Guest Speaker: Teri Rueb

On Friday, ACCAD hosted a very special guest speaker, Teri Rueb (terirueb.net). So I thought I would write a little about her, her work, and what I learned from her presentation. It is not everyday you encounter a scholar with a PhD from Harvard! BIO (mostly excerpted from her web site): Teri Rueb is an artist whose work engages digital, architectural and traditional media and modes of production. Her most recent project, “Elsewhere : Anderswo” is currently on exhibit across two sites in Northern Germany, The Edith Russ Site for Media Art (Oldenburg) and the Springhornhof Kunstverein (Neuenkirchen). Another recent project "Core Sample", received a 2008 Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in the Digital Musics category. Rueb has pioneered the form of GPS-based interactive installations and is the recipient of numerous grants and commissions from international institutions including the Edith Russ Site for New Media, The Banff Center for the Arts, the Boston ICA, Artslink, Turbulence.org, and various State Arts Councils. She has lectured and presented her work worldwide at venues including Ars Electronica, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, Transmediale, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiasma Museum, and IRCAM. She recently completed her doctoral degree at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design where her research addressed constructions of landscape and subjectivity in mobile network culture. Rueb is Professor of Media Study at the Department of Media Study, University at Buffalo (State University of New York). She also mentioned she did her undergrad at Carnegie Mellon and earned her Master's from New York University. She served as Associate Professor (with tenure) and Department Head of the graduate Department of Digital + Media at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where she was one of two founding faculty members of the department from 2004-2009. WHAT I GATHERED FROM HER WORK AND PRESENTATION (from my notes... this is my interpretation): Teri Rueb's work is concerned with cartography and spacial representation. Her work begins with an invitation to explore; she does this with sound overlay. Her experiences come into being through sound in her projects. She also spoke about how places have agency, and her work is concerned with discovering this agency. She is interested in the aesthetic and the kinesthetic qualities of GPS in site specific work. Her 2004 piece, Drift allows people to walk along tidal flats in Northern Germany (the Watten Sea). When tides are low, the area can be explored and sounds play in response to the explorer's movements - sounds are nested in areas of concentric circles. Viewers of her project carry a custom P.C. device, with java code that plays the sounds. She noted that the process of creating this project included lots of walking and programming, as well as adjusting things by small increments. She is influenced and sensitized to Cartesian maps and specific qualities of the landscape, fed into the perception of space. She was trained traditionally as a sculptor and painter, and went back and thought about landscape as something you produce. Richard Serra and Robert Smithson are some of her artist influences. She spoke about how sound, site and movements of the body become part of her work. She also is influenced by feminist Elizabeth Grosz. Grosz stated that the meaning of geography is cartographic, and based on specific coordinates, while the meaning of landscape is perceived and experiential. This is very apparent in the works she presented. CORE is a piece located on Spectacle Island, near Boston. This island was originally a landfill, and conservation efforts have more recently converted the island into a park. As viewers traverse to different topographic levels/heights on the island, the sound the viewers hear changes from sea level to the atmosphere, or the highest topographic level of the island. The audio consists of ambient sounds and spoken word, organic and inorganic sounds, as well as sounds of the past, present and future. In congruence with this piece, a soil sample or core sample of the island was on display at the Boston ICA Gallery. This is a sound sculpture and the different sounds play as viewers walk by each level of core sample. The two sites exist dialogically.

Elswhere : Anderswo was created during a residency in Oldenburg park. Its central themes revolve around the alienation we feel when we travel. She juxtaposes the German landscape with sounds that derive culturally from the West (In her video, I heard sounds from the movie soundrack from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as well as sounds and melodies from Western music). Unlike CORE, she did not take into account the history of the site in this piece, but rather the juxtaposition was the focus to communicate the feeling of alienation. No places with names, 2012 is a site-specific work located in Española near Santa Fe, NM dealing with the concept of wilderness and the re-appropriation of place and wilderness. Specifically, viewers at the Institute of American Indian Arts can traverse the landscape outside and hear sounds; some are spoken interviews of native Navajo and other tribe members who speak of the Long Walk and other cultural aspects of Navajo history and life. The Long Walk was essentially a seldom-mentioned genocide that occurred in the 1860s during colonization of North America. The Navajo were forced off of their land and it decimated their sheep, crops and their overall population, and the site of the Institute of American Indian Arts is now built along the same path of the Long Walk. This project illuminated the fact that the wilderness/landscape is not devoid of rich cultural history just because there are no markers for it on a map. In actuality there is a dialog that is seldom heard, and this project illuminates the voices of the Navajo where a cultural and geographical re-appropriation has existed (She points this out by showing the map of the Española valley with names in Spanish, Tewa, and English). During the question and answer period, Teri talked about how with the advent of new technology, she has less control over her hardware and no longer loans out computers/GPS devices for her works. She wrote an application for her works that can be accessed on cell phones and smartphones. This doesn't always work to her advantage because her goal is to suspend viewers of her work in a focused experience, and people get distracted by their phones such as phone calls, notifcations, etc. People also use their own earbuds, which doesn't always get the greatest sound quality. The advantages of using an application however, makes her work free and accessible. For her next possible project, Teri spoke about how she might work with sound more interactively; perhaps by having people walk around in a space and playing with how their proximity to one another affects the sounds they are hearing. Overall it was an interesting presentation, as her design work is a little different from those I have seen. Her work is very academic and seems to stand at a higher intellectual level than most - I appreciated that. However, at times, it was a little difficult to understand quite what she meant in her presentation. Although my work follows along a different vein, it was wonderful to hear from a designer with a very different viewpoint and different methods on approaching her work and process of creation.

Max Hattler - Experimental Animation Done Right

"I am interested in the space between abstraction and figuration, where storytelling is freed from the constraints of traditional narrative. While my films tend to be without dialogue, they explore the relationship between sound, music and the moving image." —Max Hattler I am going to post a little about one of my favorite video artists/ experimental animators, Max Hattler, as he is one of my influences. Max Hattler is an experimental animator and moving image artist based in London and Germany. Many of his pieces create relationships with artifacts of the past and present, or the relationship between form and living beings. Max Hattler performs live audiovisual works at festivals, in art spaces, and sometimes in clubs. Max Hattler was educated in London at Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art. He has had solo exhibitions at Tenderpixel Gallery, Playgrounds Festival, Lumen Eclipse, Media Art Friesland, and Someonesgarden Tokyo, and retrospectives at Go Short Nijmegen, Image Forum Festival, Fredrikstad Animation Festival, Lago Film Fest, Branchage Film Festival and International Short Film Festival Detmold, among others. His works have been shown at hundreds of film festivals as well as in museums and galleries such as Erarta Museum, MOCA Taipei, the Marl Video Art Award, Yota Space and Gasworks Gallery. Awards include Multivision Festival, St. Louis Film Festival, Premio Simona Gesmundo, Visual Music Award, Animate OPEN Digitalis, London International Animation Festival, Videofestival Bochum, Videologia and many more. Hattler's films have been included in the touring programmes of Videoformes, Videoholica, onedotzero, the European Media Art Festival, Euroshorts, Shorts Attack, Fairecourt, 700IS, The Animation Show, L'Alternativa, Animac, AURORA, and the British Animation Awards. Max collaborates with other visual artists like Noriko Okaku, Robert Seidel, Motorsaw, i.m.klif and Protey Temen. Max also creates concert visuals or works live with sound artists and music acts as diverse as Basement Jaxx, Diplo, Jovanotti, Ladyscraper, The Egg, Kraan, Ocusonic, Mikhail Karikis, Dollskabeat, Fried Dähn, Mehmet Can Özer, Pablo Gav, Hellmut Hattler, and Vesper On. Let me add that I love Diplo. Awesome beatz. He has presented his audiovisual live performances around the world, including the Museum of Image and Sound in Sao Paulo, Electrovisiones Mexico City, the European Media Art Festival, Cimatics Festival, Donaufestival Krems, Filmfest Dresden, SuperDeluxe Tokyo, The Big Chill Festival and London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. He teaches in London at Goldsmiths and the University of the Arts, Chelsea, and is studying towards a Doctorate in Fine Art at the University of East London. Max Hattler has also been on movie projects such as 28 Weeks Later working as a digital compositing artist. For more, see www.maxhattler.com

Max Hattler creates his work using a variety of techniques and methods, depending on the project. He creates works that are stop-motion such as AANAATT, 2008, and also works with 3D and 2D graphics programs. He also has experimented with hand-created animation as well. The images are usually projected either in a gallery as a loop, museum, in a club or concert venue, or in one particular instance, X, projected onto mist at the Kings Cross Filling Station in London (2012).

HIGHLIGHTED WORK - 1923 a.k.a. Heaven

After watching several of his videos, it is apparent that he prefers to work with dark backgrounds and impossible objects and patterns made of bright, neon colors that briefly pass through the screen or loop quickly. In one of his most prominent pieces, 1923 a.k.a. Heaven is a loop based on the outsider artist Augustin Lesage’s painting A Symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World from 1923, and is one piece out of a series (the other loop is called 1925 a.k.a. Hell, based off of another one of Lesage’s paintings). The original piece created in 1923 is based on spirituality and the ornamental traditions of various cultures. This version also captures the sense of a spiritual virtual world, with the entrancing visuals and sound effects.

Neon patterns of light dance and seem to wrap around ancient architecture in a digital space. The manner in which the bright patterns that form and move on the surface of the 3D objects insinuate 3D architecture that is too dark to actually discern. On Max’s web site, a reviewer describes the piece as a “building that is a machine – a chapter of Tron occurring in Ancient Egypt.” The patterns that form are that of technology; symbols for stop, play, pause, circular dials. The forms change colors from a warmer color scheme to cooler, more analogous colors, and the camera movement occurs by zooming deeper into the complexity of the architecture. The beat of the music is simple drum beat, mixed with a more synthetic digital beat reminiscent of old video games. The depth the piece creates in virtual space is spectacular and this contemporary version of Lesage’s piece serves as an infinitely complex, technological homage to a very important but lesser known modern artist.

Wreck-It Ralph. Best. Game. Movie. Ever.

The other day, several of us graduate students went to see Wreck-It Ralph at a free screening at the Ohio Union upon the first day of its dvd release. This was the first time I have seen it, and I was impressed. The animations are nicely done, and I was really thrown into the movie with the different game worlds that Disney had designed. The environment design / set dressing was amazing in this film. It takes the idea of Tron, but instead of inserting real people into virtual worlds, it personifies virtual game characters in an imaginative way. The characters live physically within an arcade, but within each game thrive in their own virtual game worlds. There is also an "atrium" meeting place where all the video game characters can leave their games in their off time, which I thought was a nice way to create a means of allowing the characters to leave their individual game space and interact with one another outside their own games. The cords on the arcade machines acted as a means of transporting the game characters. The film also mentions programming and "glitches" a lot, as embodied by Vanellope's character. I thought that this was a simple way to convey some of the very complex aspects of game design to the target audience: kids. Also, the castle vault where King Candy locks away the game's programmed framework was an imaginative way to visualize the very complex code that goes into creating a game.

The modeling, animation, and particularly the shaders were amazing in this film. I loved the shaders in Sugar Rush. All the variations of textures on the different kinds of candies were very realistic and all the surfaces retained their rightful qualities. And since candies are so decorative and colorful, there was really a lot of creative liberty the texture tds could take. In the still below, the reflections/refractions and the bubbles on the hard candy are great! Also, just look at the ice cream wheels! JUST LOOK! So awesome. I want to eat it. The film's story was easy to follow and I think it included just enough details for all viewers to enjoy it - young and old. The nostalgia for throwback games is apparent - the 80s/90s style of the 2D 8-bit Wreck-It Ralph game, and the appearance of Bowser and some other characters we see in Bad-Anon, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Pac-Man. I believe this film should have won the Oscar over Brave. I think its story was stronger and the work that its artists put into this movie was apparent. I could probably watch this film over and over again and still see things that I missed. Some of the scenes seem a little over-designed, as in A LOT of stuff is crammed into each frame, but I think that video games are oftentimes built that way and it goes along with the mise en scène of the film. This film, along with Paranorman, are my favorite animated films from last year.

Sound City Movie is Effing Rad.

Yesterday I went analog and left my cell phone at home for the afternoon/evening, and I took myself on a little date to see Sound City, a documentary by Dave Grohl that illuminates the history of one of the most instrumental recording studios in the history of American rock and roll music. The irony is that Dave Grohl, famous former drummer of 90s grunge rock band Nirvana and later, lead singer/guitarist for The Foo Fighters, had not the slightest inclination of the history of the dumpy Van Nuys studio when he and his neophyte band Nirvana had stumbled in there to record Nevermind, which ended up selling 30 million copies worldwide and reaching number one on the Billboard charts, trumping Michael Jackson's Dangerous. This was his journey back to the recording studio which started it all, but this time he recounted its history in full, from the days when Stevie Nicks recorded there as did Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The studio also acted as a launch pad for Rick Springfield, as it skyrocketed him to fame with the hit single Jessie's Girl. Countless acts recorded their record there, and from watching the film, the place looked something of a sh*thole. Although I look nothing like a person who would be into rock music, when I was in high school, I discovered that I loved Queens of the Stone Age, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Foo Fighters, and etc. etc. These were some of the newer acts to record in this studio. At the end of the film we find out Dave has a sense of nostalgia for this piece of rock and roll history. Upon the demise of the studio, Dave said he would do anything for the custom Neve console (analog soundboard) that had been installed there at the studio's inception. So, he purchased the console and had it installed in his own personal studio where he and Paul McCartney had a little recording sesh. My favorite moments of the movie happened when Dave was interviewing the brilliant electronics engineer, Rupert Neve, the man responsible for engineering the famous Neve console, and Dave makes a face of utter confusion while a subtitle appears with the question, "Does he know I am a high school dropout?" There is also a moment when they are laughing in the studio as Dave and Paul McCartney record a song, and the producer (Butch Vig) on the other side of the studio is giving them orders, and Dave says sarcastically, "yeah tell Paul McCartney what to do." The film is rich with history, good humor and just all around interesting stories. I think it can speak to everyone because it is about a fundamental cultural identity of America - Rock and Rollllllllllll! *Says that in shouty/screamy voice* The film brings up questions about the authenticity of art. And this does not apply to just musical artists - but to all artists. We all live in a digital era - the analog tools they used before are being ditched in favor of more digital methods. Because the studio's console used tape to record the songs that were made there, songs were recorded and mixed in analog. Some of the songs recorded there were even recorded live! This is based on the notion that art and humans are by nature, imperfect and the imperfections make their music special. What drives the artists to choose the right song is a "feel" - it's just a special feeling they get when they know it's right - it might take one session to record, or hundreds and the notes might be off key, the timing off tempo, but it just has that special feel, a quality that can't be explained. The film basically states outright that the tools that artists use should be no more than tools; what underlies all great artists is their willingness to learn and work hard, and the talent that is acquired because of this. Consequently, a lot of artists that have no business being in the music industry [and have little to no talent] record their songs on their laptops using Pro Tools.

Now, the film doesn't blast new technology entirely. It makes what once was not accessible, accessible to the masses. And Sound City artists like Trent Reznor use digital tools as a means to get different sounds out of the instruments he plays. In one part of the film, it depicts him recording a song on a keyboard, while it was being mixed into the computer, revealing a warped more digital sound altogether with Dave in the background explaining that "he is one of the smartest people he knows." Trent talked about how the music he created has been a result of his parents' decision of having him take piano lessons when he was a child. He learned everything he could about music structure and form, recording at Sound City back in the 90s as Nine Inch Nails, but also allowing digital technology to influence his signature sound. More recently he has written and composed scores for movies such as Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Social Network. I agree with Trent's style and philosophy of creating art - you must have a foundational talent that stems from learning the art form classically, before you can use digital methods as another tool to create art. Your talent does not just get "given" to you simply because you were given a tool to create something with (I'm talking to you and your crappy music, Ke$ha). It starts young and is a learned talent. As for me, I was drawing and painting when I was old enough to hold a crayon. I went to art school, developed my drawing and painting skills before I could learn to create digital art using a computer. I think it's better that way - the foundational skills are very necessary and are always there. The only qualm I have (if any) about the film was that it kind of beat the viewer over the head with enthusiasm for making music. On coming out of the theater, I heard one guy say sarcastically, "That film makes me want to go out and record music now!" It was kind of like, go do it! Don't think about the consequences! Who cares if you are driving around without any money living in a van! As long as you have a dream you'll be okay! I'll take that with a grain of salt, as the lifestyles of musicians are absolutely nuts! haha. But absolutely splendid documentary. GO SEE IT! Here is the link to the movie's web site.

And, LOLz: