September 2008

Kai Vierstra

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Kai Vierstra - Earthquake with Large Fissure

Video of similar piece showing plywood being stressed and cracks forming:

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[Quicktime .mov] - dead link, try the vimeo

[jpeg and video review--haven't seen the actual work] The slow cracking of the wood in the video is aesthetically satisfying, like the popping of bubble wrap, but ominous. I like the piece's encapsulation of horrific forces into almost-pure form. The shape seems to have been determined entirely by factors other than the artist's design: an imagined civic architect's ideal plans twisted and rended by catastrophe "in the field." It's straight-up entropy--once broken the structural integrity is gone. Compare Steve Parrino's bashed-in monochromes and Jason Middlebrook's post-apocalyptic Bilbao. Or Gehry if all the "implied torque" in his buildings actually tore them apart.

Greg Lynn: Reimagined Sears Tower

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Excerpt from Lynn's text, from wannes deprez/ony one's photostream [hat tip lalblog.tumblr]:

This project reformulates the vertical bundle of tubes horizontally along a strand of land between Wacker Drive and the Chicago River's edge adjacent to the existing Sears Tower. To engender affiliations with particular local events, the rigid geometry that dictated the exact parallel relations between tubes was rejected for a more supple description. Through a geometry that is more supple, the nine contiguous tubes accommodate themselves fluidly and flexibly to the multiple and often discontinuous borders of the site. The relations between tubes are not exactly parallel. These supple deflections allow connection to take place which would have been repressed by a more rigid and reductive geometric system of description.

Starting a mini-series of blog posts on sculptural/3D forms. The above has a certain affinity w/ this drawing from a few months back. Didn't know Lynn's work or much about him but like the abject quality of this architecture. It talks a good game about functionality but it seems more about a failed or impossible space which makes it considerably more interesting than Gehry or Hadid.

Double Happiness at vertexList

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Their installation in a group show called "New Blood." The DVD cases are Nigerian and Thai cinema, mostly. One video was still rendering when I arrived so I didn't get a shot of it (just the default JVC screen with colored spheres). The snack station features a working refrigerator and microwave and gallerygoers were heating mini-pizzas (also note Hydrox cookie bag--there's a story involving Warren Buffett and the reviving of the brand after he received a letter from the group--they may be heroes). The scatter-orgy successfully translates the maxed-out, unrepressed, multiple-overlapping-media vibe of the group's blog. Taste and restraint are concepts they have no use for, making them the most lifelike of the surf clubs.

Note: two members of Double Happiness will give a presentation about the grocery store C-Town (Town-Town-Town...) in connection with this year's Conflux Festival. Details at the link.

Another note: barely visible in the top photo is a laptop "eating" slices of actual pizza, which may or may not remain for the duration of the exhibit.

"Waltz Alpha Tango"

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"Waltz Alpha Tango" [mp3 removed]

Minimal techno piece (with 8-bit timbres in the percussion); 3/4 time; 140 bpm. Previously posted as "Sidbeats 3" but longer and with some spooky pad sounds added, made with the Linplug Alpha softsynth.