Cultural Conversations

hMa Recommends NYT: "The Fluid Human Dance That Is Grand Central" (re-post)Cultural Conversations with hanrahanMeyers architects

Between 8:30 and 10 a.m., enough people stand still, some in groups, to make the floor of the Grand Central Terminal look like an Italian piazza photo: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Excerpt from the article:

By ALASTAIR MACAULAY
Published: August 31, 2011

"Every city has its own choreography, formal or informal. The composer John Cage loved to point out how any street corner is theater of a kind; the dance critic and poet Edwin Denby wrote ardently of how daily life was full of things to see; and when one of Merce Cunningham’s dancers asked what a piece was about, he took her to the window, showed her the view of the sidewalk and said, “That.”

To observe large numbers of people moving and coexisting in complex simultaneity, I chose to make two visits to Grand Central Terminal in August. Its main concourse is among the city’s spectacular locales, giving you the chance to observe the complex patterns made by arriving and departing passengers. Its vast, tall rectangular block of space is framed by high windows, a ceiling embellished with constellations, and double staircases at either end. With its many arches leading to other parts of the station and its central, four-faced clock, it is more than the sum of its exits and entrances: it adds heroic drama to the very thought of travel."

Click here to read the full article on www.nytimes.com

STATIONS LOST | 3 week run of TONY FITZPATRICK's play at The BOILER Cultural Conversations with hanrahan Meyers architects

Pierogi  Gallery presents:
Tony Fitzpatrick's STATIONS LOST at The BOILER
October 20 through November 6, 2011
Performance Schedule: Thurs & Fri 8pm; Sat, two performances 6 & 9pm; Sun 7pm
Get your tickets now!

Tony and Stan took a journey to find the dark heart of America. Stan went to Cleveland.
Tony took a detour...to Istanbul. This is their story.

From America’s border-towns to Istanbul’s Taksim Square, Station’s Lost is the story of two friends, Tony Fitzpatrick and Stan Klein, and their commonalities and divergent paths in an ever-expanding world. Tony takes us through his childhood as a rebellious Catholic schoolboy obsessed with superheroes, reading MAD Magazine, and meeting Chester Gould through his adult understanding of the superhero mythos that leads him to strike out in search of the everyday superhero in the world via a journey to Istanbul.

Tony is a visual artist, poet, actor, playwright, and raconteur—a modern-day Renaissance man. This is his second play, following "This Train," and features Tony and his sidekick Stan Klein, with live musical accompaniment. Adapted and directed by Ann Filmer.

This will be a three-week run of Tony's second theatrical performance
with five performances per week (Thursday through Sunday) beginning October 20
following his recent successful run at Chicago's Steppenwolf Garage Theatre
For tickets contact Pierogi at 718.599.2144 / info@pierogi2000.com
Location:  The BOILER  191 N. 14th St. Brooklyn, NY 11211

Rie Nakajima at Diapason Gallery: Wednesday June 15, 7-9pm

Rie Nakajima performing a piece in Florence (link to article)

(bio) Rie Nakajima is a japanese artist based in London, working with installations and performances that produce sound.  Her works are most often composed in direct response to unique architectural spaces using a combination of audio materials and found objects.

In the residency, by using the gallery environment, she develops her current research on the space materialization with sound.

Wednesday, June 15, 7-9pm
free

New address:
220 36th Street
between 3rd and 2nd Avenues
Studio #407 (4th floor, all the way to the back)
Brooklyn, NY 11232
info: 646-286-3367
http://diapasongallery.org/

N, R or D train to 36th Street (Brooklyn)
walk towards the elevated highway
JUST 2 STOPS INTO BROOKLYN!!!


Come enjoy the view, drink some wine or beer, and meet Rie Nakajima, who will present a "work in progress" sound installation.

hanrahan Meyers architects Likes: "Parks to Parking Lots: All the City's a Stage" - City as Urban Theater

Photo: Yana Paskova for The New York Times

Excerpt from "Parks to Parking Lots: All the City’s a Stage"  from www.nytimes.com

By: Stephen McElroy

“Don’t I have a nice theater?” Stephen Burdman asked as he stood in a green field in Central Park near West 103rd Street on a recent Saturday afternoon. During a rehearsal break he was pointing out sites used in past productions by his company, New York Classical Theater.
Enlarge This Image

“This was the heath in ‘Lear,’ ” he said, and then, “This was the forest of letters in ‘As You Like It.’ ” Ten minutes later Mr. Burdman, along with cast and staff members working on Molière’s “School for Husbands,” were huddled under a tree during a downpour.

So it goes for providers of outdoor entertainment.

Clouds loomed over Riverside Park in Manhattan the next day, but the stars were better aligned for the cast of this month’s Hudson Warehouse production of “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” The weather was chilly but dry as the company rehearsed, and though every so often a dog and its walker traipsed across what stood for the stage, things went smoothly.

New York Classical and Hudson Warehouse are among a number of companies preparing free outdoor productions of classic plays — mostly Shakespeare — for performance this summer in parks from Inwood to the Battery in Manhattan, and in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, too. The smaller companies may find themselves competing for attention not just with the Public Theater’s shows at the Delacorte in Central Park, but also with the Royal Shakespeare Company, presenting a five-play repertory at the Park Avenue Armory (where tickets are decidedly not free) as part of the Lincoln Center Festival.

“I try to think of it as a fantastic boon that there is continued interest in exploring Shakespeare’s work,” said Hamilton Clancy, artistic director of the Drilling Company, which offers Shakespeare in the Parking Lot (literally) on the Lower East Side.

Some other artistic directors had a similarly glass-half-full view of the crowded theatrical field. “Good theater benefits all theater,” said Judith Jarosz, a producing artistic director (with David Fuller) of Theater 2020. “If somebody on the Upper East Side goes to the Armory and has a positive experience, it’s all the more possible they’ll go to the park and see something else.”

Jason Marr’s feelings about the Royal Shakespeare Company’s coming to New York from Britain are a bit more complicated.

“To be honest, as a theater artist, I’m always left feeling very torn about the projects that are of this scope and scale,” said Mr. Marr, the artistic director of Hip to Hip, a Queens company. He acknowledged wanting to see some of that company’s shows himself, “but at the end of the day, I feel that they’re preaching to the choir,” he said. “Sometimes these sorts of projects are for the culturally elite.”

Mr. Marr’s mission, similar to those of several artistic directors interviewed recently, is inspired by Joseph Papp, who started presenting Shakespeare more than 50 years ago and saw his work as anything but elitist.

“I always felt that we should travel,” Papp is quoted as saying in “Free for All,” the 2009 book that provides a history of the Public Theater through interviews with Papp and others. “I wanted to bring Shakespeare to the people, that was the whole idea. I had to reach the thousands of people who lived and died in their neighborhoods.”

But today it can be tough to get even a free ticket to the Public’s summer shows at the Delacorte. Fortunately, though, for those in New York, enthusiasts of the classics can try to check out the productions of the Public and the Royal Shakespeare Company, but can also find plenty of free alternatives, including an all-female “Henry V,” one of at least three productions of that play (another involves a boat ride to Governors Island).

Click here to read the full article on www.nytimes.com

Ernst Karel and Helen Mirra at Diapason Gallery 1/29/2011

Tix: $12/10 students & seniors
http://transitnewmusic.com/

Tomorrow, January 29, 2-8pm:

Diapason presents: Swiss mountain transport systems
a long form composition created specifically for Diapason's 8 channel system, by Ernst Karel and Helen Mirra
Saturdays 2-8pm
January 8, 15, 22 and 29
opening reception: January 8 at 6pm

Diapason
882 Third Avenue (between 32nd and 33rd Street)
10th Floor
Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Info: 718.499.5070 | www.diapasongallery.org
Subway: D, N, R to 36th Street/4th Avenue

The location recordings were made during the summer and fall of 2008 while we were in residence in Basel, Switzerland.  Over the course of frequent walks in the mountains in different parts of Switzerland, Karel recorded the various transport systems which are specific to mountainous terrain -- gondolas, funiculars, and chairlifts -- of different types, of different vintages, and accessing different elevations.  Recorded with high-quality microphones and preamps from within these mostly enclosed mobile environments, the sounds include mechanical drones, intermittent percussiveness, and transient acoustic glimpses of a vast surrounding landscape of humans and other animals.

The project builds on a performance that we gave in Kyoto, Japan, in January 2009, in the context of Mirra’s exhibition, Case study: Swiss bird houses, at Taka Ishii Gallery. For that live performance, Mirra played drums with Karel doing a live mix of unprocessed recordings of the mountain transport systems.

The project for Diapason opens up and extends this idea.  Mirra subsequently recorded the percussion parts in the studio using multiple microphones in multiple configurations.  The piece makes use of the eight-channel system to create an often abstract sound world that simultaneously evokes a sense of place informed by technologies of transportation enmeshed in the specific cultural geography of rural Switzerland.  Mirra’s minimal percussion activates and modifies the contours of the listening space, as it contrasts with, complements, interrupts, and augments the sounds of transport.

Bios:
Ernst Karel (b. 1970) works with analog electronics and/or location recordings. His audio work includes electroacoustic improvisation and composition; fieldwork-based research in the anthropology of sound; recording, mixing, and sound design for public radio and for nonfiction film and video; and solo and collaborative sound installations.          
http://ek.klingt.org

Helen Mirra (b.1970) works in varied scrap media, including sculpture, writing, and music. She has been a guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm, the Office of Contemporary Art Norway, and the Stiftung Laurenz-Haus in Basel, Switzerland.
http://hmirra.net

Diapason: Friday and Saturday: Non-Cochlear Sound opening and exhibition, Solo ParadesCultural Conversations with hanrahanMeyers architects

Seth Kim-Cohen performing at PEER gallery in London, 2005

Diapason presents:
Friday, October 1, 7pm: Non-Cochlear Sound opening, see below
Saturday, October 2: 1pm in Sunset Park: Solo Parades, by Charlie Morrow, part of the "Little Charlie" festival
Saturday, October 2, 2-8pm: Day 1 of Non-Cochlear Sound exhibition
Saturday, October 2, 4pm: Rozalinda Borcilla "Listening for Beginners" workshop, part of Non-Cochlear Sound, see below

As part of the "Little Charlie Festival- Celebrating the life work of composer Charlie Morrow", Diapason is presenting "Solo Parades", a public art event that invites musicians to journey from their homes to Sunset Park in Brooklyn playing a musical instrument along the way.

The event will take place on Saturday, October 2, beginning in the morning and ending around 1-2pm with a tutti performance in the park.
Look for the musicians wearing a red carnation!
free

Sunset Park is located on 5th Avenue between 41st and 44th Streets in Brooklyn.
Subway: D, N to 36th Street; R to 45th Street
note: THIS EVENT WILL TAKE PLACE IN SUNSET PARK ITSELF, NOT AT THE GALLERY!

Participants include Emil Bognar-Nardor, Daniel Goode, Nicole Peyrafitte and Bruce Tovsky, among others.
It's still not too late to sign up as a musician:
diapason.info@gmail.com
Information about the Little Charlie Festival is available at:
http://www.cmorrow.com/littlecharliefest/

Saturday is the first day of our Non-Cochlear Sound Exhibition curated by Seth Kim-Cohen, 2-8pm and opening on Friday, 7pm:

Non-Cochlear Sound features the work of twenty artists from Europe, the U.K., the U.S., and Canada who responded to an open call for non-cochlear sound works. From more than 150 submissions, curator, Seth Kim-Cohen, selected nineteen pieces which expand his own conception of what a non-cochlear sonic art might look like, sound like, how it might behave.
http://diapasongallery.org/upcoming_installation.html
http://noncochlearsound.com/

Opening: Friday, October 1, 7pm
Exhibition: Saturdays, October 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, 2-8pm
free

Saturday, Oct. 2, 4pm:
Artist Rozalinda Borcilla will lead Listening for Beginners, a workshop for twenty participants whose documentation will also become part of the exhibition.

to sign up: email  rborcila@yahoo.com

Diapason
882 Third Avenue (between 32nd and 33rd Street)
10th Floor
Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Info: 718.499.5070 | http://diapasongallery.org/
Subway: D, N, R to 36th Street/4th Avenue

Artists, in alphabetical order:
Doug Barrett, Violin Tuned D.E.E.D.
Rozalinda Borcilla, Listening for Beginners
Seth Cluett, Tracing Moving Circles (Neighborhood Memory)
Chris Cuellar, Tactical Archiving
Benedict Drew, Drum Loop
Jarrod Fowler, Rhythmsystemics
Seth Kim-Cohen, Critique of Instrumental Reason (by use of drums)
Chris Kubick and Anne Walsh, To Make The Sound of Fire
Corey Larkin, Monochrome
Lou Mallozzi, Screenplay: one and one
Christof Migone, 4 Feet and 33 Inches
Matthew Mullane, Détourned Down: A Conversation with Seth Kim-Cohen
Rob Mullender, Said Object / Daughter’s Voice From Memory
Michalis Pichler, Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard (Musique)
Michelle Rosenberg, Whistle Wall
Jennifer Schmidt, Hard Times / Scrabble Value: A Conversation in 2 Parts
Benjamin Thorp, Black Box
Heather and Seth Warren-Crow, Grayface
James Whitehead (JLIAT), Esse Est Percipi?

Digital Water Pavilion: Cloud Architecture: Google, Twitter and ArchitectureCultural Conversations with hanrahan Meyers architects

The Digital Water Pavilion (Battery Park City Community Center) is a new project by hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) for Battery Park City Authority, in downtown Manhattan, across from Ground Zero.  The project is a 550-foot long digitally interactive facade that will feature a sound composition, 'WATER', by New York Composer and hMa collaborator, Michael Schumacher.  The Pavilion's glass facade will have interactive links, so that music (WATER), and the Pavilion's architecture will link directly to contemporary social networks, Twitter and Google.

sample of arcade wall pattern for Battery Park City Community Center, cover for soon to be released CD for WATER, composed by Michael Schumacher for the Digital Water Pavilion

hMa's Digital Water Pavilion (Battery Park City Community Center) will integrate the cloud into the architecture by using a smart phone app as an integrated part of the building's public facade.  Pavilion's east facing facade is a 550-long glass wall engraved with a frit pattern representation of New York composer Michael Schumacher's sound piece:  'WATER'.  This piece joins Pavilion visitors thru Twitter, Facebook and other social networks, integrating with them through a smart phone app  that will allow visitors to use cell phones to read different parts of Schumacher's 'WATER' as they walk along the glass wall.

The Water Pavilion's main facade is imprinted with digital code, embedded with a digital soundtrack from the hMa / Schumacher collaboration, 'WATER'.  Visitors will wave their smart phones at the Pavilion wall and 'play' the wall.

interactive wall detail : Digital Water Pavilion (Battery Park City Community Center) by hanrahan Meyers architects, collaboration with Michael Schumacher

For more information about hMa's Digital Water Pavilion (Battery Park City Community Center) visit hMa's website:  www.hanrahanMeyers.com.

 

David Scher at Pierogi; William Lamson at the Boiler: Friday September 10th, 2010Cultural Conversations with hanrahan Meyers architects

David Scher, Faro (detail)

PIEROGI  177 North 9th St  W'burg Brooklyn  |  WWW.PIEROGI2000.COM  |  T.718.599.2144
Two new exhibitions Friday, 10 September (7-9pm)—

DAVID SCHER regular is best at PIEROGI  | 177 N 9th St  W'burg Brooklyn
WILLIAM LAMSON A Line Describing the Sun at The BOILER  |  191 N 14th St W'burg Brklyn

David Scher
At the edge of the paper, non-paper. At the edge of sense, non-sense. In David Scher's new work he continues the development of a personal vernacular in tangible form; a development that began when he drew his first sketchbook at only three years old. Drawing comes as naturally to him as hammering nails. "As the universe does not have an idea, neither do these paintings. Why establish a stopover between oblivions?" (Scher 2010)

Words that come to mind when thinking of Scher's work include, but are not limited to, humorous, ingenious, prodigious, and multifarious, biting, generous, and inimitable. Each drawing and painting is a world unto itself, while a language of figures, exquisite line, and mark-making link one to the next. In each of these worlds there is a provocative sense to Scher's non-sense. Bugs, creatures, flyswatters, three-legged figures, and odd men and women populate his imagery. “My…approach consists of establishing fields where multiple things occur in proximity. These are familiar fields, including walls, tabletops, stages, shores, and pages. My work is composed within these constructs using diverse mediums and instruments as the subject demands.”

William Lamson
A Line Describing the Sun features a new two-channel video and sculpture created in the Mojave Desert earlier this year. Begun at the Center for Land Use Interpretation's artist-in-residence program in Wendover, Utah, Lamson finished the project in a dry lakebed west of Barstow, California. The video and sculpture are both a record of two day-long performances in which the artist follows the sun with a large Fresnel lens mounted on a rolling apparatus. The lens focuses the sun into a 1,600-degree point of light that melts the dry mud, transforming it into a black glassy substance. Over the course of a day, as the sun moves across the sky, a hemispherical arc is imprinted into the lakebed floor.

The original performance documented in the video produced a 366-foot arc. The sculpture on view in the gallery is a 23-foot scale model of this mark, created using the same apparatus over the same amount of time, only traveling at a slower pace. Lamson excavated the mark by pouring water over it, softening the dry mud on either side of the line and eventually causing the insoluble glass to separate from its muddy surrounding. Over the course of the excavation, the single continuous line broke into hundreds of pieces. Its reconstruction in the gallery simultaneously evokes the geologic record and an archeological relic.

While Lamson's video works have often found him playfully and strenuously interacting with his environment (both in the natural world and in his studio), this new work brings to bear the forces of nature in the act of drawing and mark-making. In this way, it continues the investigations he began with Automatic, a project in which he used wind and ocean currents to power a series of drawing machines. A Line Describing the Sun is part performance, part video work, part earthwork, and part drawing exercise.

Video Still, William Lamson A Line Describing the Sun

Gil Houldcroft Jacobs Moscovich Neumann Yadao _ Made Space: Diapason Gallery July 30th, 2010Cultural Conversations with hanrahan Meyers architects

image: performance by Michael Schumacher and Nisi Jacobs "Eros-Ion"

Wolfgang Gil, Real-time OCTOphonic Router (ROCTOR, custom software)

Travis Houldcroft, laptop
Nisi Jacobs, video RGBA to sound converter
David Moscovich, microphone, fiction, vocalization
Daniel Neumann, microphones, mixing board, 4-channel PA
Tamara Yadao, generational speech synthesis

We are happy to invite you to the presentation of the results of the first time running 5-day intensive workshop in Modular Collaboration. The six participants are working together to create individual sound works under an overall theme that will culminate in the live performance this Friday, in which all the works are presented simultaneously as part of a larger piece utilizing the full capacity of Diapason’s special multi-channel sound systems. Starting from thinking about the differences between places and spaces participants are working on digital color space, text as a place, the narrow border between stable and unstable conditions, re-spatialization, speech synthesis, and on transient extraction as a form of de-/re-contextualizing.*

Looking forward to see you there!
GHJMNY

Friday, July 30
8pm
free

Diapason
882 Third Avenue (between 32nd and 33rd Street)
10th Floor
Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Info: 718.499.5070 | www.diapasongallery.org

Subway: D, N, R to 36th Street/4th Avenue

LISA Salons : Leaders in Software and ArtCultural Conversations with hanrahan Meyers architects

Paul Amitai, past LISA presenter

Leaders in Software and Art (LISA) is a society of creative thinkers centered around monthly salons.  Founded by Isabel Walcott Draves in fall of 2009, LISA is a membership organization with the following
aims:

- To join interesting people together for fellowship, camaraderie and
good food and drink
- To introduce the membership to fascinating endeavors
- To become the first stop for the best new art in the world
- To advance the artistic and/or technology careers of its members
- To help creative software entrepreneurs grow their businesses

Past presenters include:

- Mark Napier has been commissioned to create net artwork for SFMOMA, the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim, and more, and is represented by Bitforms. He combines his training as a painter with 15 years of expertise as a software developer to create "art interfaces", software that addresses issues of authority, ownership and territory in the virtual world.  http://potatoland.org, http://marknapier.com

- Paul Amitai is a visual and sound artist whose work has been presented internationally at venues such as Scope Art Fair (New York), Art Chicago, and Manchester Exchange Square (UK).  He has performed electronic and improvisational music with the likes of Run-DMC and the Skatalites; is a curator of film, music, and art for venues like the Knitting Factory and Eyebeam; and has written about arts and culture for publications like Signal to Noise and The Onion.  http://paul-amitai.com/.

- Marty St. James is a London-based artist who has concentrated on performance art, video and
installation art (time based-media) and digital works since the 1980's.  He exhibits internationally and his work has been shown, among other places, in a one-man show at the National Contemporary Arts Centre in Moscow and alongside alongside major works by Picasso, Bacon, Warhol, Freud, and Warhol at the National Portrait Gallery in London.  http://martystjames.com, http://www.theprojectroom.org/martystjames.html

- John F. Simon Jr. has been producing art professionally for nearly 20 years and has seen his work acquired by the Whitney, the Guggenheim, MoMA, SFMOMA, LACMA, and many others.  He has exhibited internationally and is represented by the Gering and Lopez Gallery.  The main way that he shows his software art is through sculptural wall hangings with LCD screens he calls "art appliances" which he has made and sold since 1999.  numeral.com.

The next LISA salon is on Thursday August 12th.  For more info, visit:

http://softwareandart.com/

or email Isabel Draves (founder) at isabel at draves.com