4833 rph

Behind the Screens

2010-07-25T21:20:55Z

Sometimes when you find yourself roaming through unfamiliar territories, you have to ask yourself, “How did I get here?” As I sat in studio 3 of the Hyde Park Art Center pulling giant staples out of an old wooden silk screen frame with a flat head screw driver and a pair of needle nosed pliers, I asked myself that very question. How did I get here? And the only reply I could offer myself was the Art of Poetic Skin.

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Experience the Art of Poetic Skin, that is the idea behind my small handmade skin care business called Poetisa’s Palette. I named my company Poetisa’s Palette because of my deep appreciation for art and the human experience. I spent my twenties taking photos that I can’t bear to delete even though they take up gigabytes on my hard drive. So three years ago when I decided to start making and selling skincare products, I knew that my company’s image was somewhere on my hard drive.

Fast forward three years, and here I am sitting in the HPAC studio 3 on a Tuesday morning learning how to build a silkscreen from scratch. My talented silkscreen instructor Elke Claus and several other artists are restoring old silk screens for class. I feel alive. I imagine most people see themselves on a beach on a hot summer morning, but my idea of the perfect day is sitting in an art studio restoring art equipment. The whole reason why I wanted to take silk screening was to get my images off of my hard drive and onto a t-shirt. However, as I stand here removing staple after staple, I feel like I am a part of something greater than my personal vision.

Unknown to my instructor and the other participants, this project hit home for me. The only way I can participate in silk screening on Tuesday nights is because of a partial scholarship that was awarded to me through the HPAC Fund. I don’t see myself as a charity case, but when unemployment hits you, programs like silk screening classes seem completely out your reach.

Participating in a creative learning environment as an adult is truly a luxury. As the economy offers more and more uncertainty, creativity seems to take an even further backseat. Art classes cost money; supplies cost money; and space costs even more money. You can’t get too cheap with your supplies or your project becomes difficult to produce and you wind up wasting more money. You know the more expensive the materials, the less room for error you have.

The thing that really makes the class worth it whether you get a scholarship or not is that everything you need to know to produce a silkscreen print is provided for you. Ink, paper, silk screens, UV light boxes etc., it is all there for your learning pleasure. HPAC even has daily open studio time, so we can work on our masterpieces. It is truly a no-lose situation.
At the end of the day, Elke told us we restored $800 worth of silk screens. I know what we accomplished in Studio 3 is going to help a creative soul like myself quench their creative thirst.

Paula Wills is a Hyde Park Center School and Studios student, taking summer courses in silk screening. Paula is the winner of the Art Center’s first Student Blogger contest. Each week, from July 25-September 5, Paula will blog about her experiences in the classroom - from projects to classroom lessons. Be sure to check back each week to hear more about Paula’s progress in the studio.

From NYC to HPAC

2010-06-22T15:07:01Z

I arrived in Hyde Park on a surprisingly warm September day in 2007. Coming from New York City, where I was born and raised, Chicago seemed to have a small-town vibe and Hyde Park seemed to be a sleepy little neighborhood where I would embark on a 4-year-long journey through college. At first, I was concerned that living in a small and cozy neighborhood would come at the cost of urban luxuries, like public transportation, late night dining and most importantly, access to art. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that Hyde Park had all of that and more and about 10 weeks in to my time living in Chicago, I found myself enrolled in a ceramics class at the Hyde Park Art Center.

]]> The class met just once a week for a couple of hours on Monday nights and so I figured it was a time commitment that I could handle in addition to my schoolwork. It seemed the HPAC would offer a nice respite from the Regenstein Library, where I found myself spending most of my time. What I hadn’t realized when I signed up for the class was that in addition to the 2.5 hours on Monday nights, there were “open studio” hours throughout the week which basically meant that I could come in whenever I wanted and play with my newly acquired clay. Unfortunately for my school work, the clay became new favorite toy and I found myself spending 10 hours a week in the studio wedging and mushing and smashing and rolling wet clay until my fingers were pruney and my forearms sore. I hadn’t actually taken a ceramics class since 5th grade so I was pretty much a newbie but 10 hours of practice a week is enough to get you going and, as I learned, is also enough to completely fill 2 cabinets of less-than-mediocre handmade bowls, mugs and everything in between. Into each piece went a little bit of New York, a pinch of homesickness and the portion of Homer’s Iliad that I never got around to reading for my humanities class the next day.

I am now going into my senior year at the University of Chicago, and while I have figured out how to better budget my time, I still find myself spending hours in the studio. The homesickness has gone away (although the New York in me never will) and the bowls and mugs are now toppling off every shelving unit in my little Hyde Park Apartment, the newer pieces only slightly more aesthetically pleasing than the last. I don’t use most of them, but I never throw any away. Not even the ones that cracked in the kiln or flopped on the wheel. Because at one moment, each of those pieces received my undivided attention and in that moment, I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing. I guess the clutter brought on by these defunct pieces reminds me that I’m only lucky to have had so many of these moments. And I don’t intend to stop anytime soon - the mess will grow, my apartment won’t, but I will have spent that much more time doing what I love in a place I love and when college is over, and I return to the city that never sleeps, I’ll have a whole mess of kitchen ware to show for it!

Working Towards Open Studio: Judd/Mark Update

2010-06-14T20:26:49Z

We returned this weekend from performing a work in progress of The Precession in Providence and went straight back into our studio. We are now working towards two open studio showings scheduled for Friday June 18th and Saturday June 19th from 2 - 4 p.m The two open studio times will be an opportunity to open up our process to the HPAC community and to show what we have been working on these past few months in our space. The two open studio times are also a culmination of the first part of our two part residency we have at HPAC. We will return to the studio again starting September 1st.

]]> For the open studio showing we are working towards presenting approximately 40 - 45 minutes of material. This past week we have begun to sequence and structure the material we have been generating. We are beginning to see what fits in the overall system and what doesn’t. The sequence we mapped out is what we are now drilling in the studio each day.

We have 6 fragments of material all together that we are sequencing. We are imagining that the text based net-art that Judd has been building will be projected onto the wall of the studio space and also act as a time-keeper for the first section. Following Judd’s latest text and code experiment, RC_AI, he has created Cliff Notes: Agape Threw Froths, a large-scale panoramic visualization/re-composition of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, a text obviously emblematic of the depression era and cited ubiquitously in times of economic struggle. The panorama grows over time to a width of 11,676,636 pixels which translates to approximately 12,974 feet and will work well with the 10-screen / 80 foot expanse of the HPAC facade. Along this horizontal trajectory are stations consisting of re-writings of each chapter of the novel by a basic machine-writing algorithm. These are sometimes written on-screen and sometimes read by our text-to-speech synthetic-voice collaborator, Ivanka.

We have also continued to work with the two young artists André and Evan Lennox. Here is an instruction that we gave them on June 10th to come to the studio with on June 13th:

Make 5 LINES of Dance.
Each Line should be in 10 parts.
Each line should last at least 30 seconds

Consider looking UP and DOWN / Different Speeds / Intensity

Take moves from Busby Berkeley’s ‘Pettin’ in the Park.’ Consider The idea of The Precession with the way you make the lines in the space. Consider your moves wobbling and on an angle.

Following the last HPAC e-newsletter “I Sing the Body Electric,” we realized that electricity has actually emerged as a major element through the imagery, choreography and use of objects in the work.

We will leave our studio this coming Sunday, June 20th. We will return to the studio on September 1st. Throughout the rest of the summer we will be still be working on The Precession and having opportunity to show the work. On June 26th we will present at NOISE! 2010 at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater space in NYC.

We will also be presenting two showing’s for the Printers Ball here in Chicago on July 24th @ HPAC and July 30th @ Columbia College.

In August we will back at HPAC for 4 days whilst the current Spatial City show is being taken down so that we can have an opportunity to work in the empty large gallery space at HPAC for our closing exhibition performances in March. These 4 days will give us a time to begin to integrate the performance material with the exhibition space and facade.

We will also be artists in residence at Catwalk, Catskill New York from August 17th - 29th and during this time we will be presenting a tutorial / performance on Governors Island in NYC. Our artist friend Mary Walling Blackburn has organised a summer series of performative tutorials titled Radical Citizenship. We will use this tutorial as research for a large-scale participatory performance sequence we plan to integrate into the exhibit at HPAC. Here is the tutorial we will be presenting at Governors Island:

Trials With an Overhead View

In this tutorial, we will generate a collective performance in which participants’ occupations, labor histories, skills and fundamental concerns will be used as material for a choreographed sequence of movement and text that acts as a dedication to its own ephemeral construction. Based partly on studies of New Deal-era labor histories, aesthetics and monuments, the moving images generated will be informed by sources including the dance-music numbers of Busby Berkeley, and the placement of performers will correspond to the positions of visible stars above our location on the date of the event, according to a catalogue of star data that we will use as a score.

Performing in Providence + Electronic Literature: An Introduction

2010-06-09T14:34:23Z

This past week we (Judd & Mark) were away from our HPAC studio performing in Providence, RI as part of ELO_AI: Archive and Innovate, a conference and arts program addressing digital literary practice. The 4-day event, hosted by the Brown University Literary Arts program, included scholarly discourse on the state of electronic literature along with performances of screen-based poetry, narrative and other textual forms that make use of new media or computer code.

]]> We often describe our work as being a convergence of performance and digital literary practice or electronic writing. In the last decade or so, electronic writing has developed into a broad field and global community with many scholars and practitioners. For more information, explore the Electronic Literature Organization web site. The ELO formed in 1999, — co-founded by novelist Robert Coover, electronic author, Scott Rettberg, and technologist, Jeff Ballowe — to address the inevitable change to literary culture that they realized was to come with the widespread use of computing and the internet. The ELO has been a crucial force in guiding literary culture from the era of the printed book towards new digital forms. Strictly speaking, all writing has become electronic and reading platforms like kindle are digital literature. However, electronic writing as a field or movement is concerned with how engaging with contemporary computational technologies can transform literary experience, not attempts to replicate the book in static digital representations.

For examples of textual work that explore the potentials of contemporary technologies for interactive, time-based, algorithmic, collaborative and many other kinds of textual work, see the Electronic Literature Organization Collection, Volume 1.

Among the key figures in the emergence of electronic literature is the novelist Robert Coover. While a print writer himself, he, along with colleagues like George Landow, recognized the importance of examining the potential of new writing technologies and Coover began the first experimental workshops at Brown University well before the advent of the internet. In fact, the first wave of electronic writing was called ‘hypertext’, to designate the possibility for vast, non-linear and interactive narratives on the computer. Software like intermedia and later storyspace were experimental environments that produced among many early works, the first hypertext novel, Michael Joyce’s Afternoon: A Story. The concept of hypertext became the model for the internet as we know it currently as designated by the ht in html, the basic language of the web (“hypertext mark-up language”).

With Coover retiring from teaching, the conference and arts program were dedicated to his role in establishing a new mode of creative writing practice. Many of the current practitioners of electronic writing were Coover’s students, Judd among them.

We performed a 20 minute version of The Precession, developed here in our studio, combining screen-based visual and temporal texts with live performance. The performance works with aesthetics of scale, architecture, labor and the idea of extending the body as illustrated through simple implements including a ladder, a telescope, and a very tall microphone stand.

In addition, Judd performed a new work, RC_AI, in celebration of Robert Coover. The work responds to Coover’s novel Pinocchio in Venice. The writing and performance of RC_AI also included Judd’s father, Dr. Thomas J. Morrissey, a scholar who also happens to be one of the foremost authorities on the Pinocchio story having written extensively on the original work by Carlo Collodi and its re-emergence in a myriad of modern and post-modern projects including Coover’s novel.

Interestingly, several other Chicago-based artists participated in the Providence event including Mark Booth, Adrian Moens, and Laura Goldstein. The photos of The Precession were taken by MB.

For other unusual historical movements in the language arts that have informed the our practice, see Caroline Bergvall’s essay, What Do We Mean by Performance Writing? and the history of Oulipo.

In the Studio with Mark and Judd IV

2010-06-02T18:42:03Z

Part One:The Living Newspapers

From June 1st - 27th we have an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Chicago.

This past Friday, Saturday and Sunday we have trained 33 performers to be part of this exhibition. The exhibition takes place daily Tuesday - Sunday. There are two shifts that take place daily. Each shift last for 2 and a half hours. Each shift has two performers. The performers are listening to a text to speech program via ipods that are connected to a wireless network. We workshoped the performers to speak the texts that are coming from their ipods aloud. The are having dialogues with each other through the ipod touches. Judd built a program that mines twitter texts that people have wrote. The performers then speak these texts aloud. In a database the twitter texts in real-time are structured as such that the performers enact scenes within the museum. The scenes are texts minded from twitters wrote in a mile radius of the museum, what people are ‘concerned’ about, the trends of the day - during rehearsal we learned of the deaths of Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper. Other scenes are also actual archival Living Newspapers - from where we take the name. The Living Newspapers were actual plays that were produced during the last great depression putting writers and actors to work and were generally plays of the current times. Our exhibition is a re-enactment and re-imagining of A Living Newspaper of today. We each now in some respects have our own News Feed through our interactions with social media networks. The other part of the exhibition is the performers embodying the Winged Figures of the Republic. The twin figures that sit at the top of the Hoover Dam - we invited our artist friend Claire Ashley to make us wings that we could travel with, could be light and not take up too much room. Claire wonderfully designed her version of the wings as 15 feet high inflatables, inflated by a fan inserted into a backpack. We taught each performer a small choreography that also includes the inflating and deflating of the wings as part of the choreography. We enjoyed teaching / training the performers for the exhibit this past weekend. One of the favorite activities is seeing people laying down on the wings to deflate them and to let the air out. Part performance, part absurd, part ceremonial, part performing procedure. Please see rehearsal photos.

Part Two: Winged Figures of the Republic

At Hyde Park this week we wanted to begin to work with two other performers and young artists that we have approached to collaborate with us on The Precession. André and Evan Lenox are two twin brothers. They make work in performance and new media. We had been working with them during the fall last year on this project and we approached them again last month to work with us on the exhibition. With our initial research trip to the Hoover Dam on the Nevada/ Arizona border we were taken by the monument of the Winged Figures of the Republic. The Two Winged figures sit on top of a celestial map of the night sky on September 30th 1935 at 8.58 p.m. - the time that FDR dedicated the dam. On that night 209 stars were visible to the naked eye and the two winged figures sit on top of this specific sky.

In the studio we asked André and Evan to come up with 3 still movements in relationship to the mic stand and microphone. At the still moments they will be saying text aloud that we will insert. We also asked them to respond to few lines of text written by the poet Emily Dickinson. Earlier in the week we had been sent an essay by our artist friend in the UK, Kira O’ Reilly. A Dim Capacity for Wings: Angels, Flies and the Material Imagination can be seen here .

The lines of text that we asked André and Evan to respond to are here:

My cocoon tightens - Colors tease,
I’m feeling for the Air -
A dim capacity for Wings
Demeans the Dress I wear.

We are also including two images in this blog post of the material that they produced in the studio. We will be working with André and Evan in the studio every Monday and Wednesday.

We have also been in dialogue with Daniele Wilmouth to ask her interest in recording green screen footage of the work we have been developing post exit out of the studio in the first week of July. We intend of layering the material we have been producing physically in space on top of the textual work that Judd has been programming. mining and generating.

Away in Providence:
From Wednesday June 2nd to Sunday June 6th we will be attending the Electronic Literature Organization Conference at Brown University in Providence Rhode Island. The title of the conference is Archive and Innovate. We will be presenting a Work in Progress of The Precession. Judd will also be speaking on a panel as well as performing a new work he has been developing in response to the writer and his mentor whilst he was studying for his masters at Brown, Robert Coover. Link for the event here: http://www.brown.edu/Conference/Electronic_Literature_Organization/conference.php

In the Studio with Mark and Judd III

2010-05-25T22:40:06Z

We have divided the studio into segments corresponding to the windows of the HPAC facade and are creating a movement sequence that could either be performed live on the catwalk or displayed as video sequences in the screens. We are working from sources that emphasize labor, occupation, physicality. Books scattered on the floor include images by Eadweard Muybridge, Michael Borremans, Iring Penn and posters from the WPA federally-funded art program of the 1930’s. Tonight we are meeting with young artists André and Evan Lenox who will be resume their roles as the twin Winged Figures of the Republic in some of our planned future events.

We are about to begin translating the current digital material for initial viewing on the facade. This is a formidable task as it involves creating a web page on the scale of a building. We decided early on that the facade would not be video but a work of internet art simultaneously accessible online. This involves treating the site as a vast navigable panoramic space something like a Google map where, for example, new terrain dynamically appears as you pull the landscape towards yourself. This will take consideration and time. And the HPAC system has a very unique setup and we must work within the constraints of how it displays imagery across machines and projectors.

We are also planning for two imminent events: a re-mounting of The Living Newspapers at the MCA launching June 1 and a performance at Brown University as part of the Electronic Literature Organization annual conference and digital arts event (June 3-6). In addition to a performance of The Precession, we are also creating a new work in honor of Robert Coover. Coover is a prominent writer of fiction and was Judd’s mentor as an MFA student at Brown. The entire event is in part recognition of Coover’s legacy and his innovative approach to bringing electronic media into the practice and discourse of contemporary literature. The Coover-specific intervention involves a live and screen-based retelling of Coover’s renowned re-invention of the Pinnochio story in his novel Pinnochio in Venice. The performance combines written responses to Coover’s work with material mined and composed algorithmically from Coover’s manuscript. Judd’s father, Thomas J. Morrissey, will also participate in the performance. Tom is, among other things, a scholar of children’s literature who is an expert on Pinnochio having written extensively both critical essays and children’s plays from the Pinnochio cultural corpus. The piece, tentatively called RC_AI approaches themes of father-son/ master-apprentice relationships, and the myth of the inanimate coming to life (puppet, monster, golem, artificial intelligence). This may seem like a tangent but there is a connection with our overall Precession project — Pinocchio was one of the productions funded by the WPA theater program (that also funded many Living Newspapers) and when the Federal Theater Program was discontinued in 1939, Pinnochio’s “corpse” was paraded through the streets in a small box.

On Tuesday we are meeting Fred Sasaki from the Poetry Foundation to consider our involvement in the Printer’s Ball summer festivities with its theme of print <3s digital. On Wednesday, Mark will also be part of Power Tools 5 at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he will be on a panel called Artists Take Charge.

E-literature conference:
http://ai.eliterature.org/

Electronic Literature Organization:
http://www.eliterature.org/

Info on The Living Newspapers:
http://www.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/exh_detail.php?id=240

Here are some notes from the studio:

BREAKING DOWN THE SEQUENCE

In the studio this week we have been breaking down the idea of the Muybridge sequence further. We have given ourselves 10 instructions for constructing a 10 minute sequence that is part choreographic and part performative. We are working with a constraint of 10 screens/10 minutes of time and we have marked this spatially on the floor and also the wall. Currently there are 8 gridded squares marked out by blue tape. In the squares are sheets of paper with an instruction to respond to with movement. Some of these instructions came from a previous residency where we asked people in our community to send us directives / instructions via their twitter accounts. We have so far developed 6 minutes of material from this exercise. Minute one is an announcement of a piece of text from the working diary of John Steinbeck, who wrote many depression-era books including the Grapes of Wrath. Minutes 2 - 5 are then specific generated movements and texts. Here are some examples:

1. Pathways of rubble, rocks: maneuver
2. And the poet thought that the power of language to shape the world was fireproof
3. The Astrologer smoked a cigarette and wore a grey T
4. Coalman, grocery boy, carpenter, shoemaker

A Chicago Fireman’s T shirt is worn, his body is placed against a wall and he makes a prediction. A feather falls from the sky and a man smells smoke on this hands. Someone picks up a child’s telescope and walking along a semicircular motion he punctures the wall at the half way mark, then putting the telescope to his nose, he rotates to face the opposite wall.

We want this week to complete the second half, or a further 6 minutes of material from the directives, so that we will have another 12 minutes of material to look over. We repeat, practice and rehearse the material over and over again as a way of understanding the sources and materials we are examining. Hopefully this allows us then to understand what it is we are making and building and also to get a clearer sense of the elements coming together and also to figure out timing, interruption, and editing.

IMAGES FROM THE STUDIO

In the Studio with Mark and Judd

2010-05-18T17:49:15Z

This is our second blog from our artists in residence, Mark and Judd, as they discuss what they are doing in the studio to prepare for the upcoming exhibition.

What is a sequence?
In the studio this past week we have begun to look at constructing a sequence of movement that we imagine will be bodies individually placed and spaced across the 10 individual screens on the external facade of HPAC. I imagine this space as a landscape; panorama but also as a continuum: a loop. Each time you get to the end of the line of the screen you have to return and build upon where you first started. We are exploring how do you begin a sequence and how it develops its own language, response and sources to respond to.

]]> On May 9th we taught a workshop at HPAC for children in the neighborhood. We asked the children to walk across the catwalk screen space imitating themselves, their mothers and their grandmothers (it was Mothers Day in the United States). We were interested in how material developed over a sequence of time and how the movement changed and developed as they stepped into each of the screens of the external facade on the Catwalk. How did they embody each generation? How did they take on the life, energy and imagined body of their elders? We then asked them to alter and change their movements of the activities they do, their mothers do and their grandparents - what is it liked to perform and embody their grandmothers activity as if their grandmother was a planet? What is it like to perform and embody their mothers activity as if they had wings? We didn’t know what the outcome of the tasks we set forth would be but the intention, space and performance of what they presented was terrific for us to see as a sequence of movements traversed from North to South, South to North across the Catwalk space.

Putting America Back to Work:
What is a dance that is in 26,000 parts? A Precession takes 26,000 years; this is the length of time it takes the earth to rotate in its axis. We want to give ourselves this task [of examining the Precession as a dance in 26,000 parts]. It feels a little complicated and ambitious at this time but we want to see how the almost impossible task to give a specific focus, scale and build that we are not sure how we can begin to process in real time compared to that of machine time.

Sources that we are looking at/deriving movement and text from:
1. The early sequential photography of Muybrige saw a body or an animal performing a specific task that was broken down sequentially. We are interested in his photographs as a way to assist us in building this work as well as the visual comparison of the Catwalk external facade as a sequential formal frame.
2. Michael Borremanns, a Belgian contemporary painter, works with gestural moments that are portraits and landscapes of bodies caught in a specific talk or action.
3. New York Stock Exchange Gestures that show how stock exchange workers ‘perform’ the task of exchanging ‘stocks’ on the trade floor.

Images from the studio:
The photos show paper that we put up this past week. The blue and purple paper across the wall is 20 pages long and we wish for this to be a score line for us to insert and notate a 20 minute sequence that we memorize. We are thinking each page would equal 1 minute in time. The 10 green pieces of paper act as a visual for us of the 10 screen facade and is an anchor for us when we are working in the studio space.

Meet Mark and Judd

2010-05-10T16:49:02Z

Mark Jeffrey and Judd Morrissey are two artists talking up residence at the Art Center from now until mid-June as they work out their exhibition showing here later in the year. Each week Mark and Judd will post to our blog, recounting the progress of their exhibition and reflections from the studio. So without further ado…. Heeeeeere’s Mark and Judd!

Our first post as artists-in-residence will serve as an introduction to the work we are doing in our upstairs studio. We are developing a project called The Precession, a project combining internet art, digital poetry, performance, and installation. This work is being developed specifically for HPAC’s 10-screen digital facade and will launch in December 2010. There will also be performances, workshops, and open-studio events at various times during our stay and exhibition.

The vocabulary of The Precession is closely tied to architecture, physical labor and the night sky. A primary real-world source for the work is a sculpture permanently installed at the Hoover Dam, Oskar JW Hansen’s Winged Figures of the Republic, which depicts two 32-foot tall winged men seated within a complex celestial map. The celestial map was designed by Hansen so that future civilizations and “visiting extraterrestrials” can accurately date the Dam’s construction (much like ancient monuments are often believed to contain astronomical data corresponding to their origins). It also contains a representation of the shifting position of the polestar as viewed from Earth over 26000 years (this changes due to precession, a gradual cyclic shift in the earth’s axis). We are looking at night skies in relation to monument and memorial. One of the goals of our residency is to work with astronomical data to reconstruct the positions of the visible stars over HPAC and use this as a map for nightly arrangements of digital text and image. While examining the Hoover Dam site poetically, the work will also explore depictions of America’s New Deal and depression- era landscape and consider this material in relation to contemporary social, political, and personal realities.

The Precession makes extensive use of social networking technologies to explore the poetics of the individual and collective voice. The textual content of the online work follows a specific formula according to which original writing is mixed in real-time with live data sampled from social networks. Texts are gathered by a computer program using core words in the original writing as searches to find writings to augment or interrupt the piece. A geographical voice is comprised of Twitter texts gleaned from within a 1 mile radius of places where the work is being or has been performed. Finally, an additional algorithmic voice uses the original and foreign texts as a source for machine-composition, using a basic artificial intelligence- type algorithm known as a Markov chain. All of these texts are mixed visually and sonically to form an architectural-poetic landscape.

The different voices of the piece are also dynamically converted from text to speech. This intermixed synthetic voice is represented as architecturally arranged audio files on www.theprecession.org. In live performances, these texts are often received through earphones and spoken.

Another component of our project, The Living Newspapers, has been developed for Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and responds to the Living Newspaper genre of 1930’s theater through the contemporary phenomenon of social networks.

In our residency so far, we have developed a live performance that takes place in conjunction with our digital environment. We recently performed a version of this at post_moot, a poetry and performance event in Ohio. We have additional off-site performances planned this summer in Providence and NYC and will give notice for events at HPAC and elsewhere in Chicago on this blog.

For more information, please see the following links:

http://www.judisdaid.com/precession.php
http://www.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/exh_detail.php?id=240
http://www.chicagodancemakers.org/programs/detail.php?id=63

Chicken in the big city

2010-03-16T20:08:44Z

Last weekend some dedicated Art Center teaching artists took on the big downtown to help out with a publicity campaign. Photo teacher Krystal Meisel, tells us about her adventures in the South Loop with her friend Becky and a chicken named Chicken.

]]> One sunny Friday afternoon I convinced a friend, Becky, and a stuffed chicken to go on an adventure in the South Loop. We were in charge of canvassing [map] “C” which included Buddy Guy’s Legends. Canvassing included passing out fliers and chatting about the Art Center.

Our first stop was Buddy Guy’s. I asked a waiter if we could leave some information and I began to talk about the Art Center. Quietly, from the side Becky inquired if we could photograph the chicken next to something iconic. The waiter was so excited! He took the chicken and put it on stage! Here is Becky’s description of the event:

‘The guy we talked to, without even asking, just reached out and pet the Chicken. I didn’t mind. It wasn’t creepy. Who wouldn’t want to pet a Chicken? Even a fake Chicken? As we concluded our business, I asked him: “Is there anyplace…iconic we can get a picture of the Chicken?” I thought perhaps there was some memorabilia I could place Chicken next to. Instead, He offered to place Chicken on stage…ON STAGE, at Buddy Guy’s….In my mind of course, I’m thinking “Oh My Freaking God!” but I played it as cool as I could, told [him] that would be great, and handed him Chicken. He took her, placed her on a stool, and then adjusted the microphone to beak level. I looked at my Chicken in Awe. She was beautifully lit, and perfectly positioned in front of one of the most Iconic images of Chicago Blues…

The worker (bartender?) didn’t have to do what he did. It went so far above and beyond what I would have expected a complete stranger to offer. Would any of this have happened without the Chicken? I really, really don’t think so….’

The Chicken was an incredible icebreaker and made our mission so much fun! I am sure it also helped leave a lasting impression of that wonderful creative space not to far away!

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Let's Get Critical

2010-02-26T21:27:54Z

Most artists, said local painter Kate Friedman in a recent Chicago Tribune article, “hunger for serious dialogue about art.” The Hyde Park Art Center gave three artists a chance for just that dialogue this Thursday, February 25, at our monthly Open Crit event.

Artists Anne Hayden Stevens, Derek Haverland, and James Jankowiak bravely agreed to participate in a public critique of their works and works-in-progress.

]]> Work was hung somewhat salon-style and ranged in media from painting and drawing to digital photography and and glass etching. Renowned artist Dawoud Bey and critic Susan Snodgrass facilitated discussion and kept things running smoothly. 4833 was bursting at the seems with all of the eager visitors who came for the chance to see an artist critique in action and to throw their own ideas and opinions into the mix. The diverse perspectives of the audience, artists, and facilitators made for some very lively conversation!

The conversation began with the hypnotic line paintings of James Jankowiak. James’s paintings employ thin colorful bands of fluctuating organic forms that sometimes multiply and fill the frame, sometimes linger alone. James talked about his installation concerns for an upcoming exhibition overseas, and our audience was more than willing to offer up ideas. James also divulged his desire to move his work off of more conventional canvas and board in favor of painting and taping straight onto the walls!

We then moved on to the text-based works of Derek Haverland. Derek juxtaposes two single words upon one another, etched in glass, which forces new considerations of both words in terms of their meaning and formal aesthetic properties. Derek considered the importance of using glass in his practice, a non-medium, as someone in the audience described it. Daewood and Susan, as well as many audience members, batted around some interesting ideas for new modes of formatting and display, such as mounting the glass pieces on windowpanes and shifting scale to match content.

Last, but certainly not least, was painter-photographer Anne Hayden Stevens, whose large scale digital photo-based paintings gave us much to ponder. Anne mulled over her process of wandering the streets of Chicago to find a stolen moment in a forgotten alleyway or towering highrise, and then transforming that moment through a digital intervention of painting and drawing into the scene.

Overall, the night was a huge success, enjoyed by both audience and artists alike. We eagerly await to see where these talented folks will take their creative practices next!

Open Crit in the Chicago Tribune

2010-02-23T18:27:41Z

Lori Waxman, special reporter to the Chicago Tribune, talks with artists and organizers about the value of programs like Open Crit, which focuses on developing a critical dialogue for emerging and mid-career artists.

Lori writes:

“Forget the stereotype of the lone genius artist who toils away in complete isolation in his drafty garret for years only finally to be discovered, exhibited and celebrated. It didn’t work that way a hundred years ago, it doesn’t work that way today, and it’s never going to work that way.

Or does it? Scrap the drama from this romantic cliche and at least one truth emerges: Most artists work in relative solitude, practicing their craft in spare bedrooms, basements and studios with few opportunities to share their art with others.

Sure, some artists exhibit their work in galleries, and some even get a review, and once in a while that review turns out to contain a nugget of insight. But such are the exceptions. Most artists, said local painter Kate Friedman, “hunger for serious dialogue about art.” So she and dozens of others have started participating in a free experimental program taking place every few months at the Hyde Park Art Center called Open Crits…”

You can read the full article here

Second Sunday Celebrations!

2010-02-14T16:12:42Z

There was a lot to celebrate this Sunday at the Hyde, with Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year coinciding with five, count ‘em five, exhibition openings! As part of the festivities, teaching artists Aurora and Shoshanna taught us how to make pop-up cards and Buddhist-inspired prayer flags!

]]> Studio 3 was bustling with activity as Aurora Tabar demonstrated the inner workings of pop-up cards! There was folding, cutting, and pasting galore as kids and grown-ups alike constructed their own creative interpretations out of buttons, patterned papers, markers and whatever else they could get their hands on! Froggies, flowers, and cityscapes were just some of the fun things to come popping out of these neat little festive cards.

Shoshanna Utchenik kept things lively in Studio 4 with an amazing workshop on making Buddhist-inspired Tibetan prayer flags! Individual Styrofoam tiles were carved out, inked up, and pressed onto paper to create imaginative pictures and inspiring words. These little flags were then strung together to make fun hanging banners, just like the ones Shoshanna and fellow artist Diane Christiansen hung throughout their exhibition Notes to Nonself! (Which, by the way, was one of the many shows to open this Second Sunday!)

Pure Genius

2010-02-11T17:47:13Z

Pure Genius

That’s what it said below our picture on a New York Times newsstand I found in a downtown Starbucks.

As some of you may know, the famed New York paper has begun a new locally focused news coverage, including expanded coverage of the Chicago art scene. Naturally, they chose an image of the Hyde Park Art Center as a symbol of our fair city’s creative community. Or, perhaps it was the fact we have the word “art” written two stories high across the south side of our building. Either, or.

If you spot any of these stands with the Hyde Park Art Center’s image, let us know. Email them to me at cpernell[at]hydeparkart.org and you may get a mention in our weekly email newsletter.

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Work in Progress: Further Updates from Stan Chisholm

2010-02-03T19:15:22Z

Update us on where you are
Well right now, as of yesterday I’ve actually begun to attach it to the space. So I’ve just been out cutting the foam and pretty much setting up the scenery that the characters will hang out in. And this is the part where I tend to take longer than I need to, but luckily I’ve got really simple plans for this. But I just really enjoy cutting foam. So I’ve been spending all this time just sculpting everything out. But I don’t have too many complex plans for how the foam going to stack on top of each other or wrap around things. It’s pretty straight forward since it’s all in a straight line. But I am bringing in a few new things where like the high ones kinda float off the ground; everything doesn’t have to touch the bottom. Putting in shelving. It’s sort of expanding what the foam is, sort of what the landscape can be. Rather than just being all hills I’ve got sculpture mixed in. Different built man-made structures. I guess I’m replacing technical complexity with variety of what the setting could be.

]]> What kind of landscapes will you have?
I’ve got the Lemonade Stand. And it’s going to have a few different objects sitting on top of it. There’s SFO is going to be in it. The Chrysler Building. The quote on quote “Vagina Building” off Randolph and Michigan… I guess that’s it. I mean I’m probably going to paint over the door and make that look like it’s foam too. But as far as man-made objects, they’re pretty recognizable things.

What kind of tools are you using?
Yeah, maybe just the drill, just to get these things in place. Hot glue works as well, I’ve found, but it’s a little more destructive to the wall. And so I guess it’s just not as quick, having to drag this thing around. [Instead of] burning myself with the hot glue gun I might end up putting a drill through my hand.

Yeah. Different utility knives. Usually snap offs so I can extend them all the way since the foam’s pretty thick I can just slice all the way through it and like carve through it if I want. It’s pretty flexible. The first time I worked with this stuff I used a number 11 Exacto the entire time and it wasn’t difficult because the foam wasn’t as thick, but it’s definitely harder to get through because you have to slice it and keep cutting. With this I can just slice right through with one if I have to. I guess I’m more of a sculptor if I have a sculptor blade. I guess I feel like a sculptor even though I’m not a sculptor.

How does this exhibition fit in? Because it’s not really sculpture, it’s not really graphic line drawing.
It doesn’t (laugh). It’s just, some of everything. I’ve always refused to dive all the way into one category. It’s just like going as far as I feel. Whatever I feel like doing the most is kind of what I do. That way (my) happiness doesn’t depend on what I’m supposed to be good at. And I’ve always drawn [but] this is the first time I would consider this a drawing show, that’s like all line drawing, all just ink all paper. Well mostly. It’s never really all ink or any one thing.

How did you get involved in the Art Center?
I guess the first time I had done something with HPAC was, I think I came in for a Cocktails and Clay. Yeah, that was the first time. It was me and my friend Maddie, who’s in Philly now, was responsible for us coming to Cocktails and Clay. We worked with Theaster Gates. It was a nice time. We just came out, stayed out late. It was my first time out til midnight doing strictly art things. … I just liked what goes on here. I think it’s weird that people kinda make fun of me like “What’s up with you and the Hyde Park Art Center?” Like celebrity gossip or something. “I always see you creeping around the Hyde Park Art Center.” I don’t know. I think I just, I totally agree with the way you go about things. Like even if it’s not just a community show there’s some way groups of people can come here and find out what’s going on through the various events, like weekends. Even just having kids hang out while I’m working. I don’t know, it’s like there’s always an excuse for some community involvement. And even when the Art Center does something typical of art institutions there’s always some different twist on it. I like seeing how the projects or formulated. I think that’s why I like sticking around. It’s simple, we just relate to one another.

How did that evolve into having a solo exhibition here?
I’ve been in a few [group] shows [here]. I’d imagine maybe those had something to do with it. It’s been a while in the making cause Allison [HPAC Dir. Of Exhibitions] started talking [about it] in like March of last year. And then she was on maternity leave and then I had the BFA show and I was traveling over the summer. Then I ended up doing that MoneyBags show with Francesca … I don’t know, I guess Allison talked to me a lot about the show I’d done in June of last year, and that’s when she decided that she would like a sort of foam site specific installation and we kind of worked from there. I don’t know what she had known of my work before, maybe she had just known the small pieces I had put in for Not Just Another Pretty Face or leaving artwork around the Art Center from coming in for the different events. …
Like I said, I started [volunteering] with Cocktails and Clay. And I guess, donating art works for fundraisers, and Cocktails and Clay and different family events, and just like responding when I can’t volunteer. Being like “oh, I can’t make it, but here’s what’s going on” or like “if I can help let me know.” Just trying to help answer questions (and I know that they know I’m lingering around). So I tend to forget how it happened. I’m around. I just like hanging around, asking questions, talking to people at the door. … So, I think simple things like that help a lot, but don’t think I can blame those things for why I have a solo show. Cause if I was irresponsible and I sucked, no one would give me a show.

How is the process of putting together this show different than things you’ve done in the past?
Having a studio space makes a world of difference, because it enables me to challenge myself in different ways. This show is very much about trying out different things. … But like in doing these interviews and writing these blog posts, it’s been helpful. Cause, like, I don’t always get to talk about these things while I’m working on them, but I don’t always get to voice them and getting to voice them and feeling like someone actually cares about the process is a big thing. I mean it’s part of the process that I want. And I might start blogging about my projects now talking about it a little bit more rather than leaving it wide open and just throwing them out there. Cause you usually don’t get feedback for individual pieces when you do a show and no one really knows about individual pieces unless you talk to them directly. Unless someone pulls you aside and asks at an opening. And yeah I think one of things I can see exactly how my work is going.

It’s coming down to the wire. Are you starting to feel nervous?
Um I think this happens every time. I always lay out a ton of options for the show. There’s always a set of definite and I make sure that I get those done first. And if there’s extra time I’ll go for a few last things. So my only worries that ever come up are maybe I won’t get to put that one last FU punch in there. So, I mean I know the important things will be in there, and I know I’ll get the space filled, it’s just a matter of if I get to test out a couple of things I’ve been thinking about. And I also like when I can’t think about things. I like making things a little more dramatic than they actually are. So I’ll definitely be acting like I’m freaking out. But I’ve got my plans together, so I’m good.

Have you seen any other benefits to having your studio in the same space you have the gallery?
You mean other than being able to work on site? I think so. … I usually like visualize everything first. Cause for a while there was another show in here, so I couldn’t just come in and start scribbling on the walls right away, which is what I would have done. But because I couldn’t do that, I had to go about it a different way which I think is helping out. Because had I scribbled on the walls I would have had to erase that and paint over it. So I don’t know, what I’ve been doing, it makes me plan more. Like having the space and getting to see it, but not being able to touch it makes me think about it. So I thought: these are the most important characters, these are the characters that could potentially take up the most space, so I have to think about, ok this is how tall they need to be or, what’s the landscape going to look like. So there’s more measuring involved in this show. It just makes me think about the way out a little bit more. Especially considering the shape of the space. It’s not just a round circle. It’s like a definite path. So I have to think about what character is going to going to introduce the next character or which things are going to show. So I’ve kinda got them lined in order of, there’s some relevance between what’s going on, what they have to offer and what ideas come to mind.

Work in Progress: Updates on Stan Chisholm-

2010-01-27T18:07:26Z

Can we get an update on the piece and where you’re at?
I spent the last week tracing everything out, doing a bunch of painting, drawing, coming up with different characters, working on ideas that I wanted to fit into the show. And the projecting them onto the wall, blowing them up, and tracing them all with pencil, or tracing them with pencil onto the paper. And now as of today I’ve started doing some of the outline work. And I think I’ve decided that pretty much it’s going to be all outline work. I think there may be a few spots where I’ll bring in paint, watercolor, but it should pretty much be all line work. And different types of paper. I’ve got construction paper, I’ve got cardboard, I’ve got these brutal foam boards that I’m going through right now. And then some yarn, and then foam.

]]> What stage are you in now?
… [E]xcept for this foam part, there’s only one other small thing, there’s like an airplane that [has] got to be on this material, but everything else is on much lighter paper. … [F]rom there it’s just all ink work. …

What’s the next step after ink?
After ink, cut it all out … then construct it. Some of them will be pasted and collaged together. Some will sort of just hang together and from there it’s going to be sort of like a puzzle. I’m just gonna put (all the limbs together). Cause when I projected all of them, it wasn’t like just putting up one big piece of paper and redrawing it. I had to think about which pieces would be ahead of what. Pretty much it was like I’ll do the limbs in the cream color, I’ll do the mascot heads in this color paper and then they’re so like mixed up so that there’s something for me to collage and reassemble at the end. Cause that’s kinda how I like working. I like making a lot of different things, drawing them and then deciding how I put them back together. Even as far as I keep only working within a library of characters, it’s kinda like flipping through and deciding which ones. You know like, in my sketch pad or in my notes, they’re kinda like really loose. So I have to go through and find which stories I really like the idea of creating something then coming back to it to sorta pull everything together.

As you’ve been creating things, has the layout/narrative changed from what you thought you were going to do?
Um no, I wouldn’t say that the layout’s changed at all. Originally I had some spots that were blank and I knew they were going to be blank and I didn’t want to decide ahead of time what to do with them. … But you know it’s like, I like surprising myself. …

What’s your experience been like putting together this exhibition?
… I’ve been pretty busy in Chicago since I did the MoneyBags project in October and September and I was living in St. Louis then but as of now I’m staying. Since I went to school here and I’ve got a bunch of friends in town it makes things easier. It’s sort of like I’m on vacation, sort of like I’m visiting, except I’ve been here. Luckily it’s not so cold. But I’ve just been bouncing around, hanging out with friends. When I’m not in the studio, just been drawing with them. And staying wherever works for the night.

A lot of people have the stereotypical image of the “starving artist.” Especially for people who are in art school, or just coming out of art school. You’re kind of at that stage now. What is that experience like for you and what kind of dedication does it take?
I definitely can say I’m at that stage. It’s been a bit shocking, but really fun. There have been a lot of sacrifices I’ve found myself having to make. I mean even coming here you know. Cause I work when I’m at home. … But it’s like, you know if I go a month without working, what do I do now? I’ve got to plan it out a little bit. It’s like, alright, I have to figure out how to pay this bill, or how to get from here to there, or how to get supplies around. But that’s kind of the fun part. … So now I’m finding myself having to be careful with pacing myself out and not doing things too close. Like I’m comfortable with burning myself out on a project, but I have to at least give myself some cushion in between doing that.

Where do you work when you’re at home and does that influence your work as an artist?
Yeah I work at a contemporary art museum in St. Louis. I’ve been there for a while. Pretty much since right after graduating high school. … I can’t wait to get back and spend a decent amount (of time). At least four or five months of being at home and working. Living somewhat of a normal life! But yeah it helps a ton. I’m always talking about art. There’s always different opportunities that come up. Someone will have a project. And you just like hear about it at work. It’s nice always being in an artist community, especially after school. Cause I think that ‘s one of the biggest problems people have once they leave art school is how do they keep themselves motivated to work on art. And having a job like that definitely helps that.

Why do it this way. Why not just stay at home and work at an art museum and be around art. Why do it this way?
I grew up at home. I’ve been there before. I kind of know what it’s like. It’s good to come back to share stories but when you’ve been there for so long, I kinda don’t want to exhaust myself on the spaces or burn out to the people of St. Louis … you know when you’ve got a city that’s affordable and friends that support you, they kinda like seeing you go places. And I like sharing. … Hopefully it will bring up a lot of opportunities for me to travel, cause … I don’t know what city I’ll end up in. I couldn’t even begin to take guesses at that. There’s so many places to see, you know?

What was your favorite show so far?
… [O]ne show I would love to try again on a bigger scale, it’d be really difficult, I did [it] the second year I was in the dorms, I was an RA (Resident Advisor) in dorms at the Art Institute. … But I did a show called “Give in Get in” where if you wanted to come into the gallery (we have a gallery space in the dorms) you had to bring a piece of artwork. And the idea was you bring a piece of you work and take a piece off the walls and put yours up and you leave with whichever one you want. And I think we started with ten pieces. I donated a bunch and then I have people supply some pieces just to start off the show. And you bring in a piece of work you got a stamp and your hand that sort of gave you free range to come in and out. … But yeah, I think that was one of my better ideas for a show as far as curating.
… [S]hows I’ve been a part of, solo or group … I think “Screwed In” was fun. It was a show back in St. Louis with the Regional Arts Commission. … It was a big deal because a lot of the guys in the show were artists that I looked up to in high school and early college. I eventually developed friendships with them and finally got the chance to sit down and work with them which was frustrating as hell, you know, but it worked out. And we’re doing the show again. And I think the other big thing is being in Chicago, there’s definitely a Chicago style of artwork. There’s certain attitude that I’ve noticed here in the city, with the artists that I’ve worked closer too. And in St. Louis [I] feel like it’s not as well known. Everyone kind of adopts what else is going on. So, it was nice for a big body of us to come together and say this is what we’re doing this is. I guess you can kind of say we kind of claimed ourselves as being the… street artist type or whatever. …

Having been around and traveled do you have any tricks of the trade?
I think the answer to that question is always going to be my friends and family. My friends and family are definitely my tricks of the trade. Because so often I’m just moving around between different cities and having to carry materials from one place to another. I ask a lot of favors. A lot of people are definitely patient with me and willing to help out. I don’t think I’m too big a pain in the ass. I hope not. My friends definitely help out a ton. Galleries are pretty patient with me too. They know I’m still kind of bouncing around and they know I’m young and still kind of rowdy. And I’ve got a specific way I like to work, I’ve got a specific pace I like to work at. And it doesn’t always come with like a clear statement of what I’m going to do. And that’s kind of on purpose. I kind of like making people excited. I don’t want people to read a statement of the show and see exactly what it is, know exactly what’s going to happen. Or at least like to leave myself a few options of defining it several different ways. So there’s space for me to play with it. I definitely like it when people are able to put their hands back a little and trust me to get things done somehow. … Sometimes I’ll know only what materials I want to work with for a show. I won’t necessarily know the story. Or the other way around. It’s nice that people are willing to work with me on that.

How can the community support you in this exhibition?
I don’t know. I like company. If you wanted to hang out, have a beer that’s cool. I don’t eat popcorn, but if someone wanted to eat popcorn in here while I’m working, that’s cool. … I don’t know. I’m not too sure. I guess company is sort of the best bet right now. I think I’m good on supplies. But we’ll see what happens when I actually start hanging things up.