more generative 'art' and mistaken identities

...but not generic!
Follow this link for similar unfolding art coolness.
I was directed to the above website by boingboing.com - 'a directory of wonderful things' for this little gem.
The idea of generative pastiches of famous artists' oeuvres is quite a good one, even if the execution is a little bit naf. I suppose that's the point to a lot of art these days: the concept. It's nice when a concept and aesthetics coincide in that happy place called quality.
I'm with Deleuze and Guattari when they say that the point of art is to evoke feelings ('affects' - although affects are more than just feelings) in people that then foster changed and changing perceptions/understandings. And so on...
Geez, you can tell I have very little to say right now.
I'm listening to what may be Richard D James' (aka Aphex Twin and AFX) latest offering.
There's some mystery surrounding it, however. The Rephlex published ep I bought is by The Tuss and it's called Rushup Edge (Rephlex is a label that was part-established by Richard James back in 1991, btw).
The scant ep info also states that it was produced by Karen Tregaskin, which is weird because Brian Tregaskin is credited as being The Tuss and has a myspace page of his own. All of the playable tracks on The Tuss' and Brian Tregaskin's myspace pages only sound like AFX's latest Analord releases except worse and not enough to sound like they really are written by Richard James himself. Which is also strange because Rushup Edge sounds a lot like more those aforementioned recent AFX releases - only better.
But it gets weirder because a recent article from The Guardian that speculates on the identity of Brian/Karen Tregaskin, states that one of the synths used in the ep is a Yamaha GX-1, which is a massive, extremely expensive, old and rare synth of which only seven were made back in 1973. And Richard James owns one. Although on his myspace questions and answers page, Brian Tregaskin refutes that he uses a GX-1.
He also claims that the track titles of the 'leaked' Rushup Edge ep that were downloadable from SLSK before the ep's official release (and how does that happen? I'm suspicious...) are false. Certainly, my copy of the ep doesn't contain any track titles. Further, the Rephlex homepage states that the release is an album and not an ep. But my copy only contains six tracks and runs a total of 32mins48secs. What's going on?
By the sound of the music, its pretty obvious that Rushup Edge is a Richard James written album, so all of this must be some kind of marketing ploy or game that Richard James is playing with his adoring.
If it turns out that The Tuss really isn't Aphex Twin, I'd have said that Richard James has a usurper on his hands if it weren't for the fact that, despite the blandness of the Analord releases, he's been a brilliant composer and producer for the last twenty plus years. But that's testament to the quality of The Tuss. It's pretty good! I like tunes in music. Tunes are good. Not enough tunes these days...
now playing: the tuss - shiz ko e

theo jansen

Theo Jansen is a Dutch artist and engineer who makes beach animals like the one above that are powered by the wind. According to his website, he once built a flying saucer that caused something of a commotion as it flew above Delft (Vermeer's home town).
He wants to let loose herds of these creatures onto the beaches of Holland.
A little bit freaky, but well swell.
Thanks to Tom for this.
Now Playing: Takemitsu - Spirit Garden

arch pretentiousness

Well! An expat Tassie friend of mine invited me to a free Karlheinz Stockhausen concert, established through SIAL Sound Studios, that she'd promoted. Having heard plenty about but never any of (at least, not wittingly) Stockhausen's work, I decided I should go. Fortunately, a friend of mine was also in attendance, otherwise I would have had no one to vent to.
So I knew I was up for a thoroughly pretentious time from the get go when the first piece, Der Kleine Harlekin (Little Harlequin), was performed. This was a solo piece for clarinet and involved a young woman, dressed in pseudo harlequin attire, playing a pleasant enough tune on her clarinet, absurdly strutting around the performance space and teasingly playing with the audience. I enjoyed the piece. It was fun and funny (for example, the spot light occasionally 'lost' the harlequin and randomly roamed around the venue looking for her while she played and strutted on in the dark). And the music was lovely. Plus, the performative element to it really enhanced the experience, showing, as it did, some extra ability on the performer, Karen Heath's, behalf.
All the other pieces were boring and annoying, with the exception of Karen Heath's later performance. I found the music to be mostly unengaging and the performances a tedious conceit that did nothing to enhance the music. The performers were all very good at their instruments. In particular, the trumpeter had nice shoes.
But the point isn't necessarily how brilliant the pieces are but the extent to which the ideas push the limits of art and thought and performance and culture, explode our received notions of how art is and should be and leave us at the end of the performance thinking and feeling differently about the whole shit.
Why should I expect any less? After all, this is from a composer who has penned a performance for string quartet with helicopters!

visual music

Ah, he's done it again. Brian Eno, the ambient music pioneer, is also a visual artist, if you didn't know. His latest project, entitled 77 Million Paintings, is a series of paintings he likes to think of as visual music.
This could be considered an example of synaesthetic art, in my humble. That is, art blurring its modes (in this case audio and visual) in much the same way that what are ordinarily considered discreet human perceptions are blurred, as when a person involuntarily attributes a colour to a word or a noise connotes movement for them.
So, Eno has furthered his 'generative' art model, whereby he creates a piece, or in this case a whole bunch of pieces, and feeds them into a randomising system that creates something wholly new out of the given elements. Meaning that the resulting work(s) of art are out of his control once set in motion. So in a sense, he is more the author of the system than the resultant work(s). By his own admission, Eno has always been as much interested in effecting structures and strategies and processes as defining the elements within each of his art works.
The seventy-seven-million paintings are a series of paintings and pictures that he's produced over the years, randomly superimposed over each other on a television screen or a monitor, set to some of his own randomly played music. The number of potential new works created out of these pre-existing ones equals seventy-seven-million, hence the title. So the tv screen becomes a canvas that can accommodate a near infinite (as far as human viewing experience and memory will permit) number of works.
I think he calls this visual music because there is a performative aspect to the resulting works of art, much like, for example, his pieces Ambient #1 - Music for Airports, Discreet Music or Neroli (all of which he described as holographic because, as a hologram shows all of its aspects to the viewer simultaneously, so too does a holographic piece of music disclose its entirety to the listener in a single instance). His Thursday Afternoon (also holographic), accompanied an exhibition of a video paintings Eno made in the 80's. A series of very slow motion films displayed on large television screens. 77-Million Paintings seems to be a contemporary extrapolation of that idea available for your loungeroom. Eno's released it as disc that allows you to turn your loungeroom into an art installation so you can screen his generative visual music/ video paintings on your giant plasma screen - assuming you have one (which I don't).
Evolving art in the comfort of your loungeroom. Nice.
Now Playing: Brian Eno - Ikebukuro