tom moody

tom moody's weblog
(2001 - 2007)

tommoody.us (2004 - )

2001-2007 archive

main site

faq

digital media tree (or "home" below)


RSS / validator



BLOG in gallery / AFC / artCal / furtherfield on BLOG

room sized animated GIFs / pics

geeks in the gallery / 2 / 3

fuzzy logic

and/or gallery / pics / 2

rhizome interview / illustrated

ny arts interview / illustrated

visit my cubicle

blogging & the arts panel

my dorkbot talk / notes

infinite fill show


music

video




Links:

coalition casualties

civilian casualties

iraq today / older

mccain defends bush's iraq strategy

eyebeam reBlog

hullabaloo

tyndall report

aron namenwirth

bloggy / artCal

james wagner

what really happened

stinkoman

antiwar.com

cory arcangel / at del.icio.us

juan cole

a a attanasio

rhizome.org

three rivers online

unknown news

eschaton

prereview

edward b. rackley

travelers diagram at del.icio.us

atomic cinema

lovid

cpb::softinfo :: blog

vertexList

paper rad / info

nastynets now

the memory hole

de palma a la mod

aaron in japan

NEWSgrist

chris ashley

comiclopedia

discogs

counterpunch

9/11 timeline

tedg on film

art is for the people

x-eleven

jim woodring

stephen hendee

steve gilliard

mellon writes again

eyekhan

adrien75 / 757

disco-nnect

WFMU's Beware of the Blog

travis hallenbeck

paul slocum

guthrie lonergan / at del.icio.us

tom moody


View current page
...more recent posts



Here's the Artforum.com blurb on Rodney Graham's show at 303 Gallery: "The primary work in this show, Phonokinetoscope, 2001, recreates a bicycle ride taken by Dr. Albert Hofmann through Berlin's Tiergarten on April 19, 1943. Before hopping on his bike, Hofmann, a chemist researching ergot alkaloids, swallowed a quarter milligram of the then new compound LSD-25. Later he would write that it dramatically altered his 'acoustic and optical perceptions.' Graham's film, complete with bike ride, LSD (which he washes down with coffee from a vintage thermos), and music composed and sung by the artist, mercifully avoids any overt psychedelia. Instead, it focuses on subtle interconnections and slippages between visual and aural perception, offering instances where sight and sound merge, as when the wheeze of the film projector matches the visual rhythm of a playing card hitting the spokes of a spinning bicycle wheel."

Actually none of the above is precisely true. The 16 mm film loop is synchronized with an LP recording of a song by Graham, a kind of folk-metal ballad in the John Cale/Nick Drake/Syd Barrett mold. As the song begins, Graham is already on his bike. He pedals through the park, stops to stare fixedly at a statue, and rides across a bridge in reverse-motion--an homage to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the press release reminds us. The playing card in the spokes of his bike, anchored with a wood clothespin, suggests he's regressed to a childlike (or dork-like) state. The lyrics to the song are as dumb as they are poignant:

Who is it that does not love a tree?
I planted one, I planted three.
Two for you and one for me.
Botanical anomaly...
You're the kind of girl that fits into my world...
You're the kind of girl that fits into my world...

Finally, at the end of the song, he sits down, and with power chords climaxing on the soundtrack, eats a square of blotter and stares entranced at the clothespin and the playing card, a Queen of Diamonds (as in Lucy in the Sky with...?). Of course, since the piece is a loop, you could interpret the end as the beginning, and imagine the film as a trip that lasts an eternity. EXCEPT Graham has deliberately made it possible for any idiot to walk into the gallery and lift the the tone arm off the LP, which stops the song and disconnects the "looper," bringing the film--which people are watching in a different room from the one with the turntable--to a sudden, jarring halt. The woman at the desk said many viewers have gotten angry when this happens.

- tom moody 10-12-2001 5:46 am [link] [6 comments]