March 2008

"Mr. Ray"

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"Mr. Ray" [mp3 removed]

An exploration of the sonata form. A main (allegro) theme, a slower theme, a dance, and return to the allegro. The initial four-note motif is a Reaktor preset and the rest is me. Sonatas are supposed to have some kind of tonal center but this is all timbral and rhythmic. It is a "twelve tone" piece, I suppose, too, at least the fast synthesized string parts. The sound quality is pretty harsh--it's not very generous in terms of tunes or a groove anyone could sink into. It's something I had to do and I will now return to mellifluous Tin Pan Alley tunesmithing.

sketch_c6 (work in progress)

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sketch_c6 GIF

This is a sketch of something I'm working on in my studio. Most of the pieces like this I've been posting aren't permanent. They are photographed and disassembled, or part of the structure is left on the wall to be used in the next piece. The one above is a sketch of what's up now. I'm not currently in the studio so I'm working on it elsewhere in MSPaint. I saved it as a GIF which is why it's so pixelated. Anyway, I'm thinking I will make this a permanent piece, which means inlaying white paper in the interstitial spaces of the molecule and then taping the whole thing together with strips of linen tape on the back. I've been missing making quilty physical objects. The "painting" part started as a test sheet where a family member was painting with his daughter and using the heavy paper to wipe his brushes. I added some brushy molecules and glued down photocopied spheres. I mainly like the contrast between the rigid molecule and the "expressive" painting, which stands in for the disposable product packaging that often appears in these constructions.

Spam Blogs

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Getting a lot of incoming links from fake blogs, suddenly. Usually Word Press. The title is something like "A Blog About Video" or "Photoshop Blog" with posts that say "So and so had a great post today about..." With a link to us poor pitiful fucks trying to do the right thing. It's unlikely these "blogs" are gaming Google's ranking system but they are certainly gaming Technorati, which treats them as legit (at least initially). First referer log spam, then comment spam, now whole blogs of spam. One can't help but be nostalgic for the Web before it was all robots and petty criminal robot wranglers.

Cai Guo-Qiang*

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Comment yrs truly left on Paddy Johnson's blog:

Check out the slick video of the artist making a "gunpowder drawing" on the New York Times video page (linked to in Roberta Smith's article). Talk about your Asian stereotypes. It's like the Hans Namuth film of Pollock making a painting done in the style of the '70s TV show Kung Fu. With gratuitous slo-mo!

I have seen the future of the Web and it is bad TV.

A discussion of the artist's horrible "flying wolves" installation is here. One good thing about not having comments enabled is no one can say "see how much conversation this work is generating" when the work is, in fact, bad.

*pronounced "sigh gwo-chee-ang" per the Times