Items by John Alderman

Rhizome.org

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  Interview with Erik Adigard

  Posted: 8-July-2009, 8:42pm CEST by John Alderman

  Image: Erik Adigard
  
  

  Erik Adigard is a communication designer whose work stretches into domains as broad as identity systems, web sites, videos, visual essays, and book design, as well as documentary films and installations in art museums and exhibitions. With distillations of trends and ideas into visually arresting spreads and iconography, Adigard and his M.A.D. company partner Patricia McShane's work was a key element establishing Wired magazine's visual storytelling from its start in 1993. This last decade has seen Adigard nearly as involved in installations and art venues as he is with his admittedly broad design practice.

  Adigard?s most recent public work was AirXY, for the 2008 Architecture Biennale in Venice, created with M.A.D. and Chris Salter. A multimedia installation with interactive animation, sensors, haze, light, and sound, AirXY explored space, architecture, media, and the human presence, extended by sensors and transformed by interfaces and networks. Its manifesto described the ?de facto landscape of screens? and disembodied living and called for ?re-materialization? that would unite ?data and bodies.? It followed Dualterm, in which Adigard and Salter used a Toronto Airport Terminal as a mixed point of departure into a SecondLife 3D world, along with other, less virtual destinations.

  Friends and sometime collaborators, we sat down in a San Francisco Mexican restaurant--in the midst of a blaring and lengthy Michael Jackson tribute--to talk about how his approach changes when working in the different modes of art and design. -John Alderman

  How does your approach to ?art? differ from your approach to ?design??

  That's an ongoing, essential question: Am I moving toward the wide open horizon of art practice that is more introspective, or am I going toward the chaos and the confusing world of design, which is all about combining my skills and understanding of the state of things to develop solutions, to bring someone else's idea, or service, or whatever it is into the marketplace?

  
  Images: Erik Adigard, M.A.D. and Chris Salter, AirXY, 2008
  

  How do you answer that?

  If I simplify the question and ask myself what is the difference today in my life between these two practices, I would say research is really the reason why I like to do design. I like to learn and understand how things work, and I think that the aspect of research that goes into design is the same as that which goes into arts. All of my work in the arts has been site or context specific. That's why I always have to do research about the context itself, to create a poetic or philosophical scenario that is going to survive in that context. You can't really expect anything to survive if you don't understand the context yourself. So I think that aspect of the research is the same, whatever it's for. Whether you have high aspirations or whatever, you are doing it for the money, so it's a completely objective and analytical, kind of like a data-crunching process.

  Then there's another aspect that steps in which is the more subjective, creative and poetic dimension, and in my practice I've always allowed it to be as vivid, and as free, and as current as possible, so in that sense, this aspiration that I have for design corresponds with what artists normally do. I think that artists try to be true to themselves and true to their times in order to be relevant. In that sense there is a similarity, so these two aspects in my mind are more or less the same.

  But there is a third factor to take into account: this is the process, and the process is actually quite different. Beyond the research and the notion of expression and freedom of creation, which we all have. Anybody can take a logo design and go crazy with it, it doesn't mean it's going to fly or will be used. If you are doing design, the process not only needs to take account of your clients, but your users as well. That?s very, very important. This is why we are doing what we are doing: we're doing it for the users.

  Then there is this wake-up call to design which is: OK now that I've done my research, now that I've had my gut feeling, how am I going to throw it onto the canvas, on the table, on the product, how am I going to bring the product to life and how is it going to sell? In the arts, the only filter or stop sign that you have is maybe with your team or with curators. After that what you have is critique, but the problem is that by then you already have done your thing. And there is a fundamental difference there, so the notion of gambling is on your lap.

  So it's about risk and freedom?

  If we talk about freedom of the artist ? I can do whatever I want with my challenges. But if we look at the world in which we live and look at the place of fine art and the role of the science and technology, there's been a shift.

  One of the fundamental aspects to answer the question is to consider that the role of art in society has changed in this last century. Since, say, the high point of the Renaissance and the High Middle Ages, and the 19th century with Impressionism, it's basically the rise of the artist and the demise of the art being defined as craft, which in my book it is not. So, if I think that I would want to be a sculptor in the Middle Ages, rather than, say, a poet or philosopher, today I would have to be a designer. And then the challenge in this day and age in order to do sublime things as a designer is to hope that you have a visionary client like Apple, who can conceive of their venture as an artistic adventure in a sense. In that vein, I'm very proud of the work I did for IBM and some of the stuff I did with Wired.

  And without that client?

  If you don't have that client sometimes you work with a curator to come up with that expression that you believe is right for your time. It is really an expression that you would hope to see manifested in everyday life through the function of everyday life, but if you can't make it happen like that you make it happen in a museum or a biennial, and that's what I've been doing. After my work with Wired, I started to open up to museums and curators. Before then I was so thrilled and so fired up by what I was doing that I considered myself to be going completely in the fast lane of culture.

  So without visionary design patronage, the remaining option is to become an artist?

  I don't claim to be an artist. I use artistic processes, and I have an art education. If I only look at art that I see in Rhizome, SFMOMA, MOMA, Palais de Tokyo, Centre Pompidou, PS1, a lot of it is absolutely, absolutely sublime. People really spend the time to mature what they are doing. For the project that we did in Venice, I asked myself, "Am I ready to lose my house for it?"

  So it was all or nothing?

  It was not designed to be a specific answer to a specific question. It was an open-ended address of one challenge, and I considered that it was my duty to remove everything else from the table and get as far as I could with it. It was technology-based and it was design-related. A lot of the work I do is not intended to be art, it's intended to explore technology. It's intended to explore at what point design, technology, and general culture can levitate into something else. I don't claim it to be an artistic object, I want it to be an exploration that goes in the right direction. To me the challenge is to go right to the edge. If it were to go right over the edge and become fine art, that would be great, but it's not what I do.

  So if you use artistic processes and have an art education, why would you not be an artist?

  I do not consider myself a virtuoso designer. If I were, I certainly wouldn't go into the arts the way I do. Because I think when you are a virtuoso designer you basically find the sublime in your everyday practice, and because of that you get the respect to do your job. If you're a virtuoso violin player, the same thing. In my field you don't find virtuoso communicators, you don't even know them because nobody lets them mature, and I think really talented communication designers end up moving into the arts or marketing, because the industry doesn't give much space for both in design. I came out of the Beaux Arts, and I realized it when I was a student, and I realized that the ceiling was lower in the art school than the other schools where I went before. It's very much dealing with the level of your skill. You can invent any aspiration as an artist; as a designer you can't. When an aircraft is not done well it will crash, when you are an architect a building will crash. When you are a communication designer and you don't do your job well you're going to have a bankruptcy or a war between nations. And this is honestly why I am more interested in the challenge of design.

  John Alderman is a writer and creative director living in San Francisco. His most recent book is Core Memory, a visual walk through computer history.

  
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  Interview with Mellotron Documentary Filmmaker Dianna Dilworth

  Posted: 11-February-2009, 5:15pm CET by John Alderman

  Image: Dianna Dilworth
  

  Reproduction, appropriation, and automation are three major ongoing concerns within contemporary music and art. It's strange then that relatively few people know about two mid-20th Century musical instruments that embodied all of these methods: the Chamberlin keyboard and its offshoot, the Mellotron, the first instruments built on taped samples of the sounds of others.

  In Mellodrama: The Mellotron Documentary, filmmaker Dianna Dilworth takes measure of the many players in the story behind these unruly sound machines, whose very existence ultimately shaped much of popular music. The film is a study in the unpredictability of innovation, and how each extension of the same technology can conflict with the intentions of those that came before it.

  The film profiles the creators as well as the instruments themselves, spotlighting their influence on later musical tools and approaches, as well as their overwhelming influence on a wave of pop stars, from the Beatles to 70s progressive rock bands. Mellodrama premiers February 16 at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana. - John Alderman

  Image: Mellodrama: The Mellotron Documentary
  

  John Alderman: People often find uses for devices that are outside the inventor's original intentions, and it seems like that's what happened with these instruments.

  Dianna Dilworth: Absolutely. Harry Chamberlin, the man who invented it was really into playing the Hammond organ but he wanted one that would play orchestral sounds, and so he started doing experiments and working with the Lawrence Welk Orchestra to record sounds. His vision for it was very much for it to be in every living room across America for sing-a-longs and socializing. Yet it was adapted by non-conventional musicians and it took off in psychedelic and progressive rock, and that he really didn't intend. In fact, people would try to buy the instrument from him and he'd tell them, "no, no, you're supposed to use it like this."

  What are the most recognizable songs that feature these instruments?

  The most famous song is "Strawberry Fields" by the Beatles; the flute sound at the beginning is a Mellotron. On the other Beatles' song, "Bungalow Bill" there's a Spanish guitar sound at the beginning, and it's actually just a rhythm track on the Mellotron. The Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin" has it throughout the song. It was largely associated with progressive rock, but it was used by other people like Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, and the Zombies.

  What are the differences between the Chamberlin and the Mellotron?

  Chamberlin made the instrument in his home in Southern California, and sold it to local music shops. He had a salesmen, Bill Franson, who thought it was a really good idea, but felt he wasn't getting enough out of it, so he took the idea to England where he had it manufactured professionally, and thus was born the Mellotron.

  The difference between the two instruments is very interesting. The Chamberlin is kind of shoddily put together as a physical object, very homemade, but the sounds are very, very well recorded. He used a Neumann microphone and had the Lawrence Welk Orchestra record the samples. The Mellotron is very professionally made furniture, made in a factory in England, but didn't have as much effort into its sounds, so the fidelity is worse. They both, though, have very interesting, unique sounds, and neither one of them sounds like an orchestra.

  It's funny to look back at that, because when it came out the musician's union was concerned and tried to ban them because they were afraid that it would put people out of work. Like, "No one's going to hire a flute player for their record because they have this magic box that can make that sound." But when you hear it, it doesn't really sound anything like a flute, it's kind of a weird, warped sound that is attractive to musicians looking for something new. And people still play flutes on records.

  Image: Chamberlin Advertisement
  

  And do people still play Mellotrons?

  Yes, in fact they're on many records now, because musicians and producers still like them, even though there were only about 500 Chamberlins, and 2000 Mellotrons made.

  How have the instruments aged?

  They became very archaic for a time, because digital sampling came in, and synthesizers became popular, so many people abandoned them, though some kept them around at the back of their studio or whatnot. There was a movement in the late 80s. early 90s to find these instruments and use them again. But when that movement started it was pre-Web, so people found them in junk stores, whether they were fans of 70s rock music or just came across them and wanted to do something different with them. Because of that there's a scene of people who use and restore them, but they do break down a lot, so it is a constant job for them; they are now quite expensive.

  There's a younger generation of people who collect them, take care of them, and almost fetishize them; and then the older generation of guys who used them when they were new are just done with them. Some of them are like, "I hate the Mellotron," because they went on tour for years and they'd be waiting to perform for large audiences and then their keyboard would break and it wasn't cool, it wasn't what they were going for, they were trying to play a song. It's an interesting generational perspective. Because nowadays people will argue that when a tape gets stuck or when something breaks, they like the fact that the instrument that they're playing is kind of temperamental and has a personality, and will make these odd sounds, and they appreciate that, whereas the older generation tends to not like that at all.

  Image: Assembly of a new Mellotron by Markus Resch (Still from Mellodrama)
  

  Aren't people selling virtual versions of these machines?

  Yes. Because the sound is obviously not the sound of an orchestra, it's the sound of a Mellotron or a Chamberlain, people have now put them into samples. For example, there's the M-Tron, which is a digital plug-in. And Nord-Electro, the company that makes the Clavier and other synthesizers made a sample that they've recorded from the original tapes but that can be played through their keyboards. There's a whole number of different ways that you can sample this instrument these days. And there are different schools of thought on that: some people really don't like the samples, and some really do. The main argument is that the actual instrument, because of all of the mechanics in it and the things that go wrong, that creates the sounds, and some people like the characteristics of playing through the old machines. But some of the samples have been able to emulate those things, like being able to stop midway through a note and being able to pick up where it would have left off it had been a tape in the physical mechanical object.

  You used a lot of footage from the public domain Prelinger Archives. How did that work?

  One of the challenges when telling a history is that you end up having all these talking head interviews, and that means you have to come up with ways to make it interesting for a viewer. The Prelinger Archives really helped us with that, because there are so many interesting old reels and commercials and industrial films, and they fit into the time periods we were talking about, or they gave a nice look to a sound that we were trying to highlight. The other thing was licensing, and though we were able to license some performances of music, these are big bands and we're an independent film, so being able to use a public domain collection like the Prelinger Library is nice.

  Looking at your career as a filmmaker, you seem to focus on the periphery phenomenon surrounding music, like your film We Are the Children, which is about Michael Jackson fans. Why did you decide to make a film about musical instruments?

  Two reasons really. I'm very interested in Harry Chamberlin and the idea of his homemade invention and that he made something from the materials that he had in his house, or that he could get at RadioShack. I like the spirit of the American inventor. And I also like the idea that his homemade project, that was both very inventive or a failure depending on how you look at it, that it had this kind of influence on how technology evolved. Also, most people don't know what these instruments are, but they're on so many records that the sounds they produce are very familiar. I thought it would be interesting to tell the story behind the scenes, not just in music production, but also the sub-culture that has fetishized these instruments.

  Image: Mellotron
  

  John Alderman is a writer and creative director living in San Francisco. His most recent book is Core Memory, a visual walk through computer history.

  
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  Repackaging Nature: An Interview with Philip Ross

  Posted: 31-December-2008, 3:30pm CET by John Alderman

  Image: Philip Ross, Junior Return, 2005
  

  It's easy to see Philip Ross as a recent embodiment of an age-old spirit of inquiry, where aesthetics, personal discovery, and scientific knowledge are linked, and all seem to tap into the fertile edges of local industry. In San Francisco that means computing and biotechnology, and Ross's work makes use of both. The transplanted New Yorker has a body of artwork that centers around human interaction with biological materials like fungus, plants, and mollusks. Ross was also curator of the BioTechnique exhibit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and frequently teaches classes and gives lectures, such as one he delivered December 2 to amateur mycologists at the Oakland Museum of California.

  His current projects include a long-term effort to grow a large building out of mushrooms, and a new, ongoing salon ("Critter") at the Studio for Urban Projects, a unique cultural center opened in 2008 by Alison Sant and Marina MacDougal. Ross describes the studio as "a collective of collectives," with about five or six contributing programmers, all similarly interested in ecology, education, technology and other related fields. - John Alderman

  John Alderman: Can you tell me about Critter and the new center that is hosting it?

  Philip Ross: One of the reasons we're interested in urban ecologies is that -- with the writing that's been on the wall for a long time -- we wonder how to make our cities better and more interesting places, so that you don't have to drive out of the city necessarily to get a nature experience. You might just walk down the corner to the Studio for Urban Projects. They've done things like An Unnatural History of Golden Gate Park with walking tours showing how our nature has been constructed.

  Often we demonstrate to people how something is done, in a neighborhood space, as opposed to an institution which might carry with it some prohibitions. At Critter, there are fun crossover events, stuff like music or cooking -- interesting things that you might want to do anyway.

  
  Images: Snapshots from the most recent Critter event, a presentation by Adriane Colburn and Amy Balkin
  

  So it's more hands-on and educational?

  Absolutely. We're not interested in doing shows so much, but exploring things that people can do themselves or contribute to. The next event that I'm having, called "Clone Home," is a drop-in plant-cloning afternoon. We'll serve tea and have live music, and you can bring a plant and we'll have people who will show you how to make cuttings of it. We'll also have people who do more advanced cloning, like orchid growing, and people who can show you how to make genetically engineered plants if you care to. Just basic stuff showing how easy it is to do this, and how if you have a plant you can make all kinds of other things.

  Another event is a kimchee contest. There's a huge repository of knowledge in this city around pickling, particularly around kimchee, and there's like 10,000 people whose grandmother makes the best kimchee ? it's sort of like chicken soup ? so we have an open call to put it to the test with a cash reward. I'm just thrilled to the idea of having a room with 200 open jars of kimchee in it; like a wall of sound, but this will be a wall of smell.

  Is this a coming around to something that existed in the past?

  I think so, we're at this strange place in history where there's a sense that something is about to be lost that we're not ready to lose yet. But if you can't go to your mother or father or a cousin to learn that, where do you turn? Especially since some of these things don't seem important enough to learn in college.

  To me so much of the stuff that is biotech-y is really low tech-y also, or that people don't realize that they're doing all the time. So if your grandmother is making kimchee or you're doing plant cuttings, you're actually doing something that is not dissimilar to what technologists are doing but with slightly fancier tools or surroundings.

  So you're repackaging it?

  A lot of it is aesthetic redirection, a framing to say that these are nature studies. Most people feel very alienated from nature and they don't know how to get into it, or what the direction is. The ways that people generally interact with nature are like we're living in some archetype of a '70s version of a '50s version of something that preceded that ? there's always a recycling of what's considered natural. But genetic engineering is now a naturalized process, like making plant cuttings ? this is the way that we connect with nature. So if you're making a pickle you're keenly aware of what's going on in the microbiology of that thing, despite no one saying that you're working on microbiology.

  Wasn't cooking an introduction for you to the use of biological materials in your art?

  Yes, it was a big point of entry for me. The processes, materials and techniques that you would use for microbiology are in cooking as well.

  
  Image: Philip Ross, "Pure Culture" Series, 2001-Ongoing
  

  So this follows that spirit of everyday nature by being a more open, event-driven work than the museum shows that you've been involved with?

  Nature is a dynamic ongoing thing. When you have art works that stand in for that it becomes kind of strange, so social situations are much more conducive towards art and ecology. You can have a plant cloning session and have a musician right there and they're not necessarily working against each other and can even enhance the situation. If you did that at a gallery you'd have to frame it as something really arty, but in this way you can let that happen out of each person's reaction to it; they learn something and it was a nice experience.

  My other reason for doing it as something other than capital A artwork is that you want people to reproduce these things and do them in their own kitchen or show someone else and if it seems friendly and enjoyable then people will probably do it again and invite their friends over to do a kimchee contest or whatever it is. It's something that's easily reproducible and has less of that notion of authority.

  But that notion of artistic authority is often a prerequisite for your larger individual works, right?

  I work on these mushrooms things for so many years, and if you show them in-process people are disgusted, but if you show people a drawing of it, they go "ahh!" because it looks like art. Kind of like the model of the mushroom building - it's not going to look anything like this at all, but I can show that to a person - an architect engineer or a funder and gain credibility. Of course, if I showed them what it would really look like it would wig them out. But somehow seeing your aesthetic skills at play validates your cockamamie theory.

  John Alderman is a writer and creative director living in San Francisco. His most recent book is Core Memory, a visual walk through computer history.