Acci-dental-work

Another detail of a larger piece.

Some times it's the little accidents make something pleasing. Often in the world of audio the "happy accidents" are left in, a mistake or unintentional slip that ends up with something awesome that would be near impossible to come up with on your own in the context of what you were trying to accomplish. The random act of something you did with out intent, that yields unexpectedly positive results is something rare and precious. I think as you come to enjoy this influence of chaos you also learn to run with it. This little detail is full up accidents both happenstance and forced. The positive and negative of a stencil switch places, the seeming random colors are actually shapes and letters near buried. The little odd dots are constellations of bleed through of a larger object. The light criss-crossing lines of gray that look like brush strokes, are actually my finger pushing around dried ink. I like to look at these fluid squiggles and wonder what in my brain was directing this voyage? Turn here, stop, reverse direction! I guess it's the same thing that tells you "that's enough ink there" "don't cover that bit up any more than it already is". Interesting stuff. This little detail highlights, what to me (in a staring at clouds sort of way) looks like some sort of weird beak nosed strider. The actual lighter brush strokes seem to add a sort of depth that starts to set a scene for me. The point of all this dissection is that what may seemingly be random may not be random at all. In my opinion it's this costume of randomness that makes some of the most interesting media... it's something I definitely strive for, but also something I don't want to push too far that it becomes robotic and, ironically, 'forced'. Sitting on the fence between "by design" and "by accident" is a funky mental balancing act.

Micro-looks

This is from a piece I did, that I actually have a title for (wow), called '9 Blocks'. I am rather fond of it. Like many of my works lately, I think the causal observer might glance at it and not take it in. Not what I see in it at least. I suppose that is an age old artist worry. In this one, as with some other recent ones, I have played with masking, in hopes that the 'pure' negative space will lead one to focus on the 'micro negative space' created by the overlaying. The more I think about it, this new style I have been playing with seems to be all about negative space, something I was told over and over I had entirely too much of in art class. I am posting these details of my recent pieces rather than showing the whole picture, in hopes that you can see a bit of what I see when I look at these, and not just the easily consumable chaos and colors. I particularly like the 'bleed' at the edges of the block in this one. This bleed is caused by the under laying watercolor and the ink as it seeped past the border of the mask. It's as if one world is seeping out into another. I have always loved the way liquids have spread into paper, going as far as they can into the little spaces and grooves between the fibers. I have often marveled at coffee stains or the spray marks left by stray food or water. It's a kind of art you just can't make.

There it is, in the details.

Me and Scott have completed three tracks for our Grackle Pop project, which will actually be released under the name Bluffs. This is a pretty big deal for us! Especially if you've known how long we have been making music together. You can get an idea of why it has taken so long by reading this post HERE. So we are still in the process of finding logos, fonts, making web pages and generally putting together a game plan for how we plan on putting it out and getting it into peoples ears. Fear not eager reader (and mildy interested reader) you will hear them soon enough. Part of the process is letting a few people hear the tracks as we decide what to do with them. So that involves creating the MP3's, tagging them with relevant information and assigning some temporary artwork to the files while we settle on art for the EP (or single tracks as it may be). So for some temporary artwork I created a file for the standard MP3 image size and "auditioned" (almost chose sections at random) several detail shots of some of my recent artwork, which I mysteriously referred to in this POST. So I thought I would share some of the choices I chose from:

Falling Tree Audio

Some years ago me and Scot decided to start a musical project. We both had strong backgrounds in the ways of electronic music. Agreeing that we would not me making 'dance' music, we decided to make something that would showcase the sounds we liked, something that would not really follow any rules (because you know, we're rebels. Cheese on!) and something that might even follow the accessible structures of pop music. This was Grackle Pop. Grackle Pop has since ended up sort of being an umbrella name for what we have been up to, and once more things have started to happen. As part of that process Scot and I have setup:


Go ahead and click that.
This is a place to showcase some of whats been going on in our speakers these years since the inception of the project. I wont explain too much more as I wrote a nice post HERE explaining why the blog is there. I'll still post audio oddities and such here, there may be some doubling up on both sites, but Falling Tree Audio will give a more complete picture as to what the two of us have been doing. Our first release will be coming up soon!

Speaking of doubling up, check this cool tile image comprised of details of pictures take with my Hazcam:

Multispozer

Click above to embiggen.

This was taken with my Holga on my way home from work. With the Holga firmly wedged in between the dashboard and the window I snapped pictures at various moments on the way home from work, thus this image is a mutli-exposure compilation of my daily voyage home. There are a multitude of amazing cameras out there that can give you a very concise, focused, image of what it is your capturing, I'm trying to use the Holga with it's 120 film to make a sort visual impression of what I want to capture, not just a record.

Art Detail

A detail section of a piece of art.
I've been working on a new style the last few years.
More on this later.

SXSW 2011

Another SXSW has come and gone! I don't plan on writing a detailed post of everything I did, but I just wanted to say... I had a great time. I decided against a wristband this year, there was TONS of awesome official showcases, but nothing I was dying to see or, as a bonus of living in Austin TX, would not be able to see in the coming year at some venue here in town. You can have an awesome time with out a wristband, this is something I have known for a while, and something that the rest of the world seems to be catching on to more and more every year. So much so that the free events may be getting out of hand, and organizers and talking about roping it back it in, which makes me sad, because I LOVE free. So many years I have carefully planned my SX, seeing new exciting acts and watching acts I've always wanted to see, but this year I just took it as it came, with only a vague skeleton of a plan to follow. I got to see good friends play good shows and wander aimlessly through down town alone eating free food and drinking free beer as I went. I got to ravage a free bar at an exclusive venue I've long wondered: "what's it like in there" (I later learned the floor collapsed during a fevered dance party... it was an old house indeed). I felt a solid concrete parking garage bounce like a trampoline, and even had a fleeting moment of "wow this seems really dangerous, am I about to be apart of a disaster?!" I got to see acts I'd seen before play the best set I've seen them play (TV on The Radio) and of course - see bands I've always wanted to see (Dead Milkmen - they really were fantastic). I even went to Flatstock and actually managed not to buy a new poster, a personal best! All told I had a great time, ate some great food, drank untold amounts of free drinks, and spent all of it with great company. I couldn't ask for more! I probably missed three times what I saw, but that's the way it goes. Every SXSW is a different experience for me, and this one was great! L85