New Architecture found
But now I am on the cusp of some new projects that will require my undivided attention. Over the next few months Johnny and I will be building out our new studio in Culver City, and simultaneously launching the new video design firm, Be Johnny. In addition to the studio there will be a new website, shows and maybe even a gallery in the future. Whatever we do, you are invited to join us. -Bree
On the road, again
We are back out on video tour and will spend the next month zig-zagging across the US. Touring is like taking a long road-trip with twenty five friends or perhaps more like being in the circus. This morning I woke, snuggled all cozy in my cocoon-like bunk, to the gentle swaying of the bus that indicated we were going through the mountains. Sleeping on the bus is similar to living on a houseboat, so that even on solid land your body feels like it is gently rocking. It is a lovely sensation. Crossing from the dark sleeping quarters into the front lounge, I realized that we were already into the lush green of Oregon. Will be in Seattle by dinner and I am looking forward to sneaking off with my partner in adventure to explore the city.
Coachella
ADAM FREELAND
@ COACHELLA
HERE
are some GREAT photos of Freeland's show- it was
fantastic fun!
VISUALS:
NODE VIDEO
On the road with projectors
NODE VIDEO
(that is us!) is getting ready to hit the road with
our live video shows. We are excited to cross-cross
America and would love to see you along the way.
Friday, April 25 at
COACHELLA
in
Indio, CA
with Adam Freeland
----------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, April 29
Mexico City, Mexico
Friday, May 2
Los Angeles, CA
Saturday, May 3
Oakland, CA
Monday, May 5
Seattle, WA
Tuesday, May 6
Vancouver, BC
Friday & Saturday, May 9 & 10
Calgary, ALB
Monday, May 12
Minneapolis, MN
Tuesday, May 13
Chicago, IL
Wednesday, May 14
Detroit, MI
Friday, May 16
Columbus, OH
Saturday, May 17
Cleveland, OH
Sunday, May 18
Albany, NY
Tuesday, May 20
Boston, MA
Wednesday & Thursday, May 21 & 22
New York, NY
Monday, May 26
Washington, DC
Tuesday, May 27
Richmond, VA
Wednesday, May 28
Atlanta, GA
Friday, May 30
Miami, FL
Saturday, May 31
Orlando, FL
Sunday, June 1
Tampa, FL
Wednesday, June 4
San Juan, Puerto Rico
This Friday
This Friday at noon in Los Angeles, Lex Bhagat will
be at
FarmLab
to discuss
"An
Atlas of Radical Cartography"
Here is a recent review from the blog
We Make Money Not Art.
Beginning Friday and running all weekend in Houston
is the annual
Media Archeology Festival
put on by the
Aurora Picture Show.
This year's theme is Live & Televised and
features multimedia artists who incorporate
audio/visual technology with live performance. I have
said it before & will say it again, Media
Archeology is the coolest thing that happens in
Houston!
Texas reprise
Steve Nalepa posted a few new videos (with great audio!) from the DeKam VS Nalepa performance in Houston, TX. Video shot by John Carrithers & photo by Katya Horner.
More collaborative video performances from Johnny DeKam can be found here.
Johnny Video
The tour of South America has come to an end. This time out we logged 11 flights in and out of 5 countries to do 8 shows. And as I add up the ticket sales (or venue capacity) for this tour, it is mind blowing to realize that we created a live video show for 73,932 people.
The past 48 hours have been the most extreme of this two weeks on the road. On Thursday we left Bogota, Columbia at 10AM and arrived at the airport in Caracas, Venezuela at 6PM. We then boarded a bus that took us over the mountains and arrived in Valencia, Venezuela at 10PM. On Friday morning we boarded a van at 10AM that took us to the venue and that night had a 9PM show for an amped up audience of 6,000.
Immediately following the show we broke the stage down and loaded the trucks. By 12:30AM we were boarding the bus that would take us back over the mountain to Caracas. We checked into a hotel at 3:30AM, showered and then checked out at 4:15AM to catch the last van ride of the tour to the airport for our 7AM flight home.
Not much deep reflection about the tour is available at this time. Now I am looking forward to unwinding at home while writing an article about Houston for the upcoming "Urban" issue of ArtLies magazine. Later this week we will be doing video for two club shows in LA. Wednesday night's show is with DJs Steve Nalepa (LA) and MattB (Tokyo) who will be rocking the house with their Bass Science collaboration and on Thursday night we will be at Spaceland in Silverlake with the Bay Area band Film School .
You Are Here highlights
YouAreHere was held at the Aurora Picture Show in Houston, Texas on November 30 and December 1, 2007. I curated this program (in collaboration with the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at The University of Houston) which featured contemporary artists and curators exploring the interplay between art and geography, activism and cultural studies.
Presentations included Matt McCormick (Rodeo Films), Nato Thompson (Creative Time), The Institute for Applied Autonomy, and Matthew Coolidge (Center for Land Use Interpretation).
Start with the introduction to Matthew Coolidge's presentation "Points of Disinterest in the Gulf Coast Region", in which he contextualized the work of the CLUI. You will be able to access the other presentations from here.
If I controlled the internet
This week I have spent alot of time digitizing the video tapes from YouAreHere, the Houston-based conference that I organized back in December. I have been selecting short highlights from each presentation to post to Vimeo, for those who missed the conference or for those who simply don't want it to end. These video highlights will be posted soon, until then spend some time with more of the TED talks.
Happy New Year!
DeKam Vs Nalepa Wrap Up
DeKam Vs Nalepa could not have happened on a more perfect night, it was almost 70 degrees in downtown Houston. The skyline was beautiful and a mixed crowd of a few hundred came out for the performance. Some sat on blankets with picnic suppers & drinks, while others stood front and center watching Johnny and Steve work their laptops. Johnny utilized the architecture of the site as projection surfaces and it was amazing the see video that at one moment was bouncing off the cement pilings of the Sabine Street bridge and at the next moment reflected back up from the water in the bayou. This was a true site-dependent installation and very cool! I am excited to see upcoming public projects from the Buffalo Bayou Partnership.
-Here is the article in the Houston Chronicle about DeKam Vs. Nalepa
Video Killed the Radio Star
As we approach New York City and the end of this US tour leg, I am thinking alot about music videos. Maybe it is because I am a first generation MTV kid, reared by Martha Quinn on the "I want my MTV" slogan? Last year when we toured with Thomas Dolby, it was amazing to see the crowd react to his Blinded me with Science video-still fresh after so many years. Dolby is a first generation MTV rock star. But times have changed and MTV's recent shift to "reality shows" holds little interest for me.
Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry are today's masters of music videos. Also Warp Films, a digital film studio in the UK that is connected to Warp Records and Cunningham is working on some interesting projects. Closer to home, Portland-based filmmaker Matt McCormick has recently made good videos for some West Coast bands.
Perhaps the most interesting development in the genre is how YouTube allows us to mine this evolution in AudioVisual history. The first video to be played on MTV was Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles. Here are a few others:
talking heads - Once in a Lifetime
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYbUCvz1LYE
talking heads - Burning Down the House
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oVuLJS_Eok&mode=related&search=
aphex twin - come to daddy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Az_7U0-cK0
Time Lapse Load In
In Detroit we took this time lapse series to document the Load In process. This particular day was not as dramatic as a Load In that takes place in a big hockey arena, where there is only a big platform in the center of the room when we arrive. But this old theater was a beautiful reminder of Detroit's boom-times . The quicktime movie is a bit like an electronic flipbook. We are planning to take another series this week, which will go from the moment we arrive on-site until the end of the show- almost 12 hours later. As of today, we have 7 days left on the US leg of the tour!
Video World
This photo of us was taken by Andrea Grover, while she was hanging out backstage in Houston.
We arrived in Chicago this morning & since it is a union theater, we had to wait on their guys to set up our gear. This makes for a slow moving morning, but it is much easier on the body. Our video show has been getting better and better each night and we are now using the live cameras throughout the entire show. On occasion we do still miss a cue, but for the most part, I think we are really starting to rock!
Today I learned that artist, Bill Viola designed the video for a Nine Inch Nails tour in early 2000. I hear they produced a DVD of that tour, which I will have to look for. Rolling rolling rolling - we leave for Cleveland tonight and have the day off in Detroit on Sunday!
sneak preview
Aurora Picture Show- April 19- 21
written by Johnny DeKam & Bree Edwards originally for Glasstire webzine
A relatively new April tradition in Houston is the annual Media Archeology Festival presented by the Aurora Picture Show. Now in its fourth year, this festival of live Electronic and Performance Art is emerging from the underground, and is now easily comparable to the mini-festivals and one-night events in cities such as New York, Portland, and Los Angeles. This year’s Media Archeology was guest-curated by New York’s charismatic Nick Hallett and featured three full nights of performances in several of the city’s hippest little venues. This year’s theme, “Below Fi,” featured “hackers, benders and overall fans of the analog” — artists definitively concerned with utilizing non-digital techniques in their work.
The festival kicked off with an “expanded cinema” program featuring performances by Ray Sweeten and Bruce McClure at the Aurora’s own converted church-micro-cinema in the Houston Heights. Sweeten’s set was performed with deft precision using an oscilloscope to visualize his electronic music compositions with generative Lissajous figures. Bruce McClure’s 6’s Two 8’s: Dopes to Infinity was a challenging structuralist performance employing heavily modified 16mm film projectors that sent much of the audience scrambling for their earplugs. The Q&A session following the performance provoked many questions about the artists’ hacked machines, fostering a dialogue ranging from the esoteric to the utterly geeky.
Night two took place in the courtyard sanctuary behind Domy Books, which shares backyard space with the hipster-haunt Café Brasil. As the audience quietly sipped raspberry margaritas, Dynasty Handbag (aka Jibz Cameron) stunned us with her trashy get-up and amazing body language. Summoning feminist performance art tradition, Cameron sang, twitched, and gesticulated in conversation with her recorded voice and a homespun Electro-soundtrack.
The second set, by Nautical Almanac, represented the Circuit Bender movement. The artists brought an impressive array of “bent” instruments, off the shelf technology that’s been thoroughly hacked to produce new, unintended sounds. This performance was particularly anti-musical, involving percussive and explosive noise blips and bleeps. It appeared to be a largely unstructured improvisation intended to fabricate a visceral connection between the sound and the performer’s bodies. We noted an affinity with the early music of John Cage, but flavored with the baggage of new age politic... which we found to be distasteful in combination with the musical assault.
This evening also introduced us to the visuals of Mighty Robot, who supported both acts using an elaborate optical contraption to create moving images. Their setup can only be described as a mad scientist’s VJ lab, including a light-table, water, transparencies, motors, camera, LED lights, slide projector, and various other objects employed to create ‘interferences’ in the projection. Most notably, there was not a laptop anywhere to be seen. This very tactile approach to live visuals was most gratifying, in a Luddite sense.
We returned for the final night of the festival, which was held at The Orange Show, the spectacular folk-art monument in Houston’s East End. Just about any show is great at The Orange Show, because the place is just so uniquely weird and fabulous. Tonight was no exception; it was the perfect setting to end the festival with a bang. By this point a sense of camaraderie had emerged among the festival-goers, and we found ourselves greeting strangers like old friends.
Tonight’s show began with Tristan Perich, who exudes the sex appeal of a rock star with a video game / art damage slant. Wearing sunglasses and a vest created entirely of zippers, Tristan plugged in his limited ‘1bit music’ CD, which is actually a jewel case filled with various circuits that play 40 minutes of ‘live’ music. The sound is akin to a fuzz-boxed Atari, and as the coarse, electro-synth melodies began to pulse, Perich proceeded to play his drum kit furiously, creating a live drum-and-bass track. He plays in a style that emulates what typically only computers can accomplish, which was interesting in that there was always a sense of being ‘off’ – which in the end was actually quite charming.
The grand finale of the festival was a “Swamp-Tech” set by Quintron and Miss Pussycat (shown in the video above.) PopMatters has called them: “The baddest one-man band in America, sure to move your ass and make you laugh,” and they undoubtedly lived up to this claim. Quintron sits at a large organ+Moog trap, complete with Lesley cabinets and car headlights that he lights up on command. Casio-tone beats and a strange light-triggered circuit-bent synthesizer accompany Quintron’s Pentecostal-punk fervor on the organs. Miss Pussycat, dressed in baby blue with a pom-pom on her head, playing maracas while wailing the vocals. A spirited Mighty Robot broke out his film projector, fully keeping pace.
“Everybody stand up!” Quintron yelled, and the audience collectively obeyed. Quintron later beckoned the audience to “join them in the pool”, and gleefully the crowd climbed “into the stage” (see Flckr photos) for some serious bopping. The Orange Show shook with new life tonight that would make Jefferson Davis McKissack proud.
When first reading Hallett’s essay for this years festival, we mis-read the title “Return of the Native” to be “Return of the Naïve”. Not in a negative sense, but rather in the sense of the hobbyist who toils away for hours in the basement. In a time exemplified by “user-generated content” such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and Flickr, there is a naïve-tech revolution replacing the polished, specialized productions of the Mass Media (music, television and film). Hallett’s title suggests there is something inherently primitive about what we’ve seen here… or perhaps this is evolution. In any case, you should keep your eyes on the Aurora Picture Show: with this year’s Media Archeology Festival, they have cemented their place as headquarters of Houston’s growing new media scene.
See you next year!