President Blair "Dyslexicon" Process Photos

I've been working on a new concept for PB material, that is combining the sound with a print element, a zine to be specific. The zine is an experiment in reused paper. the pages are made by stapling together sheets of Chinese newspaper between sheets of cardstock, essentially creating an instant 'scrapbook', if you want to use such gauche terminology. The CD will be included in among the pages of the zine, and various pieces of art have been glued in onto the pages. The experiment combines painting, found photography, taken photography, altered photography, collage and noise.

The audio component uses field recordings, text-to-effect processing, and other source material that references current events in the world. I don't suppose my work had ever had much of a political bent, but it seems to be going that way.

Anyway, here are the process shots from the making of this release.

Amharic Fusion Experimentation

As a big fan of Ethiopian music, I wanted to try my hand at cutting up some Ethiopian music myself and seeing what sort of edits I could make of it. In this piece, I used some contemporary Amharic music, sourced from Youtube. I'd certainly rather have worked from aproper made in Ethiopia recording,but if you don't live in that area, your best bet is Youtube, with the assurance that the quality of the audio in the video, usually considered too low to sample from by most, is about as good as you'd get from any other proper source.

What i wanted to do is to see if other 3/4 timed rhythms would work with the roundy, triplet-based Ethiopian rhythms, so i chose a particular favorite ingredient, zapateado drums from Mexico, and used these two elements in combination with one another, with an added touch of bass drum to give it some thump. The video below showcases the results. It's a nice mixture of things, I think.

President Blair "Scornfield"

Fellow DJ and electronics enthusiast Avitar Virgonian brought me by a couple of pieces of spare equipment he had lying around, a drum machine and an echo unit. I didn't get around to using them as extensively as I would have liked, due to the pressures of an upcoming move and some general laziness before said move was learned of. Using the equipment, along with some live audio mulch improv, I created the piece embedded here. Once you listen to it, you'll understand why I gave it the name. Pictured below are the pieces of hardware used.

 

Where I've Been and What I've Been Doing (instead of posting it here)

Though there hasn't been a proper MS blog entry since June, creative activities have continued at Media Sashimi HQ. In fact the change in location of said HQ is probably one of the biggest pieces of MS news; I have relocated from Eugene, Oregon to San Francisco. Creative activities have started up here, even though it's only been a week since I arrived. however with such a back log of creative activity to catch you all up on, I won't even be able to get to the SF creative acts for a few more entries yet. First, there's lots of President Blair related work that needs to be posted about. While i've continued the DJ activities pretty regularly, the noise stuff I've been doing has been more the forefront, and much more representative of the whole aesthetic I've been going for. So, now that you have my assurance that Media Sashimi won't be one of those blogs that flares to life, shines bright and flickers into nothing. I'll be here for a while. facebook can be a lousy place to try and keep proper documentation of one's activities. Thanks to all the Media Sashimi fans and supporters who come here to see what i've been up to.

Video Art Experiment Results

At last I have some actual live moving footage of my video art experiments to show you. This piece is one of the set of pieces I've been working on using the Vietnamese Buddhist DVDs. That project has taken on some interesting forms as I've strived to effectively work with that particular set of unusual abundant material. I had hoped to keep the set pure, in that what i did with that material would stay confined to a cohesive body of work related onyl the the source material and no other external sources. But it harder to keep art in a cage than you think. So here is the first moving video i have to show you. The sound is made of cutups of various things, Finnish newscasts, Telugu oldies, etc. Enjoy!

Video Art Update 061813

I've been busy again on the video art front, now that I have a little more time to devote to artistic endeavours. The focus has been to some degree the reuse of VHS resources I've been encountering. For instance, some of the tapes I found in the Goodwill's ten-cent bin were religious in nature, long two-hour tapes of sermons, and on some pretty nice tape too. They make for a nice big canvas to work with, as some possible uses for the video art footage I'm creating will be for extended background play in various settings.

So here is a hpoto reel of some of the most recent sessions. What you're seeing is photos of the screen in action. Since the mix is laid down to VHS tape, and then digitized later, we don't get the benefit of live screenshots until the processing is done, so these will have to do!

Some of the scenes, even those they were made up of a lot of 'spiritual' source material, came out kind of evil looking in places.

New Video Art Experiments.

I recently came across a video mixer, and I've been busily working with it to create different kinds of video art experiments. in fact, I've been so busy doing them that I've not had time to report on them yet. here's a short report with some pictures of the setup and some of the results. Soon i'll have some of the results in a more digital, viewable form, but for now, here's what I've got to show you.