You can find all our latest posts at the new CatSynth.
Thanks to everyone who visited us here at the "trailer" while we rebuilt our site, and offered their support and encouragement.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Upcoming Shows: Saturday, Sunday and tonight!
In the midst of everything else going on, I have three upcoming shows, including two this weekend:
Saturday, December 6, 8PM
:plug4: headphone festival
5lowershop, 992 Peralta Ave., San Francisco.
The headphone festival returns. I will be performing ofter electronic music, with a playful bent. It is a "headphone" event where people live at the venue as well as those listening online will be using headphones. For those who are interested, you can also listen live online on Saturday. visit http://www.deletist.info/plug4.html or http://www.leplacard.org for more info.
____
Sunday, December 7, 7:30PM
Musicians Union Hall, 9th St @ Mission St, San Francisco.
SIMM Series Outsound Year End Blow Out Show
Polly Moller/Amar Chaudhary duo
CJ Borosque/Matt Davignon duo
Conure
Rent Romus, Philip Everett, Pete Martin, John Vaughn
and more guests! solos, duos, trios, and the Outsound SuperSize Ensemble.
The mission of Outsound Presents is to raise public awareness of sound and unique events not otherwise made available by presenting public performance, co-op promotion, and education throughout the year. Donations from this evening will be used to support Outsound's future programming efforts...
_____
And a bonus show, tonight:
Thursday, December 4, 8PM
Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market Street @ 6th Street, San Francisco
Outsound Presents Ad-hoc experimental freeform improv.
Ad-hoc experimental freeform improv like dude whatever jam, followed by Chris Skebo (trumpet)/Luigi Marino (computer)/Karl Evangelista (guitar)
Saturday, December 6, 8PM
:plug4: headphone festival
5lowershop, 992 Peralta Ave., San Francisco.
The headphone festival returns. I will be performing ofter electronic music, with a playful bent. It is a "headphone" event where people live at the venue as well as those listening online will be using headphones. For those who are interested, you can also listen live online on Saturday. visit http://www.deletist.info/plug4.html or http://www.leplacard.org for more info.
____
Sunday, December 7, 7:30PM
Musicians Union Hall, 9th St @ Mission St, San Francisco.
SIMM Series Outsound Year End Blow Out Show
Polly Moller/Amar Chaudhary duo
CJ Borosque/Matt Davignon duo
Conure
Rent Romus, Philip Everett, Pete Martin, John Vaughn
and more guests! solos, duos, trios, and the Outsound SuperSize Ensemble.
The mission of Outsound Presents is to raise public awareness of sound and unique events not otherwise made available by presenting public performance, co-op promotion, and education throughout the year. Donations from this evening will be used to support Outsound's future programming efforts...
_____
And a bonus show, tonight:
Thursday, December 4, 8PM
Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market Street @ 6th Street, San Francisco
Outsound Presents Ad-hoc experimental freeform improv.
Ad-hoc experimental freeform improv like dude whatever jam, followed by Chris Skebo (trumpet)/Luigi Marino (computer)/Karl Evangelista (guitar)
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
MoMA, Miró, Modernism and Theremins
In addition to my adventures on the F train, I did have a small amount of time to enjoy art and music while was in New York for the Thanksgiving holiday.
One of the featured exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was Joan Miró: Painting and Anti-Painting 1927–1937. Miró often appears in my artistic travels - I have been to multiple retrospectives and visited the Miró Museum in Barcelona. This exhibition was more specific, focusing on a single decade of his career, during which he challenged the definition of "painting." It opens with his declaration in 1927 "I want to assassinate painting” and features several examples of "non-painting", including collages (such as Composition with Wire, shown to the right) and wooden sculptures. At the same time, however, many of the works are things we would consider paintings. Some of the canvases are unprimed, and several use new media such as masonite. But there are still primarily two-dimensional works involving paint on a surface. And most of the paintings and non-paintings include Miró's signature elements in his more famous works such as bulbous abstract figures, curing shapes, stars, and scarabs. In addition to the theme of "anti-painting", the exhibition follows the events in Europe, and particularly in Spain, in the late 1920s and 1930s, with the impending civil war and rise of Fascism. It ends with the Fascists coming to dominance in 1937 and the painting Still Life with Old Shoe that marks the end of Miró's period of anti-painting.
The MoMA's website includes a detailed online exhibition.
A few of the smaller exhibits also caught my attention. Dreamland: Architectural Experiments since the 1970s featured experiments in architecture, primarily centered around New York, or the modernist urban ideal of New York, as seen be architects. Some of the ideas, such as those in Rem Koolhaas's Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan
, can be quite fantastic, such as an island oasis in a glass bubble atop a highway. Others were not only more realistic, but also realized, including some impressive homes in the country surrounding New York. It's always great to see a celebration of modernism as it once was, before contemporary design and architecture took a turn away towards more mundane ideas.
Keeping with the idea of the 1960s and 1970s as particularly modern decades, the exhibit Looking at Music features visualizations of music from the era. This includes direction visualizations, such as the scores of John Cage, as well as early media works by Nam June Paik, Laurie Anderson, Steven Reich and others.
I did have a chance to hear some music as well. The weekend after Thanksgiving is often low on opportunities for new music (which is probably why I was able to book an NYC show without much difficulty after Thanksgiving in 2005). But the reliable Issue Project Room in Brooklyn hosted a show sponsored by the New York Theremin Society. The first set featured rather graphic stereo photos from World War I - still a horrific war when viewed a century later - with theremin accompaniment, presented by Robert Munn and Sara Cook. By Munn's own admittance, this was not a performance for the faint of heart. The second set featured "Master Thereminist" Kip Rosser, who treated us to a series of jazz and pop standards that would be very much at home at a wedding or bar-mitzvah. It is interesting to think about a hybrid program featuring Rosser's light jazz on theremin against Munn and Cook's disturbing images from the Great War. But perhaps that would be a bit too ironic.
One of the featured exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was Joan Miró: Painting and Anti-Painting 1927–1937. Miró often appears in my artistic travels - I have been to multiple retrospectives and visited the Miró Museum in Barcelona. This exhibition was more specific, focusing on a single decade of his career, during which he challenged the definition of "painting." It opens with his declaration in 1927 "I want to assassinate painting” and features several examples of "non-painting", including collages (such as Composition with Wire, shown to the right) and wooden sculptures. At the same time, however, many of the works are things we would consider paintings. Some of the canvases are unprimed, and several use new media such as masonite. But there are still primarily two-dimensional works involving paint on a surface. And most of the paintings and non-paintings include Miró's signature elements in his more famous works such as bulbous abstract figures, curing shapes, stars, and scarabs. In addition to the theme of "anti-painting", the exhibition follows the events in Europe, and particularly in Spain, in the late 1920s and 1930s, with the impending civil war and rise of Fascism. It ends with the Fascists coming to dominance in 1937 and the painting Still Life with Old Shoe that marks the end of Miró's period of anti-painting.
The MoMA's website includes a detailed online exhibition.
A few of the smaller exhibits also caught my attention. Dreamland: Architectural Experiments since the 1970s featured experiments in architecture, primarily centered around New York, or the modernist urban ideal of New York, as seen be architects. Some of the ideas, such as those in Rem Koolhaas's Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, can be quite fantastic, such as an island oasis in a glass bubble atop a highway. Others were not only more realistic, but also realized, including some impressive homes in the country surrounding New York. It's always great to see a celebration of modernism as it once was, before contemporary design and architecture took a turn away towards more mundane ideas.Keeping with the idea of the 1960s and 1970s as particularly modern decades, the exhibit Looking at Music features visualizations of music from the era. This includes direction visualizations, such as the scores of John Cage, as well as early media works by Nam June Paik, Laurie Anderson, Steven Reich and others.
I did have a chance to hear some music as well. The weekend after Thanksgiving is often low on opportunities for new music (which is probably why I was able to book an NYC show without much difficulty after Thanksgiving in 2005). But the reliable Issue Project Room in Brooklyn hosted a show sponsored by the New York Theremin Society. The first set featured rather graphic stereo photos from World War I - still a horrific war when viewed a century later - with theremin accompaniment, presented by Robert Munn and Sara Cook. By Munn's own admittance, this was not a performance for the faint of heart. The second set featured "Master Thereminist" Kip Rosser, who treated us to a series of jazz and pop standards that would be very much at home at a wedding or bar-mitzvah. It is interesting to think about a hybrid program featuring Rosser's light jazz on theremin against Munn and Cook's disturbing images from the Great War. But perhaps that would be a bit too ironic.
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