Art

Weekend events in San Francisco (Music, Art and Cats)

Another busy weekend, especially with the number of things going on. We only have time for a partial review…

First, there a quick stop at downtown pub to see some friends/colleagues. Then a rush to BART to get across the bay to Berkeley and my old stomping ground, the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT).

I was a few minutes late, but still had plenty of time to hear Joker Neils and Gino Robair performing a improvised duet. Robair has an amazing talent for getting electronic-like sounds out of acoustic percussion instruments, and did so again on this evening. Neils was primarily using custom synthesizers, both professional instruments as well as circuit-bent toys. We have discussed circuit bending previously here at CatSynth. He brought several well-crafted examples, including Suziki Omnichords with contact-resistance interfaces; and he also brought a tremendous enthusiasm to his performance and to his discussion of circuit bending in between sets.

Also presenting was Rob Hordijk, who designs custom synthesizers (or “works of art” as he described them). Among the technologies he employed in the “Blippobox” that he presented were chaotic oscillator pairs, where two oscillators feed back into one another to create non-linear modulation, and a filter that he called the “twin peaks” filter (presumably because it has two resonant peaks).

Amy X Newburg lent her vocal and electronic-music talents during the presentation and in the second half of the show – readers may remember her from a a recent music festival that we reviewed.

I had some interesting conversions with both Amy X Newburg and Joker Neils following the performances, which is always a nice coda to a concert.

It was another exceptionally warm weekend in San Francisco (I wouldn’t mind it becoming less exceptional), so more opportunities for walking events. First off I finally made the trip to the San Francisco SPCA to inquire about volunteer opportunities and see their much touted adoption center. The cat area featured large rooms, “kitty condos” as well as comfy areas to hide – it actually seemed on par with the “cat resorts” where I looked into boarding Luna. The SPCA is actually a short work away from CatSynth HQ (well, it’s at least short from my perspective).

Another short walk in the opposite direction from CatSynth HQ led to the Yerba Buena Gallery Walk. Open studios and gallery events are pretty regular occurrences, even within walking distance. Plus, there’s often free food and drink. I didn’t see too many things that truly interested me, except for some abstract paintings at 111 Minna that I had already seen during the first Thursday earlier this month. But that doesn’t mean the afternoon wasn’t without its attractions. Some of the galleries, such as Varnish, were in very interesting spaces, such as converted industrial buildings from the early 20th century. A view of Varnish is in the photo to the left. Additionally, some of the sights on a gallery tour aren’t the works of art, but the people viewing them – and this is even more true on a warm sunny day. Finally, I did have a delightful conversation with Jesse Allen at Chandler Fine Art – his very psychedelic/natural works aren’t what I am usually drawn to, but some of them did include abstract representations of cats and other animals and one “wild cat” in particular caught my attention.

More art on Sunday, this time photography. This Sunday was “Pinhole Photography Day” (who knew?) and the RayKo Photo center featured an exhibit, demonstrations, and most notably a ride on the Bus Obscura a school bus converted into a large camera obscura.

The bus obscura toured our South-of-Market neighborhood, providing a unique view via the pinhole-camera images. Small dots of blurry light would suddenly come into focus as a sidewalk or car or storefront.

Because the image were so localized, it wasn’t always clear exactly where the bus was, though every so often a familiar landmark would emerge. The ride was accompanied by live acoustic and electronic music, adding to the experience and making it different from the regular “tours” of our neighborhood.

First Thursday San Francisco

A number of downtown galleries in San Francisco stay open late on the first Thursday of the month, an event I have known about for a while (and even attended occasionally before moving to the city). Here are a few of notable items from the most recent “First Thursday”:

Now that I have large walls, I am actually looking for large abstract pieces, like the works of Ricardo Mazal at Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery. Several of these would have worked quite well. Unfortunately, these “monumental paintings” come with “monumental prices.” I’m not one to put down all high-priced art automatically, but I do sometimes find the pricing of art to be a bit of a mystery.

Sometimes abstract is “too abstract,” even for unapologetic modernists. Such were the large monochromatic and gradient works of Ruth Pastine. These could actually work quite well, on large bare white walls, but they would get lost in an environment with other activity and texture. Such stark paintings need space to themselves.

More down-to-earth are the offerings of the Hang Gallery, from which I have acquired some artworks in the past. This months show at the Annex, called “Give and Take”, was one of the better ones I have seen in the while. It featured more traditionally abstract paintings (Hang often seems to feature contemporary mixed-media works in the Annex), such as the work of Phillip Hua. Although not as large as some of the others featured in this article, I could definitely see one of Hua’s paintings hanging in CatSynth HQ. His work is an interesting mixture of abstraction and “industrial grit”, with moments that seem recognizable.

One “recognizable” image was Back Up by Carolyn Meyer, also at Hang. I’m pretty sure this is yet another view of the I-80 freeway through my neighborhood, as I have describes in previous articles such as the recent March “walking tour” and our highway underpass photographs. But what does it mean to see a similar scene so “painted”? It’s something entirely different from the photos, or real life.

And of course, we could not go without mentioning this delightful feline-themed work Spell by Ulrike Palmbach at the Stephen Wirtz Gallery:

It always comes back to cats here at CatSynth, doesn’t it?

This article was included in the April 9 Carnival of Cities.

A few photos from recent shows

Some photos from our Polly Moller and Company shows earlier this month. The first is from the Luggage Store Gallery:

This was our “trio format”, with myself, Polly and Bill Wolter on guitar.

There is always an art exhibition going on at Luggage Store, something that I generally welcome during music performances, as long as it is not in the way. There was an eclectic mix of works on display that evening (isn't there always?), and I particular liked this piece:

Next, we have a couple of photos from 1510 8th Street in Oakland:

These photos are from Les Hutchins, who played an electronic duo with Matt Davignon in the opening set.

I need a haircut.

Portland

I am reporting on Portland after Astoria, even though we visted and played a day earlier. That’s just how things sometimes work.

We did have some time to spend in the Rose City before our show at Rotture:


Click to enlarge

We experienced Portland’s famously variable weather. Fortunately, many of the city’s attractions are indoors. This includes Powell’s Books. I could have spent the whole day in the Pearl Room, which contained the art and architecture offerings, as well as their extensive rare book collection.

Portland also has abundant public art. Across from Powell’s is this “brush,” a noted landmark:

And this “recursive elephant” was quite intriguing:

This sculpture includes other animals besides the elephants. I think I see a cat on the trunk:

It always comes back to cats, doesn’t it.

The show that evening was at Rotture, a club on the waterfront, conveniently located next to a construction zone. Although our audience was small, the show went well; and I did like the space, a converted early-20th century industrial brick building.


Click here to enlarge

They also had an interesting mural in the main audience area, and a nice large stage. We shared the bill with Emily Hay, who also does improvisation with flute and voice (although with a very contrasting sound and style from Polly); as well as Tim DuRoche and Resolution 51 (free jazz improvisation). So it was definitely worth sticking around after our performance to hear everyone else – although the entire evening was probably branded as “experimental night” or “improvisation night”, there was a great variety among the three groups, and I think the ordering worked well with us first, both musically and energy-wise.

More on Portland, our show at Rotture, and the trip up from the Bay Area can be found here.

Five (or more) Blogs That Make Me Think (The Thinking Blogger Award)

We were tagged a week or so ago with the “Thinking Blogger Award” by our friend (and fellow mathematics enthusiast) meeyauw. We appreciate meeyauw's endorsement and complete, and encourage readers to check out her other recommendations.

Since the rules are for five recommendations, I decided to break it down using CatSynth's motto:

Cats. We are tagging Megan and the Bad Kitty Cats, for their mix of thoughtful writing and love of cats, and helping to bring our own “Cat Blogging” at CatSynth to another level. Megan also tagged us with a meme recently and I will get on that one soon…

Synthesizers. A slight deviation of the rules, we're spitting this one. Matrixsynth is our starting off point for all explorations synth-related, we've found several interesting instruments and other synth blogs by reading – plus it features Cats and Synths. While Matrixsynth remains focused on its core, Muff Wiggler provides a more eclectic mix of personal commentary often revolving around synthesizers and electronic music.

Music. We recently found a few interesting new-music blogs, including New Music reBlog. The authors add their own writing around music and performances, and follow a lot of the same live improvisation that I do.

Art. I have to give a shout out to Placebokatz for presenting modern art via a black cat. While a lot of the performance or human art is not usually my taste, I expect no more and no less from any real-life art exhibition. Also, pawful, the creator of the visual livecoding Fluxus has at least one page that counts as a blog – I have reported in his projects including Fluxus and Quagmire in the past.

Opinion. Our friend jellypizza combined cat blogging with progressive/liberal political commentary and eclectic references from bygone pop culture and our home in Westchester, New York. We miss Taboo; but we're also grateful for setting this example for the rest of us.

Should any of abovementioned sites choose to participate: please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the ?Thinking Blogger Award? with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative gold version if silver doesn?t fit your blog).

SF May 13 Part 2: Picasso and American Art, and Brice Marden

i]As described in Part 1 of this series, I had an opportunity to visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), and view two exhibits that were going to close shortly thereafter. The first of these was Picasso and American Art, in which the influence of Picasso on American artists of the 20th century by placing works side by side. For example, several of Picasso's iconic Cubist works were displayed alongside works of Max Weber that they inspired. My favorite of the Picasso works in the exhibition was The Studio (1928):

This work is considered an example of Synthetic Cubism. Compared to earlier Cubism, this style is typified by more abstract shapes and simple lines, along with brighter colors. Picasso's Synthetic Cubism had a strong influence on several prominent American artists, including tuart Davis, Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky. Below is Gorky's Organization (1933-1936), which is quite clearly influenced by (and indeed a response to) The Studio:

Artists such as de Kooning and Gorky were influential in creating the American art movement Abstract Expressionism, and their interest in Synthetic Cubism can be seen a direct predecessor along with other abstract styles. I also see works such as Organization as a bridge between Synthetic Cubism and the Surrealist work of Spanish (Catalonian) artist Joan Miro, and then through Surrealism back to Picasso's later work. Miro is among my favorite artists, and I did have an opportunity to visit the Joan Miro museum in Barcelona in 2005. I found many works with a similar (yet quite distinct) combination of sparse geometry and bright colors:

Actually, I had seen this same exhibition in New York last November at the Whitney Museum. It was interesting to see how the two museums presented the same exhibit. The main difference was the galleries themselves, SFMOMA was more light and open, while the setting at the Whitney was more intimate and somehow “quiet.” Additionally, the Whitney made the audio tour available at no additional charge. I usually don't do audio tours, but since it was “free” I decided I would sample specific parts and thus it influenced my visit.

Additionally, I found myself more drawn (during both visits) to the earlier works, mostly before 1960 (up through an including Jackson Pollock), and less interested in the pop art and 1980s styles in the last section. That being said, I do like many artists from the 1970s and later, and this is a good segue to the retrospective of Brice Marden. Marden began in the 1960s as Minimalist painter, and I think most viewers would agree with that characterization. His early work is primarily large monochromatic fields, often arranged in diptychs and triptychs, as in the Grove Series and D?après la Marquise de la Solana (1969):

The Guggenheim collection, which includes the above work, describes it as ” a response to Goya?s portrait of the Marquise, which Marden saw in the Louvre.” With that in mind, here is a computer-generated work in the spirit of Marden's early Minimalism using a photo of Luna as the source for a triptych of color fields:

All fun aside, I did find the large monochromatic works interesting in the context of the full retrospective, especially when several large examples were placed around one of SFMOMA's spacious galleries. The retrospective also gave the opportunity to see Marden's remarkable transition in the late 1970s and early 1980s with his interest in Asian calligraphy and his adoption of more complex images filled with organic curves. He continus to use this style to this day, as in the recent 7 Red Rock 2 (2000-2002), shown to the right. He did have an interesting digression in his work into complex series of crossing lines, such as the 4 and 3 Drawing, shown below. This was probably my favorite from the exhibit:

I suppose I don't really have a “conclusion” to draw here, except that as usual I walk away both appreciative and a bit overwhelmed and bewildered by major exhibits, and always go back for more.

Fluxus

I needed some intellectual diversions over the last couple of days, and last night I took another look at concept of software art that has intruiged me recently.


Fluxus is a system for live software art that combines programming with audio, visual and interactive elements. It comes to us from the same people who made Quagmire, in which programs ran inside of monochrome images.

Some interesting statements from the Fluxus website:

act of a flowing; a continuous moving on or passing by, as of a flowing stream; a continuous succession of changes

On a more technical level:

Fluxus reads live audio or OSC network messages which can be used as a source of animation data for realtime performances or installations. Keyboard or mouse input can also be read for simple games development, and a physics engine is included for realtime simulations of rigid body dynamics.

The use of OSC is of particular interest, as such a system becomes an interesting companion to Open Sound World. It also rekindles my idea of providing an OSC-based livecoding environment for OSW.

Unforunately, I have had some difficulty getting it installed (or compiled) for Mac OSX, so I haven't been able to do much myself. Hopefully I will be able to get that working soon…