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Blog archive for September 2004

Preparing for the installation

September 1, 2004

Practical/technical:

  • Converted patch used in Kristiansand to PC. I haven’t installed the 3rd party digitizer required for jit.qt.grab so that won’t work. Experienced a few crashes due to this and once XP shut down altogether. Ended up trashing the video tracking part of the patch. In WinMax I get naming conflicts between the McCartney listops and the new Java classes named similarly. Renamed the McCarttney objects “listop.nth” “listop.group” etc. Most of the objects can be changed easily for zl anyway but not nth. In the future I’ll try to give all Max-patches the “.pat” ending so that I don’t have to alter them to get them to work on XP.
  • Copied 3rd part externals patches etc. to the Mac that will be used for the installation and got that one working.
  • The wireless keyboard and mouse I bought for the PC is basically useless. If I shut the computer down I never know if the mouse and keyboard is going to work afterwards or if it has to be reset. How do you explain to the gallery guards that if the keyboard is not working as expected they have to make sure that the keyboard and mouse is sending at the same frequency as the receiver is listening for (implying that the batteries for the mouse has to be removed) and then click a button on the receiver next on the back of the keyboard (always hard to find) and finally using a pen to click on a hidden button underneath the mouse all in 20 seconds?
  • Both the Mac and the PC has been left running over the night. They’d both been running for several hours without any problems by the time I left today.

In Kristiansand I combined a layer using granulated delays and another one based on severely treated music by the late renaissance composer Jenkins for a setup of 7 loudspeakers. This combination apparently doesn’t work this time around. The layer based on Jenkins tends to slow things down and reducing intensity. The room used for this layer will be darker with more intense video projections than last time. It’s strange how the tendency keeps being that I’m removing more and more.

I’ve made another layer though: I’m running the recording of Jon Arne and Jeremy spray painting through a filter bank and a number of granular delays to be played back using four loudspeakers positioned at the windows of the brighter room. This creates a linear movement along the wall a sort of “sound stripe” similar to the visual stripes used by Jeremy and Jon Arne. The irregular rhythm of the recording (spraying – not spraying) works really well.

I’ve got a lot more clarity about how to approach physical movements and gestures in the project this time thanks largely to the reading and thinking I’ve been doing in the last couple of months. There’s a performative element in Jon Arne’s paintings indicating action movement rhythm and time but also irregularity and richness of information. A consequence of working on installation music is that the musician is abandoned as the mediator of the sound. For this project the physical actions of Jon Arne serve to make the resulting loss of performative musicality less difficult to cope with.

For some reason I find Trondheim noisy. The traffic noise is loud and everywhere. I’ve been playing sounds real loud in one of the rooms today and walked around the building to hear how much is leaking out. Once out of the gallery space I can hardly hear it for the traffic. I’m not sure there’s any real difference as compared to Bergen maybe it’s just me being to sensitive at the moment.

LMW – A Can of Stellar Stripes and other Vessels (2004)

September 3, 2004

Installation of paintings, video, light, objects and sound, by Jon Arne Mogstad, Jeremy Welsh and myself.

Trondhjems kunstforening 2004.

News

September 7, 2004

The Trondheim based newspaper Adresseavisen yesterday had an article on the installation.

Catching up

September 8, 2004

Most of the last two days have been spent cathing up with mail and doing project administration. I’ve got to catch up with blogging as well.

Several of the students at the Art Academy are involved with music. I’m going to help out supervising one of them. We spent some time together today.

I believe comments are working now…

September 9, 2004

I just got a mail from Luistxo Fernandez explaining what to do in order to get comments working. I believe it’s working now. Thanks a lot!

Luistxo is a CoreBlog wizard having made an actitecture for working on bilingual blogs. I’m mentioning this in case Jill pops by as I believe his 10 commandments for a bilingual blog might interest her.

Multilayered

September 9, 2004

Saturday August 28 surroundings of Reykjavik:

Saturday a little more than a week ago we (the staff at the department of Fine Arts) rented a car and went sight-seeing around Reykjavik experiencing hot springs dead vulcanos The Great Geysir fantastic panoramic landscaps and ended up at a lobster restaurant. On the way back to Reykjavik in the evening me and Karen Kipphoff had a long conversation in the front of the car. She was asking all kinds of difficult questions about past works of mine that forced me to think again about a lot of issues that I’ve once been concerned about and solved to the degree that they are now getting less of my intention than they once did. During the conversation I re-realized how many aspects and layers are present in a work how many different problems and issues the art work is dealing with in various ways. During the presentation the day before I’d been concentrating on certain issues only. That easily can lead to the misunderstanding that those issues were the only ones I was concerned with during the creation of that specific work.

In Trondheim I started wondering if it is possible to structure thoughts on and aspects of an artistic work in a similar way to how data programming is approaching problem-solving: by breaking large problems into smaller ones smaller problems into even smaller and so on until it all becomes a number of fairly simple tasks that can be readily solved. I’m not at all sure that it might be of any use but I’ll keep the thought at the back of my mind for a while.

Here’s a brief attempt at creating such a structure for some parts of the installation in Trondheim

Installation
video
paintings
sound
harmonic/rhythmic structures
gestures and physical presence
painterly gestures. Painting as
performance or action in time
rhythms and time structures in
the video material
interaction
groups of sound
room
white room
4
horisontal stripe of sounds
vertical stripes of loudspeakers
interactive – near the door
remote hiss near the opening to
the next room
dark room
group of 7 loudspeakers and a sub
the wooden laptop
downstairs
security issues
sound in space
awareness of the space
immersive
loudspeakers as physical/sculptural objects
unity and diversity {
this one would have to call e.g.
sounds.harmonic/rythmic structures()
}
relationship between sounds video and painting
relationships between paintings and video
relationships between paintings and sound
relationships between video and sounds
relationships between all three
the breakdown of separate components
the merge into a common mixed media
collaboration as artistic method
dialogue
respect
curiosity
openness 

Karen obviously has got to be a very good supervisor. During the tripp she invited me to collaborate on a project to happen next year. It looks interesting and different from the projects I’m already involved in and I’m looking forward to it.

For All Mankind

September 10, 2004

The music for the Brian Eno album Appollo was created as soundtrack for the National Geographic video For All Mankind by Al Reinert released in 1989.

The VHS tape has been out of print for a long while. Recently the movie has been re-released as a DVD by The Criterion Collection. The DVD is remixed for Dolby Digital 5:1.

The DVD is available at Amazon. Next pay day…


via darkshark

Max timing when running audio in NonRealTime

September 10, 2004

Useful information from Joshua Kit Clayton at the MaxMSP mailing list today:

If you run the scheduler in audio interrupt when using the NonRealTime audio driver the scheduler time is clocked by the calculation of samples.

This leaves tl.metro superfluous.

OSX Audio

September 10, 2004

OSX Audio is a web resource on music software for Mac OSX.

BEK servers updated

September 11, 2004

Gisle updated to brand new and blazing fast servers at BEK yesterday. He also updated Zope the application server used for building most of the content at the BEK web servers and Core Blog used for running this blog.

The new version of Zope and CoreBlog seems a bit more restrictive about script syntaxes than previous versions and gave me a few problems with some of the methods imported as part of the CSS supporting skin I got from Mike Malloch at The KnowNet. I’ve got it working again now but I might have broken something on the way that I’m not aware of at the moment.

NY September 20-27

September 13, 2004

September 20-27 I’ll be in New York participating on an excursion by students and staff at the Art Academy. Here’s the latest proposal for program from Jeremy:

  • Monday 20th: Arriving
  • Tuesday 21st: MoMA – PSI – Long Island – Queens
  • Wednesday 22nd: Chelsea galleries or Philadelphia
  • Thursday 23rd: Dia Beacon or Meet Walid Raad (Atlas Group) at Cooper Union
  • Friday 24th: Chelsea galleries or Downtown SoHo Tribeca East Village Canal St
  • Saturday 25th: Whitney Frick Central Park or Chelsea galleries
  • Sunday 26th: Dia Beacon 2 or NY self service
  • Monday 27th: Leaving

I’ll skip some of the program to spend some time working with Kurt Ralske and maybe visit galleries etc. with him.

Further progress on CloudGenerator port

September 14, 2004

The whole of the day has been spent working on the CloudGenerator port. Most of the features for dealing with sine waves are now implemented. I haven’t decided on a name for it yet but looking out the window “Shitty Weather” seems appropriate.

Thunder and lighning broke the ISDN box last night so phone and internet connection are not working at home at the moment.

the garden of instruments

September 15, 2004

Paul Schutze is doing an installation named “garden of instruments” opening at Galleri 3 14 in Bergen on Friday 18-21. The exhibition will be running to October 31st.

The Dream House

September 15, 2004

While in New York I’m definitively going to visit The Dream House installation open Thursdays and Saturdays from 2:00 PM to Midnight.

Shared components of Max and standalone applications

September 16, 2004

Tim Place has a lengthy discussion in his blog yesterday on problems concerning the sharing of components between Max and stand-alone applications made using Max. According to him the standalone application will look for externals in the Library/Application Support/Cycling’74 folder (if it exists) prior to looking within the standalone application bundle for the externals. As a consequence of this if Max/MSP/… is upgraded at a later stage and behavior of externals change or break the standalone application breaks as well.

I’ve seen this happening between Max and Pluggo a few times but I thought that it was due to Pluggo using the old standalone format. Still I’m surprised that this is also the case with the new bundle format. I thought that one of the options of the standalone external was supposed to avoid this assuming that all externals are included with the standalone (quoting Max45ReferenceManual.pdf):

If some of the supporting files used by Max/MSP objects in your patch will not be included in the collective itself check the Search for Files Not in the Application’s Collective option.

During the beta testing stage of Max 4.500 I more or less assumed that radiaL would be broken and didn’t try it much. However once I did to my surprise I had no problems keeping it running regardless of what happened to the Cycling’74 folder.

I’ve never paid much attention to this as I have not attempted to make standalones for a long while. however this will change with the development of CloudGenerator. On a general level I fully agree with Tim that it should be possible to create a separate Application Support folder for the standalone.

Schedule for today

September 17, 2004
  • Working with Asbjørn Flø on material for an installation in Oslo in October named Lydspor (Sound Track). He came over from Oslo yesterday and we spent the evening together.
  • 12-16: Meeting at the board at BEK

Busy…

…as usual. Still haven’t had the time to fix the phone connection at home. We’ve got the ADSL adapter now. Soon we’ll have broadband connection at home.

Documentation from installation in Trondheim

September 17, 2004

Yesterday Jeremy gave me the video and image documentation from the installation in Trondheim. I’m not sure that I’ll have time to prepare web documentation during the weekend but I’ll give it a try.

Iconographer

September 17, 2004

Tim Place is recommending Iconographer a shareware app for making OSX icons. “If you use it to create more than a few icons a $15 payment is requested.”

Off to NY

September 20, 2004

in less than an hour. Franticly trying to get done with e-mails before leaving. The phone and net connection at vhome is still down. Don’t expect much to happen here in the next week or so.

Jet lag

September 21, 2004

Walked around the neighborhood of the hostel in Chelsea in the morning. Attempted to visit P.S.1 and MoMA QNS but they were closed. Walked around downtown for a couple of hours together with Karen and Are but went back to the hostel with a bad head ache due to jet lag. Got to bed early.

One day trip to Philadelphia

September 22, 2004

Me Karen Øystein and a group of students took a bus from China Town to Philadelphia to visit The Fabric Workshop. From there we went to Philadelphia Museum of Art to see the collection of works by Duchamp. Also got to see works by Rothko Pollock and more before we rushed on to visit Tyler School of Art. The works of the sculpture master students particularly impressed me. Back to NY in the evening.

dia:Beacon

September 23, 2004

Another trip out of NY this time taking the train north along Hudson river to visit dia:Beacon. Definetively one of the highlights of the trip. I walked around the space together with Jeremy and Jon Arne for most of the day discussing the various works. I’d like to get back to dia_Beacon later on to spend a couple of hours in just one of the rooms.

I’ve still not forgiven myself for not buying the exhibition catalogue.

In the evening: John Scofield trio at Blue Note.

Doug Aitken “Interior” at P.S.1.

September 24, 2004

Another go at P.S.1 and MoMA QNS. Most of the exhibitions at P.S.1 I did not find particularly interesting with the exception for Hard Light a group exhibition exploring fragmented narratives and featuring works by Doug Aitken Fischli/Weiss Carsten Höller Chris Marker Bruce Nauman Ugo Rondinone Ed Ruscha and Lawrence Weiner. The video installation Interiors (2002) by Doug Aitken particularly caught my attention perhaps the best video installation I’ve ever seen. Here’s an excellent review. The architectural fabric structures used for the projections was developed in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop.

MoMA QNS was closing down in a few days time for the move back to Manhattan. The regular collections was already closed but special projects was still on display. The exhibition of resent tall buildings was the most interesting.

In the evening: Meeting Kurt Ralske.

Whitney Chelsea galleries and the Dream House

September 25, 2004

Whitney Museum: Photographs and drawings by Ed Ruscha an exhibition on pop and concepts (highlights from the permanent collection) and Hopper to Mid-Century (highlights from the permanent collection). Lots of possibilities for cross-reading and also relating to what we saw at dia:Beacon.

Calder’s Circus (1926- 31) a long time point of reference for Verdensteatret was on exhibit on the Mezzanine accompanied by a continuous screening of the 1961 film showing Calder performing the Circus.

After a glass of white wine in Central Park and a outlook over NY from the roof garden at Metropolitian me and karen went to see galleries in Chelsea.

Later in the evening we went to see the Dream House.

Perfect day

September 26, 2004

Day spent with Jeremy and Jon Arne. Tourist stuff and splendid weather. Brunch at a diner at Long Island from there walking across one of the bridges back to Manhattan passing China Town Little Italy Canal street finance district and on and on. In the afternoon taking the ferry to Staten Island colony style sundowner at a local bar and then the ferry back again.

Leaving NY

September 27, 2004

Bought a portable SONY DAT-player at B&amp H then moved on to Time Square (what a video installation!). Searched music stores north of Time Square for binaural microphone but didn’t find any. At one of the shops they said I was the second person in two years asking for this kind of mic. That surprised me.

Back to hostel and off to the airport.

NY blog entries

September 30, 2004

I’ve just added short entries on the NY trip to the blog backdated September 21-27. To see them all go for the September 4 archive.

Equipment back from Trondheim

September 30, 2004

The equipment used for the recent installation in Trondheim arrived in Bergen late today. Everything seems to be in good condition.

Terry Riley to Bergen

September 30, 2004

Terry Riley will be visiting the contemporary music festival Borealis in Bergen in March next year.

via bb