Showing only Notes + Links tagged process
Iannis Xenakis - Metastasis (Spectral View)
Metastasis or Metastaseis (“dialectic transformations”), is an orchestral work by Iannis Xenakis, a Greek composer-architect and a major figure in the postwar development of musical modernism worldwide. He is particularly remembered for the pioneering use of stochastic mathematical techniques in his compositions, including probability (Maxwell-Boltzmann kinetic theory of gases, aleatory distribution of points on a plane, minimal constraints, Gaussian distribution, Markov chains), game theory, group theory, Boolean algebra and Brownian motion.
Metastasis was inspired by Einstein’s view of time (a function of matter & energy) and structured on mathematical ideas by Xenakis’s colleague Le Corbusier. The 1st and 3rd movements don’t have a melodic theme to hold them together, but rather depend on the strength of this conceptualization of time. The 2nd movement does have some sort of melodic element. A fragment of a 12-tone row is used, with durations based on the Fibonacci sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34…)
The preliminary sketch for Metastasis was in graphic notation looking more like a blueprint than a musical score, showing graphs of mass motion and glissandi like structural beams of the piece, with sound frequencies on one axis and time on the other. In this video I tried to display this by presenting the frequency spectrum (0-20.000Hz) of the piece and how Xenakis actually “drew” music.
SWF Symphony Orchestra Hans Rosbaud, conductor October 1955
Saw the Iannis Xenakis show today at The Drawing Center and it blew my mind. Architecturemusicdrawing.
It took me a minute to realize that this is a photo of a real thing. That is amazing. CP+B has a way less glamorous but also awesome version of this that tracks the projects for their larger company.
The Panic Status Board - one of the things I’ve been working on lately. Read Cabel’s writeup!
“Turbo“, 2008 by Baptiste Debombourg.
Tom Moody dissects this piece of “internet aware art” from VVORK, which he defines, in one sense, as “offline art made with internet presentation and dissemination in mind.”
Neat idea but it doesn’t need to exist as a piece—you have everything you need from the installation shot. The bulge, a gallery pole, and the human for scale. It reads as instantly and dramatically as an advertising image, with the “product” being an academic soundbite about patriarchal space rendered abject. Would this have been made without vvork.com and the internet to spread it around? Yes, it could be an image in an art magazine, but would it have survived the first critic’s visit who noticed the piece only “read” from a couple of angles and didn’t hold up to more than a few seconds’ study? Vvork means never having to explain—success is presumed.
One of my teachers says that a good work of art can’t be read like a sentence.
Just listened to Alissa Walker’s interview on Humble Pied about “ignoring your job title.”
It’s the same idea that had me all excited about Gabriel Orozco’s show at the MoMA.* He doesn’t feel constrained by the collective consciousness definition of what an artist can be, or I, at least, don’t get the feeling that he’s trying too hard to create capital A-R-T. Either way, the joy is evident and in the breadth of the work there is clarity.
Like Alissa says, whatever you do becomes your body of work!
* and now that I think about it, this is the same reason that I get excited about anything. Maybe it’s also why I like reading writing about writing, I can’t find the quote, but somebody said that the business of a writer is living life, if that connection makes sense at all.
Writers always envy artists, would trade places with them in a moment if they could. The painter’s life seems less ascetic, less monkish, less hunched. Instead of the austere mess of the desk there is the chaos of the studio: dirty coffee cups, paint-smudged cassette decks, drawings of the artist’s girlfriend, naked, on the walls … In the age of the computer the writer’s office or study will increasingly resemble the customer service desk of an ailing small business. The artist’s studio, though, is still what it has always been: an erotic space. For the writer the artist’s studio is, essentially, a place where women undress.Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage (via erasing.org)
I say plagiarism in photography is literally impossible. Plagiarism is copying the expression of an idea. Copying an idea is no foul, in my book. You can’t own an idea, only a specific expression of it. Copyright office even agrees on this point. With a book, I can copy down the exact words and, there, I’ve plagiarised. With a photograph, the process itself negates the ability to copy another’s expression. The camera records the conditions present directly in front of the open shutter at the time the picture is made. Once that moment passes, the time required to open and close the shutter, capturing that moment again is completely lost forever. You can attempt to get the same lighting, the same position, the same compass headings, same equipment etc, but you can never again capture that moment in time. It’s a photographic impossibility, even in the studio.
Todd Walker, Plagiarism in Photography Is Impossible | Ocular Octopus
See also: two lighters, the bottle eversion project (and the notes about eversion).
The Generative Manifesto (Curiously enough written by hand)
Attention to detail that only hand made generate work can allow. (You can go depper into structures using code.)
Realtime output and compositional control, we hate to wait. (It is inconceivable to expect nonrealtime systems to exhibit signs of life.)
Construct and explore new sonic environments with echoes from our own. (Art reflects human narrative, code reflects human activity.)
Open process, opens minds, we have nothing to hide. (Code is unambiguous, it can never hide behind obscurity. We seek to abolish obscurity in the arts.)
Only use software applications written by ourselves. Software dictates output, we dictate software. (Authorship cannot be granted to those who have not authored!)
See also, these two definitions of generative art:
Generative art is a term given to work which stems from concentrating on the processes involved in producing an artwork, usually (although not strictly) automated by the use of a machine or computer, or by using mathematic or pragmatic instructions to define the rules by which such artworks are executed.
— Adrian Ward
and
Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist creates a process, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is then set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art.
— Philip Galanter
“We procrastinate when we’ve forgotten who we are.” —Merlin Mann
Samurai Tree 1M, 2006, by Gabriel Orozco
For a year, from late summer 2004 through early fall 2005, Orozco worked “shoulder to shoulder” with Picoli, who had not been trained as a painter. But once Picoli’s skills were finely honed, and the project of turning the Invariant diagrams into paintings had been firmly established, Orozco departed. The work of painting is now one that he delegates to Picoli in Paris and Christian Macia in Mexico City.
All the genius mythology that once went together with the studio—isolation, inspiration, struggle, ecstasy, despair—is absent in the making of Orozco’s paintings.
—Ann Temkin
In one of his last typewritten letters, he observes, “This machine is delicate as a little dog and causes a lot of trouble—and provides some entertainment. Now all my friends have to do is invent a reading machine: otherwise I will fall behind myself and won’t be able to supply myself with sufficient intellectual nourishment.” Nietzsche feared his own typewriter might outproduce him.Rob Giampietro — Lined & Unlined » Blog Archive » Serial Series, Part 6
Craft is defined in its excess—in the element of work that is not required or demanded, but through which the maker makes a gift—unsought, unreciprocated—to others.Mandy Brown — On craft / from a working library (nicely paraphrasing The Craftsman by Richard Sennett)
[Everyone] (with the least bit of inclination) should write a novel, and society would be much better off for it. Like so many forms of introspection (in many ways the enemy of fundamentalists and political zealots of all stripes), it can be one of life’s great pleasures, but (unlike many others) is not one that falls into the category of immediate gratification (like say, that mammoth black-and-white cookie I just scarfed down). It’s sort of like running a marathon; you have to train to build up to it and maintain some discipline, but ultimately, when you cross the finish line (even if you had to crawl the last __ miles or walk part of the way), you’re going to feel a great sense of accomplishment (even — or especially — if you didn’t win), and for at least a few seconds have some warm fuzzies about being alive and completing something that nobody will ever be able to take away from you. Whether the novel will be ‘good’ or not — much less successful, however you want to define that (but let’s think about it in crass, commercial terms as opposed to a sense of accomplishment) — is a completely different question, and I tend to think that not so many people have it in them to be ‘great’ novelists, much the way only a few runners can ever expect to win a marathon, because I think it requires a certain obsessive personality that falls way outside the boundaries of what most people would consider ‘normal’ and often borders on the psychotic.Matthew Gallaway
(via Tomorrow Museum)
Awesome!
hud:
Pablo Inirio is the darkroom printer for Magnum Photos in NY. For some photographers, mostly the older ones, Magnum still prints in this old school, analog way. Here’s a twitpic of Inirio in his modest darkroom.
He’s worked at Magnum for the past 18 years or so. Once I had the pleasure to meet him in the darkroom and see some of these test prints like the one above. The smell of the chemicals instantly took me back to the make-shift darkroom we set up in our bathroom growing up. I remember the enlarger was set precariously on the sink, the trays of chemicals arranged in the shower, and a towel wedged under the doorway. Maybe that’s one reason I like these test prints.
I don’t know if Pablo Inirio saves them, or if he has any rights associated, but to me these test prints, with +/- exposure notes, are works of art. 20x200?
Try to be anything else →
I woke up this morning and the first thing I did was read this post by Liz Danizco. It made my day.
I keep thinking about Jessica’s one thing:
The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.And this from Lorrie Moore on how to become a writer:
First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age — say, fourteen. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at so that at fifteen you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire. It is a pond, a cherry blossom, a wind brushing against sparrow wing leaving for mountain. Count the syllables. Show it to your mom. She is tough and practical. She has a son in Vietnam and a husband who may be having an affair. She believes in wearing brown because it hides spots. She’ll look briefly at your writing, then back up at you with a face blank as a donut. She’ll say: “How about emptying the dishwasher?” Look away. Shove the forks in the fork drawer. Accidentally break one of the freebie gas station glasses. This is the required pain and suffering. This is only for starters.Maud Newton points out:
Many writers do focus on another path initially. …. Roberto Bolaño, for instance, wanted to be a spy, Kate Christensen a rock star, Joan Didion an actress. Chris Adrian went to medical school, and the seminary. Herman Melville was a sailor.But then, importantly, they were not these things.
Seth Godin, yesterday, published a new book, which has a tagline of: “Are You Indispensable?” Keep all of this in mind — Jessica’s advice, Lorrie Moore’s wisdom, Maud’s synthesis — and consider what Dan Pink had to say to Seth:
Too many people harbor the misguided belief that humans are motivated solely by biological urges and by carrots-and-sticks. Those two drives matter, of course. But we’ve neglected that humans also have a *third* drive — to direct our own lives, to get better at stuff, to make a contribution. Here’s an example. This weekend somebody’s going to be practicing the clarinet — even though it won’t get him a mate (the first drive) or make him any money (the second drive.) Why is he doing that? Because it’s fun, it’s interesting, it’s meaningful. Because the act is its own reward.It’s a lot. But, in fact, it’s fairly simple. Try to be anything else. That’s where it gets tangle-y and difficult. Then go back to the thing that drives you; that act is its own reward.
A few days ago I started a discussion about everting objects on the Core77 Design Forum, which has since devolved into nonsense*. However, in writing about the question I was posing, I found that I answered it myself with a paradox:
You’re looking at two metal pots which have been turned inside out, one looks sort of crudely butchered and the other is shiny and new, could you tell which one had actually been everted?
The crude-looking butchered metal pot was made by taking it apart and putting it back together so it is actually an everted object, I think it would look strange but a viewer would agree that it has been turned inside out.
The smooth, shiny everted metal pot next to it was constructed specifically to appear everted (e.g. edges tape inward, handles on the inside). I think this object would seem surreal, illogical, and even funny, and I also think a viewer would agree that this is an inside out object. However, this created object hasn’t been flipped inside out, it was created in this state.
I don’t know if this clarifies what I’m trying to figure out, but it seems like eversion might be all in the head. There seems to be a conflict between the fact that turning something inside out is an act that must happen for it to be true and the idea that we make assumptions about the everted state of objects based on our memory of how they are supposed to look and function.
I’m going to do my best to actually turn a plastic water bottle inside out (a.k.a. cut it up and put it back together) and to construct an inside out water bottle from my imagination (a constructed illusion!). Both objects might pass for inside out, only one truly is, and both are in a sense, failures: the results of striving to create something that exists only in imagination and memory.
Turning the bottle inside out is easy enough: simply gut it. Or, in the same method that the three-dimensions of the earth are projected and distorted into two-dimensional maps, I’ll experiment with cutting the bottle neatly into butterflies or geodesic triangles.
To construct the illusory inversion is a little bit** more complex. I took a trip to the Compleat Sculptor this afternoon and picked up the AWESOMELY named “Dragon Skin 20,” a flexible liquid silicone for mold-making.
Kevin, one of our wonderful tough-love shop techs, helped me figure out the logistics of creating an inside out bottle. Here’s the plan:
- Drink 1.5 liter bottle of water (felt like I had to do this really fast since Kevin was waiting, it kind of hurt, then I had to pee a lot)
- Using a blade, butterfly the bottle open into two pieces so that you can get inside to brush on silicone. This means cutting along the seam almost all the way to the bottom. (I did not realize that bottles have seams!)
- Mix the silicone and brush it onto the inside of the bottle for twenty-five minutes, twice. Note that two rounds of twenty-five minutes feels like an ETERNITY when you’re trying to brush hazardous, gloopy silicone evenly around a curved surface. For some reason, between appying the first and second coat, they thought it would be a good idea to show me a picture of somebody who developed intolerance to silicone through prolonged exposure. Uncured silicone will burn you if it touches your skin, possibly poison you and/or give you a rash that will never go away. This is as far as we got today, the rest is theoretical so wish me luck.
- Let this cure for 24 hours so that it is no longer demonically poisonous.
- Pop the cured silicone mold from the inside of the bottle and flip it inside out, it’s flexible! The inside texture and surface of the bottle is now on the outside.
- Fill the hollow silicone mold with something stiff, like clay.
- Create a three-part plaster mold of the everted silicone mold.
- Thoroughly coat the plaster mold with a release agent and then pour more plaster into it. Open this up once the plaster has cured. You should now have a solid plaster bottle that looks like an everted plastic bottle. (But you’re not done yet!)
- Cut two blocks of wood that are as tall as the height of the plaster bottle and half the width of it. Drill these full of holes so that air can pass through them.
- Heat up the oven because you’re going to be melting some plastic! Lay the plaster bottle on a vacuum-forming table, with the two blocks of swiss-cheesed wood on each side.
- Once the plastic sheets are pliable, drop them on top of your setup and flip the air switch. Turn the bottle 180 degrees and vacuum-form one more sheet. Cut away the excess on both these sheets and you should be left with two plastic halves of the bottle.
- Seam these with glue.
Don’t even ask how I’m going to deal with threading the inside of the bottle and everting the cap (especially impossible because the everted cap needs to be just small enough to screw into the mouth of the yet-to-be-threaded bottle without falling through). The finishing touch of the eversion illusion is probably going to be putting the empty bottle upside down into a cylindrical vase that is slightly-larger in diameter than the bottle, filling the vase with 1.5 liters of water, freezing the water around the exterior of the bottle, popping the whole thing, and setting it right-side up next to its butchered counterpart. Again, it’s all theoretical so wish me luck.
* And by nonsense I mean somebody embedded the Age of Aquarius music video by the band Fifth Dimension after something about the fourth dimension was brought up.
** a lot
