ideometric

A few music links…

(See also: Mulgrew Miller Live at Yoshi’s)

These photos by Peter Funch are pretty genius. Looks like multiple shots from the same angle used to create a composite scene amplifying certain features of the urban landscape and life therein.

http://www.v1gallery.com/artist/show/3

Here’re some more photos from wandering around alleyways in Seoul. Whenever I start taking pictures of a wall or texture, everyone walking by suddenly gets real curious why the foreigner is so interested in some crusty poster hahah. That’s kind of the point, though.

These were mostly taken around Kungook university (건대).

Enjoy the beauty in the mundane, find the art in the everyday :] for fun I think I’m gonna self-publish a little book of photos, using Lulu or something similar.

A few shots taken while wandering around Seoul. Drawing lots of attention from curious people while taking these. The pictures remind me of Kayo Dot’s music, which I love.

“Tell me why world, unfathomable and good,
The beauty of everything is infinite and cruel.”

www.myspace.com/kayodot

So I recently purchased a Sigma 30mm F1.4 lens for my D40X. I wanted a sharper lens, with a wide aperture to play around with bokeh. I’m still such a newb when it comes to photography, but I’m having a lot of fun messing around with it.

It’s so much sharper than my Tamron 18-200mm that I sold that lens today. I don’t really miss the zoom that much, and for longer range shots I can just crop and end up with an image that’s as sharp as the Tamron.

And the shallow depth of field is a lot of fun for isolating specific things in the image. Now I’m considering picking up a 10-20mm Sigma for wide-angle indoor shots, specifically for a cafe review project.

Photo taken in Myeongdong (명동)

Dark alleys are my favorite places in Korea. The space between places where things are stored, stacked, pushed aside, strung up, hung out, layered and faded. Smoke breaks, back rooms, loitering, sketchy figures, trash piles and cabbage laid out to dry (this is Korea after all). The life sustaining exoskeletons of pipe and wire. The honest patina of street grime and peeling stickers advertising who-knows-what. I wonder how many people never let their eyes wander to the margins of the world they live in.

I went to the the Seoul Media Art Biennial at the Seoul Museum of Art yesterday. There were a lot of interesting pieces, and with three full floors for the show, it was almost overwhelming. Here are a few pictures I took during my visit. Maybe I’ll add descriptions when I have more time.

One of quite a few pieces using projectors. This was a bit surreal, as the light had the feeling of daylight, but without any window.

For this piece, air was circulating in a pipe as the storage medium for the data displayed on the screen.

You could upload data from your mobile devices via Bluetooth to incorporate it into the dialog between these two heads.

HAHA this is great. Dude tapes electrodes to his face and syncs the shocks to a music visualizer, so his face contorts with the various sounds of the song.

This is slightly genius. Above piece carved out of Marshall McLuhan’s book The Medium is the Massage by Robert The.

Book art is intimate, fascinating, and transgressive. When we talk about books, we are usually talking about what’s inside, but there is a lot more to a book than reading it. Book art makes those other aspects its domain: the way books look; the way that, with their bent spines and marginalia, they record the history of our own reading lives; the way that these mass-produced objects can seem to hold not just letters but knowledge.

http://ffffound.com/

This is the best time waster ever. (And occasionally inspiring).

French electronica, pop, with Japanese noise/collage, psychedelia influence. Nice!

More here:

http://www.olamm.tk/
http://www.myspace.com/olamm

Arcane Device, “feedback music” by David Lee Myers.

“Since 1987, I have been developing specialized circuitry and electronic systems for the production of my signature ‘Feedback Music’, whose original sounds claim unique sources. The outputs of electronic devices – particularly those intended to create a modification of some kind to an audio signal, such as time delays – are fed, via custom-built mixers, to their own inputs. In this way, these devices never receive signals from the ‘outside world’, and instead feed on a diet of their own product. A whole new function of these devices appears, bearing little relation to their intended purposes. The way I envision it, the devices are provided the opportunity to ’sing their own songs’ [...].

More Info // Sound clips on Myspace

Sometimes I wish I could remember the 80s.

In a world of simulacra, copies without originals, when is a work “finished”? Is it a perpetual work-in-progress?

I think I like that idea.

I was listening to Steve Reich’s ‘Pendulum Music I’ and wondered how anyone could play something like that. Turns out it’s ‘played’ by hanging mics.

“The microphones are pulled back, switched on, and released over the speaker, and gravity causes them to swing back and forth like pendulums. As the microphone nears the speaker, a feedback tone is created.

The music created is then the result of the process of the swinging microphones. ‘The piece is ended sometime shortly after all mikes have come to rest and are feeding back a continuous tone by performers pulling the power cords of the amplifiers’”

wiki 

It flopped in Korea, which probably means I’d like it. This is part of a Youtube rip.

I know I’m predictable but Daft Punk’s tron suits, their pyramid, control panels, the glowing orchestra behind them, and Kanye’s cyberpunkesque gear made me happy. style over substance aside.

I haven’t watched it yet, but it sounds like it could be good. It was only a matter of time for something like this, but these are professionals — I’m still waiting for some of the more popular Youtube directors to get a deal.

“NBC has concluded a first-of-its-kind deal to acquire the talked-about new Internet and social network series ‘Quarterlife’ for distribution as an hourlong drama series on the NBC network after it has first played in eight-minute segments on [myspace].”

Apparently the show centers around a character with a videoblog, and life in general for the Facebook generation. The episodes are already viewable online on the Quarterlife website — which doubles as a social network for “creatives.”

I don’t see the appeal 0f the web community angle, that market is kinda saturated already and it’d take a lot of innovation/creativity to make it successful. But it’s a nice thought…

Quarterlife website | Wikipedia entry | NYT article

Update: Haha, I still haven’t watched it, but apparently on its network TV debut, it had the lowest ratings of any new show in decades. Oh well.

TechShop is a fully equipped workshop opened to the public on a pay-per-day, or monthly membership basis. It gives ordinary people – hackers, artists, hobbyists, crafters, students, tinkerers, etc. – access to high end equipment, and the knowledge required to use it.

” TechShop is a fully-equipped open-access workshop and creative environment that lets you drop in any time and work on your own projects at your own pace. It is like a health club with tools and equipment instead of exercise equipment…or a Kinko’s for geeks.”

“The TechShop workshop provides a wide variety of machinery and tools for the open and unlimited use of its members, including milling machines and lathes, welding stations and plasma cutters, sheet metal working equipment, drill presses and band saws, industrial sewing machines, hand tools, plastic working equipment, electronics design and fabrication facilities, tubing and metal bending machines, electrical supplies and tools, and pretty much everything you’d ever need to make just about anything all by yourself.”

The best part is that they have a ton of classes to spread the knowledge required to use the various tools, with a low $30 pricepoint that makes it pretty accessible. They’re expanding to LA this summer too.

A few photos (I didn’t take) of Yri Cafe, one of the coolest spots I came across in Korea. Filled with art books and magazines, sketchbooks at the tables covered with doodles and poems from whoever sat there before you, and often host to performances, art exhibitions, etc. It fits in well with the bohemian vibe surrounding Hongik university.

The interior is what drew me, as I’d come across their website before visiting the country. Red & chrome chairs, stained and scuffed wood floors, exposed ductwork, rough cement walls, melted candles, artwork on display, shelves of books and other media. Every color, texture, surface, and object — every detail — combining to create a space that begs for exploration. The kind of environment where you’d have to try to be uncreative, try to be uninspired. I think there was even a tree trunk sitting in there. It’s a nice change from the typically boring cafes in the states.

I’m not the only one inspired, check out the user submitted photo gallery on their site. There’re also pretty active message boards, but my Korean isn’t good enough to decipher those. Makes me wonder what kind of community exists around this place, and how it might be reinforced by its virtual manifestation.

Got this for Christmas, it’s better than the original director’s cut I think; the story flows better and the visuals have been cleaned up without any of that George Lucas style editing that ends up ruining a retouched classic.

This gallery of Fred Herzog’s work from the 1950s and 60s caught my eye. I like his compositions and the saturated colors of the street. I think that most of the pictures are in and around Vancouver.

Sources: Equinox Gallery, Fred Herzog Official Site

I wrote an article for Coolhunting.com on La Blogotheque’s Take-away Shows, reposted here. Note that the links at the very end no longer point to the right places.

La Blogothèque’s Concerts à emporter (Take-Away Shows) are a collection of live, unedited videos of musicians playing in unusual settings. The artists’ unpredictable interaction with the environment and the reactions of often clueless bystanders create a genius fusion of music video and reality TV.

Director Vincent Moon’s use of improvised performance in unexpected public spaces creates moments that appear natural and effortless, even ordinary or commonplace. It’s as if we’re being let in on a secret that all around us everyday life is infused with spontaneous musicality, if only we’d have the good fortune to stumble upon the right bar, turn down a certain dark alley early in the morning, or catch the right bus downtown.

Interesting photo-book called “The Beautiful Struggle” that gives a look at style and pop-culture in the slums of South Africa. Wish there was more specific information about the interaction of global and local pop-cultures.

Sources: PingMag article

“Hu Yang photographed and interviewed 500 local, migrant and foreign families living in Shanghai, including billionaires, middle-class and the poor, covering a variety of professions.

These colorful pictures show the living status and environment of the the different classes in today’s Shanghai, and reflect the various social problems and contemporary features.”

Pictures: Hu Yang – photobook, life in Shanghai (via IFTF)