Beaching Strandbeest's

Dutch artist Theo Jansen has been building creatures for over 20 years, though i only recently discovered his work.  If you listen to him talk about his work, (which you can find here) you'll find that his interest is in creating a new life forms, and in the process finding out how evolution might have worked to result in you and i putting on fireman underpants this morning.

His work is truly beautiful and inspiring, and amazing.  i can't imagine the ingenuity required to figure out the hinges he's come up with to simulate the leg movement of his strandbeests.  Among the interesting facets of his creatures is their lack of body (aside from the larger creature above, which he "clothed"); they are almost all bones or, as he would probably insist, muscle, and in this sense are almost completely devoted to movement, or registering movement (wind).  They don't really have a brain, though he has simulated decision making with his "liar" device that you have to watch the video link for to understand, and so seem to have more in common with insects than animals, though i can think of similarities to jellyfish as well, in the way they are dependent on their element for movement.  They reminded me of those freaky silverfish you find in the basement and sometimes your bathtub (screaming sound), and both creatures' affinity to water reinforces this.  In both there is ambivalence to front and back, though the silverfish seems to know which way to go despite each end looking similar.

i appreciate that Mr. Jansen has located his creatures on the beach, where it reconciles his new life forms with the origin of land life as we understand it, primitive organisms that made their way from the sea to the land, though his strandbeests seem to be more enjoying themselves than searching for their first land meal.

Ferris Jabr recently wrote an interesting article in the New York Times on the nature of life, where he references Mr Jansen's strandbeests.

Crank Sturgeon

Back in the corner of your music appreciation room sits a lonely child playing with her chest hair & trumpets.  Not many pay attention to this child, to the child's delight, but there are some who find pleasure in the sounds of the back corner.  eye am juan.

If you aren't familiar, i throw a quick definition: noise is music minus the "rules" of music, though many in the corner find it fun to insert a sniff of melody, a pounding that reminds of rhythm, or voice whaling New Bedford.

The noise scene, however, has long been dominated by those enthralled with imagery most originally conjured in the late '70s by the band Throbbing Gristle, who were most interested in shining their light on the underside of society, and did their best to articulate the hypocrisy they saw through the display of crime scene footage, disections, and other visions of darkness during their performances.  30 years down the road, this display by lesser acts than Throbbing Gristle is, to put it mildly, tired.  Actually, its been tired for at least 20 years.  i can't tell how many performances i've seen where someone dressed in black (what else?) sits in front of a audience tinkering with obscure dials on a box while video footage is projected of napalm attack victims or some kitten having its tummy removed by a pit bull.  yawn.

There are, of course, exceptions.  Crank Sturgeon is an artist who's been performing since the mid 90's, but on a path that expands the definition of what "noise" is to include not just the sounds of noise but the phenomenal noise that exists between things that were never intended to be put together.  In this sense noise deals with the space between rather than the objects themselves, and so favors the medium of space and sound as its primary voice.  But the Crank version of noise includes not just the sonic, not just the sound of his homemade instruments and contact mic's, but the visual as well.  Crank Sturgeon performances are as much vaudeville as rock show, infused as they are with humor, irreverence, comment, and intelligence.  A summary, i think, of all that noise should lay claim to, but so rarely does.





His most recent performance was at the annual Sacred and Profane festival held at Peaks Island, Maine, in a concrete military bunker originally constructed to protect the east coast during WWII.  From the roof of the bunker, Crank suspended an airplane of sorts, sheathed in cardboard homeless signs, many donated by the homeless of Portland, of which there are many during this distressed time.  His sad plane swung back and forth, teetering and twirling, going nowhere, and sounding many a sputter as he sang a song of our world, and showed to all the unmistakable state of things.  That this performance was set in a military hall was all the more poignant, given the obscene excess of our military spending while so many do with so little.

art ramble

We, as a species, have declared ourselves to be the most clever of all the species wandering this planet.  No doubt we are on top of everything.  Not only are we are the only species to yodel with knickers glowing, but we're also the only species to make art.  And so i wonder; if we are the only species to make art, making it unique to ourselves, why is it such a struggle for us?  If it truly is in our nature, why do we wrestle with it so?  The collision here is with evidence that it's unique to ourselves and that it must therefore inform us about ourselves and our development, and with our difficulty in creating it, never mind defining it.  That art is the result of many collisions/intersections deep within the recesses of our evolution means only that the surface may be a facile one for our gaze in a moment of awareness, a flash of color and form or a sound that elicits a quick response that puts us in joy or dropkicks us into disappointment.  On its surface, we may see color, read words, hear melody, and follow dramatic action, but if we don't encounter meaning during our gaze, something that expands the experience beyond its immediate presence, we are likely to be disappointed, and that piece of art is unlikely to be held in high regard.

I've always thought art should be meaningful but felt that its primary objective was to subject us to beauty, not from afar, but from within, for in beauty is proof that we belong to the rest of the planet and that we are not some being apart from nature, but rather another piece of it, no more or less special than any other.  If we could create beauty, giving forth to us the same wonder and awe we experience in the landscapes and creatures around us, we would have verification that we do indeed belong, though we may have referred to this beauty in other terms, such as putting us closer to the divine.

After reading "The Art Instinct" by Dennis Dutton, i've come to believe that meaning is likely more important than beauty, no matter the definition of beauty.  This book made me realize that the artist is what interests us (historically) in art more so that the work itself, a concept that turned all i thought i knew about art on its head.  i always held that the Work has an objective distance from its creator, since in the end it must exist on its own, without the presence of the artist to prop it up with obscure intents and motivations.  A careful study of art history reveals that it is the ability of art to inform of its age and its creator that holds our attention over time, and that art with only beauty to sustain itself fails to engage our attention through history.  Mr. Dutton articulates this through his study of forgeries, noting that there have been many through time, many of them so brilliantly produced that they left little doubt among experts to be true "Vermeer's" or "Rembrandt's".  Yet when they are found to be forgeries they are discarded, no matter their beauty, for they cannot tell the story that we need to be told, or fit into the puzzle that is the era of their production.  We need art to tell us about ourselves more than we need it for the pleasure of its experience.  It is, over time, the only mirror we have, and if we find beauty alongside the insight and information it gives us, so much the better.

Excuse the lack of picture.  Imagine a dandylion stuck between a little boy's toes, with bees swirling and the windmill on fire.

Big Bambu

The Starn Brothers have an installation on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that consists of a hive of bamboo lashed together in an ongoing construction that one is able to wander through.

The project takes a natural weed, bamboo, and cuts it, moves it, lashes it, and fashions it into something belonging to "us", and in doing so appears to summarize our time on earth.  A project doesn't have to do much more than that, does it?  It is abstract, fundamental to its core, and brings us face to face with our origins, and perhaps the origins of art itself.  That it speaks to shelter, a making of place, creative use of naturally occurring materials, and displays our ability to imagine makes it a significant articulation of all that should embody art, without bending to current fashion.  That it crowns a museum devoted to the history of art seems all the more fitting, as does the concept of the work; that of a work in progress that the visitor, at the moment of ones visit, experiences to be a whole work, but is only a slice in time of a much longer period that can only be understood with the passage of time, just as those in the museum below, subjected to thousands of years of changing attitudes over just what is "good art".

Channel Bloom

The Fort Point Channel is blooming with plastic flowers.  Sniffy creatures of discarded plastic detergent containers are appearing and disappearing with the rise and fall of the sea and lunar pull.  Bright colors remind of the spring fresh promise long forgotten and collide with the history of a harbor long soiled, but now back to life despite a much darker larger picture.  This display is courtesy of artist Tim Murdoch, whose previous work has explored the linkages/separations between belonging and not, inside and out, and our relationship to nature.

With tide high, this bloomy vanishes as if in night or winter, and reappears when the tide again lowers and as such it seems to be keeping time more than we ever notice with the quiet rising and dropping of the water.  It signifies, but does so on more than one level, as the reminder of waters rising and dropping is also a reminder that Tide agent of our clean undies has in the past left us with frothy waters and fish floating sideways.  That the harbor is now "clean" may be cause to bloom a flower, but the sign of Tide reminds that all is not well.

art e

Art seems to matter, and it doesn't matter.  It is, in general, scorned by many who don't do it as a trivial pursuit, one with no function other than to satisfy eyes, and a waste of money when it comes to government spending and priorities.  F-22 fighter jets are held in much higher regard. It does, though, bring pleasure even to those who aren't supporters of art, and there may be no households in the world that contain no art at all.  i've long believed that art was one of the first means of communication for this species, and continues to communicate ideas that fail words.  But it may be that art has a more fundamental role in our species, one necessary to our survival.  That is the premise behind the book "The Art Instinct" by Denis Dutton, which i highly recommend.

Balance

Balance is the latest installation piece by artists Dwayne Bohuslav and Joanne Brigham, who together perform as Moving Bodies.  Their art typically addresses the most primal aspects of our existence and that of our planet, here using the theme of vernal equinox for a show that opened on the date thereof.

Though their themes are often primal in nature, addressing topics such as ice, human instinct, myth, and habitation,  their palette of materials is a modern one that attempts to reconcile these ancient themes with our modern lives, and discourage our ever increasing distance from a life engaged with the planet.

Many of their pieces are designed by Bohuslav, who is also an architect, and occupied by Brigham for a performance of her sound works.  This synthesis of space making with occupation encourages comparisons to the primitive hut, which is furthered by the ad hoc quality of the workmanship and which again attempts to reconcile modern life with our roots, just as it first did in the writings of Laugier in the 18th century.  That the installations are opened as a performance, a movement from within, rather than object installed in space for our consumption as is typical, demonstrates to the viewer our connection to these themes by showing how they may be occupied.  Past themes have allowed for the art viewer to be art participant, as they were encouraged to walk through elevated constructions where they set off sonic constructions and lights through motion detectors.

This piece, Balance, while scoring the vernal equinox in its tilted frame, also took inspiration from the Japanese Tale of the  Bamboo Cutter, which tells of a baby girl found inside a bamboo shoot and ends with her return to the Moon, from which she originally came.  The story of  something/someone from the earth returning to the heavens is a common theme through the ages, and exemplifies  our desire to make sense of our place in the realm of things, and reconcile our life on this surface with the sky above.  The scale change in the Japanese story, from bamboo shoot to Moon in the heavens, is typical of Japanese philosophy that finds equality between the tiniest detail and largest gesture.  In the Bohuslav work, one finds a massive structure overhead giving birth to small suspended bottles, scaled to ones hand, and making sense of "balance".

Many of the works by Bohuslav and Brigham are suspended from above with the viewer passing beneath, so that present in these pieces are representatives of the earth and heavens, thereby posing a meeting of body and mind, instinct and learned, and in the end, an articulation of our presence on earth.

House Holman

It's not often that you're able to compare a painting with a work of architecture, but i thought i'd take the opportunity to do so with House Holman, constructed in 2004 near Sydney, Australia.

This house has received a lot of attention due to its dramatic siting, and its unusual for a house, even one with a substantial budget, to live up to such a site, much less to exceed it.  The house is perched on a 70 meter cliff overlooking the ocean in what is otherwise a completely unremarkable suburb.  You will never see pictures of this house from the street, because the house is sited so as to rid itself of its mundane neighbors.

The designers, Durbach Block Architects, have said the inspiration for the house came from "The Bathers", a painting by Picasso i was unfamiliar with.

"The Bathers" 1918

Picasso did another work called "The Bathers" in the '50s, but i see more of this painting in the house than the later piece, so i'm assuming it to be the painting from 1918.  Its easier to understand the link between the house and the painting if you see the plans:

Level 2

Level 1

The most notable feature of the painting is the composition of the figures.  Two of them are resting on the beach, and belong to it compositionally as their figures are mostly enveloped by the beach.  The third figure, by contrast, is standing and expressively enchanted with her visit to the beach, with arms undone and playing with her hair as she gazes upward .  She breaks the edge of the beach and that of the horizon, as if to express her joy as a limitless one, belonging more to the clouds than the earth, pointedly expressed here by her white striped bathing suit foretelling the clouds above.  Her suit is blue, and here again Picasso identifies her as belonging more to the sea and sky than the earth below.

House Holman, like the figures in the painting, is both anchored to the earth and fleeing to the sea and sky, as you can deduce by the plans above and the pictures below.  It seems also, i think, to express as much joy as the woman in the painting.

The beautiful, sinuous forms of the Living/Dining spaces (02, 03 in plans above), dancing on a couple of columns and extending to the sea and sky in two different directions, have a dual nature in that they also inform the inflected space below (10), carved into the earth/context below and referencing a cave in its form, so as to reconcile earth and sky.  This same spacial device is also used to define the courtyard space that leads to the pool, where the apparently free form of the living space is disciplined into a conforming part of a semi-circular formal court that appears to emerge from the edge of the cliff, along which one walks on the stepped approach from the pool, and again reconciling earth and sky; the nature of a cliff.

The approach to the court

Living space setting up the formal court to the right

Entrance from Courtyard

View from Kitchen to Courtyard

Sea and sky