kicking off spring break at Counterpath Gallery in Denver!

Counterpath is also a small press and a bookstore. 

Christopher and Rebecca check out some Ugly Duckling Presse books during setup.

It takes a village. 

Good thing we tested the fog machine first so the smoke alarm could be fetched and silenced for the performance. We had no ladder so we had to um,  improvise .

Ashley and Austin checking the throw.

Amateur astronomy in the Counterpath backyard  while waiting for start time

(Sun setting, new Moon, Jupiter, Venus)

Line Describing a Cone, about midway. Looking away from projector.

 Touching  it!

30 mnutes later & it's back out into the streets of Denver. 

Thanks to Tim at Counterpath Press, to Christina Battle for the fog machine, to Robby at Guitar Center for suggesting 'atmospheric' fog juice, to Film Studies for the projector and stand, 

and to everyone who came out to join us for Line Describing a Cone. 

<curtsies and exits stage>

WEEK NINE: LINE DESCRIBING A CONE, Anthony McCall 1973

http://counterpathpress.org/friday-march-23-8-p-m-line-describing-a-cone-1973-by-anthony-mccall

WEEK EIGHT: THIS ROOM WHERE TIME PASSES

 In 1969 composer Alvin Lucier sat in a room in Middletown Connecticut and recorded himself speaking a short text into a microphone. He then played the recording back into the room,  and re-recorded it. The new recording was then played back and re-recorded, and this process was continually repeated. Eventually <insert duration here>  the words become unintelligible, replaced by the pure resonant harmonies and tones of the room itself. All rooms have a characteristic acoustic resonance based on many factors including but not limited to shape and size, & certain frequencies will be emphasized as they resonate in the room.   His text is a description of  this process in action—"I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice."

Here is a 1981 recording of  Lucier's I AM SITTING IN A ROOM , but as Lucier is careful to instruct us, this experiment can be performed in any room, with any text, and using any kind of technology. After learning about and listening to the piece  in class, we brainstormed & collectively tried to figure out how we might recreate his experiment in our room. Here are some of the raw results using our smartphones voice memo apps!!! <because we are geniuses, ahem>

11:46 AM

12:13 pm

Speaking of listening, on Thursday we watched several tapes including BOOMERANG, a videotape made in a tv studio in Amarillo Texas in 1974. In Boomerang, Richard Serra trains the camera on Nancy Holt, who, as she speaks, hears her own voice played back, with just a slight delay, through a pair of headphones. Holt describes her experience as it occurs, becoming both the subject and the object of her observation. The spectacle Serra conveys is that of a woman transformed into an image before her very eyes (or ears—in this case) . Boomerang begins to question the effect on human consciousness of living in a world in which reality can be instantly transformed into an image—and not the “natural” image found in a mirror, but the media-inflected image found on a TV monitor.

BOOMERANG (1974) Richard Serra, with Nancy Holt

additional viewing: 

Gary Hill, Soundings 1978

Joan Jonas, Vertical Roll 1972

WEEK SEVEN: SOUNDS and SILENCE

White Painting, by Robert Ryman

John Cage composes  4'33" (1952) 
for any instrument. The score instructs the performer not to play the instrument during the entire duration of the piece. It consists of three movements, divided into thirty seconds for the first, two minutes and twenty-three seconds for the second, and the third being one minute and forty seconds -- hence, 4'33".

Bowed Film, Tony Conrad, 1975

Mark presented us with a piece inspired by Tony Conrad's film The Flicker.  You can read about Tony and see images from his works like Bowed Film ,Pickled Film , and Sukiyaki Film (where he throws food at the screen) 
We also watched an excerpt of his video performance Cycles of Threes and Sevens where he describes harmonic intervals usually expressed in musical terms with  a calculator as his instrument.



UK artists Benedict Drew and Emma Hart collaborate on sound/ film/performance works described here.
We recreated their "Untitled 2" for guitar and 16mm film, in which the film is threaded through the guitar strings. For our classroom version we made a group film loop of various colored leaders:

read: excerpts from Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage 1961

WEEK SIX: FLUXUS continued

We throw clay to shape a pot,

But the utility of the clay pot is a function of

The nothingness inside it.

chapter 11, Daodejing.

above: Recreating Yoko Ono's  only  work for video,  the self-reflexive closed circuit SKY TV (1966).

We set up a video camera without a capturing medium on the balcony of the VAC and framed for the sky on this particular cloudy day,  and ran the cable back into a tube monitor inside a darkened room where we watched the sky on television .
*

scores, instructions, performance, event:  where we received a set of performance instructions from artist and archivist Andrew Lampert :

our projectionists Rebecca and Elizabeth prepare their instruments

 Jeanne Liotta's Loretta and Eclipse, projected according to Andrew Lamperts score #1

Stan Brakhage's Dante Quartet and The Dead projected according to Andrew Lampert's score #2

+We then had our own Fluxus event!
by interpreting some selected scores from The Fluxus Performance Workbook

 Riley does Fluxus score #403 by Bob Lens: draw an alarm clock in front of audience. have an alarm clock installed. when alarm sound plays erase the drawing.

 Christopher performs Fruit in Three Acts by Ken Friedman, with some necessary substitutions.

Austin explains Fluxus in 5 minutes or less, using a few simple props.

Clarissa tackles Alison Knowles' Color Music for Dick Higgins

 Grant attempts Jackson Maclow's Social Project 3