A number of weeks--months--had to pass before mustering up the courage to post again.
However, I lost sight I was dealing with someone who puts together theatre productions. He's used to making things work while hiding others. Darkness goes a long way, I discovered.
Brooklyn is next; another set of variables, another adventure.
Can't wait.
From December 1st until just a few weeks ago I was consumed with the first showing of the installation in Trenton, NJ. An onslaught of bad weather and bad electronics made everyday from the last post until now a painful ordeal.
No amount of patient revise was able to make the electronics work beyond three units and it remains a mystery why they malfunctioned in the first place. As I figuratively shovel out from the weeks of ice and snow I've been under, I'm back in full force, planning for the forward thrust of the installation's next exhibition in Brooklyn's Gowanus Ballroom.
In the meantime, I'm in the process of uploading the sound from the pieces and internalizing a major change to the nine installation images. I exchanged one of the images of steel for another. The image used was of the steel threads spun from the inner shaft of a ship propellor; I recorded the borer that produced the threads and its sound is in one of the soundtracks. Visually it's abstract and evocative just like the sound coming from the machine that made it.
Some insights on the work and its evolution in the last hours:
In Trenton, I hired an engineer to rig the piece to the ceiling of the public art space, Trenton ArtWorks. It's a great old factory with a lot of history at its foundation and a steel frame work spans the building in both directions. As stated previously on this blog, I'd lost considerable sleep thinking about how nine pieces were gonna hang but the engineer said, no sweat. He's a theater guy, and he said the total weight (300 lbs) was nothing and went to work with a colleague.
They ran extension cords and gaffer taped them to the wall with unsightly tape. Taking deep breaths, I thought, gosh, why does it have to look so slapped together?
By the time the lights went out and the LEDs were turned on, people walked around the exhibition space, drawn in by floating rectangles of light and sounds of who-knows-what but sounded cool. No one saw the bright orange extension cords or the gaffers. It was a hit.
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Can't wait.
Above, the rigging engineers. A panel already hanging can
be seen behind the man on the right. Right: the installa-
tion when lit.
