In a week or so I’ll be going back to New Orleans to see a performance at the sound sculpture shantytown I worked on in September. The New Orleans Airlift brought a bunch of artists to build a little village of musical instruments out of the wreckage of an 18th century house, and invited local musicians to perform with/on/in them! There’s a teaser video from the first performance — you can hear & see my piece, a set of amplified squeaky floorboards, providing the bass line starting at about 1:22. The project was covered in the New York Times last week, and you can read all about it at dithyrambalina.com. Next week will be my first chance to hear and see the completed shantytown!

In October I set up a show of my greenmarket scanography images at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Library at Grand Army Plaza, along with two amazing photographers in the (Un)Still Life exhibit. There’s just one week left before the show comes down after this weekend, so please visit if you’re in Brooklyn. I had some of my images printed huge for the first time – more than 5 feet tall for one of them! And I had fun putting together a grid of almost 200 little tiny prints – check out the installation timelapse. By the way, all the prints are for sale, and a portion goes to benefit the library.

…and then I went to Europe, to talk about my work at VU Amsterdam’s lecture series with the Metamatic Research Initiative, and to show a piece I made for Artbots in Gent, Belgium. I haven’t really had time to collect my thoughts – or my photos – since I got back, but you can see a recording of my talk at metamaticresearch.info, and I have a silly video demonstrating the Voice Extruder, an installation which translates visitors’ voices into little sculptures, which are immediately fabricated for the visitor to take home. The Voice Extruder is an offshoot of my work for Metamatic, about which I’ll have much more to say soon! The day after I got back from Europe, I took the Voice Extruder to Baltimore for the Exploratorium’s Tinkerers’ Ball.

And what are you up to? Keep in touch!

* shantytown photo by Mellissa Strkyer — see lots more photos from the New Orleans project at the dithyrambalina blog.

The Music Box – Oct 22 from TungstenMonkey on Vimeo.

Many of the fruits and vegetables I use in my images came from the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket, just a few steps from the library, so it’s especially nice to see them in the beautiful lobby gallery there.

More information at brooklynpubliclibrary.org

Some guy checks out the biggest print moments after we hung it

Timelapse: installing almost 200 tiny prints covering 9 years of veggie scanography

In September, I’ll be making a wave-powered sound sculpture for the Dumbo Arts Festival (September 23-25). Also showing a bunch of big prints from my produce scan series in the show “(Un)Still Life” at the lobby gallery at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch (September-December). And going to New Orleans to install a sound sculpture in Swoon’s musical house project (opening October 15th). Hopefully I’ll have time for Maker Faire in there somewhere (September 17-18). And I’ll be sending good vibes (and probably laser whistles) to the Festival of Music for People and Thingamajigs in the Bay Area (September 22-25). Then in October, I’ll be going to the Netherlands to speak at VU University Amsterdam and to show a piece at Artbots Gent (October 7-9), and in December, I’ll have a couple of pieces and maybe an installation in Phyllis Chen’s Uncaged Toy Piano Festival in NYC.

So now I’d better get some rest.

That same weekend, I took some of my homemade instruments, including the 8-bit violin and a second JelTone (built in haste at the last possible minute), to the Solid Sound Music Festival for the CDM/Moog Handmade Lounge. After all my jello melted, on the second day of the festival I rebuilt the JelTone with fruit salad instead, and here it is:

I was lucky to be chosen as one of the Queens Museum of Art‘s sound art residents this month, so I’ve been working with my collection of vintage automatic music toys, and I’ll give a presentation/performance this Saturday (June 18th) at 5pm. The performance is free, but come early and check out the rest of the museum, including the famous Panorama of the City of New York! Event into: facebook.com/event.php?eid=229965507015603

Here’s the toy collection:

The following weekend, I’ll be at the Solid Sound Festival at Mass MoCA (North Adams, MA) as part of Peter Kirn’s Handmade Music Lounge: solidsoundfestival.com/exhibits

Coming up in July: a workshop at the Peabody Essex Museum near Boston, the Sketching in Hardware conference in Philadelphia, and a field trip to the Lightning Field in New Mexico!

What are you up to?

Artistic Mediums II

Meet the birds at the Move About Myrtle festival on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn- tomorrow, September 19th!

They’ll also be at the NYC Resistor table at the World Maker Faire in Queens the next weekend (Sept 25-26).

The Case of the Curious Pedestrian at the Move About Myrtle Festival

July 29-31 (Thursday-Saturday) Odd Act presents Peter Pan at the Paul Robeson Center for the Arts, Princeton, NJ

They’ve borrowed a bunch of my homemade instruments for this musical adaptation of Peter Pan. I’ll be there for the Thursday night show!

September 19 (Sunday noon-6pm) Move About Myrtle Festival along Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn, between Clermont Ave & Hall St.

The Case of the Curious Pedestrian is a one-day exhibition of performance art and ephemeral installations as part of the Myrtle neighborhood festival. I’ll be hiding a bunch of little mechanical music machines along (above) the avenue- can you find them all?

August 2010-June 2011 Wind through the Trees – an outdoor sculpture exhibition of sound & motion at Jenkins Arboretum, Devon, PA

I’ve got two pieces in this show of environmental and kinetic sculpture – good old Trumpet Marine and a new one, Spiracles, that’ll twist its way all the way up into the treetops. The opening party will be the evening of Saturday October 2.

September 23-26 Festival of Music for People and Thingamajigs, Oakland, CA.

This year I’m helping to curate this festival of handmade instruments and alternate tunings, but I’ll probably have some sort of noisemaker in there too!

January 20-30, 2011 Pulse Art and Technology Festival, Telfair Museum of Art,, Savannah, GA

I’ll be conducting some instrument-building workshops, and possibly performing. Don’t know the exact dates yet.

January 24-February 25, 2011 Artistic Mediums at the New Art Center, Newton, MA.

My sound and micro-radio installation Songs from the Portugese will be part of this exhibit about mysterious phenomena and things that go bump in the night

…and maybe some other stuff.

Friday April 2nd, 2010 8PM
Performance by pianist Tiffany Lin of a new evening length composition scored for retuned piano and a new mechanical extension called the Piano Monster built by NYC artist Ranjit Bhatnagar that uses 16 MIDI triggered voltage controlled motors with attached objects that resonate piano strings.

Wayward Music Series

The Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center

4649 Sunnyside Avenue N., 4th Floor, Seattle, Washington

Tickets: Suggested Scale $5-$15

Tickets will be available at the door on the evening of the performance.

Moveable, long commutes between loved ones, music for motors and resonant strings is the elusive yet evocative title for the new composition by bay area composer Zachary James Watkins. This new evening length work is scored for retuned piano and a new mechanical extension called the Piano Monster built by NYC artist Ranjit Bhatnagar that uses 16 MIDI triggered voltage controlled motors with attached objects that resonate piano strings. The April 2nd premiere performance by pianist Tiffany Lin is presented by Nonsequitur as part of the Wayward Music Series at Seattle’s Chapel Performance Space. The title can be read many ways. Literal interpretations evoke the daily reality of so many modern day workers who must travel long distances to reach the work place or the distances traveled when in love. This title also touches upon the collaborative process between three artists who reside on two coasts and separated by thousands of miles. Trust, vulnerability and the creation of rich new works drive collaborations along distances. In our every day lives, the harmonic series is the fundamental building block of all sounds in constant collision transformed creating language, noise, and the plethora of instrumental timbres, which shape our aural, cultural and sensual experience. Moveable, long commutes between loved ones, music for motors and resonant strings celebrates diverse sounds combining electrical current hum, pure intonation, equal temperament and percussive noises into a vibrant sonic tapestry creating new imaginative narratives.

A performance with handmade instruments at Barbès in Brooklyn, Wednesday March 3, 2010 at 8pm.

Like last year, I’ll be joined by Jason and Chris of the Glass Bees!

Housebroken opens this Friday at 8pm – go!

Here’s some pictures of bits of my contribution. More at flickr.

Vegevision!
We owe that awesome headline to Brooklyn artist Ranjit Bhatnagar, who sometimes uses the term for his flatbed scanner images of Greenmarket produce, a project he’s been working on since 2000. His carrots graced the cover of Edible Brooklyn’s Spring 2007 issue, and selections from his scans–lovely little sprays of garlic chives, slices of okra that look like stars, and of course, bacon–are being shown through the month of December at the Baby Grand (world’s smallest) karaoke bar in a show called Greenmarket Scanography. For those who’ve been to this tiny Soho spot on Lafayette St., you know the key component of that name is Baby: This is but a sliver of a space, and thus Bhatnagar’s work, like others previewed at the bar, is being shown in slide format. Literally–the slides, shown below, are displayed on the wall, lit from behind, and viewed using the provided magnifying glass. Oh yeah, should you miss the show, you can see some of his recent work on Flickr, too.

Preparing for a mini-show of tiny veggie photos at the micro gallery at r bean’s baby grand bar in soho, nyc! The show will be up Dec. 1-31.

I’ve been making these veggie pics for almost ten years now!

You’ll have to join the 1stfans membership program to play the game, but it’s a worthy cause! And I’ll post the results of the game at the end of the month.

* evil monkey is on loan from the Coney Island Museum. I’ve wired him for midi control.

If the wind really picks up, the flowers will spin.

And here’s a video from when I was testing it on my deck.

Update: here’s video from the festival itself.

• Friday afternoon (April 4): instrument workshop/jam session at The Tank, NYC
• Opening Friday (April 4): Everything Must Go — the last ever show at Flux Factory’s current space in Queens, soon to be flattened by the MTA.
• Opening Saturday (April 5): Artistic Mediums: Revelations of the Invisible — at the Museum of New Art, Pontiac, MI

FIRST OFF, this Friday from 2-5pm at The Tank in Tribeca:

I’m doing an instrument-building workshop and jam session with the electronic noise band The Loud Objects. They’ll teach you to program cheap industrial microcontrollers into noisemakers of wonder; I’ll be showing how to wind your own electric guitar pickups and make simple but surprisingly great sounding electric stringed instruments. You’ll leave with one or more new instrument made by your own hands! (There’s an optional donation for supply costs.)

The Tank @ Collective: Unconscious is located at 279 Church Street between Franklin and White. To get to The Tank by subway take A, C, E, J, M, Z, N, Q, R, W, Z, or 6 to Canal Street, or 1 to Franklin Street.

LATER THAT SAME NIGHT: opening party 7pm at Flux Factory:

“Soon, very soon, the Flux Factory space at 38-38 43rd Street will be demolished. In anticipation of this event, we are turning the entirety of Flux Factory into a giant installation of itself. For the past six years, Flux Factory has developed its gallery and aesthetics laboratory at our space in Long Island City. We have had scores of shows and many hundreds of artists have graced these halls. Now it must all be destroyed. Our entire block will be razed by the pitiless bulldozers of the MTA. Everything Must Go.”

I’ll be making a sound sculpture for the show based on the recorded voices of flux factory artists, residents, and friends. I can’t give any details yet because I’m going to improvise the whole thing tomorrow night. Will it work!? Only one way for you to find
out! If that’s not enough, there will also be live music and booze.

It’s gonna be a big crazy show, check it out. If you can’t make it to the opening, the show will be open weekends (and other times – check the web site) until the CLOSING PARTY on Saturday, April 26.

Flux Factory is in Long Island city near the N, R, V, G, and 7 trains. …directions

AND THEN ON SATURDAY IN THE MIDWEST…
Opening party 6-9 pm at the Museum of New Art, Pontiac, MI. The show is called Artistic Mediums: Revelations of the Invisible:

“Thomas Edison, the son of Spiritualists, proposed a telephone to call the dead. Contemporary post humanists seek to convert their souls into bits, or at least to prove that the meat is simply a container. Paranormal researchers, in particular those interested in EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena), argue that the electromagnetic spectrum is oft manipulated by the dead to communicate with the living – that intelligences live invisibly in the ether is a foregone conclusion.”

My piece for the show is a sound sculpture made of various junk and collaged audio, called “Sonnets from the Portugese.” Unfortunately I won’t make it to the opening, but if you happen to be near Pontiac, here’s directions to the gallery. The show will be up
until April 26th.

I’ll put documentation of all three of these noisy things up on this site after the weekend.

Gonna have a party on Saturday March 1st to celebrate surviving the building of 29 instruments in 29 days! It’ll be 3-6pm (or so) in Long Island City, Queens, NYC – contact me for more info. There’ll be beer and snax and making noises. Bring your own noisemakers and/or ideas for noisemakers.

I’m going to continue with the instrument-building, making one every week forever. Or until I get tired of it. They’ll all be posted here.

It’ll be 4pm, Dec. 16th at The Openhouse at 201 Mulberry Street in SoHo, Manhattan – just south of Spring Street.

Here’s a preview of what some of the students are working on.

Mister Resistor Preview 1 from ranjit on Vimeo.

Create Digital Music, Etsy Labs and Make Magazine present
A Very Special Handmade Music Night
featuring Mister Resistor live in concert
Sunday December 16th, 2-5pm
at The Openhouse, 201 Mulberry St near Spring St in SoHo
$FREE
more info at misterresistor.com or createdigitalmusic.com

Bring your hand-carved ocarinas, homebrew synthesizers, circuit bent toys and tin can banjos to show and tell and jam.

At 4pm, enjoy the handmade sonic stylings of Mister Resistor- these Parsons students have spent the semester building and playing musical instruments made from cassette tape, microchips, oatmeal boxes, and much more.

To help newcomers learn how to make their own creations, Create Digital Music’s Peter Kirn will lead off with a workshop on musical electronics, with free kits from PAiA Corporation that uses pencil markings to produce circuits. (No soldering required, so total beginners can give it a try. Kits for the project are free, on a first-come, first-served basis.) Throughout the afternoon, New York’s top musical makers will meet and display their creations.

• Saturday 12-2: Circuit-bending* party at The Crucible to make instruments for Sunday. Bring an electronic musical toy to sacrifice!
• Saturday 5:30-6:30: Artists’ talk at Rock Paper Scissors Gallery along with Stewart Port and Edward Schocker.
• Sunday 1-2: Noise parade at Lake Merritt using the instruments we made on Saturday! Starting neat the sign at the entrance to Children’s Fairyland (Also check out Betsey’s installation which was at the same spot from 4-6).

Accordions in trees!.

There’s some photos of Misericordiam al fresco over at flickr.

ArtBots is very happy to announce a regional NYC show as part of the science+art festival 2006 this fall. The show will feature works old and new by eight New York artists who have appeared in previous ArtBots shows.

When:
Thursday-Sunday November 9-12, 2006, Noon-6pm
Opening reception Thursday November 9th, 6-8pm

Where:
Location One
26 Greene Street (between Canal and Grand)
New York City!

How much:
$$$FREE$$$

Come see wheeze and a bunch of other marvelous art machines!

Behold sensational innovations in the fields of movement, science, and art in an evening of noise, high impact dance, and robotics. Visitors are encouraged to interact with robots, experimenting with noise and paint, and to observe the vigorous and propellent dance of STREB.
– from the AUTO+MATOS web site

The exhibition will take place the evening of Thursday, October 19, 2006 at 6:30pm in the Eisner Lubin Auditorium of the NYU Kimmel Center (60 Washington Square South, 4th Floor). Get tickets at the door or from NYU Ticket Central.

more on flickr

“On March 25th, 2006 the Flux Factory space in Long Island City was transformed into a giant, interactive music box.

“A group of seven sound artists, musicians, and sculpture/installation artists gathered together by Flux Factory have created kinetic sculptures that all work together to play a single song. Viewers activate the box with a crank. Inside the Box, a veritable funhouse of sound can be discovered in each artist’s contribution to the overall song. The viewer becomes an active participant in the experience, subtly altering the song produced.” –flux factory

Art Meets Science, May 18, 2006

See all the other installations at the Robotix’s site

At first, they put it inside a glass box– missing the point of an interactive piece. So I sneaked the box off in order to let people tweak the knobs. By the end of the exhibit, both knobs were broken.

Visit artbots.org to see all the other wonderful art machines.

If you were at artbots 2003 and have video or audio of Lev, please share it with me! I was too busy to get any good video of Lev in action.