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Faux-Modernist Sculptures from Random Plastiform Dripping
Roxy Paine, SCUMAK (Auto Sculpture Maker), 1999 (hairy jpegs from gallery website)
Albin Karlsson, 2007 (?): "A machine in the roof rotates with a speed of one revolution per hour. Every minute it let one gram of hotglue drop down on the floor.During time a sculpture takes form." [via VVork]
"Duo for Drum Machine and Softsynth" [mp3 removed]
This is in 3/4 time, not that that's that big a deal. I believe all classical music should henceforth be written with current instruments. And defaults. Tired of all these fossils in powdered wigs and their attractive young prodigy front persons. Ick. And no MAX/MSP, either. Put it all up front.
Clarifying something I posted a while back. This pattern, printed out on xerox paper, quilted with tape etc, is not a bar code. I wouldn't make art with the bar code. In case anyone thought it was.
At Diapason in midtown on Thursday, five analog synthesists concocted a fascinating sonic stew for Analogos, an ongoing series of live improvisational jams. This was Analogos 9; unlike 7, featuring small sets with different combinations of the musicians, this was two long pieces by all. The first stopped rather dramatically when a power strip blew (it sounded like an intentional climax), and the second built slowly to a nerve shattering asynchronous finale. For some reason I kept thinking of Ornette Coleman, mixed with the raucous boom of the Velvet Underground playing the psychiatrist's convention in New Jersey (footage of which recently surfaced on YouTube and it's basically metal machine music & Nico). Trying to figure out who did what in all the crisscrossing sound overlays presented a challenge, but one could safely guess that Kabir Carter's newish Moog and Moogerfooger pedals contributed some of the pure, forcefully detuned pitches, that Stefan and Sergei Tcherepnin's battered Serge modulars added a scratchy, popping-patch-cord frisson, that Ed Tomney's EMS Synthi spun out the distinctive whooshes and trilling sequences of that classic instrument--and to be honest, I knew when Michael J. Schumacher's Steiner-Parker Synthacon chimed in mainly because I had a good line of sight to him from my seat on the carpeted floor. It's sort of funny these days that tonality and anything digital could get you kicked out of any club but it's thrilling to hear these vintage sounds revving at full jet engine volume.
The gallery stable for Schmulke Bruengross looks interesting. I want to go there next time I'm in Munich.
Cindy Sherman vs T shirt ninjas
Untitled Film Stills, 1979:
Webcam Ninjas, ca. 2002:
"You Have No Choice (Speedy)" [mp3 removed]
More VVork.
Sally McKay's comment about the blog's specialty--"elegant sculptural installations crafted well from non-precious materials with interesting but tidy content and an unquestioning relationship to art institutions," pretty much nails it. She says she loves/hates the site and that's what I've been saying but the unceasing tide of conceptual projects is starting to get painful. It's depressing because you see artists trying so hard, all over the world, to make their conceptualist schtick--based mostly on '70s premises but with a digital gloss--projects that document well and photograph well and might catch the eye of a curator (or omnibus art blog)--and when you show them all together like this it starts to look like a disease. Please, make it stop (or vary it with some videos of cats and sloths from YouTube)!
Update: The comment thread is now closed (to all but steve, who has magic powers) but worth a read, thanks to all who contributed, will try to synopsize some of what was said for a later post--the topic is bigger than just picking on VVork and gets into by-the-numbers conceptualism and its relation to computer workflow.