Exhibition 35
Opens 9/23, 6-9pm
@INSURANCE: Green Noise, organized by Chris Reeves.
@GREASE: The Deserter's Continuous Music In The Key Of The Fields; A Musical Irreverie, by Bret Schneider
@IN/OUT: TogetherWear ™️, by Foster Atkinson
ABOUT
Green Noise
This is an exhibition about what it is to make a noise. 7 artists chose their favorite noises and these descriptions were given to 14 object makers who translated those descriptions into objects, photographed them, and these photographs were given to 7 artists to translate into noises.
To be noisy is to be aberrant by the standards and rules that the social imposes us on. Noise, by this virtue, is radical. It would seem that background noise, in its capacity to be ignored, circumvents this radicality. Yet, on the level of analogy, contending with the sounds of what might be overlooked is the current struggle of our moment. By foregrounding the background noise of the world, “Green Noise” will suggest, through its relational and work responsive nature, that within the oft-overlooked there is radicality and potency waiting to be heard.
Noise curators: Avril Thurman, Chris Collins, Danny Floyd, Katie Meuser, Kimberly Kim, Madison Mae Parker, Veronica Ann Salinas, Yulian Leshuk
Noise translators: Aleksandra Walaszek, Andi Crist, Angela Inez Baldus, Bárbara Baron, Camille Casemier, Elana Adler, Erin Palovick, Gabriel Chalfin-Piney, Hai-Wen Lin, Jesse Malmed, Julian Van Der Moere, Maggie Wong, Ricardo Vilas Freire, Sonya Bogdanova
Translators of the noise translators (live sonic accompaniment): Anna Johnson, Fetter, Kim Nucci, Lauren Sudbrink, Liz Flood, Paige Naylor, Veronica Ann Salinas
Organized and with a free takeaway zine by Chris Reeves
The Deserter's Continuous Music In The Key Of The Fields; A Musical Irreverie
A piano has been retrofit with player piano capability for the composer to spontaneously &/or algorithmically transmit live musical expressions from a bespoke composition program. This arrangement allows for a precise integration of pitch & rhythm — rhythms are timed at exact subharmonics of pitch, creating an uncanny resonance across distinct listening modes never before experienced in acoustical realtime. This "MetaPiano" can also be played at volumes & velocities not possible with the human body, manifesting dormant capacities of the piano & extending the instrument for 21st century composition. Like all of Schneider's music, the aesthetic goal is to integrate the last half-century of acoustic experimentalism with modern beauty — in this instance, just-intoned third-ear music with impressionist French piano music. On the surface an odd pairing … yet overlaps in the domain of harmonic experience.
So how about the composition then?
Firstly, the piano is tuned to a custom just-intonation scale influenced by La Monte Young's Well-Tuned Piano … but tuned in C Major. The composer calls it "Septimal Lucid", because it values clarity & simplicity, & is constructed on harmonic seventh ratios. This inflects the music with a bright, unresolving character conducive to the perennial openness of the generative composition. The title of the composition is The Deserter's Continuous Music In The Key Of The Fields; A Musical Irreverie. This instance is part 3/3, completing the trilogy. The arrangement has three distinct voices in different tonal regions, each given their own continuous melodic & rhythmic lines. The dispersion of the tones is determined by the composer's playing drunk walks — a quasi-random iterative movement that rises & falls in evocatively writhing patterns. (For deeper discussion, see the artist's conversation with Omair Hussain published on Caesura Magazine). This dynamic cyclical movement — striving to permute through as many chordal & melodic combinations as possible — pairs well with the just-intonation, which cultivates difference tones & other mysterious third-ear phenomena. This extreme permutational movement — this nearly libidinal drive to exhaust all known possibilities so as to evoke unknown possibilities — expresses a sincere, desperate longing for transcendent beauty, a type of tormented beauty characteristic of art in our era.
The MetaPiano is accompanied by two pairs of ethereally light distributed mode/bending wave speakers resonating just-intoned sine waves in A Minor, hanging from the wall 19" for full 360º dispersion, skinned in acoustically conductive cosmic elements (copper, aluminum, graphite, etc), shellacked in the tradition of piano soundboards, & rhythmically painted in diaphanous sunset tones — aestheticizing the final moments of The Deserter's Continuous Music trilogy. Form & function are integrated in the chalk pastel drawing, which dampens or emphasizes acoustic resonant modes on the plate.
The Deserter's Continuous Music is the musical accompaniment to Chapter 2 of Schneider's 4-part epic poetry book, The Irreveries.
TogetherWear ™️
TogetherWear ™️ is made with love, laughter and a pinch of pessimism in order to entertain, amuse and bewilder the other beings we wear clothes for, as well as ourselves.
In this series, Atkinson hopes the Pieces touch people’s love and/or disdain for clothing. Through TogetherWear we recognize that clothing is a need but it doesn’t need to be serious. Fashion is deep, but also dumb.
At the end of the day we choose to see style as an acknowledgment and opportunity for togetherness and not a tool or act of separation!