blake carrington || archive

CATHEDRAL SCAN PERFORMANCE AT RUSTINES LAB

Before leaving Montreal I gave a short performance of Cathedral Scan followed by an artist talk at Rustines Lab. This was a teaser for a larger show to be held in spring 2010 at a large church space in Montreal. Click the plan image to see and hear the direct A\V capture of the performance.

Many thanks to everyone at Perte de Signal!

-posted Sunday November 8, 2009-

VOLTAGE CONVERTER

I returned to New York last week from a residency at Rustines | Lab in Montreal. Over the past 6 months, starting with a previous residency in Helsinki, I've been keeping a blog called Voltage Converter filled with a range of microprojects, art and music reviews, and general updates about my activities. I have found the more gestural nature of the blog very liberating for my practice, so I've decided to stay with it here at home. Click the image to take a look.

-posted Sunday November 8, 2009-

SUOMENLINNA ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY

"Suomenlinna Ornithological Society" is a multi-faceted project created while at Helsinki International Artist-in-residence Program (HIAP) in May/June 2009. The island of Suomenlinna is a sea fortress located 15 minutes off the Helsinki coast. Built in the 18th century, it has witnessed years of bloody conflict, forced labor, and prisoner executions. Common wisdom says that the island is haunted. These stories contrast with Suomenlinna's current function as a summer destination for tourists and locals alike. With its beautiful rocky hills and dense population of birds, it provides an escape to nature for the city's inhabitants.

At the core of "Suomenlinna Ornithological Society" is the invention of new bird species with electronic birdsongs. The concrete sources of these birdsongs are samples taken from a Suomenlinna museum film about the history of the island. Explosions, cannonball whistles, and grisly vocal narrations are re-shaped into the rhythms, timbres and frequencies of birdsong. This transformation references the Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP), a supposedly paranormal occurrence where voices of the dead are heard via electronic technology.

The project has thus far been realized in three different forms:

1) The Society's Website archives the invented bird species as well as a number of real species found in Finland. A curious presence can also be detected by the inquisitive visitor.

2) An "electro concrète" remix of the archive was commissioned by MUU Gallery for their net radio series Audio Autographs. This is an excerpt from the upcoming full-length album titled Ghost Cycle~, to be released under the moniker Suomenlinna Ornithological Society.

3) Three small audio devices were created with the Arduino board + Waveshield by Adafruit Industries. These devices were placed in trees and gun shafts in the environment, playing the artificial birdsongs.

Special thanks go to the photographers and recordists of real bird species, whose work was appropriated for the Society's archive. Also many thanks to Pessi Parviainen and Gregoire Rousseau at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, who provided space and equipment for the creation of the audio devices.

-posted Friday July 3, 2009-

LOCI_

"Loci_" is a series of prints generated by a custom sound-to-image visualizer.  Audio field recordings are fed into the system, then manipulated into abstract imagery that brushes against architectural and topographic representation.  The project deals with perceptual analogues to the conversion of audiovisual data, and is motivated by a statement from R. Murray Schafer: "All visual projections of sounds are arbitrary and fictitious".

I am currently working on re-writing the Max/MSP/Jitter patch to accommodate a much larger physical scale. The imagery is created in real-time and relies much on feedback loops of matrix data to create the forms. Possible developments for the future include vinyl mural prints and audiovisual performance with widescreen high-definition projection.

-posted Friday July 3, 2009-