tough to imagine

it has been a pretty whirlwind past couple of weeks, and now it is finally starting to kick into summer here in NY. Lots to report in terms of music and art making

(keep yer eyes peeled for the pure fire mix from NRON and the Pure Fire crew from subtonic, new track with Small Change and forthcoming 12″ Negative Dianetics)

but that is not the point here.

The point here is to try to find space to imagine, create a space, dig it out of the hole, carve it out from the saturated mass of buy buy sell sell and rebuild the links that fed our energies to do what we did that brought us pleasure. Not to wax nostalgic, summer brings out memories of freedoms; the woods behind my house were my real home in the summer, then the parkinglots of the flat strips that were called my town, all forming a fear and imagined future where we could make some kind of positive change to this truly imbalanced planet.

here is a new way. make your own worlds. situate yourself and the things that make you you. wiki + gmap = wikimapia.org
foreground the automatons, mechanical turk from amazon makes us sheep. do sheep make sheep? we are not sheep. (learn its history. Is this the future?)

I am looking forward to a summer where we can eek out the space to

copy, repeat, scratch and break and make, and try to build some dissarray into everything we make.

5:07 pm | | No Comments »

some promotional activities

just to toot horns, the whitney independent study program show is up at the chelsea art museum  in New York until next week.

a quick ny times review is here

also coming up this friday is the curated whitney isp show at CUNY graduate center

Here is the Rhizome.org press release (also on WMMNA)
Finally, not to miss the critical studies lectures next week, including architectural studies as well.

all can be found here

10:34 am | | No Comments »

a few thoughts and some sound

Last week saw the Whitney ISP show go up at the chelsea art museum. I have a new piece, called “Protect yourself from yourself”. It is a video installation, and I’ll have some documentation coming in a bit. Also, on Saturday evening, the whitney ISP had screenings and performances as well. I showed a related piece, called sec. 215, sec. 217. Both the installation and the video are based off of sections of the USA Patriot act. It was a pretty intense install, and it came together well becuase of the help from the museum and the ISP staff. So thanks to those folks, and and I can only congratulate my friends in the group show on a fine job.

Meanwhile, been thinking again about sound. Recently, I have been pushing more and more into video, with crossover work. But it seems that building from sound up is the way that I can work best.

My class, the NMC collaborative through Eyebeam called Sound and The City, is nearing it’s final phase. You can check the blog here, we have had some visits with some folks like cory archangel and michael sharon from socialight, among others.

There, my students learn about sound, psychogeography and chance, as well as some technologies. I begin the year with one recording, and often bring it back for a reminder of the human potential, as well as for discussions on the body, sound vs. music and so on.

For those who have not heard A Thundersound, or who have asked about it, I am posting the classic Ghanian Postal Workers cancelling stamps, 1976.

This is a field recording, and yes (all marxist jibes welcomed) this is the sound of the postal workers working.
I have been listening to this track for years, and never grow tired…

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2:28 pm | | 1 Comment »