Thursday, March 19, 2009

two little projects

Hey K!
Came across a couple things in my mindless facebooking today:

1. I am a new "fan" (you know the feature) of "Conversations at the Edge," and the Gene Siskel is screening the work of Cory Arcangel tonight. He's a pop-culture Nintendo game hack artist. I can't make it, but checked out his work. He did a project called "The Bruce Springsteen Born to Run Glockenspiel Addendum" in 2006. Being a fan (although not yet declared on facebook) of glock and Bruce, I felt this was such a guilty pleasure.

His site describes it best: "The Bruce Springsteen Born to Run Glockenspiel Addendum is a composition for solo glockenspiel. For those not in the know, Bruce's Born to Run record is littered with glockenspiel. For example, the famous melody from the song Born to Run is actually a guitar DOUBLED by a glockenspiel. The Born to Run record itself contains 3 songs that feature the glockenspiel, ... For this project, I decided to create an addendum to the original and compose, play, and record glockenspiel parts for the songs on Born to Run that do not already feature the instrument (Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, Backstreets, She's the One, Meeting Across the River and Jungleland). This composition has existed in several formats. A 12 inch vinyl record & mp3's (meant to be played along to Bruce's record), a "mix" CD (my additional glockenspiel mixed back into the original), and every now and then I will perform it live along to a recording of Springsteen."

Here is a YouTube clip I found of him performing this:


2. After perusing recent status updates, I found myself checking out project pics of an old graduate advisor of mine from Memphis. Cedar Nordbye is an interdisciplinary artist that specializes in the performative (and was a direct influence on me during my MFA studies). He posted images of a project he did in 1999, seemingly as a way to find past participants.
The description from his album page: "In 1999 I traveled to Paris and in the hall outside the room containing the Mona Lisa offered visitors $10 and a postcard of the Mona Lisa if they would NOT go in to see the painting. I made a small artist's book documenting the results."

I also have to give him credit for the image at top. Just a sketch, but very evident of his analytical thinking. And today especially, this seemed to speak loudly, as I'm negotiating my own me + we.

love ya!
k

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