Weekend Cat Blogging: Luna and Luna

In honor of the full moon last night (dubbed the “supermoon” in the media), we present Luna along with her namesake.

I always thought the name suited her well.

Photographing the moon is even harder than photographing cats. But I did also create this highly stylized image of the full moon with traffic from nearby Interstate 280 as it descends into downtown San Francisco.

Weekend Cat Blogging is hosted by Samantha, Clementine and Maverick.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted today by Ritzi at iInfidel.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Broadside Attractions | Vanquished Terrains at Intersection for the Arts

Today we look at the show Broadside Attractions | Vanquished Terrains which is currently on display at Intersection for the Arts.


[Photo by Scott Chernis. Courtesy of Intersection for the Arts.]

This large and ambitious show, curated by Maw Shein Win and Megan Wilson with Kevin Chen of Intersection for the Arts, brings together twelve pairs of visual artists and writers to produce collaborative work centered around the historical broadside medium. A broadside is generally defined as a large sheet of paper printed on one side and designed to be plastered onto walls in public areas. They were historically used to announce events, proclamations or news in a very concise and public manner before the advent of the internet, broadcasting, or even printed newspapers. Like many media that have outlived their original practical purpose, the broadside continues on in more rarified form for artistic exploration, this show being one such example. For this exhibition, the teams followed a very specific process. First, each visual artist provided his or her collaborating writer with three data points based on the theme of “vanquished terrains”: a piece of music, a movie and a location. The writer then created a short piece that was then given back to the artist to create a small visual work in response to the writing. These were combined to form the historic broadsides, which consisted of the visual piece as a black-and-white printed graphic, followed by the text of written piece.


[Photo by Scott Chernis. Courtesy of Intersection for the Arts.]

Finally, each artist-and-writer pair created another piece that embodied the same ideas and concepts as the historic broadside but using any form or media. The final pieces were quite varied, united only by the connections to their respective broadsides and the process of collaboration. Some were very direct reinterpretations, while others were quite distant from a recognizable broadside. The majority were somewhere in between, with flat media of either physical and or digital varieties.


[Photo by Scott Chernis. Courtesy of Intersection for the Arts.]

The above piece, a collaboration of artist Matthew Rogers and writer Maw Shein Win, is typical of the experimentations with media to augment the traditional broadside concept. The piece is primarily a flat panel of mixed media on paper, with a segment of the space presenting a video, in this case an animation by Rogers with music and bits of a reading of the written piece. The overall feel of the both the visual piece and the poem had a very bleak quality. The prompt location was the Inland Empire, with its combination of stark desert landscape and overdevelopment. The latter is apparent in the poem, while the desert is more present in the visual media, with the video bridging the two with rather dystopian imagery.

Some pieces derived more directly from the original broadside concept. Indeed, one of the media that most captures the original intent in our particular time and place is the protest sign. In their collaborative piece, Megan Wilson interprets the central figure of Hugh Behm-Steinberg’s poem Ruby-Crowned Kinglets as part of a crowd of protest signs.


[Photo by Scott Chernis. Courtesy of Intersection for the Arts.]

The bright solid colors and simple text and graphics makes this piece stand out, even when just wandering by. At the same time, the image of the cartoon bird crying “Help!” has a fun quality to it. It was interesting way to bridge the contrast between protest art and more personal and descriptive nature of Behm-Steinberg’s poem. During the opening, visitors were invited to take one of the textual protest signs on the floor (but not to take any of the birds).

Video was a frequently used element to bring the broadside concept into the contemporary sphere. One of the most creative uses was by Eliza Barrios with writer Myron Michael. Several asynchronous video streams were projected onto a corner window, transforming the rectangular images into more angular shapes that were aligned perfectly to create the illusion that they were coming out of the window. In the center, a changing set of single words were projected. In watching this piece, I was trying to figure out how the words may relate to the images on either side.


[Installation view with Inaoko/Cortez second to left and Barrios/Michael on the right. Photo by Scott Chernis. Courtesy of Intersection for the Arts.]

Other interesting video pieces included artist Misako Inaoko with writer Jaime Cortez. Their stop-motion animation piece, which included text along with what appeared be live photographic images taken with an app like Instagram or Hipstamatic, created a low-fidelity loop of activity. The piece by Keiko Ishihara and Chaim Bertman revealed the frenetic pace of activity in Tokyo’s complex transit system. It seemed a world away from the location prompt of the South Pole, but quite related to the musical prompt, Brian Eno’s Music for Airports.

At the other end of the spectrum, there were several fully three-dimensional installations. The largest and most dramatic was a two-story installation by artist Karrie Hovey and writer Elise Ficarra that covered the spiral staircase of the gallery in felt representations of deer with stylized antlers and legs. Ascending the staircase to the upper level reveals a dark painted sky with floating text and butterflies. Deer may at first seem an odd choice for a piece whose text and imagery is about the plight of human intervention in nature – having grown up north of New York City, I can attest that deer are doing quite well for themselves – but the message in this piece relates specifically to the controversial killings of deer in Point Reyes national seashore.


[Photo by Scott Chernis. Courtesy of Intersection for the Arts.]

As a bonus, this piece also featured sound art via the work of composer Evelyn Ficarra. The generated sounds were diffused via numerous speakers embedded throughout the installation. The was the only piece to use sound design as an independent element (i.e., not part of a video), and of course I had to try and figure out more about it. The sounds appeared to be manipulated and processed from natural sources which was consistent with the theme. I think they were also multiple streams for the different speakers.

Another interesting large installation was the piece by artist Nathaniel Parsons and writer Ly Nguyen. I have seen several of Parson’s installations before, and this one had a similar home-made construction feel to it. But it was a bit more subtle, with a small hole in the side of the coarse wooden surface to reveal a “piece within a piece” inside.


[Photo by Scott Chernis. Courtesy of Intersection for the Arts.]

So how do pieces like these related at all to the original broadsides? They are still in very concise language “shouting” their point like a Tweet in their own varied proportions and media. And in this sense they retain the “broadside” spirit.

Perhaps the most conceptual take on the theme was Tea + Dialogues presented by writer Jenny Bitner and artist Liz Worthy. They constructed a “tea room” where visitors could sit down, enjoy a cup of tea and participate in dialogues with other visitors. The tea was served in custom ceramics created for the installation, and the walls were decorated with text.


[Photo by Scott Chernis. Courtesy of Intersection for the Arts.]

Visitors choose dialogues from a preselected list, many of which were quite humorous and at least one referenced the installation itself. In additional, visitors were offered a fortune cookie that contained a “miniature broadside.” The dialogues, fortune cookies, and embedded text on the walls all related back to the historic broadside but brought it into a more ubiquitous and interactive realm.

I did participate in a dialogue with another visitor whom I had not previously. It was fun to read, and had the minimalist awkward quality of mid-century experimental theater piece.

In addition to the printed broadside and installation, each piece included links to the source prompts, with QR codes that allowed visitors to access the source music and movies via their mobile devices while exploring the exhibition.

As one can tell from this review, the visual art and installations tended to overpower the written work, especially for those like me who tend to be more visually oriented. To help balance this out, the show included to readings where the writers were front and center, presenting their work in the show as well as related readings of their choice. As with the installations, there was a great variety of work, from short song-like poems to surreal fiction to personal recollections.

The show will remain at Intersection for Arts in San Francisco through May 26.

Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt: Texture

We at CatSynth have been absent for a few days. Most of my time that wasn’t spent at the day job was devoted to preparations for last night’s Night Light Multimedia Garden Party at SOMArts here in San Francisco. All the work paid off and the show went quite well, and I will be talking about that in a later article. But the combined silent-video-and-live-improvised-music piece featured several clips of Luna, including this one that is perfect for a combined Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt with theme texture.

This is a fun clip that combines cats, abstract digital imagery, and even highways with our I-80 sign in the background. You can see the short segment that appeared in the video below:

Luna black cat I-80 texture from CatSynth on Vimeo.

A sad note this week, our friend Meowza passed away suddenly last week. It was unexpected when we read of his passing in the comments for our Carnival of the Cats last week, he was so full of life. We remember him through the many images of him rolling around in the dry Arizona dirt:

We send our thoughts to Mog and all of Meowza’s family on their loss.

Weekend Cat Blogging is hosted by…no one this week. In fact, it looks like this week was completely left off the schedule, which resumes with edition 360 next weekend. But Elivra has stepped in to combine WCB 359 1/2 with Carnival of the Cats.

The Weekly Photo Hunt is up with the theme of Texture.

The Carnival of the Cats will be up tomorrow at Meowsings of an Opinionated Pussycat.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Primary Fun with Highways: New York

It seems that all the interest in the primary season has faded, with the outcome all be inevitable. And perhaps our primary highways series could fade as well. But I would be remiss if I did not at least cover New York. It is a different experience to try and observe one’s home state and try and condense that experience into a short road-centric article; and experience familiar places and note those that are left out, as many others have for their own states over the course of this series.

My experience of New York has revolved around New York City, “The City” which still sets my personal standard for what a city is.

Here we see one of New York’s most iconic landmarks, the Empire State Building, from the vantage point of one of the newest landmarks, the High Line. The High Line is a public park built on an abandoned elevated rail line in the formerly industrial west side of Manhattan. It is now an integral part of the Chelsea neighborhood and the area still known as the “Meatpacking District”. I spend quite a bit of time here during my NYC trips to walk the High Line and visit the many art galleries.

And in terms of landmarks there is the Brooklyn Bridge:

In this photo, taken from the very trendy Brooklyn waterfront, we see not only the venerable bridge, but many newer buildings of lower Manhattan. The tall twisty building in the center is a new Gehry-designed residential tower. In the back we see the incomplete but already quite tall One World Trade Center, the main building in the new complex.

It is interesting to see how much the city changes every time I return, especially in comparison to what things were like in the 1980s and early 1990s. The neighborhoods that we are looking at these photos, Chelsea, Lower East Side, DUMBO in Manhattan, were nothing like what they are now. There is a bit of nostalgic charm looking at the old run-down scenes that I remember, but I know this is probably for the best.

Another thing that makes talking about New York different from talking about other cities in this series is that there aren’t many highways to talk about, especially in Manhattan. New Yorkers take the subway. But there are still highways even in some of the denser areas of the city. The FDR Drive along the eastern edge of Manhattan is narrow and winding but offers good views of the East River and the changing skyline of the city as it passes underneath the bridges.


[By Bob Jagendorf from Manalapan, NJ, USA (Downtown) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons]

On the Brooklyn and Queens side, there is the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, (I-278, the BQE). It zig-zags through some of the densest areas of Brooklyn on a narrow double-decker path among tall buildings. With the contemporary focus on Brooklyn, the highway has also taken on a significant identity for those who live and work there. There are even multiple art and music pieces dedicated to it, such as this piece from Performa 2009.

It is impossible to in an article like this to even scratch the surface of the city’s cultural offerings, both large institutions like the Museum of Modern Art as well as the numerous galleries and small performance spaces. So with limited space, I share with you one of my own performances in New York, at Theater Lab near Union Square in late 2011.

I could not discuss New York City without giving a shout-out to The Bronx, the borough to which I have the most family connection. Though once the “new” section of the city with fancy apartments lining the Grand Concourse, the Bronx fell into deep decline in the 1960s through the 1980s, with scenes of derelict and burnt-out buildings particular in the South Bronx commonplace. Charlotte Street perhaps was the most infamous of all such scenes.


[By User Incantation on en.wikipedia [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons]

Having only seen the Bronx since the 1970s and 1980s, this is what parts of it looked like. It was just part of the landscape. And I wonder if it influenced my deep interest in the aesthetics of urban decay. But these images never told the whole story of the borough, either at its nadir or during its current rebound. The Bronx has long been home to respected institutions like the Bronx Zoo and Wave Hill, and newer cultural gems like the Bronx Museum. The museum is part of the revitalization of the corridor along the Grand Concourse in the central and south Bronx.


[Wave Hill]


[The Bronx Museum of the Arts.]

The Bronx is bisected by Interstate 87, the Major Deegan Expressway, which travels with length of the borough south to north, passing by Yankee Stadium. As it crosses the city boundary into Westchester County, I-87 becomes the New York State Thruway. The Thruway cuts through the southern part of the county before meeting I-287 and crossing the Hudson River on the Tappan Zee Bridge.


[By Sev! on Flickr [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons]

This is the Hudson River Valley, known for its scenery and for inspiring the “Hudson River School”. The paintings may look rather trite and dated now, but the scenery that inspired them is still quite spectacular. One of the more dramatic points along the river is the Bear Mountain Bridge, which carries US 6 and US 202 from Westchester on the east side to Orange County and Bear Mountain State Park on the west side, spanning large hills on either side.  It also connects up NY 9D on the east and US 9W and the Palisades Interstate Parkway on the west.


[By Ahodges7; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:13, 27 June 2010 (UTC) (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons]

On the west side of the Hudson, one can continue north on the Thruway to Albany, the state capital. However, on the east side, one could take the scenic Taconic Parkway. It begins in suburban Westchester County just north of the city and not far from where I grew up, and then continues north through picturesque rural landscape for the remainder of its route. It is in fact the second-longest continuous road listed in the National Register of Historic Places after Virginia’s Skyline drive.


[By Phillip Capper from Wellington, New Zealand. Cropped and color-corrected by Daniel Case 2009-12-31 prior to upload (Taconic Parkway, New York, 7 Nov. 2009) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons]

In Albany, we turn onto I-787, which parallels the river through the downtown. This circle-stack interchange connects to US 20 and to the Empire State Plaza.


[By Foofy at en.wikipedia ([1]) [CC-BY-SA-1.0], from Wikimedia Commons]

The Empire State Plaza, conceived and built by then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller, is a huge government-building complex built and arranged in the futuristic international style of the 1960s, a bit like Brasilia. As a result, I am quite fond of it. Nearby along US 20 is the State Capitol building, which is quite different from most others. It is not the Classical style with columns and a large dome or rotunda, but instead looks more like a rich family mansion that one might find in New York in the 19th century. It is a mixture of Roman, Renaissance and Victorian styles all put together.


[By UpstateNYer (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons]

From Albany, one can continue on I-87 north towards the Canadian border. Along the way, the highway passes through the Adirondack Mountains. In the northern part of the Adirondacks, one can leave the interstate for smaller roads like Highway 86 through the mountains to Lake Placid of Winter-Olympics fame, and nearby Whiteface Mountain.


[By Mwanner (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons]

Meanwhile, the Thruway continues west from Albany with I-90, through many of the other cities that dot western New York, such as Syracuse and Rochester, passing north of the Finger Lakes. The longest is Cayuga Lake. On the south end is the town of Ithaca, home of Cornell University whose campus is on a hillside overlooking the lake, and whose official school song references the lake. Near the northern end of the lake is Seneca Falls, a famous location in the history of women’s rights in the United States. From Seneca Falls, we can also follow the Erie Canal westward. The canal, which was an important transportation route in the nineteenth century, runs largely parallel to the present-day Thruway. It is known for its complex series of locks, such as these at the appropriately named town of Lockport.


[By Leonard G. at en.wikipedia [see page for license], from Wikimedia Commons]

The Erie Canal and the Thruway continue westward to the city of Buffalo. We leave the main Thruway and continue on I-190 towards the downtown on the shore of Lake Erie. It is the second largest city in New York State, but I have yet to visit it. It’s location on the edge of the Great Lakes and its industrial past make it seem much closer to the cities of the midwest, such as Cleveland and Detroit, than to the rest of New York. Indeed, one of the city’s landmarks, Buffalo Central Terminal reminds me a bit of Michigan Central Station in Detroit: a once grand art-deco station that has been abandoned and fallen into disrepair.

And yes, Buffalo wings do come from here.

We can head north from Buffalo on I-190 to Niagara Falls.


[By Victor Ip (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons]

This image contains the smaller American falls, with the larger Horseshoe falls off frame. Next to the falls is the Rainbow Bridge, which connects to Canada, and concludes our trip to New York. Even as I finish writing this, I think of all the comments I could write about what was missed in this brief trip. But I know I will be writing about New York again in the future.