Tripwire

By Jean-Michel Albert / Ashley Fure:



(Thanks, Julie!)

"Sustenance" Update

Lots more visuals of the exhibition here. (For a larger version of the image at left, click on it; the work is by Jesse Morgan Barnett.)

The exhibition includes works by Brian Fridge, Chris Hefner, Darryl Lauster, Devin King, Frances Bagley, Iris Bechtol, Jeff Zilm, Jesse Morgan Barnett, Justin Ginsberg, Kate Helmes, Kimberly Aubuchon, Kristin Mariani, Linnea Glatt & Jim Cinquemani, Lizzy Wetzel, Lou Mallozzi, Ludwig Schwarz, Matt Hanner, Michael Mazurek, Patrick Murphy, Sedrick Huckaby, Shannon Brunskill (with Courtney Brown), Tom Orr, and Temporary Services. Exhibition checklist and more at the Sustenance FB page or blog.

"Sustenance" Exhibition

. . . opened at 11am today in the blue building at 337 Singleton Blvd., Dallas, and will stay open 'til 10pm tonite (and the show will be up for a month or so; see the Sustenance FB page or blog for more details).

Congrats to Stephen Lapthisophon, Anne Lawrence, and all the artists on an exciting show. (The pic at right is what you might see as you enter Brian Fridge's installation.)

Notes from Anne about the opening today:

Shannon Brunskill and Courtney Brown will start their performance around 11 a.m.
Linnea Glatt and Jim Cinquemani will start the "Social Circle: Watermelon Social" around 6 p.m.
Devin King will be performing in his space on the 2nd floor around 9 p.m.

There is plenty of parking around the building. You can turn into the lot before the building, closest to the bridge or park in the large open lot across the street. Be careful crossing Continental! The cars are fast.

The exhibition includes a small installation of ART WORK newspapers and related materials. These are truly the LAST of what I've got, so come 'n get 'em.

Report on "Modern Ruin"

I loved the concept and the works shown, which were especially impressive considering the artists had less than two weeks to conceive and create their contributions.

The show was organized by Christina Rees and Thomas Feulmer, and the artists included Frances Bagley, Tim Best, Michael Corris, Thomas Feulmer, Annette Lawrence, M, Margaret Meehan, Tom Orr, Richard Patterson, Cameron Schoepp, Noah Simblist, Christoph Trendel, Terri Thornton, Kevin Todora, and Jeff Zilm.

The piece shown here is Double Trouble by Noah Simblist (2010, paint on wall). Per the artist, the statistics are the amount of foreign aid the U.S. gives to Israel and the number of Palestinian houses that were destroyed anyway. (The ambiguity in relation to bank bailouts and home foreclosures in the U.S. was intentional.)

More photos and details here, and I'll add more info there if I get it.

UPDATE: NPR's Marketplace will air an interview re- the show TONIGHT ca. 6:30 PM (I presume that's CST.) In Dallas, that'll be on 90.1 FM.

One of Adam's Recs: Len Lye's "Swinging the Lambeth Walk"

Visuals apparently hand-made; note the audio's spliced. Per Wikipedia,

"The Lambeth Walk" is a song from the 1937 musical Me and My Girl . . . . The song takes its name from a local street once notable for its street market and working class culture in Lambeth, an area of London, England.

The tune gave its name to a Cockney dance first made popular in 1937 by Lupino Lane. The story line of the original show concerns a Cockney barrow boy who inherits an earldom but almost loses his Lambeth girlfriend. . . .

An SA Mann of the Nazi Party declared the Lambeth Walk "Jewish mischief and animalistic hopping" in early 1939 as part of a speech about how the "revolution of private life" was one of the next big tasks of National Socialism.

In 1942 Charles A. Ridley of the British Ministry of Information made a short propaganda film, Lambeth Walk - Nazi Style, which edited existing footage of Hitler and German soldiers (taken from Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will) to make it appear as if they were marching and dancing to "The Lambeth Walk." The film so enraged Joseph Goebbels that he ran out of the screening room kicking chairs and screaming profanities.

Check out Adam's other recs, too; e.g., "The Internet in 1969":

Adam Bork

I like how the visual aspects work with the street/movement noise, as well as Adam's moog/organ music (which was in fact audible outdoors -- not just layered into the YouTube video). Check out more of Adam's work here.

Flight of the Conchords, for Real

Here.

"Joshuah Bearman alerted me to David Dixon's amazing audio archive website, which has links to audio files that people recorded at home and unwittingly sent to Napster.

"'This was right around the time that Napster was just beginning to penetrate into the average computer user's lives. At the same time, an audio utility program called MusicMatch Jukebox was also being widely used, since it was often pre-installed on off-the-shelf PC's. MMJ allowed you, among other things, to make recordings using the cheap microphone included with the PC, and save the file in mp3 format. If you didn't give the audio file a name, it assigned a default name "mic in track" followed by a number. Now if you were also running Napster, and you were careless enough to be sharing everything on your computer (which *many* were), then anyone also running Napster could just do a search for "mic in track" and find and download these personal recordings, usually without your knowledge.

"'I am that guy. I've amassed many, many hours of these recordings, which provide endless voyeuristic entertainment. Typical recordings were of people singing, rapping, or playing along with the radio (often badly), kids practicing their school book reports, audio love letters, kids being silly, and so forth. One of my finds was a 14-minute-long recording of a guy praying very fervently and emotionally, even lapsing into glossolalia. I've posted many of my favorites on my webpage, for free.'"

Joshuah Bearman, via boing boing (thanks, ben!) Check out Joshuah's other rec'd links, including a QVC spoof by ten-year-olds or a "jug band hillbilly cover version, or really sequel to," Juvenile's Back That Thing Up.

Update on CentralTrak Schedule

The Wim Wenders screenings and the two Art+Tech talks have been deleted (I wondered how they were going to do everything). There's still lots to do; see the official calendar here, and my updated post here.

Upcoming at CentralTrak

Charissa T. and Mary B. have been working hard. Here are a few (tho' by no means all of the) upcoming events (selected purely based on my own interests):

Now thru Jan. 20: Vicious Pink, curated by Mary Benedicto. Image left: Kirsten Macy's A Girl Named Ham & the Sportsman Royal (2008; courtesy Barry Whistler Gallery).

1-8-09: Artist's Talk on Dreamyourtopia, by Daniel Rozenberg, at the DMA. See below.

1-10-09, 5-9PM: Checkpoint Dreamyourtopia. As I understand, you'll have to pass through border control to get to the bar and band.

I'm fascinated with immigration.

First, I believe freedom of travel is a fundamental human right, and suspect nationalism and national borders to be feudal figments perpetuated by oligarchs who would prefer that power over the migration of jobs and us serfs be retained by themselves rather than us. Second, it should be obvious to any sane observer that, because of the demographically gigantic population of boomer oldsters and the relatively tiny cohorts coming up behind them, we desperately need immigrant worker/taxpayer/consumers to help keep the U.S. economy afloat during the next several decades. Third, in what must be one of our times' supreme ironies, border control has nonetheless become the subject of intense focus by right-minded xenophobes and security/control freaks in general. Fourth, I think most students of cultural history will confirm that the intermingling of cultures has often resulted in humanity's most notable flourishings in arts, sciences, etc. Fifth, surveillance, border and boundary control, balances of knowledge about who's up to what -- whether among citizens, furriners, or those who purport to serve us in gummint or their private contractors -- the need for moderation between openness and closedness, in order for any organism, species, or other system to survive -- I think these are all incredibly interesting and important issues (I've made work on and written about these here and elsewhere). Sixth, I'm curious about the seeming conflation of brains and guts. If I recall correctly, there's a biological basis: our brains/nervous systems are closely related to our skins, as are our guts: these are the membranes through which we process what's outside us.

I've suggested a related contest, but not sure whether it will/shd happen, but let me know if you want it to: who can get through checkpoint Dreamyourtopia quickest while carrying (or constituting) the most subversive contraband that's not actually illegal. I'd personally offer the winner a prize having no discernible worth, plus equally negligible fanfare, probably on this very blog.

1-24-09, 6-8PM: Midnight Special, a cooperative event with and/or gallery and House of Dang.

1-29-09, 6PM: Artist's Talk by Kevin Bewersdorf. Kevin had a show at and/or and was in the movie LOL shown at the Dallas Video Festival 2007, etc.



1-31-09, 6-8PM: Openings of exhibitions, Highest Fidelity: I am a Sound Technician, by Frank Dufour, and Commute Portraits by Florencia Levy.

2-7-09: Open-Forum Discussion: New Music-Electronica Scene, DFW/Denton, with Paul Slocum, CJ Davis, and Robert Howell.

2-14-09: Plush Crush, a collaborative event with Plush Gallery.

2-25-09: Lecture: "What Time Is It? Episodic Time in the Road Movie" by Charissa Terranova.

3-7-09: Symposium: Woman Body Image: Half Lives of the Cyborg Manifesto 25 Years After, with Kristin Lucas, Juliet MacCannell, Orit Halpern, and Irina Aristarkhova. Lucas had a great show at and/or earlier this year.

3-21-09: Carnivale.

See CentralTrak's Calendar for more details.

Tom Moody Interviews Paul Slocum Re-

his "sampler remixer," used by Paul in his performance at the opening nite of The Program -- interview here.

Abe and Mo Sing the Blogs

. . . here, is a treasure trove. E.g., the lyrics of the first song are from hansbernhardblog):

September 15, 2005

Breakfast Drugs
12:15

2x500 mg Depakine
1x300 mg Neurotop
0,05 mg Thyrex
250 microgram Seretide
1 Coffee

The entirety of hansbernhardblog appears devoted to simply listing drugs taken mornings and evenings. Abe and Mo sing this post as heavy metal, but their stylistic range is broad.

The subsequent songs are just as good.

P.S.: Love that hairstyle on Marisa -- really.

Artists Surveille the Internet: The Listening Post

By Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen. "[T]he messages you see and hear flowing across the grid of 231 vacuum tube screens are derived from a continuous live feed from thousands of internet chatrooms."

Per the U.K.'s TimesOnline, after years of updates and a stint at the Whitney, the piece has now become part of the permanent collection at the Science Museum in London. More, including the Times' own video, at the link above.

Headphones Art by André Avelãs

A one-night installation comprising 960 earbuds used as speakers plus another 40 buds used as microphones to fuel a feedback loop. "Another unpredicted but welcomed sound source was some white noise from a fucked-up amplification circuit I built," said Avelãs. More at Avelãs' Flickr gallery and his website, where a sound sample is to be posted soon. (Via Gizmodo.)