June 26, 2008 at 11:41 pm · Filed under Architecture
Remember Archigram, the futuristic, pop-infused collective from the 1960s? The group that dreamed up magical urban environments like the Walking City and the Plug-In City?
It seems like the spirit of Archigram has emerged once again in the 21st century, this time in Dubai. Italian architect David Fisher has designed a 1,378 foot-tall skyscraper with 80 movable floors, each capable of shifting a complete 360-degree revolution around a central column within three hours or less. Dubbed the Dynamic Tower, the new structure will house a luxury hotel, commercial space and private residences:
Despite its behemoth appearance, the Dynamic Tower touts impressive green design principles. Wind turbines located beneath each floor will allow the tower to generate enough power for itself as well as neighboring buildings. An entirely pre-fabricated construction process will further reduce costs, too.
Fisher shows no signs of slowing down; indeed, he’s hoping to take his skyscraper idea worldwide. The tower is scheduled for completion in 2010, but Fisher is already planning similar structures in Moscow and New York.
It’s 92 degrees outside! I can feel the heat in the air! Three cheers for the start of summer and a great weekend ahead: Bruno Pronsato performs tomorrow at the Endup during a day party called Apertura.
After his sweet set with Sammy Dee at Mutek (as Half Hawaii), he’s now making his way up from South America and I am so happy to see him a second time this year. Mark your calendars, this is a summer party not to be missed…
Amid reunions with friends and immersive audiovisual thrills at Mutek, Ezekiel Honig introduced me to Nicola Ratti, the newest artist on his Anticipate label.
At last, after nights of hard-hitting techno, Ratti’s From The Desert Came Saltwater comes as a tunefully softer antidote. Its subdued electroacoustic palette — which encompasses trembling guitar and piano lines, as well as pale flashes of field recordings — makes Ratti’s album a lovely choice for the morning after.
Events like Mutek remind me of the rip-roaring delight of being young, traveling to exotic locations (like Canada!), and indulging in sights and sounds from the outer fringe. Some festival highlights:
Morgan Packard and Josh Ott opened the week with ambient techno shavings, helix-like visual permutations, accordian drifts and bird whistles:
Barem and Chic Miniature warmed up the crowd on Friday evening at SAT, while artists worked on a large mural:
Half Hawaii shook the packed midnight down at Metropolis:
And Onur Özer unleashed horns onto the crowd on Sunday’s Piknic set. It started to rain, but who could stop dancing?
I also enjoyed a side visit to the Canadian Center for Architecture, where I caught an exhibition on residential case studies by SANAA partner Ryue Nishizawa:
May 1, 2008 at 8:05 pm · Filed under Music, Overlap
The third installment of the LISTEN/VISION series is coming up on Wednesday, May 14. This time, we are super happy to share that Carsten Nicolai (Alva Noto), Frank Bretschneider and Olaf Bender from the Raster-Noton imprint will perform live, both individually and as a trio called Signal.
About Raster-Noton: Raster-Noton is a platform, a network covering the overlapping border areas of pop, art, and science. After surviving the storm that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, East German sound manipulators Carsten Nicolai, Frank Bretschneider, and Olaf Bender pooled their resources as Raster-Noton and jacked into international art currents. Their minimalist electronic CDs and sound objects have sent power surges through a global grid connecting like-minded artists from Coil’s ElpH to Tokyo’s Ryoji Ikeda.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
San Francisco Art Institute Lecture Hall
800 Chestnut Street
San Francisco
$15 general public, limited free seating for SFAI students
Please join us for this very special event, co-presented by Overlap.org and Volume Projects with generous support from the Goethe Institut.
April 20, 2008 at 11:10 pm · Filed under Culture, Music
After picking up coffee at Farley’s this morning, I went to Aquarius Records to browse through my favorite section of the store, Exotica/Novelty. That’s where I found The Ghost Orchid, a bizarre collection of paranormal voices and sounds recorded on magnetic tape. Curated by the world’s leading EVP researchers, these tracks are known today as examples of Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP), or the recorded voices of the otherworld.
Recordings from The Ghost Orchid range in both topic and length, from singing to multilingual responses in English, Latvian, German, or Russian. Often, the recordings are a scrambled combination of several different languages. They were captured in various methods: some came as mysterious appearances on home tape recordings; others were interruptions to public radio broadcasts; and many were direct, shockingly insightful responses to EVP researchers who engaged in dialogue with these so-called “voices”.
Superstitious folly? I couldn’t exactly tell by the cover art alone, but once I started listening to snippets, I became hooked and listened to the entire album. I heard conversations between EVP pioneers and the “voices,” who disclosed answers regarding specific individuals, events, life after death, and even their own origin.
Here’s one example: Friedrich Jürgenson, a painter/singer who enjoyed recording his own singing and that of wild birds, noted that strange noises and voices often appeared when he played the recordings back. After questioning the validity of these occurrences, he suddenly realized that they were no accident when he heard the voice of his (deceased) mother in one playback, saying: “Friedel, can you hear me, it’s mammy…”
Before I give too much away, I’ll stop here and let you pick up your own copy for review. It’s a trippy, unearthly experience which I wouldn’t want to spoil for the rest of you — especially those who are interested in field recordings and found sounds.
Yamaha is sponsoring a free event at 1015 this Friday, April 18, which includes live performances by the likes of Pole, Robert Lippok (of To Rococo Rot), Sutekh, Safety Scissors, and I am Robot. This event will serve as a launch party for a novel instrument that wowed the crowd at SIGGRAPH in 2005: Tenori-On.
A touch-sensitive sequencer with a LED matrix interface, Tenori-On offers a fun way to visually represent music while you make it. It’s easy to create and manipulate loops, manage layers and and even import samples via an SD card slot. Tenori-On looks like a fun piece of gear for live shows too — you can string a few of them together or hook one up to your laptop, mixer, etc. via MIDI. Best of all, friends and audiences can actually see the music progress with the dancing LED lights on the double-sided tablet. Designer Toshio Iwai will give a live demo of the instrument at the party.
I first encountered the work of Bay area artist David Kwan at last month’s LISTEN/VISION 02 event, where I experienced Solaris, an audiovisual piece focused on the diaphanous reverberations of muted light forms.
Kwan, who teaches at Mills College in Oakland, is now taking part of Interplay, a new exhibition at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley:
Terra Firma is a complex video installation deployed by an automated system that “composes” a continuously changing landscape derived from video footage. The footage is generated from four different video sources that project images of empty landscapes to create a single on-site landscape in the gallery. Kwan’s visual continuum of shifting permutations creates a sort of “non-place” suggestive of our own interior psychological space. For the viewer, these images can provoke a nostalgic memory of our archetypal landscape. (description via Kala’s website)
Interplay
Featuring works by: David Kwan, Nora Pauwels, Bartosz Posacki and Steve Reich
April 17 - May 24, 2008
Reception: Thursday, April 17, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Gallery Talk with the Artists: Tuesday, April 29, 7:00 pm
A great lineup is in store for Yuri’s Night at Nasa Ames. Of note on the audiovisual side is a psychedelic drawing interface installation by Joshua Ott,Ezekiel Honig, and Morgan Packard (see screenshot above).
Other artists like Jon Tejada, Lusine, Deru, and [a]pendics.shuffle will keep the tunes going alongside all of the technological wizardry that one can expect of a Bay area geek spectacle. See you there!
Amid reunions with friends and immersive audiovisual thrills at Mutek, 
Here’s one example: 
