things related to sound, visual art, architecture, modernism, music, design, fluxus, 78's, literature, film, ephemera, and much more ...basically a space to share "the collection", much of which serves as inspiration for my work...
a winter evening... sometimes space
seems like a panelled room,
blue curtains darkening,
the fire flickering out
while a cold lamp
of snow shines against the wall.
or is it the moon already rising
cleansed of her dust
and the breath of our mouths?
philippe jaccottet, from winter light, 1977
image: 1910 snapshot of train in snow, negative
Labels: negative, philippe jaccottet, quiet breath, snow, train
some tips for recording in snow:
1. be careful if your contact mics are warm... if you place them on ice, they will stick to it, like your tongue on the inside of the refrigerator.
2. your baseball cap can work pretty good as an impromptu protective cover for your recorder if it starts snowing.
3. sometimes even in snow and cold, a dog will run up to your mics and try to lick them, perhaps thinking they are food or play toys...
Labels: baseball caps, dogs, field recordings, snow, wyoming
i have made several films using a kind of relative scale drawing process. the first was done by tracing all of the notes in a piece of music onto clear film stock. the second was from my trip to norway, and involved tracing a map, words in a book, and a player piano roll. when i got to wyoming last week, i wanted to find a way to do something related to the landscape, but trying to find a way to have it have a relationship to scale.
for the first film/drawing, i covered the entire sliding glass door of my bedroom with clear 16mm film stock, and then tried to draw the view onto the large plane of strips. this one was a bit of a disaster as i ended up getting sharpie marks all over the window and had to spend the better portion of the next day cleaning it off.
yesterday, as it began to snow, i decided to try to map the dropping flakes, so i covered the small window in my studio with clear film stock, and did several 5 minute drawings, trying to map the falling white dots in different colors, within the window plane.
what you see above is the resulting drawing, before it was taken apart and edited into one long strip. i have no idea what these will look like when projected, but quite excited by the potential...
Labels: cameraless film, snow, wyoming
Labels: rabbit feet, snow, wyoming
today i fly to chicago to give a talk on my work and meet with grad students, then to philadelphia to visit the girard college site for my installation next spring.
fortunately, blogger's ability to create posts in advance, and the fact that i had a pretty good day at the flea market sunday, have allowed me a week's worth of posts just from sunday's findings. and so i begin this first post forming a line from my leaving and returning site, here; through my destinations, there...
here: seen above, a great snapshot found in a box of photos at the flea market, from the 40's of a radio or television transmission site, probably shot through a telescope, or some such circular hole-like form, taken from the pasadena area, not far from my home...
there: a beautiful song called "snow" from a 1940's set of 78's called 'songs from the first grade book'. i am sure to encounter snow in either chicago or philadelphia if not both... i honestly don't know how the real thing could be anymore sublime or beautiful than this song... which arrived in the mail monday morning...
Labels: 78's, children's songs, listen, power towers, radio towers, snapshots, snow
this is one of those photos where the text on the back seems totally connected to the image on the front. the style of handwriting seems so much like little dust balls bouncing in the wind on this barren landscape. it also seems a kind of notation of wind. it's almost as if the writing could be super imposed upon the surface of the photo (a kind of montage) that would somehow feel right. the swirling movements of the writing clearly indicating weather.
the words found within these scrambling wavy lines are also nice: "drop me a card any way and tell me what you are doing. am all alone and the wind is blowing 2:40 snowed this PM and everything looks and feels wintry. but i have lots of coal and it is inside. have 14 of the finest pupils you ever saw. they are so mannerly and nice i really have been blessed to get this quarter and school at home. you will have to come out to this dark land some time. i weigh 103 most i have ever weighed and feel fine.every organ works perfect for i guess i never know i have any".
the photo of the duet is also quite stunning. it is difficult to see in the scan, but they are really playing together, the mandolin player's head cocked as if completely lost in the listening. there's a ton of detail in the barn and its beautiful parallel lines of various widths...
Labels: coal, handwriting, organs, RPPC, snow
well, yesterday was the "official" first day of winter. i suppose, like this gent, the best thing to do would be to wait around in the snow for the record store to open :-)
Labels: edison records, record stores, RPPC, snow, winter
