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Paul Slocum, Deep House for Symphonic Band and Choir, 2006. Slocum explains on his blog, "It’s a dance club hit written for symphonic band and choir. The music plays on the speakers in a loop (about 4 mins long) and the entire score for all the instruments is pinned to the wall between two Sylvania Gro-Lux fluorescents." The music (at www.qotile.net/blog/wp/?p=326) is great; a very full, lush orchestrated sound, compositionally minimal but soulful, like the best deep house on vinyl, but with a Steve Reich vibe in the use of symphonic instruments and voices. I like that the score is presented as a series of abstract marks on the wall, a la Sol LeWitt (lighting by Flavin), but that the marks actually correspond to something you can hear with your own ears, both in real space and virtually, by virtue of being published on the Net.
Updated a couple of times, with more words and a link to the tune.
New York Times review of Michael Bell-Smith's show at Foxy Production, 617 West 27th Street (Chelsea), New York, NY, up through June 3:
Michael Bell-Smith operates in the gap between animated cartoons and painting with unusual effectiveness. His short digital loops, shown on small screens or paintinglike wall monitors, portray landscapes, cityscapes, figures and oblique social commentary. But their main concerns are color, space and light, tweaked and amplified by digital technology and restrained animation. Whether we are flying high above an endless suburbia, as in "Some Houses Have Pools," or looking at the artist as he stands in the middle of a Midtown street, as in "Self-Portrait NYC," the excitement lies in grasping the layers of the image and the way they do, or don't, change.This is a nice review but treats the gallery as a walled garden sealed off from the Internet and the street. If anyone's work could benefit from a "digital non-site" analysis it's Bell-Smith's. How much does the imagery and animation derive from gaming, website GIF wallpaper, ringtones, and upload/download culture in general and how much is invented out of whole cloth by the artist? What is the value of putting "gallery brackets" around pop culture ephemera? Is this still Pop Art? Is it relevant to mention Bell-Smith's CD of acapella hiphop hits digitally synchronized with ringtones of the same songs? That he plays in a band? Or the fact that he was recently on a panel called Net Aesthetics 2.0, that considered a gradual tectonic shift in Internet art practice? That he has a blog and is an ardent curator of Internet cult phenomena of every description, with exquisite taste in same? "The gallery" and the "art review" are still excellent places to discuss these kinds of things--particularly how they can be translated into an elegant physical space. It would be good if our top gun critics could stretch just a wee bit.
In the post-Katrina "Continue 2000," a red-caped hero stares at the setting sun from the roof of a house adrift in a flood of shimmering, patchwork color. He is going nowhere, but the sun explodes and the world turns momentarily gray, like an omen.
"Up and Away" scrolls through an encyclopedic array of panoramic horizons — city skylines, deserts, mountains, castles, forests, oceans — that conjure up dozens of movie genres but are actually downloaded from video games (and are so coarsely pixilated they seem Pointillist, or knitted). Now it is the viewer who goes nowhere: space is deep but never penetrated. It's like watching a deck of cards being shuffled: pick a landscape, any landscape. Mr. Bell-Smith brings new and old and static and mobile into a promising, visually enthralling alignment. ROBERTA SMITH
GIF from fUSION Anomaly enlarged, cropped, sped up
GIF from fUSION Anomaly eight times
Individual GIF from fUSION Anomaly 144 times
Spreading the acid house gospel... exorcising the demons from the laptop... playing "air theremin"...I forget which. (photo - artMovingProjects) Lecture/Perfomance notes
McCain Criticized by Fellow Graduation Speaker
This is inspiring--from the New York Times article "Graduates at New School Heckle Speech by McCain" (By David M. Herszenhorn, May 20, 2006)
The jeers, boos and insults flew, as caustic as any that angry New Yorkers have hurled inside Madison Square Garden. The objects of derision yesterday, however, were not the hapless New York Knicks, but Senator John McCain, the keynote speaker at the New School graduation, and his host, Bob Kerrey, the university president.I say put the kids in charge, fire the adults.
No sooner had Mr. Kerrey welcomed the audience to the university's 70th commencement than the hoots began to rise through the Theater at Madison Square Garden. Several graduates held up a banner aimed at Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican and likely 2008 presidential candidate, declaring: "Our commencement is not your platform." Other students and faculty members waved orange fliers with the same message.
Mr. Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska, was unapologetic yesterday about inviting Mr. McCain, his friend and fellow Vietnam War veteran, to speak. He noted early in his welcoming remarks that there had been intense media coverage of Mr. McCain's graduation speech last week at Liberty University, headed by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, in which Mr. McCain strongly defended the Iraq war.
"Many predicted that his speech today would not receive as friendly a reception," Mr. Kerrey said. "The expectation is that — and that expectation has already been realized — that some of you in this audience will act up to protest the senator's appearance."
The first student speaker, Jean Sara Rohe, 21, said she had discarded her original remarks to talk about Mr. McCain.
"The senator does not reflect the ideals upon which this university was founded," she said, to a roaring ovation. "This invitation was a top-down decision that did not take into account the desires and interests of the student body on an occasion that is supposed to honor us above all."
Noting that Mr. McCain had promised to give the same speech at all of his graduation appearances, Ms. Rohe, who was one of two students selected to speak by university deans, attacked his remarks even before he delivered them.
"Senator McCain will tell us today that dissent and disagreement are our civic and moral obligation in times of crisis, and I agree," she said. "I consider this a time of crisis, and I feel obligated to speak."
She continued, "Senator McCain will also tell us about his strong-headed self-assuredness in his youth, which prevented him from hearing the ideas of others, and in so doing he will imply that those of us who are young are too naïve to have valid opinions.
"I am young, and although I don't profess to possess the wisdom that time affords us, I do know that pre-emptive war is dangerous and wrong," she said.
She added, "Osama bin Laden still has not been found, nor have those weapons of mass destruction."
As Mr. McCain came to the lectern, dozens of students and professors stood and turned their backs on him. Many waved their fliers.
Before his speech, Mr. McCain thanked Ms. Rohe "for that CliffsNotes version of my address."
Mr. McCain seemed uneasy, but stuck to his script and did not acknowledge the barbs. As Ms. Rohe had predicted, he spoke about the importance of civil discourse, and he reiterated his defense of the war.
"I believe the benefits of success will justify the costs and risks," he said. The protests grew louder and more frequent as he spoke. Some graduates walked out. Others laughed. When Mr. McCain returned to policy after briefly quoting Yeats, someone shouted, "More poetry!"
At another point, someone yelled, "We're graduating, not voting!"
The heckling continued when Mr. Kerrey returned to the lectern, with one audience member shouting, "You're a war criminal!"
Mr. Kerrey, a Medal of Honor winner, has admitted to leading a mission that resulted in the deaths of 13 to 20 unarmed civilians.