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.