The staff of Pan recommends the following artistic happenings for your viewing pleasure.
Lode Runner by Mike Beradino at Emergency Room at 7 pm, Thursday, September 20. I'm not sure I quite understand the description of this work by Rice visiting lecturer Mike Beradino, so I'm just going to reproduce it here: "This work is a virtual currency-mining rig, utilizing a computer that is dedicated to the production of a type of money called BitCoin. These BitCoins are collected, then exchanged for real gold, resulting in a sculpture that produces a growing pile of gold." That doesn't sound quite as fun as popping balloons with a laser, but I'm intrigued!
Breaking the Big Geode! by Kia Neill at Box 13, Saturday, September 22, 1 to 4 pm. If you ever wanted to construct you own Sleestak environment, now's your chance to acquire some glowy cave walls. Kia Neill has installed various versions of her cave in venues in Houston and Austin, and is now disassembling it for the last time. But you can buy chunks of it pretty cheap!
Galapagos by {Exurb} at El Rincón Social from midnight Friday to midnight Saturday (September 22). Three members of artist collective {exurb} will be locked in El Rincón Social building an as yet undetermined installation. And you can watch!
Text of Light at the Barnevelder Movement Arts Complex at 7:30 pm Saturday, September 22. Text of Light is a group of musicians formed in 2001 for the specific purpose of improvising to the films of Stan Brakhage. The musicians are Tim Barnes (Louisville) on drums, Ulrich Krieger (Los Angeles) on saxophone & electronics, Alan Licht (New York) on guitar, and Lee Ranaldo (New York) guitar. The word that comes to mind is "rad!"
Visible Unseen by Regina Agu at the Spacetaker ARC at 6 pm, Saturday, September 22. Nine drawings and collages (featuring images from vintage biology and medical texts) by Regina Agu will be displayed. Her work is described as being roted in her interest in "mythology, futurism, science-fiction, and scientific frameworks," which sounds pretty cool to me.
On Walden Pond group exhibit at Rudolph Blume at 6 pm, Saturday, September 22. Featuring work by Martin Amorous, Joanne Brigham, Tudor Mitroi & Seth Mittag, who ask what would escaping to Walden Pond and living life deliberately look like today?
Showing posts with label Exurb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Exurb. Show all posts
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Thursday, June 7, 2012
No One Goes to Summer Fest to Check Out The Art
by Robert Boyd
No one except me. And I had a press pass. The point is, a big music festival like the Free Press Summer Fest brings people interested in music and partying, not necessarily in that order. Anything extra is at best icing on the cake. Otherwise, it's something to be ignored. On top of that, any visual art at an event like Summer Fest is going to be competing with a lot of other stuff for your attention--a festival like this is all about sensory overload. Compare this to the calm, quiet environment of a museum, where it's all about making the art the center of your attention.
So given these challenges, what art works at Summer Fest and what doesn't? Broadly speaking, I'm going to say that pictures don't work. They are too static and have too much competition--not the least are enormous video screens flanking the main stages.
For example, there were several paintings that may or may not have been by Matt Messinger hanging in the "Fancypants" tents. [Correction: These paintings were not by Matt Messinger. I don't know who they were by. They were apparently brought by The Hay Merchant, who was the concessionaire in this tent.] Access to these air-conditioned tents cost paying festival-goers an extra $40. The Fancypants tents were a refuge from the heat and a bar all in one. Did the people inside these tents particularly notice these relatively subtle paintings hanging from the ceiling? In a different setting, they might have had a very different presence, but here, they felt extraneous.
But maybe these somewhat austere, monochromatic paintings are not appropriate for Summer Fest. Perhaps larger, more colorful paintings would attract more attention. Molly Clark had several colorful, cartoony banners. I found her characters amusing and delightful.
These cute monsters were hanging up on a pedestrian bridge over Allan Parkway (under which most festival-goers had to walk to enter or leave SummerFest).
This one was attached to a fence at the top of the embankment above one of the main stages. All her banners were large, colorful, and cute, done in a style that recalls both children's book illustration and the "cute brut" style of alternative comics typical of such artists as James Kochalka. In short, they have a lot of appeal. But did people stop to check them out? I'm sure some did, but that wasn't the norm.
Instead of attentive viewers, this art was greeted with indifferent crowds rushing to and fro--to the next act on a different stage, to the porto-potty, to get water or beer to drink, or to the Fancypants air-conditioned tent to cool off. As nice as Molly Clark's art is, it just wasn't in the right place to be noticed.
The same could be said about Eric Castorena's witty mashup of Davy Crockett and Tom Waits.
Even Amie Jones' massive god's eye-like constructions, Eyes Over Texas, seemed to struggle to compete with the other attention-grabbing aspects of the festival. In just a slightly different setting, I think these two cosmic eyes would be very striking--unsettling, even. But here, it was hard to get people to look up.
The point is that paintings (or things like Eyes Over Texas, which acted like paintings by virtue of being hung up) had a tough time commanding people's attention. Given this, what might work better is something that intervenes. Something that is physically in your path. In short, sculptural objects would seem to have an advantage in this venue.
Michael C Rodriguez's installation was more of a painting than a sculpture, but because it was free-standing, it had a sculptural presence.It was hard to avoid this large Roy Lichtenstein-ish painting, and people huddled in its shade. Its size and location helped it be seen--it wasn't unobtrusive like some of the other artwork. I like the tattoo on the female figure's arm.
Brett Osborne's With All Music Blaring, I Can Hardly See Straight has a smaller footprint than the Michael C. Rodriguez piece. Note to future Summer Fest sculptors--work big. Osborne is better known as a tattoo artist than a sculptor, but I found this piece pretty ingenious. I will confess--I would have been nervous to display a large ceramic piece like this among the sixty thousand intoxicated Summer Fest patrons.
Jacob Calle's dinosaur and Chelsea Paquette's mammoth were pretty nice, but they were placed in an out-of-the-way spot (near the entrance, but once you entered you were already past them). So they didn't accomplish the task of getting in your way--which was an important means of getting your art noticed at Summer Fest.
The finest sculpture at Summer Fest got the least respect. Henry Moore's Large Spindle Piece is a permanent feature of the park, and I guess the Summer Fest people had to protect it. At least, I assume that's why they fenced it. But even worse than the fence is the random crap surrounding it.
Perhaps the best way to make a splash artistically at Summer Fest was to do performance instead of static art. I don't know who these "protesters" were, but I sure noticed them. (And I heartily agree--Summer Fest was hell--unless you could retreat into an air-conditioned Fancypants tent from time to time.)
countercollectivecollectivecollective, Countercrawlture
I am pretty sure that these guys with plastic bindles were part of countercollectivecollectivecollective's Countercrawlture. So there was a mobile performance aspect (the bindle guys) and a stationary aspect.
countercollectivecollectivecollective, Countercrawlture
The stationary part included these banners made of plastic bags.
countercollectivecollectivecollective, Countercrawlture
Yes, right on the edge of Summer Fest, an orgy of consumption, was this art installation that looked like a homeless encampment. My understanding was that it was meant to be a place where you could get away from the crowds and take a nap. And it was in fact in a curiously peaceful part of the Summer Fest area--the area behind stage 3 where there was a group of oak trees providing shade. The part that looks like a laundry line on the right was a string of Walmart plastic bags with one bottle or can in each.
The work that worked best was, like Countercrawlture, interactive. I think that is one of the keys to a successful piece of art at Summer Fest. On that count, Stephanie Toppin's person-sized geodesic dome, Imaginary Head Space, worked.
Stephanie Toppin, Imaginary Head Space
Stephanie Toppin, Imaginary Head Space
Imaginary Head Space was just big enough to accommodate one person--or maybe two if they were small. There wasn't anything to do inside it except get out of the sun and hang out. Toppin told me that she was worried that people would leave garbage or worse in it. Her nightmare was coming in Sunday morning and finding poop inside. However, mostly what people left was not bad--some people even left flowers in it.
Woody Golden, Terra Antenna, styrofoam and wood
Another place to hang-out was Woody Golden's Terra Antenna. This enormous styrofoam and wood structure worked because it was large, it was in the way (you had to walk past it, pretty much), and it was interactive in that it had a space inside where people could chill out (and probably smoke some weed, but I never witnessed that).
Woody Golden, Terra Antenna, styrofoam and wood
Like all the artists, Golden had free access to the Fancypants tent. But they didn't give the artists free beer. He was shocked when he learned the beers there cost $7, even for artists. An outrage!
No respect for artists in the Fancypants tent
So I've established that the best pieces of art at Summer Fest should be highly visible, they should be big, they should be in the way, and they should be interactive. These are the pieces that people will notice among the general hullabaloo of a music festival. And the piece that best embodied all these qualities was Water Gate, a collaboration between Exurb and TX/RX Labs. These are two groups of artistic tinkerers that I would describe as engineering-oriented art collectives. (I've written quite a bit about Exurb in the past.) In a way, this seems like the perfect kind of art for Houston--we're a city lousy with engineers, after all. Houston needs its own E.A.T.
Exurb and TX/RX Labs, Water Gate, pvc pipe, electronic equipment, pumps, water
Water Gate straddled the westbound lanes of Allen Parkway. It rained a continuous curtain of water on overheated festival-goers who needed a spritz. And it had a motion detector that could tell if there was someone walking up--and a small gap in the curtain of water would appear whenever this happened.
Exurb and TX/RX Labs, Water Gate, pvc pipe, electronic equipment, pumps, water
Exurb and TX/RX Labs, Water Gate, pvc pipe, electronic equipment, pumps, water
The only problem with Water Gate was that they suffered technical problems. This is the danger with all engineering projects. The design may be sound, and the testing and commissioning may be perfect, but until you are operating in field conditions, you don't know what will happen. In this case, they failed to anticipate how dirty the people going through the gate would be. Specifically, a lot of people came through the Water Gate after having ridden on Patrick Doyle's Paint Slide. This was another interactive art piece (a highly successful one, judging by the number of paint-coated people I saw), where people literally slide down the side of a hill on a slide covered with wet paint. So these colorful, paint-spattered people would use Water Gate to clean off a bit. The paint (and dirt) ended up clogging one of the pumps that was circulating the water, and by late afternoon Sunday, Water Gate wasn't working anymore.
Disappointing, sure. But now they know--it's just an engineering problem to be fixed. The concept is sound and the piece is beautiful. Water Gate is exactly the kind of installation you would want to have a hot summer festival. I hope Exurb and TX/RX Labs work out the bugs and install it at other events this summer.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Robert Boyd's Best of 2011
by Robert Boyd
There were lots of enjoyable exhibits and performances this year. It's really hard to choose the best--it's even hard to choose my favorites because they keep changing. Ask me in three months, and my list might be different. That said, below are my list of my 10 favorite 2011 exhibits in Houston as of December 21, 2011 (plus a long list of honorable mentions). The shows below are not listed in any sort of ranked order. Each was excellent in its own way.
John Wood and Paul Harrison, video stills
John Wood and Paul Harrison, Answers to Questions at CAMH. I don't dislike video art, but sometimes I find it tedious to look at in a museum or gallery setting. It is a credit both to these hilarious but deadpan videos and to the CAMH's exhibit design that I sat for hours and watched Wood and Harrison's videos.
Charles LeDray, Hole, fabric, thread, plastic, wood, metal, 19 1/4 x 13 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches, 1998
Charles LeDray, workworkworkworkworkwork at MFA. A Houston art world figure called this show "disgusting." But I loved it. It thought it was rich and beautifully wrought. The empty suits spoke of absence--which as they were made at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s is appropriate. The little sculptures and tableaux appeal to me in a visceral way. I visited this show several times.
Havel-Ruck Projects, Torrent at the Houston Permitting Center
Houston Permitting Center. This will be the subject of a post in the next few days. Not all art happens in galleries or museums. In this case, Studio Red took an old warehouse and turned it into a fairly fantastic city building. But what gets it on the top 10 is the art by Dick Wray, Serena Lin Bush, Jesse Sifuentes, Kaneem Smith, Geoff Winningham, Metalab Studio, Havel-Ruck Projects, Agnes Welsh Eyster, GONZO 247 and artist/curator Mary Margaret Hansen. It's like there was another museum in Houston that you never heard of.
Man Bartlett puts a price on your dreams at Skydive
Man Bartlett #24hclerk at Skydive. For a 24-hour period, you could Tweet your dreams to Man Bartlett. He would ponder your dream for a couple of minutes, then announce its price. He would set a price gun to that price and put a label with that price on a large piece of white paper on the wall. (Meanwhile, Nancy Douthey sat off to the side transcribing the proceedings on an old electric typewriter.) A camera captured the action live on Bartlett's website. I loved this idea and enjoyed dipping in from time to time during the day as he kept on pricing dreams from around the world. I came to see him in person at Skydive at the very beginning of the performance and the very end.
Exurb, Input/Output at the Joanna
Exurb, Input/Output at the Joanna. This was a large, multichannel digital/analog sound sculpture by Exurb, a five person collective. It was loud and weird and I loved it. Yet another example of technological art, I loved that it employed both archaic analog electronics with cutting edge software.
Mark Flood, Another Painting, fluorescent paint
Mark Flood at Cardoza Gallery. For years I had wanted to see Flood's art, but he had no gallery in Houston. So while people in Berlin and New York could see his work, I could only see jpegs. Until this show. And it not only lived up to my expectations, it blew them away.
Larassa Kabel, Any Minute Now, Bay, colored pencil on paper, 2011.
Larassa Kabal at Peel Gallery. How Peel Gallery found this relatively obscure Iowa artist, I don't know. But these beautifully rendered life-size drawings of horses falling are not likely to be forgotton once you've seen them. Unnerving yet beautiful, this was a small show with a large impact.
Jeremy DePrez, 5 out of 194 Countries I Have Never Been To, oil and acrylic on canvas with country selection assistance by http://www.randomcountry.com, 2011
33rd School of Art Masters Thesis Exhibition at the Blaffer. Some of my favorite artists in town got their MFAs this year--Francis Giampietro, Britt Ragsdale, Emily Peacock, and Jeremy DePrez. Seeing them all together showing some of their best work (along with excellent work by other grads) was terrific.
Natural Resources by The Bridge Club
The Bridge Club, Natural Resources at Lawndale. While the idea behind this performance seemed a little obvious, that was beside the point. What mattered was the staging--the identical costumes of the four performers, the hyper-deliberate, slow movements of each performer, the low lighting, the glass jars. It was a dream-like, hypnotic performance, and I fell in love with Annie Strader, Christine Owen, Emily Bivens and Julie Wills (or at least fell in love with their characters) as I watched.
Lane Hagood, Detourned Bust, mass-produced statuary, foam, acrylic paint, 2010
Lane Hagood, The Museum of Eterna at the Joanna. I've been a fan of Hagood's since I first saw his work at Gallery 1724. This show was like a museum, with each room dedicated to a different artist who all happened to be Lane Hagood. This Fernando Pessoa-like strategy worked brilliantly--it allowed him to try wildly different approaches to working. This show reinforced Hagood's literary side. As a bookish guy myself, I love that Hagood is a bookworm.
When I look at this list, I can see it says a lot more about me and my tastes than anything else. I don't claim to have an absolute conception of "good art." I'm not Clement Greenberg, and thank god for that. I'm more of a follower of Thomas McEvilley, who thinks the best you can hope for is an educated personal taste. I think we saw that with the best shows as chosen by the Houston art community. Between their top six list and my top 10, there was only one overlapping choice. This is not to say everyone's opinion is equal, but even among people who know a lot about art and who have well-developed tastes, there is little consensus.
Next up--Honorable Mentions, shows I liked a lot but that didn't make the top 10. and the Worst Shows of 2011.
There were lots of enjoyable exhibits and performances this year. It's really hard to choose the best--it's even hard to choose my favorites because they keep changing. Ask me in three months, and my list might be different. That said, below are my list of my 10 favorite 2011 exhibits in Houston as of December 21, 2011 (plus a long list of honorable mentions). The shows below are not listed in any sort of ranked order. Each was excellent in its own way.
John Wood and Paul Harrison, video stills
John Wood and Paul Harrison, Answers to Questions at CAMH. I don't dislike video art, but sometimes I find it tedious to look at in a museum or gallery setting. It is a credit both to these hilarious but deadpan videos and to the CAMH's exhibit design that I sat for hours and watched Wood and Harrison's videos.
Charles LeDray, Hole, fabric, thread, plastic, wood, metal, 19 1/4 x 13 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches, 1998
Charles LeDray, workworkworkworkworkwork at MFA. A Houston art world figure called this show "disgusting." But I loved it. It thought it was rich and beautifully wrought. The empty suits spoke of absence--which as they were made at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s is appropriate. The little sculptures and tableaux appeal to me in a visceral way. I visited this show several times.
Havel-Ruck Projects, Torrent at the Houston Permitting Center
Houston Permitting Center. This will be the subject of a post in the next few days. Not all art happens in galleries or museums. In this case, Studio Red took an old warehouse and turned it into a fairly fantastic city building. But what gets it on the top 10 is the art by Dick Wray, Serena Lin Bush, Jesse Sifuentes, Kaneem Smith, Geoff Winningham, Metalab Studio, Havel-Ruck Projects, Agnes Welsh Eyster, GONZO 247 and artist/curator Mary Margaret Hansen. It's like there was another museum in Houston that you never heard of.
Man Bartlett puts a price on your dreams at Skydive
Man Bartlett #24hclerk at Skydive. For a 24-hour period, you could Tweet your dreams to Man Bartlett. He would ponder your dream for a couple of minutes, then announce its price. He would set a price gun to that price and put a label with that price on a large piece of white paper on the wall. (Meanwhile, Nancy Douthey sat off to the side transcribing the proceedings on an old electric typewriter.) A camera captured the action live on Bartlett's website. I loved this idea and enjoyed dipping in from time to time during the day as he kept on pricing dreams from around the world. I came to see him in person at Skydive at the very beginning of the performance and the very end.
Exurb, Input/Output at the Joanna
Exurb, Input/Output at the Joanna. This was a large, multichannel digital/analog sound sculpture by Exurb, a five person collective. It was loud and weird and I loved it. Yet another example of technological art, I loved that it employed both archaic analog electronics with cutting edge software.
Mark Flood, Another Painting, fluorescent paint
Mark Flood at Cardoza Gallery. For years I had wanted to see Flood's art, but he had no gallery in Houston. So while people in Berlin and New York could see his work, I could only see jpegs. Until this show. And it not only lived up to my expectations, it blew them away.
Larassa Kabel, Any Minute Now, Bay, colored pencil on paper, 2011.
Larassa Kabal at Peel Gallery. How Peel Gallery found this relatively obscure Iowa artist, I don't know. But these beautifully rendered life-size drawings of horses falling are not likely to be forgotton once you've seen them. Unnerving yet beautiful, this was a small show with a large impact.
Jeremy DePrez, 5 out of 194 Countries I Have Never Been To, oil and acrylic on canvas with country selection assistance by http://www.randomcountry.com, 2011
33rd School of Art Masters Thesis Exhibition at the Blaffer. Some of my favorite artists in town got their MFAs this year--Francis Giampietro, Britt Ragsdale, Emily Peacock, and Jeremy DePrez. Seeing them all together showing some of their best work (along with excellent work by other grads) was terrific.
Natural Resources by The Bridge Club
The Bridge Club, Natural Resources at Lawndale. While the idea behind this performance seemed a little obvious, that was beside the point. What mattered was the staging--the identical costumes of the four performers, the hyper-deliberate, slow movements of each performer, the low lighting, the glass jars. It was a dream-like, hypnotic performance, and I fell in love with Annie Strader, Christine Owen, Emily Bivens and Julie Wills (or at least fell in love with their characters) as I watched.
Lane Hagood, Detourned Bust, mass-produced statuary, foam, acrylic paint, 2010
Lane Hagood, The Museum of Eterna at the Joanna. I've been a fan of Hagood's since I first saw his work at Gallery 1724. This show was like a museum, with each room dedicated to a different artist who all happened to be Lane Hagood. This Fernando Pessoa-like strategy worked brilliantly--it allowed him to try wildly different approaches to working. This show reinforced Hagood's literary side. As a bookish guy myself, I love that Hagood is a bookworm.
When I look at this list, I can see it says a lot more about me and my tastes than anything else. I don't claim to have an absolute conception of "good art." I'm not Clement Greenberg, and thank god for that. I'm more of a follower of Thomas McEvilley, who thinks the best you can hope for is an educated personal taste. I think we saw that with the best shows as chosen by the Houston art community. Between their top six list and my top 10, there was only one overlapping choice. This is not to say everyone's opinion is equal, but even among people who know a lot about art and who have well-developed tastes, there is little consensus.
Next up--Honorable Mentions, shows I liked a lot but that didn't make the top 10. and the Worst Shows of 2011.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Exurb Plums the Nation's Memories
by Robert Boyd
Back on November 18, the Joanna opened their latest show, Dis, Dat, Deez, Doz. I'm not sure if it was a one-night only thing or if it's going to stay up. Hopefully the latter. It was a great, if somewhat overwhelming, show. Art was crammed into every nook and cranny.
One piece that stood out was the sculpture by Exurb. The piece, whose name I can't remember (and which hadn't been finalized by the members of Exurb on the night of the show), consisted of four movie projectors (three 16 mm and one 8 mm) each projecting four film-loops onto four panes of glass and a white screen behind the panes of glass.
Exurb, four-projector memory machine, projectors, wood, steel, film, 2011
The films had been discovered on eBay. They were all vacation films taken in the 60s, as far as Exurb could tell. They were projected onto the somewhat dirty windows in a back-facing room at the Joanna. About three or four feet behind the windows was a fence with a white sheet on it to act as the screen. The plane of focus was set for the windows--the "screen" was just a blur. But because the windows were pretty dirty, you could see the content of the films quite well on the windows,
Their last big piece, Input/Output, involved combining old technology (vacuum tubes) with modern technology (digital imaging). This time around, they stuck with ancient technology. Also, this time they didn't build the device from scratch. The projectors are manufactured objects. The only tweak they made was to not use the take-up reel but instead to build large tape loops.
Of course, there were technical problems with the loops that had to be fixed on the fly.
Patrick Renner tightens a bolt on a film loop reel
Johnny Di Blasi splices a broken film loop
I had recently seen Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film when I saw this show. I had also seen the Stan VanDerBeek show at CAMH in May. Obviously I couldn't look at Exurb's new work without thinking about the various innovators of underground film. But they were doing their experiments in the 60s (or earlier). So Exurb, both in the choice of films they used and in the choice to use film at all, were dealing with nostalgia. There was a time when the clackity-clack noise of a film projector signified modernity--now it is quaint and old-fashioned. The whole notion of experimental film (as opposed to video) is old fashioned. And I think this idea of looking back with longing, or nostalgia, is embedded in the work.
Back on November 18, the Joanna opened their latest show, Dis, Dat, Deez, Doz. I'm not sure if it was a one-night only thing or if it's going to stay up. Hopefully the latter. It was a great, if somewhat overwhelming, show. Art was crammed into every nook and cranny.
One piece that stood out was the sculpture by Exurb. The piece, whose name I can't remember (and which hadn't been finalized by the members of Exurb on the night of the show), consisted of four movie projectors (three 16 mm and one 8 mm) each projecting four film-loops onto four panes of glass and a white screen behind the panes of glass.
Exurb, four-projector memory machine, projectors, wood, steel, film, 2011
The films had been discovered on eBay. They were all vacation films taken in the 60s, as far as Exurb could tell. They were projected onto the somewhat dirty windows in a back-facing room at the Joanna. About three or four feet behind the windows was a fence with a white sheet on it to act as the screen. The plane of focus was set for the windows--the "screen" was just a blur. But because the windows were pretty dirty, you could see the content of the films quite well on the windows,
Their last big piece, Input/Output, involved combining old technology (vacuum tubes) with modern technology (digital imaging). This time around, they stuck with ancient technology. Also, this time they didn't build the device from scratch. The projectors are manufactured objects. The only tweak they made was to not use the take-up reel but instead to build large tape loops.
Of course, there were technical problems with the loops that had to be fixed on the fly.
Patrick Renner tightens a bolt on a film loop reel
Johnny Di Blasi splices a broken film loop
I had recently seen Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film when I saw this show. I had also seen the Stan VanDerBeek show at CAMH in May. Obviously I couldn't look at Exurb's new work without thinking about the various innovators of underground film. But they were doing their experiments in the 60s (or earlier). So Exurb, both in the choice of films they used and in the choice to use film at all, were dealing with nostalgia. There was a time when the clackity-clack noise of a film projector signified modernity--now it is quaint and old-fashioned. The whole notion of experimental film (as opposed to video) is old fashioned. And I think this idea of looking back with longing, or nostalgia, is embedded in the work.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Input/Output at the Joanna
by Robert Boyd
In college, I had a roommate, Bill, who was an electrical engineer. But beyond majoring in the subject, it was his hobby and passion as well. Consequently, the various hellholes in which we lived were littered with electronics and computer-related projects. He was into building practical things (uninterruptible power supplies) and impractical things (really loud amps, handheld lasers). This was a million years ago, and now Bill runs a successful electronics manufacturing company here in Houston. But I was reminded of his younger self when I saw Input/Output, the installation by the artist/engineer collective Exurb. This is the kind of project Bill would have eagerly joined back in the day.
Exurb, Input/Output "Doorway", plexiglass, electronic circuits, 2011 (photo by Robert Boyd)
The first thing one sees when walking into the Joanna are two plexiglass post-and-lintel constructions, called "doorways". The first thing you notice, however, is a caterwaul of noise. The noice is coming from the speakers on the doorways. The plexiglass construction allows you to see that there is electronic circuitry inside the doorways. But it's not circuitry that most viewers might be familiar with from looking at the circuit boards in their computers or other electronic devices.
Exurb, Input/Output "Doorway" detail, plexiglass, electronic circuits, 2011 (photo by Robert Boyd)
These are old electronics--vacuum tube technology. The members of Exurb commented that all the parts could have been bought fifty years ago. The basic technology here is the theremin, which was invented in 1920. A theremin operates by changing pitch (frequency) and loudness (amplitude) using variable capacitors. The body of the player is the grounded plate in the capacitor, and the distance between the body and the antenna changes the capacitance which is used to vary the sound. In this device, the theremins (there are three on each post) only change frequency. The antennae are these checkerboard metal plates on the inside of each doorway. Passing through the doorway brings you close to the plates, causing pitch changes.
Exurb, Input/Output "Doorway", plexiglass, electronic circuits, 2011
Therefore, the viewer's physical presence within the installation makes him or her part of the input. But it's much more complicated than that, of course. Because in addition to generating sound, Input/Output has a microphone that is converting the sound into data, which it then uses to help create six video outputs. In addition, there are two video cameras running, and they are used to help create video output. I tried to diagram roughly what was going on. (Correction: Eric Todd contacted me with a few corrections. One was that the sound was wired directly from the doorways to the computer--so no microphones were required.)
diagram of Input/Output by Robert Boyd
I don't have a photo of the histogram screen, but it's the least interesting--it seems more like a device to help the artists monitor the functioning of the various devices.
Exurb, Input/Output detail-graph display, data feed, visualization software, projected image, 2011 (photo by Robert Boyd)
For this dynamic data visualization, the Y-axis is amplitude, the x-axis is frequency, and the z-axis is time. This graph was continually renewing, and because of the way it was visualized, time seemed to be receding into the past.
Exurb, Input/Output detail-green screen, data feed, video feed, small monitor, 2011 (photo by Dean Liscum)
The members of Exurb wanted a video that looked like night vision. But it's not real night vision. The green cast is somehow affected by the sound input, but I'm not sure exactly how. It otherwise seems like a green-filtered video of what is happening in the doorways room.
Exurb, Input/Output detail-green balls, sound data feed, java script, small monitor, 2011 (photo by Robert Boyd)
Exurb member Sam Singh told me about the screen with the exploding green balls. "As the change in frequency is higher, the force with which the balls break up is greater." After they explode apart, they fall back into place and the process starts over.
Exurb, Input/Output detail-high-contrast video, C++ script, sound data feed, video feed, lprojected image, 2011 (photo by Dean Liscum)
This screen displays video from the "doorways" room, but like the green screen video, this video is altered by the sound. The flat, high-contrast areas are determined by some criteria that I don't quite understand, and the color of those areas is determined by the frequencies of the sound input.
Exurb, Input/Output detail-lo-res video, C++ script, sound data feed, video feed, projector, 2011 (photo by Dean Liscum)
The last output takes the video feed, turns it into a super lo-res image in which every pixel becomes a geometric shape, and overlays those "pixels" with another geometric shape that is determined by the sound input. At first, it is hard to see that it is actually video--it seems like a gridlike, constantly-changing abstract pattern. But after a while, you realize that the motions you see look like people walking across the room.
This photograph shows one other way that viewers can provide input--the lowest-tech way of all. They can cast shadows on the screens.
Input/Output evokes several reponses. One thinks of surveillance, for example. There is a notion of technological history, using analog and digital technology in one object. What I experienced most powerfully is the post-modern idea that art should not be separated from life. Thomas McEvilley has written that in Western art, there has been a long separation of art from the cognitive and the ethical--that the aesthetic was a completely separate category. This separation was carved in stone, so to speak, by Kant. While in a practical, lived sense, this separation has never been absolute--after all, French viewers of The Oath of the Horatii in 1784 saw more than an arrangement of colors and lines; they also saw a powerful piece of propaganda, but one that could be read in different ways by different viewers in relation to their own lives.
That said, the autonomy of an artwork--its existence and meaning regardless of who (if anyone) was viewing it, was something taken for granted. Modernism was propelled in that direction. Hence the neutral white box for displaying art. Hence the banishment of subject matter. Postmodernist art attempts by various means to rebridge that chasm between the aesthetic and life. One obvious way to do so is to involve the "viewer" is the creation of the work. The viewer of Input/Output is not a passive receptacle of visual or sound information. She is as involved with the creation of the visuals and sound as the artists are. Likewise the artists dive into life by involving engineering (and engineers) in the creation of the piece. This breaks down the distinction of who is and who isn't an artist.
Left to right: Patrick Renner, Johnny Di Blasi, Eric Todd, Sam Singh and Stephen Kraig
Each of the members of Exurb brings a different skill-set and point of view. Patrick Renner is a sculptor (whose work is all over Houston right now--some of it is visible at Williams Tower through July 20, and some downtown at the Blaffer Gallery's Window in Houston space.) Eric Todd gives this self-description: "I personally dabble in a little bit of everything. I got a BFA from UH in Theater and Creative Writing in 2007, have had a few installation pieces of my own in the past (two at Lawndale in the last few years), run a recording studio, am a regular contributor at red94.net (the Houston Rockets ESPN affiliate), am a staff editor at Nano Fiction Magazine (nanofiction.org), write a poetry blog that I don't keep up with as much as I should (giddyox.net), and am (though I think all of us would object to any of our number claiming such a title) the sort of de facto foreman of Exurb." Johnny DiBlassi is a multi-media artist. Sam Singh is a software engineer (and describes himself on Twitter as an "engineer, philanthropist, writer, and self-proclaimed tech aficionado"). Stephen Kraig is an electrical engineer whose day job involves designing vibration sensors for industrial motors but who has a side business building guitar amps. This team strikes me as very corporate in the best sense of the word. Renner and Todd conceived the project, and Todd acted as team leader, but the team is collectively responsible for creating the work. When you think of artists like Matthew Barney or Jeff Koons or other artists whose work is the result of many people's labor, you see a tendency to ascribe credit to a sole auteur. Input/Output could not have been made without the contribution of each member of Exurb, and credit goes to each member.
Input/Output is installed at The Joanna and can be seen and heard through July 16.
In college, I had a roommate, Bill, who was an electrical engineer. But beyond majoring in the subject, it was his hobby and passion as well. Consequently, the various hellholes in which we lived were littered with electronics and computer-related projects. He was into building practical things (uninterruptible power supplies) and impractical things (really loud amps, handheld lasers). This was a million years ago, and now Bill runs a successful electronics manufacturing company here in Houston. But I was reminded of his younger self when I saw Input/Output, the installation by the artist/engineer collective Exurb. This is the kind of project Bill would have eagerly joined back in the day.
Exurb, Input/Output "Doorway", plexiglass, electronic circuits, 2011 (photo by Robert Boyd)
The first thing one sees when walking into the Joanna are two plexiglass post-and-lintel constructions, called "doorways". The first thing you notice, however, is a caterwaul of noise. The noice is coming from the speakers on the doorways. The plexiglass construction allows you to see that there is electronic circuitry inside the doorways. But it's not circuitry that most viewers might be familiar with from looking at the circuit boards in their computers or other electronic devices.
Exurb, Input/Output "Doorway" detail, plexiglass, electronic circuits, 2011 (photo by Robert Boyd)
These are old electronics--vacuum tube technology. The members of Exurb commented that all the parts could have been bought fifty years ago. The basic technology here is the theremin, which was invented in 1920. A theremin operates by changing pitch (frequency) and loudness (amplitude) using variable capacitors. The body of the player is the grounded plate in the capacitor, and the distance between the body and the antenna changes the capacitance which is used to vary the sound. In this device, the theremins (there are three on each post) only change frequency. The antennae are these checkerboard metal plates on the inside of each doorway. Passing through the doorway brings you close to the plates, causing pitch changes.
Exurb, Input/Output "Doorway", plexiglass, electronic circuits, 2011
Therefore, the viewer's physical presence within the installation makes him or her part of the input. But it's much more complicated than that, of course. Because in addition to generating sound, Input/Output has a microphone that is converting the sound into data, which it then uses to help create six video outputs. In addition, there are two video cameras running, and they are used to help create video output. I tried to diagram roughly what was going on. (Correction: Eric Todd contacted me with a few corrections. One was that the sound was wired directly from the doorways to the computer--so no microphones were required.)
I don't have a photo of the histogram screen, but it's the least interesting--it seems more like a device to help the artists monitor the functioning of the various devices.
Exurb, Input/Output detail-graph display, data feed, visualization software, projected image, 2011 (photo by Robert Boyd)
For this dynamic data visualization, the Y-axis is amplitude, the x-axis is frequency, and the z-axis is time. This graph was continually renewing, and because of the way it was visualized, time seemed to be receding into the past.
Exurb, Input/Output detail-green screen, data feed, video feed, small monitor, 2011 (photo by Dean Liscum)
The members of Exurb wanted a video that looked like night vision. But it's not real night vision. The green cast is somehow affected by the sound input, but I'm not sure exactly how. It otherwise seems like a green-filtered video of what is happening in the doorways room.
Exurb, Input/Output detail-green balls, sound data feed, java script, small monitor, 2011 (photo by Robert Boyd)
Exurb member Sam Singh told me about the screen with the exploding green balls. "As the change in frequency is higher, the force with which the balls break up is greater." After they explode apart, they fall back into place and the process starts over.
Exurb, Input/Output detail-high-contrast video, C++ script, sound data feed, video feed, lprojected image, 2011 (photo by Dean Liscum)
This screen displays video from the "doorways" room, but like the green screen video, this video is altered by the sound. The flat, high-contrast areas are determined by some criteria that I don't quite understand, and the color of those areas is determined by the frequencies of the sound input.
Exurb, Input/Output detail-lo-res video, C++ script, sound data feed, video feed, projector, 2011 (photo by Dean Liscum)
The last output takes the video feed, turns it into a super lo-res image in which every pixel becomes a geometric shape, and overlays those "pixels" with another geometric shape that is determined by the sound input. At first, it is hard to see that it is actually video--it seems like a gridlike, constantly-changing abstract pattern. But after a while, you realize that the motions you see look like people walking across the room.
This photograph shows one other way that viewers can provide input--the lowest-tech way of all. They can cast shadows on the screens.
Input/Output evokes several reponses. One thinks of surveillance, for example. There is a notion of technological history, using analog and digital technology in one object. What I experienced most powerfully is the post-modern idea that art should not be separated from life. Thomas McEvilley has written that in Western art, there has been a long separation of art from the cognitive and the ethical--that the aesthetic was a completely separate category. This separation was carved in stone, so to speak, by Kant. While in a practical, lived sense, this separation has never been absolute--after all, French viewers of The Oath of the Horatii in 1784 saw more than an arrangement of colors and lines; they also saw a powerful piece of propaganda, but one that could be read in different ways by different viewers in relation to their own lives.
That said, the autonomy of an artwork--its existence and meaning regardless of who (if anyone) was viewing it, was something taken for granted. Modernism was propelled in that direction. Hence the neutral white box for displaying art. Hence the banishment of subject matter. Postmodernist art attempts by various means to rebridge that chasm between the aesthetic and life. One obvious way to do so is to involve the "viewer" is the creation of the work. The viewer of Input/Output is not a passive receptacle of visual or sound information. She is as involved with the creation of the visuals and sound as the artists are. Likewise the artists dive into life by involving engineering (and engineers) in the creation of the piece. This breaks down the distinction of who is and who isn't an artist.
Left to right: Patrick Renner, Johnny Di Blasi, Eric Todd, Sam Singh and Stephen Kraig
Each of the members of Exurb brings a different skill-set and point of view. Patrick Renner is a sculptor (whose work is all over Houston right now--some of it is visible at Williams Tower through July 20, and some downtown at the Blaffer Gallery's Window in Houston space.) Eric Todd gives this self-description: "I personally dabble in a little bit of everything. I got a BFA from UH in Theater and Creative Writing in 2007, have had a few installation pieces of my own in the past (two at Lawndale in the last few years), run a recording studio, am a regular contributor at red94.net (the Houston Rockets ESPN affiliate), am a staff editor at Nano Fiction Magazine (nanofiction.org), write a poetry blog that I don't keep up with as much as I should (giddyox.net), and am (though I think all of us would object to any of our number claiming such a title) the sort of de facto foreman of Exurb." Johnny DiBlassi is a multi-media artist. Sam Singh is a software engineer (and describes himself on Twitter as an "engineer, philanthropist, writer, and self-proclaimed tech aficionado"). Stephen Kraig is an electrical engineer whose day job involves designing vibration sensors for industrial motors but who has a side business building guitar amps. This team strikes me as very corporate in the best sense of the word. Renner and Todd conceived the project, and Todd acted as team leader, but the team is collectively responsible for creating the work. When you think of artists like Matthew Barney or Jeff Koons or other artists whose work is the result of many people's labor, you see a tendency to ascribe credit to a sole auteur. Input/Output could not have been made without the contribution of each member of Exurb, and credit goes to each member.
Input/Output is installed at The Joanna and can be seen and heard through July 16.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
