December 2007

Robot Pop

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1991-ish quote from Kraftwerk's Ralf Hutter, from Simon Reynolds' "retroblog" of published and unpublished writings:

"The mechanical universe of Kraftwerk has been cloned or copied in Detroit, Brussels, Milan, Manchester, and even psychedelicized by the delirium of house music. You can define it as you want: sci-fi music, techno-disco, cybernetic rock. But the term I prefer even so is robot pop. It fits in with our objective--which consists of working without a respite toward the construction of the perfect pop song for the tribes of the global village."

Guyton, Ruff: Abject Cyberculture With Cash

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guyton

Two examples of "abject cyberculture" on view in large Chelsea galleries: Wade Guyton's "black paintings" a la Stella or Reinhart made with industrial-sized EPSON printers with clogged print heads (at Friedrich Petzel) and Thomas Ruff's gigantic "bad jpeg" photos of idyllic landscapes and manmade disasters, where "bicubic mush" resulting from saving images too many times creates a zillion Mondrians when viewed up close (at David Zwirner). Both shows shined and one wishes these dealers the best marketing this type of work to a collector class that values the "human hand" over everything.

It has to be said, though, that the copious cash necessary to produce both exhibits somewhat negates their would-be Arte Povera aesthetic. In addition to the untold EPSON cartridges expended on Guyton's show (the gallery put an image of the ink containers on the exhibition mailer in a "truth to materials" gesture), the artist carpeted the entire floor of the oversized warehouse space in wall-to-wall cheap plywood, painted austere, semi-glossy black. It's hard to convey without seeing it how much wood this is, but it's a decent sized shantytown or Broadway set's worth, at least. Concentrating on the paintings is difficult because you're constantly thinking about what's underfoot--an arbitrary, temporary surface trying too hard to "neutralize the white cube." It can't be done at Petzel, sorry.

Similarly, one does not want to contemplate the printing bill for the Ruff show--25 or 30 museum scale photos, flawlessly rendered and framed, their purpose to bowl you over with the sheer craft and tastefulness of their production so that you don't even remember that the subject is consumer technology (Photoshop) that anyone could mess with.

Seen In Chelsea While Everyone Was in Miami

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gallery

carl ostendarp

Top: Unnamed hippie gallery that doesn't allow photos (or so they told me after this was taken)--presumably so you will not take your fuzzy 45 degree angle snapshots and correct them in a computer and sell the resulting imperfect images as prints on a blanket out on the street. Or because soul-capturing photos destroy the gallery's contemplative pan-cultural vibe (if you can ignore the half-drunk cocktails and cigarette butts on the stairs outside). These people have been sending me press releases for their shows so I take that as an implied waiver of any "no publicity" rule.

Bottom: Image in the back room of the Carl Ostendarp retrospective at Elizabeth Dee. Linguists might call this painting a nugatory declarative illocutionary speech act, in that it answers the question "who is this painting by?" without giving any actual information.

Argento's Phenomena (Amazon Review)

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Dug this out of the amazon reader reviews because I always liked it; I think "a customer" was changed from something funnier:

monkeys, maniacs, mutants, and creepy crawlies by the ton, March 8, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Phenomena (1984) (Ws Rmst) (VHS Tape)
What more could you want from a horror movie? A pretty schoolgirl who commands armies of insects, a knife wielding serial killer, a deformed boy kept chained to a wall in the attic, a vengeful helper monkey with a razor blade, Donald Pleasance, delirious camerawork, blindingly gorgeous cinematography, pulsating music, characters who behave strangely for no particular reason, lots of pockets of glowing blue light (see where X-Files got some of their aesthetic ideas), surreally graphic violence, beautiful scenery, it's all right here. Sure, it's not Dario Argento's best work, but it's his most eccentric. Besides, why not watch a real horror film instead of Scream?

I've been using "characters who behave strangely for no reason" to describe Argento's films since I first read this.

"Phlogiston Phloat"

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"Phlogiston Phloat" [mp3 removed]

Have been fooling around with Reaktor effects plug-ins and softsynths. (Reaktor is like Max/MSP in that you can design your own synths but I've done very little of that--the pre-built ones alone are like working complex puzzles, at least if you want to understand how they function and make songs that are intuitively "yours.") In this song the drums have been treated with the Cyan and Fusion Reflections plugs, which fattened up a standard 808 loop in different ways. Through computer speakers you can't hear the bass at all but at normal volume with a decent home stereo the drums dominate. The pretty chord pad is a preset from the Akkord synth. The lead synth riffs are non-Reaktor softsynths so this isn't a total product endorsement. Am talking about mostly "formal" issues here because it's harder to nail the content, even if I wanted to--it's mostly about conflicting moods. Phlogiston was the element that everybody thought caused fires before the discovery of oxygen and its combustible properties. At the rate we're going these creationist f*cks will have us all believing in it again.