bag in a tree

new direction 5 | sep 2011

2011-09-08T08:14:00.001-06:00

new direction 4 | sep 2011

2011-09-06T09:55:00.001-06:00

new direction 3 | 2011

2011-09-05T11:03:00.000-06:00

new direction 1 | sep 2011

2011-09-01T11:22:00.000-06:00

built from Decim8

jackalope circa 2009

2011-07-22T11:37:00.000-06:00

backyard | june 2011

2011-06-03T11:22:00.001-06:00

collegiate peaks | colorado | may 2011

2011-05-27T11:10:00.003-06:00

rio grande gorge | taos | may 2011

2011-05-27T11:09:00.002-06:00

ghost ranch | may 2011

2011-05-27T08:08:00.001-06:00

nyc 2 | 2010

2010-04-18T16:48:00.008-06:00

nyc | jan.feb | 2010

2010-02-06T09:23:00.008-07:00

abstract red/blue anaglyph | 2009

2009-10-09T21:19:00.018-06:00

try viewing with 3D red/blue glasses for added dimension (pun intended)

denver art museum | V | aug09

2009-08-19T07:51:00.010-06:00

denver art museum | IV | aug09

2009-08-18T20:59:00.013-06:00

definitions worth remembering | 2009

2009-08-18T17:50:00.012-06:00

denver art museum | III | aug09

2009-08-16T22:27:00.009-06:00

denver art museum | II | aug09

2009-08-15T15:49:00.012-06:00

denver art museum | I | aug09

2009-08-15T11:05:00.012-06:00

Beginning of second installment of DAM series. Previous photos mashed were from iPhone. This time the photos were with D80. All available light, slow shutter speed, big aperture and 400ASO. While a large portion of the Hamilton building was closed, including stairwells — which unfortunately provide some dramatic povs — still filled up the card. Post production in PS with some 3rd-party filters used.

outdoor scans | 2009

2009-06-28T23:07:00.010-06:00

denver art museum VI

2009-04-08T14:59:00.006-06:00

denver art museum V

2009-04-07T11:32:00.007-06:00

denver art museum III

2009-03-30T11:38:00.006-06:00

denver art museum II

2009-03-29T10:35:00.009-06:00

denver art museum I

2009-03-28T12:21:00.008-06:00

twenty-ninth street vii | 2009

2009-03-24T12:58:00.006-06:00

twenty-ninth street vi | 2009

2009-03-24T12:56:00.005-06:00

twenty-ninth street v | 2009

2009-03-21T08:07:00.004-06:00

twenty-ninth street iv | 2009

2009-03-20T08:46:00.006-06:00

twenty-ninth street ii | 2009

2009-03-19T08:06:00.004-06:00

twenty-ninth street i | 2009

2009-03-18T16:20:00.005-06:00

outdoor flatbed scans

2009-03-16T13:43:00.010-06:00

With a bunch of free time on my hands I've taken the iBook and scanner back outside for a second attempt at scanning the garden. Images were scanned at 500dpi...would have upped the res except the scan would have taken a half-an-hour or more.

bag in a tree

2009-03-11T20:18:00.006-06:00

from dover digital clip art

furnace redux part II

2009-03-10T10:57:00.002-06:00

furnace redux

2009-03-09T17:39:00.006-06:00

no title

2009-02-27T19:42:00.008-07:00

from break room images

second furnace

2009-02-23T22:25:00.007-07:00

first furnace

2009-02-22T13:45:00.005-07:00

MCA denver | feb 2009

2009-02-08T13:52:00.009-07:00

MCA 1

MCA 2

MCA 3

bag in a tree | christoph niemann | nyt | 2009

2009-02-03T10:42:00.006-07:00

Just couldn’t resist adding this image...see more here (x).

relic | collage | 1980s

2009-01-26T19:33:00.004-07:00

relic | collage | 1980s

2009-01-25T10:19:00.004-07:00

sx-70 self-portrait | 1983

2009-01-24T10:42:00.017-07:00

Back in the ’70s Polaroid gave SX-70s to artists to see what they could do with the camera and the process. Lucas Samaras, mentioned in a previous post, mucked with the emulsion as the print was developing — here is one example. I had an SX-70, was in art school and learned about Samaras’ work and tried it myself. I was interested in African masks at the time as well as Robert Ferris Thompsons’ book Flash of the Spirit, which led me to the above.

relic | collage | 1980s

2009-01-24T10:39:00.004-07:00

second bowl of bosch suppe | 2008

2008-12-07T09:50:00.007-07:00

so i was thinking . . .

2008-12-04T21:22:00.016-07:00

What if during a show opening at a gallery or a museum everyone who entered the show was given a wireless microphone. All the microphones would be fed into a computer that would recognize the words and then display the words like this or this or some other form of data visualization, on a giant monitor in another room. According to a word's frequency it could grow in size, change hue or rise to the top. Or it could take another form altogether, like a bubble or a 3d object that would be extruded. Or it could grow something like this. A visual verbal petri dish of instant crticism.

a brighter graffiti | 2008

2008-12-03T21:47:00.005-07:00

graffiti series | part II | june 2008

2008-11-26T22:45:00.004-07:00

Graffiti 4

Graffiti 5

Graffiti 6

relic | collage | 1980s

2008-11-25T21:14:00.005-07:00

Republic of Boulder currency | reverse | 2005

2008-11-24T20:16:00.006-07:00

a dozen on denver | part V | 2008

2008-11-23T09:56:00.021-07:00

1980s / Beginnings
Diane Mott Davidson / © Rocky Mountain News

2000s / The color of impression
Laura Pritchett / © Rocky Mountain News

The future / Heirlooms
Robert Pogue Ziegler / © Rocky Mountain News

Republic of Boulder currency | obverse | 2005

2008-11-22T20:39:00.006-07:00

a dozen on denver | part IV | 2008

2008-11-22T09:59:00.026-07:00

1950s / Fence busters

Manuel Ramos / © Rocky Mountain News

1960s / The welcome

Arnold Grossman / © Rocky Mountain News

1970s / Something in common

Robert Greer / © Rocky Mountain News

relic | collage | 1980s

2008-11-20T22:56:00.003-07:00

relic | gunbarrel | 2005

2008-11-19T23:08:00.004-07:00

a dozen on denver | part III | 2008

2008-11-19T22:22:00.021-07:00

1910s / Armistice Day
Nick Arvin / © Rocky Mountain News

1920s / New hat
Connie Willis / © Rocky Mountain News

1940s / Lennie’s Tavern
Sandra Dallas / © Rocky Mountain News

a dozen on denver | summer + fall 2008

2008-11-18T23:39:00.032-07:00

1860s / Yellow Roses
Margaret Coel / © Rocky Mountain News

1880s / It’s November 1880, and the Angel of Death is having a bad day

filed under the category of conceptual work that i’ve been thinking about for a long time, but have recently rethought

2008-11-17T21:24:00.038-07:00

saw this the other day on ffffound

A number of years ago I thought about taking the college hoops scores — published in agate in the sports section — and turning the page sideways to superimpose a music staff over the scores. Where the scores meet the staff a note would be placed. The process would encompass the whole season, with each day equaling one measure and it would be purely percussive.

Last May I read an article in the New Yorker entitled Letter from Alaska: Song of the Earth about American composer John Luther Adams and a piece of work he created based on real time “information from seismological, meteorological, and geomagnetic stations in various parts of Alaska is fed into a computer and transformed into an intricate, vibrantly colored field of electronic sound.”

This sounded really great, since I’ve always been partial to new approaches to music. For myself, like Mr. Adams (and this is where the similarity ends), it started with Zappa (but for me it was “Absolutely Free”), then it was Satie and Milhaud, then Partch (wish his “Castor and Pollux” was on iTunes), Cage, ECM artists like Marion Brown and Azimuth, Sun Ra, Anthony Braxton, Ornette Coleman, Carl Stallings, Steve Reich and the list goes on.

Their exploration of music is why I now gravitate toward listening to world music ... so many approaches and varieties of sound that are way more interesting to me than most popular music except Tom Waits and Beck.

And just the other day I found sniff_jazzbox, a free iPhone app that converts wlan-waves into sound waves, so with wi-fi enabled, you can ride the bus or walk through your neighbor and let the app find all the hotspots and convert them to music. Within the app there is the ability to change instruments and the speed at which each instrument is played. There are also themes that have preset instrument groupings. You can find out more about it here. It is a great idea and provides another interesting approach to music.

Anyway, back to the New Yorker article. When Mr. Adams spoke of flying out of Alaska and his love of the geography, the place, I started thinking about converting topography into sound. While I’ve produced innumerable Tour de France, Giro and Vuelta stage profiles in the past, the thought had never occurred of taking a profile of the land and superimposing it onto a music staff until reading the article.

Here are the basic thoughts ... if anyone out there knows of something like this already in existence, please let me know.

The profiles I’ve done are crude, elevation increments of 500 feet. Better geographic data and plotting could help determine where the notes are placed based on the interaction of the profile and the staff. In other words, a note could be placed at every five or ten feet of vertical elevation change, or a note could be placed where the intersection occurs every five or ten feet horizontally.

Measures could be based on geography as well, through x number of miles from the locus — either equidistant or logarithmically. Movements could be going to or from the center. Additional cardinal points could also come into play.

landscapes | part III | june 2008

2008-11-16T11:06:00.007-07:00

above treeline (or edema onset)

copse

poppy veil

suppe suite | april 2008

2008-11-15T18:18:00.006-07:00

brancusi suppe

van eyck suppe

bosch suppe

landscape series | part II | june 2008

2008-11-14T21:37:00.004-07:00

basalt

dogwoods

bear in wildflowers near two mesas under a peeling sky

graffiti series | part I | june 2008

2008-11-14T08:54:00.006-07:00

graffiti 1

graffiti 2

graffiti 3

landscape series | part I | june 2008

2008-11-14T08:44:00.007-07:00

roaring fork

sunset

prairie storm

end of the lites series and beginning of landscapes | 2008

2008-11-13T08:35:00.011-07:00

calf season

fireflies

sunrise

filed under the category of conceptual work that i’ve been thinking about for a long time | part II

2008-11-12T14:24:00.033-07:00

Filed in a subfolder titled “Absurdist Notions of Grandiose Proportions”

site from an altitude of 75 miles

I have always been fond of absurdist art, along the lines of Claes Oldenburg’s proposed monument for the intersection of Canal St. and Broadway, a giant block of concrete inscribed with the names of war heroes, or his design for a tunnel entrance in the form of a nose. I also seem to remember a conceptual piece for a war memorial by someone I can’t think of at the moment, that was a large, shallow, concave surface with a very deep hole in the center.

claes oldenburg, 1965

I’ve had the idea of an earthwork that is a bar code since the early 90s, and I'm sure others have had the same thought, but after some Google image searches I haven’t been able to see any others. If anyone knows of another, please let me know. Here is the basic idea...

site from an altitude of 10 miles, choice of barcode is from cigarette package

area is north of I-80 (you can see it as the angled line at the bottom left of the image)
and west of the Great Salt Lake.

area selected is a mile-and-a-half by a mile

each bar would be dug from the earth, and be approx. six feet deep.

this place is flat — according geospatial data in Google Earth,
the elevation changes only two feet at the most

the shadows cast from the furrows, according to data in SketchUp
for my current latlong, would create the full barcode
prior to 8 a.m. and after 3:30 p.m. for this date, November 12.

Earthworks by others currently in progress

black mesa / az

near gillette / wy

jonah field / wy

navajo reservoir / nm

round mountain / nv