Three "work in progress" performances by artists from the 2004 Whitney Biennial debuted at the Kitchen last night. Tracy + The Plastics, a one-woman (virtual) band, consisted of Wynne Greenwood seated at a keyboard, playing and conversing with two prerecorded Wynne Greenwoods on DVD. The three are ostensibly sitting around their "band house" performing snippets of songs and having mock-lame arguments about the direction of their music. While frequently funny, Greenwood's passive aggressive slacker-chick persona wore thin after a while: I know this year's Whitney was about the "quest for the adolescent" but her self-absorbed conversation with the video mirror seemed trivial next to the mid-to-late 90s electro-femme performance work it somewhat resembled (e.g. Kristin Lucas, Monotrona). Alex Bag also inevitably came to mind.
Golan Levin's work was tech-intensive and nerdy (maybe it was the lab coat) but also fun and playful. He and his fellow performer Zachary Lieberman each used a combination of overhead and digital video projectors to make semi-abstract shadow-outlines (basically Rayograms) of their hands and other objects, with the overlap of the respective projector arrays creating dramatic color separation effects. The shadows in turn interacted with custom software to synesthetically translate shapes into sounds. A silhouette of a balled fist opening into a two-finger V caused a sequence of chiming musical notes to alter in mid-cascade; three fingers changed the sequence again, and so on. Clunky cut paper objects dropped onto the projector beds had their own unique audio signatures. Manning their opaque projectors like gamers at battle stations, the performers held a back & forth dialogue-cum-duel of changing silhouettes, which was exquisitely timed and quite charming.
Framing the other two performers was Cory Arcangel's "Pizza Party"--a demonstration of how to hack into the Dom1no's website and order pizza using only command line instructions. These green-on-black text-only options, which Arcangel accessed with a Perl script, lurk below Dom1no's (and every other business's) GUI, or graphic user interface, and consist of filling in "y" or "n" next to mushrooms, anchovies, thin crust, etc. and specifying a delivery address. As he walked the audience through the process on a large screen, Arcangel commented drily (but enthusiastically) on the essential uselessness of online commerce, and even greater uselessness of hacking into it, when a simple local phone call would suffice. And although he warned that failure was a possibility in his performance, his confident demeanor when he came back after the other acts told us that our pizzas had arrived.
UPDATE: "Pizza Party, a free text based software package for ordering pizza, or for throwing pizza parties" is available online here. UPDATE 2: Somebody posted an article about security vulnerabilities in "Pizza Party," the software. No one seems to know if it was satire or not.
I saw Cory Arcangel on one of the generic Sunday morning "news" programs. Completely ridiculous piece, but he was prominently featured. Anybody else catch this?
what was it about?
I was only half watching. Some Diane Sawyer-ish woman from the show was at an art show interviewing people. The artists were all young, and all seemed to be showing drug and technology related pieces. I would guess Williamsburg over Chelsea. One installation was made to look like a basement grow room. Another was psychedelic light show type thing. The interviewer kept asking the same question: Why is this art? But in a friendly fake humble sort of way. "Help my mother understand this piece. What should she feel when she sees this?"
Cory's piece was some sort of video projection. Maybe the one where it's just clouds (and the rest of the video game was erased?) Was that him?
He had the biggest time slice. They interviewed his grand parents too.
Sorry I can't be more precise. It was one of the big three networks. And the show had "Sunday Morning" in the title.
sunday morning
You mean you just searched and found it? As if all the information in the world is indexed in some giant web? Genius!
Thanks Dave.
I thought it might be the Biennial. It's the only event the "major media" ever notices (and then doesn't know how to talk about). It was the clouds piece, then.
Hi Tom Moody,
After reading this post: http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/comment/26735/, I have to assume you are the enemy. I'll be keeping my eye on you! Better watch your back man! I'll be 'staying the course' too!
(ok, right, just kiddin' nice blog, take care)
|
Three "work in progress" performances by artists from the 2004 Whitney Biennial debuted at the Kitchen last night. Tracy + The Plastics, a one-woman (virtual) band, consisted of Wynne Greenwood seated at a keyboard, playing and conversing with two prerecorded Wynne Greenwoods on DVD. The three are ostensibly sitting around their "band house" performing snippets of songs and having mock-lame arguments about the direction of their music. While frequently funny, Greenwood's passive aggressive slacker-chick persona wore thin after a while: I know this year's Whitney was about the "quest for the adolescent" but her self-absorbed conversation with the video mirror seemed trivial next to the mid-to-late 90s electro-femme performance work it somewhat resembled (e.g. Kristin Lucas, Monotrona). Alex Bag also inevitably came to mind.
Golan Levin's work was tech-intensive and nerdy (maybe it was the lab coat) but also fun and playful. He and his fellow performer Zachary Lieberman each used a combination of overhead and digital video projectors to make semi-abstract shadow-outlines (basically Rayograms) of their hands and other objects, with the overlap of the respective projector arrays creating dramatic color separation effects. The shadows in turn interacted with custom software to synesthetically translate shapes into sounds. A silhouette of a balled fist opening into a two-finger V caused a sequence of chiming musical notes to alter in mid-cascade; three fingers changed the sequence again, and so on. Clunky cut paper objects dropped onto the projector beds had their own unique audio signatures. Manning their opaque projectors like gamers at battle stations, the performers held a back & forth dialogue-cum-duel of changing silhouettes, which was exquisitely timed and quite charming.
Framing the other two performers was Cory Arcangel's "Pizza Party"--a demonstration of how to hack into the Dom1no's website and order pizza using only command line instructions. These green-on-black text-only options, which Arcangel accessed with a Perl script, lurk below Dom1no's (and every other business's) GUI, or graphic user interface, and consist of filling in "y" or "n" next to mushrooms, anchovies, thin crust, etc. and specifying a delivery address. As he walked the audience through the process on a large screen, Arcangel commented drily (but enthusiastically) on the essential uselessness of online commerce, and even greater uselessness of hacking into it, when a simple local phone call would suffice. And although he warned that failure was a possibility in his performance, his confident demeanor when he came back after the other acts told us that our pizzas had arrived.
UPDATE: "Pizza Party, a free text based software package for ordering pizza, or for throwing pizza parties" is available online here.
UPDATE 2: Somebody posted an article about security vulnerabilities in "Pizza Party," the software. No one seems to know if it was satire or not.
- tom moody 5-03-2004 7:24 am
I saw Cory Arcangel on one of the generic Sunday morning "news" programs. Completely ridiculous piece, but he was prominently featured. Anybody else catch this?
- jim 5-03-2004 4:33 pm
what was it about?
- joester 5-03-2004 6:11 pm
I was only half watching. Some Diane Sawyer-ish woman from the show was at an art show interviewing people. The artists were all young, and all seemed to be showing drug and technology related pieces. I would guess Williamsburg over Chelsea. One installation was made to look like a basement grow room. Another was psychedelic light show type thing. The interviewer kept asking the same question: Why is this art? But in a friendly fake humble sort of way. "Help my mother understand this piece. What should she feel when she sees this?"
Cory's piece was some sort of video projection. Maybe the one where it's just clouds (and the rest of the video game was erased?) Was that him?
He had the biggest time slice. They interviewed his grand parents too.
Sorry I can't be more precise. It was one of the big three networks. And the show had "Sunday Morning" in the title.
- jim 5-03-2004 6:47 pm
sunday morning
- dave 5-03-2004 6:54 pm
You mean you just searched and found it? As if all the information in the world is indexed in some giant web? Genius!
Thanks Dave.
- jim 5-03-2004 7:03 pm
I thought it might be the Biennial. It's the only event the "major media" ever notices (and then doesn't know how to talk about). It was the clouds piece, then.
- tom moody 5-03-2004 7:18 pm
Hi Tom Moody,
After reading this post: http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/comment/26735/, I have to assume you are the enemy. I'll be keeping my eye on you! Better watch your back man! I'll be 'staying the course' too!
(ok, right, just kiddin' nice blog, take care)
- twhid (guest) 5-03-2004 9:52 pm