plenty of stuff already, but I'm still regretting a dollar I didn't spend at a Midwestern estate sale a few years ago. It was a travel diary written in the eary sixties by a querulous middle-aged couple on a package tour of Europe. They didn't take pictures, but there were faded, greenish postcards interleaved with the handwritten pages. It felt strangely voyeuristic to read the entries, and that's partly why I didn't buy it. Now I'm wishing I had. I don't want that cranky couple's observations to go forgotten. I'm not sure what I'd have done with them, but there are plenty of examples.
Readers in the United States probably already know about the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, who write songs and build performances around sets of slides rescued from garage sales.
On a smaller, more intimate scale, John C. Ralston of Lawrence, Kansas undertook a three-month project based on a 1925 yearbook from Hamline University in Minnesota. Every day he'd focus on one of the graduates, taking an hour or so to draw a portrait based on the yearbook picture, then posting the portrait to a blog, listing the graduate's clubs and affiliations. Ralston's moody treatment of the graduates' old-young faces, along with their uncanny-valley names (Lilydaisy Wenzel, Haven Handscom, Olga Heggen) and their earnestly stated enthusiasms, make for a strange, evocative lineup. Hardly any of them smile (the aforementioned Olga, who's a sociology major -- pretty avant-garde for 1925, I'd guess -- is one of the rare exceptions. Ralston eventually moved the project from its original blog location to the photo hosting site Flickr; you can now see the entire graduating class as a set there.
I had a wonderful time. They're smart, thoughtful, deeply silly people, working on some very interesting stuff. They're celebrating twenty years at the Knoll, which is the magnificent building they inhabit; it was hit hard by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and for years the third floor was abandoned to barn owls. The barn owls still live there, but on the outside of the building, and the third floor is a wonderful, comfortable, acoustically terrific performance hall.
On another note entirely, the rain's stopped around here, and that means that it's now garage sale season. I try to avert my eyes, because I have plenty of stuff already, but I'm still regretting a dollar I didn't spend at a Midwestern estate sale a few years ago. It was a travel diary written in the eary sixties by a querulous middle-aged couple on a package tour of Europe. They didn't take pictures, but there were faded, greenish postcards interleaved with the handwritten pages. It felt strangely voyeuristic to read the entries, and that's partly why I didn't buy it. Now I'm wishing I had. I don't want that cranky couple's observations to go forgotten. I'm not sure what I'd have done with them, but there are plenty of examples.
Readers in the United States probably already know about the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, who write songs and build performances around sets of slides rescued from garage sales.
On a smaller, more intimate scale, John C. Ralston of Lawrence, Kansas undertook a three-month project based on a 1925 yearbook from Hamline University in Minnesota. Every day he'd focus on one of the graduates, taking an hour or so to draw a portrait based on the yearbook picture, then posting the portrait to a blog, listing the graduate's clubs and affiliations. Ralston's moody treatment of the graduates' old-young faces, along with their uncanny-valley names (Lilydaisy Wenzel, Haven Handscom, Olga Heggen) and their earnestly stated enthusiasms, make for a strange, evocative lineup. Hardly any of them smile (the aforementioned Olga, who's a sociology major -- pretty avant-garde for 1925, I'd guess -- is one of the rare exceptions. Ralston eventually moved the project from its original blog location to the photo hosting site Flickr; you can now see the entire graduating class as a set there.
Posted by
Andrea Donderi
Comics for your phone -- stories that go bzzzz!
"Write something about electronics intruding into the backgrounds of things," a friend of mine said earlier tonight.
I'm not going to do quite that, at least not now. But I have had cell phones on my mind lately, and since we're all constantly distracted by people's ringtones and conversations, I guess that's tangentially related.
It's not just that I've been writing about performances by phone (Phoning it In, Part 1 and Part 2); I also recently stumbled across MoCo News, a mobile phone industry news site. Now, not only do I live in North America, which is the backwater of the mobile world, but even by local standards I'm way behind the curve. I got my first cell phone only five or six years ago, and I've always made do with the free-or-cheapest option. So I found myself staring at these tidbits with something sadly akin to primitive wonderment.
Apparently Indian providers are just now starting to offer subscription comics to phone users. But this is old hat in East Asia. In Singapore, Japan, and Korea, various weekly comic-book episodes have been available for some time, beamed out at calibrated speeds with special phone-only enhancements: popups, background noise and bzzz! For extra plot intensity, your phone can even vibrate!
Nothing's happening on that scale in the West. There's been some movement toward releasing feature movies on SD cards for phones, as well as TV episodes. (Spongebob, believe it or not!) What sounds a lot more interesting, though, are the small independent groups releasing their own comics, cartoons, and fiction -- like Gobstopped in the UK. In the United States, Full Tilt has been releasing comics intended for phones, but because the North American market is such a tangle of carriers and formats, you can't yet get them delivered directly to your phone. You'll have to download the comics to a computer and then transfer them.
Coming up in a sentimental mood: old photos, new stories. And on another note entirely, the Newstage festival at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.
I'm not going to do quite that, at least not now. But I have had cell phones on my mind lately, and since we're all constantly distracted by people's ringtones and conversations, I guess that's tangentially related.
It's not just that I've been writing about performances by phone (Phoning it In, Part 1 and Part 2); I also recently stumbled across MoCo News, a mobile phone industry news site. Now, not only do I live in North America, which is the backwater of the mobile world, but even by local standards I'm way behind the curve. I got my first cell phone only five or six years ago, and I've always made do with the free-or-cheapest option. So I found myself staring at these tidbits with something sadly akin to primitive wonderment.
Apparently Indian providers are just now starting to offer subscription comics to phone users. But this is old hat in East Asia. In Singapore, Japan, and Korea, various weekly comic-book episodes have been available for some time, beamed out at calibrated speeds with special phone-only enhancements: popups, background noise and bzzz! For extra plot intensity, your phone can even vibrate!
Nothing's happening on that scale in the West. There's been some movement toward releasing feature movies on SD cards for phones, as well as TV episodes. (Spongebob, believe it or not!) What sounds a lot more interesting, though, are the small independent groups releasing their own comics, cartoons, and fiction -- like Gobstopped in the UK. In the United States, Full Tilt has been releasing comics intended for phones, but because the North American market is such a tangle of carriers and formats, you can't yet get them delivered directly to your phone. You'll have to download the comics to a computer and then transfer them.
Coming up in a sentimental mood: old photos, new stories. And on another note entirely, the Newstage festival at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.
Posted by
Andrea Donderi
Multi-legged walking machines, eavesdropping by phone, and a computer music festival at Stanford.
I live on the San Francisco peninsula, not far from Stanford. It's been raining here for weeks and I've been feeling a little stir-crazy. That's probably why I've been thinking so much about getting outside and walking around. I've just finished writing about Theo Jansen's enormous machines cruising on multiple legs along Dutch beaches. I'm also about to tell you about a different kind of ambulatory project -- organized eavesdropping via cell phone along an urban walking route. Come back soon for details on the Pedestrian Project.
Coming right up in my back yard from April 27 through 29 is a three-day celebration, April 27 through 29, at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. CCRMA is run by Chris Chafe. His animated film Organum turns "traditional" music visualization upside down by using data from digital images to generate the sounds his characters make as they speak and locomote around their imaginary world. Stanford is also the home of composer Mark Applebaum, whose latest instrument, the Mouseketier, is (in his own words) "a musical Frankenstein consisting of threaded rods, nails, combs, doorstops, springs, squeaky wheels, ratchets, a toilet tank flotation bulb, and other unlikely objects". Applebaum also notably collaborates with a performer who has unusual brainwave skills. I'm looking forward to telling you all about what these guys and their friends come up with.
Coming right up in my back yard from April 27 through 29 is a three-day celebration, April 27 through 29, at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. CCRMA is run by Chris Chafe. His animated film Organum turns "traditional" music visualization upside down by using data from digital images to generate the sounds his characters make as they speak and locomote around their imaginary world. Stanford is also the home of composer Mark Applebaum, whose latest instrument, the Mouseketier, is (in his own words) "a musical Frankenstein consisting of threaded rods, nails, combs, doorstops, springs, squeaky wheels, ratchets, a toilet tank flotation bulb, and other unlikely objects". Applebaum also notably collaborates with a performer who has unusual brainwave skills. I'm looking forward to telling you all about what these guys and their friends come up with.