February 2014

Mutations: Email GIF Collaboration

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Simon Baker, aka Stage, put up a series of GIF collaborations he did with various people via back-and-forth email exchanges. Participants in the Mutations project are listed below.

Our collaboration started with this GIF of Stage's:

tm1

And nine emails later ended with this GIF of "mine":

tm10

The word "mine" is in quotes because by the final step we had both added ideas, edited, cropped, enlarged, etc, so that it's properly "ours," even though I had the final cut.

Links to individual collaborations: Agathe André, Aaron Chan, jimpunk, Sara Ludy, Michael Manning, Tom Moody, Sabrina Ratté, Ryder Ripps, Chris Shier, Rick Silva, and Yoshi Sodeoka.

From my email to Stage, after he had everything up (and note the use of the "gallery" top level domain -- what, no "art"?)

The [website] design is intuitive and simple, even though the work is cumulatively neo-baroque psychedelic.
I like the banners compressing all the collaboration steps into a single strip.
Will be curious to see the reactions. There are interesting facets to the "politics of collaboration" and many single images that stand out from the flow.

Will be posting some of the other collaboration GIFs from the project soon.

linkjaying, '60s - '90s

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'60s

Max Roach, "Garvey's Ghost" YouTube. I have this on a vinyl compilation, Impulse Energy Essentials

'70s

Automatic Man, "My Pearl" YouTube. If Hendrix had lived he'd likely have done a mix of prog and funk that sounded like this.
MX-80 Sound, "Crushed Ice" YouTube. From Hard Attack, a better album than the later pair on Ralph, only available as an import at the time of release.
MX-80 Sound, "Tidal Wave" YouTube. "There's nothing left but kids in vans, without pants, and they're eating pork."
Orchestra Luna, "Were You Dancin' On Paper" YouTube. Quirky Boston ensemble combining prog and showtunes.
Orchestra Luna, "Little Sam" YouTube
The Bizarros, "Artie J" [MySpace link removed -- bad idea] Akron!

Bonus: Network Awesome has a great collection of Can YouTubes. For those who followed the band only from vinyl across the Atlantic back in the day, it's fascinating to watch their evolution from hippie collective to the "art disco" period. Another revelation was Irmin Schmidt stepping up as stage showoff after Damo Suzuki left. Somehow I imagined him looking ponderous behind his keyboards but he's out there mingling Sun Ra theatrics with lively dance steps.

Debussy, "Sonata for Violin and Piano," David Oistrakh (violin), Frida Bauer (piano), live recording, 1972 YouTube My favorite Debussy piece, confidently executed.

'90s

Soul Odyssey, "Rapture" YouTube - Progressive house tune produced in Dallas TX (1993), when I was living there and taping Jeff K's KDGE show. Discovered by Sasha and became a global club hit.
Central Fire, "Shout Going Out" YouTube

real reply to a fake critic

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Wading into the shallows of media coverage of a recent Shia LaBeouf performance art piece, Kenneth Goldsmith makes a clever pastiche of the cliched writing in an authorless, Kathy Acker-style mock-review for Rhizome.org, with links back to the original sentences Goldsmith cobbled together. Can airheaded writing about airheaded work be redeemed as "surf art"? Probably not. Will this earnest reply to "Kenneth" refocus our values? Probably not:

Dear Kenneth,
Your report gives few details about this performance so I had to resort to USA Today:

The exhibit is a collaborative project between LaBeouf, Finnish performance artist Nastja Säde Rönkkö and British artist Luke Turner, according to a press release sent to Time.

It took place at The Cohen Gallery, which USA informs us is "is across the street from BuzzFeed's L.A. offices," adding parenthetically, "Probably just a coincidence, right?"

Like you, the Daily Beast's Andrew Romano was oddly moved by the whole spectacle. "I actually felt something real. Something strange and complex. Something like sympathy. ..."

This is probably more of a USA Today-type story, and USA Today-type performance art, but it's always interesting to see what you're interested in.

Personally I'd like more sociology on how porous the gallery world and the film biz are in LA. I got messages yesterday that Parker Ito had sold a painting at auction for $93,000 USD, which is pretty good for a n00b, and one of the reasons for the high price tag is that film director Harmony Korine is a collector of his art. Maybe as a cross-NY-LA correspondent and assiduous documenter of the avant garde through ubuweb, WFMU, etc, you can help us understand the interrelationship of art and pure promo hype in the tinseltown art scene.

Best, Tom

I confess when I wrote the above I just skimmed the Goldsmith and thought, instead of "this isn't worth your time," that he had simply lost his mind. This will teach me not to skim and troll (or at least, mouse-over), but would still like to see the convo diverted to more new-media-relevant topics, such as the role of LA collectors in market-making for YIBA (or YIBI) art.