Road Trip from CA to VT…

Posted on July 4, 2011 by admin

On June 19th 2011, I left Oakland, CA heading for Johnson, VT by my car to come to Vermont Studio Center. It was quite a trip, an enduring driving through heat and cold weathers, flooded lands, etc. etc.

Here was the route.

  • Day 1: Oakland – Sierra Hot Spring, CA
  • Day 2: Sierra Hot Spring – Elko, NV
  • Day 3: Elko – Hwy 93 – Hwy 86 – Idaho Falls – St Anthony, ID
  • Day 4: St Anthony – Yellowstone – 90 – Columbia, MO
  • Day 5: Columbia -Hwy 94 – Bismark, ND
  • Day 6: Bismark – Fargo, ND – St Cloud, MN
  • Day 7: St Cloud – Minneapolis – Wabasha, MN
  • Day 8: Wabasha – Hwy 90 – Janesville, WI
  • Day 9: Janesville – Kokkoman Factory (WI) – Milwaukee – Chicago (Maho’s)
  • Day 10: Chicago – Indiana Dunes – Bridgeman, MI for Cook Nuclear Power Plant – Fremont, IN
  • Day 11: Fremont, IN – Buffalo, NY – Niagara Falls, NY
  • Day 12: Niagara Falls, NY – Niagara Falls, Canada – Astoria NYC, Midori’s
  • Day 13: Astoria – Mass MOCA – Barre + Plainfield, VT
  • Day 14: Stayed at Emiko + Jeffery’s place in Plainfield
  • Day 15: Plainfield – Burlington, VT – Johnson, VT
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Prelude, Fugue and Riffs

Posted on June 3, 2011 by admin

Bernstein’s Prelude, Fugue and Riffs served like a music lecture for me. Its climax sounds “like” his West Side Story but this composition is a masterpiece of counter point, utilizing Baroque vocabularies, he created a great “written-out” jazz composition. The last part of Riffs, the third movement is quite ecstatic. It was premiered by Benny Goodman even though the composition was originally commissioned by Woody Herman. Well, my favorite Béla Bartók also wrote a tune called Contrasts for Benny Goodman. And I remember Stravinsky wrote Ebony Concerto for Woody Herman. There is an interesting episode about Bartók writing Contrasts which I read in his biography, but I will write about it when I find a good video of the tune on YouTube or somewhere else.

The name of this band seems to be Synchronicity and they transcribed the composition for piano, percussion, bass and yes, clarinet. Some parts sound rather interesting, but some other parts are a bit “thin” ensemble, especially “fugue” part has lost mastery of the original, but this version has its own charm.

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Recycling With a Vengeance

Posted on June 2, 2011 by admin

I think it is an interesting idea to connect recycling with our visceral feelings, and performative aspects of the event must be enjoyable. But, why do they need to throw bottles aiming at other people? Of course it has the effect of catharsis by doing something you would never do in your everyday life, and that is the function of feasts and rituals in many cultures, and there are some festivals in which people can throw something at other people such as Holi and Tomatina. And, in our contemporary society, can pigments and tomatoes be replaced with beer bottles if targets are physically protected by bullet-proof glasses? Yes, I make my work out of what I hate. Yes, I do. Is it the same? And yes, it is “recycling with a vengeance” which is much healthier than throwing a bottle at someone without any protection for real revenge. Is this a happy straw man strategy, or I fell into a straw man argument?

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Several days of a bit of both excitement and disappointment

Posted on April 23, 2011 by admin

Several days of a bit of both excitement and disappointment, and new days start and continue… I may not need to know what these things I am dragging behind me, and keep walking toward somewhere over a dense fog into where a big black bird flew away.

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Being guilty of same.

Posted on April 6, 2011 by admin

What is the good word/term for the method of criticism by acting or practicing the position of which I criticize? Basically it becomes critical because my activity itself throws something I want to criticize in the face of people. Activity itself is shown as guilty of the same. It’s like the work by Santiago Sierra and Artur Zmijewski.

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how we experience music when we listen to music from iPod

Posted on March 30, 2011 by admin

I am sure that many people have been talking about this. Music listening experience through iPod seems to be totally different from that through other media. Okay, first of all, I should think about the live performance setting. Then, recorded media, started as Edison’s cans and evolved to vinyl records. Having going through a bit of optical analog period (laser disks, etc.), digital came in, CDs. Then, computer with iTunes took over, then more mobile devices such as iPod started dictating. Well, the point I want to make sure is the changes in the complexity of information we experience related with this activity of listening. Probably to think about other human behaviors, this seems to be very important. It is the question of what kind of accompanying information/stimulation we experience when we do an activity. In the case of listening to music, or more specifically choosing a song to listen, vinyl record for example is accompanied with peripheral experiences such as going to an used record store run by this particular person who are way more knowledgeable than you are, then hold the huge paper jacket, carefully taking the record out and play “carefully again” on the play so that the tiny stylus does not scratch the surface with black shinning grooves. Accompanying sources of information/stimulation around playing iPod are totally different. Well, going back to the live performance, I can see total differences too. The complexity of accompanying experience almost make a particular activity unique.

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Janos Starker – Kodály Cello Solo Sonata

Posted on February 21, 2011 by admin

Amazing….

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Very cute…

Posted on December 31, 2010 by admin

Here are two new comers. Toro and Toro-Toro. I am not sure which is which yet. I just started a week ago or so, but I have spent so much money and my energy to keep these cute gems alive… When I was a child, I used to keep goldfish, but I did not have any chemistry knowledge you need for aquarium practices. So, many goldfish died and many other survived without knowing any reason. Now I am learning. The breed is called Edo-Nishiki (Old-Tokyo Calico), a variety of Ranchu.

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Passage to Squeeze

Posted on September 20, 2010 by admin

Shirin Neshat, William Kentridge and Mika Rottenberg

Disappointingly finding out the tickets for Edward Yang’s A Bright Summer Day at YBCA, I went across the street to SFMOMA. It was on the last day of Calder to Warhol, so there were many visitors. Even though, my target was Mika Rottenberg’s new work, I checked many sections of the museum. The two video works I had seen before by Shirin Neshat and William Kentridge again made me think about certain things around art making seriously again. The use of music in visual art. One of the most seductive and dangerous things. Yes, those pieces by them had much much more to talk about of course, but I am at this point focusing on music or musical aspect of a time-based art…. Well, I should write more about this sometime later…

Still images from Passage by Shirin Neshat and Philip Glass.

Shirin Neshat Passage

Well… I should say the work was so moving, but I am not sure if Philip Glass’s music was necessary. Of course, it is not thoughtful to divide a piece of art into its elements like that because an artwork is presented as one entity in front of me, and experiential wholeness is indivisible. Also, this work Passage seemed to be commissioned by Philip Glass.

William Kentridge’s Magic Flute. I have seen the piece in his retrospective exhibition at SF MoMA. Was it there?? Probably there… I cannot remember certain things lately. Mozart! Yes, his music is always the biggest question in my head, his insanity in using excessive amount of musical motifs mostly within magically crafted and well-ordered structures.
William Kentridge's Magic Flute

Mika Rottenberg’s work was amazing. I haven’t seen such a funny and sarcastic political work recently. It was very inspiring. Here I found an interview of her on YouTube.

Mika Rottenberg Interviewed:

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River

Posted on August 25, 2010 by admin

I grew up with rivers flowing through my city. Some were huge ones, and some others were almost like gutters. I realized somehow, I need water running very close to me. As ancient Japanese poets saw a river represent transiency of “everything,” I might need to feel constant change of time and probably imperceptible eternity, surrendering to tranquil shower of sublime.

I took this picture in 1994 in India. It’s Ganges river.

I am not sure if this was from the same trip, but it’s in Thailand, probably right behind the palace in Bangkok. I don’t think it looks like this anymore. It’s shot in 94 or 95.

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