Mo' money
mo' problems











Something I liked last night:
Harmonica by Pedro Gomez-Egana at the Watts show, Centro Colomba Americano

Had an interesting chat with someone last night at Centro Colomba Americano about the problems of artists working with the city.

I think he was talking about how certain approaches enforce a kind of imperialism or authority by an artist making a statement about some aspect of a city, or indeed trying to "help" or "improve" something they perceive as bad in a city.

I am trying to avoid this kind of approach and certainly avoid references to what Colombia is infamous for. I am interested in something that is more like using the city as a conduit or machine or organism for generating work and in my case sound. This sounds overly abstracted but I mean it in a more warm human way.

In the process of learning about the city machine or organism through meeting and working with people who have their own relationships with the city then there is potential for discovering and exploring the city and not making statements about it.

This project is a research residency so it is about me learning something and developing some work...

I wonder how my idea of literally using the city as an instrument with cars buses and trucks re distributing sound really works in the sense of this relationship between artist and city...

I dont want to say hey this is what the sound of Bogota is... so what? Everyone has ears to hear the sounds unmediated by an artist... I want to make the work be a byproduct of making some exploration of place...process, process I guess.

It is also not meant to be a statement on street art, the idea is by no means "street" nor does it represent "a street culture"...It is of course an old idea but then I want the idea just to be the tool to explore the city in some way...





Very useful meeting with Daniel Prieto here. He is using the Murray Shaefer
book Tuning of the World in his teaching at los Andes (not to be confused with Pierre Schaeffer of Musique Concrete fame).

Next week we will go out recording to some new places. Very interesting guy. Does work with sensors and sound and mutimedia. Am getting into some PD

Supercollider is proving pretty hard for someone new to OOP (Object Orientated Programming). Will keep at it but PD may prove to be faster to get the installation to work in time for April.