Our friend Ben, who plays in the spasmodic and wonderful electronic band Haunted Beard we've collaborated with a couple of times, has posted this video of our Music Waste show on his youtube channel.



Side note: some of my friends have been throwing around the mirthful nonsense word PANOPTICUNT as a great band name...and in grabbing the url to link to Haunted Beard's myspace I discovered that they have actually made a song under this name and it is lovely!! Check it out.

Last night I hung out in my room, playing with some video feedback I made a few weeks ago.
Here is the result.




xo jess

This installation by Saskatoon based VJ Carrie Gates came up on my Facebook homepage today. It defies the passive consumption of imagery, something all to often done by spectators of VJ work and by VJs themselves—especially when they use pop culture and nostalgia for the sake of ease (something we too have been guilty of!).

From the official write up: "This work is an installation where EEG brainwave signals are used as biofeedback controllers for a video mixer built in Max/MSP/Jitter software. The participant is seated on a comfortable seat in an intimate environment, facing a television set. The Gallery Assistant fits the participant with the EEG sensor headband, which then reads their changing brainwaves and sends that data as integers over a wireless Bluetooth connection to the hidden laptop computer, controlling the aspects of the video playback system. When the participant’s brain waves change, the video changes in realtime, creating a biofeedback loop. The trick for participants is to learn how to train their brainwaves to respond to the graphic imagery seen on the screen in order to see all of the videos. One has to control the mind's reaction to the imagery on different levels in order to see it all and control the organic sequence of videos. The videos revolve around themes of consumption, war, greed, glamour, environmental damage, and other perils of contemporary late capitalist culture, investigating relationships of passive consumption in gallery-based new media art and the world at large."

Not only is this impressive technically and conceptually, but I am delighted by the very fact that it is conceptual at all. Maybe I'm paranoid (or ignorant), but I often sense that there is too wide a divide between the work of VJs and the new media artists with whom they share video technology. VJ work doesn't have to be superficial, and new media art can and should be incorporated into nightlife. I'm not saying that the lines are necessarily firmly drawn, only that further integration and goodwill between the two is a great thing.

Photos by Neil Hilbrandt

Tonight we're playing a show with the weird and wonderful Haunted Beard at the TALL HALL Music Waste show! It's free, so for all you nerds who slacked off on getting a pass, this one's for you.

From the official description: glorified party tent built to honor our social/political/cultural crisis by way of sounds waves, oscillations, frequencies, light and shadow.
participants// spectrum interview: addus tolly & scant intone: haunted beard: j. parsons: cooleecoolee: L.V.A. cairns

Tall Hall
Hawks At Union south/west corner
bigbig tent
10pm to midnight.

SUNDAY JUNE 7, 8 PM at VIVO [1965 Main Street]
Performance with Workshop Participants + K & W Tankred | $3-10 sliding scale

Elizabeth Cairns
Alex Young-Hwa Cho
Graham Christofferson
Laura Lee Coles
Spencer Davis
Ricarda McDonald
Alex Muir
Jessica Parsons
Martin Reisle
Emilio Rojas
Anju Singh
Kent & Wenche Tankred, Sweden

Kent & Wenche Tankred were introduced to Vancouver at Signal & Noise 2008 with their remarkable performance Inflection for 9 amplified electric hand mixers and 6 amplified computer fans. They have now been invited back for a 10-day VIVO residency to lead a workshop for local artists.

Stepping back from the “convenience” of digital technology, the Tankreds will conduct an experiential detour into live electro-acoustics using more rudimentary tools. Workshop participants will build sound machines from common houshold appliances, electric motors, electromagnetic relays and consumer electronics. The emphasis will be on sonic exploration, supplemented by visuals. The workshop will culminate in a collective audio/visual performance event.

Liz created a series of stills from some of our past sets...

I admittedly had never heard of Swedish audio-visual artists Kent and Wenche Tankred before beginning the Analogue Detour workshop at VIVO with them. They do improvised sound performances that use found electronics (one thing they have said over and over this week is that they almost never buy anything for their music), makeshift contact mics, old motors, AM radios and sheets of metal, among a mess of other household/garbage items, to produce a symphony of deep dark hums and buzzes. I like it a lot. It relaxes me.

Liz and I are now about halfway through the seven-day workshop. One thing we've learned that is the most relevant to our (and maybe your!) work—along with getting over our we-can't-do-that attitudes and finally delving into some sound experimentation—is the use of audio mixers as the intermediary for a video signal. It's a simple idea, but one that neither of us has come up with before. Genius. There are two ways to go about it. The first is to send a video signal through the mixer to a tv or projector. The image is rendered out of focus, with variable undulations. The second way to is to use audio signals. One of the best things I have seen at this workshop thus far is that way sound 'looks' on a tv. Single notes create bold horizontal lines; with chords these lines split and multiply, and the vibrations get stronger.

The one downside to this is that the video comes out as black and white. Audio signals obviously contain no chrominance, and I'm guessing that audio mixers are therefore not equipped to handle that when running video. If you have an Edirol V-4 or another type of analogue video mixer, you can throw a chroma filter on your signal and play with that.

The workshop is culminating with a performance this Sunday, June 8 at VIVO. If you're interested in seeing what this technique looks like in person, drop by for 8pm.

Tonight! We have visuals going at the Astoria for Damaged Goods and Liz is going to be mixing live at Funky Winkerbeans for Mutant Disco. Be there or be sludge.

love,
us

A long time ago I bought one of those silly books, the kind that goes over a topic generally in order to introduce the given concept. It was called "video art". Through it I discovered this installation by artist Doug Aitken, an eight-channel moving image projected onto the outside of MOMA in 2007, and featuring Tilda Swinton, Donald Sutherland, Chan Marshall, Seu Jorge, and Ryan Donowho. I never moved much beyond this in the book, which has laid closed on my shelf for the past year at least...but I'm not bothered. Sleepwalkers is the most expressive and graceful installation I think I have ever come across.

A bit from the MOMA website: "This nighttime installation comprises eight large-scale moving images projected around the museum and on its facades, enlivening the architecture with the nocturnal journeys of five city inhabitants...These characters provide a blueprint for the metropolis as a living, breathing organism fueled by the desires, energies, and ambitions of its inhabitants.

Sleepwalkers is a broken narrative, without beginning or end. The five characters entwine across the building's surfaces in combinations that change cyclically throughout the course of each evening. With this exhibition Aitken pioneers a site-specific cinema, expanded into the urban landscape and keyed to the pedestrian experience."

What do you guys think?

visit the website
a review in new york magazine

- jess

Coming up from May 29 - June 7, VIVO Media Arts is holding a seven day intensive workshop as part of their SLAB studio labs. This time around it features Swedish artists Kent & Wenche Tankred running an "Analogue Detour to Electronic Sound & Video".  

From the release: "Stepping back from digital technology and “contemporary workstations”, we take an Analogue Detour to Electronic Sound with more rudimentary tools. Using various electronic devices such as computer fans, kitchen appliances and the like, workshop participants will learn how to build sound machines and instruments that are run by electric motors, electromagnetic relays and other such components. Video and slide projections will be used to complement the sound in a live performance.

To register for the workshop, please email education@vivomediaarts.com with “SLAB 3: Registration” in the subject line. We need your full name, your phone number, your email, and your commitment to attending all workshop sessions. Deadline to register is May 18. "

We have already applied and hopefully will get two of the spots.

You email too!

Both Liz and myself studied under Chris Welsby in our first year at SFU. At the time I don't think either of us had any idea of the importance of his work; Chris was just that laid-back guy who opened our eyes to moving images outside the confines of narrative structure. But underneath his modesty and witticisms there lay hidden that whole time an important body of work that was one of the first to explore systems theory by looking at weather patterns and landscapes in cinema. 

Just recently, he did an interview in Scout Magazine where he elaborates on his interest in the natural world. The article was written in the lead-up to his presentation tonight at Pacific Cinémathèque, where he will lecture on the philosophical, technical, and critical frameworks surrounding his artistic practice. 

The new media, being often about the moment, movement, the senses combined, interactivity...is sometimes poorly expressed in print. As a student one of my favourite resources for new media and multimedia studies is Media Art Net. A project founded in Germany, the goal of Media Art Net is to defy the limitations of the printed word through a combination of embedded multimedia and critical text that is readily available to the public for free. It also offers links to several online-only art projects. One that I really enjoyed was the Cyborg Web Shop, where you can login to re-create yourself as a virtual cybernetic organism. The first thing I bought was the alcohol eliminator, "An indispensable means for those driving back after a night out."

MUTANT DISCO

@ FUNKY WINKERBEANS
35 West Hastings Street

FRIDAY MAY 8 + 22

8-late!

cheap ass beer! ($3)
cheap cover
$4 before 10 $5 after

weirdness Djs Ben & Dan 
playing italo/space/electro/new wave/
90's dance/rare hits/top of the pops/mash ups etc!

AND LIVE VISUALS BY YOUR BEST GAL PALS FROM DNGROUS ADDRESS

Jess: I'm super excited for this night because I know that Ben and Dan will be playing the kind of shit I always dance around to in my bedroom, yet never hear out: liquid liquid, giorgio moroder, tom tom club, gino soccio, ESG fuck maybe even some Grauzone!!

If this is not your thing, we also have a DVD of psychedelic mind trips running over at the Astoria for DAMAGED GOODS, a weekly night run by the hilarious and kind Sex Attack DJs, and featuring local bands. 

http://www.viisionquest.com/

Jess here. Sorry about these videos being cut off...I've embedded them from Facebook but apparently I suck at the internet. You can find the original, with proper sizing here. You'll have to be logged into FB. The horses video can be found on our group page as well. Hey, while you're at it, join our group!

Photos by Quinn Omori

@ The Astoria

DNGROUS ADDRESS : is : a laboratory for creation, visual projection, performance, storytelling, and collaboration. 

DNGROUS ADDRESS : we : mix visuals live, build stream-of-consciousness dreamscapes, project collective memories through the use of found footage and team collaboration, weave stories between ourselves, the audience and, when relevant, the music.

The DNGROUS ADDRESS VISUAL LAB is a site for the creation of moving image art, be it through vj-ing, new media adventures, or filmmaking. We are committed to the critical discussion surrounding these practices. We are committed to being active within the Vancouver music and party scene through our visuals. 

DNGROUS ADDRESS : are : Liz Cairns + Jessica Parsons. We met while studying film and art at Simon Fraser University, studying under artists such as Chris Welsby. Liz is an inter-disciplinary artist currently working on a master's degree in the department of Interactive Arts and Technology at SFU where she gets to play with wearable, interactive new media machines. Jess completed an internship with VIVO Media Arts, and has also worked for Vancouver-based video artist Judy Radul. Together they have made films and created live video performances for nightclubs and bands since 2007.

write us: dngrousaddress@gmail.com