In Between

There’s something I find very attractive about in between places. Travelling to new places and hanging out with old friends within them give you the opportunity to see things in a whole new perspective (both the new place and the old friends). I also find these places to be particularly unnerving as there is little familiarity and control in lessened. Then there is the feeling of being in the ‘in between’ but being in a familiar place, which at times is more unnerving than being in the ‘in between place’ with no familiarity or control.

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Syders

As mentioned in a previous post, I received a prize in a local exhibition in Tasmania (art prize) and also a highly commended award for a second piece (I was just happy to be hung). Today I found out that one of my pieces was also purchased, unfortunately not ‘Supersize Rob’ which had a price tag of $10,000, but my second piece which was a still life of poppies made from poppy seeds.

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Well well well, Sydney was rock’n so hard. Many good things happened, many awesome things happened and a hand full of insane things happened. Was out every night doing something seeing a bunch of international acts (Four Tet, Peter Rehberg, Mu, thenownownow festival, Afra and The Incredible Beatbox Band) and not to forget some crazy electro clash and a handful of DJ’s, actually there was one that was playing some wicked breaks at The Candy Bar in the Kings Cross last Saturday night and I didn’t even catch his name.

Checked out some good art shows with my favourite being Erwin Wurms interactive pieces in The Museum of Contemporary Art. I enjoyed his work so much that I purchased one of his books and a bunch of others with my Emerging Artist Award I received at the end of uni last year. I also struck a deal with the owner of the indy record shop in Newtown “Paint It Black”:http://www.paintitblackrecords.com/ and my CD ‘This & That’ is now being stocked in Sydney, Melbourne at Synaethesia and at CD Baby online and in Oregon in the US.

Caught up with the whole crew on my last night in Sydney which was wicked (the bang bang brothers hang’n tough) we all hit Mu together at Spectrum, which was very good except Maurice Fulton pulled out and Mu really needed to do a an encore. We then hit The Candy Bar again after the biggest denied entry ever from ‘The Ruby Rabbit’. ‘The Ruby Rabbit’ is the most disgusting place I have ever seen and I didn’t even get inside. Apparently we weren’t allowed inside because we weren’t on ‘the A list’. I politely told the guy as we left the scene where I thought he was getting his list from and it wasn’t his clipboard, somewhere much much lower.

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Four Tet

It the latest news, both my works were hung in the local Art Prize and I took it out a section, extending my bank account nicely. I also got highly commended with my piece ‘Supersize Me’ Will post a pic of the winning image and an explanation when I have a decent pic.

Mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn, Sydney is Krank’n. Job interviews went well so now I have to hold tight for a couple of weeks before I find out, negative/positive (I so want to get back to Japan). Checked out Four Tet on Thursday night and he was tearing it up, remixing some of his classic loops and generally not being scared to push the capacitors on the speakers and in my ear drums for that matter.

Checked out ‘thenownow’ festival last night in Newtown which was also good. Very Expero.

It’s been good to catch up with a few pals with more re-unions shortly. The Ocean Rules

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L8R

Off Off and Away

I’m off to Sydney tomorrow so there will be little action here for a week or so. Sure enough there will be plenty of stories to tell when I’m back considering I have a job interview, 4 concerts to attend, 3 art shows, some sound recording and a lot of lazing around on Sydney’s beautiful beaches and no doubt a date or two with some tasty beers. I’m looking forward to hooking up with the boyz!!

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Local Art Prize

There’s a local art prize on and we all thought we’d enter. Actually they have pretty good prize money, comparable to that of Canberra Contemporary Art Space. What is great is that they have a section that is for “Contemporary Art” and then it says that everything entered must have been made in the last 2 years, doesn’t that mean everything is ‘Contemporary’. Maybe they just put this section in to separate those ‘crazy’, ‘way out there’ water colourists and abstract digital photographers.

Unfortunately ‘the local council’ decide what gets hung and what doesn’t, the sad thing is I think that the credentials of these people deciding will consist of ‘pen pusher’ or ‘hole digger’, I suspect they get a couple of the local council road workers on one of their many lunch breaks (for the day) to come on down to the gallery and decide. I’ve given the prize two shots, one with a more ‘traditional’ piece , yet still quite conceptual (I’ll post it later) and another for the all elusive ‘Contemporary’ section.

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Titled: ‘Supersize Me’
Writing on the box says; ‘rob eats 4 pizzas a day but doesn’t put on any weight. he’s worried he’s UN-AUSTRALIAN’

I wonder if it’ll get selected??!

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This is Yuko’s awesome water colour which really deserves it’s own separate post. Title ‘A Moments’ it refers to different moments she has experienced whilst in Australia in the past year. It really is more impressive in the flesh.

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OMG The New Mac is PHAT

Have you seen the new computer from Apple?! It’s called ‘Mac Book Pro’. It’s basically the same as mine but 4x powerful, really that’s pretty insane because I wouldn’t call mine sluggish. As good a reason as any to start saving up the pocket money, I feel an upgrade coming at the end of this year, for sure!!.

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Been finalising some art works for a local art prize. I’m creating works, a mixed media piece dealing with commercialism and art, touchy subjects when combined, particularly in an art prize for cash. Another piece is a still life of poppies, using poppy seed and coloured using water colours. For some reason I really enjoy using water colours, maybe it’s because to me they seen so delicate and I enjoy using them in a kind of debaucherous way. Also the exhibition at the National Gallery (water colour retrospective ‘Moist’) was a big inspiration.

This piece below is a screen print of my eye combined with people walking on Shijo St. in Kyoto, Japan. With a bit of luck, destined for a gallery in Newtown, Sydney.
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I’ve been playing around with minimal glitch sounds more and put together this track; “Scratch That Glitch.mp3″:http://s63.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0JV44K17C2NGC1TFV7HXNTKW8L I’m not to sure where it’s headed at the moment, I feel like I want to go even more minimal. Maybe minimal field recording compositions are a possibility?! Anyway I’m just experimenting at the moment.

On the serious side of my sound works I am creating compositions from sound scenes I captured whilst in Japan (a place I’m passionate about). They’re everyday scenes (day and night) from Hiroshima to Tokyo and everywhere in between. I think at this stage I’ll have 5-6 of them that vary between 5-10 minutes. I was asked some good questions today about my sound projects;

how do you compose your tracks? This is something I’ve had straight in my own head for a while but when I went to put it into words I understood that it has it’s flaws but them again these flaws (variables) can produce some interesting mistakes. Basically I start of with an idea. The current idea is to create sound compositions of places that I spent time in whilst in Japan and over lay these with rhythmic repetition (a replication of noticeable situations of repetition I experienced in Japan) that subtly (sometime not so) awake the senses to suburbia’s natural rhythm, which is sometime I have always had an interest in.

The process of combining all these samples of sound that I compile starts of by playing, seeing what sounds goods what doesn’t and lots of constant reviewing. Taking time out to refresh my ears and then listen again. As I’m still on a pretty steep learning curve with sound (with everything for that matter) I just try not to get stuck in any type of concrete process because then nothing progresses. I find that each year for the last few I have continued to learn new processes and software and just hope that I can keep this up now I’ve finished uni because this is as big a inspiration as any to make new works, for example; I’ve had an idea to create something but was not sure how to go about it, them I find some software that make the process to getting to this idea a possibility. Probably my biggest inspiration is to get my work out there and share it with others, live or just distribution and exhibition.

Glitch

I have written more today about my performance yesertday, but I am going to wait until I’ve edited it more before I post.

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GLITCH

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Something I wasn’t really fond of to start with, but the more I listened the more I liked. I recently got my hands on some of the sweetest minimalist glitch I’ve ever heard. I have since dabbled in it myself and would like to push this even further, even more minimal.

Here’s a track for starters; “Ive got a nasty GLITCH”:http://s11.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3JFXCNPTO76WQ0BLXF5WKAB2W3 mp3

Today I Was That Guy

“What’s That Guy doing on that platform?!” Was the most used call of the day.

Venue: Hawley Beach, Tasmania, Australia
Title: Stranded
Duration: 7 hours 30 minutes

The performance started at around 11:30am today, to the dismay of regular beach goers and those who infrequently read ‘The Advocate’ (the local newspaper covered my return to Tassie recently and this performance piece pior to it starting < see previous posts >).

For me It was a day of contemplation and self analysis but lets not forget enlightenment for some others. I think I met no short of 50 people who came and talked to me whilst I was on my platform, some just to criticise and others who were more genuinely interested. One girl particularly, came out early in the morning and made the assumption that I was just plain koo koo (she let me know it) but came back later in the day and trod water for nearly half hour to ask me more detailed questions (curiosity got the better of her).

A particular note of interest (one that I have pondered before) is how people can’t stand to not know what is going on in front of them, I’m not sure if it’s laziness but people want the full story and they want it NOW, without having to use an ounce of their own brain power. It wasn’t rocket science from a visual point of view as to what I was doing but people want DEEP explanations. For me it was great, recently I being feeling overwhelmed by the abundance or decisions I have to make now and shortly that will affect my short and long term future but there was no better way to get it back into perspective than with some good old fashioned performance art.

This was by far the longest performance I have down (previous was “Reality Reflex”:http://www.tomhall.com.au/Sept23rd.html 2 hours 7 minutes) and for some reason it seemed easier. It could be to do with the amount of distractions around me but I think more so with the fact that I needed to get some things straight within myself. It’s hard to sum up a performance into words so soon and unlike Mike Parr I am not trying to make a direct political statement. Although, sometime it amazes me how little people will think for themselves, which I assume is quite all right with our current government (more sheep, less farmers). with this being a particularly noticeable point when performing to the general public.

I’m going to edit this tomorrow cause I’m too tired to read back through it, so please stop by for more pics a more concise artist summary.

Thanks to my Family for there help in particularly my girlfriend Yuko and my father Greg. Also, Andrew Rolands and the lady who got her daughter to swim out and give me some food right when I was getting hungry.

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One Performance to the Next

Tomorrow I’m going to sit atop of a platform that I’ve made (very makeshift, a nice dodgy feeling) and contemplate my existence, others and my surroundings all whilst being alienated from my reality (the ground) only to be un-controllably re-united with it again 6 hours later.

I can’t really see anything that can go wrong but possibilities include; Platform floating and me falling off (hopefully not until there’s some water underneath), being told by some do-gooder to get down or just giving up?! (everyone fails sometimes). I don’t really mind what happens because the wonderful thing I enjoy about Performance Art is all the elements that I can never control, the more you take that into the publics eye the less.

This time tomorrow night I’ll post some pics from the day.

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Recent sound works when I’ve had time (I should have heaps but I feel busier than I did in the last few months in Canberra) have become (planned) more field recordy and less effected. Still maybe a little to beat orientated for me, I really want to make them more everyday rhythmic, a representation of the space with an ephasis on the natural rhythms.

The first one off the rank is called ‘James Train Tokyo‘. All the sounds heard have come from a 20 minute segment recorded when myself and a friend, James Scanlon (from NY), caught locals trains to Tokyo from Kyoto in Japan. One of many interesting experiences I had in Japan and a great way to make good friendships, gooder.

“James Train Tokyo”:http://s44.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3N4TJUNZ197RD1KUEK6Q815673

I’m going to remake this track for reason stated above. A new version will be available in a few days.

I’ve also been playing with the joyous and sometimes scary GLITCH of which I’ve used to make an interesting track. I’ll master this out tomorrow and chuck it up for ya’ll to download.

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Till Tomorrow….