Update 3
Posted: May 22, 2013 Filed under: Art, News, Tunes, Zines | Tags: CD-R, collage, conclusions, destiny, finality, goals, noise, package, plans, polyethelene 1 Comment »Hi read-and-lookers. Here is the third and final update of my aforementioned book/zine/sound project.
This project consists of 120 collages divided across 10 handmade, 12 page books, and features a 31 minute sound installation burned onto a basic CD-R embedded inside the last page of each book. All books are completely unique, but the CD-Rs are all basically the same.
The sound installation that I finally settled on is something that’s been bouncing around my head for the past nine months or so. The title of the piece, in fact, is just the date that I started work on that particular track. Although much of the audio you hear was looped and altered digitally, the sound installation was performed “live” with no overdubs using a pair of shoebox cassette records, a mixer, a couple of effects pedals, and two battery-powered, hand-held synthesizers. That’s all I’m going to say about that. Give it a listen.
You might’ve (probably not) noticed on my soundcloud that all the old stuff is gone and there are just these three big tracks there. I got rid of the old stuff because all that stuff took up space. The tracks labeled “4_25″ and “5_2″ are earlier sessions of the piece going into this project. You can listen and download all of them til I take them down (which might actually happen soon).
I’m also thrilled to announce that all of the books can now be viewed online in my new photobucket thingy. So even if you can’t have one of these 10 copies, you can still totally just see them all online, which is a much better option for some people anyway. It was a pretty incredible feeling to just sort of let go of all of the art – which took 6 months to complete – and to just kind of give it away. The scanning/editing job took quite a while.
I plan to do the following things this summer: finish working on a cassette project that I’ve had on the back burner since, like, December; finish a zine with a much higher print run (like, 100, hopefully); and START AN ETSY SHOP (finally!). That last thing I’m especially looking forward to because whenever I get locked into one of those “so you make a zine, right? Where can I get one?” conversations I’ll finally be able to send that person somewhere where that person can actually get stuff for not a lot of money. Won’t that be cool?
-T.
Collage
Posted: March 3, 2013 Filed under: Art | Tags: barf, collages, crafting, crassness, estrada, greenpoint, rainbows 1 Comment »Hallo! Not an update about the status of the book project, per se, but a diversionary collage made at the Greenpoint Library Handskills event on Saturday, to make it look like I’ve been busy making books, which I have been, but can’t show anything off right now. This collage includes various media that I wouldn’t otherwise use for the books, and it looks like graphical barf mounted on card stock, which it actually is. Whenever I make a just-for-the-fun-of-it collage, I’m always implored to describe it as looking like barf, so it’s not gross, it’s a sort of compliment.
cool vomit
Eggerd made a better one involving the guy from CHiPS. Dig it!
-T.
Update 2
Posted: January 4, 2013 Filed under: Zines | Tags: chisels, collage, modeling, stew Leave a comment »Hello, dear reader. Behold: six completed books. When you look at this zine what do you see? I’ll tell you what you see. You see a neatly chiseled, well-groomed, drop dead handsome zine. The sounds are still stewing and fermenting, so nothing new on that front for now. Oh, and how ’bout this site redesign, with the new “about” page and new background and everything? You like? Lemme know, ok?
progress!
Apropos
Posted: November 8, 2012 Filed under: Tunes, Zines | Tags: bears, beats, beets, creativity, nothingness, paper, rebirth, return, scissors, sounds, writer's block Leave a comment »Hi. This post is about my new zine/book. This post is called Apropos.
The zine/book is also called Apropos. It is called just that. It is a return in form to some of the earliest incarnations of this project: an all-collage, 12-page object. Like those early incarnations, every book will be completely handmade; non-print. This return is important to me for two reasons. The first is because this has been kind of a tough Autumn creatively, and I feel that this gesture might help me consolidate some mental strength, because it involves a process I’m familiar with and confident in. The second reason is because my attempts at overly complicated projects for which I possess neither the funds nor talent to pull off have concluded in failure. But I know that I can do this zine, and so I will.
There are some key differences between this book and ones I’ve made in the past. First and foremost: this zine is bigger, with every page measuring 7 x 5.5 inches. Also, I haven’t established any creative boundaries or topics of interest in the making of this book, apart from a commitment to the collage format. So this zine couldn’t really be said to be “about” anything — it is apropos of nothing apart from itself. Finally, I’m including a CD-R with this zine. It will contain some tunes that I’ve been working on lately. These tracks are somewhat of a departure from those included in earlier posts — cleaner, brighter, a little bit louder. If the earlier tunes sound like they were held together by scotch tape, these sound like they were scooped out of a pint of digital ice cream-fuzz with a platinum spork.
I won’t know precisely how big of an edition this will be until I’ve decided that I’m done. My aim is for twenty books with the CD-R in sealed bags. My plan is to distribute them locally at some of my past favorite hubs and through regular person-to-person exchange. I have finished two books so far. They took me each around 5 days to complete — the second under the duress and isolation of Hurricane Sandy. Seven images of the book are included below.
Cover
1, 2
3, 4
5, 6
7, 8
9, 10
Back
And here’s those tunes. Chilly.
I’ll be back to upload some snippets of the second book and maybe another tune in a few days. Sound good? Cool. Peace.
-T.
Tunes
Posted: September 6, 2012 Filed under: News, Tunes | Tags: assemblage, beats, fidelity, ringing, sonics, tinnitus, wires Leave a comment »Do you follow me on twitter? If so, you might’ve (doubt it) noticed that I tweet about music often. Sometimes it’ll be a small tribute to Arthur Russell or Elliott Smith, or some song lyrics, or an ill-advised jab at Pitchfork reviews or a band I find insufferable. It’s just how I roll and it’s the kind of news I find easy to keep up with. That’s because music was my first passion. I think I’m far more proficient a music-listener than a zine-reader, to be honest. Both are great of course, but music appreciation (and, occasionally, performance and production) always came more naturally to me.
So… I guess that this project was sort of inevitable.
Below you’ll find some “tunes” (I hesitate to call them songs for a number of reasons) that I’ve been kicking around for most of this summer. The track titles don’t mean anything, ignore them. The tunes are based around pitch- and time-adjusted samples with instruments layered over the samples in various ways. Some of the tunes are pretty traditional in structure. Very little of the sounds in these songs are “performed,” per se. By that I mean two things: first, that there is no “live” complement to the tunes; and second, that I arranged a lot of what’s here almost exclusively by dragging, dropping, cutting, and pasting audio data in GarageBand rather than playing instruments. Even the parts I did play myself were mostly recorded in small spurts and gratuitously edited. I liken this approach to arranging elements in a collage. So give ‘em a whirl.
Those of you who actually do follow me on Twitter may have seen my tweets about this, or those about my frustrations operating a rudimentary digital audio workstation on an aging Apple computer. Thanks for keeping up. To the rest of you: consider yourselves informed. And, as always, enjoy.
-T.
Stick/Poke
Posted: August 22, 2012 Filed under: Art | Tags: Anime, Electricity, Prison, Tattoos, Transformers, Voltron Leave a comment »Hi. Wasn’t sure what to call these. I mostly start with a black and white image and begin by “drawing out” the jagged lines with dots, fill in the space between with some white out, and surround with more monochromatic dots accordingly. I’m labeling this “Stick/Poke” for now, which describes the physical process alone (sticking, poking, etc.) and has nothing to do with prison tattoos. I think the shapes take on an angularity reminiscent of the old Voltron and Transformers cartoons I loved so dearly in my youth. Enjoy.
1
2
3 (Left)
3 (Right)
That last one there’s a diptyche, clearly. More zines in the future!
-T.
