Projects are Blooming

Last Tuesday, I performed a piece with Kelli Rudick and Wes Stitt. It was a 12 minute improvised set of electronic music guided by a video made by Wes. Here is a clip:

                                                            (Click Here)

Please excuse how douchbaggy I sound when I describe my set up. I had my Ring Modulator, Evolver, a DOD Delay pedal (the world's shittiest digital delay but glorious in it's failures) and two tape players. Most of the tapes I used were synth pieces made on a Serge modular at Bard College or subliminal message tapes. When I start plugging in all those wires it produces a feeling inside similar to the way a turkey dinner makes one feel. Glazed eyes, sweat, heavy breathing.... The performance was succesful, and we are going to ride this wave of communal flouresence to bigger and better things.Check out Shoestring's blog for more updates and videos, as well as JustMakingStuff.  Mark Boyd has become the instigator, agitator and organizer for all this extravagance. So exciting. Next up- playing music and video in this space in Spruce Pine. Apparently it is an old factory. It is getting harder and harder to sleep with all of these ideas tumbling around the ol' brain reverb chamber.

MB has also gotten a hold of a silent generator. It seems that currently, the possibilities are endless. I would love to perform some of my older Hofwyl stuff out on the knoll or in the woods in the dark. A Kegs of Acid show on top of a mountain? Any other ideas? Let me know: wark.marren@gmail.com

Melanie

I woke up this morning with the song, "I've Got a Brand New Pair of Roller Skates (You've Got a Brand New Key)" by Melanie on a loop in my brain. I had to hear it. Is the music we listen to in our heads sung in the voice of the musician or instead our own? Where do we get the information to fill in the gaps of the parts we cannot remember. Is the song in our heads often times better than the original? These are the questions a man faces every day. I know no answer to this question. However, I know that from now on whenever I think of that song, I will be picturing this incredible video.

Snowfall and Wolf Thoughts

It snowed all last night. As I sat in my bed, I couldnot stop worrying about the anemographs. I needn't have worried though, the anemograms produced were beautiful, the snow was so dry it did not blur any of the lines although each piece of paper was under at least 3 inches of snow.


I listened to the wind and stared at my wolf tapestry above my bed.

Tape Music, Radiophonic Workshop, Glowing Sky Monkey Watches Over All

I have been listening to a lot of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop themes recently. My favorite is definitely the Dr. Who theme.                                                                                            

                       

Delia Derbyshire made that song entirely from tapes of real sounds sped up and slowed down. Its amazing to think how long it must have taken to cut the tapes and reassemble them. The video below is an example of her in action. If I could time travel, I would probably go back and do a lot of things throughout all eras of time (like hunt dinosaurs and intervene in dolphin evolution, just to name two), but I would especially try to get Delia Derbyshire to marry me and we could make lots of superhuman tape music babies together. I love her teeth.

Musics

Music is a system of organizing sound. I organize sound often. I like it more than organizing art, generally. In May, I am going on tour with the band I started with my friend Chris. We are Kegs of Acid. Tentatively, here is a schedule:

5/8: Asheville

5/9: Richmond

5/10: Baltimore

5/11: Brooklyn

5/12: Philly

5/14: Chapel Hill

5/15: Charleston

5/16: St. Augustine

But what will it sound like? Look at that picture to the right. Now, imagine those creatures playing heavy psychedelic surf rock filtered through a lack of discernible skill, ring modulators, fuzz pedals, delays, and old amps. Suppose that each song is in some way reflective of the philosophy proposed in the greatest movie of all time, Point Break. Now imagine these creatures flying through outer space on skateboards. Now imagine them eating tacos and watching Ninja Turtles III, Turtles in Time. Now imagine them maybe playing a concert for you. Wouldn't that be awesome? So you should come to a show.

RIGHTEOUS!!!

Anemography

What is anemography? Anemos is the ancient greek word for wind. Above is a painting of what William-Adolphe Bouguereau thought might have happened when the god of the west wind, Zephyrus, met the goddess Chloris. Anemography is the practice of extracting drawings from the wind. To do this I have made simple machines that react to changes in the wind and produce drawings. This is what they look like. I made this pair in the Spring of 2008 when I came to Penland to take Jon Brook's  class called "Ideas Drawn from Nature".  I took the title literally.


These machines are modeled after two of my favorite things, windmills and dinosaurs. Specifically pterosaurs (aka pterodactyls). Please note the example below.

Why collect drawings made by the wind? When I was about 7 years old, I woke one night with the suspicion that beneath the sheen of order we perceive in everyday life, the universe might in fact be nothing more than a random jumble of systems. I began to look everywhere for a harmony that never appeared. Since then I have resigned myself to the fact that randomness itself is beautiful. In some small way, these machines isolate some of this randomness into a tangible artifact. I call these drawings anemograms.



They normally look really cool like this, but one time I got the message "STOP>THE WIND HAS NOTHING TO TELL YOU> MORTAL BEWARE OUR WRATH" scrawled in an anemogram.

RARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR