posted
  • place: Golden, Colorado

cryptic and incomplete 2016 review

I think 2016 started with the thought that it couldn’t be more challenging than 2015. If change is a challenge, 2016 definitely was that.

It started out slowly, ensconced in the modest house I bought in Prescott in 2014 that contained my full art-media-production studio and archive in Prescott, Arizona. As the art-scene in Prescott consists mostly of bronze cowboys, turquoise-and-silver jewelry, and paintings of blue-eyed Indian children, my work had to be virtual and remote: Patrick of framework:afield invites a piece for his internationally syndicated weekly program on field recording; Arts Birthday; AudioBlast; Reveil 2016; continuing contributions to aporee::maps; and, later, Radiophrenia (Glasgow). Portrait work continues but I haven’t really put any new landscape images online for awhile.

One local exception came when Tom, the director of the Natural History Institute invited me to do a public lecture and workshop on ‘acoustic ecology’ titled “A Natural History of Sound” in March.

April saw something of a (Plotner) family conclave for Al’s interment at the Antelope Hills cemetery. I was the sole representative from the Hopkins/MacKenzie side of the family. Good to see those folks again, might be awhile before the next family-type conclave.

I spent significant time the past couple years on a conceptual re-development of the Ecosa Institute‘s ‘regenerative design’ curriculum with a small group of folks along with volunteer work at the nascent Milagro Art Center. more “cryptic and incomplete 2016 review”

posted
  • place: Trondheim, Norway

(no)music arena

(stereo audio, 176 mb)

Get online early to prep everything, stream at 1400 local time. As per usual, a single glitch pops up when I begin the live transmission, something that I have not experienced before: this is also a typical characteristic of the glitch. This time, my outgoing audio stream had a scratchy noise overlaying it. When I start the actual performance, laboite suggested a few fixes (restart the encoder – MacAmp on a separate G4, or reboot the system), which I did, along with swapping and testing cables and on. All during the time that the performance is running. Sweating. The stream ended up going down twice, but laboite kept me calm (this by no means the only technical glitch in the 24-hour program!). The end result was simply having the noise over the actual work which some listeners on the IRC channel liked. I didn’t, but so it goes. I have a hunch that it was an aliasing function between playing mp3 files and then encoding that (albeit an analog output through a mixer to the encoding machine) output to a mp3 shoutcast stream. I could hear that the G4 output was messy, but the output from the mixer was clean. Or, there was something wrong with the USB audio input device, or the audio circuits on the G4 (not outside possibility, as my own G4 has some issues with that), or, or … endless possibilities. That finished, I wandered over to TEKS to meet Espen, and ended up talking with Trine at the Contemporary Art space where an exhibition paralleling TMM is taking place. Then back home to catch up on logistic arrangements (buying four different transport tickets for the coming month).

posted
  • place: Trondheim, Norway

prepping

(no)music arena started in the night and goes all day today. got a small streaming situation set up at the Academy and was testing and irc-ing with some of the other participants — Jerome, Steve, laboite, and others. I’ll do a set mid-day. then matchmaking cranks into gear in the evening. meanwhile meet with Per Erik, another workshop participant for a focused dialogue on an even-morphing range of subjects.