Rough going sometimes

The replies came back from a number of funding organizations, no luck. Some are disappointing, others are a learning experience. Coming up for 2013 is a new schedule of project management to get this installation finished and up this year.
Grrrrrrr.

Far More Than an Inconvenience

I did not suffer any losses, other than some time and food in a warm fridge. Some friends and colleagues--maybe some readers of this blog--suffered quite a bit.

Several have lost everything--everything. No home, car, clothing, nothing. Some are still homeless in evacuation centers or at friends'. A colleague's family business was destroyed. It may take many months--if ever--to recover. What path is taken now?

Admitting: I could be a little callous if not specifically told what the issues were; at times I'm more observant than perceptive. However, I am able to see the complicated layering of possession and loss; memory and its vivid resurrection. Indelible fingerprints of the past; how can they be recalled?

Found this photograph on the web from The Daily Beast, a Brooklyn paper, photographed in the ashes of Breezy Point.

Hurricane Issues

Proto 1 phase was just about ready for exhibiiton at the Grace Gallery when the city was hit with a "major weather event". No show, no opening, nothing. Silver lining? Several. Details in the next few days.

Stand For Anything

Suspending the pieces from the ceiling is a challenge in most gallery spaces, no matter how different and unusual the notion is. I am convinced that a few places, though interested in the work itself, didn't relish the idea of large, heavy artworks potentially falling from above.

When the piece was at BWAC in Red Hook, I had the advantage of putting significant braces into the ceiling and a strong-gauge wire to hold everything in place. The pieces moved with air displacement, but not dramatically.

The Prototype 1 phase at the Grace Gallery where I work at City Tech does not allow for any kind of drilling. Not only are the ceilings high and pristine white, City Tech is a public institution, and a special department must be consulted when a power tool is brought to its property. Overkill, yes, but measures must be taken to prevent total chaos.

So, two options were explored: setting up a rig or making stands which hold the foam core boards erect. For this Proto 1 phase, as discussed earlier, the nine images were tiled to-size and stuck onto foam core. From here, they'll be placed around the room.

A rig proved to be time- and budget- costly. So I slapped a stand together first, from a piece of card stock and then from some left- over board. It works great.

And, by far, an advantage: it I want to change the piece's location, all I have to do is move it. No ladder, no re-tying. Which gives me an idea for how to hang the nine mounted and framed pieces.

The journey continues.

Help From Everyone

One of the nice things about working where I do, The New York City College of Technology, is that they have technology to do my work with, and kind, wonderful, knowledgeable people who are ready and happy to help with machines I can't use.

Pictured is Mr. Steve Caputo, the print college lab technician, cutting the tiles of SIS on our industrial cutter, a monster of a machine.

Like all cutters I have ever known, Mr. Caputo is precise and mild mannered, rarely, if ever, getting ruffled or raising his voice. But, commanding, none the less.

Time flies

With a week or so to go for the Proto I exhibition of all nine pieces in SIS, quite a bit still needs to get done. In the rush, much of the cataloging of the research gets thrown aside, a potentially costly error.

Several goals to this prototyping:
Placement of the pieces
Traffic through the work
Population of the installation; is more space needed?

Others at the College have expressed interest in exhibiting a future prototyping phase in a different venus at the College.

Time flies.

Love of Knowledge

Something about speaking to someone who does what they love and loves what they do:
I spent a half-hour on the phone with a curator from Cornell's Ornithology lab chatting about SIS, and it was like a ray of light. Not that SIS ever ceased for a moment to be a fascination for me, but it is as if a secret door opened to a distant and exquisite kingdom, at every turn ingenuous yet richly layered; at once intimate and untouchable.

Simple questions by the curator began an avalanche of thought:

Do the sounds need to closely mirror the sounds of the machine sound bytes?

European lapwing, a recommended specimen.

That answer was easy. No. The bird songs and the machine sounds need to complement each other; to both play off and reinforce one another. In so doing, they set up the discourse in the viewer's mind: What occurs in nature? What is man-made? Similar to: What happens in our every day lives? What is our interpretation of it?

What about the other ambient sounds that inevitably occur on the same recording with the bird call specimen? I see this as a contribution to the project, not a detriment. The naturally occurring ambient adds a layer to the work's environment: finding a machine sound that forms a dialog to this voice stands to deepen the experience of those visiting the installation.

Would I need images of the birds whose calls are included in the installation?

At first, my answer was no, but a steel trap snapped in my head: why not be familiar with the image of the creature whose voice contributes to my work?

More points were touched upon, more to think and smile about.

Prototype preparation

From the Cornell.edu site.

At this phase everything's been tiled: eighteen tiles per piece. Just trimming is needed. Turns out the color on two originals was off; chromes rescanned and to be reprinted.
Proposals needed for second Prototype Phase needed; from there, it's the usual:
•  contract the engineer
•  tape new sound
•  go to Ithaca to work with the ornithologists. 

Delays, delays

However, daily progress is bing made, even if an inch at a time.

The images were all tiled @ 11x17, needing 18 panes. They'll be trimmed and pieced together over the next few weeks.

Contracting the engineer this week, as well as planning the sound trip to Baltimore. And, those endless grants to apply for.

Weeks of progress

The nine prints have been reviewed, four need rescans and reprints. My color sense has gotten so much keener that the images in question are unacceptable. Most are leaning toward magenta; the scans also show the slight evidence of a moiré on one image.

However seeing them brought new life and inspiration. The disappointments disappear, replaced by new--but good--anxieties.

All nine images have also been tile-printed and will be trimmed next week to prepare them for prototype assembly.

And, a new schematic was made over the last few weeks.

Sound and Video

Interesting that presentations grow and grow according to the media invented to disseminate them. Video presentations are now all the norm for all kinds of projects. In fact, they are becoming increasingly the required--not the preferred--method to present ideas, concepts and requests for funding.

With motion being offered on just about any type of image capture device, and editing software for beginners being at everyone's fingertips, there is no other option but to learn to slap together a 3 minute video--of any and everything.

Proto 1 Phase Exhibition Date

Moving forward each day, Proto 1 phase will show in Brooklyn. Set up during last days of October, opening October 26, closing November 2nd. Nice.

As production officially begins next week...

...additional considerations are needed.

While at once I was ready to get a full set of scans of the pieces, right now I'm holding off.
   a) There must be relevant digital images of all the materials somewhere, it just must be found. Perhaps only one or two are needed to update.
   b) From there most of the images can be tiled and worked on for the Proto 1 Phase.

I meet with the engineer July 2  to work out a logical path for an October prototype exhibition at NYCCT
   a) Perhaps the unit from SMV with new chips might suffice for the time being.
   b) Where to find these chips? And, SMV has seven pieces; SIS has nine.
   c) The unit is nowhere as important as what's going on them and how I'm going to do that.

I have heard back from a few places, with flat results, and the one place I'm waiting on hasn't gotten back.
   a) I'm placing a lot of weight on a fund raising campaign, to be launched in September.
   b) Still worried about a lack of work space.

Yet, I emailed the designer to begin thinking about identity materials. Must keep this thing moving, staying optimistic.

And then, the birds!                                   

Clapper rail, whose song is on the soundtrack.

More to think about

Currently in the works:
1) one monetary grant
2) two space grants
3) one residency grant
4) one exhibition proposal

Coming up:
1) one residency grant
2) two exhibition proposals

Chomping at the bit

Over the next few weeks, the initial prep work needs to start, that is, after a very needed short vacation. NYSCA came in with a no-go, yet other things--good ones--still loom on the horizon.

A time line has been written, time to follow it. 

Widening Horizons

An email from a confidant from Cologne—who now lives in Karlsrühe, Germany with his lovely wife—woke the dinosaur to bring the installation across the Lake. Not that the ZKM hasn't been on my mind. Its website listed on the right. Thoughts of crates, customs and all those fun details have been whirring through my head non-stop ever since.
Looking forward to the possibility.

Back of the Piece

While a long way off, I've started imagining the pieces of the installation suspended from the ceiling with most of their production requirements underway. What I haven't thought until this morning was about the back of the piece.

When prototyped at BWAC, I used speaker fabric purchased from Speakerworks. The price was excellent and the product seemed to work out fine. However, its elasticity made it sag horribly no matter how tightly it was stretched. I was told by a fine speaker manufacturer that is the idea of the material: that it should stretch around curves and cones depending on the design of the speaker.

So now the quest is to either find a way to use this particular fabric, perhaps stretched over a frame or finding another material that allows sound to pass with minimum filtration.

Daily musings

Little details seem to taking my time away from what I'm longing to do: work on SIS. Finding a space, getting images scanned, putting together proposals, it's all quite exciting, and often it seems like nothing gets done when, as an inventory gets taken, quite a lot gets done each week.

Yesterday I met a sales representative from Duggal. My search for large paper output was met with a hefty prince: their output is more expensive than lambda output in the Midwest. However a nice suggestion was made: Since it's a prototype, why not tile it?

Which is what I'm gonna do. Let's see: 11x17" paper, 48 x 60" final piece, 15 sheets per image. Nine pieces, 135 sheets plus all that tape.

Time Line

To prototype Phase 1 in November:
Scope:
a) Color lasers mounted with spray glue on foam core. No suspensions; make casters (also from foam or gator board) and stand them up to determine location
b) Install sound units taped on to the back of the board with speakers and finished sound
c) Tape viewer interaction

To prototype Phase 2 in the spring:
Scope:
a) Mount all images on linen or muslin
b) Stretch the fabric and mount finished units with sound
c) Small promotion campaign and tape viewers' interaction.

Proto thinking

Priced out the installation for prototyping. Lambdas would turn out at $250 for eight and $150 for the ninth! So, after surveying what I've got, the lambdas would be for the second proto.

Right now seeking a place to make large cheap inkjets, to stick on foam core and hang from the ceiling.

And, waiting on the reply from the three other funding orgs.

Nuance and Memory

Lost temporarily in the production of an art piece is the impetus for it. Now that plans for SIS’s completion are coming together, the fingerprints of nuance are all that’s present, but they linger.

In an earlier post, I wrote about those long autumn nights in Cologne. There are long nights coming up as I tape sound and assemble everything. Plenty of time to think of what was, no longer is and how one impacts the other.

How to remember something? Someone? Their face through a fog of events? Or just the replay of everyday life drifting like sand through a sieve? Often I see images of Alex when he was little, as I saw him from the living room window. He was playing in the street back in Queens where we grew up. I remember the striped shirt perfectly. Oddly enough, it’s an image replayed long before he was gone; I always saw him as a child, which isn’t fair, I guess, but that’s how I’ll remember him.

In this week’s Rolling Stone, I read excerpts from Gregg Allman’s memoirs, released 1 May. In it, he talks about losing Duane and how he was angry at him for dying. I can identify with that feeling, although I see Alex being gone as something that could have been avoided.

What did strike me was Allman's memory that, due to circumstances, the last thing he said to his brother was a lie after an altercation. The last time I saw Alex, we too, left acrimoniously.

Duane and Gregg Allman. This classic photo came from the web, of course. It's credited to Country Darlin', I don't know who shot it.

That darn wind...

For weeks, I've been thinking about getting to a windy location to tape, and now that I have a moment to do it, not a breeze is lifting anywhere in the tri-state, not even by the water.

Winds are 3, 4, 5, mph overnight with a significant rise over the day at Red Hook, the place furthest away from continuous traffic (unlike the UN or Rock Center).

The Peripherals

Now that everything's moving forward, a catalog of stuff must also be considered. With SMV I designed everything myself and it went through many, many changes until it was OK--and that was a simple kit, black Helvetica on white to pick up on the text on the images.

SIS is far more complex, as the pieces are in color and I think an image might better express what's going on. SMV's text on the image was a bit of a novelty; computer composition had just come in, although SMV was printed analog and type was stripped into the composite negative with rubylith. Wow. Those days are gone, dust.

Composite analog neg of "He speaks with a smile".

Back to the right now. What's needed:
A logo to brand the work
A postcard, of course.
A poster, 11"x17" to print digitally
A catalog, 24 pages: Eighteen for the images (one image per spread); two for title; and two each for text and tech/credits.
Perhaps a CD label. The CD catalog didn't go over well for SMV, but to burn a few are nice leave-behinds and are cheaper than paper catalogs.

I had an email out to a designer buddy who asked for a scope of work list and I'll probably forward the above to him, after thinking about it a bit.

Weiter! *Forward!

Three phases
1) Initial prototype
2) Live prototype
3) Live exhibition

Initial prototype:
Build the entire installation, as I did with SMV, out of laser prints (or the like), spray mount them onto foam core and study the movement around the works with a skeleton sound unit.
To determine:
a) Position of pieces and their height from the floor
b) Minimum and maximum space needed for the entire the installation
c) Order of the pieces: 3 steel, 3 ice, 3 stone OR steel, ice and stone? Break up the 1,2,3 or keep them together?
make all the heights the same or different?
d) Which sound with which piece? Does anything need to be re-edited, re-taped?
e) Position of the sensors on each piece
f) Position of the speakers on each piece
g) Volume of playback
h) Traffic flow through the installation
i) Attendance minimums or maximums
j) Duration of interaction

Materials:
a) Nine large laser prints or lambdas (only if cheap; current sale of $.99 sq. ft from supplier. 4x5 = 20 x .99 x 9 + shipping). WIll use these prints for phase 2, Live prototyping
b) Nine pieces of foam core
c) Spray mount
d) Twine or hanging wire
e) Working sound units with speakers and sensors
f) Memory stick/chip with sound = software
g) Tape of various kinds to stick everything together
h) Hooks or eyelets; grommets.

Timeline:
a) Find space
b) Survey it for time, area, availability
c) Get sound units made
c) Record and edit all sound
d) Get foam core
e) Get all supplies other than the prints
f) Fit foam core with grommets or hooks to hang; test wire or twine
g) Transfer sound to chip; fit sound unit; to foam core
or
h) wait for part of this phase until the piece is hanging?
i) Hang this over a week or so
j) Make them live
k) Retest the position, height and placement of pieces, sensors and speakers
l) Bring in traffic

Funding, funding, funding

Still waiting on the two foundation grants and two space grants. The minute I get an answer from one of the two foundations, expected in the next two weeks, I will begin working with the engineer.

I also went to IKEA this morning to tape the flags, not a thread of wind. Reminiscent of when I tried this long ago, traveling far to get a similar effect. Brooklyn is much better, of course. Photo below is from the web, this morning was foggy. Gotta get there around 3 AM. At 5, birds were already up and singing, walking over, begging for food.

Exploring places where I can assemble, but the hanging is tough because of drilling into the ceiling understandably ticks most people off.

Next week I'll assemble the first of many to-do lists, to refer to from this blog.

Onward still

The search for a new exhibition venue is on now that complications won't allow SIS's hanging. The work requires too much space and the gallery can't accommodate it. Friends and fans have suggested a number of different options; that is now my current endeavor.

Always thinking

Now that it's time to think of the installation as a whole, prototyping is the next step. I have emails out to a few venues so I can try to structure the nine pieces before installing them. In the coming days, I must get the files together to print BXW (I'd like color but can't afford it at this moment) actual size digital outputs that I can hang from the ceiling for placement and dimension.

Color digital output is about $90 each, $ 810 just to prototype; ouch. Kinko's charges $3 a running foot ( width of one yard ), all three would run $ 72.00, with some patching together.

Depending on other funding, I might be able to afford colorLambda for Less charges .99 per square foot. 4x5 feet = 20. $ 20 for each print? I'm doing it!

Find film and rescan tomorrow or Friday.

Onward!

Won the PSC RF CUNY grant. Now I can at least think of finishing the installation with all the bells and whistles. One step closer.

The wait is endless

Five grants, alternately for space and funding. Awaiting replies to assemble strategies for building, finishing, presenting and showing.

A week of spring and I didn't get it together enough to tape anything out of town. However, I still have plenty of time to process the recent footage and maybe tape some stuff by the NJ waterfront and maybe around the flagpoles of the UN or Rockefeller Center.

Bringing up Chanel

Without getting too lost in the details, the Chanel internet video interests me with regard to SIS because the still image moves as if one were walking by it; of course, at your computer no such thing happens, but the effect is there.

The black field behind it adds to the outer-space quality of the piece, and BWAC's dark galleries would be similar to that. Up till now I had thought of SIS in a white-box surrounding. This opens up new possibilities.

As much as I like the photographs, for me, the video far surpasses the exhibition, though I do like the photo of KL by his work.

I don't know who shot this photo but I got
it from Andrea Janke's High Fashion Blog.

Been away too long

However the installation has been on my mind and in my conversations daily.

I found an engineer who gave me a reasonable quote to work on the electronic aspect of the project. I still have to get back to him but am looking at some other interactive pieces to ask intelligent questions.


Saw an interesting video on Chanel.com the other day. The music is a little eerie, but that's OK. What I found pertinent was that the still images were moving--effects turned a series of images into a video. And, like all things Chanel, I love it.


I think it was a little long, but since all the people in the video celebs, it has staying power. Included are some favorites from the work, along with what I love to look at: production stills. Don't mean to offend anyone by posting the images here.

http://thelittleblackjacket.chanel.com/

Just a few days away.....

and it seems like years.
In a few days I'll be in contact with other engineers and hopefully start on the electronics right away.
Got a nice response from the Ars Electronica with regard to presenting the research paper; they said they don't ordinarily accept works in progress. I've got to re-read that email. I found an image of it at night on Google. Looks wild.

The Engineering Saga Continues

FInding an engineer appears to be easy. FInding one who can commit to finishing the job is a separate challenge. Putting a circuit together is one thing, testing it, modifying it and testing it again is another story. Revisiting a circuit that's not working must be time consuming. I have no idea about this; I know what I want the circuit to do and have an idea how it performs its tasks, but resistors and all the other little electronic baubles is a mystery to me and something I prefer to leave to the pros. Swiping the image below from Lions-wing.net, there's a million different parts and they're all tiny.

I am immediately available to fit the electronic piece to the print, a lengthy and intricate, though infinitely fun problem-solving task.                                                                                                       

Till Hohn

Till is a friend of a friend. We met when I stumbled into Berlin one November long ago. I visited with him twice after that, but haven't seen or corresponded with him in years.

He's a genius artist, and I could write many paragraphs about him, but not now.

The reason I bring him up is that I wrote to him around five years long ago about a memory that had resurfaced: the one of the evening I met him. We sat in a restaurant caddy-corner and, in the middle of the conversation, he told me his brother had died. The reason that memory came alive, I wrote him, was that Alex was dying.

He called a few days later, as if he'd just read my letter moments before.

To the right is a picture of the street on which he lives; I wonder if it still looks like this.

Nuance and Memory

The topic has been raised a few times:

How do the steel ice and stone images and the machine and bird call sounds metaphor the things I write about with regard to the work (see post November 17, 2011 )?

A few weeks back I wrote about a nuance I stumbled upon recently, of when I was in Cologne in November. I'd spent many Novembers in Cologne a few years back--enough to accumulate a small jewelry box of memories. Some were like little gems in hidden compartments; others were in the center tray reserved for flashy, well-worn costume trinkets, ready to be thrown on at a whim. 

The nuance flooded my senses as if I'd opened that imaginary jewelry box: the sight, the cold feel of the metals within, the gentle jingle of the contents. That's what this work does for me. 

I get a chance to muse back on that dusty chamber of my past and pull yet another memory from the faded corners.

Thinking back to when Alex and I were kids, when we went to Europe. We never went back together. But, that first time, in Genoa, behind the Caravelle esplanade in Piazza della Vittoria, there was a colonnade of sorts,  overgrown with ivy. It was very mysterious to me; it could be climbed to via a staircase that seemed to disappear within the ivy (see it below).

All these years later, I think of having been there with Alex, it could have been one day or many. Alex not being here anymore makes that place no longer exist for me, although its nuance, its memory, floats by like a cold wind.

Reference Sidebar

As I keep researching materials to back up what the installation is about, they'll be listed to the left.

Only two for now.

Sometimes overwhelming

Funding applications for this project was at a frenzy: many organizations were tapped and I have no intention of stopping just yet.
I'm also beginning to look into additional exhibition opportunities.

Some back-up materials and descriptions

Steel, Ice & Stone is a public sound and image interactive installation project that creates an immersive environment of abstract sensory media for the viewer to connect and reflect on a memory in their lives.

The installation consists of nine large—4 x 5 foot—color abstract images of pieces of steel, ice and stone. The imagery is united with a sound composition (still under development) melding birdcalls with machine sounds, many of which I recorded.

The media components convey how I process events of my surroundings: the still image holds the moment captured in time, while the sound weaves through that moment in the present. This creates a layered experience surrendering my thoughts and emotions to the balance of absence and presence in time.

The expression of the piece is that loss, and the emotions it evokes, are both mutable and indelible: hence the abstract images of cold, hard objects and sound morphing from the unforgiving pulse of machinery to the gentle warbling of a birdsong. I believe that as time rushes forward, we lose the ability to assess our surroundings until events in our lives become memories. This installation aims to re-awaken in the viewer an overlooked thought or emotion by the interplay of the sound and images; it presents the opportunity for connection and introspection with a moment of their past.

The nuance of recollection is very powerful for me. Sensual recall of events play heavily in my work. This work gives the viewer the ability to absorb the work peripherally by lingering through a maze of suspended images.

The viewer walks through the installation: a constellation of nine large—4 x 5-foot—photographs suspended from the ceiling of the exhibition space. In doing so, the viewer trips sensors set to play sound bytes from sound units embedded in each piece.

The photographs were made on 4x5 film using a view camera. The images were scanned, digitally processed and printed via laser on C-print paper. The images are wet-mounted on linen and stretched on wooden stretcher bars—like a painting. They are further outfitted with a sound unit—which is under development—and the suspending hardware.

The sound is the combination of birdcalls from indigenous North American birds and machine sounds, many of which I recorded. The dance between the sound of a line borer and the mournful calls of a pair of owls create a sensorial metaphor to awaken a distant memory in the viewer as they walk through the piece.

Each image expresses a complete thought; however it is the collection of the images, like a collection of words to form a sentence, which connect the physical objects to the ideas they represent. Getting the sensations just right—formed by walking past an abstract image and hearing an abstract though vaguely familiar sound—is the life of the installation.

The ideal audience for this work is anyone who has an interest in abstract photography and enjoys engaging with media in an uninhibited way. At my exhibitions, I've seen people of all ages interact with my work: Children try to fool the sensors into playing; an elderly lady told me that she understood the meaning the work when she experienced it rolling by in her wheelchair and then backed away to see its entirety. Steel Ice & Stone continues in this vein but in a more private, reflective expression.

 

OK, so the sound is up.

I'm not wild that a screen opens up in the middle of the blog, but I'll figure out how to get it where I want later. I'm excited that the audio is online.

Much has happened

The in-progress sound comp is done, but it must be uploaded as a YouTube Video. Snore; I have to add an image to it and I'm not ready to assign sounds to images just yet. Besides, it's a mock-up, a maquette, to give an idea of the experience of sound melding.
he final comp is dependent on the presence of the viewer crossing the sensor.
Now I'm working to add it as a permanent gadget.
UPDATE JAN 2012: I removed this video to replace it with the same by another name.