On Friday, December 13,
Andrei
and I visited our friend
Anna Oxygen's TV Club class at Hamilton College (where I'm also teaching
Intro to Animation this semester). TV Club is a class Anna
created for the Digital Arts program that gives students the
opportunity to explore video art, livestreaming, and
performance. For their final episode of the fall 2024 semester,
we provided an analog video art playground, and livestreamed its
output as we walked the students through the setup and then let
them experiment with it.
Here is an abridged cut of the episode; the full length stream
is archived on the Hamilton TV Club
Youtube Channel.
Since I launched my Zine Club project
this past spring, I've been mailing out an edition of Mystery
Objects every 2 months. The goal is to surprise people with the
contents of their packages, so I try not to post any images of
the Objects until after they've reached their recipients. Now
that the Club has been running for a while, I can share a bit
about the first few Objects I've created.
My very first Mystery Object was actually three objects - a set
of stickers, based on my drawings of three "Exquisite
Machines."
The second Mystery Object was a foil postcard print. The
abstract designs were created digitally, and the asemic
"text" captions are a fictional writing system from a
world-building project I started in the quarterly e-zine that I
had just published the month before, titled
Self-Same Life Forms of Aritana Occ.
I liked how the silver foil came out, the way that the metallic
ink protrudes slightly from the card, and how the spreading of
the ink gives the lines a more liquid, blobby quality. There is
a subtle gradient in the background, which I think ended up
being a bit too dark to notice.
Also, I was experimenting with creating a print that was also a
postcard; the other side was stamped and addressed. But the
cards ended up being a bit fragile, and scuffs from passing
through the mail system were very visible on the matte
cardstock. In the future, if I make small printed cards, I will
enclose them inside of envelopes instead of sending them out
into the world naked.
The third Mystery Object was a set of 16 printed cards called
The Life Cycle of Aritanian Flowers. In the accompanying info card, I suggested that these were
flashcards created for students learning about the stages of
growth and reproduction of a fictional type of plant found in
Aritana Occ. The idea thus far with the world-building project
of Aritana Occ is that it is a dimension occuped by fractal (or
"self-similar") life forms. All of the images on the
cards are drawings based on frames of video feedback.
I printed these cards myself, and I also cut them down and
punched the rounded corners. Since I was making over 20 sets in
a variety of paper colors, I ended up having to print and cut
several hundred cards, and the process took a bit longer than
expected. In the future, I probably won't do this again by hand,
but I was pleased with how they came out. I thought that perhaps
the cards could also be used for divination, and some of the
recipients seemed to share that idea and took photos of them
arranged in tarot-like spreads.
Addendum: visit
this page to
see all of the cards and find information on how to print your
own deck.
The most recent Mystery Object that I sent out was manufactured
using the process for creating printed circuit boards (PCBs).
However, the designs on the board are entirely abstract and
serve no electronic function whatsoever. As an electronic artist
and tinkerer, I've come across some projects that take advantage
of the medium of circuit boards as an art form, and I wanted to
experiment with making something like that myself.
I was vaguely aware of the process of designing a circuit board,
creating gerber files, and getting them made through an online
service, but I had never done it before. I downloaded
Kicad
and learned a bit about the different layers that comprise a
PCB: the fiberglass board, the conductive copper layer, the
colored solder mask, immersion gold, and white silkscreen, as
well as the board outline, which can be any shape. I designed
the layers so that they would create a cohesive pattern, with
copper, gold, and white silkscreen on one side, and the other
side white silkscreen only.
The dark blue solder mask I chose ended up being very opaque, so
the additional layer of copper underneath the solder mask wasn't
really visible, but you can kind of see it in the form of a
slightly embossed edge around the "Discordian Knot"
design. The resulting object was very satisfying to hold, and
also quite durable, as I've been using it as a keychain for a
few weeks now. I learned a lot from this project, and I hope to
create more PCBs-as-art-objects in the future.
Here is a video I made of a few of these Objects so you can see
them existing in time and space:
So, that brings us up to date on the latest Mystery Objects, at
least until I send out the next batch in December. Creating
these Objects and snail-mailing them out to people around the
world has brought me a lot of pleasure. If you're interested in
receiving strange Objects like these in your mailbox
periodically, check out the link below and consider becoming a
Zine Club Member. The more people join, the more time I can
spend creating weird art.
In August, I performed live visuals for two shows in the Hudson
Valley. The first one was on August 21 at
The Avalon Lounge
in Catskill, NY, where my video projections augmented the music
of two electroacoustic duos:
Lunar Slopes
(Snark & Jeff Rieger), who are local to the Hudson Valley,
and
Matthew Ryals
and
Stephan Haluska, who were on tour together and who hail from NYC and
Cleveland, respectively. It was great to return to this lovely
and welcoming venue, and to get the opportunity to collaborate
with friends, old and new. Here are few scraps of video footage
from this show:
The second show, which I helped organize, was held at a private
space in Kingston, NY. I performed visuals for sets by
Snark
(who also helped organize the show),
The Spookfish, and
headfullofhammers. Bungey Colle, another co-organizer, was sadly unable to make
it to perform.
On Tuesday, June 18, I gathered with a few friends in an outdoor
space behind a small gray barn which I helped renovate over the
spring. As part of a party taking place that night, we set up a
projector screen and a PA and brought out some music and video
gear for a jam session that lasted well into the night. I pulled
the excerpt below from our session, which features
Snark
on saxophone and electronics,
ShmOoOo
on synths and samplers, and
Ben Kujawski
on guitar, as well as myself on visuals. It was a memorable
evening, and I look forward to my next opportunity to perform
video synthesis outdoors.
On Saturday, May 4, Andrei and I returned to
The Psychic Garden
in Rochester, NY to perform live video and sound as REALITY ORP!
Our friend
Anna Oxygen
(Ithaca) also performed a bumping synthwave set. Unfortunately
Dr. Hamburger
was unable to perform, but fellow Rochester locals Shonen Book
were able to hop on at the last moment with a fever dream of
feedback-laden visuals mixed with Donkey Kong. It was a
memorable night. Many thanks to
Taimur
for holding down the Psychic Garden fort as well!
