An exercise in reduction

I thought I'd post this as it's something a bit different from the usual sound-orientated stuff that dominates this blog. The series of photos detail the process of an extra-curricular activity from the Milkcrate session over the weekend. A tactile distraction of sorts for a long 24 hours.

I had brought along a metal sheet as a means of generating some interesting sounds for the session, though after awhile (and several coffees) it became its own autonomous art object. Earlier I had scratched it with rocks and pencils to get certain sounds and marked out interesting harmonic regions with whiteboard markers. By the early hours of the morning it had been scribbled with random nonsense, and by dawn only traces of chaotic gestures were visible in the scratch marks and the barely visible pencil scrapings.

I like the idea of reductionism, it is an approach that I apply to my work ethic during a Milkcrate session: building up detail and stripping it away. A visual parallel to sonic gestures.


1) Some scratches, pencil markings and whiteboard marker shapes


2) Nonsensical rhetoric and additional details


3a) Whiteboard marker markings scrubbed away: final result


3b) Close-up of final result

Tyndall Assembly Concert 4: POSTPHONED AND RESCHEDULED

Due to unforseen circumstances Tyndall Assembly concert 4 has been postphoned and re-scheduled for Thursday 11th October. Please go to www.tyndallassemblyblog.blogspot.com for further details.

Milkcrate 18

I am currently engaged in the 18th Milkcrate session. You can monitor progress and results here.

Tyndall Assembly on JJJ JArts Crew

Lachlan Tetlow-Stuart of Triple J's J Arts Crew has written a great article on the Tyndall Assembly which you can check out here.

http://www.theprogram.net.au/featuresSub.asp?id=5295&state=1.

Good Evening Song

Good Evening Song
Sept 2 - Gallery Delacatessen

Johannes.S.Sistermanns, James Geurts, Linda Marie Walker

Last night I attended a performance at Gallery Delacatessen that I thought would be worth mentioning.

Good Evening Song was a combination of sound (Sistermanns), words (Marie Walker) and images (Geurts.) The performance was already underway in a sense as myself and few other people arrived at the venue ten minutes prior to the designated start time. The atmosphere seemed quite casual and informal as James Geurts worked by a projection, Linda Marie Walker sat at a table cutting up text and pasting it into an empty book and Sistermanns greeted people at the door discreetly. Geurts projection showed a sequence of somebody (him I assume) peeling and fixing transparent tape to a surface, shot from the top with only his hands and arms in view. This sequence was occasionally intercut with pixelated mattes of colour. Geurts was working at a nearby table carefully measuring lengths of transparent tape and fixing them to the wall over the projection. Marie Walker sat on a chair elevated with blocks of cork as she pasted fragments of text into her empty book and stood up to read them (quietly.) Each time she did this she would purposely dislodge the chair from the cork blocks and once she had finished speaking, refix the chair to these blocks before sitting down and continuing her process. Sistermanns activated a series of sound devices around the space which emitted a variety of soft and metallic attacks and sustained sounds. He then proceeded to move to the piano, striking a note then fixing sellotape to the key and dragging out the length of tape (through the audience in some cases) to a section of the space. This process continued until there were several lengths of tape creating a transparent web across the space. As Geurts and Marie Walker continued their respective tasks, Sistermanns stood over the piano emitting a sustained singing tone, turning slowly as to articulate the resonant frequency of the space. Notes were occasionally struck and trilled on the piano and later he would proceed to play a contact mic on objects around the space, including the tape network and Marie Walker's table.

This was definitely the most conceptually broad performance I've been privvy to in some time, though then again this may suggest a lack of diversity in performance art activity around Adelaide. I had short discussions with the artists and some audience members afterwards and we agreed that the key to this performance lay in its consistent pace and respective discipline of its performers, wherein it never accelerated or slowed down - everything had a natural flow to it. This was essentially mixed media theatre reminiscent of Fluxus and Happening performances of the 1960s, though I wouldn't wish to consign it to this approximation alone. Good Evening Song overall was a highly enjoyable, curious and playful experience.

EAF : City Tags (31.8.07 Day 6)

There's been a bit of a delay on the post for the final day of the City Tags workshop on Friday due to time constraints and being generally worn out. The session on Friday morning comprised of presentations of the participants projects and some general (and lighthearted) discussion to wrap up a weeks worth of activity. The projects were by no means finished works, but rather explorations of art practice in public space. I've included some brief overviews of some of the participants projects that I was impressed by.

Adele: Adele showed us excerpts of her French New Wave/Goddard-esque film. The film focuses on three characters at various locations around Adelaide, where messages are written on walls by each of the characters as a means of communication (i.e. "meet me in the city at 3.") The direction of the film is playful and deliberately abstracted by the quirkyness of the characters, use of both colour and black and white, as well as camera techniques (handheld/fixed) and media (ISight, Mini DV, mobile phone.) I was impressed Adele's film. It examines the city of Adelaide in a curious and cheeky fashion with three main inhabitants, seemingly out of synch with each other whilst attempting to locate themselves and each other.

Yasamin: Yasamin showed us some by a local art collective that she is affiliated with. One striking example was a series of boxes which they had painted and decorated with various material at installed on Union Street in the East End of Adelaide. Each of the boxes makes up a piece of the finished mural, and was (suprisingly) left relatively untouched by the City Council. I found this work to be a creative and original approach to urban art.

Luigi: Luigi showed us a film that he had made with frames video captures of solitary trees around the CBD. With the title of 'Lonely', he explained that he wanted to explore the idea of lonliness in the urban environment and chose trees as his central subject. I felt the idea could have been developed a little better from just focusing on actual trees, Calin suggested (in all seriousness) that he should have perhaps dressed a person up as a tree as this would add a bit more gravitas to the project.




Logan: Logan examined his assault (see previous posts) by looking at the role of authority figures in public spaces. A foam-board stencil of a security person was situated in locations around the Uni SA City West campus to explore the relationship between the object and its surroundings as well as the reactions of the general public in outdoor areas. The choice of such a location is because Logan's assault occurred close the campus and resulted in a dramatic overhauls of security on campus and its surrounding areas.



Marget: Marget showed us a film which she had made of her performing against a backdrop of the ocean (near the grain silos, Outer Harbour.) She made slow movements and gestures within the single frame as she draw on herself. The clothing she draw onto (like a white cloth poncho) was put on display in our room for us to examine up close. The conceptual background behind the work was complicated, though put simply Marget's intention was to explore one's own presence 'drawing onto' the atmosphere and environment by movement, positions and gestures as well as physically drawing onto one's self.




Bianca: Bianca couldn't make it to our final session, though the conception, materials and proposed location(s) of her project were very interesting. Mid-week she showed us some stickies she had made using an Aquadere composite and coloured dyes. Resembling ooze-like drips, these would be stuck onto cracks and divisions of corporate buildings around the city. Her intention is to examine the austerity and corrupt nature of these buildings, reflected in their impersonal appearance and what they represent.

Which brings me to my project which I unfortunately hadn't had time to develop beyond the examples I showed in the previous post. The idea itself - audio tagging within an urban context - was received relatively well with some good feedback regarding the nature of the work and further developments.

Conclusions and reflections on City Tags:

Overall, the workshop provided me with a good opportunity to work amongst a group of likeminded participants as well as meet Calin Dan, whom I regard as a consumate artist in many respects. Although I didn't come out of the workshop with a completed work, I am satisfied that I have come out of this experience with some fresh new avenues for my post-graduate research as well as my own art practice beyond the ivory tower.

Calin Dan's exhibition is now showing at the EAF until the 6th of October 07.