While in the Gallatin M.A. program I created this video-performance piece entitled 8:32. In this video piece, which could be classified as a “self-portrait”. I was a painter, painting my body with black and red paint. Videotaping this, I painted my upper body, starting with a single brush stroke, and until it was mostly covered. I edited this footage to a pre-prepared score. This score was an ambient sound “collage,” consisting of me speaking the same thirty-two words, tuned down at half speed, and looped over and over for eight and a half minutes. I then digitally “time stretched” the phrase – changed its length and pitch— to several different degrees and gradually layered these different variations of this on top of each other, adding complexity and tension as the piece progressed. Higher pitched and faster versions of the vocal phrase were laid on top of the original slow, low pitched version, and even lower versions were added, creating a rumbling sound underneath. The effect was that the words blended together to become noise, tones and “atmosphere” rather than words. The words, solitary and stark at the beginning of the piece, became a tangle of overwhelming noise, building to a crescendo at the end.

In 8:32, I used repeating words as a metaphor for events and how, in our experience, they unfold, via television, news, Email, telephone calls, and other forms of communication. This information—as it is often experienced—is a series of ideas that begins simply and becomes a deluge from so many sources, with so many different versions that it blurs together and becomes meaningless, except for a sense of anxiety. There is simply too much information available for a person to process and then derive meaning. The piece also suggests—via the metaphor of paint covering a body, not a traditional canvas—that information or “facts” (as “news”) are given, via the media, in such a way as to annihilate meaning and individual opinions– especially during events where there is the potential for (or reality of) actual annihilation. It also suggests, conversely, that art is a living thing.

Posted on YouTube last week.

This kind of disproves Michael Moore’s thesis in “Bowling For Columbine”:
Canada police name college gunman. Police in Canada have named the gunman who went on a shooting spree in a Montreal college, killing a young woman, as 25-year-old Kimveer Gill.
Apparently, as Moore postulates (Canadians have far fewer violent killings, despite having free access to guns—I heard they hand them out on the street), Canadians aren’t any less likely to go on a killing spree than Americans. I still haven’t checked the statistics myself.

However, I don’t think bad grammar and spelling should be overlooked in this case either:
Blog of accused killer reveals dark character and bad spelling.

memory imprint

Originally uploaded by atöm.

this probably has to do with the idea of when you look up at the skyline expecting to see familiar objects, or even in a certain place in your mind for a person’s presence, and just naturally expect that something or someone to be there, innocently, without a second thought, because through your whole life it, or they, have always been there, a part of you … and it’s just gone, or they’re gone, and you can’t quite reconcile that loss because you can’t quite imagine their non-existence, and you keep bumping into that spot, trying to find the thing that was once there, and can’t find it, and eventually have to accept that there is an unanswerable emptyness, or at least think of other things for a while. and that is my comprehension of death.

it is a human lack of comprehension, or limitation of human perception, of a concept or dimension that we don’t have a sense with which to perceive. or perhaps it is merely my own limitation.

Best viewed at large size.

Petit Café

Originally uploaded by atöm.

So Bri, Gabby and I went for brunch yesterday at Petit Cafe in Carroll Gardens. As we walked in there was a line and to our left, a man who looked a lot like Rob Schneider of Deuce Bigalow/Countless Adam Sandler movies/SNL fame. I was pretty sure it was him. We found out from our waitress that it was, in fact, Robbie boy. He was tan, and more good-looking in person than you’d expect. I had to resist the urge to run up to him and take a picture, while proclaiming, “Rob Schneider, derp-de-derp! Until one day … tum-ta-tidlly tum-ta-tee, da derp de derp …” I would have liked to hear his amazing Elvis impersonation, however.

Check o ut orcafrog’s new gallery: Trash at Rififi 25 August 2006.