For the past few years, the annual Live Looping Festival, which primarily takes place in Santa Cruz, California, co-hosts an opening-night performance in San Francisco with Outsound Presents at the Luggage Store Gallery. This year was no exception, with visiting artists coming from afar and braving the large flying piñatas on display in the gallery that evening.
The show opened with a solo performance by Philipp Zurcher, who was attending the festival from Switzerland. His set opened with dark and subtle tones on guitar and effects, and very little overt looping. The music remained sparse for a while, but eventually started to build up into a thicker texture as the loops came to the forefront.
[Philipp Zurcher.]
While Zurcher’s performance was subtle and sparse, the next set by Krispen Hartung and Aaron Davis from Boise, Idaho went in the opposite direction. Davis played fast runs and driving chords and rhythms on keyboard while the pair layered electronics and loops in a loud and intense rhythmic texture that they sustained for the duration of the set. There were moments where things grew a bit software which allowed Davis’ keyboard performance to come to the forefront, but overall it was a full-on barrage of electronic beats and semi-rhythmic long tones that enveloped the space and the audience.
[Krispen Hartung and Aaron Davis]
The final set featured Italian ” sound-sculptor” Luca Formentini. At first glance, he appeared to be another looper-guitarist, but that label sells his highly virtuosic and narrative music short. His guitar sounded other-wordly, aided by the fact that his performance was largely without any light. The dark, tense and melancholy tones were augmented by electronics and more complex loops layered with a mixture of effects. There were sounds that mimicked natural elements, such as water, fire and even sound evocative of cats. Rather than simply building up layers of sound, he adeptly added and removed the layers to forward an abstract narrative – one had the sense of a movie with something beautiful but tragic was about to happen. Overall, it was an impressive performance.
Overall, it was a good show, with a small but appreciative audience. The festival moved back to Santa Cruz after this opening performance. I was not able to attend any of the subsequent events, but glad I saw these artists on this night in San Francisco.
The huge Cindy Sherman retrospective at SFMOMA will be closing in a week, and I would be remiss if I did not write a few words about it. Her work, which is almost entirely composed of self portraits, is often described with terms like “masquerade,” “caricature,” “persona”, and her still images lend themselves to the idea of performance and play. I had the opportunity to see the exhibition a few times and found the her use of invented persona and performance inspiring as my own work in both music and visuals moves in that direction.
While much of the attention has focused on Sherman’s more over-the-top and exaggerated portraits, I found her early Untitled Film Stills to be among the most compelling. In these pieces, she successfully transforms herself into realistic roles and characters that one might see in films of the 1960s and 1970s.
‘
[Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #21. 1978; gelatin silver print; 7 1/2 x 9 1/2″ (19.1 x 24.1 cm); The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Horace W. Goldsmith Fund through Robert B. Menschel; © 2012 Cindy Sherman Source: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art]
The transformation from her real appearance and character into these fictional roles through costuming, makeup and expression is already apparent, and one would not think they are all the same person if seen outside the context of the exhibition. It is the realism coupled with black-and-white that makes these portraits stand out from the rest of her body of work. There was also one particularly interesting series of images documenting the Sherman’s transformation from her everyday self into one of the characters.
One the other extreme are some of her more recent portraits, depicting female archetypes from contemporary society as well as a series devoted to aging “society women”. She uses the same elements of clothing, hair, make-up, setting and pose as in the earlier images, but here the effect is to make these everyday tools of beauty and personal identity into something strange. Some results of beautifully exaggerated, others veer towards the grotesque. But in all of these pieces there is a deliberate falseness to the facades and personae.
[Cindy Sherman, Untitled #463, 2007-08; chromogenic color print; 68 5/8 x 6″ (174.2 x 182.9 cm); courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York; © 2012 Cindy Sherman. Source: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.]
Once again, these images suggest performance, ranging from burlesque to reality television to more experimental performance art where the visitor is confronted with this exaggerated form of human appearances and has to figure out how to interact with her.
Another take on fictitious persona can be found in her history series from 1988-1990. Here, she uses the same elements to recreate scenes either directly referencing or suggesting historical works of Western painting. She transforms herself into the a variety of women as well as a few men that one might see in paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries.
[Cindy Sherman, Untitled #193, 1989; chromogenic color print; 48 7/8 x 41 15/16″ (124.1 x 106.5 cm); courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York; © 2012 Cindy Sherman. Source: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art]
In some cases, they are quite convincing, while in others they are once again deliberately exaggerated through the addition of prothetic facial elements, lactating breasts, as so on. There was even one portrait that at least to me looked more like a Klingon from Star Trek than a European aristocrat.
Not everything in this exhibition was playful. A few of the characters were clearly meant to be battered or abused women. And entire room was devoted the period in the 1980s when she moved away from self portraits into more abstract pieces. This was the height of the AIDS epidemic and these images portraying dismembered bodies and rotting flesh were very difficult to look at.
Finally, in a nod to the focus on digital technology of San Francisco and SFMOMA, Sherman presented a wall-to-ceiling site-specific mural that used Photoshop rather than traditional techniques to alter her appearance. In the piece, we see her larger than life in a variety of characters, the most memorable had her in long hair and long flowing dress, more reserved than in her later photographic portraits. The use of Photoshop also is a reminder of how the ideas of invented personae is more accessible to more people than ever before.
As I said in opening, this exhibition was an inspiration as I move into more invented personae and theatrical performance in my own work, whether in music, video or photography. It is more of indirect influence through the mechanics and discipline of her production and the idea of the characters and transformation, rather than a desire to specifically emulate what she does. In that sense, the timing could not have been better.
Cindy Sherman will remain at SFMOMA in San Francisco through October 18. If you are in the Bay Area and have not yet seen it, I recommend doing so. The exhibition will next travel to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and then onto Dallas.
In addition to the main concerts, this year’s San Francisco Electronic Music Festival featured a concurrent gallery exhibition. It took place at Million Fishes in the Mission District of San Francisco, and featured a variety of works that combined sound and visuals. I had the opportunity to visit the gallery on the Saturday of the festival, just before that night’s concert.
I have experienced Matthew Goodheart’s work with transducer-excited cymbals a few times now, most notably in his solo performance at the Outsound Music Summit. Here, he arranged them around the front room over the gallery to create an immersive installation called …silence through things secret….
The installation dominated the main room both visually and aurally, with the late-afternoon sun reflecting off the cymbals, and a variety of sounds echoing around the room. Computer-generated sounds were created from analysis of the resonances of each cymbal and recordings of each instrument played in a variety of manners. The sounds were then used to excite the cymbals via small transducers.
Because the sound from the cymbals is acoustic, the only notion one has of electronics at work is the fact that they are standing on their own without anyone there to play them. But there is nonetheless something otherwordly about the visuals and sounds of the unattended cymbals. Goodheart’s piece was part of a larger project he has developed in conjunction withe Center foew New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at UC Berkeley.
Giant Leap, the result of collaboration by Floor van de Velde and Elaine Buckholtz, paid tribute to the late Neil Armstrong and the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing. The audio-and-visual work combined an anaglyph image of the moon with a sound score realized using modified rotary telephones.
The moon landing and the sounds associated with that achievement are still quite fresh, but the use of rotary telephones reminds us just how long ago this achievement took place. I consider rotary phones a particularly endangered technology in that it bears so little resemblance to contemporary phones in both form and function.
Dan Good presented two small kinetic sound sculptures. Artificial Lung combined standard speaker drivers in a novel way. They were pressed against one another a driven with a 1Hz sine wave. While the signal is far below the range of human hearing, the pressure on the speakers was visible and created the illusion of a breathing organism.
In, Good’s sculpture Petri Dish, small glass spheres are pulled up and down in a glass bowl and tubes. The sound of the glass is subtle, but the visual is quite striking, especially when it is moving (the photograph does not really capture this aspect.)
Both of Good’s sculptures draw upon simple shapes, lines and processes to create something conceptually compact and understandable. As such, they play to the strengths of modernism – something refreshing to see in a contemporary setting,
SFEMF has featured installations before, usually as fixtures in the lobby during concerts. I thought separating it out into a gallery presentation worked well and allowed the pieces the chance to be seen outside the shadow of the live performances and milling crowds. I hope they do this again next year.
“Obake Yashiki” (Ghost House) officially opens tonight at Arc Studios and Gallery in San Francisco. The project is a collaboration with artists Priscilla Otani and Judi Shintani, and combines sound, Japanese lanterns and “deconstructed kimonos”. Here is a view of the installation:
And the project statement:
An atmospheric space in-between worlds is glimpsed in this installation. Fragments of sound from crickets, chanting monks and Japanese instruments envelope Japanese lanterns, womanly silhouettes and floating deteriorating kimonos. Obake Yashiki or Ghost House, is a dwelling place of spirits that continue to haunt us. They cannot find their peaceful resting place due to tragic occurrences during their lifetimes. The exhibition calls attention to women around the world whose lives have been taken due to earthly disasters and violent human interaction. We honor the spirits who are trapped between life and death in hopes they may find peace and resolution.
A lot of work went into making this installation happen, including hanging the kimonos and approximately 100 lanterns! But three of the lanterns were also outfitted with tiny speakers and MP3 players to create the immersive soundscape in the space:
The assemblage works quite well, and the sounds emanating from the lantern clusters adds to the overall eerie quality of the piece. Of course, portable electronic devices need to be recharged, so we have the odd visual today of Japanese lanterns being recharged via USB cables (i.e., like an iPhone) ahead of tonight’s reception:
Hopefully everything is charged up later this afternoon and ready to go.
If you are in San Francisco this evening, feel free to drop by our free reception. It is at Arc Studios and Gallery, 1246 Folsom St, and goes from 6PM to 9PM. We are also planning an interesting closing program in October.
This morning, the decommissioned Space Shuttle Endeavor flew over the northern California today, including San Francisco. It is part of a farewell tribute as en route to its final resting place at California Science Center in Los Angeles. We were able to get a good view of the flyover from the roof of CatSynth HQ.
It was impressive to see so clearly over the city. But it was also a bit melancholy. I was in my early school years when the first shuttle flight took place – I of course had my own model of it (probably more than one), and was enamored with space and space travel in general. With the shuttles now decommissioned, it is unclear what we do next to keep moving forward space-wise. The moon and Mars proposals still seem squishy, and in someways feel like a step backward from the space shuttles when I see the proposed vehicles. Nothing to really bridge the gap between our past in space and the promise of routine travel from science fiction. I hope we can somehow rekindle the shared desire to explore and move into space.
The final concert of the 2012 San Francisco Electronic Music Festival (SFEMF) took place on Saturday, September 9 at the Brava Theater. If there a common thread among the different performances on this evening, it was the use (and celebration) of analog electronics.
The concert opened with a solo piece by Chuck Johnson called Passivity and Void. The performance featured analog electronics with steel guitar as a sound source, and explored the tension between retaining and relinquishing control over timbre and musical processes. This is particularly true of feedback and random voltages that Johnson used. The result was beautiful low-frequency drones with complex textures layered on top.
[Chuck Johnson. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]
I also found myself focused on his suitcase-based analog setup, similar at least in appearance to what I have been using of late.
The next set featured James Fei using a large speaker, in particular an Altec 604, as a musical instrument in its own right.
[James Fei and Altec 604. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]
The large speaker, which is a model that has existed since the 1940s, is visually impressive. And the dramatic movements of its driver in response to the low and mixed frequency analog sound sources was a central aspect of the performance. Through his mixture of subtle long tones and more pointed elements, Fei seemed to imbue the speaker with a personality, expressing itself with motion and sound. It was fun to watch. As a purely sonic experience, the elements were simple, though not as minimalist as the piece’s title Sine of Merit would suggest.
The final set of the concert and of the festival featured a collaboration of Peter Conheim of Negativeland and Jon Leidecker (aka Wobbly) appropriately called Negativewobblyland. They were joined for this performance by Don Joyce.
[Negativewobblyland. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]
Their performance, titled Booper Variations No. 18 and featured sounds and techniques based on Boopers, which were “analog feedback instruments created entirely from salvaged radio and amplifier parts.” Although the modern reinterpretation used samples and delays as forms of feedback, the music was based on the principles of the original Boopers. The result of sampling and feedback was a complex and varied array of electronic sounds and felt like a swiftly moving history of electronic music in a single set. The energy of the trio carried the music forward for the entire duration.
Overall, this year’s SFEMF included several strong nights of music, and each of the nights was quite well attended. Additionally, there was a concurrent gallery exhibition, which I will review in the final installment of the series.
We continue our review of the recent 2012 San Francisco Electronic Music Festival (SFEMF) with a look at the third concert. It took place on Saturday, September 8 at the Brava Theater in San Francisco, and for the most part focused on music from unusual sources, such as natural materials, found objects and electrical circuits built in real time.
The concert opened with a solo performance by Cheryl Leonard with video by Genevieve Swifte. Leonard’s instruments are created from items she has collected from the Arctic and Antarctic, including shells, stones, kelp flute, and bones, as well as prepared viola and field recordings of wind and water. The music she produces from these sources is richly textured moving between long notes and short sequences of percussive hits, with minimal treatment of the amplified acoustic elements. Each of the two pieces, Sila and Polarnatt featured different elements in the instrumentation to reflect their respective themes.
‘
[Cheryl Leonard. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]
The video, which featured the formation of ice crystals on the surface of the ocean. It was quite subtle with little movement, except for an occasional bird flying through field of vision – as such, it served as support for the music and for Leonard’s live performance on stage, and a contrast to the more dynamic movement in the percussive sections.
This was followed by Loud Objects, a New York based group that creates noise by building circuits from minimal components live on stage. The performers Tristan Perich and Lesley Flanagan stood alongside an overhead projector with a clear piece of plexiglass as the performance began. It continued in silence as a few wires and integrated circuits were soldered into place on top of the surface until the first tentative and unstable sounds emerged.
[Live circuit building from Loud Objects. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]
Once the sound generation elements were live, the group lived up to its name. It was quite loud and intense, with various modulations of simple synthesized sounds. Much of the fun of this set was watching the construction of the circuit alongside the sounds being generated, and I found myself captivated and curious about what the shadowy integrated circuits were doing while I was listening. I would be curious to see how other performances by this group are similar or different to what they created this night.
After the intermission, renowned electronic musician and interdisciplinary artist Richard Lerman performed a version of his project Border Soundings. Lerm, an has been making audio and video recordings from the fences at the U.S.-Mexico border for many years. This version combined video taken at several locations with live performance on amplified musical instruments created from objects found near the border. Among these were a branch with things, a brush and dustpan and a tomatillo husk with onions.
[Richard Lerman. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]
In this piece, the visuals were front and center, primarily the video scenes but also the live performance with the found objects. The amplified sounds from the objects were very literal, with the metal, wood, paper and other materials readily apparent. The electronic processing did not detract from the acoustic expectations. The border scenes in the videos ranged from serene, as along the linear form of the fence near Naco AZ, to forlorn in some locations, to the surreal emptiness of the Border Field State Park, with the border fence flowing into the ocean and the beach devoid of any activity (access to the beach on the US side is now restricted) – by contrast, looking through the fence to the beach on Mexican side reveals vibrant activity and daily life. The music through all of the scenes remains percussive and abstract.
The final set featured a solo performance by Dieter Moebius. Moebius is best known for his early with with the duo Cluster and the band Harmonia, but now performs solo work as well as collaborations with other noted musicians. His performance was different from the others on the concert that evening in that he focused on more conventional electronic sources, such as pre-made rhythmic loops and noise hits.
[Dieter Moebius. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]
Although Moebius’ performance did not use the same novel instrumentation or techniques of the other artists in the concert, it was nonetheless quite virtuosic – I particularly liked his third piece which employed more noise-based timbres and complex rhythms. His set did continue on for quite a while, however, far longer than I expected – and I suspect longer than the organizers or other members of the audience expected, as people started to file out of the auditorium as he launched into his fifth piece approaching a full hour. He even seemed poised to continue with another piece after the audience gave a warm and enthusiastic applause.
Despite the way the last set panned out, it was still a strong concert with much innovative music and technology. I am glad I had the opportunity to hear it.
