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Céleste Boursier-Mougenot from here to ear (2014)
A sonic arrangement featuring songbirds and electric guitars, from here to ear consists of more than seventy zebra finches, enchanting little chaffinches from central Australia, “performing” in the Square. These tuneful and gregarious birds settle in groups on unusual perches: a dozen amplified electric guitars and basses ready to receive the finches, which, as they fly about on the strings, play pre-recorded rock, punk and heavy-metal chords. While the sounds they generate overlie their own songs, the composition of claws on electric guitars that they improvise is governed by the beating of the birds’ wings and by the movements of visitors as they walk around the gallery.

 

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Otomo Yoshihide hyper wr player – without records hi-fi version (2009)
What is the sound that a record player has in itself? Adopting today’s state-of-the-art technologies to the full, this work “without record player” is based on the concept of “without records,” which uses only old portable record players and has been evolved through stages. This hyper-version performs deconstruction and reconstruction in the current perspective, taking away the recorded media (records) of a record player, the origin of recording media.

 

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Otomo Yoshihide ＋ Yasutomo Aoyama without records (2007)
In this installation, there are about a hundred portable record players without records, but equipped with unusual materials such as corrugated paper or iron. In the space of the foyer, turntables scattered everywhere, high and low, right and left, produce noises by the rotating friction, resonating in multilayer. Quiet, low-fi sounds form groups and change the entire image of sounds. When visitors move the position of a player or replace the needle, an additional new world of sound appears.

 

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Chelpa Ferro Octógono (2009)
In this installation, the group Chelpa Ferro, formed by Barrão, Luiz Zerbini and Sergio Mekler presents a musical programme in the form of a large sound speaker that goes up and down, entering and rising above a receptacle, in a continuous movement, during 8 hours, provoking different hearings in each level.

 

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Florian Hecker Event, Stream, Object (2010)
Hecker’s project Event, Stream, Object creates an unusual listening environment to manipulate one’s perception of sound. Hecker’s multilayered composition is supported by a system of eight MM-4XP loudspeakers, each conveying a sequence of synthetic sounds. The miniature loudspeakers are suspended from the ceiling, with bent reflectors in front of the them to emphasize the way sounds rebound and are diverted, thus heightening the complexity of the experience. “In my works, I have to place sound sources at distinct positions, where seeing them becomes a crucial aspect for the multimodal experience of these pieces,” says Hecker. “Event, Stream, Object dramatizes an uncoupling of sound sources in the space and the locations from which we perceive them to come.”

 

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Carsten Nicolai unidisplay (2014)
The installation unidisplay employs visual semiotics to examine various theories of perception. The work operates with a number of modules of different visual effects that interfere with the viewers’ perception. The installation unfolds against a long projection wall in a mirrored room, thus visually expanding like a mise en abyme. The basic visual – made up of graphic translations of various units of time measurement – acts as a world clock and evokes the notion of intertwining time, between past, present, and future.

 

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Nathaniel Mellors Hippy Dialectics (2010)
Hippy Dialectics is an animatronic sculpture. The sculpture’s two heads are connected by hair and each repeats a line from a moment in a script where Daddy is losing the plot—”Listen mate, I’m having a few issues. Small, administrative problems really, not a big deal … ” It is partially influenced by Pasolini’s 1968 classic Theorem, in which a seemingly angelic guest (Terence Stamp) arrives at a bourgeois household and acts upon individual desires to seduce each of its members, from the patriarchal father to the maid. Other influences include Beckett and the theatre of the absurd, and British TV drama and sitcoms of the 1970s and 80s.

 

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Tristan Perich Microtonal Wall (2011)
Microtonal Wall is made up of 1,500 very simple one-bit speakers, tuned individually to create an intricately varied continuum of pitch, rendering this twenty-five-foot wall a spectrum of sound. Perich has explained, “Each listener’s exploration of that aural space shapes what they hear, from the totality of white noise (from a distance), to the single frequency of each speaker (up close).” This near-endless variation “opens the scope of the piece to the entire universe, since only from an infinite distance would we be equidistant to each speaker, though in that case they would also have zero volume, and we would be very far from home.”

 

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Kevin Beasley Strange Fruit (Pair I) and (Pair II) (2015)
Strange Fruit (Pair I) and (Pair II) incorporate the sounds of the museum into sculptures made from sneakers, foam, resin, and other materials. For this performance, the artist used the sounds recorded by these objects to build environmental and experimental compositions.

 

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Lyota Yagi Sound Sphere (2011)
Cassette tape’s magnetic strips are wound into balls. Balls can be played.

 

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Zhang Ding Enter the Dragon (2015)
Zhang Ding’s solo exhibition and performance, named after the celebrated Bruce Lee film, is one of a kind. Zhang transformed the ICA theatre into a ‘mutating sound sculpture’, layering the room with reflective surfaces, suspended sound panels and a series rotating mirrored sculptures positioned next to two music stages that formed a disorienting maze.

 

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Keita Onishi Forest and Trees (2012)
“Forest and Trees” is an installation of moving images and sounds employing 12 digital photo frames. The animation and its sound effects playing through the internal speakers of each frame gradually come together to form music.

 

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Zimoun 138 prepared dc-motors, cotton balls, cardboard boxes (2011)
Zimoun creates complex kinetic sound sculptures by arranging industrially produced parts according to seemingly simple rules. Using motors, wires, ventilators, etc.., he creates closed systems that develop their own behavior and rules similarly to artificial creatures. Once running, they are left to themselves and go through an indeterminable process of (de)generation. These quasi autonomous creatures exist in an absolutely synthetic sphere of lifeless matter. However, within the precise, determinist systems creative categorioes suddenly reappear, such as deviation, refusal and transcience out of which complex patterns of behavior evolve.

 

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Christy Matson Movements (2008)
Christy Matson’s interactive installation Movements produces the grainy, clacking tones of a working loom when viewers press their hands on three monumental, wall-hung jacquard weavings, intersecting both the act of listening and the act of touching.

 

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Wang Chung-Kun beTube-6set (2012)
Born in 1982, Wang Chung-Kun is one of the rising stars in Media art in Taiwan. He has created various forms of machinery that have consistently maintained an intriguing purity and peculiar sense of beauty. As the viewers approach, these machines operate on their own untiringly. Sound-making, switching on and off, exhaling, spinning or twinkling, they can simply do more than a single action. Rather, they have their own rhythm variation, as if they have a life of their own.

 

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Bartholomäus Traumeck Years (2011)
A record player that plays slices of wood. Year ring data is translated into music. A tree’s year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music. It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently.

 

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Mark Leckey BigBoxStatueAction (2003)
This is a piece I made in around 2003 called Big Box Statue Action … at Tate Britain; this is a statue by Jacob Epstein called Jacob and the Angel. I’ve been going to Tate Britiain for a long time, and it’s always there. They’re always shunting it around, they’re never quite sure where to put it. I always found it very alienating … it has this power and bulk and it’s such an obstinate thing… What I ended up finding is that it speaks a language, i.e. of Modernism, that means nothing to me. I can’t connect with that thing [but] I wanted to address [it]. I made a sound system, because I always loved them as objects that made sound, and made a sound that in itself is sculptural.

 

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Dominique Petitgand Je m’en vais (2009)
Dominique Petitgand presents a piece that articulates various relationships with speech (monologue, dictation, screams or cacophonies), language (the voices in French are accompanied by their English translations), editing (fragmentations, synchronicities or temporal gaps), space (playing of distances, mixing, resonances).

 

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David McConnell Phonosymphonic Sun (2008- 2009)
“Phonosymphonic Sun” is a sound sculpture/installation by David McConnell. Each phonograph was rebuilt vertically and the turntables, now painted in a colorfield array, spun continually as each speaker was repurposed to play individual instruments in an 18 song soundtrack written, recorded and performed by McConnell in 2008- 2010. This score was created with rare antique instruments, audio devices and naturally occurring sounds.

 

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Christian Marclay Surround Sound (2015)
This is a video of people in the Paula Cooper Gallery in NYC enjoying Christian Marclay’s Surround Sound, a floor-to-ceiling, wraparound video installation. The piece explores the punchy graphic sound effects of comic books (think “POW,” “CRACK,” etcetera). It is a silent video of a visual trope meant to suggest an auditory experience, making it a work of multiple translations, among other things.

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. I would love to. As inevitably seems to be the case, I’m getting more swamped with work related obligations and family demands than I anticipated, so my short time is getting eaten, but I’ll try to find time to come over, although I’m not sure that I can, as of this morning at least. I will do about the release date. Our distributor is at the Berlin festival, but they and I will talk when he’s back next week. And thank you so, so much for wanting to write on the film! ** Bill, My big pleasure on the plug. It’s as close as I can get to vicariously being there unless, I hope, it’s videoed and uploaded. It’s raining the veritable cats and dogs here too. I barely escaped a bad fender bender yesterday. I don’t know Leyya Tawil’s work, but I will see what I can find online, thank you. ** JM, Ha ha. Yes, I met Adam and his sister briefly at the screening. They seemed really nice, and I so happy they liked the film. Everything swimming with you? ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks, Ben. How did the completion go? Is it impeccably complete? I really want to see ‘Burning’. Great to hear it hits its mark. ** Jeff J, Hi, Jeff. Yeah, it’s been wonderful to hang with Michael, and of course honored that did a show on the film. Oh shit, really? About the sales. That’s truly bizarre and unexpected and kind of makes absolutely no sense based on the book’s incredible reception. Wow. I know acclaims doesn’t automatically translate into buys, but … I’m sorry, man. I guess remember that the initial burst is just that. I know with my books, it’s a gradual and long life thing that always counts and pays off. Sure, we can talk about that or Paris or anything offline. Probably best once I get back to Paris because things are getting pretty rushed and busy here these last couple of days. I lead back to Paris on Sunday. I’m really glad you’re able to work on your book and music, and the assemblages are super intriguing. Thank you ever so much about the Roussel. And, I mean, of course, a post re: the Akermann memoir would be amazing! How great that they’re publishing that! That is some press! ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Well, he’s really more of a conceptual artist, so those aren’t the kinds of paintings that are meant to exist without the knowledge of how they came about. Look forward to your review. Everyone, Steve has reviewed the Colombian film BIRDS OF PASSAGE here. ** Okay. Up there is your restored post for today — another foray into sound art, which, apparently and obviously, is an area of intrigue for me. See you tomorrow.

* (restored)

 

‘Born in 1965, Morton Viskum is considered one of the most provocative and controversial contemporary artists from Scandinavia. The artist’s unconventional choice of materials, themes and artistic expressions often seduces and invites the viewers to experience a range of unexpected emotions, causing shock, amazement and uncontrollable curiosity.

‘For his first London solo exhibition ‘The Hand with the Golden Ring’, the artist did a live performance during the evening of the private view; the thrill was caused by the fact a dead human hand was used live as a paintbrush, demonstrating how the new series of paintings were created. It was not the first time the artist made use of a severed human hand as a paintbrush to compose paintings; Viskum actually owns several hands, they are not merely tools; the idea of the hand being linked to an immortalized personality is absolute central to those occasions when Viskum paints with it.

‘Viskum gained notoriety in the art world when back in 1999 he showed at an exhibition in Copenhagen the very first series painted with a dead hand: ‘The Hand that Never Stopped Painting’. Carefully the hand used was placed in a metal box with a lid and the viewers decided for themselves if they wanted to see it or not. Over a decade later, the hand is still a strong and a significant part of his art projects; when painting with them each hand expresses a different style and the paintings embody a certain personality.

”The Hand with the Golden Ring’, unlike the others, evidences an aggregated object: the golden ring suggests vanity and affluence of the diseased; the golden ring acts as a counterfactual narrative; the object put contingency back into an obsequy, serving as a necessary antidote to traditional deterministic tendencies. The presence of the ring initiates an obituary and for the viewer it evidences a sense of the human futile materialism. Who the hands belonged to initially, is one of Viskum´s well kept secrets.

‘By this approach, the art appears performative, more as an action, and not as much as an object-related material presence. By using one hand from a dead human being as a paintbrush, Viskum draws attention towards the work process. One can easily recognize the patterns caused by the hand’s presence, formed by abrupt lines, applied vertically in many layers and in many colors, adding a vibrant feeling of rhythm to the surface of the scintillating painting. These paintings bring to mind American Action Painting, an art form where the painting finds no premeditated composition and the focus is set on the event that created the art rather than on the object itself.’ — Vegas Gallery

 

Morten Viskum’s ‘Immortal’

 

Morten Viksum Website
Morten Viskum @ Facebook
Morten Viskum @ Vegas Gallery, London
‘Morten Viskum / in retrospect’ @ Artpulse Magazine
Morten Viskum @ FAS, London
‘The Female Hand’ @ ME, Denmark
Book/video: ‘Morten Viskum (Antenne Books)

 

You are generally regarded as one of the most controversial contemporary artists in Norway. How do you describe what you do to people who don’t know you?
I usually start by describing my background as a veterinarian before I started at the Art Academy in Oslo. At the same time I tell people that a lot of the things said about me originates from the tabloid press. The projects written about here only make up a small portion of what I do as an artist. Many of my projects concern everyday phenomena within medicine and science, things that the public are not used to seeing and hearing about.

Is controversy an important and intentional part of your work?
No. To shock is not interesting in it self.

But the projects have lead up to a lot of interesting discussing that have made the projects worth seeing though. When the projects are exhibited for the first time, I sometimes get insecure if I have lost sight of the primary goals within the projects. And revealingly it seems that the projects get better over time. I take this as a good sign.

Can you tell us a bit about ‘The hand with the golden ring’?
The different Hand – projects develop, both concerning concept and technique, based on the background information I have.

The hand with the golden ring is hand number 6. All the paintings are new and made for this exhibition. First the canvas is painted with animal blood, using the severed hand as a brush. Then I place some gold glitter in the palm of the severed hand. Then I blow the glitter over the blood. At the end I paint over the glitter again with different colours, again using the hand as a brush.

How easy is it to source dead people’s body parts for the work?
That is a part of the project’s secret.

The nature of your work inevitably is going to divide audiences. What is the most common criticism that you hear? How do you deal or react to it?
Most of the time the people that criticize my work are the people who do not come to see my exhibitions and who do not make an effort to enter into the problems the projects discuss. Other people fear death too much and therefore do not want to touch the subject. Others again think using the severed hands is just a cheap trick. Luckily, a large group of people, growing after each exhibition, are fascinated by and interested in the work just because they are not made in a traditional sort of way.

The people who have been following my work over time also know, of course, that most of the time the projects are concerned with what you can not see, more than what is actually there.

Throughout art history artist have visited mortuaries and autopsies to paint and draw the human anatomy. I extend this tradition a bit further. I remove the body parts from the morgue and use the body parts directly as tools. The performative aspect is therefore the most important part of the work and what happens when the audience encounters the remains of the performance.

 

The first hand

The black hand

The hand with the golden ring

The new hand

The female hand

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The paintings

 

 

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Two exhibitions

‘The hand that never stopped painting’ (in Norwegian)

‘The black hand’

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Fellow Guy Maddin lover here. PGL has an American distributor, Altered Innocence. They’re going for a US theater release, but, the film being what it is, it’ll likely be a very limited release. A short run in NYC, hopefully in LA, and otherwise we’ll see, and probably screenings in some cities. Then there’ll be a streaming release and a DVD, so at least people will be able to see it that way. Thank you so much for your enthusiasm about the film. That’s thrilling. Zac has already left town. I’m pretty sure I’m going out of town later today, but, otherwise, I will go to Tosh’s event at Book Soup for sure. ** Keatonumbered, Loved your new blog thing, man. Nice that your mom comes with sweets. That’s rare enough. Wait, when is Valentines Day? Like imminently? I’m completely lost even though, I think, France has a watered and distorted down version, I think. Ha ha, make mine for yours a Chucky. ** Dominik, Hi, D! Indeed!!! Yeah, I’m squeezing in some art and friends, although I’m ending up a lot busier here and around here than I thought, and the time is ticking away so fast. But it’s a pleasure. Yeah, yeah, I think I know what you mean about that preemptive wild energy, and trust it’ll coalesce as a superpower-like force. Can you feel that happening yet? I hope the dentist gets in and out of your mouth quickly. My recent-ish visit was a surprising smoothie, and I hope that’s a sign? Take good care ’til soon, my friend. ** Jeff J, Hi there, Jeff! No, it’s the same old post, I think. Not in Europe that I know of, but in Japan, I mean, it must, right? Trip’s been really good. The screenings have been really excellent. Well, a definite highlight has been that Michael Silverblatt so loved PGL that he devoted a Bookworm show to it even though it’s not a book! That was pretty cool, and, of course, it was great and humbling to record that episode with him. There are a few big art fairs happening here, like Frieze and a couple of others, so I’m interested to check them out before I split. How are you, man? I’m hoping the amazing birth of ‘DAM’ has been a giant pleasure for you. You writing? Etc.? Great, great about the Roussel/Song Cave post! Thank you so much! ** Sypha, Do it, do it! ** Rewritedept, Hey, pal. I didn’t know you are a decent snowboarder, no. Never tried. Couldn’t ski, so I abandoned snow as a sports arena. Well, obviously, look to the light, man, whether it’s mountain light or light wherever. 12 hours? Uh, … yikes. Your upcoming trips sound like  nothing but crazy fun. Oh, I’ll be in Paris, or in Europe at least, in April. I’m outta here in just a couple of days. Okay, re: the ask. Next time? ** Bill, Me too, re: that game, but it’s toast, I think. Oh, wow, your gig is pronto! Damn, I’d love to see that. Everyone, If you’re in/around the Bay Area on Feb. 15th, meaning two days from now, you can see Bill Hsu and others performing live, which, need I even say, is manna. Do that and report back to me, please. Here’s the scoop. ** Shane Christmass, Hi, Shane! Great to see you! The Bookworm will be in late Feb., date to be announced. I saw you have a new novel! Can’t wait to read it! And to listen to the mixtape! Everyone, Shane Jesse Christmass, stellar writer, author of one of my fave novels of last year, etc., has a new novel out called ‘Xerox Over Manhattan’ that I can tell you before even reading it is a must. Info/purchase here. And he made a mixtape of tunes he was listening to when writing the novel that you can hear here. Sweet. I read a bunch if not all of Breece D’J Pancake’s stories years ago and thought they were really fantastic. Def. will give your hi to Zac. Thanks, man. ** Steve Erickson, Hi, Steve. Thanks. Ah, great, about the arm’s normalcy. Good question about Welles’s ‘Don Quixote’. You … would think? ** Right. Someone recently wrote to me and asked me to restore the post today that was made by a mysterious (to me) silent reader of this blog some years back. See you tomorrow.