Beyond

"You wanted it real
But can you tell me what's real?
There's lights and sounds and stories
Music's just a part"

LCD Soundsystem

Well, Beyond has taken place. It thrived in its moment, and while I'll release audio, video, and maybe other components of it, it will only truly exist in that moment. This term in New Media, we discussed how to create hyperreals and simulations, and in a performance setting, I realized how important that is. Considering it all, I mainly made Beyond a multimedia work (incorporating video, music, sound, poetry, dance, lighting, and more) because I wanted to create worlds for the audience and performers. Baudrillard shares how in the grafted-on universe, there is "multistimulation and multiresponse." Before even reading this part in Simulations, I had thoughts along these lines. To create worlds, you can't always just rely on one type of art. For me, that was music. Yes, it can be so powerful on its own, but to try and reach many observers and bring them to a world, other art can and will play just as huge a role, and for some, even bigger roles. There was a lot going on in Beyond because I and the other people involved wanted to evoke responses within the audience. But those responses could really vary. And they did. It's been amazing hearing how various people have been affected and I know it wouldn't have resonated as much if it was just a concert, just a traditional theater piece, just a video, etc....

We loved creating Beyond for everyone and I cannot express my gratitude enough to everyone involved and everyone who supported me (by going or not). I can't wait to create more for you.

Guided By Voices: Creating the Hyperreal

I recently finished a project exploring the different ways Guided By Voices simulated via their music and general persona. The band, specifically frontman and only consistent member Robert Pollard, create two distinct hyperreals. One is from incorporating live rock antics such as mic-twirling, partying and drinking on stage, and windmilling, simulating what famous rock bands would do despite GBV themselves not being that famous. The other hyperreal is created within each song and the world of their music overall, the lyrics being self-contained and self-referential (either within themselves individually, or the entire catalogue). Immersing myself in a band's work and thinking about the music far beyond themselves was not a new experience for me, but I really enjoyed doing so with this group.

Double Artist Talk Think Posts

In the past few weeks, I had the privilege to see an artist and art historian give talks at Lawrence. The artist was Colleen Woolpert who works with stereography. The art historian was Joan Rothfuss who discussed Nam June Paik in a lecture entitled "Striptease, Robots, and Videotapes."

Colleen Woolpert

The most interesting concept to me that Woolpert brought up in her talk was about the artist's role as an inventor. With her stereographic work, she had to invent a new way to view stereographs due to them not being completely accessible in a museum or art gallery setting. While working on her goggles for this, she came to a realization that as an artist, she invents. While creating the goggles, she was inventing in the more traditional sense, but even before, she was inventing. Ideas. Ideas have to be invented in many cases. People seem to bring up the artistry in scientists and inventors a lot, but rarely the inverse. There's a sense of a discovery in art, and sometimes it can be clinical and more "inventor-esque" than "arty." That's fine.

Joan Rothfuss

A ways into the lecture, Rothfuss brought up Paik's view of music simply being anything bound by a sequence of time—meaning dance, moving images, sonic work, and more. Freeing. Too often we limit ourselves by thinking in only one medium. Or how one medium interacts with another. Or thinking what makes mediums different. Try thinking about music in the way Paik does. What can you create, bound only by time?

Kernels

As my big final project/performance/writing/concert/etc. that will conclude my time here at Lawrence, I am working closely with Copeland Woodruff (who's guiding me in opera studies, theatrics, staging, the list goes on) and Matt Turner (who's guiding me in improvisation, songwriting, poetry, the list goes on) to shape something that blends my passions for many mediums into one thing. I am also getting help from John Shimon in digital visuals that will play a part in this production, and it is this last component that I will be focusing on in these blog updates throughout the term.

To begin writing and planning this production, Copeland advised me to figure out the kernels. The concrete concepts that I wanted to convey through the project. They could be autobiographical, but that doesn't mean that the performance would have to follow a narrative of any sort. But the kernels would greatly inform pretty much all other aspects of the project—the music, lyrics, poetry, visuals, staging, acting, the relationships between all these mediums, and beyond. As of now, the primary kernel is the different ways I have created throughout life, with a focus on now and as a child.

What we're reading in class, Jean Baudrillard's Simulations, fits in well with this idea of creating a multimedia project that evokes these feelings and thoughts because, in a way, the final product will be a simulation of them. I don't want it to be a simulation of solely or specifically my life and creative process, but rather a more general concept, stripped away from its creator, in an effort to instill in its audience something that they will learn to be, or already know, universal. In a comparison to a Borges short story in which cartographers create a map so detailed that it is the same size as the thing it details, Baudrillard claims that "it is the map (the simulation) that precedes the territory (the original concept)." While some of my territory comes before the map, I'm sure the process of creating this will lead to maps detailing a nonexistent territory, and that is an exciting prospect.

I know I didn't talk about the visual or any specific things besides the ideas behind it, but these will all come later I'm sure. For now, I'll leave you with three albums that I think will influence a lot of this project (and not just its music).

Yo La Tengo's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out

Palm's Rock Island

Björk and Dirty Projectors' Mount Wittenberg Orca

improvisationaLU with live art

This is a very delayed reflection, but still fresh in my mind. A couple months ago, Lawrence hosted its second ImprovisationaLU, a festival celebrating improvised arts, primarily music. This year, visual artist Lewis Achenbach did live painting to every set, documenting the music and musicians with abstract and impressionist paintings. This had a huge impact on me as a music journalist. I began to think more about how his documentation of the art was different than mine. His could stand alone, it was left up to interpretation, it still complimented what inspired it well, it was not just a newsy piece that said exactly what happened, and so on. I thought about how music journalism—at least in the mainstream—does not do things. I cannot help but believe that this is the direction music journalism (and other writing about other mediums) should go. What would it look like? I will find out.

mayfly

An exploration of improvisation within various mediums. Simply watch and listen. Download the sounds here. Stay tuned for future releases.

a reflection: no reason

my   mind    doesn’t   want  any

   of    it  , please

it’s   done , content   with

the  basic    nutrients    from

 food     and   liquids   that

     don’t    affect   in   ways

   i do not want

there    is     enough there

to  work  and      create  from

  and    i can   escape without

       the  aid   of    anything

   but   my     mind

        i   let    it     happy

             happen

there     was   no   real  joy

  nor    creativity  from

 them

   only  fabricated

softened

diluted

so   i   waved   away

 materials   that   served

  no    purpose

please, this  is  personal

  and up to  me  only

 but   for    you  it  is

    up  to    you   if  you

      wish

but   recognize  the soul’s

   POWER

john cage research project

It's been a while since I've done a research project and a Powerpoint but I appreciated getting the time to delve into Cage's work, even if it was only a bit. I focused on his breaking down of barriers between what is art and what isn't, as well as between mediums. With his sound, music, writing, visual art, and more, he poured out a creativity that emphasized its own existence and essence. The classifications weren't important, and neither was the creator. Here are the visuals that I used in Powerpoint. Go listen to him, read his work, look at his art, read about him—immerse yourself!

 Happy birthday!!!

With some reels.

Score for "Suite for Toy Piano"

Score for "Fontana Mix"

Score for "Fontana Mix (A Special Female Version)" 

Score for "Sette Quartetti. L'oubli de Métamophoses"

Score for "Empty Words"

"HV2, No. 17N"

"11 Stones"

"Day Six"

the mudd show

Planning for and attending a gallery opening of photographs by me and my classmates was a strange experience. Coming from the live music background, I am very used to creating art for attendees in real time, reacting to myself and collaborators in the moment, as well as the audience. But with the photo gallery, once I took the pictures and chose which ones to display and how, I was done. My current self no longer had the same influence on the photographs and the attendees' perception of them. Also, I didn't feel like watching other people watch my art. It's different when you're not actually making it for them in the moment. So I ate snacks outside with my friend instead.

I was really happy with the turnout though, and putting together my showing as well as seeing and helping others was fascinating. It made me want to photograph and share my visual art more.

give me light

It is not common for me to do art that is not rooted in sound or music. But with these photos—found on my Flickr—I attempted to bring the emotion, improvisation, and general aesthetics of what I do with sonic art into a visual form. This involved me taking the photos in an improvisational manner—emphasizing meaningful movements, attempting to take some shots without going back and trying for something else, and so on. I edited the photos in a similar matter, going with my instincts and seeing where the edits took me rather than having a very specific final product in mind. This project was also attached to music through the subjects of the photographs as well as album art from various music I was listening to around the time of the project.

Think of darkness as a sort of visual silence.

now

"Everything we do is music." -John Cage

There is not much I want to say about this piece other than the fact that it was created in a now—a self-contained transitional moment documented by the music heard in its short duration, be it banjo, wet leaves, traffic, voice, emotion, or anything else that might be heard and should never be ignored despite our filtering brains. That is what I mean by a "now."

My creative process for this piece is primarily personal so little will be shared here, but I will say it came out of frustration and cognitive dissonance relating to my desire to create but not having enough inspiration to actually create something that I felt honestly reflected me. I recorded a decent amount of material earlier in the day but disregarded it all. Now is what's left.

ongoing, Still

Time can be measured in both movement and sound. Sometimes it's both at once. Marshall McLuhan says "We march backwards into the future." Consider the possibility that there is no future, nor past. Just movement and sound. How would we function? Would it matter?

When I made this, I was listening to a lot of noise music—particularly Wolf Eyes' Burned Mind and Animal Collective's earlier discography—as well as watching David Lynch the whole summer before, and rewatching Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey the weekend of. I also was moved to base the video and sound around Adam Friedman's drumming (heard in two affected tracks), as he has been a huge inspiration, close friend, and passionate collaborator throughout my time here at Lawrence University.

Unite movement and sound when you watch this video. I challenge you to be more conscious of how the two interact in everyday life.

Storyteller

I've been telling stories for a while now. What started as a love for personal conversations and recounting events morphed into music journalism, telling stories of concerts and albums to those who experienced them or not. (You can find recent ones here for DownBeat and here for The Lawrentian.) I've been at that point for several years and while I have enjoyed my time as strictly a journalist with occasional creative writing in other styles, I want to be a puddle, spreading out across a plain, reaching many destinations at once. My desire to be a puddle has helped me realize a storyteller can traverse mediums and creative outlets, fabricating and describing through the likes of music, film, personal connections, et cetera and no one thing should limit it. I brand myself as a storyteller because there's no use for me being boxed into just a musician, or just a writer, or so on. Our human experience is bigger than that and we can tell stories how we want, and it is the story that reigns supreme, not the means that
share it.

My whole life I have been moved by a wide variety of storytelling—The Grateful Dead, The Point, Charlie Kaufman, The Coen Brothers, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Hydrogen Jukebox, Kurt Vonnegut, David Foster Wallace, Serengeti—these are just several works and artists that have shaken me to the core, leaving me inspired but also feeling like I have known them forever. Recently, it's been David Lynch and Yo La Tengo that have been guiding me, building up ideas in my head that are just waiting to echo as stories and leave at least a small fraction of an impact that my influences have done to me. In Marshall McLuhan's The Medium Is The Massage, he claims that "All media are extensions of some human faculty—psychic or physical..." and if that is true, my art will be an extension of the mind, the soul, the heart, the ghost in the machine.

A poster (with original artwork) for a happening I fronted that brought together several of my artistic voices with other artists near and dear to my heart.