Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Torrance Art Museum


*object control will not be participating

July 3:

STATIONS: 751

7 Artists
5 Hours
1 Day

TAM: On Saturday, July 3, 7 sound and media artists from Los Angeles and Orange County will collaborate on a five hour performance that explores the concepts of transition, interaction and improvisation. Incorporating both electronic and conventional instruments, light projections, and movement, the program will feature new works by DBRP, phog masheeen, Eric Strauss, and FLOOD.

Compositions will be presented as a continuous stream of interconnected events that will transform the Torrance Art Museum into a cooperative sound/media installation and minimal conceptual circus. This performance exhibition will be curated by the Long Beach group FLOOD who produces and curates SoundWalk, a one-night multi-media event dedicated to sound art.

FLOOD’s practice of curation as a separate aesthetic category has resulted in SoundWalk striving to function as a stand-alone work of art comprised of other stand-alone works of art. Within this context, Stations: 751 will serve as a further experiment in “curation as art” as the five featured sounds artists function as a sub-curatory of artist-collaborators who determine such things as object placement and performance progression. As a result, sonic overlap zones and chance events will be among the elements that are a direct result of the curatorial expressions of the artists themselves. It is FLOOD’s hope that the results of this experiment will positively influence the group’s approach to future curato-artistic practice.

WHAT: Sound Art Exhibition curated by FLOOD (Kamran Assadi, Frauke von der Horst, Shelley Rugg-Thorp, Shea M Gauer, Marco Schindelmann)
WHO: Divine Brick Research Projects (Aaron Moreno and bumble head, Wet Mango, DBL), phog masheeen, Eric Strauss and FLOOD
WHERE: Torrance Art Museum (TAM), 3320 Civic Center Drive, Torrance, CA 90503
(310) 618-6340
WHEN: Saturday, July 3rd (11:00AM-5:00PM)
ADMISSION: Free
PARKING: Free

Sunday, February 28, 2010

A Stepping Aside to Collect My Thoughts

It is hard to concisely explain my train of thought as of today. With few things lining up, but all seeming to converge to a point: some personal, free overflowing everywhere, others at the macro level, the point at a pins tip.

What is most important is not that I cannot explain it, but that it is occurring in more places then just in my Reality. What I hope to at least understand is that what is occurring becomes clearer with one concept I have most recently in the last I’d say 2 years realized, always known just solidified. This it a modest occurrence, it is the realization that there is a handshake behind any bamboozle. For those that like to dive into purity and ancestrally gods, these are not immune.

Priest: Conducers of Truth

I recall a personal epiphany in which I understood that behind the Mayan colonization is the Mayan hand shaking the Anglo one. Deal dealt in blood, rape and loss. Then much like now knowledge was power. To predict is to control.


Let us call upon Mel. Mel Gibson, for his movie is so fresh in our collective memory stream, which is always in a schizoid flux. Let us picture the Mayan priest versed is all the ancient secrets and knowledge, through him we knew the gods, through him his power helped us see the face of the gods, their love and their anger. Him, the priest, asked us to sacrifice a few to subdue the omnipotent ones. A simple prediction from the omni-conduit came proof of the destructive power of a lie. Predictable celestial bodies became the tool to control the masses and show them the indiscriminate destructive power of the gods.

I also start to direct my focus on the Mayan ruins, legacy shrouded in mystery. To step into the once lustrous ruins was to be of the elite class. If by some occurrence you, as a peasant class found yourself in this sacred place what were the chances that you could understand any of the coded language that surrounded you. At present, to step into the ruins what is the meaning of this occupation? You could be of peasant class or of the elite to execute this action although more and more we are restricted entry because of age and entropy, but to understand the secrets heavily veiled with age, from which class would you need to be from or flow in?



The Virgin Mary

Lets try to reach inside and find the real purity; If that is a possibility, purity. The one gift that is sacred is to give life. More precisely represented is the ability to incubate a thought. Many a times there has been a need to make a concept more native to another's understanding. The honey added to the poison (or medicine, however you choose to see it or it chooses to be seen) reflects this want to hold on to this modest idea I am trying to erode to, a more modest belief that allows a release of power.

Some would say a weakness in ones Self others say a stepping down from arrogance. A possible rephrasing: From primal to civil we gain power to control and manipulate. In finding that what is created is not mystical, arrogance is cultivated. A whipping girl is established soon we all are gods with free will to create or destroy. The priorities shifted from process to product, from Virgin to Christ.



When Consumption Becomes Replication

All things, to me, are fluid. This is, like all things mentioned, personal physics which allow me to stumble and manifest Truths that interconnect. During one of my liquid ventures I stumbled onto a word (This word is Conducer) that describes a phenomenon that I have been trying to grasp to understand. This phenomenon involves an embedded urge we all have, which is the urge to create.

Yes the obvious urge that comes to mind is the want to create another, which is the sexual urge we all have. I want to go further into this idea and explore the urge to create a self, create a reality, create a structure, create a language, create art, but giving attention to a system that taps into this urge and stimulates it. This creative urge could be a biological survival tactic or learned conditioning, as of now it is really not important where it comes from but that it is the urge that is simulated by things such as video games, virtual worlds, networking sites and other newer technologies or to be specific, technologies that have an entertainment element to them and some how helps us achieve a higher state of content. Such things have always existed that cater to that urge: cooking, sports, arts, and Self-Realization. What is different is the way the experience is mediated by parameters chosen by another.

This word or noun, the conducer, is referring to the one that is not only a consumer but also a producer, intertwined and eating itself.

EX: An avatar created by one existing in Second-Life manipulating, creating in a world that is in-part created buy another…I mean by another consuming producing then consuming its own, an experience where consumption and production are synonymous. Is this any different then what once existed? Is this just a clearer definition of what is human or Humanism?

My hope is not to confuse but to communicate in an easier form. All thoughts are solid in creation, pulled apart to share. This is where things are lost and the vacuum between you and I resides. Work is needed to stitch these things together and find a forum where we can endure.

Sitting on my steps as my blue sky becomes a gridded haze,

-DBL

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

SoundWalk 09-VID




                               CLICK IMAGE ABOVE TO VIEW!!!


Bipeds alike,



This is the Sweep Performance performed at the SoundWalk of Long Beach, Ca (September 25, 2009). Many thanks to electronic emergency and many that helped out.

The audio consists of 2 channels each with two different excerpts from two different Sweep Performances performed at the SoundWalk.

The actual performance  consisted of one performer sweeping with a broom that was wired to a computer.   The computer filtered the sound of the broom accentuating it.  This sound was then directed back to headphones that were worn by the performer and anyone else that wanted to follow him and immerse themselves in the performance.


-DBL

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

SoundWalk Performance Update


Converging Life Streams,

My hopes is to have the SoundWalk performance vid ready to share soon. I really enjoyed this piece and hope to experience it again, and give others a chance to do so with me. It was nice to be a part of the Soundwalk of Long Beach for the second time. Although it is bitter sweet.

I really do feel it is unfortunate it is a very little known event, mostly known to Long Beach locals, if even that. It is quite a unique event. Growth and positive spirit of audience and of the organizers is my desire.

One thing I found that was encouraging is the energy and spectrum of the audience. Most glad to see children and many of our community elders there and most ecstatic to see may colors and origins on many of the faces.

Art is strangled, sheltered in least terms, when hermetically sealed. Oxygen is for growth, your carbon, expelled, is just part of that cycle. You must breath on it, by all means break that air tight seal. Stir in all your germs all the filth, conjure up an elixir, strength is in the mix, to combat an pin hole panoramic view.

On a tangent now. Been thinking of that great white art box all artist love to put there finger prints on. So much white to reflect the light. To much space to contain the ego.



-DBL

Friday, November 6, 2009

Tarfest Recap- "Research in Performance, Sound, and Dissent"

Cohabitants,

With hopes of transforming each molecule and atom of the Tarfest audience with waves of undulating, random and beaten sounds, this invocation delivered.

To tilt the unbalanced unconscious was the goal. Success measured in unveiling of error for tomorrow to be recalculated.

Thanks to ones that transformed into characters of weight, appreciation for the passive willing to absorb, acknowledgment for those active but not brought to light and special thanks to two extraordinary ladies (and one life stream in utero), willing testifiers, active and transformed.

One peculiar thing. Just before the performance music was turn on in the gallery, played through the p.a. system. By the end it fused with the noise of the performance and gave a nice texture.

This video and sound objects were presented the remaining days of the show.

-DBL

Wooden form functions as a resonator feedbacking onto itself to produce a wave of undulating texture. Headpiece has a pitch bended analog synth. Piece was and exploration in control symbolism and recontextualization them.


DBRP Performing at Tarfest 2009 from DBL on Vimeo.

DVD copy now available (with extras)