We will be performing during First Friday, Friday Sept 3rd at Creedon's Flower Shop and Gallery between 6-9pm. Creedon's is located at 323N Washington Ave, Scranton, PA - a block before the court house square. The show will also include a number of my photography as well that will be up the entire month.
Our other show's date is not planned yet, but the show will be at Embassy Vinyl located at 352 Adams Ave, Scranton, PA.
Here is a post card I have made for the upcoming show at Creedon's (info willbe on the backside) - they wil be printed and shipped within a week or two, then I will plug them into every major gallery in the area to get more people to show up for the event.
Friday, August 13, 2010
We had our first show at Cafe Metro - unfortunately I wasn't able to make it due to prior traveling, but Shane did an awesome job. The only down side was that there was no projector to be found there! We will defiantly have at least one for our next show at Creedon's Flower Shop and Gallery on N Washington in Scranton - I will be showing my photography as well on Sept 3rd (photos running though the entire month).
I put this together as a sample to anyone who is interested in seeing what the visuals and music combined may look like. I took this clip at random and realized the beginning part was too fast to start out with, but you will get the idea either way.
Shane and I have been practicing live recording and performances for our project. I have taken two of them and added them to my vimeo account. If you have external speakers with bass please use them - it adds an entirely new feel to the songs if you use them, and the drone puts you in almost a meditative state. I hope this will give you a better feel for the project. As far as the visuals go, this is just straight shooting from the camera, visuals to these songs will be edited and replaced at a later time.
When making the videos that will be projected, I am planning on using old experimental film footage mixed with my own. The issue that then comes into play is copyright infringement. How does this work? Well a good start to this is the use appropriation and the found object (found footage). Appropriation is taking or borrowing someone's idea or work and using it in new context. A good example of this would be Andy Warhol's soup can. What is I take parts of films, layer them in clips, break up the order, distort them beyond original recognition, and make an entirely new film as the end result? A musical artist, Girl Talk, makes his music almost entirely by sampling clips of other artist's songs.
In The remake of Psycho, Gus Vant Sant copies Hitchock's original film almost entirely shot by shot. Van Sant adds a few touches that Hitchcock had hinted at such as Norman Bates having Pornography, and a superimposed image of a skull over Norman's face in the final shot. While many may see the exact same movie as Hitchcock and a pointless rip off of a remake, by looking deeper into and under it I find it to be a lot more poetic and come from an entirely different angle. The feeling of a more modern, confined world where the idea of Mr. Bates isn't as distant and far from Normalcy as it is in Hitchcock's.
the next example is from an exhibit I saw of Eric Doeringer.
Doeringer uses copyright infringement and appropriation to the max. The exhibit I saw of his included exact replications of world famous paintings, sculptures, and photographs. He painted the paintings himself, which include various Warhol, sculptors of a Santa clause butt plugs by Paul McCarthy, and a Dorothea Lange I have put below in which he printed a copy of the image off of his computer and then scanned it to make the quality of the final print better. His other work includes fake Employee ID badges of himself for famous museums and membership cards. The idea behind making bootleg reproduction art is the same as knock off designer bags and watches.
Thought this would be a good time to throw some of my art out there - it would serve as an example of how the visuals will look. I have been creating photo and video art for the last 4-5 years, and painting for the last half of year. It wasn't until recently that I found my real niche. It's really neat when a certain style just takes over - just emerges slowly until you realize it - a very surrealistic experience. I first found this in my videos - I would find hidden under tones, motifs, the video was capturing something hidden from the human eye and then exploiting it to the viewer. There was something dark inside, and also something very poetic. I then ventured into photography, developing my own film and prints. A year later I bought a digital SLR. After a few years of shooting, I realized that my photos were resembling my videos, or my videos a moving image of my photos. There always seemed to be something dark about the image, and either something surrealist (resembling dada comedy, or of a pure dream). One other thing stuck out as well; almost all of the images could not be placed in a certain time or space. Below are a few examples of what I am trying to say (disregard the water mark and size on these, I had them else where online):
In the above photos no place (setting is known or shown). Also pay attention to the perspective - how big is the size of this entity? Is it 2 inches big, or as big as a school gym? What time period was it taken?
This photo was staged by me - this doesn't happen often, I usually catch the moment in the act, but I had a vision of this that haunted me until I made it come to life. I get a very dark feeling from this photo, but yet it is a beautiful image. Is the tree on fire? Why is it deserted? Who lives here? What is going on? It has a very mysterious presence.
Although I feel that this is not one of my strongest images when framed, I really enjoy it. It expresses my style very vividly revealing no time, space, or the context of what is going on (the event). A girl hanging upside down surrounded by bubbles.
One last example - another non-objective piece - another entity of itself. I always tell people to picture in their heads, where the photographer was when taking something, and what was going on around him.
I have included two of my videos below as well to give you an idea of how they are a living and moving version of my photos. This will also give you an idea of what is to come with our project.
Going back to experimental cinema, I figured that this would be a good time to bring it up. Film is divided up into two categories - narrative (telling a story), and non-narrative (no story). When telling people this, I usually tell them to think of it like a painting. When people paint they usually follow one of two main formats - content based and visual based - content telling something politically, or dear to the artist's beliefs (narrative), and visual being made up of no subject matter, just shapes and colors (non-narrative). Film started out as mainly being non-narrative and over time developed into the traditional narrative. Once you take away the luggage of having to tell a story, new possibility open up. You are able to test the limits of film, and new ways in which it can be used. For example: you could take sand paper and paint and use these tools on each frame, and then project it to see something entirely different than how it is viewed when holding out the strip of film. I have found that by treating and viewing film and video in this sense, I am able to open up and display feelings, poetry, and images that have no other way of being shared, and that have no words able to describe them otherwise.
Wassily Kandinsky would often attend the orchestra, and then paint his representation of the music played. You may say that my video would be a representation of the music being preformed while it is played. I often thought of someone who is deaf watching the video while the music is being played. They would not be able to hear the music, but feel the vibrations from the speakers and bass - would they be able to picture the music in their head (or possibly hear it) while watching the video?
(Kandinsky painting)
Below is a video done by the famous Dada and surrealist, Man Ray. This was made in the mid 20's - a prime time for experimental video. While watching this video, you will notice that it is not very poetic by itself, but once put to music, a spark is made and it seems to dance to it in parts.
This last clip is by Maya Dern - pay attention to the poetic images, editing,and cinematography to the music.
It's always nice to know the background of what your seeing or hearing to get an understanding or appreciation of what is going on, and where someone is coming from. An eighty piece orchestra produces the same result, as three bull frogs or a buzzing stoplight - music. Melody (or the lack of) and rhythm (or the lack of). So what exactly are we going for, what is going to be our process? What we will be doing isn't anything avant-guard, it's been going on for some time, but I believe out approach to it is what makes it truly unique. Well, first let me explain our process. Everything music wise is done on the spot, live, each song different from the last and unable to be reproduced. The process is almost entirely done unconsciously, in a surreal matter. There is one building point from which the entire song will be made of. Shane may start by recording the sound of a key being pressed on a keyboard, or a few notes on a piano being played, or a dog barking, or a child crying. This bare essential part is then looped and played over itself over and over creating a gamut of sounds that can be taken out or added at a later time in the progression. He may also add live music, recorded and looped on the spot such as a a guitar, keyboard, bass, etc and add voice sampling, which can be broken up into each individual note and layered over the rest. The entire process and progression of each song develops into life and will eventually end the same way it was created. During the music, one or more videos will be projected. The videos will have no story, but will be developed the same way as the music - starting with a single image, or a small amount of footage which will be layered, and looped. Found footage, appropriation of clips from famous experimental films, still images, etc will also be added within the video. The video may then be projected over top of each other, side by side, or each on a separate wall. We are hoping that the music and videos will at some point (or the entire length) will sync, putting the audience in a trance, opening up their unconsciousness as well as an entirely new way of experiencing and perceiving something they could in no other time or way. What about our influences in this project? As far as music goes (I will discuss video later in this blog) - the main components are post-rock, noise, and performance art. I have put links to what post-rock and noise are for anyone interested in learning more about them.
A brief description of these -
Post-rock: no vocals, layered instruments (mostly very simply played, playing mostly the same notes but at different times), having a slow ambient quality that builds as the song does, lengths of 6-20 minutes, and a very poetic and emotional quality to them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-rock
Noise: no main melody, no repetition of parts, very slow or very heavy, no vocals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_%28music%29
I have put a few videos below to help you get a better idea of what these genres sound like. The first is a video of the Japanese band the Boredoms performing in Philadelphia. I was lucky enough to be at this show, and it is quite possible that you can see me standing in the front row in the middle of the stage. The Boredoms did not always sound like this, they have evolved and changed their sound severely. They now consist of 3 drummers and one from man who plays a 7 neck guitar that strapped to a post by hitting it with a long stick, two electric balls which react through noise and feedback when put next to each other, and a keyboard. Their songs are long, and develop and end similar to the way we will be performing.
This next video is of the post-rock band, Explosions in the Sky - this video is a fine example of what post-rock sounds like.
This last video is of the band the Boredoms again, and shows them in a younger time than above. This style is a mix of noise, performance art, and dadaism (I will talk about this more in other entries of this blog).
