partly cloudy, slight chance of video

Sonic landscaping

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:30:00 +0000

For the past year, at least, i've been wanting to work more on sound, yet i keep getting distracted (sometimes in welcome ways). I do have a tentative project coming up which is more sonically oriented than i've been able to do in a long time, but this hasn't yet made it out of the gate, so i shouldn't get my hopes up yet about being able to do it (that is, being able to stage it... i could still do it, and in all likelihood will do it in some shape or form at some point, because i really like the idea, but at this point i don't want to jinx it by getting too excited).

So right now i'm digging into the past a bit... inspired by one of my favorite musician/sound artists, Biosphere. Just yesterday he released a compilation of tracks that spans a long period of time, some of which i found during the Napster days in the late 90s, and i'm really excited to see these having a proper release. This compilation spans 13 years, from his early solo days to the mid 00s, which also happens to overlap with my first wanderings into sound. His sound ranges from treated (and untreated) field recordings, to drones, to types of musique concrete, to ambient and minimalist techno, and often drifts between these categories on single tracks.

His use and treatment of non-musical sound initially drew me to his output (along with his parallel to Brian Eno's ambient work of the late 70s), and this was not long after i had first gotten into working with sound, around 1998-99. In early 1999 i started working on what would be a long piece of sound work (for me at that time), and one that i started to consider as a soundtrack without a visual component. This piece used a disparate array of source material, but was inspired by a pretty singular event... a canoe trip i took with my friends Ian, Carissa and Quintin, on a river near Orlando, Florida. Ian had brought along his video camera, and was recording the various flora and fauna we encountered along the way. In particular, there was a large bird that seemed to be following us, and it had a call that was like an enormous shriek... it was a bit terrifying:

terrifying bird image by Ian

Besides sound samples taken from this video, other sources for this piece include a piano, shortwave radio, and samples from an analogue synthesizer, recorded at the SYCOM electronic music studios at the University of South Florida (i never took any classes there at the time, though i could have and should have, but i did have friends who worked there, so i spent a good deal of useful time down there).

This piece, which i called Prehistoric Alien Landscape, was edited during the spring of '99, and was nearly done when i had a hard drive crash that lost me all the sources files for the project. I don't remember the particulars, but in a nutshell i was left with a PCM version of a rough draft of the piece, and nothing else. This was a very rough version of what the piece could have been, and there is a lot i would have done to the piece had i not lost those files, but i still love it all the same. For me it's a kind of time capsule, and in some ways a place i'd like to return to, if only in the way i imagine sound.

It's been just about 13 years since i last worked on this piece, which i just realized by coincidence is also the same amount of time that Biosphere's compilation covers in his work. So up above is the whole piece, with an image by Ian, of that bird from the canoe trip.

Bookless (here's an epilogue)

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:30:00 +0000

2nd floor at Bookless

Such a fun place to be, it was... loads of great artists (around 100 of those), and such a great response from the community to it (over 5000 showing up over the course of that day). From all i've spoken to, I think it's given everyone a real boost and shown what is possible here if everyone gets together and makes it happen (it helps as well to have such a great organizer in Trent Miller). There are some really good post-show reviews, here here here, and some great photo essays and really good documentation of some of the work... lots of it was very temporary, so it's great that we've got such good documentation. Plus, there was the photo booth, in which our books had a recurring role.

1st floor

For my part with Nate Davis, it was a lot of fun to do and i'm really happy to have taken part. I'm really glad i chose to do a piece that explored the library spatially, and made connections with that other physical aspect of the place, those books. For me there were lots of small surprises along the way, making it all the more fun to work on. Also, it was my first collaboration with Nate, and all the more interesting for this... it was great to hear how he responded to my video, and i'm really happy with the results (he was also very helpful in getting the video done, pushing the books around the library and suggesting clever ideas for what the books could do).

basement floor

Unexpectedly (for me anyway), i feel like the biggest response to the work was from the kids, earlier in the day. I'm not sure if it was because TV is such a magnet anyway, or the nature of the animation... maybe good timing, harkening back to the Saturday morning cartoons of yore? I heard from people that they wouldn't take off the headphones, transfixed by Nate's soundtrack i guess... further study is definitely needed.

basement floor

Fatherland - Родина (re-post)

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:21:00 +0000

I recently found a post on a Russian blog about my video Fatherland (Experimental Television Center full frame mix), and i was lucky enough to have it translated by my friend Lisa, who is fluent in Russian. With their permission, here is the translation of the post:

Fatherland

Toby Kaufmann-Buhler
6:38

The present film was created at the Experimental Television Center in New York. In essence it is a rather complex video based in several levels: the documentary and the artistic. The relationship between people, space, history, and consciousness is examined. In the course of nearly seven minutes the author tries to draw the observer's attention to the most important aspects of our life. The place we were born, our parents, the path where we took our first steps – all of this forms our subsequent life. And when we return to our homeland, we feel all of the atmosphere that formed us. The landscape changes, but it remains its former self. Just like the characters: besides the director, in the given space we also find the camera-operator, who basically has no relationship to the history of the main character. But from now on he is part of this unified space. Memory – that is what drives the entire human existence.

About the author
The Englishman Toby Kaufmann-Buhler studies the relationships that exist between the picture, sound, and audience. In each of his films he looks at the picture as a single entity, and as as a way of expressing the director's thoughts. He studied at the University of South Florida (2001) and also at the Royal College of Art (2003).

Installations in time & space, now & then

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:58:00 +0000

Begin at the End (1998) - 4 slide projectors/3 soundtracks

Since way back in 1998, installation work has been a big part of what i do. Thinking about a space, and how the work can be part of that space at that particular time, has been a central preoccupation of mine since those early days.

It's not very often that i'm able to take over a space and work in this way, so each time is usually a very different approach and experience; but i'm fortunate right now to have quite a few recent, current and future opportunities to do this type of work. The recent Horizon Life installation in the "Time (Im)material" show was a great experience, and was really the culmination of a lot of work, going back a number of years.

Currently i'm also working on a site-specific video animation piece (with lots of help from Nate Davis and Trent Miller) for a local event, "Bookless", that will be happening in late January in the empty downtown Madison public library (currently closed down for a complete renovation). This piece uses materials directly from the library, has been shot on-site there, and will be installed in multiple locations inside the library during the event. So, it will be a completely site-specific installation for the event, and my goal is for it to have a symbiosis with the space, a library empty of its usual inhabitants, the books. Below is a promo clip for the event, using material from my piece...

Coming up at the beginning of 2013, i'll be having a solo exhibition at the Watrous Gallery here in Madison, which i'm excited about. Aside from being my first solo show in quite a while, this will be my first opportunity in a long time to take over a space and have multiple works that play off each other. So, i'm planning to do two installations, and possibly some smaller work, that will hopefully tie together all my work of the past several years.

One element of installation work that i've always been interested in is that of scale: with my first back in 1998, i was interested in filling spaces as much as i could, with both projected imagery and sound (to me there was something very theatrical about doing installations, and also illusory, since once the machines were shut off the work would be completely gone). Then, at grad school in London i started doing very small installations... even when i did a solo show in a one room gallery, i didn't fill the space; it was a collection of loosely-connected elements, all separated in space. I was going for intimacy with the work, and was trying to turn it toward something more personal as well, so i felt that the installation design needed to reflect this.

In the past several years my installation ideas have grown larger and more complex, but i still want to retain this intimate aspect that i have been cultivating in the work. I hope to retain a balance between this growth in scale and the more personal ideas i have and will continue to explore.

Here's an album of photos following the installations i've done since 1998.

Parting shots...

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:20:00 +0000

Yesterday i took down the installation, which (with a bit of help) took only about 3 1/2 hours... compared to the 7 days of work it took to put it up, easy.

So, here are some last shots i took of the installation, which is about as well documented as i could want. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and it was well received... since i work so close by i was able to spend a lot of time at the gallery, and it was fun to see how people reacted to the work, took it in, and what it did to the gallery space.

And it was really enjoyable to be in this show with such great Madison artists... Trent, Susan and Michael have been great to work and show with, and i think this was a very coherent and exploratory group of work.

Up into the mid-show

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 04:16:00 +0000

We're now in the midst of the middle of the show at 1308, and so far it's been well received. Overall i'm really happy with the show... everyone's work is really good, and it all works really well together in the space. Here are some photos of it in situ.

There have been some ongoing technical difficulties with my installation, some of which i think have made it difficult for many visitors to get the whole of it. Early on in the show, there was a problem with the frame and/or the projection... the alignment of the whole projection went off, so we adjusted the positioning of the projector (much simpler than messing with the screens and the frame itself), and that seems to have solved the problem. Not sure what happened, but this has been fine for a while now... if we're lucky, this will continue to not be a problem.

More problematically, the sound level has been very erratic, which seems to mostly be a technical glitch with the sound system (though we haven't been able to rule out human interference). Since my office is so close to the gallery, i get to experience this firsthand sometimes when i go over there, but i've also had a few people tell me that they just can't hear the sound. Obviously, a problem when this large part of the piece isn't discernible... so with my friend Nate's assistance (as if he didn't help out enough with designing/building the frame), i've borrowed a speaker from him and have installed it in the gallery, bypassing the internal sound system, resulting in a consistent soundtrack for the installation. It sounds really good now... one downside of the gallery sound system was that the speakers are mounted way up in the ceiling, making the sound seem very cavernous (even though it was throughout the gallery). Now, the sound is actually much closer, and it sounds quite good with Nate's great speaker.

I've gotten some good feedback about the piece, and i'm hoping for more in the coming weeks. Below is a bit of video documentation (with overdubbed soundtrack) of the installation... i need to do more of this (and better), but it gives a sense of what the piece is and how it is situated.

"Time (Im)material" install photos (part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 22:30:00 +0000

More photos from the show install, very excited...

Michael getting ready to hang his work

more screens!

Susan getting ready to hang her wall pieces

Trent's in to hang his work...

almost there...

"Time (Im)material" install photos (part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 22:30:00 +0000

So on Friday i was the first one into the gallery to start the install, and there has been no end of stuff to do for my part. Susan has been coming in since Saturday (and Trent and Michael have dropped by to check in), and Jennifer has been a big help as well with my stuff, along with taking most of the photos documenting the process...

for me, the hard part: setting up the frame for the screens...

the frame mounts on these stands, going up to the hanging height of 10'

at the other end of the gallery, Susan starting on her floor installation...

up on the hydraulic lift, beginning work on the wires that will hang the frame from the ceiling...

done with the wires, taking off the tape that secures the frame to the stands, in order to remove the stands...

whoa

it hangs!

now, the harder part, hanging the 24 screens...

Gettin' ready for 1308

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 02:56:00 +0000

This past weekend i got together with my friends Susan Johnson White, Michael Velliquette and Trent Miller to have a look and listen in each other's studios to what we're all doing in preparation for our upcoming show at UW's Gallery 1308... that is, everyone's studio but mine, since i can be portable and we've got a projector already living in Trent's studio.

These were enlightening visits... we started at Susan's home studio, where she showed us the floor piece-in-progress (which will be quite large) and also the works on paper she has been doing, all based on a piece of fabric that originally belonged to her grandmother. This work is fantastic... it's intricate, organic and delicate, referring simultaneously to the body and to past lived experience.

Next, we went downtown to Michael's studio, which was chock full of large and small pieces that he's been getting ready to take up to a solo show in Green Bay (including a great and literally towering piece, on a pedestal, that rotates via motor and has shiny bits of mirror). He showed us various pieces of work he's doing, including some work-in-progress, along with what he's planning to put in our show... he's definitely very busy with it all, and doing great work.

Last, we went a little ways over to Trent's studio/barn, where we could see his paintings-in-progress. He's doing some very interesting work, very layered and nearly abstract (in the large work), but with some figuration starting to develop in the density... really looking forward to where he goes with this work.

I then showed Horizon Life, and talked about what i'm doing to the piece in preparation for this new installation version. I'm in the process of re-making part of the video, so that it works better in looped form, and i need to work some on the soundtrack as well (still need to finalize how the sound will work in the show, but this will become more clear when we install in early October... for now, i'm just happy that everyone seems to be not too bothered by the slight craziness of my soundtrack).

It was great to see where everyone is at with their work, and get a hint of how everything will come together for this show. I'm excited about it, since all are doing really interesting work, and i think these will come together in the gallery really well. Michael and Trent have already shown together earlier this year, so their work already has that connection, but i think that (with what we've already begun planning in terms of the layout) there will be a great flow for this show, between all four of us.

Father time...

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 22:05:00 +0000

This Sunday is Father's Day, and Saturday (tomorrow) is my dad's birthday. This year marks 25 years since he passed away, and he would have been 67.

The Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol. 9, No. 4, 1987

I've been slightly asthmatic lately, whether due to allergies or the prevailing weather, i'm not sure. It's strange timing though, as this is the condition that my dad suffered through, leading to his passing.

A more fortuitous bit of timing... yesterday i found out that a couple of videos of mine have been accepted into a July show in San Diego. One of these has never been screened before: Fatherland (Experimental Television Center full frame mix). This piece was a remix of Fatherland i did while in residency at the ETC in 2008. Fatherland (from 2007) in turn was based on source video (shot by Ian) from a road trip in 1999; when passing through New York, we stopped at the Chappaqua Quaker meeting house & cemetery where my dad is buried. When coming up to his grave (as shown in the piece), we found it covered with ivy and leaves. As also shown in the piece, my first impulse was to uncover the grave; it was only a bit later on that i realized it was poison ivy covering his grave (there is no irony in this for me, other than incidental circumstance, so it's not something that plays into the videos, for most anyone but me anyway).

This is some of my most personal work to date, and it leads in a direction that i hope to go further down with future projects. However, until now i haven't had a chance to show this work to the public; now i've got this screening, and also with the Watrous Gallery show (in early 2013), i'm planning to show the original Fatherland piece as an installation.

This work opened a door for me, and it's a door that remains open. For some time i had been searching for a way to explore parts of my family and their pasts, and when i came to make this piece back in 2007, it made sense for me to start with my father, in order to explore some of my feelings about the chasm between us, and where both he and i come from.

My father came from a time and place that i can't begin to imagine: he was born in 1944, in the midst of WW2 Nazi Germany. Soon after he was born, his mother was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in the Czech Republic. She was fortunate enough (unlike a number of others in our family) to live through the end of the war, and when the camp was liberated she apparently had a long and hard return to her family in Heidelberg. When i was small, before the end of her life, i was fortunate enough to meet her; hers is definitely a part of the family history that i would like to explore more fully. My father left Germany in the 70s for a career (with a German publishing house) in New York, and there our family started. In 1986, at the time of his passing, he was preparing to become a full US citizen (and also at that time, i have a fond memory of him telling me that he would teach me the German i constantly heard him speaking in his study). We never did start on that, and ever since my education in the language has been fitful and unfulfilled. It's a bit ironic then that a number of years ago, because my father never gained US citizenship, i was able to apply for and receive a German passport (fortunately never having to demonstrate any command of the language).

There is much about my father's side of my family that is buried to history or obscured in memory, but there are some very interesting people and stories there that i would like to explore (for my work, and also just to know). I don't yet know the forms this work might take, but i think these will be suggested by what i learn (and i should also say that my mother's family will also play a large part in this eventually as well, as there is much i can learn from it, and the crossovers between the two sides).

In any case, i have a lot of work ahead, but it's good to pause and remember, even if memory grows more blurred with the years...

photo on top is my dad playing ping-pong in Germany sometime in the 1960s

Looking at the work, from many ways...

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:29:00 +0000

I started this blog last year with the idea (to begin with) of showing progress on the multi-screen project (in whatever iterations it might appear), and now with this first show of the screens this project has progressed into something very real. Still, there's more work to be done, since even with its first showing it wasn't possible to fully deploy the screens. There's a lot we got right about the setup of the rig (mostly thanks to Nate's design ideas), but more time and thought needs to be put into the hanging of the screens in particular. I've gotten some good advice and tips from people that will help to do this right next time, at least.

This said, I'm definitely happy with this first piece i've done with the screens, in terms of the video, and i think that Nate's music comes together with it really well. The video had a long production process (i was working on it basically from last October/November and finished it in April), but such is the way with the matrix frame process, plus this is one of the longest videos i've ever done (and definitely way more complicated then the longest one).

Lots of ideas went into the piece, and it got over-complicated for a time, but then it naturally shed some of this and simplified, which was a great relief. I do have this problem on long-term projects where i begin layering in more and more ideas, and the work gets over-stretched under its own weight. But i do find much of the time that i'm able to strip out these layers, and still underneath is something more simple and cohesive (most of the time anyway).

The nature of collaboration also makes me want to keep it simple as well, especially this being a new collaboration. When collaborating with others in the past i've fell into a trap of trying to throw too much into a piece, with the work suffering as a result. So with this last piece, even though over time i started to complicate the work, at least in the end i could rein it back in again.

It also helped me a lot to keep in mind other work of mine that had always remained simple (such as this and this). And it definitely helped as well that this new work has much in common with those older pieces and could draw on the ideas they represent. From the beginning i really wanted to do something playful with this work, partially because i've always had this sense of Nate's music as being very playful, and also because of the performative aspect. So this underlying playfulness that i had embedded in the structure of the video wasn't ever missing, and could be brought back to the fore pretty easily.

So i'm happy to have done a quite big, yet simple (i think) piece of work. Certainly not simple to make, but pretty simple to understand, yet hopefully still engaging in its course. I'm really looking forward to being able to experience it again soon, with the music, and hopefully in the near future also being able install it with the screens somewhere (hopefully before 2013, when the installation is supposed to happen at the Watrous Gallery). A big hope is to be able to bring the performance down to Florida, so my family and friends down there get to have the experience.

As for the screen rig, it's going to have many uses. I've got a show coming up in the fall in the new Union South gallery (with some good friends), and i'm planning to install Horizon Life as an installation there. I'm hoping to use the screen frame in that installation, and i'm optimistic that we'll be able to make it work in that gallery. I'm also hopeful that the frame will be usable in the Watrous gallery show as well, but we've got a lot of time to work this out.

Since last week's show was the first (and so far only) chance i've gotten to experience the piece as a whole, with the music, i'm eager to get this chance again. Maybe a little while, but i've now got a some small sense of it, and i think it will have a good long life, at least...

Post-show look back...

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Fri, 13 May 2011 22:30:00 +0000

I've been thinking a lot about the show, and how it all went down. From load-in to showtime, there was a lot for us to do, and the projection screen rig for my video was perhaps the most complicated aspect, if only because it's the first time we've put it to use. Nate's design of the frame from which we hung the screens worked really well, and was set up very quickly (see below for photos). The hanging of the screens themselves was what caught us up, and with a little more preparation we could have had a much easier time with it.

It was a crazy hectic day, for a number of reasons, but mostly in the end we learned quite a bit about setting up the projection screens (mostly, for me, that i should be more organized for efficiently mounting them to the grid, and also have a very set and quick way to hang them for adjustability).

Due to these issues, we were only able to hang half of the screens, 12 of the 24, before running into showtime. Fortunately, this was good enough, and i decided to simply cover up half the projection as best i could. We couldn't have gotten even this many up without the help of Nate's father, who very fortunately was able to spend all day with us helping on the screens and other equipment issues.

The performance itself went really well, i thought, and i was really happy to finally be able to experience the piece in full (at least with the music, if not with the full video). Now i won't be able to re-visit the video (silent for so long) without any accompaniment, so i'm trying to patiently wait for Nate to provide a recording...

I was also really happy to see all the people who came out for our show (thanks all!)

I've been accepted for a show at the Watrous Gallery (also in the Overture Center), so we're planning to set up this piece as an installation there, and in that context we'll have the opportunity to get it right. As a stage performance it's a difficult task to get it all set up, but with more efficiency (and more help, probably), it could be done in shorter time. In whatever context though, i'm looking forward to doing it again.

Below are some photos from the day of our show along with some details shots of the screens being packed up at home....

assembling the screen grid, which (in Nate's design) is made out of 3 separate pieces, that all fold up for compactness and mobility - photo by David Bartlett

mounting the screen grid on the stands (another of Nate's great ideas, since this allows us to set up pretty much anywhere) - photo by David Bartlett

checking the screen grid height (in the end, about 8.5 feet) - photo by David Bartlett

trying to figure out the best way to tie the screens to the wood slats that will be mounted on the grid, while still also making them adjustable for height (getting this right took a lot of time) - photo by David Bartlett

mounting the first screen with the wood slats (and trying not to drop it on the marimba) - photo by David Bartlett

screens organized and ready for action - photo by David Bartlett

with the projection running, lining up the screens already hung - photo by David Bartlett

12 of the 24 screens hung, and in the end this is what we had time to do, as the process was very slow - photo by David Bartlett

photo by David Bartlett

packing up the screens at home (1 row)

packing up the screens at home (2 rows, and my trusty sewing machine)

all boxed up for another day...

THIS weekend...

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Thu, 05 May 2011 22:30:00 +0000

Excited busyness, and business...

http://www.overturecenter.com/production/nathaniel-bartletttoby-kaufmann-buhler

Here's some of the promo stuff i've been working on:

A mock-up of what the final show might (but won't) look like, and the flyer. I had been working on different imagery/designs, but ended up out of time (and with a dead camera), so i mined what i already had available, which worked out.

Seasonal life, re-visited & re-created

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 22:30:00 +0000

Spring is creeping up on us here in the upper midwest of the US, but that's always iffy this time of year, when the occasional snowstorm could be thrown in before winter gives up. In The Same but Different, the seasons played a large part, governing one of the cycles of the piece, but they were also a backdrop, as so much of what happens in that work is about interiority.

As a contrast, in my new work (a collaboration with Nathaniel Bartlett), the seasons, or rather an interpretation of the seasonal cycles of activity, are the primary structure of the piece. It seems to me that "seasonal activity" affects us in (at least) a couple of major ways: by observations we make (say, looking out the window), or by a direct impact on our sense of being (say, slipping on a patch of ice and falling down... this i've had direct experience of a couple of times in the past few weeks, ouch). In either way, we might consider the experience to be "seasonal"... not out of the ordinary in our experience.

With this work, i'm interested in exploring the boundary where the seasonal meets the "unseasonal". The unseasonal could refer to a myriad variety of events or experiences, many of which seem to have happened in the world recently, both on a local level and far away from here.

One of the main points i'm interested in with this work is the relationship i constantly return to, that of sound and image, and how their ordinary relationship can become unusual, or unseasonal.

We have a premiere show for this work on May 8, here in Madison... in the meantime, i may have further things to say about it, given the time.

Some stills, from "spring":

Winter road signs...

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 23:00:00 +0000

http://listen.grooveshark.com/s/Winter+Now/3p49sY?src=5

So what's new? Lots of stuff, pointing in different directions, though right now most everything is off on a vague horizon, but such is winter here anyway. It's almost over, but doesn't seem so until it actually is... i'm in no hurry though.

My current collaborative work with Nathaniel Bartlett is coming along well, and is very busily humming along. We have a concert date set for May 8 at the Overture Center here in Madison... my first real deadline in a long long time. I'd like to post something related to this work here at some point, given some time... but no promises.

I've also got a piece (an edited version of A Saw in the Sound Garden at the Experimental Television Center) in the Washington Project for the Arts' Experimental Media Series, juried by DJ Spooky... this has been touring around from January - April, and my piece is on the program for four dates, in D.C. (Phillips Collection), Baltimore (Maryland Institute College of Art), Silver Spring (Montgomery College), and Philadelphia (International House Philadelphia). It's great to be included in this... only wish i could attend, but i'm lucky enough to have friends able to attend in Philly.

I also have another group show coming up, with three local artists, at the new Gallery 1308 in the newly re-opening Union South here on the UW campus... this will be coming up in the fall, from October to November. The show will be with Trent Miller, Susan Johnson White, and Michael Velliquette; i'm excited to be showing with such a group, as it should be a very interesting collection of work. My plan is to include the Horizon Life installation, and it's about time... this is a little ways away, but i've got quite a bit of prep work to do on the piece, in any case (and i really need to figure out the screens).

I'm also excited to be showing with a group of artists whom i know... it's been too long, really since grad school, that i've been able to do this. Trent and Michael have a great show up right now at Rockford College, and we were able to get down to it... their new work is really wonderful (along with their collaborative pieces). It was also great to see Susan's work at a show here in Madison around the holidays; i think there's going to be a lot of depth and dimension to our show, so i'm really looking forward to it.

http://davidclowery.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/11-flowers.mp3

Not much moves that isn't pleasing and doesn't repeat

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 22:30:00 +0000

It's been about 13 years since i did this photo series, back during undergrad at USF in Tampa, and (of course) i had no idea that it would become a reference point for me while working on this new project. At the time, i was making a transition from being non-committal about studying music (and mainly music), to being mostly committed to studying art (and anything else interesting). A big part of this transition was the realization that i could do what i wanted with sound (as opposed, but not totally unrelated, even if sometimes done badly, to music) in the confines of visual art, and i could get by.

I did this series nearly 2 years before i first approached video, and it definitely anticipates that jump into movement (and even more so, the static frame that i've made much use of in video as well).

My first video had no sound (and is still my only soundtrack-less video), but it references sound and music. In these photos, i was going for sound as well, but i really wanted to explore the idea of sound and the ways in which it can work interdependently with the visual while still retaining its own identity.

Now, in my new work with the multi-screens (and particularly in the new collaborative project), i'm feeling the need to refer back to my past photo work, which was done so much by hand using exploratory processes. Very little that i'm doing currently can be considered "handmade", but i still want to recognize the importance of that direct connection and feeling, as i think this is going to be a big part of the work ahead.

What's being multi-screened

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 22:00:00 +0000

I've got two projects going right now with the multi-screen method i've been developing since the summer (see below): one uses an old piece that hasn't gotten much exposure, and the other is brand new, made for the many screens.

I did Horizon Life back in 05-06, and it was the first big project i worked on while developing the matrix frame video method. Despite pushing it a bit (but not as much as other work, admittedly), it hasn't been shown anywhere, besides some private screenings. This is probably at least partly because i've had little faith in it since i made it. For a long time, it didn't seem to be quite everything i wanted, conceptually, so i began putting it aside as a purely process-oriented piece... more about developing the matrix frame method then about anything in and of itself. However, i've still always loved it (even while putting it down), and this summer when i began developing the multi-screens, it seemed a natural fit for Horizon Life to be my test piece when hanging the screens. When i showed the screens to Jennifer, one of her initial reactions was that she really liked this piece with the screens... it really worked for her, in the way that the images were staggered and thrown into a kind of relief. I could really see what she meant, and this began making me think about the piece in a new way: the multi-screens enhance a factor in the piece that is basic to its conception, bringing the experience of it back to what i was thinking about at the time of its making (which was, after all, a very eventful time in our lives, but also one filled with uncertainty).

So now i'm renaming this piece with an addendum, "the appearance of distance"; this fits with its new identity as an installation piece using the multi-screens, and perhaps nods towards the past that is so much a part of it as well (an aspect of distance that is a part of time as well as space). It's going to take some editing for this to become an installation, but (hopefully) not too much. I have plans to submit this installation as part of a group show, and i'm pretty hopeful about it.

So, what's new? Well, since the summer i've also been talking with a local artist about doing a new collaboration. This artist is a musician & composer, and we first saw him perform last year here in town. Since that time, i've always thought his music and performance work (which is really singular and very interesting on its own) would be really great with a visual accompaniment. Earlier this summer Jennifer encouraged me to get in touch with him, so i did and to my pleasant surprise he's been very responsive to my ideas. It turns out to be really good timing with the multi-screen method, as it seems to be quite complimentary to what he's doing. We're now getting started on this collaborative project, and we'll be working on it through the winter. There are some possibly tentative plans to get it staged in the spring, and if all goes well it might go on tour with him at some point after that. Also, we're planning to have this work do equal time as a gallery installation as well as a performance work, and it should work well either way. It's definitely in the beginning stages, but i'm pretty excited about it at the moment.

I'm happy to get back to collaborative work... some of my best experiences have been in working with other artists, since what comes out is always at least different and interesting, and the time spent can have very lasting effects.

The Same but Different, but the same...

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 22:30:00 +0000

Recently i read an article on Slate that made me think of my piece in the Triennial; it's about the recent Wikileaks scandal of the release of classified information regarding the war in Afghanistan, and it relies pretty heavily on the common metaphorical use of the drip in discussing such "leaks" (even in the accompanying illustration).

I'm not going to make a direct link between my piece and the subject of this article, since that would be stretched to say the least... but i am interested in the use of the metaphor here, since it's the same metaphor that i constantly revisited while working on the piece. This is mainly since it is a metaphor that appears so often, in so many places (whether in TV/film, text or other media), and is so often used to convey stasis and movement simultaneously. I even kept a log, for a long while during the creation of the work, of movies and TV shows that featured drips of some kind, and how they were used in the action or mise-en-scene. The drip has very particular uses, mostly with negative connotations in relation to the characters or stories, so this definitely had an influence on the progression of my drips.

It seems to me that, in the Slate article, the leaking drip has both negative and positive associations. The writer encourages leaking, rather than "gushing", all the information out, so that it drips in a slow feed to the news organizations and can be properly processed for reporting. Underneath this is the general idea that the leaking is negative for the entity that is being leaked from... this is positive from the standpoint of journalism (for which all must be known, eventually), but it's a taboo for the source of the drip. However, it's taken as a given that once the drip has started, it can't be stopped (no matter the rate of the leak).

It seems to me that the drip/leak is a kind of process, a translation, from one entity to another. In the case of the government leaks, it's from a very closed one to a very open and public one. So there is a movement from one to the other, but there is also a need for the information to be static and end up on the other side in roughly the same form (if only more digestible for the public, as the Slate piece argues for).

Back to my piece, i like to think that this is essentially what is happening with the drips: though the larger causes (sources) of the drips are pretty obscure, the results are a kind of translation, revealed in the paper to be quite clearly delineated (only here these essentially signify nothing but an absence, at least from the image).

Interestingly, the addendum at the end of the Slate piece suggests that maybe (in a way perhaps a mirror image of my piece) this deluge of information had to be released in this way, since if it had been dripped out it wouldn't have signified anything, as it is just the preliminary material for reporting.

Some stills:

Bits of time and space hanging in a void

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 22:30:00 +0000

Continuing with this thread about the multi-screen method, i'm pretty excited about the potential of it for installations and performance based work. Most interesting for me is that i can set up the multi-screens in really any way in a given space, provided there is a consistent ceiling space to hang them. I can hang them low to the floor, or higher up and closer to the ceiling (and the bigger the projection, the more variation in height that can be achieved). I can space them out so they cover more "depth" of space, or a more shallow area, hung closer together (the more spaced out, the more that focus is an issue, in that the images will become more blob-like and lose their edges, but this is something to experiment with, i think).

So yesterday Jennifer and i were looking at the projection of Horizon Life on the screens, and she remarked on how this piece seems to be much more alive, and less flat, with this method (also she said that the eyes are much less creepy somehow). She was lying on the floor and looking up at the screens, and from that perspective the effect is most dramatic... the screens are more spaced out, so the viewer has to look around more to get a sense of the whole. She also suggested that it would be interesting to show something like this where she works, which is in a 19th century-era observatory building (with functioning telescope). It would be very interesting to set up these screens in such a place, to directly experience these floating elements of time and space (along with sound) in a place that has such a history of observing this same phenomena, more or less.

If a second projector could be used, it would be interesting to try projecting on the opposite side of the screens (especially experimenting with different kinds of material for the screens), as this might lead to some interesting blends of video.

But for now probably best to keep it non-resource intensive, since as it is i'm just using one projector, which makes it a good possibility for any gallery based installation (in which i would possibly need to provide equipment) or in a performance situation (in which equipment setup options are tightly controlled and therefore quite limited).

For performance situations (and possibly installations too), i'd like to try working with at least a couple of different source videos using ImX (as i've done in the Triennial with The Same but Different)... i can use an audio or midi input, affecting a change between different matrix frame videos, possibly making it disorienting or possibly harmonious, or both.

ImX is a great app, made for OS X (but originally programmed for OS 9), for working with video, and it emulates various analog video process and effects. I began using it not long before my residency at the Experimental Television Center... while there i really grew to love working with analog signal processes (it had been the first opportunity for me), so it was pretty natural after that experience for me to work in ImX on very similar processes, making them much more portable along the way, and allowing a tiny computer to run the piece at the MMoCA, instead of a bunch of big machines.

It's a natural fit in working with this projection method, and i'm hopeful to have opportunities to play with both together soon.

Horizon Life, multi-screened

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0000

Horizon Life is a piece that i worked on from the middle of 2005 to sometime in 2006. It's a matrix frame video, and the first one i did that felt complete. The video imagery comprises parts recorded in London (a sunset, recast as a sunrise) and Madison (the snow/ice and the eyes, though the latter were inspired by work done in London). The soundtrack was fun to make... some great shortwave radio samples (provided by Ian), Audiomulch manipulations, and even some samples of a hamster lodging with us. Still, it was a long and arduous project, mostly because i hadn't yet figured out how to automate much of the frame creation process, so i was still doing it manually (this would subsequently take much less time with Fatherland).

HL isn't my most accomplished piece so far in terms of ideas, but at its most basic it deals with the concepts of physical distance and presence... and i think that it lends itself to the multi-screen method i'm developing. There's a sample in it, of some kind of travel show host (who originally sounds like he's on a train), saying: "on the other side... the vast aquamarine of the Pacific ocean seems to go on forever... on the other side... make sure to look around you". I'm interested in this idea of the pursuit of the horizon, and the potential, or hazard, of what is "on the other side" (something like what could be at the end of a rainbow, perhaps a pot of gold or perhaps something else, but in any case impossible to reach).

So, what i've been thinking is that in pulling apart all the images in the frame, as can be done with the multi-screens, this distance can be emphasized... at the same time also emphasizing the act of looking around, and taking in all of the facets of the piece, from the different angles these screens can provide.

I'm planning on developing some new video for the multi-screens, but for now i think this is a good test of the new projection method... this video has some visual variety, and it would work well as an installation (and i'm hoping to have an opportunity to show it, but more on the installation possibilities later).

Here are some pics of HL in multi-screen mode, with just 5 of the screens hung...

Multi-screened

noreply@blogger.com (Toby Kaufmann-Buhler) — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 21:57:00 +0000

For at least a few months now, i've been (mostly) thinking and working (a bit) on a new idea, one that i can integrate with older work and begin developing into new work. For the past month or so, i've been able to physically work on it in more depth, so this now seems like a good thing to post here, as the newness of it feels like a good starting point.

To begin with, a couple of things... i wouldn't have been able to get this off the ground without having a projector, which i acquired with my friend Trent from UW SWAP for a nice little sum. Been wanting one for years, and it definitely makes ideas like this more possible.

Second, this new idea is based on some of my previous work (with what i've called matrix frames). Here's one of my matrix frame videos, from 2007:

I've been working on this method since 2005, and the process of composing work with it involves having a good sense of the divisions and subdivisions of time in video, along with (just as important) a sense of how the material needs to work in the space of the frame. Basically, i dissect the video into individual images, and (after planning this out on a paper "score") re-compose it into the new frames.

All along, this intersection of space and time in the frame (and the relationship with the more "free" soundtrack) has been among my big concerns. So with this projector in hand, i've begun thinking about how i can expand the spatial aspect of this work even more, bringing it out from the 2D plane of the single projected surface. Important for this, the matrix frame video is already divided into 24 individual images, each one occupying a distinct position in the frame as well as its own distinct timeline within the video.

As shown in the following pics, i've begun hanging small screens (8 so far), positioned to catch some of the individual images in the matrix frame video, at different distances from the projection. This means that some of them can be quite small, while others can be large... this leads to focus being an issue, but my aim right now is not to worry too much about the focus (using video material in which fine focus doesn't much matter... and in any case, the construction of the matrix frame videos themselves necessitates the use of source video that can be discernible at small size and low resolution). Something i really like about this arrangement... the result is a kind of "forest" of images, viewable from all sides (especially with certain kinds of paper), so that the experience becomes omnidirectional, and the possible integrations with sound are greatly increased.

These pics show the hung screens, and in some following posts i'll get into how, and with what, they'll be lit up...