Strangely, it reminded me of Bill Viola's early work.
-Joel
On 8/9/2014 7:53 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Hi Annie and Alan,
Yes, Richard Long. I was actually thinking of Robert Smithson's "site/non-site" with the
two categories "onsite/online."
Annie, I went up there without any source material; I just took hardware and
software tools for making. We were offline up there, and out of cell phone
range, and a few days after we arrived we got hit by a hurricane which knocked
out power, water pump, and local phone for two days (and blew the barn door off
my outdoor studio)! In preparation for the residency, I was thinking of Andy
Goldsworthy, how he arrives at a place and makes work from local materials,
situated in the context of that place. So I wanted to do that, but with video
installations instead of just physical sculptures.
The idea for the installations came out of this piece (
http://playdamage.org/transcryption/ ), which you've seen. So with the colored
rocks piece, what if the video signal from the tide in the center video was
running through the colored rocks, and when it got to the smaller videos at the
end of the rocks, the signal had been translated (transCrypted [sic]) by the
rocks? So in the barn, the rope is doing the translation, and in the basement
the video itself is translating between the two states of sedimentary rocks.
And then the crabs infest and transform the doll.
(Side Note: My 12-year-old son did the source stop motion crab animation for
the doll piece! That doll was in one of the barns up there and his sisters
moved it just inside the barn door as a trick, and when he opened the door it
freaked him out. So I invited him to fight the doll with the crabs so that the
doll would not triumph!)
Then the 4 site-specific installations (transcryption engines) are further
translated into online/offsite pieces. I am glad to hear that you prefer the
web versions. This is part of what I am exploring. We were required to
publicize an open studio (during which time the first two pieces (colored rocks
and barn/rope ones) were running, and I also gave an artist talk at the local
library, but very few people live in that area. So maybe 15 people total came
to the talk and the open studio. Also (and import to me) my family (wife and 5
kids) saw the work on site. They were not all that impressed with the online
versions, perhaps because they had been in those source spaces.
So the onsite/online aspect has to do with time, memory, archivability, erosion [rocks,
flotsam/jetsam(rope), a 1950s doll], solidity, a canon. One of the locals there was a fun/crusty
retired anthropology professor whose aesthetic criteria of "good art" was art that the
anthropological record had preserved (a quite tautological/teleological criteria). So good art had
to 1) be worth keeping to someone at the time, and 2) it had to be a solid object that was
keepable. But the performances of Socrates were preserved a lot better than the parthenon, and I
don't have to travel to Greece to be infested/infected/transformed by them. (But then neither
Plato's philosophy nor Greek architecture are "art" per se.)
I'll leave off. I love theorizing, but I hesitate to claim more about my own
work than what it's actually doing. I think the barn piece with the triangle
forms (the connecting rope itself forms a triangle) winds up feeling
quasi-alchemical. They all feel that way. (Maybe Joel's comment about weirdly
inclusive atmosphere is related?) Alchemical mysticism was not my overt
intention. But then alchemists were trying to translate base metals into gold,
so maybe it is a kind of media alchemy.
Best,
Curt
...
I prefer the webversions to the videos
which is probably logical
I might also have liked the real installations if I could have visited them
alone.
That also explains why I prefer the webversions - the video is the view
made by the other.
I would love to hear Curt talking about this, why, how, what - are you
analysing the works Curt?
best
Annie
...
On Sat, Aug 9, 2014 at 7:23 AM, Alan Sondheim wrote:
quite beautiful work in the tradition? of Richard Long? at least a
relationship there - favorite was the shack w/tangled rope?twine?vine?
projection -
- Alan
...
Hi all,
Here is some work I made during a recent artist residency in Nova Scotia:
http://deepyoung.org/current/nova/index.html
Here is an artist book I made:
http://www.blurb.com/b/5455837-a-playdamage-flipbook
And here is a collection of essays coming out next month:
http://linkeditions.tumblr.com/upcoming
Best,
Curt
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