Seamus A - A Room For Improvement

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2011-09-18T03:29:00.002Z

By way of explaining the previous post, what's happened is that the proprietary blog software on the web host I've been using for the past year or more as stopped working and it seems as if the company can't be bothered to do anything about it, so the only thing I could think to do was copy the source code of the last fifty entries into one post here on blogger and continue for the new academic year to update this blog instead.

Keeping this blog has been useful to me in a lot of ways and while I don't intend keeping it up after college, I would like to keep it online as an archive and maybe a bit of a memory lane for myself when I'm older and bitterer. With that said, the next entry will be a summary of the work I completed at the end of third year, followed by a summary of my summery summer.

2011-09-18T03:18:00.002Z

Blog's down :(

Because of a technical issue with this blog widgit, I haven't been able to update for some months now. Working on a solution

News / Works in Progress

Deus Ex Caput - a work in progress

Posted March 16, 2011

Below is a clip and some photos (by Paul Coffey) taken from a day of filming for my current project, which has the working title Deus Ex Caput. This clip represents a heavily processed version of the visual I'm working on, with previous clips I've posted having been more naturalistic. Of course, the processing has been tried out to make up for poor direction and shooting on my part (I'll likely have to shoot some of the scenes again) but it's an interesting visual and one of the themes of this particular project, is how far one can push the suspension of disbelief after a given aesthetic has been established. The actor here is Oliver Kirwan, who's generously helping me out by staring as Arthur in a series of scenes written as analogues to the stations of the cross. Notice the bottle and the falling down.

I'm excited about shooting (and writing) the rest of the film but it is a daunting task at the same time - especially given the demand for space and equipement in college. Organisation is key. Where's my keys?

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Posted in Research

Tagged as myth, film, deus ex caput, video, and narrative

Mesh Exhibition at Hello Operator

Posted March 16, 2011

On Thursday I was involved in the opening of a group show featuring myself and nine of the people I've been studying with for the past three years. We called it mesh because we had no common theme or project brief - the show was a simple show case of a variety of different approaches to a number of themes. More about the individual pieces and their artists can be found here

Paul Coffey, who also exhibited, has put together an overview in video form, with a questionable soundtrack, which you can see below. It's hard to do many of the works justice in documentation, as they often required a level of user interaction, which seemed to make it a worthwhile visit for those who came along.

Big thanks to those who were able to make it, we hope you enjoyed the show.

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Posted in Exhibitions

Tagged as mesh, hello operator, paul coffey, aoife brady, shadley rawat, louise brady, stephanie golden, mairead hutchinson, michael gavigan, craig cox, and moya clarken

m e s h exhibition - This Thursday

Posted March 7, 2011

Group Exhibition this Thursday at 6 in Hello Operator, 12 Rutland Place, Dublin 1. Gonna be mega. More info on our blog http://meshexbition.blogspot.com

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Posted in Exhibitions

Tagged as exhibition and hello operator

Making the world a slightly different place

Posted February 16, 2011

I've been making video, all sketchy, all sort of ok. This being primarily a blog detailing stuff in process (the previous post's political tyradette not withstanding [at all {at all}]), here is it (them).

This one is for a college technical workshop in video editing. The class is focused on processing of various whacky sorts rather than the straight-forward, linear continuity we tried to get a grip on last year (successfully) so I'm going to make something like this - only better.

Below are my first experiments in creating an aesthetic for the final project of the college year, which will be a essentially a short film, composed along my own formal guidelines and with layers of meaning which I don't enjoy talking about because I'm not qualified - hence I make the pictures and what not. The formal qualities are derived from an interest in using patterns coming from the science of chaos to structure temporal compositions. As per usual. I've done a lot of work lately that has been more epic in scope than practical for my means because I've been trying to take in these entire, comlex structures all at once into every piece. The current project differs in that I'm simply taking a random pattern of managable parts (a deck of cards shuffle 8 times) as my model rather than a chaotic structure of infinite complexity, which makes it a bit easier to focus on aesthetics.

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Posted in Research

Tagged as video and deus ex cratum

Self-Directed

Posted February 9, 2011

I'm making a film for my final project of the year at college. So far I've written the screenplay and I'm working on the storyboard as I type. Well, actually, I'm typing to avoid continuing on the storyboard because it's not at all my favourite part of the process. In the meantime, I've been fooling around in the studio, making maquettes out of playing cards and poker chips and cutting and drawing cells of paper and acetate for projection in the background of scenes. Work so far has been slow and chaotic - much like my normal process, except slow. Yesterday a general lack of awareness and motivation was replaced by abject panic at how behind I really am with the whole thing, so that's a step forward.

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Posted in Research

Tagged as card, craft, projection, film, and chaos

Photographic Fictions

Posted February 9, 2011

I recently finished and presented the result of a technical workshop in photograpy. I ended up taking a simple series of tounge-in-cheek self-portraits in the dank and cramped living room of my apartment with a 25mm lense to satisfying effect as well as a number of variations of the image in an empty room. I then scanned the negatives in layers and used the resulting digital images to create a little interactive installation where the spectator's proximity to the TV monitor on which the final images were displayed caused the image to fade from one to the other.

Here are some examples of the images fading in and out on my laptop screen as a test run.

This was achieved using an infra-red sensor connected to an Arduino micro-controller, in turn connected to a laptop running Processing and finally to the TV display. This is the first project of value that I've completed with this technology so, for other beginners in this area, here's the code I used for the Arduino. This code reads an analogue input from pin zero and sends the value every hundred milliseconds to the laptop via USB.

float temp = 0;
void setup(){
Serial.begin(9600);

}

void loop(){

int analogValue = analogRead(0);
temp = analogValue;
temp = (map(temp, 0, 1024, 0, 5000)/10.0);
Serial.println(temp);

delay(100);

}

And the following code for Processing calls one of two images to fade over one another (sort of) based on the reading from the Arduino.

import processing.serial.*;

int lf = 10;
String myString = null;
Serial myPort;
float num;

PImage go;
PImage stop;

void setup(){
size(1750, 1600);
background(0);

myPort = new Serial(this, Serial.list()[1], 9600);
myPort.clear();

go = loadImage("go.jpg");
stop = loadImage("stop.jpg");

loop();
}

void draw() {

while(myPort.available() > 0) {
    myString = myPort.readStringUntil(lf);
    if(myString != null) {
      print(myString);
      num=float(myString);
      println(num);
if (num > 30) {
image(stop, 0, 0);
delay(5);
}else{
   image(go, 0, 0);
   tint(255, num);
   delay(5);
   myPort.clear();
}
}
}
}

I'm pleased with the way the project turned out and I plan to continue to develop this sort of photography in my spare time over the next few years (although the interactive element will likely disappear or become somehow less obvious).

Not exactly part of my art practice but worth mentioning because of how fun it was, a few weeks ago I built a tiny amp (from a kit, so not exactly from scratch) and connected it to a salvaged pick-up and speaker to electrify my crappy old acoustic guitar. It's really bred new life into it and made it a lot of fun to play (badly). I might tidy up the package somewhat when I feel like it but at the moment, this is how it looks.

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Posted in Research

Tagged as photography, film, self portrait, arduino, interactive, and physical computing

Maquette

Posted January 15, 2011

I've been working in dribs and drabs on another little project using a recycled toy, which still needs a lot of designing and building but this is one of the first tender steps toward something which will hopefully get finished sometime or other. It is one of a few little pieces, one of which will be used in my photography workshop in college, using electronics and an arduino microcontroller and sensors and switches and what not to make stuff interactive. It's all pretty primitive at the moment but the possibilities... well, you know what they are.

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Posted in Research

Tagged as samuel johnson dictionary

Self Directed research - Week 1

Posted January 14, 2011

Below are smatterings of images from both the previous college research project and the one that has just begun. Last term I played with cards and filming stuff in front of colourful projections. This term I'm reading about fictional and historical figures with view to making, in narrative video form, a new myth for the moment. The over all concept is a reversal of certain elements from the Sumerian/Babylonian creation myth which has influenced much of Western and Middle Eastern religious myth and therefore culture since the earliest of civilisations. I'm reading a lot of biographical stuff and watching a lot of film noir for characterisation. Not doing a whole heck of a lot else.

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Posted in Research

Tagged as film, narrative, chaos, and mythology

Presidentational Address

Posted December 10, 2010

This week in college, I have had to do two presentations about my work, one of which was also a pitch for a thesis subject. The one on Wednesday is most of the grade for our research module and I fairly mumbled my way through five minutes sounding like some sort of would-be mad scientist who can't do maths (which would be maddening!) without really giving anyone the impression that I knew what I was talking about or indeed that I knew that I was talking out loud. Today however, in a non-assessable version, I managed to maintain contact with the point, even as I veered away from it. I just had a look at the written statement I handed up with it and thought I might aswell paste the part about my own practice - for the record. Also, so that whenever anyone asks me what something is about for the next few weeks I can reply unpatiently "Gaah! Doesn't anyone read my blog?!" which I do anyway.

"As
complexity increases, precision and meaningfulness become
incompatible. While precision thrives on stable (fixed) meanings, the
fuzzy meanings are unstable - they can simultaneously relate to
several attractors and express specific types of meaning-generating
crises. Instability of the fuzzy meanings make them flexible for
interpretation and open for evolution and transformation. And these
are precious qualities necessary for understanding social
complexity."

Vladimir
Dimitrov

The
above quote is included to illustrate my interest in Chaos theory,
the science of unpredictability and the study of complex dynamic
systems. The above is from an essay looking at the behavior of
Strange Attractors as analogues for variables influencing complex
social relationships. The theories and imagery associated with Chaos
are derived from the application of pure mathematics to problems of
unpredictable patterns in such things as the weather, population
growth, convection heating and more besides. How I have related these
theories to my work is by using the visualizations of observed and
fabricated chaotic systems as models for the structuring of
performances, videos, installations of drawing and compositions of
sound. These pieces will often use the chaotic structure as a
metaphor for psychological function and malfunction, with the content
often personal and autobiographical in nature.

In
the current project, I have been using the fall of cards at various
stages of being shuffled to build a model after which to structure
content of a planned video piece who’s content and characters will
take on wider issues than my own. Apart from that, I am due to
perform a participatory piece in Monster Truck, Francis St on the
seventeenth of December which uses game play, drawing, card shuffling
and story telling to illustrate the fractal nature of people in
society and their definition and projection of themselves.

So, that's what I was supposed to say, I suppose, so. That's in no way the complete picture but one tailored to appear to have relevence to the thesis topic I pitched. And tossed.

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Posted in Research

Tagged as statement, concept, practice, and monster truck

States and Affairs

Posted November 26, 2010

I have an essay due this day next week for college, so in finding new and implausable ways to avoid doing that, I thought I would write something here instead.

I'm engaged at the moment in project 302, the second project of third year, which takes the shape of a body of research meant to identify an area of interest and, by implication, an approach to that interest. All this leads directly into our self-directed project, the big 'un, after xmas holidays.

After making what I thought was a rather nifty and very simple piece for the previous project, I decided to cast a wide net of experiments at the beginning of this one, in order to completely confuse myself. This I have managed to do most thoroughly. I've been mucking about with text, photography, video, electronics and (mostly) playing cards and paint.

From this period of experimentation, I have made a rough model of an editing process I'd like to use again later but in this case I've used all but arbitrarily chosen found-texts, where-as for a serious version, I'll be writing original texts and scenarios. Also, this is filmed very quickly with a problematically lone light source during the few hours available to me in a particular studio in the college and with almost no planning whatever, literally just to see what the colours would look like. Colour is, of course, not the issue with the work, it's a tool. The issue is still the behaviour of chaotic systems. Here's a little clip from what I came up with.

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Posted in Research

They kill'n'main'em...

Posted November 17, 2010

On the fourth of November, I took part in a group performance, devised by Niamh Murphy and Meabh Redmond as part of Right Here Right now, an evening of some twenty durational performance which, for four hours on a stormy Thursday night, responded to this intensly cold shell and it's rich histories in front of a wierdly huge crowd of people pouring through at sixty or seventy at a time. The whole evening was organised by live art enthusiasts Amanda Coogan, Niamh Murphy and Dominic Thorpe as well as a number of those involved in the gaol / museum itself and whose names I don't know.

Penal Machinery, as our piece was called, was a voice based sound piece incorporating various texts from the archives of the gaol, performed according to a call-response method of relaying the information repetitively and dispassionately. The method was previously used in another group performance by the same artists called The Something Specials. You can read all about both right here - http://penalmachinery.wordpress.com/about/ (something is up with this editor all of a sudden and I can't put the links in as before - bummer.

Here are some pictures by the noted wit and sporadic stamp-collector, Paul Coffey (also a fine visual artist).

Edit: Paul Coffey is not now, nor has he ever been a stamp-collector; he is in point of fact primarily a visual artist.

The whole thing was super-amazing anyway, or so I've heard. I missed it, since I was talking the whole time.

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Posted in Exhibitions

Tagged as right here right now, kilmainham, gaol, niamh murphy, amanda coogan, dominic thorpe, and meabh redmond

Project 301

Posted November 17, 2010

The video above is a snippet of the result of a five week project for the beginning of third year. I like it. Other people liked it too, including my tutors - which is nice. Why it was likable (set up as an installation in a white cube space), no one could really say, least of all myself.

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Posted in Research

Tagged as supermodel, video, film, and narrative

Belated Entry #2 - Inferno, The Shed

Posted June 20, 2010

On 26th of May, I participated in the Inferno event at The Shed’s new location of 43 Gardiner Lane, Dublin 1. The main event of the evening was Maria Laura Ronzoni’s Notes From The Underworld, which is a combination of texts from Dante’s Inferno and the work of Samuel Becket, each part ending in a song of Maria Laura’s own. Great show and one for which I was happy to be asked to improvise little musical links from one part of the performance to the next. Robson Jamaica demonstrated the music and dance of Capoiera, while talking about it’s origins and history and I did a hellish set of improvised electro-acoustic noise. With screaming and everything.

I’m working at the moment on compiling and editing the entire video archive of The Shed’s three or four years of events in performance, theatre, music and installation and Notes From The Underworld will be a part of that work but for now, I’ve just got this little video of a not very typical A Room For Improvement set. Not very meditative and there are no visuals.

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Posted in Exhibitions

Tagged as maria laura, ronzina, the shed, and eli mcbett

Belated Entry #1 - LiveStock at Market Studios

Posted June 20, 2010

On the 6th of May, I went along to Live Stock, Market Studio’s monthly evening of live art. It’s informal and workshoppy and really rather cosy. This was their fourth event and featured myself doing the sound piece I’ve been working on based on Genesis 11 7 and the story of the tower of Babel as well as a performances by Louise Ward and Joan Healy (who also organise the event with Francis Fay), who performed an object and spoken word piece called “Ornament and Grime” which was fascinating and funny, Valerie Joyce, who’s action of painfully slow crawling down the street in a powder-blue power-suit drew suitably baffled and concerned reactions from the passing public and really was quite intense and the tounge-in-cheek “Inner Child Workshop” by Mari Jarva and Eithne McAdam, involving the shaping and baking of the audience / participant’s inner children, which you were then allowed to take away and do what you wish with. Some people had eaten their’s before the end of the evening; mine is sitting in my cupboard in the pantry. This was the highlight for me. There was also a screening of American video artist Matthew Silver’s “Overmodulated Marriage” which was unsettling and unconscionably amusing.

You can find a comprehensive collection of photos from the evening on the group’s facebook page.

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Posted in Exhibitions

Tagged as livestock, market studios, babel, mari jarva, eithne mcadam, louise ward, joan healy, valerie joyce, matthew silver, and a room for improvement

UNIT 30 Something followed by Misfits

Posted May 2, 2010

This Thursday, the 29th of April, our college group opened our show UNIT 30 Something at The Complex, Smithfield Plaza.

There's a nice little review some photos here - the second ever post in our brand new group blog. The blog and indeed the exhibition (in a very large part) were organized by Paul Coffey who has been absolutely legendary through the whole process - Big Ups! Thanks and praise also go to our class' fearless rep Tanja Harney for all she's done for us throughout the year.

There was soooo much great work of all sorts there that well, if you weren't there, you missed it. Aideen Barry was good enough to come along and open the event, which was great; we're big fans.

Here's a wee video from the few clips I captured in-between setting up before the show and drinking and smoking during.

I was unfortunately both absent and, when present, absent minded during a lot of the post-opening celebrations and, indeed, work. The reason being that I was distracted by the looming performance of a brand new piece of story-telling the next night, Friday at the Dublin Art Mill, as part of the Misfits show curated by Patryk Starzykowski and Niamh Murphy. In the end, I had a great time. The performances were varied and super-facinating from start to finish.

Joan Healy's Cyberskin must be experienced to be believed. It's simply a miracle of modern technology. Any more info will ruin the surprise should you ever have the chance to catch this performance. Elizabeth Cleary's Box was a grippingly performed, deceptively simple, object-based narrative performance. Tracy Martin and Sadie Ryan performed Papa Don't Preach, an absolute scandal of a performance; it was hilarious, shocking and really thought provoking, all in about 3 minutes. Angelika Schori's bizarre and beautiful human sculpture, Boundries, turned out to be a heck of a lot more engaging than it sounded when described to me. So, try to see it. Francis Fay's Delightful Illusion was delightful and very real.

Here's quick clip of my own piece on the night. I really enjoyed doing this and want to do it again soon, only slightly better. The story is a retelling of an ancient greek myth and a passage from the bible, which are intended to contextualise the main part of the story which is an original myth about our own time, as told from the perspective of an improbable, distant future.

It seemed to go down well.

Related again to the Unit 30 Something exhibition, here's a fun video of some of our college mates helping to hoist Michael Gavigan's exhibition piece Church 2.0 into the air, in-studio, a few days before the exhibition. I'm not there, because I was guarding some TVs at the time. It was mostly shot by Moya Clarken, I think. As I say, I wasn't there. As much as we all enjoyed making fun of him during the process, it's an impressive achievement. Kudos to him and all the other v v v talented folks who were involved in a wonderful show which has made us all very, very, very tired. And poor.

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Posted in Exhibitions

Tagged as unit 30 something, complex, iadt, dublin, art mill, and misfits

Exhibition time!

Posted April 26, 2010

Från 30 Something Show

Paul Coffey's informative flyer and map say it all really but, if you need more words to read today, here are some I typed out earlier.

UNIT 30 SOMETHING is a two day exhibition of thirty something artists from IADT working in a wide variety of media. Art works on show range from ambitious architectural and technological experiments to deceptively low key, intricate explorations of traditional media such as painting, drawing, print and sculpture, as well as a host of original approaches to contemporary interdisciplinary media of video, sound, performance and installation.

So, that's it really. My own piece won't really be seen by most people since its a hefty 80 minute video, housed in a small self-contained installation BUT I like it so much that I'm going to burn lots of extra copies because I'm sure everyone will want to take the video home and enjoy it in the same cold, dark, lonely light as the starry heavens above and the moral law within.

I've uploaded a scene from the video here

;

The statement available at the exhibition will read something like this.

Spectre (For TV)

This 80 minute video is a scaled down
visualisation of an 8 hour sleep cycle. Narrative structure is superceded by a
form derived from the marrying of the progression of a sleep cycle to the
behavior of a complex dynamic system, as described by chaos theory. The content of the video revolves chiefly
around the creative process and the anxiety of the protaganist in the face of
the blank page.

A Room For Improvement

This installation of appropriated and
combined objects is representative of a philosophy of self-improvement and
introspection which motivates much of my work. Here, I am using the structure
of the room and the inconvenience of the entrance to suggest that the work
requires more commitment on the part of the viewer than many shorter or
repetitive/durational video art works.

Opening on the same night, Thursday 29th April, is the Misfits show in Dublin Art Mill in the Liberties. I'm hoping to make it down there to have a look but in any case, I'll be there the next evening to tell a story at a performance oriented event curated in conjunction with the show. Details to follow.

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Posted in Exhibitions

Tagged as unit 30 something, complex, spectre, and a room for improvment

SelfDirected2010 Research Ctd

Posted February 21, 2010

Getting my head back into our end of year project good and proper this week.
I'm kind of in the middle of a few little experiments involving web-art as well as thinking hard about whether to focus on filming or performing the eventual script that I've been working on. I've been story boarding the script I wrote for a performance as if it was a film - which is confusing but interesting. Been watching Steve McQueen's Hunger and thinking about how it compares to Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ.
Here's a random smattering of images to give you some idea of what's been going on in the school department of my brain.

Here's a sketchy idea for a web based piece relating to the project, which would also feature in a filmed version of the whole project. zenTest.swf

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Posted in Research

Tagged as hunger, steve mcqueen, seamus bradley, tetris, zen, performance, and video

A Brief History of The Past Six or Seven Weeks

Posted February 13, 2010

The fire folks came before we'd started, after people had started to come and gave us the option of getting out right now or sqeezing the night's performances into an hour.
I guess I pretty much decided, and then persuaded the artists, that the latter would be our course. I think that was worth doing. It was short lived but extremely well documented. Since the artists were encouraged to bring experiments and works in progress to the friendly little public we'd gathered, I know from experience how important it is to see yourself in performance as well as to do it. Sometimes, the mistakes that ring out like gongs in one's head while performing will be almost invisible when looked back on, sometimes vice versa. It's an important learning tool and needs an audience.

Having said that, I really liked all the work. Of course, I would say that - I was the one who decided which artists would be there. Here's a quick cut of the footage I managed to get on my own camera, there is a lot more footage from two other cameras which I'm almost done putting together - I'll start a seperate blog to archive it and write proper reviews. As the word "archive" implies, I don't intend this to be the last The Howl Into The Hole event. The Shed is unable to host events for the moment, but I'm looking for an alternate venue right now.

Big friendly thank yous and many warm handshakes must go to the artists who took part, more of them travelling from outside the county of Dublin than not and who provided, under some considerable strain, both entertaining and thought provoking examples of ephemeral art practice - Alive and unpaid, just off Bolton Street.

The next day, I went to Cork. The Basement Project Space to be exact. The Podium #1 to be absolutely precise.

The Podium is planned as a monthly platform for the free expression of ideas, curated by Stephanie Hough, one of (I think) six artists with studios attatched to the space.
Stephanie herself performed a piece called Porn From The Podium, reading found texts of extremely explicit content, recording, playing them back and repeating until the repitition made the shocking content seem extremely banal. An effective experiment I thought. We also saw some video clips, apparantly made the day before or something of the same artist dressed in silly wigs, singing hilarious songs in the guise of some sort of worst case senario eurovision song contest winner. I remember there being some sort of over all point with them but all can recall now is how very wierd they were.

There was also a piece called Appliance Ensemble or something, which made snacks for everyone as per intructions sent from the artist. It's in the video too. The piece itself wasn't doling out booze, just smoothies and popcorn, so I stayed away from it.
I believe I was next and read fairly successfully, I think, ...from the works of Icarus Crane - always a worthwhile endeavour. People were pretty positive about it afterward, as I recall.

Colm Madden, another of the artists at the studio, performed a piece, entitled Self Love. It was great! It was mostly pretty conversational, the artist reading intermitent pages from a note book, happening on the main points of the performance he had not completely prepaired and then singing these wonderful songs, somewhere between Bessie Smith and Britney Spears, amid a deceptively ad-hoc environment, including a projection and mirror.

I got a lot out of (oh yeah, and some other guy got a really silly hair cut to raise money for the Haitian earthquake victims, which was nice of him) the performances at both events and just in the past few weeks, I've been making real ground in my own work of the past few months.

Here's a random smattering of images from my research since Christmas time.

A lot of what I've been doing has been text and sound based. A little of it appears below. I've been writing a lot and going back and rewriting some of the core passages of performances I've already done. The performance workshop video shown here is the most recent and was pretty much a total failure when it actually came to performing it but, the happy accidents that did occur and the comments of the workshop group have led me, over the past few days to totally rethink the mess of information gathering and experimentation in one very simple narrative, which is written and which I'll try to get filmed in some way over the coming weeks.
One positive thing about trying out the performance is that it reminded me of how I'd learned the performance I was developing this time last year. Video taping and watching and rewatching. Using objects in the recitation of texts seems to be proving useful to me too. I'm not sure if it's something like the sense memory technique used by actors or just that it distracts me from what I'm saying, so I don't fuck it up.

All of this stuff is totally sketchy and a lot of it uses borrowed sounds and images. This week's plan is to draw together imagery from the various texts I've been working on into plastic form (on paper).

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Posted in Exhibitions

Tagged as the howl into the hole, thith, podium, the shed, mcbett, stephanie hough, and basement project space

Site specific project - Sandymount Strand

Posted December 6, 2009

This week I have been mostly trying to finally wrap my head around our last college project of the calander year. All Joycian and wordificating have I been.

At the beginning of the project, I was thinking in the way of land art, in the sense of sculptural ideas, rather than going with my strengths and with my actual skills as they are being taught. I got over that and then I settled on a text / landscape based film idea. Here are the results.

The above video is the culmination of a few different experiments in how to tie filmed images of the landscape with the literary ideas suggested by its connection to two episodes from James Joyce's Ulysses. I won't bore anyone (except my tutors in college) with the other the sketches. They're really not that different.

Coalting research and making presentable seems to be important in this particular project, since we are supposed to be making a proposal for a fictional grant or award. Interesting to see what's involved in that. I think I'm going to need some kind of manager. Never was any good at filling out forms.

Below is the layout of my main proposal, which I've printed off in large format. It really is rather snazy... but in a very-obviously-not-a-professional-graphic-design-job-kind-of-way. It certainly beats all the drawing/printing attempts I made at presenting the idea.

Från SandymountProposal

I also had the chance this week to go along with my classmate Stephanie Golden and document herself and volunteer firestarter Louise Brady experimenting with her own project. Below are the results, with some stolen music by Tunng - a fantastic band who hopefully wont sue me.

Why am I writing a blog entry about college work at half two on a Sunday morning? Good question. I haven't finished my homework and I'm procrastinating, that's why.

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Posted in Research

Tagged as site specific, sandymount, film noir, james joyce, and ulysses

Site Specific

Posted November 27, 2009

Below is some of the sketchy work I've been doing in response to a college project to develop a proposal for a site responsive artwork located along the coast of south Dublin, as featured in James Joyce's Ulysses. I've been focusing on Sandymount.

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Posted in Research

Tagged as site specific, james joyce, ulysses, and sandymount

Run On

Posted November 8, 2009

Here is the final edit of my piece for this confounded Disassemble / Reassemble project we've had in the past few weeks in college. I decided to go for a three minute edit in the end in direct response to a call for artists I saw a few weeks ago for a local radio station (in Roscommon if I remember correctly) which specified a three minute limit on pieces of sound art for air play. So, after assesement on Monday, I'll be putting together a CD with this track and a few others to send off to that show. Should be interesting to see what they make of the various pieces.

Gen117TowerFinalRadio Rendered.mp3

Below is a video I've put together over the weekend. The dialogue comes from a bit of scribbling which turned into a loop quite organically and which seemed to lend itself to the format you see below. Immediate problems with it are(even in the uncompressed AVI which is better quality than the video below), relatively low resolution and an annoying buzzing on the soundtrack which I removed, but at the expense of the general clarity of the sound. These are both problems of equipement quality and should be fixed by borrowing a better camera and hopefully a stand alone recorder from college. Once I've got it down to perfection - I would plan on trying to screen it somewhere - this would be the first video I've had screened in its own right for a few years in fact... I've been waiting to come up with something awfully clever...

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Posted in General

Tagged as disassemble, reassemble, genesis, 11, 7, and sound

You heard it here first

Posted October 26, 2009

The above videos are two that I have come across during my lazier moments of "research" for the project I'm working on. I have no other comment on either one.
Below is the link to another sound piece... more than likely there will be more little ideas like this along shortly, which I won't bother to publish but which will become part of a larger composition incorporating the sound piece from the previous post also.
Below that, we find some screen shots from a model in Google SketchUp - I've made models of the Hebrew letters in of Gen11:7 and stacked them on top of one another...
like a tower.
Not my most inspired work but, you know, learning by doing.

Gen11 7Beats2 Rendered.mp3

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Posted in Research

Tagged as video, sound, disassemble, reassemble, genesis, 11, and 7

disReassemble Continues

Posted October 25, 2009

Following the initial research talked about in the previous post, I have made these pieces. This first piece is something of an aside to the brief of the project but relevant to it none the less.

It is an homage to Baldesari's "I will not make anymore boring art" but informed by the content of my project of the moment. It's extremely sketchy and not really of any use without being projected on a larger scale. It is shown here in much abreviated form.Before I'm done with the project, I may go to the trouble of making a better version. I may not.

This second, more sophisticated piece is a sound piece, which I have written some notes on for the benifit of my tutors in college and which follow the link in this post.

Gen11 7Tower.mp3

Building of a "tower" of sound.
A somewhat literal deconstruction / reconstruction of Genesis 11:7.

- Found audio of Hebrew text Gen 11 online.

- Isolated 11:7 by analysing key points of my phonetic interpretation of the original text as well as the verse's relative position within the chapter.

- Using Audacity and Paul's Extreme Strech, produced variations of the verse, manipulating the tempo at various sample rates while maintaining the pitch.

- Imported the slowest rendering at a fairly low sample rate into 8 tracks on Ableton Live; 2 tracks transposed to -24 (semitones); 2 to -12; 2 to -7; 2 left at original pitch.

- Added reverb of various parameters to remove harsh extremes and fill the gaps between sylables - a solid foundation of sound.

- Added next slowest verse with the same variations of pitch and reverb into another 8 tracks.

- Repeated process with next slowest sample.

* Overclocked processer.

* Decided to render smaller chunks at a time, as I would normally do with video.

- Spread 16 tracks over the stereo field, recorded, rendered.

- Repeating this process to create a big sound which can, over the course of the composition, be broken down and the meaning confounded.

-Thus, the first three tracks in the final project / Live Set are actually comprised of forty tracks - forty variations of Genesis 11:7, differing in pitch and tempo, as well as treated with a simple set of reverb effects and spread about the stereo field.

From Here...

it all gets pretty intuitive.

I add more tracks of the verse read without manipulation to the start of the composition - then treat the whole as a live set - adding new samples by keyboard triggers and practicing / editing / re-editing and repeat - until I record a final live mix.
This format lends itself also to performance of the piece as a set of live electronics - coming quite close to downbeat electronica.

Key Composition Points (and how they are achieved)

- "Tower" of sound : As illustrated above.

- "Period Three": All the samples used so far have been slowed down by multiples of 2 - as variables in a stable dynamic system will tend to rotate inside this parameter.
- "Period Three Implies Chaos" -

- After the introduction of the "Period Three" sample, I use grain delay to create the chaos implied by period three.

-Later in the composition, I use midi controlled instruments to break down the passage from legible Hebrew into sylables and phrases and using those sounds as content for regemented beats.

* There is something of a fall when a piece of durational art moves from the transendant to the banal during it's composition.

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Disassemble / Reassemble Project Week 1

Posted October 19, 2009

During the first week, we have been asked to select our object of focus and present a short statement of intent along with some the research and work we've done so far.
Below is a slideshow of some of the work I've been doing with my chosen object, which is Genesis 11:7, as well as the proposal itself. I've ommited my research images since they are all under copyright.

"Having first considered taking the theorised strings of theoretical physics' String Theory as the object of focus for this project, further thought led me to look at the idea of disassembling God as an idea/object. This being an enourmous undertaking, I narrowed my view of God as object to simply taking the name of God as the object. Given the belief of certain Jewish mystics that the name of God is, in fact, the entire text of the Koran, practicality eventually led me to take a single line from the book of Genesis as my object for disassembly and reassembly during the coming weeks. This line is Genesis 11 – 7

"Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech."

To the end of meeting the brief for this project, I have undertaken to familiarise myself with the Hebrew characters that represent the original form of this line of text as well as the context in which it occurs in the book (it is a passage related to the story of the Tower of Babel – more or less the final part of the creation myth of Judaism, Islam and Christianity).

In the coming week, I will continue to break down the text, not only in caligraphy form, as I have been doing, but also using audio and video to examine the text as annunciated. In the final two weeks of the project, I envisage a reassembly and reinterpretation of the text moving from the written word to a finished piece in video and audio."

Below is a link to stream(click) or download (right click, save target as) a quick experiment in breaking up the individual sounds of the passage as read phonetically by the PDF "read aloud" function on Adobe Acrobat Reader and remixing them into beats and noises.

11 7 PDF Beats.mp3

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Disassemble / Reassemble Project

Posted October 19, 2009

Last week, we recieved a brief for a four week project where we need to select an object, image or process to disassemble and reassemble by formal means, focusing on the tangible rather than the personal.

During the first week, we have been asked to select our object of focus and present a short statement of intent along with some the research and work we've done so far.
Below is a slideshow of some of the work I've been doing with my chosen object, which is Genesis 11:7, as well as the proposal itself. I've ommited my research images since they are all under copyright.

"Having first considered taking the theorised strings of theoretical physics' String Theory as the object of focus for this project, further thought led me to look at the idea of disassembling God as an idea/object. This being an enourmous undertaking, I narrowed my view of God as object to simply taking the name of God as the object. Given the belief of certain Jewish mystics that the name of God is, in fact, the entire text of the Koran, practicality eventually led me to take a single line from the book of Genesis as my object for disassembly and reassembly during the coming weeks. This line is Genesis 11 – 7

"Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech."

To the end of meeting the brief for this project, I have undertaken to familiarise myself with the Hebrew characters that represent the original form of this line of text as well as the context in which it occurs in the book (it is a passage related to the story of the Tower of Babel – more or less the final part of the creation myth of Judaism, Islam and Christianity).

In the coming week, I will continue to break down the text, not only in caligraphy form, as I have been doing, but also using audio and video to examine the text as annunciated. In the final two weeks of the project, I envisage a reassembly and reinterpretation of the text moving from the written word to a finished piece in video and audio."

Below is a link to stream or download (right click, save target as) a quick experiment in breaking up the individual sounds of the passage as read phonetically by the PDF "read aloud" function on Adobe Acrobat Reader and remixing them into beats and noises.
11 7 PDF Beats.mp3

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Culture Night, Random Noise and The Howl Into The Hole

Posted October 10, 2009

A further verse in the ongoing epic of the Guitar Player's Heart, continuing on from the work of Icarus Crane.

A roughly thrown together video to the improvisations of Oliver Kirwan over some simple loops

And a bit of loopy wierdness put together with images from my older video work

In other news, I will be curating a night a month of ephemeral art with an ending in mind from Thursday, January 28th at The Shed, entitled The Howl Into The Hole or THITH for short. Detail, right here

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Culture Night

Posted September 29, 2009

Culture Night was on Friday and bang dab in the middle of a bit of a long weekend. How and ever... I performed ten minutes of the Last Days Of Icarus Crane at the Mamuska Dublin at the Back Loft followed by a twentysomething minute version of The Forger... with a little of The Last Days included at the Shed.

A fine evening I had after my sickly nervousness subsidded (after I was done the shows) and people seemed to respond really well to both shows. For this I am certainly thankful.

There were a few people knocking around with video cameras at both events, so hopefully, I'll have some documentation up here soon.

Right now, I'm just drained.

I wanna play football for the coach...

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TermThree WeekOne

Posted September 18, 2009

Back in college. Walking around looking at sculptures making our blunt opinion on them, pouring plaster moulds and spot welding... These pictures are worth several thousand words

I enjoyed the 3D workshops (to be followed in the coming weeks by a set of 4D and 2D workshops) more than I thought I would. I rather like the possibilties of using plaster for the moulding and carving of props for video and performance. My work, in the end, was all quite literal and descriptive compared to the work of some of my classmates who, in particular in metal, were immediately drawn to more formal concerns of physical and aesthetic balance. That's why I would still see 3D in general being very much on the periphery of any work I do and why I won't be choosing 3D as my line of study in a few weeks when we "present our findings" so to speak and then choose between one of the three areas.

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Been some time...

Posted September 13, 2009

...since I last updated here. I've been in the country... no interweb down the country, so sir. Perhaps somewhere in the back of my head I was pondering on making the previous post on this blog the last one... it having been the forty second.

On the 25th, Icarus Crane put on a little exhibition in the Project Space in Unit H at the Market Studios here in Dublin. It went well... I think.
The guys at Market Studios were most accommodating... even to the point where I'm confident that all the drawings I left rolled up in an office beside the space are most likely still there and doing just fine.

Enough people came along to have a look so that I didn't feel like a loony putting this show on and for this I am very thankful. Nice one everybody! A few other people graciously apologised for not coming because of various commitments and what not so I feel like there is some sort of interest for my work out there. I'll keep doing it so.

Here are some photos from the show taken by Paul Coffey who is in my class at IADT and also a fine photographer and graphic designer and god-knows-what-else-he's-got-up-his-sleeve in his own right. Unfortunately, I didn't bring a camera on any of the days of the show or ask anyone to document the performance on the night in any way, so below Paul's shots is a slide show of grainy video stills of the drawings. Although it may not appear obvious from these photos.. there WERE other people there, I swear!

I have to thank in particular Oliver Kirwan, all round creative type and very nice guy, for his lending me of equipment and general helpfulness throughout the setting up and such... and for always helping me keep my head out of the clouds with his constantly disparaging remarks. It's appreciated.

I will be making the full audio sound set as performed on the night available here... um... tomorrow?

It feels like I've learned a lot during the journey toward this show and the putting on of the show itself but too much time has passed now for me to be bothered writing down such thought. I tell you what... as I use the knowledge gained, I'll try to make note of it here.

A few weeks after this exhibition, at 03:42, on the 9th of September, Icarus Crane died tragically... swallowed up by the sea.

During his last days, Icarus wrote a cycle of poetry, seeming to predict his demise and took a series of photos, experimenting with a battered old SLR camera, borrowed from his father Daedalus Crane.

As his benefactor and archivist, I will endeavour to present these poems and photos in performance venues over the coming months as well as continuing to develop the works left unfinished by Icarus brief existence.

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Blurb / aside

Posted August 16, 2009

Below is a slide show of images from the past few weeks which I've created in the open source paint.net program. Basically, a free (donations welcome) version of photoshop. These are a mix of digital paintings and photo manipulations. Nothing special by the standard of the people who specialise in this sort of medium but fun to do and it's through these kinds of experiments that I've put together the web based portion of the exhibition mentioned above.

Digital painting to me is fairly empty without the added touch of interactivity which, as one sees from the simple flash files displayed at the "Please to enjoy..." page, is a skill I have yet to master. The idea of seperate but connected work exsisting soley online and made entirely from digital media is something I will continue to develop though, as it is a facinating area to work in and is one which is so desperately under used by contemporary artists even now when the internet seems so integral to our daily lives.
I've also been tipping away at the soundy trickery I'm developing to try to complement the narrative elements of The Evolution of Lauren Begaun and will be doing a run through / recording of that next week with a view to a small salon type performance at the end of the month. I think.

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The Song of a Sick Boy

Posted August 3, 2009

The beginnings of the next A Room For Improvement sound and video set.

And a video from Bray Festival a few weeks back. This show got funnier as it went on but I only got the first few minutes. Go see Coco Le Bouche should the oppurtunity arise. She's a minor celebrity you know?

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PostStockan

Posted July 28, 2009

Also performing in the arty tent were Stephen James Smith, Colm Keegan and Karl Parkinson all doing spoken word. The first too guys I've seen before and they both do a great set and it was cool seeing Mr Parkinson for the first time. I hope to come across his set again. What sets him apart is a kind of natural dramatic flare which sort of sneaks into his reading without coming over as fruity or pretentious. Good stuff.

I just about managed to get around to see a few of the acts that were either known to me beforehand or recommended by trustworthy folks during the festival but not nearly enough of them. Deadly stuff I actually saw include but are not limited to The Northside Kontraband (or something very like that) - stompin' good fun! Toward slavic type party music, banjo, percussion, heaps of brass and a clarinet. Not a milliion miles from the Ompa music I love so dear - on Sunday evening right after Eric Noon and the Future Gypsies - those two bands in succession will melt yr legs off! Manu Negra eat yr heart out. Seriously good, seriously fun songwriting and bags of energy (backed up by real talent in the individual members). Indeed the Fish Stage was the new Main Stage (as Mr Noon kept insisting).

Something I wasn't going to miss was just after that on Sunday night - Marcas Carcas was due to do a longer set than I'd ever seen him do (just seen him twice on his own unplugged) and I was dying to see what he'd do in this setting. Couldn't see really, he had the Tunnel of Fun WEDGED and nearly bouncing the tent spikes out of the ground. Missisipi Wine is still knocking around in my head during quiet moments. Great stuff.

Saturday is a really random blur altogether I have to admit but yeah, loads of talent knocking around. On Friday I actually took my video camera out for a little while until I started to unhinge from work mode and decided to actually enjoy myself a bit and I think I got the odd good tune on tape. I think the guy's name is James Guilmartin who was with his band (don't know what they're called I'm afraid) in the Melty Marquee on Friday eve and really impressed me. I've seen the guy play unplugged on his own too a few times and never totally got into it even though he demonstrates himself to be massively talented, the songs he's doing are really more suited to the format of the band I saw him in, guitar, bass and drums all being played very very well indeed. An eclectic sound for such a simple set up, enough bluesy guitar to even out metally build ups and some great songwriting.
I was in that tent a good bit on Friday (not just cos it was raining mind) and saw some really different stuff. Over all I'd say it was younger talent in that tent, so some really good acts that people will be delighted to hear more and more of in the coming years. Don't know who they are but I'll pick my way through the bands on the festival website to try to find out a little more about some of the bands.

That doesn't really cover anything at all in comparison to the amount of great acts that were about but I'm sitting quite uncomfortably and haven't quite recovered yet.
For this reason, I'm going to relax a bit more and continue the days work which has been small scale drawing in preparation for a refocusing on the exhition in August.

Peas and Love

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Todays THIRD blog entry (I more or less took the day off today you see)

Posted July 20, 2009

Here is the line up for the three days in the Art Tent organised by
programmed by Mia Mallow for KnockanStockan festival
this weekend (subject to change etc etc)

Friday:
All day: Brian Lynch, Ana Carey, Stephen Lawlor
2.00: Video art and shorts
4.00: Tickle
4.30: Aileen and Aoife (10 minutes)
Icarus Crane
5.00: Frank Wasser
5.30: Karl Parkinson
6.00: Stephen James Smith
6.30: Aileen and Brian Keary
7.00: Hugh Cooney's films.
8.00: Mikey and Matt's music videos, gig footage etc etc.
11.00: Deccys movie choice thing

Saturday:
All day 2-7: Brian Lynch, Ana Carey, Stephen Lawlor and Barry Quinn
2.00: Video art and shorts
4.00: Tickle
4.30: Icarus Crane
Aileen and Aoife (10 mins)
5.00: Frank Wasser
5.30: Colm Keegan
6.00: Stephen James Smith
6.30: Enda MacNally
7.00: Aileen and Brian Keary
7.30: Films from Ray Hyland, Hugh Cooney and David Loder
8.30: Mikey and Matts films.
11.30: Deccys movies

Sunday:
Brian, Ana, Lawlor and Barry all day
2.00: Video art, gig footage, bands music videos, festival footage etc
4.00: Frank Wasser
4.30: Icarus Crane
5.00: Colm Keegan
5.30: Stephen James Smith
6.00: Ophelia
6.30: Mikey and Matts films etc etc
11.00: Deccys

Check out the festival website and myspace for all other info.

I
am preparing three different but similar sets for the three days with
room for improvisation (and improvement of course) in each, so if yr at
the festival, stop by EACH DAY and enjoy. Upon my return I'll hopefully
have heaps of bootleg video footage to stick up on the old interweb,
for now here is a video from Bray Festival's art arena yesterday of
Riona Hartman, a deadly jazz singer with her two accompanists who's
names I don't know (sorry).

I've got a few other clips from the show (the previous post
feature's my own performance) but I just want to check with the artists
before I put them up. Inspite of seriously long hold ups and technical
problems and what not, the whole show was lots of fun and ranged from
the anarchic cabaret stylings of Rose Lawless to the comedy of Coco
Lebush (or something like that), from the one woman drama of Lauren
Begaun to the improvised electroacoustics of Kim V Porcelli and the
wonderful singing of songs of Eleventy Two. All to be highly
recommended. I really enjoyed the show (once we got going).

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Today's THIRD entry (I more or less took the day off you see)

Posted July 20, 2009

Here is the line up for the three days in the Art Tent organised by programmed by Mia Mallow for KnockanStockan festival this weekend (subject to change etc etc)

Friday:
All day: Brian Lynch, Ana Carey, Stephen Lawlor
2.00: Video art and shorts
4.00: Tickle
4.30: Aileen and Aoife (10 minutes)
Icarus Crane
5.00: Frank Wasser
5.30: Karl Parkinson
6.00: Stephen James Smith
6.30: Aileen and Brian Keary
7.00: Hugh Cooney's films.
8.00: Mikey and Matt's music videos, gig footage etc etc.
11.00: Deccys movie choice thing

Saturday:
All day 2-7: Brian Lynch, Ana Carey, Stephen Lawlor and Barry Quinn
2.00: Video art and shorts
4.00: Tickle
4.30: Icarus Crane
Aileen and Aoife (10 mins)
5.00: Frank Wasser
5.30: Colm Keegan
6.00: Stephen James Smith
6.30: Enda MacNally
7.00: Aileen and Brian Keary
7.30: Films from Ray Hyland, Hugh Cooney and David Loder
8.30: Mikey and Matts films.
11.30: Deccys movies

Sunday:
Brian, Ana, Lawlor and Barry all day
2.00: Video art, gig footage, bands music videos, festival footage etc
4.00: Frank Wasser
4.30: Icarus Crane
5.00: Colm Keegan
5.30: Stephen James Smith
6.00: Ophelia
6.30: Mikey and Matts films etc etc
11.00: Deccys

Check out the festival website and myspace for all other info.

I am preparing three different but similar sets for the three days with room for improvisation (and improvement of course) in each, so if yr at the festival, stop by EACH DAY and enjoy. Upon my return I'll hopefully have heaps of bootleg video footage to stick up on the old interweb, for now here is a video from Bray Festival's art arena yesterday of Riona Hartman, a deadly jazz singer with her two accompanists who's names I don't know (sorry).

I've got a few other clips from the show (the previous post feature's my own performance) but I just want to check with the artists before I put them up. Inspite of seriously long hold ups and technical problems and what not, the whole show was lots of fun and ranged from the anarchic cabaret stylings of Rose Lawless to the comedy of Coco Lebush (or something like that), from the one woman drama of Lauren Begaun to the improvised electroacoustics of Kim V Porcelli and the wonderful singing of songs of Eleventy Two. All to be highly recommended. I really enjoyed the show (once we got going).

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Fail

Posted July 20, 2009

Sometimes it just doesn't click.

And here's what it should've sounded like

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Fail

Posted July 20, 2009

Sometimes it just doesn't click.

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Just a thought

Posted July 20, 2009

Might become facinated with the composition of 140 character Twitter updates as a prose short form. It could use more rules though, like Haiku. Out of limitation is precision honed, I suppose I might say if I was in the aphorism buisness

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Immediatly Upcoming

Posted July 18, 2009

I'm delighted to be going to KnockanStockan

to perform some Icarus Crane spoken word on the 24th, 25th and 26th of
the month. I'll be on at around 1630 each of those days in the arts
tent organised by Mia Mallow of Arty Party fame.

This coming
Sunday, the 19th, I'll be doing something similar in the arts arena of
Bray Summer Festival and maybe showing some videos. Not too sure.

I have nothing else to say right now.

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Immediatly Upcoming

Posted July 17, 2009

I'm delighted to be going to KnockanStockan to perform some Icarus Crane spoken word on the 24th, 25th and 26th of the month. I'll be on at around 1630 each of those days in the arts tent organised by Mia Mallow of Arty Party fame.

This coming Sunday, the 19th, I'll be doing something similar in the arts arena of Bray Summer Festival and maybe showing some videos. Not too sure.

I have nothing else to say right now.

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Posted in General

Just a little procrastination is all

Posted July 16, 2009

Been procrastinating like a pro the last few days from doing as much work as I should on my drawings. Been making sounds out of words. Actually, since that work is the other part of the show that I'm doing in August, I guess I have been working after all. Nice. I've also changed the look of this blog from Black and Boxy to Open and White. A change is as good as a break eh?

This Sunday, I'm going to do the first full live set of Icarus Crane spoken word with live electronic processing at Bray Summer Festival in the Arts Arena on a day of events MC'd and organised by Rose Lawless, who I'd only vaguely heard of until a few days ago but who I've enjoyed checking out on her site here. So that should be a fun day. I'm also going to bring along a few videos in case there's time that needs filling in, so we'll see what happens with that.

In other news, my entry to the Hilltown New Music festival was rejected but I guess it's just aswell since it was on this weekend too and I'd rather go perform than install. That does look like a good festival though and I'll probably spend some time making a better piece for it for next year. (I went to the site of the festival and took footage and sound samples which I edited together in a day - bit of a longshot)
In other news of rejection, my entry for the RDS student art awards was also rejected rejected rejected. Bitter? Yup, bit him too!
Nah, not bitter - especially when I saw yesterday that my classmate Tanya Harney had been accepted to the show. I hope she wins the 10,000 euro award and buys pints for the class on our return to college. I'm assuming she entered the video she made for the end of year show in May - it was really beautifully made and a lovely idea to start with, so good on her!

When I get round to it, I'll edit this post with the inclusion of the piece I made for Hilltown. Not right now though.

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Just a little procrastination is all

Posted July 16, 2009

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also

Posted July 15, 2009

Some downbeat electronic music what I make as a hobby. When I can afford the external Midi controllers I would need to do this sort of stuff well as a live set, I'll probably do more with these sequenced type sounds but for now, here's a bit of quirky grooviness for you to enjoy

aWindowTwoLiveSet.mp3

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also

Posted July 15, 2009

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Live Set for Down Load

Posted July 13, 2009

Here is a free gift of the full A Room For Improvement live set Senryu #4 as performed at the latest Arty Party. For better or worse, this was how it went down on the night.

Senryu4Live.mp3

Also, here are just a few photos of the last few weeks drawings for an upcoming Icarus Crane installation. It's not that I haven't been drawing much mind, it's just that I can't take a photo to save my life.

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Live Set for Down Load

Posted July 13, 2009

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stop time

Posted July 9, 2009

I recieved a copy of a bizarrely worded MP4 player manual yesterday from a nice young lady and will be using it as part of the content for an upcoming spoken word / sound art piece. Here's a wee bit of what I've been doing with it today. Very rough.

Samsung Test One Rendered.mp3

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stop time

Posted July 9, 2009

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flasher

Posted July 8, 2009

I enjoyed making little clickables of this sort earlier this year as an aside to the project I was working on and have decided to set up a little site in the next few weeks to add an online element to installation I'm working on. I'll be keeping the graphics and texts simple, in line with the drawings from the show.

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someNoise

Posted July 7, 2009

Insomnia strikes
Tenament.mp3

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someNoise

Posted July 7, 2009

Insomnia strikes
Tenament.mp3

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Blog Feed (Works in progress)

Deus Ex Caput - a work in progress

Posted March 16, 2011

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Posted in Research

Tagged as myth, film, deus ex caput, video, and narrative

Mesh Exhibition at Hello Operator

Posted March 16, 2011

Big thanks to those who were able to make it, we hope you enjoyed the show.

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Posted in Exhibitions

Tagged as mesh, hello operator, paul coffey, aoife brady, shadley rawat, louise brady, stephanie golden, mairead hutchinson, michael gavigan, craig cox, and moya clarken

m e s h exhibition - This Thursday

Posted March 7, 2011

Group Exhibition this Thursday at 6 in Hello Operator, 12 Rutland Place, Dublin 1. Gonna be mega. More info on our blog http://meshexbition.blogspot.com

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Posted in Exhibitions

Tagged as exhibition and hello operator

Making the world a slightly different place

Posted February 16, 2011

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Posted in Research

Tagged as video and deus ex cratum

Self-Directed

Posted February 9, 2011

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Posted in Research

Tagged as card, craft, projection, film, and chaos

Photographic Fictions

Posted February 9, 2011

Here are some examples of the images fading in and out on my laptop screen as a test run.

And the following code for Processing calls one of two images to fade over one another (sort of) based on the reading from the Arduino.

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Posted in Research

Tagged as photography, film, self portrait, arduino, interactive, and physical computing

Maquette

Posted January 15, 2011

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Tagged as samuel johnson dictionary

Self Directed research - Week 1

Posted January 14, 2011

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Posted in Research

Tagged as film, narrative, chaos, and mythology

Presidentational Address

Posted December 10, 2010

Vladimir
Dimitrov

So, that's what I was supposed to say, I suppose, so. That's in no way the complete picture but one tailored to appear to have relevence to the thesis topic I pitched. And tossed.

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Tagged as statement, concept, practice, and monster truck

States and Affairs

Posted November 26, 2010

I have an essay due this day next week for college, so in finding new and implausable ways to avoid doing that, I thought I would write something here instead.

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Test

2010-06-08T00:36:00.000Z

The selfish philosopher rages.

2010-05-27T22:27:00.003Z

Get your own valid XHTML YouTube embed code

SelfDirected2010 Research Ctd

2010-02-21T17:17:00.003Z

A Brief History of The Past Six or Seven Weeks

2010-02-13T12:44:00.005Z

On January 28th, I organised a performance oriented event at The Shed, Henrietta Lane. Apart from the fact that it was shut down by the fire safety folks, which was a shame, it was a success. The artists were of great quality, people came and, as far as I'm aware, enjoyed themselves in a lovely space, provided by Eli McBett at The Shed.
The fire folks came before we'd started, after people had started to come and gave us the option of getting out right now or sqeezing the night's performances into an hour.

I guess I pretty much decided, and then persuaded the artists, that the latter would be our course. I think that was worth doing. It was short lived but extremely well documented. Since the artists were encouraged to bring experiments and works in progress to the friendly little public we'd gathered, I know from experience how important it is to see yourself in performance as well as to do it. Sometimes, the mistakes that ring out like gongs in one's head while performing will be almost invisible when looked back on, sometimes vice versa. It's an important learning tool and needs an audience.

Having said that, I really liked all the work. Of course, I would say that - I was the one who decided which artists would be there. Here's a quick cut of the footage I managed to get on my own camera, there is a lot more footage from two other cameras which I'm almost done putting together - I'll start a seperate blog to archive it and write proper reviews. As the word "archive" implies, I don't intend this to be the last The Howl Into The Hole event. The Shed is unable to host events for the moment, but I'm looking for an alternate venue right now.

Big friendly thank yous and many warm handshakes must go to the artists who took part, more of them travelling from outside the county of Dublin than not and who provided, under some considerable strain, both entertaining and thought provoking examples of ephemeral art practice - Alive and unpaid, just off Bolton Street.

The next day, I went to Cork. The Basement Project Space to be exact. Podium #1 to be absolutely precise.

Podium is planned as a monthly platform for the free expression of ideas, curated by Stephanie Hough, one of (I think) six artists with studios attatched to the space.
Stephanie herself performed a piece called Porn From The Podium, reading found texts of extremely explicit content, recording, playing them back and repeating until the repitition made the shocking content seem extremely banal. An effective experiment I thought. We also saw some video clips, apparantly made the day before or something of the same artist dressed in silly wigs, singing hilarious songs in the guise of some sort of worst case senario eurovision song contest winner. I remember there being some sort of over all point with them but all can recall now is how very wierd they were.
There was also a piece called Appliance Ensemble or something, which made snacks for everyone as per intructions sent from the artist. It's in the video too. The piece itself wasn't doling out booze, just smoothies and popcorn, so I stayed away from it.
I believe I was next and read fairly successfully, I think, ...from the works of Icarus Crane - always a worthwhile endeavour. People were pretty positive about it afterward, as I recall.
Colm Madden, another of the artists at the studio, performed a piece, entitled Self Love. It was great! It was mostly pretty conversational, the artist reading intermitent pages from a note book, happening on the main points of the performance he had not completely prepaired and then singing these wonderful songs, somewhere between Bessie Smith and Britney Spears, amid a deceptively ad-hoc environment, including a projection and mirror. I got a lot out of (oh yeah, and some other guy got a really silly hair cut to raise money for the Haitian earthquake victims, which was nice of him) the performances at both events and just in the past few weeks, I've been making real ground in my own work of the past few months.

Here's a random smattering of images from my research since Christmas time.

A lot of what I've been doing has been text and sound based. A little of it appears below. I've been writing a lot and going back and rewriting some of the core passages of performances I've already done. The performance workshop video shown here is the most recent and was pretty much a total failure when it actually came to performing it but, the happy accidents that did occur and the comments of the workshop group have led me, over the past few days to totally rethink the mess of information gathering and experimentation in one very simple narrative, which is written and which I'll try to get filmed in some way over the coming weeks.

One positive thing about trying out the performance is that it reminded me of how I'd learned the performance I was developing this time last year. Video taping and watching and rewatching. Using objects in the recitation of texts seems to be proving useful to me too. I'm not sure if it's something like the sense memory technique used by actors or just that it distracts me from what I'm saying, so I don't fuck it up.

All of this stuff is totally sketchy and a lot of it uses borrowed sounds and images. This week's plan is to draw together imagery from the various texts I've been working on into plastic form (on paper).

Site specific project - Sandymount Strand

2009-12-06T02:08:00.003Z

Från SandymountProposal

Run On

2009-11-08T14:35:00.002Z

You heard it here first

2009-10-26T00:00:00.002Z

The above videos are two that I have come across during my lazier moments of "research" for the project I'm working on. I have no other comment on either one.

Below is the link to another sound piece... more than likely there will be more little ideas like this along shortly, which I won't bother to publish but which will become part of a larger composition incorporating the sound piece from the previous post also.

Below that, we find some screen shots from a model in Google SketchUp - I've made models of the Hebrew letters in of Gen11:7 and stacked them on top of one another...
like a tower.
Not my most inspired work but, you know, learning by doing.

Gen11 7Beats2 Rendered.mp3

disReassemble Continues

2009-10-24T18:08:00.006Z

Following the initial research talked about in the previous post, I have made these pieces. This virst piece is something of an aside to the brief of the project but relevant to it none the less. It is an homage to Baldesari's "I will not make anymore boring art" but informed by the content of my project of the moment. It's extremely sketchy and not really of any use without being projected on a larger scale. It is shown here in much abreviated form. Before I'm done with the project, I may go to the trouble of making a better version. I may not.

This second, more sophisticated piece is a sound piece, which I have written some notes on for the benifit of my tutors in college and which follow the link in this post.

Gen11 7Tower.mp3

Building of a "tower" of sound.
A somewhat literal deconstruction / reconstruction of Genesis 11:7.

- Found audio of Hebrew text Gen 11 online.
- Isolated 11:7 by analysing key points of my phonetic interpretation of the original text as well as the verse's relative position within the chapter.

- Using Audacity and Paul's Extreme Strech, produced variations of the verse, manipulating the tempo at various sample rates while maintaining the pitch.

- Imported the slowest rendering at a fairly low sample rate into 8 tracks on Ableton Live; 2 tracks transposed to -24 (semitones); 2 to -12; 2 to -7; 2 left at original pitch.
- Added reverb of various parameters to remove harsh extremes and fill the gaps between sylables - a solid foundation of sound.

- Added next slowest verse with the same variations of pitch and reverb into another 8 tracks.
- Repeated process with next slowest sample.
* Overclocked processer.
* Decided to render smaller chunks at a time, as I would normally do with video.

- Spread 16 tracks over the stereo field, recorded, rendered.
- Repeating this process to create a big sound which can, over the course of the composition, be broken down and the meaning confounded.

-Thus, the first three tracks in the final project / Live Set are actually comprised of forty tracks - forty variations of Genesis 11:7, differing in pitch and tempo, as well as treated with a simple set of reverb effects and spread about the stereo field.

From Here...
it all gets pretty intuitive.
I add more tracks of the verse read without manipulation to the start of the composition - then treat the whole as a live set - adding new samples by keyboard triggers and practicing / editing / re-editing and repeat - until I record a final live mix.
This format lends itself also to performance of the piece as a set of live electronics - coming quite close to downbeat electronica.

Key Composition Points (and how they are achieved)

- "Tower" of sound : As illustrated above.
- "Period Three": All the samples used so far have been slowed down by multiples of 2 - as variables in a stable dynamic system will tend to rotate inside this parameter.
- "Period Three Implies Chaos" -
- After the introduction of the "Period Three" sample, I use grain delay to create the chaos implied by period three.
-Later in the composition, I use midi controlled instruments to break down the passage from legible Hebrew into sylables and phrases and using those sounds as content for regemented beats.
* There is something of a fall when a piece of durational art moves from the transendant to the banal during it's composition.

Disassemble / Reassemble Project

2009-10-19T15:37:00.002Z

Culture Night, Random Noise and The Howl Into The Hole

2009-10-10T15:33:00.003Z

On the 25th of September, Culture Night, I was lucky enough to take part in Mamuska Dublin at the Back Loft, where I read portions of The Last Days Of Icarus Crane and, later, at Reptile Cabaret at The Shed, where I performed an adaptation of The Forger Of The String by Icarus Crane. Both events seemed to go well and my thanks are due to curators Brigit McCone and Phil Lee as well as the respective crews at both venues.

I do believe that documentation exists from both events but I don't have it as of yet... I'd really like to see it though.

Since then I've been in funk of minor creativity and also been sporadically attending college. Here is some of the stuff I've done lately... as rough and unready as it is

A further verse in the ongoing epic of the Guitar Player's Heart, continuing on from the work of Icarus Crane.

A roughly thrown together video to the improvisations of Oliver Kirwan over some simple loops

And a bit of loopy wierdness put together with images from my older video work

In other news, I will be curating a night a month of ephemeral art with an ending in mind from Thursday, January 28th at The Shed, entitled The Howl Into The Hole or THITH for short. Detail, right here

TermThree WeekOne

2009-09-18T21:32:00.004Z

Been some time...

2009-09-13T11:17:00.007Z

Blurb / aside

2009-08-16T16:28:00.009Z

Big train bearing down on me.

Is how it feels to have my first non tidy-paintings-on-walls type solo exhibition coming up in a week and a half.

It's all good though, as they say. The work nears completion and is, for me at least, going to work just fine as an installation.

Below is the promotional image and blurb for the show.

Icarus Crane is a character / project name invented days before the exhibition of his first piece, namely “The Forger Of The String Between The Starry Heavens Above And The Moral Law Within”; an interactive, projection based performance installation.

“Please to enjoy the exhibition as designed execution for the pleasure participation, welcome” continues the research undertaken some months before the first performance of “The Forger Of The String...” into the working of the human mind and how it's functions and malfunctions can be reflected in image, sound and text – with a focus on non linear, durational narrative elements.
This installation of sound, text and drawing concerns itself with the relationship between reality and fantasy in the individual mind, using a combination of language and image drawn from sources ranging from factual texts to automatic drawing and surrealism and touching on subjects from Northern European art history and the biological function of sleep to the worship of dead heroes and romantic obsession.

The spoken word piece to be performed on opening night does contain some prerecorded samples but will almost entirely be read aloud, sampled, looped and processed live, to be replaced with a looped recording for the rest of the exhibition.

An online presentation of interactive, digital drawings designed in anticipation of the exhibition can be found here http://pleasetoenjoytheexhibition.blogspot.com
For more information on this artist, please visit http://aroomforimprovement.com

In fact, I've only just sent this copy to be vetted by the exhibition space's staff, so I may need to come back and edit it. For the moment anyway, this is my story and I'm sticking too it.

Below is a slide show of images from the past few weeks which I've created in the open source paint.net program. Basically, a free (donations welcome) version of photoshop. These are a mix of digital paintings and photo manipulations. Nothing special by the standard of the people who specialise in this sort of medium but fun to do and it's through these kinds of experiments that I've put together the web based portion of the exhibition mentioned above.

Digital painting to me is fairly empty without the added touch of interactivity which, as one sees from the simple flash files displayed at the "Please to enjoy..." page, is a skill I have yet to master. The idea of seperate but connected work exsisting soley online and made entirely from digital media is something I will continue to develop though, as it is a facinating area to work in and is one which is so desperately under used by contemporary artists even now when the internet seems so integral to our daily lives.

I've also been tipping away at the soundy trickery I'm developing to try to complement the narrative elements of The Evolution of Lauren Begaun and will be doing a run through / recording of that next week with a view to a small salon type performance at the end of the month. I think.

The Song of a Sick Boy

2009-08-03T21:26:00.001Z

PostStockan

2009-07-28T08:19:00.004Z

Thanks are due to an awful lot of friendly folks who put on a great festival in the Wicklow hills this weekend. KnockanStockan is organised, built and taken care of by volunteers who love music and good times so fair play to them.

My personal experience at first was one of feeling out of place, unprepared, boring and old but once I stopped thinking I actually had any real responsibility to fulfill, I had a smashing time.

The arty tent only sort of happened on Saturday after taking ages to set up on Friday and eventually being taken over as a regular stage due to the cracking Melty Marquee getting blown away Saturday night. Fuck it. When I did get around to doing one of the pieces I'd prepared, there wasn't really anyone there and I'd already realised it wasn't the most fitting thing to present in that setting so yeah, fuck it. I did it how it ought to be done more or less and I know now what work is left to get it ready for the gallery space its being designed for.

Much more satisfying work wise was earlier on the Saturday when I thought it was a bit of a waste sitting in the lovely indian (that's from the country called india) marquee with all these flowing colours and patterns sweeping about in the wind, listening to an iPod on the PA and decided to grab my gear and do a few A Room For Improvement style electroacoustic sound sets. About the same time I decided to that, a deadly painter called Barry Quinn showed up and launched into a lovely live painting session and over the course of his painting and my sound set, enough people wandered in and out, a good few staying to chill out after hearty breakfasts and what not, that I felt like I'd made some contribution to the festivities. It'll DEFO be A Room For Improvement who applies to do any festivals from now on. Until the Icarus Crane is willing to muddy up his sports jacket anyway.

Later some different folks hanging around in the healing tent across the way mentioned that the music had changed favourably into what sounded like my set, so job done.

Also performing in the arty tent were Stephen James Smith, Colm Keegan and Karl Parkinson all doing spoken word. The first too guys I've seen before and they both do a great set and it was cool seeing Mr Parkinson for the first time. I hope to come across his set again. What sets him apart is a of natural dramatic flare which sort of sneaks into his reading without coming over as fruity or pretentious. Good stuff.

I just about managed to get around to see a few of the acts that were either known to me beforehand or recommended by trustworthy folks during the festival but not nearly enough of them. Deadly stuff I actually saw include but are not limited to The Northside Kontraband (or something very like that) - stompin' good fun! Toward slavic type party music, banjo, percussion, heaps of brass and a clarinet. Not a milliion miles from the Ompa music I love so dear - on Sunday evening right after Eric Noon and the Future Gypsies - those two bands in succession will melt yr legs off! Manu Negra eat yr heart out. Seriously good, seriously fun songwriting and bags of energy (backed up by real talent in the individual members). Indeed the Fish Stage was the new Main Stage.

Something I wasn't going to miss was just after that on Sunday night - Marcas Carcas was due to do a longer set than I'd ever seen him do (just seen him twice on his own unplugged) and I was dying to see what he'd do in this setting. Couldn't see really, he had the Tunnel of Fun WEDGED and nearly bouncing the tent spikes out of the ground. Missisipy Wine is still knocking around in my head during quiet moments. Great stuff.

Saturday is a really random blur altogether I have to admit but yeah, loads of talent knocking around. On Friday I actually took my video camera out for a little while until I started to unhinge from work mode and decided to actually enjoy myself a bit and I think I got the odd good tune on tape. I think the guy's name is James Guilmartin who was with his band (don't know what they're called I'm afraid) in the Melty Marquee on Friday eve and really impressed me. I've seen the guy play unplugged on his own too a few times and never totally got into it even though he demonstrates himself to be massively talented, the songs he's doing are really more suited to the format of the band I saw him in, guitar, bass and drums all being played very very well indeed. An eclectic sound for such a simple set up, enough bluesy guitar to even out metally build ups and some great songwriting.
I was in that tent a good bit on Friday (not just cos it was raining mind) and saw some really different stuff. Over all I'd say it was younger talent in that tent, so some really good acts that people will be delighted to hear more and more of in the coming years. Don't know who they are but I'll pick my way through the bands on the festival website to try to find out a little more about some of the bands.

That doesn't really cover anything at all in comparison to the amount of great acts that were about but I'm sitting quite uncomfortably and haven't quite recovered yet.
For this reason, I'm going to relax a bit more and continue the days work which has been small scale drawing in preparation for a refocusing on the exhition in August.

Peas and Love

Today's THIRD entry (I more or less took the day off you see)

2009-07-20T22:22:00.004Z

Here is the line up for the three days in the Art Tent organised by programmed by Mia Mallow for KnockanStockan festival this weekend (subject to change etc etc)

Friday:
All day: Brian Lynch, Ana Carey, Stephen Lawlor
2.00: Video art and shorts
4.00: Tickle
4.30: Aileen and Aoife (10 minutes)
Icarus Crane
5.00: Frank Wasser
5.30: Karl Parkinson
6.00: Stephen James Smith
6.30: Aileen and Brian Keary
7.00: Hugh Cooney's films.
8.00: Mikey and Matt's music videos, gig footage etc etc.
11.00: Deccys movie choice thing

Saturday:
All day 2-7: Brian Lynch, Ana Carey, Stephen Lawlor and Barry Quinn
2.00: Video art and shorts
4.00: Tickle
4.30: Icarus Crane
Aileen and Aoife (10 mins)
5.00: Frank Wasser
5.30: Colm Keegan
6.00: Stephen James Smith
6.30: Enda MacNally
7.00: Aileen and Brian Keary
7.30: Films from Ray Hyland, Hugh Cooney and David Loder
8.30: Mikey and Matts films.
11.30: Deccys movies

Sunday:
Brian, Ana, Lawlor and Barry all day
2.00: Video art, gig footage, bands music videos, festival footage etc
4.00: Frank Wasser
4.30: Icarus Crane
5.00: Colm Keegan
5.30: Stephen James Smith
6.00: Ophelia
6.30: Mikey and Matts films etc etc
11.00: Deccys

Check out the festival website and myspace for all other info.

I am preparing three different but similar sets for the three days with room for improvisation (and improvement of course) in each, so if yr at the festival, stop by EACH DAY and enjoy. Upon my return I'll hopefully have heaps of bootleg video footage to stick up on the old interweb, for now here is a video from Bray Festival's art arena yesterday of Riona Hartman, a deadly jazz singer with her two accompanists who's names I don't know (sorry).

I've got a few other clips from the show (the previous post feature's my own performance) but I just want to check with the artists before I put them up. Inspite of seriously long hold ups and technical problems and what not, the whole show was lots of fun and ranged from the anarchic cabaret stylings of Rose Lawless to the comedy of Coco Lebush (or something like that), from the one woman drama of Lauren Begaun to the improvised electroacoustics of Kim V Porcelli and the wonderful singing of songs of Eleventy Two. All to be highly recommended. I really enjoyed the show (once we got going).

Fail

2009-07-20T15:58:00.002Z

Sometimes it just doesn't click.

Immediatly Upcoming

2009-07-17T16:54:00.002Z

I'm delighted to be going to KnockanStockan to perform some Icarus Crane spoken word on the 24th, 25th and 26th of the month. I'll be on at around 1630 each of those days in the arts tent organised by Mia Mallow of Arty Party fame.

This coming Sunday, the 19th, I'll be doing something similar in the arts arena of Bray Summer Festival and maybe showing some videos. Not too sure.

I have nothing else to say right now.

Just a little procrastination is all

2009-07-16T14:25:00.003Z

also

2009-07-15T00:29:00.003Z

Live Set for Down Load

2009-07-13T17:30:00.003Z

stop time

2009-07-09T20:58:00.002Z

flasher

2009-07-07T23:25:00.004Z

someNoise

2009-07-07T05:17:00.002Z

Insomnia strikes
Tenament.mp3

Done with that there now

2009-07-02T18:13:00.002Z

After performing this piece a few times and reviewing and repairing it, the comments of my tutor Des Ward about how problematic audience participation might be, ring a little in my ears upon retiring this piece in order not to be distracted anymore from further Icarus Crane projector projects. Enjoy footage from various versions...

wordsMakeSounds

2009-07-01T13:30:00.003Z

A short sample of my developement of the sound portion of an upcoming installation.

guitarPlayer Rendered.mp3

Enjoy

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

2009-06-29T23:22:00.004Z

I've been lucky enough the last few weeks to have too much to do to work so much as I'd have liked on my drawings and texts for August's show in The Market Studios. A few weeks ago, I took part in The Last Arty Party with an A Room For Improvement sound set set to visuals. Aside from a few minor technical difficulties, it went well and was well recieved. I was happy with this piece (Senryu #4 - theMarriageOfTheSerf) and will have to come up with something extraordinary before I endevour to perform another of these sets. On the other hand, I've sent an A Room For Improvement video/sound piece for consideration for installation at the Hilltown New Music Festivalin July. This piece is composed entirely of clips and sound samples taken from the enchanting site of the festival itself. So here's hoping I get in there!

Arty Party was well attended and just as well - there was a lot of great work on show. The musicians from KnockanStockan were good fun, apart from the guy who stropped off. And Hugh Cooney's performance will not be forgotten by anyone in attendance. Funny motherfucker! Heaps of good stuff on the walls too. One paper cut out structural thing was particularly charming (got to get the name of the artist and then I got it - Wendy Stephens, who I'm informed can be found selling such wares in Cows Lane of a Sunday). Thank you to Mia Marshmallow for providing that name and oh yeah, for organising the entire thing. I reckon it was a hit with all in attendance and that was quite a few - nice one.

The same weekend, I performed as Icarus Crane in The Forger Of The String at the same venue (the Back Loft) for La Cat Salon. A fine evening's entertainment it was too.

I was supposed to perform the same piece this weekend at The Shed but owing to equipment failure it didn't happen. Not to worry - had an enjoyable evening all the same, chilling to some rockabilly.

For the last few weeks I've also been doing some live video mixing of old public domain exploitation, documentary and advertising to the funky turntable stylings of Mongoman Steve, Sundays in the Thomas House. This week we also watched the Goonies and I did a video remix. Which was fun. Next week it's The Big Lebowski at 6 oclock and White Russians on special!

Last Monday, I took a step in the direction of August's exhibition by performing a few short spoken word pieces at Stephen James Smith's reinvigourated Open Mic Night at the International Bar. One piece was the abreviated third part of The Forger and the other was a meadering text experiment of intensly mundane qualities. The absolutely impressive Dublin poet Colm Keegan wrote a great review of the night here http://theblogsthejob.blogspot.com/2009/06/stephen-james-smith-and-international.html . Have a look at this guys blog anyway - its quality. For those who don't click that link, I will repeat his mentioning of Marcas Carcas, who was I also saw at Arty Party. He's a sight and sound to see and hear... there's a video of that on YouTube actually and there it was - this video belongs to the afore mentioned Ms Mallow

Class, isn't he?

The above pictures are a little sample of the research I've been doing for my current project. Doesn't look like much and it isn't much but there's been a lot of reading and writing going on and much more drawing to come this week. I look forward to having the time now to get stuck into this work and withdraw further from the real world. I'll be recording my endevours more closely right here and I'll eventually get around to publishing some samples of the video work I've been doing too.

this week, i will mostly be doing...

2009-06-10T22:03:00.002Z

performance art.

I've just been in to the Back Loft to sort the set up for La Cat Salon.
Also Performing
Icarus Crane (video & performance artist - live)
Riona Hartman (musician)
Julien Longchamp and Kim Porcelli (projections and live cello)
Hillary Williams (performance artist)
Julyo and the Photosonic Orchestra (electronic music)

Promises to be something different.
People seemed nice and were certainly helpful - so I'm ready to prance about a bit for them - no charge.
Here is the preview of the piece I'll be doing

On Saturday at the same venue, I'll be doing a sound piece against a video projection at Arty Party

Other Artists include but are not limited to
Stephen James Smith (Spoken)
Kevin Nolan (Spoken)
A Room for Improvement (Live visual performance)
Hugh Cooney (Performance)
Conor Foy Andreas Scholtz
Turf Boon (Brooklyn based artist showing new work)
Ruth Power
Fiona Carey
Helena Doyle?
Loki Bee
Carolyn Walshe
Anna Adrians
Barry Quinn
Fiona Spiers
Wendy Stephens
Mia Marshmallow
Music from Knockanstockan Musicians:
Marcas Carcas
James Guilmartin
Steve from Bojangled
Peter Space Invasion
Bo Sean Ford Owen

So, heaps going on there!

Stephen James Smith is rather good. I've seen him a few times last year. Don't always know what he's saying but he's loud and moves a lot. Holds my attention.
I look forward to seeing new work by Turf Boon too. I've just seen the one video that I'm aware of, but it was lovely so it was! Don't know much about the other artists although I believe I've seen Loki Bee's stickers gracing toilet cisterns and pub walls. Quite striking. Of course thanks and praise are due to Miss Mallow for all her work putting these parties of art together and providing almost edible lighting to the masses.
Here's a portion of what I'll be doing on the night.

The last few days I've spent working on a set of live visuals to compliment the turn table stylings of one Mongoman Steve - also known as Steve - which I'll be performing and developing over next few Sundays at Thomas House between eight and twelve.

Kidstuff

2009-06-05T16:20:00.003Z

Been doing some drawing with crayons and markers with a view to creating an installation of sound and drawing, concerned with the nature and function of sleep. Started to work on models for claymation - just for fun. Just today I've gotten back to preparing for my performance at Arty Party after a little break. Just rehearsing it really. It's done. Also mentally preparing for La Cat Salon in a week. No real preparing I can do until the day before but to directly translate from the Swedish "jag peppar" - I'm pepping. Yes I am.

I'm interested to get a reaction to "The Forger of The String..." from a different audience. Also, the real reason I'm bothering to perform the same piece for a second time, I'll be glad to get some documentation of the participatory elements.

The Arty Party should be an interesting evening and I'm looking forward to performing "The Marriage of the Serf...". It's new, it's dark and it rattles the inside of yr eardrums until they're tickling yr eyeballs. Yes it does.

Most of May I spent working on "The Marriage of the Serf..." and sleeping because both of those things I could do for free. Been to some interesting exhibitions too but if I start writing about them, I'll bore myself.

Here's to reignition.

Mixed Up

2009-05-24T20:31:00.004Z

I've done a few remixes based on the A Room For Improvement live sets so that they are more suitable for airplay and for mp3 player play for anyone who'ld like to download them.

Enjoy

The Chased Train

Divine Harm

And Then Leaving (Enkelt Mix)

clattering and banging

2009-05-19T18:38:00.001Z

workInProgress

2009-05-09T22:26:00.001Z

done

2009-05-09T17:18:00.004Z

So here is the video of the performance more or less as it happened on the night of the end of year exhibition. Thanks is due to those who participated in the full performance, which ran about twice as long as this clip.

The exhibition was impressive by anyone's standards with much and varied quality work and all those in attendance eagerly await the launch of a commercial line of paper bags that follow you home. You can read a study by some Buisness and Arts Management types about the process of development of some of the other works in the show right here
http://www.astepineverydirection2009.blogspot.com/
and it's a good read too!

The Forger of The String Between The Starry Heavens Above And The Moral Law Within

This three part video based performance / participation piece is concerned with the ideas of autocommunication, self deception, fantasy and the corruption of memory.

Part One : The Forger of The String is a dramatic allegory illustrating the nature of self deception.
Part Two: The Dreamer of Things is a participatory installation concerned with institutionalisation of myth and fantasy and the relationship of symbol and reality.
Part Three : The Caretaker of These is a storytelling performance grounding the ideas addressed in the previous two parts in the mundane and the everyday.

here lies

2009-04-20T18:38:00.003Z

This is an critical review I wrote for college autumn 08. I'm posting it merely as a reference for any other poor student who might be doing something on some of this material and is sitting googling at the last minute for references. Of course this would mean that the intended audience will not have read this since they will have pushed Ctrl + f already

Here Lies in film...

Venue: Temple Bar Gallery

Producer : Al Curran

Cinematographer : Christopher Doyle

Performance and initial concept: Olwen Fouere

Music: Roger Doyle and General Practice

Editor: Simon Hudson

Walking in to the Temple Bar Gallery during this exhibition one is first confronted with two standard flat screen TVs on which are shown loops of two old ocean liners going about their journeys (actually the same set of images set up as mirror images of one another). Inside the main space is projected a series of dark, disjointed images of a cold, dirty interior full of hard metal edges, infinitely vacuous, dark spaces and sudden bursts of intense white light. The atmosphere's tension is heightened by a darkly ambient sound track sprinkled with harsher, louder accidentals and background noises.

One is made aware, at first by glimpses of a silhouette and an incoherent whispering sound, that someone is present. As the piece progresses the viewer is confronted with fragments of a narrative voice-over at the same time as witnessing the throws of a human body in extreme distress. The voice protests over it's treatment at the hands of the gardai and explains lucidly it's dissatisfaction at having it's request to meet with Eamon De Valera denied, among other things.

The appearance of the figure becomes more frequent and more distressing, the voice's protests less distinguishable and the cutting of the camera shots more violent as the piece goes on. The music and background noise swell only minimally before the entire piece fades to black. This piece, Here Lies in film... is a filming by Christopher Doyle of an original performance installation by the Operating Theater group with Olwen Fouere playing the part of Antonin Artaud, a French actor and writer of the 1920s and 30s and noted surrealist figure of the time. The goings on in the film relate to an episode in Artaud's life when, in August 1937, he traveled to Ireland after a premonition which had led him to believe that the end of the world was imminent and that he must travel to Inis Mor¹. Accounts seem to vary about exactly what he wanted to do there but St Patrick and JM Synge feature prominently. After traveling the country for some weeks, leaving a trail of unpaid debts, Artaud was eventually arrested in Dublin after causing a disturbance on the grounds of the Jesuit Monastary in Milltown. After a short incarceration in Mountjoy Jail, he was deported as a “destitute and undesirable alien”.² On his return to France, he was held for nine years in various mental asylums, undiagnosed and generally considered incurably insane, although his friends in Paris considered his situation an unfortunate one; his eccentricities having been more acceptable in that city at that time.³

“...the camera is a gentle voyeur, lingering in corridors while people speak outside the frame, reflecting characters in mirrors, swimming in from behind as if eavesdropping, offering all the while iconic portraits of sorrow and solitude.”⁴

This is what the Observer's Gaby Wood said of another of Christopher Doyle's works and it becomes useful in contextualizing this work. Here Lies in film... uses similar tactics intensified to the point where one feels not only as if they are within the same confines as Artaud but are drawn in the end into his madness and frustration. In contrast to In The Mood For Love (film referred to here) Here Lies in film... puts the viewer in an immediately uncomfortable position – no softness afforded.

As a piece included in the Dublin Theater Festival, Here Lies in film... is interesting because of the decision to film the original performance piece in a markedly cinematic and very stylized manner and then exhibit it a contemporary art space. This is made all the more remarkable since it also the first filmed piece released under the prolific and long running Operating Theater group.⁵

At this point, it is worth referring back to the subject of the piece, Antonin Artaud, since he is generally accepted as the only one of the French surrealists to have developed a theory of cinema.One must assume that, as a truly groundbreaking cinematographer, known for his departure from predominant film making practice, Christopher Doyle must have made himself aware of Artaud's theory in preparation for the making of this film. In any case, comparing this piece with the surviving ideas of it's subject proves an interesting critical method.

Stephen Barber summarizes Artaud's theory thus:

“It was a cinema backed by a theory intended both to exact a radical obliteration of all cinematic history up until that point and to create a reinvention of spectatorship by negating the basis of the film in the rapport between illusory and pacifying patterns of light and their incorporated, enmeshed spectator.”⁶

Here Lies in film... deviates from this idea in a number of ways. Artaud, developing his theory at a pivotal point in cinematic history - the end of the silent movie era with the advent of sound in film - initially opposed the use of sound in the scenarios he was writing since he thought sound would dominate and detract from the imagery, which was his main focus. Here Lies in film... uses a powerful but subtle soundtrack which complements without dominating the imagery, if one takes the music as separate from the narrative elements. The narrative elements on the other hand dominate to a degree by forming connections between the images and separate events, drawing one's attention ultimately away from the imagery and communicating ideas which are not addressed visually.

Olwen Fouere's powerful performance and Christopher Doyle's handling of this raw material is however certainly in keeping with Artaud's preoccupation with the use of the human body as a central material and subject in film. There are images in this film which definitely remind one of “The Sea Shell and the Clergyman”, the first of the three great surrealist films (the other two being Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'Or) which is difficult to interperate since Artauds attitude toward the film is hard to pin down. The film is the only one of Artaud's many written scenarios ever to be realised on celluloid but was filmed without his involvement and vehemently criticized by him upon completion. Some years later Artaud's view of the film seems to lighten in view of it's preceeding Buñuel's more well known films.⁷

One of the main problems Artaud had with the film was the disparity between his theoretical concern of trying to convey the inner workings and structure of dreams and what he saw as director Germain Dulacs's simple representation of the dream's narrative content. In Here Lies in film..., the images themselves convey a real sense of understanding how to represent the kind of metaphysical breakdown down that can seem to afflict one suffering from mental illness with intuitive focus on the body and the physical space it inhabits edited in such a way as to convey psychological collapse which is then elaborated upon by the voice over narrative.

In my opinion, and I feel that Artaud would have agreed at some point in his working life, this film would be more successful as a visual piece if the voice over narrative was not included since, by it's inclusion, it grounds the visual in specifics of the background story and narrows one's understanding of the of the piece. The visual elements and the musical portion of the sound track are in harmony due to the non-narrative nature of both, something which can also be seen in Christopher Doyle's feature films as dreamlike interludes which do not further the story but offer one time to reflect on and understand the complexities of the events that make up the films' narrative premise.

According to Barber, Artaud's ideal for the cinema would be for it to be as ephemeral as a stage production which only exists in the memories and reactions of the audience who sees the performance. This would of course mean that films would ideally only be shown once to a limited number of people and then destroyed. An interesting contrast exists between this idea and the fact, as mentioned above, that this is the first attempt by the performance art group behind this production to present one of their many ephemeral works in the more permanent media of film.

What this says about the creator's interest in the specifics of Artaud's theory of cinema is – not much. Fouere's concern seems to be with a personal identification with the character of

Artaud himself and with the difficulties associated with this period of his life. Acting out behavior which is used here by the cinematographer and editor in an effort to break down and reveal the inner workings of the state of mind which could cause such behavior.

The performance's inherent power can be understood in the context of Fouere's long experience, not only as an actor but also in contemporary dance. If instead of seeing this as a dramatic performance, one sees it as a contemporary dance piece, leaving the more traditional narrative devises aside for a minute, it can be appreciated as an incredibly mature example of this craft, with a minimum of stylization and much genuine expression.

Even in the context of Christopher Doyle's often experimental output, this film is uncompromising in it's transcendental nature and we can hope that it will be seen by future film historians as one step in a total departure from the dominant cinematic trends by an increasingly influential artist at his height. It is also possible that this kind of work will remain in the background of Doyle's larger projects.

It might be worth finishing off by admitting that to assume Doyle and the rest of the production team's consideration of the theory of Antonin Artaud may be entirely misguided since Doyle himself is known as the man who photographed a shot for shot remake of Psycho without ever seeing the original.

References

¹Barber, Stephen; The Screaming Body. Creation Books, 1999, p35

²Exhibition Press Release

³Barber, op-cit, p37

⁴Wood, Gaby, The Observer, Sunday July 17^th 2005 ( HYPERLINK "http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/Jul/17/features.review"http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/Jul/17/features.review)

⁵Exhibition Press Release

⁶Barber, op-cit, p13

⁷ Barber, ibid, p7

Photos : http://www.olwenfouere.com

Preview of Final Piece

2009-04-10T03:09:00.000Z

Term Two Week Ten

2009-03-09T17:34:00.000Z

Från Term Two Week Ten

Term Two Week Nine

2009-03-04T09:26:00.005Z

Från Term Two Week Nine

Pause for research

2009-02-28T20:36:00.003Z

TermTwoWeekEight

2009-02-25T02:19:00.002Z

Term Two Week Seven

2009-02-22T05:32:00.001Z

Från Term Two Week Seven

Term Two Week Six Part Two (pointAndClick)

2009-02-13T19:11:00.006Z

Term Two Week Six

2009-02-08T22:43:00.002Z

Term Two Week Five

2009-02-02T15:24:00.005Z

Term Two Week Five

Term Two Week Four (part 2)

2009-02-01T22:04:00.001Z

Week Four - Installing and Recording

2009-01-26T22:11:00.005Z

Week Three - MOLOCH

2009-01-22T19:46:00.003Z

Some Experiments Week Two

2009-01-16T14:41:00.004Z

Term Two Week Two

Musings on beginning a new project

2009-01-12T19:49:00.001Z

How can I make representations of things I don't feel?

They say smiling will eventually make you happy and frowning will get you down.

Most artists learn methods, skills, strategies and such to represent how they feel or what they think -

Actors are admired who can represent; appear even to feel; emotions they have no reason to be going through.

At the same time, noone seems to think it unworthy when Picasso's blue period is unpunctuated by rose or amber paintings.

We read Van Gogh's paintings as representing the powerful emotions of the man at the time of painting.

Wouldn't this make them unavoidably type cast actors?

Is it lower or higher then to be able or to even attempt to reach emotions in art which are alien to the artist at the time of creation?

Are method actors the greatest liars?

An author can surely dig through not only his own experience but also that of those he has known to create convincing fiction with realistic characters – going backward in time and even trying to move laterally into other people to convincingly represent a full range of emotions and ideas.

Not something painters are known for or expected to master these days.

Is it simply impossible for the gesture to lie or are painters in our time simply not trying hard enough?

Term Two Week One

Term One Video Project

2008-12-31T22:33:00.000Z

Animated story made from Google SketchUp models mixed with assorted video clips about a computer's fantasy art collection.

An experiment in using observations of natural forces to create a sort of visual music

An experiment in using observations of natural forces to create a sort of visual music

Term One Video Project SketchUp models

Video Project Term One

Since it's Xmas and all that

2008-12-13T03:29:00.000Z

Something from my practice outside IADT - Recorded during a snow storm during the spring and realised as a sound/video piece in the last few weeks. The first in a set of three videos intended as continuous live set.