WE THINK > WE MAKE > WE LEARN

Nam June Paik

Prof Egon — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:17:14 +0000

U.S. Video Artist

Nam June Paik–composer, performer, and video artist–played a pivotal role in introducing artists and audiences to the possibilities of using video for artistic expression. His works explore the ways in which performance, music, video images, and the sculptural form of objects can be used in various combinations to question our accepted notions of the nature of television.

Growing up in Korea, Nam June Paik studied piano and composition. When his family moved, first to Hong Kong and then to Japan, he continued his studies in music while completing a degree in aesthetics at the University of Tokyo. After graduating, Paik went to Germany to pursue graduate work in philosophy. There he became part of a group of Fluxus artists who were challenging established notions of what constituted art. Their work often found expression in performances and happenings that incorporated random events and found objects.

In 1959 Paik performed his composition Hommage a John Cage. This performance combined a pre-recorded collage of music and sounds with “on stage” sounds created by people, a live hen, a motorcycle, and various objects. Random events marked this and other Paik compositions. Instruments were often altered or even destroyed during the performance. Most performances were as much a visual as a musical experience.

As broadcast television programming invaded the culture, Paik began to experiment with ways to alter the video image. In 1963 he included his first video sculptures in an exhibition, Exposition of Music–Electronic Television. Twelve television sets were scattered throughout the exhibit space. The electronic components of these sets were modified to create unexpected effects in the images being received. Other video sculptures followed. Distorted TV used manipulation of the sync pulse to alter the image. Magnet TV used a large magnet which could be moved on the outside of the television set to change the image and create abstract patterns of light. Paik began to incorporate television sets into a series of robots. The early robots were constructed largely of bits and pieces of wire and metal; later ones were built from vintage radio and television sets refitted with updated electronic components.

Some of Paik’s video installations involve a single monitor, others use a series of monitors. In TV Buddha a statue of Buddha sits facing its own image on a closed-circuit television screen. For TV Clock twenty-four monitors are lined up. The image on each is compressed into a single line with the lines on succeeding monitors rotated to suggest the hands of a clock representing each hour of the day. In Positive Egg the video camera is aimed at a white egg on a black cloth. In a series of larger and larger monitors, the image is magnified until the actual egg becomes an abstract shape on the screen.

In 1964 Paik moved to New York City and began a collaboration with classical cellist Charlotte Moorman to produce works combining video with performance. In TV Bra for Living Sculpture small video monitors became part of the cellist’s costume. With TV Cello television sets were stacked to suggest the shape of the cello. As Moorman drew the bow across the television sets, images of her playing, video collages of other cellists, and live images of the performance area combined.

When the first consumer-grade portable video cameras and recorders went on sale in New York in 1965, Paik purchased one. Held up in a traffic jam created by Pope Paul VI’s motorcade, Paik recorded the parade and later that evening showed it to friends at Cafe a Go-Go. With this development in technology it was possible for the artist to create personal and experimental video programs.

Paik was invited to participate in several experimental workshops including one at WGBH in Boston and another at WNET in New York City. The Medium is the Medium, his first work broadcast by WGBH, was a video collage that raised questions about who is in control of the viewing experience. At one point in a voice-over Paik instructed the viewers to follow his directions, to close or open their eyes, and finally to turn off the set. At WGBH Paik and electronics engineer Shuya Abe built the first model of Paik’s video synthesizer which produced non-representational images. Paik used the synthesizer to accompany a rock-and-roll soundtrack in Video Commune and to illustrate Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. At WNET Paik completed a series of short segments, The Selling of New York, which juxtaposed the marketing of New York and the reality of life in the city. Global Groove, produced with John Godfrey, opened with an explanation that it was a “glimpse of a video landscape of tomorrow when you will be able to switch to any TV station on the earth and TV guides will be as fat as the Manhattan telephone book.” What followed was a rapid shift from rock-and-roll dance sequences to Allen Ginsberg to Charlotte Moorman with the TV cello to an oriental dancer to John Cage to a Navaho drummer to a Living Theatre performance. Throughout, the video image was manipulated by layering images, reducing dancers to a white line outlining their form against a wash of brilliant color, creating evolving abstract forms. Rapid edits of words and movements and seemingly random shifts in the backgrounds against which the dancers perform create a dreamlike sense of time and space.

Nam June Paik pioneered the development of electronic techniques to transform the video image from a literal representation of objects and events into an expression of the artist’s view of those objects and events. In doing so, he challenges our accepted notion of the reality of televised events. His work questions time and memory, the nature of music and art, even the essence of our sensory experiences. Most significantly, perhaps, that work questions our experience, our understanding, and our definitions of “television.”

- Lucy Liggett, The Museum of Broadcast Communications

Nam June Paik’s Website

Nam June Paik on UBU

Nam June Paik WIKI

WIKI: Madeline Charlotte Moorman Garside (November 18, 1933–November 8, 1991) was an American cellist and performance artist.

She was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. She studied cello from age ten and won a scholarship to Centenary College (Shreveport, Louisiana) where she took her B.A. in music in 1955. She received her M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and continued on to postgraduate studies at The Juilliard School in 1957.

She began a traditional concert hall career but was soon drawn into the active mixed-media performance art scene of the 1960s. She became a close associate and collaborator of Korean avant-garde artist Nam June Paik, with whom she toured widely. In 1963 she established the New York Avant Garde Festival which played annually in various locations including Central Park and the Staten Island Ferry until 1980 (except for the years 1970, 1976 and 1979).

In 1967 she achieved notoriety for her performance of Paik’s Opera Sextronique, a seminude performance which resulted in her arrest on charges of indecent exposure; she was given a suspended sentence. The incident gave her nationwide fame as the “topless cellist.” She also performed Paik’s TV Bra for Living Sculpture (1969) with two small television receivers attached to her breasts. Another memorable piece was her performance of Jim McWilliams’ Sky Kiss in many locations including New York and Sydney, Australia, which involved her hanging suspended from helium-filled weather balloons or the brightly-colored inflatable sculptures of Otto Piene.

As well as being a star performer of avant-garde pieces, she was an effective spokesperson and negotiator for advanced art, charming the bureaucracies of New York and other major cities into co-operating and providing facilities for controversial and challenging performances. The years of the Avant Garde Festival marked a period of unparalleled understanding and good relations between advanced artists and local authorities.

In the late 1970s she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy and further treatment, to continue performing through the 1980s in spite of pain and deteriorating health. She died of cancer in New York City on November 8, 1991, aged 57.

Charlotte Moorman Garside was involved with the Fluxus movement of avant-garde and performance art and was a friend and associate of many well-known artists of the late twentieth century, including Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, John Cage, Joseph Beuys, Joseph Byrd, Yoko Ono, Carolee Schneemann, Jim McWilliams and others. In 1966 artist Joseph Beuys created his work Infiltration Homogen für Cello, a felt-covered violoncello, in her honor. Body artist Carolee Schneemann maintains a memorial page for Moorman on the Web.

Charlotte Moorman on UBU

The New York Times – Charlotte Moorman

“Topless Cellist” Charotte Moorman

Howard Weinberg and Nam June Paik

1995, 29 min, color, sound

Nam June Paik’s first single-channel videotape since 1989 is a heartfelt tribute to his long-time collaborator Charlotte Moorman. This portrait traces Moorman’s career as an avant-garde performer, from her classical training to her notorious arrest as the “Topless Cellist” and subsequent talk-show celebrity. Rare documentations of Moorman’s performances include Otto Piene’s Sky Kiss and Jim McWilliams’ Chocolate Cello. Interviews with Moorman’s friends, family and collaborators, such as Yoko Ono, Christo and Jeanne Claude, Otto Piene, and Barbara Moore, among others, provide intimate recollections of the inimitable Moorman.

Editor: Janice E. Young. Coordination/Music Producer: Stephen Vitiello. Researcher: Maria Rosa Fort Brescia. Interview Camera: Howard Weinberg, New York; Sandra Robert, Little Rock; Vin Grabill, Boston; Your Media Image, San Diego. Archival Video: Nam June Paik, Electronic Arts Intermix, Vin Grabill, Jud Yalkut, Otto Piene, Larry Miller, Paul Garrin, Andrew Gurian. Archival Photographs: Peter Moore, Charlotte Moorman Archive, Andrew Gurian & Barbara Moore, Fred W. McDarran, Otto Piene, Andor Orand, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, NYC Dept. of Sanitation, Rene Bloch, Francescho Conz, Thomas Haar, Tamara Hendershot, Takenisa Kosugi, Mira Cantor, Elizabeth Goldring. On Line Editor: Mitch Brody. Still Animation: Angelique Thermes, Yvetot Gouin. Videotape Transfers: Elina Shvachkin, Sima Malah. Production Assistance: Electronic Arts Intermix, Arthur White, Center for Advanced Visual Studies, M.I.T.

John Cage

Prof Egon — Mon, 03 May 2010 01:48:06 +0000

“In the nature of the use of chance operations is the belief that all answers answer all questions.” ~John Cage

John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer, philosopher, poet, music theorist, artist, printmaker, and amateur mycologist and mushroom collector. A pioneer of chance music, electronic music and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century.He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage’s romantic partner for most of their lives.

Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, the three movements of which are performed without a single note being played. The content of the composition is meant to be perceived as the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed,rather than merely as four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence, and the piece became one of the most controversial compositions of the twentieth century. Another famous creation of Cage’s is the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by placing various objects in the strings), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concert pieces, the best known of which is Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48). -Excerpt from WIKI

About The Composer:

In 1952, David Tudor sat down in front of a piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds and did nothing. The piece 4′33” written by John Cage, is possibly the most famous and important piece in twentieth century avant-garde. 4′33” was a distillation of years of working with found sound, noise, and alternative instruments. In one short piece, Cage broke from the history of classical composition and proposed that the primary act of musical performance was not making music, but listening.

Born in Los Angeles in 1912, Cage studied for a short time at Pamona College, and later at UCLA with classical composer Arthur Schoenberg. There he realized that the music he wanted to make was radically different from the music of his time. “I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said ‘You’ll come to a wall you won’t be able to get through.’ So I said, ‘I’ll beat my head against that wall.’” But it wasn’t long before Cage found that there were others equally interested in making art in ways that broke from the rigid forms of the past. Two of the most important of Cage’s early collaborators were the dancer Merce Cunningham and the painter Robert Rauschenberg.

Together with Cunningham and Rauschenberg at Black Mountain College, Cage began to create sound for performances and to investigate the ways music composed through chance procedures could become something beautiful. Many of Cage’s ideas about what music could be were inspired by Marcel Duchamp, who revolutionized twentieth-century art by presenting everyday, unadulterated objects in museum settings as finished works of art, which were called “found art,” or ready-mades by later scholars. Like Duchamp, Cage found music around him and did not necessarily rely on expressing something from within.

Cage’s first experiments involved altering standard instruments, such as putting plates and screws between a piano’s strings before playing it. As his alterations of traditional instruments became more drastic, he realized that what he needed were entirely new instruments. Pieces such as “Imaginary Landscape No 4″(1951) used twelve radios played at once and depended entirely on the chance broadcasts at the time of the performance for its actual sound. In “Water Music” (1952), he used shells and water to create another piece that was motivated by the desire to reproduce the operations that form the world of sound we find around us each day.

While his interest in chance procedures and found sound continued throughout the sixties, Cage began to focus his attention on the technologies of recording and amplification. One of his better known pieces was “Cartridge Music” (1960), during which he amplified small household objects at a live performance. Taking the notions of chance composition even further, he often consulted the “I Ching,” or Book of Changes, to decide how he would cut up a tape of a recording and put it back together. At the same time, Cage began to focus on writing and published his first book, “Silence” (1961). This marked a shift in his attention toward literature.

In the ’70’s, with inspirations like Thoreau and Joyce, Cage began to take literary texts and transform them into music. “Roratorio, an Irish Circus on Finnegan’s Wake” (1979), was an outline for transforming any work of literature into a work of music. His sense that music was everywhere and could be made from anything brought a dynamic optimism to everything he did. While recognized as one of the most important composers of the century, John Cage’s true legacy extends far beyond the world of contemporary classical music. After him, no one could look at a painting, a book, or a person without wondering how they might sound if you listened closely.

Connected artists:

Related Web sites:

For the Times editors, as for so many others, the problem with treating Cage as a composer is clearly a problem with his work after 1951. His compositions for percussion and prepared piano written in the 1940s have never been difficult for critics–his Sonatas and interludes of 1948 has even been called a masterwork. In 1951, however, Cage began to use chance operations in the course of his composition, and it is here that things go awry. His adoption of chance techniques is almost always seen as a rejection: a jettisoning of everything traditionally musical. External forces of irrationality (such as Zen Buddhism) are invoked as the cause of this break. Under such influences, it is believed, Cage decided to substitute the throw of dice for his own tastes, so that he could ultimately remove any trace of his personality from the composed work. By 1952, Cage had written 4′ 33”, the silent piece; thus, in the words of one writer, “the authority of the composer [had been] extinguished.” – Excerpt from Introduction to ‘The Music of John Cage”

Cage on UBU:

http://www.ubu.com/film/cage.html
http://www.ubu.com/sound/cage.html

John Cage FanSite

John Cage: performing “Water Walk” in January, 1960 on the popular TV show I’ve Got A Secret.

John Cage: talking about Silence

John Cage: Prepared Piano

Dedicated 4’33 Performance

John Cage’s 4’33 performance by David Tudor

The first performance of John Cage’s 4’33″ created a scandal. Written in 1952, it is Cage’s most notorious composition, his so-called “silent piece”. The piece consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds in which the performer plays nothing. At the premiere some listeners were unaware that they had heard anything at all. It was first performed by the young pianist David Tudor at Woodstock, New York, on August 29, 1952, for an audience supporting the Benefit Artists Welfare Fund — an audience that supported contemporary art.

Tudor placed the hand-written score, which was in conventional notation with blank measures, on the piano and sat motionless as he used a stopwatch to measure the time of each movement. The score indicated three silent movements, each of a different length, but when added together totalled four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Tudor signaled its commencement by lowering the keyboard lid of the piano. The sound of the wind in the trees entered the first movement. After thirty seconds of no action, he raised the lid to signal the end of the first movement. It was then lowered for the second movement, during which raindrops pattered on the roof. The score was in several pages, so he turned the pages as time passed, yet playing nothing at all. The keyboard lid was raised and lowered again for the final movement, during which the audience whispered and muttered. ²

Cage said, “People began whispering to one another, and some people began to walk out. They didn’t laugh — they were just irritated when they realized nothing was going to happen, and they haven’t fogotten it 30 years later: they’re still angry.” ³ Maverick Concert Hall, the site of the first performance, was ideal in allowing the sounds of the environment to enter, because the back of the hall was open to the surrounding forest. When Tudor finished, raising the keyboard lid and himself from the piano, the audience burst into an uproar — “infuriated and dismayed,” according to the reports.⁴ Even in the midst of an avant garde concert attended by modern artists, 4’33″ was considered “going too far”⁵.

9 Evenings – Variations VII

Excerpt from performance

“In 1966 10 New York artists worked with 30 engineers and scientists from the world renowned Bell Telephone Laboratories to create groundbreaking performances that incorporated new technology. Video projection, wireless sound transmission, and Doppler sonar – technologies that are commonplace today – had never been seen in the art of the 60’s.”

“9 Evenings was organized by Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver, then a research scientist at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was held at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City from October 13-23, 1966. As Billy Klüver has written: “9 Evenings was unique in the incredible richness and imagination of the performances. The Armory space allowed the artists to work on an unprecedented scale, and their involvement with technology and collaborations with the engineers added a dimension of unfamiliarity and challenge. They responded with major works.”

“For his 9 Evenings piece, Variations VII, John wanted to use as sound sources “only those sounds which are in the air at the moment of performance”. He wanted sounds from all over the city and if possible all over the world. He also wanted to pick up the sounds from outer space.” – Billy Klüver

Spiral Cage Blog

La Jetée

Prof Egon — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:11:31 +0000

From Wiki:

La jetée (English: The Jetty or The Pier) (1962) is a 28-minute black and white science fiction film by Chris Marker.

From The MIT Press:

From Zone Books:
La Jetée
ciné-roman
Chris Marker

La Jetée, the legendary science-fiction film about time and memory after a nuclear apocalypse, was released in 1964 and is considered by many critics to be among the greatest experimental films ever made. (It provided the basis for the recent Terry Gilliam film 12 Monkeys.) Chris Marker, who is the undisputed master of the film essay, composed this post-apocalyptic story almost entirely of black-and-white still photographs. The story concerns an experiment in recovering and changing the past through the action of memory, yet the film can be read as a poem dominated by a single moving image, which in its context becomes one of the supreme moments in the history of film.

This Zone edition reproduces the film’s original images along with the script in both English and French.

Terry Gilliam‘s Twelve Monkeys (1995) was inspired by, and takes several concepts directly from, La jetée. In 1996, Zone Books released a book version of La jetée. It reproduced the film’s original images along with the script in both English and French and is now out of print, though it was re-released in 2008 by Zone Books. The 2003 short film, La puppé, is both an homage to and a parody of La jetée.

PBS ART:21

Prof Egon — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:07:41 +0000

Art:21 – Art in the 21st Century is a PBS series, educational resource, archive, and history of contemporary art. It premiered in 2001, and is now broadcast in over 50 countries worldwide. Premiering a new season every two years, Art:21 is the only series on United States television to focus exclusively on contemporary visual art and artists. It is a nonprofit organization founded in 1997 to make contemporary art more accessible to the public, and to document 21st-century art and artists from the artists’ own perspectives. Their overall goal is to raise the profile of major players in the world of contemporary art and to encourage creativity. The main office is located in New York City.

Art:21 Website

Videos: (Note: I think this site gets a lot of traffic. The VCU library also has these videos on DVD)

Identity – Artists address the idea of identity by questioning commonly held assumptions about stereotypes, self-awareness, portraiture, and what it means to be an artist.

Paradox – Contemporary artists address contradiction, ambiguity, and truth.

Protest – Artists engage politics, inequality, and the many conflicts that besiege the world today.

Ecology – Artists explore how our understanding of the natural world becomes deeply cultural.

Romance – Artists explore the roles that intuition, emotion, fantasy, and escapism play in contemporary art.

Play – Spontaneous and joyful, subversive or amusing, play can take many forms in daily life as well as in contemporary art.

Structures – Artists explore how we organize life and the ways in which we capture knowledge and attempt greater understanding.

Memory – Artists explore how memory functions and how to frame the past in their work.

Power – From politics to mass media, the theme of power pervades daily life and is reflected in the ideas and concerns of contemporary artists.

Humor – Artists use irony, goofiness, satire, and sarcasm in their work, being funny and critical at the same time.

Loss & Desire – Artists express longing, love, and human experience in contemporary work.

Time – Artists evoke and transform time in their work, relating to art of the ancient past, to nature, and to the rhythms of the life.

Stories – Artists tell stories in their work, reveal narrative traditions, and record and describe the world around us.

Consumption – Artists address the idea of consumption by questioning commonly held assumptions about commerce, mass media, and consumer society.

Spirituality – Artists address the idea of spirituality by questioning commonly held assumptions about faith, belief, meditation, and religious symbols.

Place – Artists explore the idea of place by questioning commonly held assumptions about land, home and national identity.

Gary Hill & Laurie Anderson

Prof Egon — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 02:21:56 +0000

Gary Hill Website – Gary Hill Wiki

Gary Hill – Site/Recite – 1989 – 4:05min

With startling precision, Site/Recite moves across and around a table-top graveyard – bones, butterfly wings, egg shells, seed pods, crumpled notes, skulls – in a series of seamless edits that present a continuous flow of detailed close-ups. This taxonomy of dispossession, “little deaths that pile up,” is juxtaposed to a narration on the linkage between semantic self-consciousness and visual experience. Through the window of this text, the objects on the table come to model how consciousness affixes itself to material manifestations and how memory is constituted by the collection of empty vessels. Site/Recite is a prologue for Which Tree, an interactive videodisc installation that presents viewers with a maze of interconnected branch points, allowing them to wander through its forest of images and words to discover the “texts” of their own thinking patterns.

Gary Hill – Soundings – 1978 – 17:49min

In Soundings, conceived by Hill as a work for broadcast, the found object of a loud speaker becomes the source for a sequence of image/sound/text constructs. A series of what Hill terms “processual rituals” ends with a text “from” the speaker, in which it describes its electronic, changing state as a relationship with the viewer. As Hill speaks about touch and sound in an extrapolated monologue, he buries the speaker in sand, drives a spike through it, sets it on fire and pours waters onto it.

Laurie Anderson Website – Laurie Anderson Wiki

Laurie Anderson – O Superman – 1981 – 4:21min

“O Superman” is a 1981 song by experimental performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson. Part of the larger work United States, “O Superman,” a half-sung, half-spoken, almost minimalist piece unexpectedly rose to #2 on the UK Singles Charts in 1981^[2]. Prior to the success of this song, Anderson was little known outside the art world. -wiki

KINE237 – This Project is Your Oyster

Prof Egon — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:44:48 +0000

For this project… taa daa! You get to do whatever you want! Seriously. If you have other projects for other classes that need some stellar sound and you want us to help you out with creating the best sound you can… you CAN! Bring it!

If however, you need help with an idea… and you can’t think of something to do: Create a 2 minute piece with sound as the focus about one world absorbing another world. Kinda like the Marvel Galactus of sound compositions. You can have visuals if you want.

You will be graded on how much you challenge yourself to create sound and your professionalism with this project. Give it your all! It’s you last project of the semester… For all the beans!

Production Schedule/Timeline:

4/22 Thursday – 1) Sound Presentations (Sun, Michele & Lindsay), 2) Finish up crit, 3) Project Introduction

4/27 Tuesday - 1) Student content picks! 2) Art of Sounds: Pierre Henry

4/29 Thursday – Work in Progress DUE! … You MUST have something for me to check out!

5/04 Tuesday – 1) Student Content Picks! 2) John Cage!

5/13 Thursday @ 1:00pm in Room 105 – FINAL EXAM/PROJECT DUE

Pierre Henry – GranDaddy Electronic Sound Artist!

Prof Egon — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:28:06 +0000

Born in 1927 in Paris, France… Pierre is a French composer and is considered a pioneer of Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrete genre of electronic music.

Musique concrète (French for “concrete music” or “real music“) is a form of electroacoustic music that utilizes acoustical sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sonorities derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as “musical” (melody, harmony, rhythm, metre and so on). The theoretical underpinnings of the aesthetic were developed by Pierre Schaeffer, beginning in the late 1940s.

Biography by Jason Ankeny for allmusic: The celebrated French composer Pierre Henry was among the pivotal forces behind the development of musique concrète, becoming the first formally educated musician to devote his energies to the electronic medium. Born in Paris on December 9, 1927, he began training at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten, studying piano under Nadia Boulanger and percussion under Felix Passerone while also attending the classes of Olivier Messiaen. Still, Henry had little regard for traditional musical instruments, preferring instead to experiment privately with non-musical sound sources; over time, he grew fascinated with the notion of incorporating noise into the compositional process, and perhaps unsurprisingly first attracted notice in performing circles for his prowess as a percussionist.

In 1949, Henry joined the staff of the RTF electronic studio, founded by Pierre Schaeffer five years earlier; he soon immersed himself completely in electronic music, heading the Groupe de Research de Musique Concrète throughout the greater part of the 1950s. Henry soon began compiling a “sound herbal,” a catalog of any sound potentially useful from a musical standpoint — everything from animal cries to editing techniques to speed variations, all of which he deemed superior to conventional instrumentation. It inspired 1950′s Symphonie Pour un Homme Seul, a 12-movement work co-written by Henry and Schaeffer employing the sounds of the human body; solo pieces including 1951′s Le Microphone Bien Tempere (the first attempt at notated musique concrète), Musique Sans Titre, and Concerto des Ambiguites (which combined live piano with its own recorded distorted sounds) all broke new ground as well.

In 1952, Henry produced the first musique concrète ever commissioned for commercial films when he scored Jean Grémillon’s Astrologie; a year later, at the Donaueschingen Festival, he premiered Orpheé 53, the first musique concrète piece composed for the stage. Henry also frequently collaborated with choreographer Maurice Béjart, a pairing that yielded 1955′s Arcane, 1956′s Haut-Voltage, 1962′s Le Voyage, 1963′s La Reine, 1967′s Messe Pour le Temps Présent, and 1971′s Nijinsky, Clown de Dieu — in all, he scored more than 30 films and stage productions during his long career. In 1958, Henry left the RTF, and in 1960 he teamed with Jean Baronnet to found the Apsone-Cabasse Studio, the first private electronic music workshop in France; concurrent was his realization that for musique concrète to evolve, it would need to begin incorporating the electronic aesthetics pioneered in other areas of the world.

Toward that end, in 1959 Henry composed both Coexistence and Investigations, trailed a year later by La Noire a Soixante, which fused musique concrète with pure electronics. Throughout the decade to follow his music adopted increasingly spiritual and meditative qualities; 1968′s La Messe de Liverpool, in fact, was commissioned for the consecration of that city’s Cathedral of Christ the King. Spoken Biblical text was also prominent in L’Apocalypse de Jean, which was debuted in Paris on October 30, 1968, at a 24-hour celebration of Henry’s music. A year later, he premiered Ceremony, which included music by the pop band Spooky Tooth. By the 1970s, his primary interest was large-scale works complete with elaborate lighting effects, among them Mise en Musique de Corticolart and Kylderstück.

During the mid-’70s, Henry’s projects frequently paid homage to his own inspirations — 1975′s Futuriste celebrated the Italian futurist Luigi Russolo and his 1913 work The Art of Noises, while 1979′s La Dixieme Symphonie served as a follow-up to Beethoven’s nine symphonies. Continuing to work regularly throughout the years that followed in a vast range of musical contexts — he even collaborated with the American alternative rock trio Violent Femmes — in 1997 Henry completed Interieur/Exterieur, a work commissioned by Radio France that he declared the culmination of his life’s work. His influence on contemporary music was underlined by the concurrent release of the LP Metamorphosé, which featured remixes of his work by the likes of Coldcut, DJ Vadim, William Orbit, Fatboy Slim, and Funki Porcini.

AFO Student Content Picks Week ONE!

Prof Egon — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:08:42 +0000

AM Class:

Doll Face – Andrew Haun – 4:13min… A mix of 3d modeling and live action compositing. Beautiful. Check out Haun’s website. There is a lot of really amazing works on his site. (Alex’s web pick!)

All is Full of Love – Bjork/Chris Cunningham – 4:10min… Similar to Haun’s piece. For more information: about the video… about Chris Cunningham. (My pick)

Star Wars Uncut “The Escape: – 4:29min... Amazing exquisite corpse! Check out the website: Star Wars: Uncut (Jeremy’s web pick!)

Star Wars Holiday Special – 2 hours! … This was created in 1978 and viewed on CBS. It’s absolutely insane. Read up about it here. Watch it with your friends.

Ready Able – Grizzly Bear – 4:31min … Beautiful piece. Stopmotion/claymation. (Brian’s web pick!)

Vivions of Frank 4 – 2:41min… This piece is a morphing of popular animated cartoons … it become grotesque and hypnotizing! (Warren’s web pick!)

Theodor Bastard: Pustola – 3:51min & Selva – 5:30min … Amazing Flash animations! (Eve’s web pick!)

Draw with Me – 2:54min … Beautiful line drawn animation! The story is saaaaad. (Jessica’s web pick!)

Mika Rottenberg – 4:00min (Emily’s web pick!)

Ok Go – This Too Shall Pass – 3:53min (Emily’s web pick!)

Stress – Justice – 6:41min (Warren’s web pick!)

Warren’s pick sparked my memory about the Flash Mobs (last year) and this year in Philly, PA.

Keith Loutit – Small Worlds (Alex’s web pick!) … Takes a minute to load.

Big Ideas (Don’t Get Any) – Radiohead/James Houston – 3:55min … Great sound piece!

PM Class:

Ray Johnson – How to Draw a Bunny – OvationTV – 2:49min (David’s web pick!)

Theo Jansen – Wind Sculptures – BMW Commercial (?) – 1:06min (David’s web pick!)

Pixels – Patrick Jean - 2:34min (Emily’s pick!)

Scacchi Clay Stop Motion – 1:56min (Eileen’s pick!)

The Cremaster Cycle – Matthew Barney (My pick)… For more information Cremaster Cycle Wiki

None Shall Pass – Aesop Rocks – 3:58min (Eric’s pick!)

Sony Bravio Ball Bounce Commercial - 1:00min (Marie’s pick!)

Los Abrazos Rotos – Almodovar - 1:45min (Marie’s pick!)

Sony Bravia Colours – Pyramid – 1:01min (Marie’s pick!)

Sony Bravia Colours – Paint – 1:11min (Marie’s pick!… again! haha)

Waikiki at Sunset – Drag Makeup Tutorial – 11:56min (Marie’s pick!)

Dogs, Art of Both? – 1:31min (Kayla’s pick!)

Gravite – Renaud Hallee – 2:00min (Kayla’s pick!)

The Darkening – Peter Rose – 9:25min (Andrea’s UBU pick!)

Toe Jam – Fatboy Slim featuring David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal – 3:27min (Eric’s pick!)

Amateur – Lasse Gjertsen - 3:14min (Eileen’s pick!)

Hyperactive – Lasse Gjertsen – 2:07min (Eileen’s pick!)

My Picks 1-1

Prof Egon — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:19:52 +0000

Hey Folks… !

Here are my picks for this week!

For you enjoyment: What is video art?

Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. (It should not however be confused with television or experimental cinema). Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations.

Check it out:

Rivet Girl by Christine Schiavo – 9:12 min – Dreaming in multimedia! The sound is wonderful.

Field by Self Burning – 2:30 min – Agriculture and geometry collide.

Terrestre_movements in still life by Maria Celeste Taliani – 10 min – Evolution.

Zwischen by Diegonante – 2:30 min – I am foreign.

Janela by Deb Prado – 2:21 min – Photographing movement.

Memory Game by Yuval Yairi – 4:23 min – Found forget.

More on Banksy! Current TV

Prof Egon — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 04:12:44 +0000

Current TV: Who is Banksy?