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.