Arthur--Painter and Fortune Teller

This is a portrait of “Arthur” that I completed just two days ago (5x3 feet). Arthur is a homeless man who spends his time painting on wood and canvas. His pieces range from small (3x12 inches) to large (10x6 feet). His paintings are interesting, but I first got to know him when he had inherited an old set of tarot cards and was trying to make a few bucks telling fortune.

At the time, I wanted to learn how to read palms and tarot cards, so I thought I might learn a few things from him. I really don’t think he had much experience with tarot cards. The cards were just something he was given and he was mostly improvising with great sincerity. I didn’t learn anything useful but I did appreciate his effort and commitment in something he wasn’t well versed in. It was as if I were to pick up a deck of tarot and immediately set up a stall to tell fortune with no previous experience at all… Something I would never have the guts to do, and something I could never do a hundreth as well as he did. So I appreciated his flair and hustle.

Since that time, we have become friends. I have not interviewed him however. I just feel as if he’s the type of person who hides deep, personal feelings behind his jolly, cheerful exterior. I don’t feel like I’m at the point of being able to penetrate his facade. Perhaps one day I might… Then I will ask him to tell me his stories…

Jose V.

This is another “retro-post” of a portrait I completed in late October this year. It is a portrait of “Jose.” The actual shoot was taken a few months ago, but only recently had I finished the life-sized (7x3 feet) composite piece. Of all the people I have photographed and interviewed, Jose was the one who had the most impact on me. This was for many reasons: One was that this man has high spiritual energy. He’s like a charismatic shaman lost in the mass of homelessness. Second was that this man has gone through hell and abuse from as early as three years old. That he turned out to be such a gentle spiritual man (instead of a angry psycho) never ceases to amaze me.

My interview with him lasted more than eight hours, spread over four separate days. I felt an honor that he would sit with me and tell me his most personal stories. The exchange was exactly what I quest for in what I do in art or anything else in my life. As Carlos Castaneda would say, the exchange was a “gesture” between him and me. And we sat in truth for a few moments in time.

Mother/Father Piece

This blog was started to document the progression of the art project "Our House," but having gotten into the spirit of blogging, I feel that this is an excellent way to record my overall artistic progress and development, and also a good way to reposit any major ideas and inspiration relevant to all my ongoing projects--not just "Our House."

So to make this blog more complete, I will enter a few “retro-posts”--posts that refer to a few important points in time that happened before the beginning of the blog.

This particular post refers to the above piece of my mother and father (3x6 feet, done in early November this year). The working title of the photograph is “My father left us for greener pastures, fresher faces, and a new family. Forty years later, mom met him again at a convalescent home… I felt a light, and it opened me.”

The title is long, but I felt it had to be so because the photograph will have more impact if the backstory is somehow conveyed to the viewer: When I was child, my father was a successful and thriving businessman in Malaysia. In the Chinese culture of the time, it is common for successful men to have mistresses on the side. And when I was six, for whatever reasons known only to him, he decided to leave our family to pursue a larger business empire, a younger wife, and a new family.

Anyways, to make a long story short, about forty years later my dad was put into a convalescent home by his latest family. We got a call informing us of his whereabouts. So my mother, my sister, and I went to visit him. This is a picture of their first meeting in forty years.”

When I was there, there was an opening of light, an opening of enlightenment in me. It was a special moment in my life and, I’m sure, in my mother’s as well.

"Religion" - Readymade and Sound Sculpture

I had gotten an email notification of a DADA/Surrealism/Readymade/Found-Object art show, and it occurred to me that this could be a good venue to put out my first “sound-sculpture baby” to the art world at large and see how it is received or rejected. The entry deadline was only a couple of days away so I mostly cloistered myself within this project this last week and finished it a few hours ahead of the deadline.

The title of the piece is “Religion”. It comments on Consumerism as the all-encompassing religion of America. A lot has been studied and written about Consumerism as a religion, for those who are interested in reading a sample of these available on the internet, I have listed a few links at the end of this post.

“Religion” is a piece about the “voices” of things. Phenomenologically speaking, the things we interact which are imbued with meaning. Objects speak to us with the voices that are given to them in our daily interactions with the world at large. In American culture, advertising is the foremost authority that gives voice to the objects all around us. These voices are “transparent” in that we are not conscious of what is spoken but, unconsciously, they speak clearly to us of promise: The promise of validation, recognition, acceptance, status, love, happiness… On the other hand, they also speak of lack, shame, inadequacy, rejection, and outcast. These voices pass, unfiltered, into our subconscious and they echo transparently inside heads. What they say is unheard, until they are translated into our interior dialog, which are then spoken with authority and heard clearly as the voice of our inner self.

“Religion” gives clear voice to the three shopping bags colored red, white, and blue. The voices are made opaque and there is no denying them any longer. The sculpture of the sound is made like echoes that reverberate from the universal static signal of advertising.

In the piece, a pair of speakers is hidden in the bags, and the sound (10 minutes) is run on a continuous loop. As an update on the previous "sound system" post, I’d say I’m generally happy with the entire system. The sound quality is equivalent to my current home stereo, which is of a fairly decent quality. It won’t blow any audiophiles away, but it will get the sound-sculpture job done. The only obvious complaint is that the fan of the power amplifier is rather noisy. Which might pose a problem when I start experimenting with live sound; I’m sure the mics will pick up the fan noise with no problem at all. But, hey, it was a cheap power amplifier…

Below, I list three web articles that talk more about Consumerism as a religion: (I can't seem to be able to make the web addresses into links. So please just copy the lines and paste to the browser address field. Sorry.)

http://www.planetpapers.com/Assets/1618.php (“The Myth of Consumerism”)

http://www.rochesterunitarian.org/2000-01/20010729.html (“The Religion of Consumerism”)

http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_07/issue_09/opinion_04.html (“The Religion of Consumption”)

Sound System

Anticipating the need to eventually supply a sound system for my show, as well as for any other pieces that may incorporate sound, I decided to put together a basic rack-mounted system that will play decent sound in a average-sized show space. Looking at discount internet suppliers, I put together a system that will be used for the three following scenarios:

1) Continuous looping of a CD track (of the sound sculpture) for the entire duration of the gallery show.

2) For use with art pieces that I may produce that will incorporates the use of sound design.

3) To “sculpt” live sound in public-art sound sculptures that I hope to do in the future.

Considering the usage, the requirements of the system should be as follows:

1) Because the system will be left in the galleries and operated by gallery staff, it should be easy to use. Meaning that it will have to have a CD player (and not have to be played via a computer laptop--which will be too complicated).

2) Relatively portable, with enough power to fill a good sized show space with undistorted sound. This means rack-mounted components all set up in one portable case. And small, but high quality, speakers (which I already have).

3) My preliminary experiments with altering live sound produced scary levels of feedback. I know I have a lot more learning to do here. Regardless, I decided to buy a feedback eliminator unit to put in the rack. Maybe it will help. We'll see...

Anyways, there was a good sale last week at one of the internet suppliers, so I put in the order, and the components have been coming in one at a time via UPS and FedEx. Mostly, these are lower-end, prosumer components that don’t cost as much as high-end audiophile units. I hope the resulting sound quality will be good enough. Will report more when the whole thing is put together.

Artist Statement

(above: Portrait of "Woman at Swap Meet")

Today, I tried to put together a new artist's statement with the sound sculpture component added to it. I'm posting it to elicit any comments or recommendations. Any responses on what works, what doesn't, and what it lacks are totally welcome (and will be much appreciated). Here is the draft:

"In my continuing search to understand what it means to be in this world, I have come to the realization that, for me, we live in a world of people--and not a world of places. Ever since then, the work I’ve been doing has come to be an experiencing of this world of people through photography and personal interviews. The art that has come out of this exploration is the multi-media form of the “Human Landscape” done through photographic portraits and sonic sculptures of human sounds.

In the photographic component, I try to present the power of the individual without any adulteration or artificial gloss. They stand towards the camera without being posed, and they stare back at the viewer without a smile or other generic expressions elicited by traditional portraiture. The rest of my photographic process also reacts against the traditional, modernist standards of the medium that I feel severely limit the creativity and expression of the artist. The notions of the perfect print, consistent surface treatment, and idea of the flawless “fine photograph” presented immaculately behind glass is deconstructed. The result is a post-modern approach to photography: images sometimes clear, other times choppy, blurry; the works are composited from smaller prints to form larger pieces glued onto canvas, and are then tacked to the walls without glass protection. The presentation and feeling of the pieces necessarily have to reflect the feeling of the real world in that it has the textures, the flaws, and the accessibility of real lives of real people.

My ongoing project “Our House” is a multi-media exhibition based on photography and sound sculpture. The impetus behind the project is the modeling of the “Human Landscape” as I see it. In addition to the visual, I have added the auditory to form a greater gestalt of the human condition. The aural component consists of a sound sculpture rearranged from the recordings of interviews and other organic vocal sound clips of humanity. Like the photographic imagery, the sound component sculpts the aural with new textures in new auditory contexts, creating for the viewer/listener new ways of seeing, and new ways of listening."

La Jetee / Meditation

(above: Image frame from "La Jetee")

Scoped around the internet and checked out what the web had of the French “film” La Jetee. The various short (7 to 9 minutes) segments found on YouTube was actually different parts of the larger film which totals 28 minutes. Made in 1962, by Chris Marker, La Jettee is “made from a series of stills and a voice-over narration that tells of experiments carried out on a prisoner in the underground camps to which everyone has been forced after the holocaust of World War III. The experiments will purportedly save humanity by sending "emissaries" into both the past and the future to bring back help. The experimental subject (the film suggests this is the narrator himself) is chosen because of his obsessive attachment to an image of the past½a young woman on the quay (la jetée ) at Orly Airport when he was young. Under the auspices of the experiment, he reaches the past and spends time with this woman; but he is then brought back by the experimenters and sent to the future. The people of the future offer him refuge with them, but instead he asks them to return him to his past, to the quay at Orly and to the woman--and, as it turns out, to his own death.”

This is a strangely beautiful film. The black-and-white still images are superbly done, capturing the essential imagery of the narrative. It is as if we went through a well-shot film frame-by-frame, and then frame captured the best still images that told the story, then threw away the rest of the frames. Because of the lack of traditional film/video motion, this film, to me, sort of exists in that twilight zone between still photography and film. Sort of in the same “zone” where Fiona Tan’s video art piece "Corrections" can be found in the categories of my mind.

Where "Corrections" haunts us with the play of imagery, La Jetee’s power was in its total immersion in word/voice and image. And as strong as the still images are, the film mostly hits us with the sound of the human voice speaking the human word. The sound and narration is just absolutely beautifully done. Sort of like a sound sculpture of an individual human being, in contrast to what I want to do—which is a sound sculpture of the entire human landscape.

Another interesting thing about "La Jetee" and "Corrections" is that they both have a unusual meditative quality to them. Something that I find in neither the still photography or video/film media. For "La Jetee", it is as if the still imagery halts the mind from moving forward in the narrative. In doing that it stills the mind while, on the other hand, requires the mind to do more work with the imagination. The result is a more mindful and meditative viewing/listening. I feel this is a good effect, especially for my project.

I’m going to get my hands on the full-length version. Let the feeling of the piece (of the sound) settle inside of me. Definitely will provide an influence on “Our House.”