Morph and hazard
Oct. 15th, 2004 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusOn Wednesday night I made the final montage of my 'Otto Spooky' album, splicing John Talaga's morphs to the songs they link. I'm gobsmacked by how much better the record now is.
It goes and it flows. It starts and doesn't stop until it stops. It really is 'spooky' now, because the morphs work as a kind of alienation device, smoothing the transitions, appetizing the listener for the next song, but also losing him in a murky broth of sound, a primeval pea soup song fog from which who knows what song-monster will rise? Otto is now 'an experience' rather than a mere collection of songs. It's immersive, conceptual, symphonic. A virtual place you can really get lost in.
As usual with John, there's a lot of subtle detailing to listen to in the morphs. The grain of the clicks at the end of 'Corkscrew King', the Antarctic gale that rages through the tail of 'Sempreverde', the splashy syn-snare that decorates the weird garbled vocal mantra at the end of 'Belvedere', the lovely Eno-esque analogue flute sounds that follow 'Mr Ulysses'. John's parts appeal to a different hemisphere of the brain than mine do. His are right brain, mine are left brain, so we have a whole-brain experience in the final product. It's like falling asleep and dreaming, then waking up and going to work, then coming back home and dreaming again.
I've always loved art that mixes modes of representation in one space, even something as simple as a film that switches between black and white and colour. At some point, every honest artist needs to foreground the medium, to remind the audience that it's not transparent. Jolts and juxtapositions and narrative hazards are a way to do this. An honest artist is one who doesn't ever let you forget that art is some kind of weird lie.
Something else great about this record is that John and I have basically hit on one of the formulas that makes pop from the 60s so good, which is the collision of a coherent tradition of vaudeville songs with an experimental mindset involving psychedelics and multimedia and art. I'm the vaudeville, John's the LSD. It's a satisfying combination -- coherence and craziness in quick succession.
Talking of things that alternate in quick succession, I've mentioned my love of hazard tape before. How do I love hazard tape? Let me count the ways:
* Hazard tape is a temporary way to redefine space. It betokens impermanence -- visually, anyway -- better than Buddhism and changeability better than Communism.
* Hazard tape appears, as if by a miracle, when something slightly unusual, interesting and dangerous happens in the city, breaking our habit routines. With hazard tape, you can never take anything for granted. People who see nothing on their way to work must open their eyes for hazard tape.
* Hazard tape has an almost Italian brio in its design. Its red and white diagonal stripes are forward-looking, brash, and cool. The repeating pattern is, of course, static, but its regular rhythm and rakish angle make it look very dynamic.
* Hazard tape shows the arbitrary nature of authority. Anyone who knows of a risk -- or just wants to jazz a place up with a whiff of danger -- can buy a roll and demarcate a space with it, feeling instantly the amateur, horizontal authority of the man who shouts 'Fire!'
* Hazard tape can also be used to make a 'citizen's arrest'.
* There can be no avant garde without hazard tape.
* Do not unroll hazard tape in a crowded theatre!
Except, that is, if you're the director and you have your actors unroll it on the stage during a scene. Which happens to be the case in Scene 3 of 'Attempts On Her Life' by Martin Crimp, the theatre production I'm working on at the moment. I have a small speaking part in the scene, which is set in an art gallery showing an installation based on a female artist's suicide attempts. There's me playing the voice of an art critic describing the work and how I wish she'd succeeded in killing herself the first time. Then suddenly the stage is full of actors stretching tape across the space, slicing it up and redefining it. The scene is distressingly realistic for me, because I really did have an artist friend who made her suicide a kind of installation piece. But the hazard tape is a consolation.
It goes and it flows. It starts and doesn't stop until it stops. It really is 'spooky' now, because the morphs work as a kind of alienation device, smoothing the transitions, appetizing the listener for the next song, but also losing him in a murky broth of sound, a primeval pea soup song fog from which who knows what song-monster will rise? Otto is now 'an experience' rather than a mere collection of songs. It's immersive, conceptual, symphonic. A virtual place you can really get lost in.
As usual with John, there's a lot of subtle detailing to listen to in the morphs. The grain of the clicks at the end of 'Corkscrew King', the Antarctic gale that rages through the tail of 'Sempreverde', the splashy syn-snare that decorates the weird garbled vocal mantra at the end of 'Belvedere', the lovely Eno-esque analogue flute sounds that follow 'Mr Ulysses'. John's parts appeal to a different hemisphere of the brain than mine do. His are right brain, mine are left brain, so we have a whole-brain experience in the final product. It's like falling asleep and dreaming, then waking up and going to work, then coming back home and dreaming again.
I've always loved art that mixes modes of representation in one space, even something as simple as a film that switches between black and white and colour. At some point, every honest artist needs to foreground the medium, to remind the audience that it's not transparent. Jolts and juxtapositions and narrative hazards are a way to do this. An honest artist is one who doesn't ever let you forget that art is some kind of weird lie.
Something else great about this record is that John and I have basically hit on one of the formulas that makes pop from the 60s so good, which is the collision of a coherent tradition of vaudeville songs with an experimental mindset involving psychedelics and multimedia and art. I'm the vaudeville, John's the LSD. It's a satisfying combination -- coherence and craziness in quick succession.
Talking of things that alternate in quick succession, I've mentioned my love of hazard tape before. How do I love hazard tape? Let me count the ways:
* Hazard tape is a temporary way to redefine space. It betokens impermanence -- visually, anyway -- better than Buddhism and changeability better than Communism.
* Hazard tape appears, as if by a miracle, when something slightly unusual, interesting and dangerous happens in the city, breaking our habit routines. With hazard tape, you can never take anything for granted. People who see nothing on their way to work must open their eyes for hazard tape.
* Hazard tape has an almost Italian brio in its design. Its red and white diagonal stripes are forward-looking, brash, and cool. The repeating pattern is, of course, static, but its regular rhythm and rakish angle make it look very dynamic.
* Hazard tape shows the arbitrary nature of authority. Anyone who knows of a risk -- or just wants to jazz a place up with a whiff of danger -- can buy a roll and demarcate a space with it, feeling instantly the amateur, horizontal authority of the man who shouts 'Fire!'
* Hazard tape can also be used to make a 'citizen's arrest'.
* There can be no avant garde without hazard tape.
* Do not unroll hazard tape in a crowded theatre!
Except, that is, if you're the director and you have your actors unroll it on the stage during a scene. Which happens to be the case in Scene 3 of 'Attempts On Her Life' by Martin Crimp, the theatre production I'm working on at the moment. I have a small speaking part in the scene, which is set in an art gallery showing an installation based on a female artist's suicide attempts. There's me playing the voice of an art critic describing the work and how I wish she'd succeeded in killing herself the first time. Then suddenly the stage is full of actors stretching tape across the space, slicing it up and redefining it. The scene is distressingly realistic for me, because I really did have an artist friend who made her suicide a kind of installation piece. But the hazard tape is a consolation.
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hazard tape
Date: 2004-10-15 01:30 am (UTC)do you know the "brown rubbertape" section @www.shoboshobo.com ?
Re: hazard tape
Date: 2004-10-15 01:59 am (UTC)http://grogore.free.fr/ruber/rubytop.html
It really presents tape as a little sign of hope, the intrusion of something human-scaled, frail and homemade into modern urban environments which are otherwise too monumental, too finished, too fortress-like. And yet the tape reminds us that it's the monumental, the glassy and the metallic which are truly vulnerable, and the flexible and humble (tape) which needs to be called on, time and time again, to hold everything together.
hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-15 02:07 am (UTC)http://www.showroommama.nl/
erik
Re: hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-15 02:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 02:41 am (UTC)is there any way to buy it directly from your website?
-tomas
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 02:51 am (UTC)There was a way to buy the song files from imomus.com earlier this year, but when ownership of the material transferred to the record labels that stopped. But the record has now evolved into quite a different beast anyway.
Re: hazard tape
Date: 2004-10-15 02:52 am (UTC)erik
Re: hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-15 03:03 am (UTC)Re: hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-15 03:09 am (UTC)Re: hazard tape
Date: 2004-10-15 03:31 am (UTC)no, i am not Mehdi but i know him quite well...
my name is Jedrek, you may call me ddddrrr_k & wanted to join the community but just don't know how to do it...
sorry::
Re: hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-15 03:52 am (UTC)Re: hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-15 04:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 06:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 07:17 am (UTC)http://www.hyperreal.org/wsb/elect-rev.html
Of course your points could easily be applied to audio tape work (in the Burroughs sense) as well. OK, time to wake.
aside
Date: 2004-10-15 09:03 am (UTC)B.
Re: hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-15 11:31 am (UTC)Re: hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-15 11:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 01:23 pm (UTC)-tomas
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 01:59 pm (UTC)certain aspects of it remind me of the subgenius pamphlets i'm about to link to.
http://subgenius.com/pam1/pamphlet_p1.html
are you familiar with these outdated attempts at something?
-tomas
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 03:36 pm (UTC)Sienna Cathedral seems to strike a cautionary note.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 04:13 pm (UTC)Prayer can be hazardous to your health
Re: hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-15 05:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 05:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 10:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 10:53 pm (UTC)wonder about it's etymology. It seems a quintessential
English (as in of England) word.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 11:00 pm (UTC)suicide inducing pills (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3748442.stm).
Re: hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-16 12:46 am (UTC)In fact, driving a car means being subject to a huge number of restrictions. 'Stop when I say stop!' say the traffic lights. 'Go when I say go!' 'Don't come too close!' say the brake lights of the car in front. 'Don't choose this street!' says the No Entry sign. The pedestrian who uses public transport can collide with his fellow-traveller's soft flesh without more than an 'excuse me', but the car-driver must get insurance companies involved (not to mention duct taping the unsightly mess of dented chrome and broken glass).
The artist who disrupts this deluded system of pseudo-freedom is to be applauded. Certainly he is challenging order and courtesy, but he is also revealing the car drivers' habitual and largely unconscious internalization of the dictates of power. The fact that the police always arrive within seconds of Hazard Tape Artist's interventions shows that his are more than mere breaches of etiquette.
I read recently somewhere a description of how empire works. I can't remember where it was, actually, but this thought was striking (I paraphrase): 'The thing about the current American Empire is that it seems voluntary. Nobody is forcing people all over the world to walk around wearing jeans and baseball caps. It just seems like the right thing to do. People do it almost unconsciously. Question them and they won't have any good answers for why, or for the meanings of the clothes. In the words of Nike, they 'Just Do It'.' But if they stop doing it -- if a country deliberately turns away from converging towards the etiquette of American life and starts diverging away from it -- there's always the chance that the 'global policeman' may arrive.
Etiquette and power can't always be separated, and public order and power can never be separated. The way to distinguish the etiquette which is mere respect for your fellow man from the etiquette which contains power or empire is to breach the code and see what happens. Do you get a mild reproach from people you've inconvenienced, or do police and armies immediately arrive? Only by breaching etiquette do we make it clear which etiquettes are horizontal and voluntary and which are vertical and compulsory. Which, in other words, are matters of politeness and which are matters of power.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-16 01:33 am (UTC)Re: hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-16 03:35 am (UTC)Now tell me how else my disabled mother is going to get around town.
Re: hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-16 04:13 am (UTC)By the way, I liked your entry about Martin Creed. But I don't know why you be hatin' on the ICA so. If only New Labour had half its daring.
Re: hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-16 07:02 am (UTC)Thanks for comments re: M Creed. I don't hate the ICA that much, but fear that however daring it's exhibits and programme still are (e.g. current John Bock show), the institution itself increasingly exudes a rather smarmy atmosphere and attitude... "New Labour" is about as close an adjective as I could muster.
Leo /SB x
Re: hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-16 11:25 am (UTC)The artist who disrupts a system of pseudo-freedom by unbalancing the system of equal rights should be ignored. Etiquette is to do with one's own private power of character. Public order is to do with everyone else's. In a marginally liberal society, such as our own, the police in actual fact have little power over us. It is we who decide to be antisocial; the police merely react to our decision. That the authorities seem to act so swiftly, on my behalf, in the above happenings is something of a comfort to me. Sure, there are many people who expel noxious gases into the atmosphere just so they can feel superior to public transport users, but there will always be the ambulance carrying a dreadfully ill person, the food being transported to shelters, the mother who might loose her job if she's late to work, honourable causes that are being upset for useless, selfish, pretentious reasons. I see public order infringements and other crimes simply as exaggerated degrees of rudeness. And I only ever see rudeness to be an expressionist art form if it's wholly justified.
Re: hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-17 09:51 am (UTC)Re: hazard tokyo
Date: 2004-10-17 10:25 am (UTC)