San Francisco

LoveTech SF 1st Anniversary Epictacular

We present a few photos and notes from the LoveTech SF 1st Anniversary “Epictacular”, which I attended on Saturday. LoveTech is a “Collaborative Music Technology Party & Interactive Multimedia Art Salon” here in San Francisco, and a group I definitely should try and be more involved in during its second year.

Our friend Tim Thompson, together with Michael Broxton, performed live improvised music along with generative visuals (i.e., the graphics are generated live):

Tim’s setup features a Launchpad/Mimo/Keyboard interface. This music featured tonal improvisations (lots of jazz chords and lines) with fast lines and rhythms, a structure that allowed one to shift focus between the music and visuals. The visual software was Broxton’s PhosphorEssence. You can see some clips from the performance on this video:

In addition to live performances, there were also technical demonstrations. Here we see Moldover presenting the MOJO, a newly released music controller which features touch-sensitive strips, game-controller-style buttons and a rather sturdy looking case.

There was also a “jam lounge”. Here we see a duo of *bernadette* (left) and Pamela Parker performing a delightfully noisy and inharmonic electronic improvisation with guitars and effects (including a Moogerfooger).

They also had a theremin as part of their set. Note the porcelain cat figurine on the theremin.

The video below features a demonstration by Komega of his custom sound and light instruments, including the Kromatron, Komegatone, and the Breadman.

More on Komega’s instruments in a future article.

SF Recology Artists in Residence

Last Friday, I attended an exhibition for the Artist in Residence program at Recology San Francisco (formerly known as, SF Recycling & Disposal, Inc.). Yes, this was an art opening at the SF dump. The program has been around for almost twenty years, and provides space and support for artists who work with materials from the city’s waste stream, including recycled wood, paint and metal. Pretty much anything the artists can scavenge. This exhibition marked the end of the residency for artists Erik Otto and Christina Mazza.

We first enter the gallery through an anteroom, with some smaller works including Erik Otto’s Rebuild, featuring the title word cut into scrap paper (including a musical score and furniture assembly instructions) and illuminated by a recycled light box.

Erik Otto. Rebuild, 2010. (Click to enlarge.)

The title and the materials of this piece set the tone for the show. In addition to my standing interest in text as a visual element, I liked the inclusion of music as part of its texture.

Moving into the main room, one immediately sees Otto’s Road of Prosperity (The Start of a New Beginning), with over one hundred small wooden houses suspended from the ceiling on fishing line, forming a chaotic spiral that descends towards the ground.

[Erik Otto.  Road of Prosperity (The Start of a New Beginning), 2010.  (Click each image to enlarge.)]

The houses, made of recycled wood, all have a similar iconic shape. Stepping back, one can see the the wooden frame at the base is itself another house. Indeed, the houses reappear throughout Otto’s work, either as central or peripheral elements, in his paintings and mixed media pieces and even in a video installation featuring recycled television sets:

Erik Otto. In the Abundance of Water, We Are Still Thirsty. (Click to enlarge.)

I am drawn to recurring icons in a series of work. So what is the significance of the houses? Certainly, they are a symbol of our current economic crisis, and a very visible part of natural and human-made disasters. Otto’s own words are informative:

My work is a narrative told by the recurring characters/elements I use often in my artwork. The house is a physical embodiment of our spiritual being. Inspired by the notion that being home is “knowing” – knowing your mind, knowing your heart – that if we know ourselves, we are always “home”, anywhere. It is often depicted in chaotic landscapes and is found seeking safety from a storm and/or rising water levels, which refer to our current social and economic climate.

His paintings, which also prominently feature the houses, include other elements such as found text, such as the “OPEN” sign in the large painting Moment of Reflection. Devotion 5 features a house (perched on stilts above a body of water) painted over book covers and a Scrabble board – certainly a powerful symbol of out-of-context text.

Erik Otto. Moment of Reflection. (Click to enlarge.)

Erik Otto. Devotion 5. (Click to enlarge.)

While Erik Otto’s work seemed to focus on discrete elements, icons and text, Christina Mazza’s pieces were about more continuous textures. Many of her finely detailed drawings feature entanglements of string or rubber bands or rope.

Christina Mazza. Construction. (Click to enlarge.)

She takes this theme of complex tangles to a larger scale with this wall piece made of shredded packing paper.

Christina Mazza. (Click to enlarge)

Mazza presents a very different texture with Redemption: SF Dump, which features a video inset in a wall made of brightly colored wood panels. Up close, one can see the imperfections, nails and slightly off angles of the the recycled wood. From a distance, it can seem a texture of precisely generated color rectangles with a moving image at the center.

Christina Mazza. Redemption:SF Dump. (Click to enlarge)

Mazza found inspiration in the discoveries she made at the dump, and documents her adventures on her blog. Looking through the images, I can see piles of discarded items that served as “subjects” for her drawings. One image which I found interesting but was not reflected in the pieces at the show was a discarded Chinese paper frame .

Christina Mazza. Chinese paper frame.

I find this image a fitting conclusion as I turn my attention to other recently visited exhibits and my own upcoming projects.

Thanks to Recology SF for providing many of the photos for this article. You can see more pieces from this exhibition and previous artists in residence at their flickr site.

First Thursday, January 2010

We at CatSynth present a few notes from our gallery visits here in San Francisco on the first Thursday of the year.

Peter Focault, courtesy of Micaela Gallery

First up, we visit Micaela Gallery for an exhibition of work by Peter Focault and “friends”. Focault’s large ink-on-paper works build up complex structures from simple lines and strokes. The textures can be come very intricate and dense, such as in this detail from Four Square Squared Series #2. Several pieces also have a very architectural quality, while others such as the Evolution Series #1 have a more organic feel.

In addition to the wall presentation, there was a live performance and creation of a new drawing. This was a collaboration of Focault, musician Jake Coolidge, and Jonathan Grover. Coolidge performed live processed bass guitar with loops and other samples. The audio was then interpreted by a robot that moved with a pen on a surface in response to changes in the sound. The long curving strokes with back-and-forth motions gradually produced an image that was similar in style to completed works. You can see a brief sample in the video below from Jake Coolidge’s blog, along with a more detailed description of the process:

Shannon Ebner’s Signal Hill at Altman Siegel depicted every day objects, some with text, some with symbols like stick figures, some bits of manufactured material, that all convey information or “signals” in contemporary society. I identified with the simple and geometric elements and incorporation of text in her large photographs as well as her sculpture, as well as the sparse presentation by the gallery.

Shannon Ebner, courtesy of Altman Siegel Gallery

The photographs also had a very three dimensional texture, such as one photograph of an international graphic symbol (included in the photograph above) that one often sees on a very smooth surface.

Holly Andres, courtesy Robert Koch Gallery (click to enlarge)

At Robert Koch Gallery, I saw Holly Andres’ Sparrow Lane series. The photographs this series feature a group of adolescent women. The photographs seem to be narrative, as if the girls are exploring and investigating, but they are also disjoint without any real story line. As she explains in this interview, Andres spends a lot of time carefully crafting the images, including the clothing worn by the models and the walls and furnishings of the spaces. The clothing was very well done. Most seemed vintage mid-century and featured skirts and dresses with straight lines and solid colors that gave the characters a modernist “early 1960s” feel. On the other hand, the props and settings seemed more baroque and and did not really hold my interest. The one exception was the The Missing Bird (presented here), which places the characters in a grittier basement covered in media images with a cat in the background.  I did find myself contrasting this series with the Dystopia exhibition I saw at this same gallery a year ago – it would be intriguing to see them side by side. (The exhibition will remain on display at the gallery through the end of the month.)

While exploring the photographs at the Koch Gallery, the air from the doorway carried the heavy tones of electric blues. I followed the sounds next door to the Haines Gallery, where a blues band was playing. It turns out the band was led by Mike Henderson, whose paintings were featured in the current exhibition.

I tend to be drawn to minor keys and modes, so minor blues holds a special place in my musical vocabulary. His paintings have geometric shapes with complex textures, overlaid with various line drawings and lettering. Some have a very bright texture akin to a wood surface, while others are dark black with small light shapes and figures.  It is interesting to consider the connection between the music and the visual art.  Unlike the collaboration described above where the connection was direct, the connection here is more emotional or evocative.

Stephen Wirtz gallery presented Catherine Wagner presented large highly-detailed prints of specimens from the California Acadamy of Sciences. They were arranged by biological taxonomy, but also visually. From a distance, one can focus on the overall texture, while up close one notices the details of each specimen. Hits by Rick Arnitz featured large canvases, each of which seemed to take on a different geometric theme: brightly colored circles, a texture of red a black vertical lines, stars on a light blue field, etc. I often like discovering pieces from the permanent collection on display in the back room – I recall Ulrike Palmbach’s soft sculptures of cats from a previous visit – this time it was Marc Katono’s Half Light, a large light canvas with very delicate curves and lines. The piece was reminiscent of organic fibers and would have seemed at home among Wagner’s prints.

Randy Hussong, Courtesy of Gallery Paule Anglim

Across the street at Gallery Paule Anglim, I saw Randy Hussong’s Sculpture and Lithography exhibit. All the images were based a large steel box held up on one side by a stick with a chain, essentially a “trap” of sorts. The box itself was shown in the center of the room as a piece entitled Prey and Weight.  Along the walls were combination photographs/lithographs based on images of the box in outdoor setting, based on photographs at different times of day. The box is clearly artificial, but it’s coloring and worn texture allow it to merge with the natural environment. Additionally, there was one pure black-and-white lithograph entitled Trap.

At A440 Gallery, Dominic Alleluia’s large mixed media works had a very contemporary feel. They combined large abstract elements, color textures and shapes with energetic dark swirls and waves reminiscent of graffiti. A third dimension in some works included objects and materials such as wooden dowels and metal. I found this video of the “artist at work”, and I thought the music expressed the energy of his pieces the exceptionally small gallery space.

Finally, I would like to mention seeing the exhibition Diane Arbus‘ photographs at Fraenkel Gallery.  The exhibition, titled Christ in a lobby and Other Unknown or Almost Known Works by Diane Arbus, were selected by sculpture Robert Gober from a collection of little-known photographs.  The photographs, which were relatively small in size, did fit into the context of Arbus’ better known images in that they depicted a wide selection of people, some very everyday and some a bit more challenging.

Rain and Resurface

I usually try not to be intimidated by the rain here. But it was coming down pretty hard as I wondered the familiar streets of SOMA and South Beach looking for a particular gallery not far from the former Fremont Street overpass that I photographed on a sunnier day. I was trying to catch an exhibit before it closed on Sunday, only to find the gallery itself was closed for the extended holiday weekend.

So now I had not only the pouring rain around me, but also a large caption reading “FAIL”. Not a big deal per se, but we did need to get out of the rain. We headed down 2nd Street, looking for someplace that would be at least dry and somewhat comforting, a cafe or a bar that had not opted to close for the holidays. I was surprised to find that 111 Minna was open, and in fact quite well populated. They were having some sort of fundraising event with work from several artists. However, I found myself more interested in the permanent exhibit, Resurface, a solo exhibit by local artist Micah LeBrun. LeBrun had taken a hiatus from his work, which primarily focused on painting, for a year in late 2008 and early 2009 to travel through Central America, Asia, Australia, Africa and Europe. During this time, he focused on photography, and only returned to painting after returning home. The exhibit included examples of his photographs (partially obscured by the art being displayed for the fundraiser). I was more drawn to the stark landscape images, which reminded me of my own adventures in the desert and sparsely populated areas, than to the portraits. Among the paintings, I was also drawn to the non-portrait pieces, such as the large red canvas with the words “the New Yorker”, and another piece featuring an algebraic equation (the solution to which was of course 0.5). Both pieces are visible in this promotional image, featuring the artist in his studio:

[Click to enlarge.]

Afterwards, I did visit LeBrun’s website, and found myself more interested in some of his earlier work, such as the combination of figurative and abstract paintings from 2005 and 2006. There were several works that focused on black and shades of pink. It was interesting to view one of his figurative pieces, such as “high maintenance” next to an abstract work like “take it easy”, as if one is a distillation of the other (small versions of both works are displayed to the right). You can see other works from this series at his online gallery.

Weekend Cat Blogging: Holiday Windows

This weekend, we present some of the cats featured in the Macy’s SF/SPCA Holiday Windows. Every year during the holidays, San Francisco SPCA teams up with Macy’s in San Francisco to feature adoptable pets in the holiday window displays at their main store in Union Square.

Here are couple of kittens in one window:

and this handsome black cat:

Many passers-by in this busy shopping district were surprised and delighted by the live animals in the displays.   We at CatSynth certainly hope that some of these animals, including the cats featured above, find new homes as a result of this program.

To find out more about the program, including when to see the animals and how you can contribute, please visit the official Macy’s SF/SPCA Holiday Windows site.

Weekend Cat Blogging #238 will be hosted by our friends at the House of the (Mostly) Black Cats.

Carnival of the Cats will be going up this Sunday at When Cats Attack!.

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Happy Holidays!

Art and music notes. Friday, December 18

Last Friday, I managed to visit four different art and music events in one evening. Below are some reflections from each.

Our first stop was the offices of Kearny Street Workshop for their SF Thomassons Holiday Party. Readers may recall KSW’s APAture Festival and the Present Tense Biennial.

“Thomassons” are architectural elements that exist (or persist) outside of the original intended function, such as an inaccessible door leading out of an upper floor of a building, or a staircase leading to nowhere. The term was coined by Japanese conceptual artist and writer Akasegawa Genpei, and the Thomasson website allows people to upload examples from around the world. We at CatSynth have actually presented several Thomassons in our Wordless Wednesday photographic series, including these stairs leading into the San Francisco Bay. KSW’s “SF Thomassons” project involves photography and performance art centered around Thomasson sites in San Francisco. The party was a preview to coincide with Kaya Press’ publication of the first English translation of HYPERART: THOMASSON, and included a performance-art piece set at one of the largest sites in the city, an abandoned church at Howard and 10th streets that happens to be across the street from KSW’s offices.

After that, it was off to Gallery Six at 66 Sixth Street. The current exhibition, entitled “Every Single Where”, features new works by local artist Pakayla Biehn. The paintings each carried superimposed images that are similar but not identical, as if multiple exposures from a camera. According to the press release, Biehn has a congenital visual disability, and her paintings attempt to “give the viewer an understanding of her own optical condition.” Although they share the common theme, each work was stylistically quite different.

Actually, the work in the gallery that caught my attention was not in the featured exhibition, but on display in the back room from a previous exhibition, a small geometric print entitled “Bird’s Nest” from Charmaine Olivia’s Urban Managerie.

From Gallery Six, we then went to Gallery 16 for an exhibition celebrating the 25th anniversary of Emigre. Emigre was a combination digital type foundry and publisher founded by Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko, and is known both for its typefaces and the design journal Emigre Magazine. The exhibition included examples from the magazine and other designs featuring Emigre fonts.

The prints had a very clean quality, with bold colors, large shapes, and of course text. I particularly liked the works based on Licko’s abstract Puzzler font, with it’s arrangements of dots and other elements into larger complex patterns. One of the large prints (again combining text and geometric elements) also featured a large barcode with a valid ISBN number. Thinking myself quite clever, I performed a quick internet search to find out what it was – I suppose I should not have been surprised that it was issue #67 of Emigre Magazine, although the cover image from the magazine looks nothing like this print.

The final stop was Cafe du Nord for a party and concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of KFJC Radio. This was the last of several events marking the anniversary, including the concert at FLUX53 that I attended earlier in the week.

Because of the busy schedule for the evening, we only caught two of the many bands performing. First was the band al Qaeda (I am sure they were aware the name was already taken). Their music combined driving punk-style drum and guitar elements with experimental electronics elements and electrical noise.

Al Qaeda was followed Arrington de Dionyso. I had seen de Dionyso perform in a trio at FLUX53, but this time he was with his band. Once again, he performed a combination of bass clarinet with various vocal techniques, including throat singing, set against standard rock drum, bass and guitar sounds. On the screen behind the band, increasingly complex black-and-white drawings (or paintings) were being created live.

Pmocatat Ensemble and Chorus, and Weller-Borosque Duo

Last Thursday night, the Pmocatat Ensemble performed again at the Luggage Store Gallery. Pmocatat (pronounced “Moe Ka Tatt”, the “p” is silent) stands for “pre-recorded music on CDs and tapes and things”. The members of ensemble pre-record acoustic material (instruments, voice, environmental sounds, etc.) according to compositional instructions, and then during the performance, improvise with these pre-recorded sounds using standard playback controls: play, pause, fast-forward, rewind, and speed controls. Devices used for playback included CD players, cassette tape players, and iPods/iPhones. This performance featured Matt Davignon, Amar Chaudhary, Suki O’kane, Michael Zelner, Rent Romus and Edward Schocker. It was billed as the “Pmocatat Ensemble and Chorus” as many of the pieces featured vocal material.

Matt DavignonMichael Zelner's iPod TouchAmar ChaudharySuki O'kaneRent RomusEdward Schocker

[Photos by Michael Zelner.]

We opened with a sparse piece, with single-syllable words entering periodically to perform collaborative nonsense phrases. There was a lot of open space between the words, which was filled in with droning instruments later in the piece. This was followed by a free-improvisation with pre-recorded woodwinds, mallet percussion and bell sounds. The result was an expressive performance with rich textures and complex rhythms composed articulated notes from the different instruments.

graphical score for Pmocatat. Click to enlarge.

graphical score for Pmocatat. Click to enlarge.

My composition contribution was a piece with a graphical score which called for vocal sounds, instrumental and vocal drones, and animal sounds. It for this piece that I recorded clips of Luna last week, and thus she made her “debut” in a new-music concert. Her meows were set against moderately long vocal sounds that arbitrarily “cut off”, followed by a series of very short sounds to represent the tiny scratches in the graphical element. Here, we heard Luna’s clicking sounds that she makes when hunting. For the longer sounds, her purrs were set against various drones. I think was received well, judging by the looks of delight and amusement from various members of audience.

The graphical piece was followed by an interpretation of Pauline Oliveros’ Form Unknown Silences. The sparse texture, with a variety of short sounds interrupting periods of silence, had both a playful and meditative quality. This was followed by a brand new piece featuring guitar sounds set against percussion. The percussion was really following the guitar sounds, with the pa

This being a holiday show, we of course had to conclude with a holiday offering. In this case, it was a rendition of the classic “O Christmas Tree”, with pre-recorded versions of the song sung very slowly, and played back even more slowly and asynchronously, with gaps, pauses and changes in playback speed overtime growing more complex until the artifacts overtook the original.

The Pmocatat Ensemble was preceded by a duo of Ellen Weller and CJ Borosque. The set opened with an atonal “call to prayer” of Weller on a shofar and Borosque on trumpet. The remainder of the set unfolded as an interplay with Weller’s wind instrument and Borosque’s noise synthesizers (and trumpet). Among her instruments was an experimental box with chaotic oscillators and filters – I acquired one of these a few weeks ago but she has gained significantly more proficiency than I have. There were moments with fast saxophone phrases against the synths, and others with Weller’s exceptionally noisy and agressive flute sounds against very finely articulated synth noise. Other moments included undulating unstable waves, a snake charmer flute, and a variety of acoustic and electronic squeaks. The were moments when the music became quite trancelike even as it remained loud and noisy.