Artist Lecture #3 - Paola Antonelli

Yesterday I went to the lecture by Paola Antonelli, it was some pretty interesting stuff. She is a design expert, architect, teacher, author and curator for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her exhibitions looked interesting but it's hard to talk about them because of the limited amount of images. She did talk about some interesting things though. What I liked most was what she was saying about the interactions between scientists and designers. I think it is important that scientists and designers stay connected and work intimately with one another for the bettering of future technology and goods. I thought it was funny what she said about scientists not making their powerpoints look too elegant because they would not be taken seriously.

With new technology comes new possibilities, her speaking of the great change in ease of making a plastic chair reminded me of recording music. When I got into home recording, I didn't realize the quality that is possible these days. I expected that in order to get a decent recording you had to go to a real studio, but with improvements in technology it is becoming more and more possible to make studio-sounding recordings with just a laptop and minimal equipment.

Something else that she said that I thought was really interesting and I believe is probably true, was that she thinks if children can look at art and enjoy it then it is probably good. Children have the best opinions about that sort of thing because they haven't gotten their minds all mixed up yet. They don't have the same inhibitions and preconceptions that soil the way older people see things.

Contest #2 - The Art of Photography

Artist #19 - 4.12.10 - Diego Stocco

Today Paul showed me a video in our meeting of a guy playing a tree like an instrument, I was very impressed and so I decided to do my artist blog on him. His name is Diego Stocco. He is a sound designer/composer, and has worked on a variety of popular films, TV shows, and video games. He has also done sound design for patches on popular keyboards like the Korg Triton series. I know he's not really a visual artist but his work does pertain to mine in that mine is about sound and also his methods could be very useful to me, in my music as well as my art. I was noticing the types of microphones he uses to record his sounds, some of which were unfamiliar and intriguing. In "Music From A Tree" he uses a stethoscope at one point, and in "Music From Sand" he uses what looks like some sort of metal stick that somehow picks up sound. His use of super-amplified sounds is really interesting to me, things that don't seem like they really make much noise can become big, full sounds. As if you are suddenly very small, where sounds like rustling sand becomes as loud as an avalanche. Here is his website and some videos of his work
www.diegostocco.com


Music From A Tree, Diego Stocco, 2009


Experibass, Diego Stocco, 2009


Music from Sand, Diego Stocco, 2009

Idea #18 - 4.8.10 - Some new pieces

Lately I've been working on a few new things that are a little different than what I had been doing, but I feel like they are working. One of the ideas was this one,

Tree Sounds, Justin Lewis, 2010

I am not sure if I am happy with the image yet, I couldn't quite work it out, the way I had it in my head, but I do like the way the lines work together in it. I feel like this piece is dealing with ideas that I was working with last semester, about nature and it's importance, but it goes with my current work because it is also about sound and listening. I like that it is kind of humorous or absurd and lightly begs the viewer to 'listen' to nature.

Another idea that I have executed is this piece, Three Waves (Light, Water, Sound). This one feels like the most successful, in it I have taken a speaker box, covered the speaker holes with bags of water filled half way, shined a light through the back and placed a woofer speaker in the back of the enclosure. The speaker has the effect of creating subtle ripples in the water that change depending on the frequency of the sound. I really like the glowing effect it has, the interaction between the smoothness of the bags of water and the texture of the box. I suppose this piece is a sound sculpture, so I should have shot a video of it to show it's full effect.

Three Waves (Light, Water, Sound), Justin Lewis, 2010

Three Waves (Light, Water, Sound) Justin Lewis, 2010

Three Waves (Light Water Sound)(detail) Justin Lewis, 2010

And I have done another piece called "Rocking Speaker"



Rocking Speaker, Justin Lewis, 2010
Basically it is a speaker on a pole stand rocking back and forth to ambient or minimal music. This piece is also a sculpture but can be shown as video as well. In fact, it should be shown as a video at this point because I haven't figured out a way to make the stand rock for an extended period of time on its own. The stand is built a little off balance so if I just give it a little push it will rock for a while, but to install it as a sculpture in a gallery I would need a way to keep it rocking. It would be cool if I could control this by the tempo of the music, but I will have to do some research to figure out if that is possible. I sort of discovered this piece on accident when I made the speaker stands for my studio. The sheet metal I used for the base is a little too thin so it curved a little when I welded it so now, while it still supports the speakers, it is easily rocked with a push.

Artist #17 - 4.5.10 - Stephen Vitiello

I think I might have written about Stephen Vitiello at some point last semester, but I keep coming across him and am really enjoying his work, he is also an assistant professor here at VCU in the kinetic imaging department, I believe Paul had a show with him at Transmission a few years ago as well. One of his pieces that I had not seen until now but was astonished when I saw it, LFO Drawings, is something I was attempting last semester. I had set up a sub-woofer and filled it with watery acrylic paint, then blasted some bumpin' music. Unfortunately, my amp wasn't strong enough to get the speakers to really move enough to get the paint onto the paper in any sort of interesting way, no matter how loud I turned it up. I had planned on trying again when I could afford a nice amp, but it looks like Vitiello has already done it. On the bright side, this makes me think that I do have ideas worth executing. I would like to think of another way to use the process of making music or sound to make imagery as well. Most of Vitiello's work is composed of various sound recordings sometimes arranged in a musical, albeit unusual, method. The music follows a strange rhythm, making it more ambient than anything. Something that I thought was interesting about it is that some of these pieces which don't have any of the traditional qualities of music, Vitiello has still managed to be able to play with the listeners emotions through these dynamic and rich soundscapes. Here is a link to some of his sound pieces, http://www.stephenvitiello.com/index.php?id=C0_4_2 and here are a few visuals,

Stephen Vitiello - LFO Drawings


Stephen Vitiello - Speaker Shooting (Cannon)


Stephen Vitiello - Four Color Sound

Idea #16 - 4.1.10 - A few ideas

Up until my meeting with Paul, I hadn't really been looking ahead and didn't realize that panel review was so near, so I've been trying to get some ideas for new work for my portfolio. I've got a few that I like and will be executing today. Something else that I've been doing is when I'm listening to music I will watch TV on mute just to see what kind of random music/imagery associations can be made. It has proven interesting and often comedic but hasn't yielded any good ideas though.
One idea I want to do is a piece to be entitled "Microphone Recording Camera Recording Microphone" it will be a photograph to go along with a sound recording entitled "Camera Recording Microphone Recording Camera" It will consist of a photograph of a microphone, and an audio recording of the length of the shutter of the camera photographing the microphone. It will be a long exposure to allow for the sound recording to have some presence to it. The good thing about this is I don't think you necessarily need the sound recording so the image can stand alone in my portfolio.
I also had some other things that I've done this year that I wanted to include in my portfolio, but are somewhat unrelated to the bulk of my other work which is based on music. I am still thinking about if I want to do this or not. If I don't then that is more new work I have to produce, but if I do I may risk a lack of cohesiveness throughout my portfolio. One of these pieces would be my "Don't Look At This Piece", the gallery version of "Don't Talk About This Piece" which was an idea I had for a work that was to be viewed in a critique environment. To bring this piece into the area that the rest of my work is in, I was thinking that I could just tack "Listen To It." on the end so the piece would be "Don't Look At This Piece, Listen To It." This changes the meaning of it a lot, but I kind of like what it does to it. It creates a conundrum, and I think it still has the effect of heightening the viewers senses by asking the viewer to attempt to do something senseless. I also like it because it kind of sets the table for the rest of my work.
If anyone is reading this, please give me your thoughts.

Artist #15 - 3.29.10 - Carol Bove

At our meeting, Paul suggested I check out Carol Bove. There were a few pieces of hers that I really liked, but for the most part I thought her stuff was stupid. Some of her installations were really interesting though, like this one.Carol Bove, The Night Sky over New York, October 21, 2007, 9 p.m., 2007.

In it she has mapped out stars exactly where they are on the ceiling in a web with copper bars hanging from each star point. It reminds me of rays of light, as if they are traveling through space from light years away and I can see all of them falling here. This is one of her more aesthetically pleasing pieces as well, which was another reason I liked it. When I first saw it I thought it was some kind of sound art using wind chimes, when I found out it wasn't, it gave me an idea of an installation where the people in the gallery cannot help but occasionally knock a wind chime, thereby creating a sort of organic, accidental music. Although, this may not work because people might try really hard to avoid touching them, or if there are too many, the viewer may be annoyed. Here are a few more of Bove's work that I enjoyed. I like the ones that use a lot of repetition or pattern.Carol Bove, Untitled, 2009

Carol Bove, Tower of the Prophet, 2002

The ones I particularly didn't like were her bookshelf pieces. I didn't get how these are art. I did some reading, but still couldn't see the what the concept was of placing these items from the 60's and 70's on shelves. Maybe it is for the same reason that Paul couldn't respond to the image I brought him, the media didn't allow him to access the piece. I suppose it is possible that if I saw these in physical form, I would feel differently about them, but as they are, I am not interested.

Idea #14 - Metaphor/Metonym

The other day I was trying to understand contemporary art better and I came across a discussion board about the differences between modern and post-modern art. They said that a big difference is that modernism tends to use metaphors, where post-modernism uses metonymy. I knew that a metaphor is something that is meant to represent something else. For example, a staircase could be a metaphor for life. I am still trying to understand metonymy but my understanding is that a metonym for life could be something like a human or animal, something associated with life. A metonym is more of an association where metaphor is a similarity. After learning this, I'm still not sure how this applies to visual art, I think I get it as far as verbal use, but when it comes to either in art I have trouble understanding what the metonym/metaphor is referencing and differentiating between the two. That is, even knowing this, I still can't differentiate between modern and post-modern art. It seems like modern art is more non-representational, which makes me think that the abstraction is the metaphor. I might be thinking too into it, maybe I shouldn't worry about what is what and just use what I need to use to convey my message.

Artist #13 - 3.22.10 - The Baschet Brothers

While looking for art that deals with music I came across the Baschet Brothers. They create thing that are musical instruments as well as sculptures. I like the idea of these things that look interesting on their own and can be discovered as being musical and interactive. It inspires me to want to make some of my own musical instruments. I have thought of this before, but not in the context of being sculptural as well. I think it would be difficult to achieve something that looks appealing but also sounds good. It is an art all in itself to make an instrument so that it plays in key and has tuned harmonics. Unfortunately my computer is currently out of service and the sound doesn't work on the one I am using so I haven't been able to listen to the sounds the Bashet Brother's instruments make. I am very curious though, it's always cool to hear something with an unusual timbre. I played a didgeridoo over break which is a very unique instrument, but very simple. It is mostly a percussion instrument, these don't necessarily need to be tuned so perhaps if I were to make an instrument it would be a percussive one to eliminate the necessity for fine tuning, I could just focus on resonance. Here are some of the Baschet's pieces:

Francois Baschet

Banjo - 1952

Baschet Brothers - Cristal Baschet

Justin Lewis - 3.22.10 - Anderson Gallery Submittion

Here is a photo of the framed images I am submitting to the Anderson Gallery

Idea #12 - 3.11.10 - Loosining my noose

From my critique I feel like the most important thing I could do is loosen up the way that I make my finished work. I am imaging 'playing' my images. I need a method that allows me to juxtapose my imagery more through feeling. Almost like painting or playing an instrument in the way that you can quickly morph and change a piece by feeling the brushstrokes/note combonations. I kind of like the idea of collage because it kind of can have this property, especially if I were to do it by hand. I think a touch of hand working might be beneficial to my work. However, I don't know how I feel about the aesthetics of collage, and I think the idea of a musical process could be pushed more too. I also have been thinking of moving away from photography, using it only as documentation and focusing more on materials. I think I spoke earlier about my peanut-butter hammock. I think this has the problem of using it's own language but I'm starting to feel like I am having trouble understanding what language could be used other than that.

On a completely different topic, going back to something I started working on the beginning of last semester. I just had the idea of creating a large scale photo of a pretty landscape or something natural and put it on the floor, dividing the space. How would viewers react to it? Would they jump over it? How long before people are stepping on it? I feel like it presents the idea of nature as an obstacle. Do they treat it like an inconvenient piece of art? Or do they destroy it just to pass by? Maybe the big question is would it make them angry or would they appreciate it? Of course this would have to be with the permission of my fellow students because people would have to jump(or just walk) over my piece to get to some of theirs.

Artist Lecture #2 - Sanford Biggers

I almost didn't go to the lecture today because I had a crit at 2:00, but I had to get money to Ashley S, so I decided to go but I had to leave a little early. I'm glad I went though because I really enjoyed a lot of his work. Of course I was very interested in his musical influences as my work is dealing with ideas about music. I also love hip-hop music so it was cool to see art that deals with themes about hip-hop.

I thought something kind of interesting happened when he showed the first video. At one point when it is demanding that everyone get up out of their chairs, hang out the window, and get mad. I almost expected people to get up, or I almost felt the desire myself to get up, but everyone just sat there. It just seemed funny in the context of having all those people watching it.
I also enjoyed his breakdancing piece, when viewed from the top it, like the synchronized dancers, creates a sort of human visualizer and puts the art of breakdancing in a place that treats it as an art. I liked the idea of it being a Buddhist pattern which brings to mind the idea of dance or music as meditation or spirituality. This is something I would like to incorporate in my work.


I couldn't find an image of it on-line, but I thought his piece with the footage of the black and white families was very interesting because for a while I didn't realize that the two families were of different races. That was one of the last things I noticed, which really made the piece a lot stronger for me.
One of the last pieces I saw was this one, I thought it was visually really cool, but I didn't really get it.

Artist #11 - 3.6.10 - Arturo Herrera

I was browsing the Art 21 website and I came across Arturo Herrera. His work, like mine, is inspired by music. He uses methods of splicing and re-contextualizing various sources into abstractions. This method reminds me of how some music is made. Often artists, particularly hip-hop producers, will slice up music samples by other artists and rearrange clips to form a new composition, often with a totally different sound than the original song. I found this quote by Herrera where he relates music to his work that I thought was great,

"Music is related to the way of thinking for what I do- because music offers no solution. It has no content. It’s just total subjectivity. So it lasts for a limited time, and it’s gone. Unless somebody plays it...it’s just non-existent. This experience of making it happen and then disappear- the transient nature of music- is fascinating to me. I’d like the visual images that I’m trying to do to be nonobjective, just like music"

This is a good expression of how I am feeling lately. I am trying to incorporate imagery in my work, but the problems I am coming up with are that when I listen to music I do not usually imagine a scenario, or an image per say. Instead I imagine a quality that might be found in an image, but might not be the subject of the photo. So when I attempt to juxtapose images that I feel have these qualities, their content seems at odds with what I might be trying to say. I want my images to be abstract and non-objective, but I feel a pressure to use photos of things because it seems like using abstraction doesn't communicate anything to anyone anymore. I feel like abstraction is the best (and maybe only) way to visually express music. It doesn't have to be like a visualizer, but to use a combination of objective images seems too close to a film.

Here is some of his work

"Untitled"
2003
Enamel paint on wall, dimensions site specific

"Untitled"
2002
Collage (gouache on paper), 9 1/4 x 7 inches

"Before We Leave"
2001
Wool felt, 84 x 144 inches

Idea #10 - 3.4.10 - Back to color fields

While thinking of ways to present my work, keep coming back to a sort of color field approach to my image arrangement. The way that I am working is similar to color field painters in that there is a great importance in relationships between colors, image qualities, space, and size, but instead of working in one canvas, I will be composing installations of multiple images. I am imagining each instrument as having it's own image and then arranging them in accordance to their presence in the song. I will be kind of mapping out a song like I've always been doing, but now I feel like instead of presenting everything in a song in one image, I am more free to explore how different elements can interweave with one another. The images will be composed based on the feeling of an instrument, like a trumpet would be an image of something bright, tight, sharp and exciting. If it is a trumpet solo, or the trumpet is the prominent instrument in the song, the image may be big or may span the whole composition, but maybe the trumpet just adds little accents throughout the song; then there might be multiples of the same image and would be small and placed throughout as visual accents to other images. Rhythm is important but may not stay exact to the song, instead it will be built based on an overall rhythm in a song, not on individual beats as my work was before.

Artist #9 - 3.1.10 - John Baldessari

One of the artists Paul told me to look at in our first meeting was John Baldessari. Some of his work I do not get at all, but some of it I think is awesome. The stuff' that first struck me was his text work like these:

John Baldessari (b. 1931)

Painting for Kubler
acrylic on canvas
67 7/8 x 56½ in. (172.4 x 143.5 cm.)
Painted in 1966-1968.

John Baldessari, Solving Each Problem as It Arises

John Baldessari
Everything is Purged...
1966-68
68 x 56 in.

What I like about this work is that it is talking about art, it is causing the artist to consider the paradigm that he exists in. My favorite one is Painting for Kubler because I see it as applying to aspects of society other than art. Things like our economic system, art, or even culture are entities on their own. We know nothing outside of them. I feel like they could all be compared to a strange, ancient flying machine that we pushed off a cliff, we only think we're flying because we haven't hit the ground yet. This piece suggests that there are other paths that art (or economics or culture) could have taken, but after it got going in this direction, that is all there could be. If it were all to crumble, what would the next attempt look like? Surely a totally different paradigm.
In "Solving Each Problem as It Arises" I thought it was interesting how he ends it. I think this points at an important flaw in art; how people who aren't artists view art. This piece might not even be about that, but it makes me think about how a normal person, who doesn't know much about art can interpret some of the stuff artists make. As artists are we making art for each other(other artists), or for everyone?

Some of his other work is inaccessible to me, pieces like this for example,

Yves Saint Laurent Shirt
John Baldessari

Is this of a religious nature? Is it about temptation? What is the significance of the painted-over faces with grayscale noses and ears? The title references the shirt, but it doesn't seem to be about the shirt at all, is it about consumerism? Is this supposed to be some kind of modern portrait of adam and eve? This stuff seems to be his most popular work, but it doesn't speak the same way other stuff of his does.

Idea #8 - 2.25.10 - A Few Ideas

For this idea post, I wanted to put down some ideas I've been thinking about.

1. This one might be too crazy and inaccessible because I think it has the problem of utilizing a made-up language, which I guess is like what I was doing before. Another problem is that it brings me away from photography and more into sculpture. Here it is anyway... When I hear music I often find different instruments or melodies to have textures, sizes, or some dimension or quality about them that brings a feeling, when I try to identify these feelings words like silky, tight, or wet are what come to mind, among others. For example, a bassline can be hammocking a chunky guitar with a sticky drum. When I hear this song I dont imagine a hammock filled with peanut butter but when I try to rationalize the words for the feelings that each part gives me, that is what comes to mind. What I love about this idea is the abstractness and absurdness of it. A problem that I am having with using imagery is that I feel a pressure to have actual 'things' in my photos, which feels at odds with instrumental music, and in this case, I feel like the quality of the materials would be important and would be lost in a photo.

2. In an attempt to make it more about photography, I thought to try shooting photos with long shutter speeds while making a sound recording of that same moment. It seems interesting to me but I'm struggling with what meaning it has. What is the implication of the image being still? Make it moving and it is a video. Is it a statement on the nature of photography? Is it about time? A photograph can contain a moment in time, whether a fraction of a second or 30 minutes but no matter how long, it can be experienced instantly. Sound can only be depicted through time, or in a visual representation which is then essentially a photograph which could not be identified by anything other than 'a sound wave' by a viewer. Perhaps in this type of work I would be dealing with ideas about how accurately a photograph can portray life. I'm not sure, I dont know if this is a good idea either.

3. I imagined something more interactive that deals with the same stuff I've been working with. I thought about fashioning a keyboard that lights up and is basically a manifestation of the color/music theory I've developed. The viewer immediately sees how the colors of the rainbow are related to the keyboard, so if they were to play a set of complimentary colors they hear it as harmonious. In theory, someone who is really in touch with color relationships might be able to play the piano beatifly without knowing anything about music, but by simply choosing key combinations based on their colors.
I like this idea the most, however, I imagine a slew of technical aspects that might make it impossible. It also isn't photography. For some reason I can't seem to develop ideas that stay exclusively in the realm of photography. All of these still are incorporating music or sound in some way but for a lot of reasons I feel like should try to not even use sound or music at all. But how can I express the ideas I'm working with, without the element of sound? Can I make photography that truely has the experience of music? I don't know, I've gotten myself pretty confused at this point.

Artist #7 - 2.22.10 - Christian Marclay

During our meeting, Paul suggested I look at Christian Marclay. He was one of the first people to use turntables as an instrument, independently, but around the same time as hip-hop artists were beginning to do so as well. Most of his work deals with altering or destroying records to produce interesting music loops or soundscapes. My criticism is that he doesn't make music so much as he just makes noise, or "sound collages". I understand that he is an innovator of this sort of thing but my interest ends there. I suppose it's hard for me to grasp why you would want to make music sound bad. Of course this gets into the whole discussion of what 'good' music even is which could be a whole other blog post.

The method of using multiple musical samples to make something new reminds me of a lot of modern music. DJ Girl Talk is someone who is pushing the limits of this method but doing it in a much more musical way than Marclay. He takes parts of numerous hit songs and arranges them in such a way that they continuously and seamlessly play play with and mold into one another. Also on a less notable level, in the recent past it was the standard for hip-hop artists to make beats composed of sliced samples of old records and turntable scratching. Marclay's work reminds me of non-rhythmic hip-hop.

Marclay also does visual work although, like myself, his visual work seems inferior to his audio work(aside from his installations, which I like the most). Here are a few of those,

Christian Marclay, Stereo Volume, 1989

Christian Marclay, Guitar Drag, 2000

Christian Marclay, Ensemble, 2007

Christian Marclay, Ensemble, 2007



Christian Marclay, Video Quartet, 2002

I found an interview with him where he mentions something that reminds me a lot of myself, in it he says, "Being in art school and wanting to make music was not an obvious choice but I felt a lot more energy coming out of the music world than from the art world. When I was visiting New York on the weekends, I tended to gravitate more towards what was happening in music clubs than towards what was happening in museums and galleries." To be perfectly honest, I have little interest in the art world, but I could spend hours in the basement at Plan 9. It's not that I don't like art, I just don't like what art is these days. So instead of looking for visual artists, I usually spend more time looking for new musical artists. It seems like other artists keep up with artists the way I keep up with musicians, looking for their new work or where they are showing next. I came to school to learn how to be a photographer, not necessarily a fine art photographer. But since that's what I'm doing, I feel like I can use music more expressively as art than I can photography.

Idea #6 - 2.18.10 - Tryin to think outside the frame

During my individual meeting with Paul, we discussed how I could bring my photography to have the same impact as my music. He suggested that I try to ignore what I think the rules of photography are and use imagery in any way I can to get the effect I want. Some ideas I have been working with are multiple images that together can created a mood or scenario, not just in their content but in their arrangement, repetition, and colors. However, I am afraid that this language may brush too close to what a movie or music video is. It is still a bit unclear to me as to how I can really build a strong relation to the music in this way without becoming too much like a music video. I think perhaps the difference is that I believe that qualities of music can be captured in still imagery, I just need to find an effective way of communicating this. I also want to toy with how music changes the context of an image. For example an innocent image may become sinister in combination with ominous music, and then may change back to playful with a happier tune or vice-versa. And although I know the language I have created of connecting colors to musical notes seems to be inaccessible, I still want to incorporate it. Griffin suggested that I use a sort of key in my artist statement, which I think would be helpful in understanding my work.

Artist Lecture #1 - 2.16.10 - Hank Willis Thomas

I attended the Hank Willis Thomas lecture and thought that it was good. Particularly his stuff that deals with advertising. I thought it was funny what he said about MasterCard having an ironic name because most of us are in debt to them. His series Br@nded was really cool, and I found it interesting what he said about when he was showing the series people didn't know that they weren't advertisements. It makes me wonder how much people were even paying attention, because although they have the language of advertising, they clearly are 'advertising' a different agenda. My favorite piece was this one,

I thought it was interesting how he has shown basketball as a means of holding down black people. It seems that the media has convinced many black men that basketball or rap music is their only way to success, limiting their progression in other areas. And something interesting he said was "we came here in chains and now we're still wearing them." And of course, the reason is not as any sort of memorial, but rather a perpetuation of the media's portrayal of black men.

I also thought the works where he removed the text out of magazine ads were very interesting, but I found myself wondering what kind of crazy subliminals he could find if he didn't limit himself to portrayals of black people. I understand that the portrayals of blacks is central to his idea, but it is clear, to me at least, that advertising has always been building and perpetuating some strange TV world of misplaced ideals and skewed interpretations of real life.

Artist #5 - 2.15.10 - Ciro Totku

Today I want to talk about Ciro Totku. He is a Russian abstract photographer working in Cambodia. Totku finds his images mostly in nature and although I chose him for his use of color, not all his work is in color. His work is similar to the last photographer I talked about, Mark Mason. While looking through his work, I found myself often wishing I had some of these bright colorful images to explore musically. When I shoot I tend to focus on compositional elements, and while I enjoy his compositional sensibilities, his work has inspired me to look more for colors and interesting color relationships. I realized that this is the most important thing I could do considering my work is all about relationships between colors and musical notes. The more complex my color relationships, the more interesting my musical scores could be.

Research #4 - 2.11.10 - Room Acoustics

A big part of my work, particularly on the audio side, is the space in which I create the work. The shape of a room, placement of speakers and combination reflective and non-reflective surfaces play a huge part in how I hear and record sounds when making my work. This is also something that should be considered for exhibition as it will play an important role in how the viewer hears the work. To begin, I am recording and mixing in the extra room of my apartment. It is roughly 9'x14' with high ceilings. Ideally, I would like to be in a perfect acoustically engineered recording studio, but given the space that I have, I need to optimize it's acoustic properties. Fortunately, the room is rectangular, which is not ideal, but in my research I found that a perfect cube is the worst possible scenario. The fewer parallel surfaces the better, so that certain frequencies do not build up. I had covered most of the walls with egg cartons because I believed it provided a better listening environment, but in my research I found that they are really only useful to dampen the sound. This will be good for recording, as it will reduce background echoes, but it leaves me needing panels for sound absorbtion when mixing. For now I will have to rely on my couch as my main place of absorbtion but I have also read that large pillows in the corners are a cheap solution for bass traps. A bass trap is an absorbtion device that prevents uneven bass response so that certain frequencies do not get amplified or lulled by the shape of the room. I read that in a rectangular room, it is best to face one of the shorter walls when mixing. I also read that having speakers in the corner of a room, or right up against the wall are bad choices so I have placed my speakers about 1.75' from the 9' wall placed at 46" apart. I read you want to put yourself in an equilateral triangle with your speakers. Therefore, given the distance between my speakers, I have placed my listening position at 5'4" from the wall which puts my speakers at about 30%. After rearranging for this new set-up, I can already hear a difference and new clarity while I'm mixing. I need to read more on how different environments might react and will have to consider this for exhibition once I know the space the work will be in. Here's a picture of the studio:

Artist #3 - 2.8.10 - Brian Eno

Brian Eno

Since my latest piece is dealing with a sort of transient minimal ambiant type of music, I wanted to talk about Brian Eno. He was one of the pioneers of minimal and ambient music so naturally, I should have a listen to him as one of the firsts. I have his album, Ambient 1/Music for Airports and from what I have heard, his work is very similar to the sound the I am looking for in this particular piece. It is very airy and open. The first song is most like what I am looking for, with a sort of sauntering piano accompanied by some long triumphant pads. Even though this album has plenty of silence, I feel I want even less driving the song foreward, or fewer, but more intense segments of instrumentation. I do like how the songs stay true to their themes; they focus on a certain melody and allow different instruments to carry that melody, lead into or out of it, branch off from it, and sort of hammock it as well. It seems the most important thing is that the melody can stand on its own in the void that is created by the silence. It doesn't leave the listener waiting for more, it is acceptable simply to be let be and contemplated upon before it begins again and continues. Eno's music theory is very complex which is kind of discouraging, but as far as theory goes, I rely on the colors in the photograph to decide that. I am really only taking notes on Eno's style, which is what I will need to understand in order to accomplish the vibe I am looking for.

Idea #2 - 2.4.10 - Snow

I am interested in the ephemeral and the transient, and the snow has provided me a good means of exploring this. The snow falls and melts over time(at least in our part of the world), and can visually bears a resemblance to sound as well. For example Wassily Kandinsky said that the color white represented silence, but a silence full of hope, like a break in a song or the time between songs on an album. In a photograph of the snow, the shape of the tremendous white negative space becomes the subject of the photograph, I am going to work on a song that is more about what you don't hear than what you do. Not in the way John Cage's "4:33" looks at silence as music, but rather to compare the negative space of the photograph with music dealing with negative space, or white noise. The tones of the music will emerge from the ambiance as the snow-shielded dark areas emerge from the blanket of snow. I imagine soft music of an ambient style. My only problem with this is the lack of color variety, I see some reds and blues, but that doesn't give me much to work with musically. Of course, I do want this to be a minimal song, but I will use Photoshop's color-picker to see if there are any more subtle hues that I can derive a musical scale from.

Artist #1 - 2.01.10 - Mark Mason

At the current state of my work, the visual side is represented in abstract photographs. I feel they best portray the abstraction that is music. My music has no lyrics, so I feel my photographs should have no story to accompany them. I am interested mostly in natural abstractions. These scenes can be found anywhere and each one describes something about life, about the way things work and why they are the way they are. For example, this seemingly random, yet organically structured beauty can be found in the way paint chips and peels off of a wall, or in any given gum-spattered slab of sidewalk. No one created these abstractions, they simply came to be. So today I want to talk about Mark Mason, I came across him while researching abstract photography and was pleased to find that his images are very similar to mine. I have heard from people that these types of images are nothing but cathartic work that you do when you're bored. This always discouraged me because that's the work I like to do, I am not particularly interested in post-modernism. I suppose Mason is doing well enough as one of the top rankers in Google for abstract photographer, so he has inspired me to shoot what I want. Here is some of his work,

Mark Mason, Inverted Paint Splashes: Calgary, AB, 2007

Mark Mason, Swirled Sheet Metal: Near Baker, CA, 2008

Mark Mason,
Poster Scraps: Athens, Greece, 2008

Mark Mason, Smoke Damage: Calgary, AB, 2007

Visually I enjoy his work a great deal because I feel he has very similar sensibilities to me. Something that struck me as being true to my own work was how Mason describes his methods of making his work, "I create when I feel a connection. A subject's shapes, colours, and textures are only vessels, like words in a poem, to help explain what I feel. To this end, I work with my subjects spontaneously, as I find them, and do all of my creative manipulation with traditional optics, in the field." This feels like an accurate description of what guides me in the creation of my photographs. The shapes, colors, and textures are indeed like the words to a poem, or in my case, the melody of a song. I am taking it a step further by trying to understand these elements further by means of connecting them with music.