RIP Rolf julius

    Photograph by Jens Schumann

The artist Rolf Julius has died. The Western Vinyl label, which is due to release a number of Julius’s sound works in the coming months, stated: “A beautiful human being and an extraordinary talent, Rolf Julius left the world on 21 January, 2011.”

Julius was born in Germany in 1939 and studied fine art in Bremen. In the mid 1970s he began using sound alongside his visual practice. Later he moved to Berlin and became an important figure in that city’s budding sound art scene – participating in Für Augen Und Ohren (1980), one of Europe’s first major sound art exhibitions. Over the course of a 30 year career Julius’s performances and low-volume, minimal sonic sculptures and installations developed an approach highly influential on a younger generation of sound artists.

Tetsuya Umeda & Kanta Horio

 

"Tetsuya Umeda: Science of Superstition"

A bucket and a mop and a ramshackle assortment of fans and lights — all sprawled across the floor and ceiling of Ota Fine Arts in east Tokyo's Kachidoki area (www.ota.finearts.com) — lie dormant. 

Flick several switches, though, and a chaotic performance ensues, pulleys plunging objects into water-filled trash cans, spinning rotors connecting dangling wires to complete electrical circuits that set off lights and explosions of sound.

Tetsuya Umeda's installations are as much about those sounds as they are about the arrangement of the everyday items he uses. Umeda's main work is the objects' performance, which he helps orchestrate but is never in control of. At Ota, he has assembled four electrical circuits that are connected and trigger one another with unpredictable results: Watch for a while and there is no regular pattern, rather a random escalation of noise, flashes and motion followed by silences.

The artist often performs in rundown buildings with installations that reflect the disorder around them. Ota Fine Arts is one of the smaller spaces that Umeda has used, as was Ota's room at the Art@Agnes art fair in Tokyo this past January. In one of the best presentations in the hotel fair, a pile of feathers in a bedroom, looking as if it had been pulled out of a comforter, would burst into the air when a fan was turned on by an electrical circuit being completed when wires dipped into the tub in the bathroom.

You could attempt a meaningful statement about the unpredictability of these constructions representing the random nature of our existence in the world, but that would be as futile as assigning a particular meaning to life. Probably it's best to just sit back and enjoy the show.

These two Japanese artist occasionally combine Installations with performance/intervention in some of their collaborations together.  It's quite interesting and gives me a lot of ideas of how I can develop my sound sculpture/installations.

My hard drive is experiencing some strange noises

The sound of a defective hard disk is picked up by a contact microphone. The acoustic wave is instantly processed by a software that repeats and amplifies sounds creating a resounding echo. 

Gregory Chatonsky is an artist born in Paris. He currently resides in Montreal and Paris.

He holds a philosophy master’s from the Sorbonne and a multimedia advanced degree from the Ecole nationale superieure des beaux-arts in Paris. He has worked on numerous solo and group projects in France, Canada, the United States, Italy, Australia, Germany, Finland and Spain. His works have been acquired by public collectors such as the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie.

I was told that my sound sculpture presented at the Containment project sounds like a defective hard disk. 

Without Records

 

 "without records" Otomo Yoshihide＋Yasutomo Aoyama  

In this installation, there are about over a hundred portable record players without records. In the space, turntables scattered everywhere, high and low, right and left, produce noises by the rotating friction, resonating in multilayer. Quiet, low-fi sounds form groups and change the entire image of sounds. This works provide people with an opportunity to reconsider the meaning, possibilities, and historical significance of sound art composed of records and turntables, which are being consigned to oblivion in the digital age. 

Otomo Yoshihide is an artist I really appreciate. He has a huge influence on my work and ideas. Today I was talking to a fellow classmate about an idea I have for a project using CD/DVD players (although different to Otomo's colab I see a connection).  I realized that I've had this idea stored away in a hidden (forgotten) compartment of my brain. I should write everything down and then develop them at a later stage (or discard them).

Still no guides

Emmanuel Lagarrigue is a young French artist who works with sound as a material rather than as a medium. He uses it in sculptures and installations. This video features the piece Still no guides from 2008, an atmospheric combination of neon lights and buffer sound.

Projects 001: Baptized today

 
I've decided that my solo noise project will be called Osanyow.

Well I should get on with making some noise (which is the important part...)

Nam June Paik - Video Flag

 

Installation: "Video Flag" by Nam June Paik  

Sound: "Statement" by Koxbox

This is brilliant! Political and humorous.

Dissertation 002: Fluxus Movement

 

In theory the fluxes movement should be the answer to works that are more accessible and understood. They break down the boundaries between the performer (or work) and audience (or viewer of the work). There are elements of chance and playfulness we can all relate to. I've been looking at another art movement of the 90's that has a lot in common. I will expand on this later as my ideas are not fully formulated at this stage...

Borrowed manifesto!

 

 'Art has been removed from being an integral part of our society and has been relegated to mere processes which had lead to the production of dry, academic, pedantic, superficial, mechanical, and mass produced works of art devoid of all integrity, honesty, and meaning and has stripped art of its physical, psychological, moral and spiritual impact necessary for the thriving and indeed the very survival of human culture'  

Manifesto by Umberto Crenca, Martha Dempster and Steven Emma (1982)

   

And if you replace Art with Sound Art...