20190709

I have a bad habit of planning my performances using lists. I often maintain two. One for the score and one for stuff I need for it. The score-list resembles a schedule and shows the order of different conceptual ideas I plan to bombard the audience with. More on score-lists in a previous post.

The lists attempt to represent a structure of the artwork. They are useful for assessing how things flow during the show and for spotting how different ideas and materials align. But I now think that lists do more harm then good. They advocate hierarchical, linear and deterministic (causal) views of time. Performances that are planned using lists for chores and materials, are rituals which advocate the passing of time and the (seemingly) inevitable changes the passing of time causes. Performance artists often set the pace and become temporal dictators of sorts.

I’m starting to like exhibitions because audiences can piece them together in their own pace. I bet contemporary art is very much in dept to geology in this regard. Every exhibition visitor is a psycho-geologist of sorts. Workshops are cool too because attendants most often try match their work rhythm with the group.

Listening to Ways of Hearing (2017) Damon Krukowski. A podcast on how listening has been affected by the emergence of digital media. It is been very sentimental and nostalgic but easy and inspirational listening when cycling thou. Finnish HC scene is mentioned in episode 5!

20190707

Helka was still in her pyjamas when Frida came to collect her. They ate bilberry pie for breakfast and decided to head for the Pimpelipom-hills. Frida sprinted upstairs to fetch her stuff and Helka begun the meticulous process of testing which of her caps would best match the band-aids in corner of her eye. She settled on the pink one, which showed the band-aid just enough to spark curiosity.

I was drying a piece of timber in the microwave. A slice of birch from Tammisaari which I cut the day before. While cooking it first smells like a damp forest, then like a sauna and towards the end like bread (I guess it’s the sugars in the wood). The bilberries were from the same site as the birch.

Frida returned with a purse and wore brand new white sneakers. She was proud to tell me that they were for her camping trip. Helka got a purse too, a leather one, with a gold magnet to secure the lid. The excess shoulder strap was held in a loop using an hair tie.  They packed phones, cookies and asked to knifes. Helka found the smaller one from Okkos backpack and Frida was happy to get the longer and sharper one, which I keep in the kitchen drawer.

They went outside and I waved at them from the window. Frida strolled around the housing hold company parking lot a few times, showing her new shoes and then they dashed into the woods. There was no conflict, no struggle or grand narrative to refer to. They were just a couple of kids in the woods with knifes in their purses. Detached from history.

20190705

Secured a set of rails to my rack to accommodate 1u tiles. Breadboard a Simple EQ / Baxandall EQ unit. Everything works but I’d like to boost the volume. The diy water-capacitor is in the making, the epoxies and insulators are taking a long time to dry. Used acrylic-paint as an insulator, got the idea from Johann Diedricks Sound Monsters workshop. Kids painted over the boards with thick paint after soldering them and the units worked fine after (the paint needs to dry).

Working as a substitute janitor for our housing-hold company.

Made a shoulder pad for my hoodie using the front of my Frenchie’s Gym cap. Looks cool. The cap was always to small for my head and it works better as a fashion joke anyway. Took a one and a half month break from gym activities due to a shoulder injury. I have a gym date on the 17th and I have just enough time to restore my gains.

20190703

Second experiment with Epilog laser cutter worked better. Cut clean trough 3,5mm poplar plywood (made eurorack panels, 3 & 1u) but I didn’t get trough a (dirty & crooked) 6mm birch plywood sheet (wanted to make a case). The cutter only yielded 5w of its maximum 50w power. 3,5mm went trough with 4 passes and I tried to get trough the 6mm for two hours. The cutter will be serviced tomorrow.

20190701

Wrote a summer text for Mustekala.info Puu kaatuu metsässä – Tunnelmia Kiilan äänipäiviltä Kemiönsaarelta [Tree Falling in the Woods – Vibes from the Kiila International Sound-Days at Kemiönsaari]. An easygoing review which includes a short history of the event and an overview of all of the works presented this year. Includes some fancy casually post-humanistic sentences: “[their piece] explored constructions, which enable the production of sound in bodies, animals and other wind instruments” (concerning a performance by Ragnhild May and Kristoffer Raasted). Also summarized Yan Jun‘s from last year performance which I wrote shortly about. Got to interview Tolvi, Juho Laitinen (got a micro-lecture on art!) and Teemu Lehmusruusu for the text too.

Jesse introduced me to the concept of post-ore (jälki-malmi). He came up with the concept after spotting scum with aluminum and copper traces in the lot of an old foundry. Its a very useful concept for Ore.e Refineries. Post-Timber works too (see this crafty palindrome as a performance). We build a sauna (using post-timbre) with him in two days. Needs insulation but gives a good löyly.

Breadboarded a Microphonie (Music Thing Modular) and made a unit on perfboard too. Turns out my DC 5-24v to Dual Power 12v -12v 5v -5v 3.3v is incredibly noisy. Works ok, not as loud as I hoped and a bit noisy (most likely because of my building skills). Using a battery works cleaner. Tested it with my μZEUS too and begun to build a (water)capacitor (will be dry tomorrow).