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AV Club.
In spring of 2024, I began a new project called Zine Club, in
which people could purchase a membership and receive
Mystery Objects (mailed parcels containing small
art-objects) and Digital E-zines (virtual zines
delivered via e-mail) at regular intervals. Since then,
creating things for Zine Club became a ritual for me. It
motivated me to create small things more often, and it
provided me with a small but reliable income source that
allowed me to spend more time on my art practice. I
consistently received feedback that people were delighted and
surprised by the things I sent them.
Zine Club grew to over 40 members. While I had initially
thought that more members would be more efficient through
economy of scale, it turned out that instead, my systems began
to show their cracks. Time spent packaging items, increased
shipping costs, and manual email sending began to encroach
upon my ability to sustain the project. Additionally, my
practice in making Zines and Objects began to feel somehow
separate from my main art practice, which deals with
audio-visual systems.
AV Club is a new project I've just launched, which will take
the place of Zine Club going forward. There is a new name, and
some things have changed, in the service of making the project
more maintainable and aligned with my practice. The focus may
shift to include more writing and technique-sharing,
accompanying the art itself. But the overall intention is the
same: make strange and intriguing things, and send them to
people. I am happy to report that, in the first few days of AV
Club's existence, 17 members have already joined — many of
them former members of the sunsetting Zine Club.
AV Club has its own website, and I already wrote more about
the project in the
intro post
there. If you're interested in supporting and receiving weird
art, give it a read and consider subscribing!
Meanwhile, I've sent out three Mystery Objects and two E-zines
since my last "reveal post," so I'll share them
here. See below for images of the final Zine Club editions.
Also, the zine club webpage will stay
up as an archive of the project.
Thanks to everyone who supported Zine Club over its two-year
existence. I look forward to carrying the torch onward into
the new era of AV Club!
This past Saturday, Andrei and I performed a set as
REALITY ORP for another
Weird Music Night
at
ChaNorth, an artist residency space in Pine Plains, NY. This is a
yearly event for Upstate Arts Weekend, and it was our second
time participating. This year's event was a series of eclectic
sets, including one by our friend Chants Voyage, whose music
has been described as "cryptic techno," and another
by Phantasma Traumata, seen in the image gallery below in
their unique costumes. There was also a clown who, among other
sketches, performed an industrial techno song on colorful
plastic toy instruments.
Continuing my recent explorations in live improvised sound, I
sampled and looped an FM radio, kalimba, and vocals, and
manipulated them with granular processing. Andrei performed
live video using footage they recorded of liquids, processed
with feedback loops and digital transformations using their
self-created Gravity Waaaves device. See below for a diagram
of my audio setup.
We made a recording of the set, but I neglected to record my
audio directly, so the sound is from the camera's mic.
Contrary to my expectations, I actually like this version
more, as it includes the environmental sound and atmosphere
that made the event so enjoyable. Beneath the sound from the
PA, you can hear the sounds of night in the forest, children
giggling, and people sitting in the grass, murmuring to each
other. In the video image, moths flutter around the lamp on my
audio table. This is the sort of delightful, intimate event
which seems to bring out the best in live performers.
On Saturday, May 9,
Andrei
and I played a show as
REALITY ORP in the Boston area.
In this instance, I performed music, while Andrei performed
live visuals. It's been a while since I did live sound, so I
developed a new setup, which I'll likely continue exploring
for the next few shows we play.
I sampled a small handheld FM radio through a microphone,
scanning through stations until I found a snippet of sound to
loop and process with granular synthesis. I also played the
continuumini, vocals, and kalimba, also with granular
processing. The result is a slowly morphing ambient soundscape
that evolves gradually over time in parallel with Andrei's
visuals.
The two-day event, titled Orbits, was organized by
fellow artists
cskonopka
and
Callie Chapman, who also performed as part of the program. We performed in
a multimedia space that contained a sprung floor for dance,
and multiple projectors facing the walls and floor. The other
performances included interesting combinations of modern dance
movement and interactive projected video.
It was very cool to see these collaborations taking shape, and
to be a part of this exciting synergy. We used multiple
blended projectors to create a widescreen image. Here is a
recording of our set:
Last month, on April 10, Andrei and I led a workshop on Analog
Video Glitch at the
Electronics Faire
at Temple University in Philadelphia. This was our second year
participating in this annual event; last year, I led a
workshop on HTML Journaling. This year, the theme was
repair, which we kind of subverted because our
workshop was more about breaking analog video signals
than repairing them... But in some sense, bringing old video
devices back to life and misusing them is a form of repair, I
think. Anyway, it went well and was a lot of fun. Everyone was
very amused and curious about video hacking and the underlying
technical details.
The rest of the faire was very enjoyable as well! We attended
part of a workshop by
Lee Tusman
about the new
L5 library, and how it relates to topics of repair and permacomputing.
As I did last year, I lurked often at the booth of
Iffy Books, a local bookstore and infoshop in Philly. We saw some cool
art exhibitions and live performances. And I had the
opportunity to see some friends from the Philly area (Sam
and
Richard) — and some
friends from afar
who I didn't expect to run into!
Many thanks to the
organizers
of the E-faire for hosting our workshop, and for facilitating
the photo documentation I've included in this post.
This past weekend, I organized a live show at
Ely Center, a community art space here in New Haven, CT. The impetus
for the show was that two experimental electronic musicians I
know from Worcester, MA were doing a mini tour around the
northeast. I put together a mixed electronic bill, and
performed live video projections throughout the event.
Visiting from Worcester were
RUBY, who refers to her musical practice as 'keymashing' and
performed dancey riffs using an old IBM mechanical keyboard as
a controller, and
Imaginary Prisons, who did a mixture of ambient sound textures, and percussive
segments that bordered on drum and bass, using an open source
node-based daw called
bespoke synth.
Locals joining the bill were
The Herbalists, an epic dungeon synth artist peddling intricate,
fantastical melodies (who also performs under many other
monikers), and
Parlay Droner, who performed hazy lofi psychedelia with an omnichord and
several tape-based machines that I will have to ask him more
about some time.
Considering that I'm still new to New Haven, and don't know
that many people yet, I was a bit nervous about the turnout,
but a good number of people braved the cold weather to join
us. Ely Center's new interim space is really nice for these
sorts of events, and this show was a spiritual participant in
the
Weird Music Night
series also hosted there.
Since I was filling multiple roles at this event (working
door, helping with sound, etc.), I tried to keep my visuals
setup as simple as possible while still remaining dynamic
enough to shift to suit the different vibes of each set. I
didn't use a laptop or resolume this time; the only
"computer" I used was the single-board Jetson Nano
running Andrei's
Artificial Life
video oscillator software. I also used my classic video
feedback rig with a gimball head allowing for rotation of the
camera. Scroll down to the bottom of the image gallery to see
a diagram of my signal chain.
Overall, I felt that the show went really well, and I really
enjoyed all of the sets that we performed. While I don't
organize shows very often, it can be a very rewarding
experience to see how the energy of many people can come
together to make something happen. I'm especially grateful to
the folks at Ely Center for opening their space to us, to
Aude, Ruby, and Drew for the photos and footage, and to Andrei
for helping with literally everything.
