This month I’ll be the “artist in residence” on the Brooklyn Museum’s 1stfans Twitter Art Feed. Through Twitter, I’ll be conducting variations on the Surrealist game of Exquisite Corpse, in which participants make a collaborative work of art by alternating to add pieces to it. I’m reviving a game I first organized in 1992, back in the dark ages of the web!
You’ll have to join the 1stfans membership program to play the game, but it’s a worthy cause! And I’ll post the results of the game at the end of the month.
Almost 15 years ago I wrote a silly song based on a typo, about the 19th century’s greatest nonexistent feat of engineering, the transatlantic canal between the United States and Ireland. Many years later, Jacob Haller arranged and sang an a capella version of my lyrics, and now, through the magic of the interweb, you can hear a fully realized version of the song by the all-mollusk* band El Submarinium. Check out the Ballad of the Eire Canal on their myspace page! (Their other songs ain’t bad either.)
Keira and I are starting a new daily photo project, inspired by Minty Forest. Each day, in San Francisco and in New York, we’ll look at Merriam Webster’s word of the day and let it influence the making of a photo. We won’t share our pictures with each other until they’re both posted side-by-side. Please take a look at Don’t Wiggle!
Hello! I’ve got news of some upcoming events in Brooklyn, and then some coverage of the instrument-a-day project!
ON THURSDAY night, April 2, the Nutmeg Orchestrette– my little robot ensemble– will be performing as part of the NYC Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, along with a bunch of other excellent performers including R. Luke Dubois, Jane Rigler, and more! That’ll be at 11PM at Galapagos Art Space, 16 Main Street in Dumbo, Brooklyn; admission is $10, or maybe $5. If you haven’t been to Galapagos since they moved, it’s a great space! The Festival is also putting on an excellent series of free concerts all weekend at the Graduate Center in midtown Manhattan– check out the full schedule at their web site.
ON SUNDAY afternoon, April 5th, Nick Yulman and I will be previewing our new electromechanical music installation in the lobby of the Coney Island Museum, right across from the intoxicating Freak Bar and the tantalizing Freak Show! I say “previewing” because we’re going to keep on adding to it as long as the museum lets us. (I’m working on a tiny pipe organ for June!) On Sunday you can see and hear a newborn sound sculpture, entangling the Nutmeg Orchestrette and more in its 24-volt tentacles. Sunday is also the museum’s annual Band Organ Rally, so you may also see some antique player pianos and barrel organs brought out by collectors. It’s a day of mechanical music, all for free! The Band Organ Rally will take place noon to 4:30 on Sunday the 5th, but the bar, sideshow, and museum are open every weekend and will probably soon be open all week for the summer.
ALSO COMING UP in June, the Figment Festival returns to Governors Island June 12-14. I’ve participated in each of the previous festivals, and it was a blast! Please consider proposing an installation or event or party or performance of your own! More information: http://figmentnyc.org/2009/2009-event/
LAST MONTH I spent the whole month making a new handmade musical instrument every day, the second year in a row I’ve ruined February that way. It was a challenge, a learning experience, and an excuse to make lots of noise. I capped off the month with a performance with my friends in the experimental band The Glass Bees. Somehow, National Public Radio got interested in the project, and they recorded a nice little segment about it, which was broadcast on Weekend All Things Considered on March 7th. You can hear the whole show or just this segment at the links below, and the Glass Bees’ site has sound and video of the entire performance! Many thanks to Bethany Ryker, who found a spot for us in her weekly series of experimental, avant-garde, and sometimes just plain weird music, at Barbes in Brooklyn.
The Glass Bees and I played a bunch of my homemade instruments last night at Barbès in Brooklyn. (The show was made possible by Bethany Ryker, who brings interesting stuff to Barbès every Wednesday and to wfmu every Sunday.)
Here’s some excerpts from the show– thanks to bee Chris for editing and naming the songs!
You may be able to catch an interview and some more from the show on NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered this Saturday or Sunday. [Update: the interview aired on March 7th and can be read & heard on NPR’s site.]
photo: me and two bees with our granny-carts full of junkstruments!
Years ago I was in a gallery show with Mineko Grimmer, who makes sound sculptures of pebbles frozen in ice. As the ice melts, the pebbles drop into a pool or a wooden lattice and make irregular sounds.
I made my own version entirely out of things from my junk drawer: marbles, squashed pennies, old keys and dog tags, and some acorns I was saving in a tiny jar. What does it sound like? I won’t find out until the weather warms up.
This one didn’t really work out. It was supposed to be a sequel to last year’s automatic tension guitar, but it doesn’t work or sound nearly as good. I’m experimenting with cheap substitutes for the little clapper solenoids I used last year, which are now really hard to find, but so far the results are bad.
And it’s not even automatic! I didn’t get around to rigging up a computer interface, so I’m playing it with the funny little wooden keyboard you can see at the upper right. It sounds like this.
