Category Archives: image

visual documentation

ancient animals

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To learn how to work with clay, I’ve been copying ancient animals that I find on the web. These were made, with air-dry clay and acrylic paint, between November 2021 and April 2022. Here they are, arranged from youngest to oldest.

cute rounded whale in black stone

Whale effigy, Chumash, 1200-1600 CE

Musée des Beaux Arts, Montreal

my clay copy of the whale, painted black
whale copy seen from the back
a pleased looking clay dog, reclining, with sleepy eyes.

Rattle dog from Athens, 3rd century BCE

greecehighdefinition.com

my version of the rattle dog, in clay painted to look weathered
dog copy seen from the side
yes, my rattle dog really rattles!
elegant abstract horse with smooth curved limbs and painted details

Horse, ancient Greek, Boeotian, 6th century BCE

bidsquare.com

my copy of the horse, painted to look weathered, not as elegant as the original
my copy of the horse, seen from behind
an abstract bull-like figure with rounded horns and short legs

Animal figurine, Late Mycenaean (14th–13th c. BCE)

Museum of Cycladic Art

my copy of the figure, painted to look weathered, seen from the front
my less elegant copy, in weathered paint, seen from the side
a little carved hedgehog in white stone, with short legs, a perky nose, and an engraved grid pattern representing the spines. It's standing on a dark stone cart with wheels.

Hedgehog on wheels, Susa, Iran, Middle Elamite period (1500–1200 BCE)

Musée du Louvre

my clay copy of the hedgehog in weathered white paint, with a much bigger nose and clumsier modeling. It doesn't have a cart with wheels.
another view of my copy.
Maybe someday I’ll make wheels for my hedgehog…
a perky little dog with pointy ears, curly tail, spots, and only three legs

Spotted dog, Pakistan, Chanhu-Daro, 2600–1900 BCE

Museum of Fine Arts Boston

my copy of the dog, painted to look weathered. It has a longer, less cute face, and still only 3 legs.
a front view of my dog copy.
a grizzled and tough looking boar, its side heavily slashed

Boar, Tepe Sarab, Iranian Neolithic, 9th millennium BCE

reddit

my copy of the boar, painted to look weathered, slashed down the sides
front view of my boar copy, showing how narrow it is

the tapestry of the search for terrestrial intelligence

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The Tapestry of the Search for Terrestrial Intelligence is my piece for the show Life at the Edges, on view through September 30 at Science Gallery Dublin.

In 1977, the two Voyager space probes were launched, each carrying a golden record with music, sounds, and voices from Earth — just in case. The records also feature over a hundred digital images encoded as sounds. If an alien civilization picked up one of the Voyager probes a million years from now, what would they make of the information on the record? They probably wouldn’t think they way we do. They might try to taste the disk, or try to find meaning in the way it feels when they rub their fingers on the grooves. Or they might try to decode the ancient, degraded images onto a forty-meter-long tapestry.

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noisy spring update (from the mailing list)

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It’s spring, and the 17 year cicadas are coming soon. It’s going to be a noisy June!

Singing Room instruments

I recently showed my installation, “Singing Room for a Shy Person”, at the Clocktower Gallery in New York. Singing Room was commissioned by the Métamatic Research Initiative, and I’d been working on it for more than two years! It’s moving to the Tinguely Museum in Basel this Fall, along with all the other Métamatic commissioned works – if you happen to be in the area between October and February, please check it out! Here’s some more info about the thing:

http://artonair.org/residency/ranjit-bhatnagar-singing-room-for-a-shy-person
http://hyperallergic.com/70273/singing-for-shy-people-with-voice-activated-instruments/

I’ve got two big projects coming up next! First, in a few weeks, I’m going to Paris to meet up with a bunch of artists, architects, builders, and musicians to build CONCERT HALL – a sound sculpture shipwreck, a big walk-through experience made from salvaged materials and robotic instruments, and we kind of need your help to make it work. It’s opening next month at one of the largest contemporary art centers in Europe: the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Even though this is a huge museum, they are opening twenty exhibitions all at once as part of their Nouvelles Vagues programming, and museum budgets being what they are, they weren’t able to offer us the full budget they had initially discussed.

Here’s a concept rendering of the thing:
Concept rendering for Concert Hall

We have been attempting to raise an extra $7000 through Rockethub, which is realistically the amount we need. As of now, we have 2 days left and it doesn’t look too likely that we’ll make it to that amount. However, with Rockethub, unlike Kickstarter, it is not all or nothing. Every little bit will help, and if we can make it to the half-way point, we at least know we’ll be able to provide for ourselves in terms of lodging and groceries during our stay in Paris. I know many of you have given already – thank you! It has not gone unnoticed, and we appreciate it!

Others, if you can spare just $10 each, it will really help us make this ambitious project possible. Please contribute if you’re intrigued – note that we’ve got some neat gifts for contributors!

http://www.rockethub.com/projects/25362-concert-hall


The other big project, which I’m just as excited about, is the revival of SiSSYFiGHT 2000, the online multiplayer game I helped make way back in the late ’90s! It was a weird, disturbing, and fun game that had a lot of enthusiastic fans until we had to close it down a few years ago. Now we’ve raised money on kickstarter to rewrite the game in modern web technologies and give it all away as open source code. We’ve made our funding goal, but if you’d like to kick in a few bucks to reserve your SiSSYFiGHT username, or to help us reach our stretch goals, or to get some fun prizes, we’d be grateful!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1805029723/sissyfight-2000-returns

Note for web readers: you can sign up to receive these email updates at https://moonmilk.com/mailing-list/. I’ve been meaning for years to move this mailing list to a fancier mail service. Hopefully I’ll get it done soon. If you sign up here and later get a letter from MailChimp asking you to confirm your subscription to my mailing list, don’t be alarmed! I hope you’ll choose to continue receiving the updates.

I always love hearing what you are up to – please keep in touch. You know how to reach me! Feel free to add me to your own announcement lists if you use such things.

greenmarket produce scans at Brooklyn Public Library

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A selection of my prints from the greenmarket produce scan series – ranging in size from 3 inches to 5 feet! – will be in the (Un)Still Life show at BPL’s Central Library at Grand Army Plaza, opening tomorrow! The show will be up through December 3.

Many of the fruits and vegetables I use in my images came from the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket, just a few steps from the library, so it’s especially nice to see them in the beautiful lobby gallery there.

More information at brooklynpubliclibrary.org


Some guy checks out the biggest print moments after we hung it


Timelapse: installing almost 200 tiny prints covering 9 years of veggie scanography

(mailing list archive) noises of summer

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I saw a firefly a few days ago, so it’s summer now, whatever the calendar says. Last weekend was the annual Figment Festival on Governors Island, and I brought back my 2008 wind-powered sound sculpture in a new cyborg body. Here’s a video:

I was lucky to be chosen as one of the Queens Museum of Art‘s sound art residents this month, so I’ve been working with my collection of vintage automatic music toys, and I’ll give a presentation/performance this Saturday (June 18th) at 5pm. The performance is free, but come early and check out the rest of the museum, including the famous Panorama of the City of New York! Event into: facebook.com/event.php?eid=229965507015603

Here’s the toy collection:

The following weekend, I’ll be at the Solid Sound Festival at Mass MoCA (North Adams, MA) as part of Peter Kirn’s Handmade Music Lounge: solidsoundfestival.com/exhibits

Coming up in July: a workshop at the Peabody Essex Museum near Boston, the Sketching in Hardware conference in Philadelphia, and a field trip to the Lightning Field in New Mexico!

What are you up to?

trumpet marine at figment festival

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I made a little sound sculpture – a sort of wind-powered banjo – for this weekend’s Figment Festival on Governors Island. Here it is installed on the island’s waterfront by Castle Williams, with a spectacular view of downtown Manhattan. (If you’re in the New York area, come to the festival this weekend – it’s free, and there’s eight million things to see.)

Trumpet Marine at Figment Festival
If the wind really picks up, the flowers will spin.

And here’s a video from when I was testing it on my deck.

Update: here’s video from the festival itself.

pix and sounds from 29 noisy noises

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Thanks to everyone who came to the 29 Noisy Noises party on March 1 and helped me celebrate finishing 29 instruments in 29 days! Lots of great people came over and made a lot of great noise on the 29 instruments — you can hear some of it below.

29 Noisy Noises – more party photos from Andrew – more from me

electric jam
“set up a groove”

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