Carnival of the Cats / Carnaval de los Gatos #324

We at CatSynth are happy to host another (slightly tardy) edition of Carnival of the Cats

¿Por qué en español? Well, this weekend happened to also be the big Carnaval festival in San Francisco.

I spent most of yesterday at Carnaval with friends, enjoying the music, the rather vibrant and colorful costumes, and the overall energy. Considering that this actually has very little to do with cats, however, let is move on to our regularly scheduled “carnival”:

It’s been a sunny and warm weekend for us. And for others, too. K.T. Cat shows his jungle heritage while enjoying some sunshine outdoors in this great “nature photo” at K T’s Sratching Post.

Our friend Nikita Cat is also enjoying the outdoors in a unique way, as he goes for a stroll outdoors with his dad. Literally, a stroll in a stroller. In addition to being a great way to enjoy some fresh air, it’s helping his dad’s continued recovery and rejuvenation. And he certainly gets some attention from passers by. And this is a lead in to Nikita’s second contribution concerning how much non-felines obsess over cats.

Elisson visits his elder daughter’s new digs and meets some of the animal residents, including Miss Kitty, who has adjusted well to domestic life after being adopted from the streets (I wonder if she should meet Mister Kitty). There is also Minnie, appropriately described as “one tiny ass dawg.”

At Elms in the Yard, Hadi is adjusting well and learning to trust humans after her past experiences (including the vet). As one can see from this image, she is learning not to trust but to quite appreciate belly rubs. Rahel also encountered a visitor in her home while preparing for bed. Fortunately, the stranger turned out to be a neighbors’ cat, and was soon back home safely.

At Dophin’s Dock, Dolphin says “goodbye” to Sigyn. But this story has a happy ending, as Sigyn is going to a new home where she should be able to enjoy a lot of love and attention.

Antics about at Life from a Cat’s Perspective, where Samantha and Clementine have a rough over a paper sack. They have a photo series with the action unfolding. Samantha does not look pleased.

That concludes our Carnival for this week. Thanks to everyone who participated.
(Note, if you had planned to participate but I missed your entry, please leave a comment or contact and I will be happy to add you.)

Weekend Cat Blogging #260: Close-ups

For Weekend Cat Blogging, we present some new close-up portraits of Luna. These are inspired by the weekly Friday Close-ups” from our friends Mickey, Georgia, and Tillie.

Close-up portraits are a practice I am still working on. These were done by just picking up the camera with its zoom lens and shooting – I would have opted for the fixed-width portrait, but with a cat you have to be ready to use whatever you have on hand.

Here is another from the same series, in monochrome:

For those who haven’t seen it yet, please check out my review of the Quickening Moon Concert which features a video of Luna. And we will be hosting the Carnival of the Cats tomorrow here at CatSynth.

Weekend Cat Blogging #260 is being hosted this weekend by Nikita Cat.

The Carnival of the Cats will be up here tomorrow at CatSynth!

And the friday ark is at the modulator.

Quickening Moon Concert

Sometimes things linger undone for a quite a while. And that is the case with reviewing the Quickening Moon Concert, which I am finally getting around to doing as the next Full Moon concert is about to happen. Basically, the process goes like this. I wait a few weeks to look at the video of my own performance with a fresh perspective. I review the videos. Then post them online. Then a few more weeks pass as life intervenes. So here were are, finally getting to it many “moons” later. Memories of course fade over time, but even going by my own recollections, there is much to recall fondly. Bottom line is that it was a really good performance, in fact I would consider it one of my best solo electronic sets to date. This was in no small part to the advance preparation, but also to the audience, which filled to the Luggage Store Gallery to standing-room only capacity!

This was also one of the larger setups, featuring the Octave CAT vintage analog synthesizer, E-MU Proteus 2000, DSI Evolver, Korg Kaoss Pad, a Mac laptop running Open Sound World and Max/MSP, and the Monome controller, along with an array of my folk instruments from China and India. Even the iPhone made an appearance as an instrument.


[Click images to enlarge.]

Of course, the highlight of the set was the premier of 月伸1, featuring improvised electronic music set against a video of Luna. Musically, I focused on the Octave CAT (seemed appropriate) with the other electronic instruments in a supporting role. You can see a full video of the performance of this piece below:

The music was improvised live, with some prepared guidelines. In this way, it was reminiscent of the live music performances from old silent films. I kept the music relatively sparse and maintained the focus on the visual elements, which moved back and forth between clips of Luna and abstract visual elements (you can read more about the video production here). The audience clearly responded to the video of Luna and the music, and their laughter at very points reminded just how funny a piece this was. It was easy to lose sight of that in the hours of very detailed and very technical preparation, and one of the delights of playing in front of a live audience. I also heard from people that could tell they were able to sense the affection for Luna that came through in the video, though the long shots and the breaks in the otherwise silent video where her voice came through.

The balance of the set leading up to 月伸1 featured various combinations of electronic and acoustic instruments. The monome was my main controller in several of the other pieces, including the opener that focused and live sample loops and patterns from the folk instruments.

I played the instruments live, and then replayed the samples in various patterns on the monome to create complex timbral and rhythmic patterns. I also used the monome in a later piece to control some very simple but musically interesting sound synthesis, as can be seen in this video.

The lights on the monome are visually compelling, but also provide a link for the audience between the actions (which are really just button pressing) and the music.

Several of the pieces including strong rhythmic elements, which helped propel the set forward – I even saw at least one person “grooving out” to one piece.

I replayed several of the pieces (but not the video) in another performance a few days later at the Meridian Gallery. I certainly hope I will have an opportunity to the video again as well.

My performance was followed by the premier of Polly Moller’s Genesis. Genesis is “a musical experiment in which the M-theory of the 11-dimensional universe combines with the inward and outward spiral of the Western magical tradition.” The 11 member ensemble represent the 11 dimensions (which include Universal Time, the three spatial dimensions, and seven others) who combine to bring the “New Universe” into being, as portrayed by Matt Davignon on drum machines.


[Photo by Tom Djll.]

Polly Moller conducted the piece, not from the traditional podium in front of the ensemble, but rather by walking in an inward and outward spiral among the performers. As she walks by, wind chimes in hand, different performers enter or exit. As the New Universe comes into being, Matt Davignon’s electronic performance emerges, culminating in an extended solo as the 11 performers representing the “parent dimensions” fade out.

Quite fortuitously, someone turned my video camera to face the ensemble, so I was able to capture some video of the performance. In the clips below, one can see the conducting by walking in a spiral, as well as parts of the New Universe solo.

Video by Anne Eastman, Maggie Foster, Guthrie Lonergan, Hayley Silverman Jancar Jones Gallery

We now turn our attention to another exhibition that is closing this week. For most of May, Jancar Jones Gallery has presented a group exhibit of videos by Anne Eastman, Maggie Foster, Guthrie Lonergan and Hayley Silverman. Each of videos explores subtle motion and illusory effects, either through the objects being filmed or through computer-based manipulation. The exhibit will remain open at the gallery through May 29.

Anne Eastman, A Record of Abstract Ideas. Image courtesy of Jancar Jones Gallery. (Click to enlarge.)

Anne Eastman. Image courtesy of Jancar Jones Gallery. (Click to enlarge.)

The work that most caught my attention was A Record of Abstract Ideas, a mesmerizing video by New-York-based artist Anne Eastman. She creates sculptures and installations that are very abstract and formal, but also play with reflection, motion and changes through the inclusion of mirrors and mobile elements. She then creates videos of the installations, which become works in their own right. The video presented here appears to include images of Eastman’s 2009 installation “Mobiles” at the ATM Gallery in New York, as seen here. Throughout the video, one sees portions of geometric shapes, circles, rectangles and grids enter and exit the video at odd angles and reflect different textures and patterns within their boundaries. At times, one sees the elements close-up and disconnected, while at other moments there is enough context to recognize a piece of a sculpture. She also plays with colors and effects of the video itself in creating a work separate from the installation being filmed. At a few times, one can see a video projector in the background, presumably projecting an earlier video of and earlier installation.

Installation view with Hayley Silverman's 1st Movement on left. Courtesy of Jancar Jones Gallery. (Click to enlarge.)

Opposite Eastman’s video, the other works were projected onto the wall as part of a single continuous loop. Hayley Silverman’s 1st Movement features images of shiny fabrics that appear to be folding and collapsing naturally, as if a sheet or a piece of clothing were dropped on a surface. However, on close viewing one can see that the images are being digitally deformed, giving the illusion of the natural behavior of fabric. You can see a video example here. The other videos in the loop explore similar themes. In “Floor Warp 2“, Guthrie Lonergan creates the illusion of continuous motion of wooden flooring (very similar to the flooring at CatSynth HQ, actually). Similarly, Maggie Foster’s Untitled (2009) manipulates images of a green lawn creating illusions of distance.

(re-)Claim, SOMArts

I continue to work through my backlog of shows and exhibits to review, with a focus on exhibits that are still open. One of these is (re-)Claim, which will remain at SOMArts through Friday May 28.

(re-)Claim is part of the United States of Asian American Festival sponsored the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center (APICC), a month-long festival that celebrates “the artistic accomplishments and the cultural diversity of San Francisco’s Asian and Pacific Islander communities.” The exhibition features work made from discarded objects and materials explores “the redemptive process that renders an object ‘fundamentally new'”. I have seen several exhibitions this year on similar themes – perhaps a sign of the times – and in fact some of the same artists are featured in (re-)Claim, including Truong Tran and Christina Mazza. The other artists featured in this curated show include Mark Baugh-Sasaki, Kathy Fuji-Oka, Su-Chen Hung, and Judy Shintani.

We had last seen Christina Mazza’s work in the SF Recology Artists Program in January, where she also focused on found objects and materials from the San Francisco dump. For this exhibition, she created an impressive 9-foot-by-12-foot site-specific installation.


[Christina Mazza. Site-specific installation. (Click to enlarge.)]

Up close, one focuses on the individual wooden panels that compose the work, and which reminded me a little of the panels from her “Contained Spaces” series from SF Recology (a few prints from that series were included here as well). From a distance, one could better see the landscape elements and the textures that combined both geometric and natural qualities.

Truong Tran featured several works that I recognized from his solo exhibition the lost & found back in February. All of his works in that show were meticulously constructed from recycled objects and materials, many of which he found on his frequent walks around the city’s neighborhood (an activity that we at CatSynth wholeheartedly support). His pieces fit perfectly into the theme of the (re-)Claim show, where they would be seen alongside and compared to the works of the other artists. There was at least one piece that I didn’t recognize from the solo exhibition – it is shown here.


[Truong Tran. (Click to enlarge image.)]

Sculptor Mark Baugh-Sasaki took a very different approach to reclamation. His large sculptures are composed in part from manufactured or processed materials, but have a very natural quality to them, as if they are part of some imaginary ecology. In his artist statement, he refers to them as “objects that are inhabitants of or illustrate the evolving systems and interactions in this new landscape.” I also quite liked his large wooden sculpture A Form Derived from a Constructed Landscape (shown below) and his metal sculpture Relic.

[“A Form Derived from a Constructed Landscape” by Mark Baugh-Sasaki. Image from the artist. (Click to the enlarge)]

We conclude with a mixed-media piece “My Friends” by Su-Chen Hung in which a pair of figures is constructed from a variety of household objects.


[“My Friends” by Su-Chen Hung.]

I would be remiss if I did not also mention the taco trucks that were on hand for the opening. Fusion taco trucks (i.e., assembly of spices and main ingredients from other cuisines in proper taco form served out of a truck) are a mainstay of street cuisine here in San Francisco, and there were two on hand for the opening. I have enjoyed the Asian asada from Kung Fu Tacos at several past events. But I was particularly fond of the paneer and extra-spicy sauce taco from Curry Up Now.

Report from the In The Flow Festival

As I prepare for my next performance with Reconnaissance Fly tonight (details here), it seems like a good time to look back at last week’s In The Flow Festival in Sacramento.

My roadie friend and I arrived in Sacramento around 12:30 to the rather calm and rather pleasant jazz-guitar sounds of the Nahum Zdybel Trio. As we wandered off for a quick bite to eat, I was thinking how much of a contrast our own set would be. When I returned to set up, the ensemble on the other stage lead by Henry Robinette was harder and more driving – with much stronger drum, bass and rhythm guitar – but still straight ahead jazz.

[Reconnaissance Fly: (Tim Walters, Polly Moller, Amar Chaudhary).  Photo by Jen Hung.  Click to enlarge.]

So then it was time for us to perform. Our set begins with my graphical improvisation piece Small Chinese Gong, a complete 180 degree turn from the previous sets, though it does feature a short section of tongue-in-cheek early 1970s lounge jazz amongst the free improvisation and noise. We also did both of our rock-inspired pieces One Should Never and An Empty Rectangle (written by Tim Walters); a more refined version of The Animal Trade in Canada with both a bluesy “Ca-na-da” rock-out and an Afro-beat jam; and an abridged performance of our epic Ode to Steengo. All the pieces feature spoetry, i.e., spam messages that rise to the aesthetic level of poetry.

Our set was followed by Fig, the duo of Nels Cline and Yuka Honda. Their set started relatively calmly and quietly, but by the time I finished packing and had a chance to wander over to the other stage, things began to get a bit louder.

[Fig (Nels Cline and Yuka Honda). Click images to enlarge.]

Nels Cline alternately set driving heavily processed guitar rhythms and long virtuosic lines against Honda’s beats, which featured highly synthetic percussion sounds. Often, she was playing a Tenori-on, as featured in the second photo. Overall, the set moved back and forth between beat-based sections and “skronking” (i.e., arhythmic and often noisy performance with fast runs of ntoes), ending with an extended guitar-and-drum-machine jam with a more techno feel.

The next set (back in previous room) was Ambi, a duo of Stuart Liebig and Andrew Pask. As the name suggested, the music had an “ambient” quality to it in that the sounds created an environment for the listeners more than individual lines and riffs to focus on. The set opened with lots of one-off percussion samples with pauses of varying length, some notes being very isolated and others coming in small clusters. On top of the percussion hits were layered long “space-like” sounds, liquidy bass notes and saxophone. Gradually, beats emerged from the ambient mix, but the patterns were regularly broken by other off-tempo sounds. I did notice they were using a Monome, a complement to Honda’s Tenori-on from the previous set. After a while, the beats become stronger and more stable, but were again interrupted by the sound of a thunderstorm that gave way to analog-sounded filtered arpeggios. Towards the end, the set, which unfolded as one long piece, evolved into a jam between bass (Leibig) and saxophone (Pask).  It concluded with a driving funky bass riff, which stopped suddenly in mid-motion, an ending I found quite effective.

After this set, we took a break from the festival to explore a bit of Sacramento, including the immediate neighborhood and some of the downtown. This excursion inspired last weekend’s Fun With Highways: Sacramento Edition article.

We arrived back at Beatnik Studios in time to L Stinkbug, featuring GE Stinson, Nels Cline (again), Scott Amendola and Steuart Liebig (again). There was certainly a lot of “double-dipping” in the lineup of the festival, but that seems appropriate for an event focused on improvisation, and the performances among the different combinations of musicians can be quite different. L Stinkbug was, if nothing else, loud. Certainly, these are all very technically adept musicians, and the combination of driving beats and skronking should be relatively loud, but perhaps a little less so in this particular space. We moved back and forth between the main stage and the adjacent room to avoid the full affects of the volume.

If there was one overall regret from my abbreviated experience at the festival, it is that it was an abbreviated experience. I missed a few sets that I would have liked to see, including Vinny Golia, whom I had heard at last year’s Outsound Music Summit, and the Thin Air Orchestra, featuring many familiar wind players.

Weekend Cat Blogging #259: Industrial Cat

At the end of April, I was visiting open studios along Islais Creek. I have been here several times before, and took advantage of the evening like to take photos along the creek. The main landmark, this old industrial crane, should be familiar to long-time readers of this site:

Walking around, I espied a small tuxedo cat walking around on the ground. Once it saw me, it immediately ran off and through a chain link fence into the neighboring lot. But he (or she) did come out soon, and I was able to get some photos through the fence:

The cat was definitely curious but wary .  A few minutes later, the cat posed on some wooden objects that provided a geometric backdrop (once again, from behind the fence).

When I see cats among the old buildings or lots, they are often skittish and immediately run to hide. So it’s rare that I have a chance to intersect cats and industrial landscape this way.

Weekend Cat Blogging #259 is hosted by Pam at Sidewalk Shoes.

The Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at One Cats Nip.

And the friday ark is at the modulator.