Paloma Kop

Blog

Here are some things I've been up to. To stay updated, subscribe to my email newsletter, or visit my now page!

Silvering Toward Invisible

Poster for Silvering Toward Invisible

Thursday, February 29, was the opening of Silvering Toward Invisible, a group exhibition at Speedwell Contemporary in Portland, ME, presented by Lights Out. The show features my audiovisual work along with photography (often of glowing spiderwebs in the dark) by Peah Guilmoth, minimal textured landscapes in charcoal by Emily Nelligan, and poetry by Kristen Case.

Silvering Toward Invisible is driven by poetry, both visual and written. During this season the light is changing, and the warmth of the sun is slowly returning. We begin to hunger for spring, though it is months away. We look for evidence of its signs, but a thick white blanket of snow still covers the ground. We can see the contours of the landscape through the trees. At this time the world is at its most stark and elegant and takes on the impressions of our imaginations. This show will harness the returning light, the receding darkness, and the bare, suggestive quality of the landscape waiting to undergo monumental change. Viewers will encounter moments of brightness, velvety darkness, and a deep poetic primality waiting to erupt from beneath the surface.

🌐 More info: lightsoutgallery.org/silvering

Mall Magic

Installation at Mall Magic

On Saturday, February 24, Andrei and I (Phase Shift Collective) created an interactive video installation at a pop-up event hosted by Anna Oxygen in a disused retail space at a dying mall in Ithaca, NY.

At the event, Anna performed an experimental run-through of The Shapes We Leave Behind, a strange livestream performance in which she greenscreens herself, wearing various sculptural costumes created by collaborator Fawn Krieger, into a surreal video-game-esque landscape filled with glitchy 3D scanned statues of herself, while also singing and performing electronic music.

The night ended with a dance party to 80s disco music, with people dancing inside the video feedback loop of our installation.

Anna was able to briefly take over this former storefront space in a mostly empty shopping mall, inserting herself and her artwork into an appropriately liminal venue during a sabbatical from her professorship. Thanks to Anna for inviting us to be a part of this unusual show.

Anna Oxygen in Shapes We Leave Behind

Collaborative A/V Performance w/ Matthew Ryals

Audiovisual performance at The Avalon

On Friday February 16, I performed a collaborative audiovisual set with Matthew Ryals at The Avalon Lounge in Catskill, NY. Matthew and I have collaborated before, so when I found out that he would be performing in the area, I eagerly joined the bill. Combining modular video synthesis and camera feedback, I was able to incorporate control voltage signal's from Matthew's audio synths, introducing synesthetic interaction between the sound and video.

Other performers included The Early from Philadelphia, and Friends Meeting, ambient duo project of Ben Seretan and M. Geddes Gengras. It was a lovely evening of dreamy experimental sound. At the end, The Early and Friends Meeting joined together for a rather epic jam. The show was also broadcast live on Wave Farm's WGXC.

Still image of my patch for the show

Artist Talk at Luck Dragon

Photo of various sound-making devices

On January 26, I presented and discussed some excerpts of my audiovisual artworks at an event called Sound at Luck Dragon, in Delhi, NY.

Sound is a monthly event at Luck Dragon, in which two artists or musicians present and talk about their work, followed by a period of group discussion. In this way, artists and sonic practitioners are brought into conversation with both each other, and the local community. The other presenter for this edition was Sam Tellman, who talked about his research and design journey toward creating https://www.sottoinstruments.com/ that's more lightweight and user-serviceable.

Luck Dragon is an art supply shop that also hosts community events. It was cool to visit this space because the people who run it also have an open-source audio hardware company, a pottery studio, various artist spaces, and a private occult library in the same building. Delhi is about an hour west of where I'm currently based, so I'm hoping to spend more time there in the coming months. Thanks to Brian for inviting me.

🌐 Visit Luck Dragon's website: luckdragon.space

2023 Year in Review

Portrait of me in front of a scenic overlook

I've never done this sort of post before, but so much has happened this year that I feel a need to take one last look over my shoulder before 2023 is over. This year, I made twice the average number of posts in the "news" section of my website, because this year has been full of activities. Here are some of them:

  • Made myself a new artist website (this very place you're visiting now!) with hand-coded HTML and CSS; it took a long time but it was very fun and I learned a lot

  • Helped start Polyphase Portal, a cooperatively-run online educational space with our own self-hosted infrastructure (running open-source software for our website, video classrooms, chat, and wiki)

  • Attended my third vipassana meditation retreat, and finished a seven month, 200-hour yoga teacher training, which not only prepared me to teach others but also helped me evolve my own yoga practice

  • Left my corporate software development job of the last 5 years, and managed to scrape by for 8 months thus far without a "day job"

  • Side note: despite being part of a mass media conglomerate, my team there was small and scrappy, and we did some cool stuff together. Hats off to the great folks I worked with.

  • Left Brooklyn, where I've lived off and on for much of my adult life, and wrapped up Phase Space, which was run out of the basement of our apartment there

  • Bought a 1988 Chevy van with Andrei and spent 5 months traveling across the US together

  • Did 3 audiovisual performances and 2 artist residencies

  • Co-led 12 in-person video art workshops and demonstrations across the country

  • Camped in many national parks and other public lands, experienced many different biomes and landscapes; learned to identify a bunch of new plants

  • Returned to Catskill Mountains of upstate NY, where I grew up and then left 12 years ago, with a new appreciation for its vibrant forests

  • Started — and am still starting — a small business: Moon Ark Studio (with 4 clients so far and counting)

This year has been alternately fun, exciting, hectic, exhausting, and immensely fulfilling in a way I have not quite experienced before. And the way things are going, it seems there will be many more adventures in store in the coming year. Thanks for following along, and I wish you a happy old year, in the last moments before a new one begins.