Showing posts with label audio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label audio. Show all posts

Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock vs Brad Pitt "Mistaken Landscapes" Audio


This audio playlist was created for the Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock vs. Brad Pitt at sunset (approximately 8:36 PM) screening of Mistaken Landscapes at All Star Fine and Recorded Arts (film described in detail below). The film was projected onto a large window facing the street from inside the gallery. Visitors could follow a link on their smartphones to this audio track, then listen to the soundtrack while viewing the visuals from outside the space.

Forming a counterpoint to the rhythmic shifting of the distorted visuals, the audio of this film is constructed from recordings made while sitting still on the balcony of a Tokyo apartment. As with the HDR images that don’t precisely combine, the addition of sounds—a child’s tantrum in the courtyard, a neighbor’s koto lesson, rice cooking, and an answering machine message from FedEx—enhances the surreal qualities of the film and foregrounds the contrast between movement and stasis, outside and inside, travel and home.

The star actor in this film is the visual/aural landscape itself.

0:00 A distant rock concert, birds, a truck with a speaker 
3:13 Rice cooking 
4:14 A tantrum in the courtyard 
5:09 An answering machine message about a missed delivery 
6:04 A speech in the middle of the night, a sudden arrival 
7:32 Stray Dog 
8:08 A murder of crows 
9:30 Wind 
9:52 Yuyake Koyake (Sunrise, Sunset), a child (animal?) having a tantrum, crickets 
10:22 A passing jet, a siren, a koto lesson, a baby crying 
11:54 Cicadas, cicadas breaking the recording device 
12:36 A baseball game, crows, a hit, crickets, crows 
15:16 Rain, a bird, a birdcall, a bird responds, an assessment 
15:53 A passing jet, Yuyake Koyake, Yuyake Koyake echos 
16:41 An unhappy refrigerator 
17:14 A voice from a speaker, a truck, briefly a scooter, the voice continues

Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock vs. Brad Pitt at Sunset


 



 

 

 

 

 

Tonight 8/5/2022: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock vs. Brad Pitt at sunset (approximately 8:36 PM) at All Star Fine and Recorded Arts: 3022 E 35th St, Minneapolis, MN 55406 Instagram. Listen to the audio hereLive Zoom link click here Meeting ID: 867 4296 5027. View a book version of the film here.

All Star Fine and Recorded Arts is not scared to go up against the big guns. So, we are proud to announce that Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock’s film, Mistaken Landscapes, shot from Shinkansen Bullet trains in Japan over six years, will drop on August 5th, the same release date as Bullet Train, a new action comedy starring Brad Pitt.

Based on the 2010 Japanese novel Maria Beetle by Kotaro Isaka, Bullet Train (filmic value yet unknown) is not to be confused with the extraordinary 1975 thriller, The Bullet Train, starring the legendary Ken Takakura and Sonny Chiba. Regardless—Takakura, Chiba, Pitt—we stand our ground.

Like the big motion picture companies, we, too, will bring a sampling of Japanese landscape into American theaters; however, our version emerges from the heartland minus the comedy, less predictably and more abstractly. Mistaken Landscapes will be projected onto the gallery window from inside All Star Fine and Recorded Arts, inverting space and turning the interior of this Minneapolis gallery into a view of the passing Japanese terrain. The corner location and visibility from pedestrians and drivers ideally places All Star Fine and Recorded Arts as the conduit between travelers on different continents.

About the film: the images comprising Mistaken Landscapes were made with an iPhone while traveling on Shinkansen bullet trains in Japan between 2014 and 2020 and exploit the iPhone’s High Dynamic Range capabilities.

High Dynamic Range, or HDR, has been an iPhone option since model four came out in 2010. When HDR is enabled, the camera quickly takes three images each time you press the shutter button—one underexposed, one at the correct exposure, and one overexposed. The three different exposures are combined, yielding a single image with an increased dynamic range of color and contrast.

Even though the three HDR exposures are made almost instantaneously, the Shinkansen travels at speeds up to 300 km/h (186 mph); consequently, the view out the window shifts during the image-making process. The brief lag between exposures causes inaccurate imagery alignment, with misregistration areas appearing featureless, and gray.

As viewed from a speeding Shinkansen, the world streaking by already appears unreal; however, the slippage generated by the HDR shift pushes the images into territory bordering on hallucinatory. This selection, pulled from 11,417 images, manifests a range of scenes from urban to rural and a spectrum of misregistration from subtle to severe.

Forming a counterpoint to the rhythmic shifting of the distorted visuals, the audio of this film is constructed from recordings made while sitting still on the balcony of a Tokyo apartment. As with the HDR images that don’t precisely combine, the addition of sounds—a child’s tantrum in the courtyard, a neighbor’s koto lesson, rice cooking, and an answering machine message from FedEx—enhances the surreal qualities of the film and foregrounds the contrast between movement and stasis, outside and inside, travel and home.

The star actor in this film is the visual/aural landscape itself.

The Plan


















The Plan
Spotify Playlist, 437 songs, 26 hr 46 min.
Created for the Marble Hill Camera Club.

Of course, everyone was utterly fascinated by the foreign exchange student who joined the highschool film club. Who wouldn't be? However, it is safe to say that I was the one most in love.

This unknown variable in the domestic rabble added a distinct element of style to the mix. It ratcheted up the competitive intensity of the arguments that took place after and sometimes throughout the screenings. Occasionally, the exchanges became so spirited that we had to pause the movie to untangle the dispute. Unfortunately, this process invariably caused even further disagreements, as the image frozen on the screen became yet another inflammatory topic to trigger a debate. Some simple fool would interrupt the current melee and blurt out an absurdity like, "Stop—look at that—Antonioni couldn't construct a frame like that in his wildest dreams!" An incendiary burst like that could take forever to manage, and I suppose in retrospect that one should never join any organization without carefully weighing who the participants might be, especially if membership is free and you will be meeting in a small windowless space.

We watched movies on a barely functioning audio-visual cart VHS player squeezed into a dark storage room packed with all manner of forgotten items. The television's tube had, without a doubt, lived several lifetimes past its expiration date so that the faint screen made even contemporary films look old, which was fine by us. That relic was a beacon of future possibility on which we observed tantalizingly unknown worlds while surrounded by mutilated wood desks, half-functioning instruments, abandoned dioramas, broken props, and the lost and found box's eternally unclaimed contents.

The smell of that space was unforgettable to anyone who entered, even if only briefly. Many generations ago, somebody had left something on top of the clanging radiator, and it still produced a burnt waxy aroma. That smell combined with the distinct perfume of the ditto machine's duplicating fluid, and this new spectral fragrance saturated everything. At one point, we proudly thought that we had been moved and overwhelmed with mature emotion from the swelling romantic crescendo of Bernard Hermann's score for Vertigo; however, most likely, we were only buzzed from the fumes.

We sent out meaningful glances and conspiratorial winks in this half-lit educational morgue, not yet having realized that there is nothing quite so confusing and counterproductive as an amateur conspiratorial wink. Our imaginary film festival sequencing ricocheted off the peeling walls to hopefully meet their intended recipient—the import. These fanciful cinematic playlists never came close to their mark; however, releasing them into the wild was just enough at that time to allow us to maintain the illusory chance of something happening. We imagined connections spontaneously forming, of having our vaguest sentiments be precisely understood without resorting to the use of actual, specific language. These mixes were simultaneously both our thumbprints and also appeals.

Recollecting those late Thursday afternoons in February, I feel compelled to reassemble my plan's specifics and share them with you. We never determined our effort's potency because we never implemented "The Plan," as you can imagine. My fantasy setlist is now shrouded in an aniline purple haze and so far removed from my current life that it might as well be from an alternate cosmos. Nevertheless, film by film, it should do the job reasonably well of sketching out a juvenile psyche under the spell of moving pictures, both domestic and foreign. At the very least, you can bank on the fact that the mixtape will run for roughly twenty-four hours, and with that, my surrogate will serve as your intimate companion for the waking and sleeping hours of your day.

I am looking forward to spending time with you in that small, dark place where we imagine what we hear.

Anna – Léa Massari – Anna Maria Massetani

Anna – Léa Massari – Anna Maria Massetani, 2007, audio, total running time 4 minutes and 35 seconds, accessed through "On Call Audio" playback on demand at Bloomberg Headquarters, 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY. Presented as part of Art in General and Bloomberg L.P.'s Horizon, curated by Jan Van Woensel

Find Léa Massari, the actor who played the disappearing character Anna in Michelangelo Antonioni' s 1960 film L'Avventura, and almost have a conversation.

Extensions on the Dial HORIZON card:
  • Ext 01: Dialogue 1 by Eric Van Hove
  • Ext 02: Dialogue 2 by Eric Van Hove
  • Ext 03: Dialogue 3 by Eric Van Hove
  • Ext 04: Music by Sufjan Stevens: Flint (3:45)
  • Ext 05: Music by Sufjan Stevens: Tahquamenon Falls (2:20)
  • Ext 06: Music by Sufjan Stevens: Holland (3:28)
  • Ext 07: Music by Sufjan Stevens: Romulus (4:43)
  • Ext 08: Music by Sufjan Stevens: Vito's Ordination Song (7:06)
  • Ext 09: Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island, 2003–2005 by Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock (2:29)
  • Ext 10: Ritorno a Lisca Bianca, 2003–2005 by Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock (3:29)
  • Ext 11: A Triangulation (Italy), 2003 – 2006 Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock (3:06)
  • Ext 12: An Island, 2006 Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock (1:57)
  • Ext 13: Anna – Léa Massari – Anna Maria Massetani, 2007 Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock (4:35)

A Triangulation (Italy)/An Island


A Triangulation (Italy), 2003–2006, 45 rpm silver master plates, h 12 3/8" x w 22 3/4" (framed) An Island, 2006, C-print (from a Super-8 film frame) mounted to aluminum, h 6 1/2” x w 9” (image) h 9 1/16” x w 11 5/8” (framed)

Have you ever seen Buster Keaton going out a doorway? He turns right, then he suddenly turns left, then, spinning on his heels, he abruptly reverses direction and heads off to the right as he initially started. It is impressive to see his original intention, his deviation, his realization, and his modification occur in the space of a few short moments. As well as the physical agility demonstrated in this comedic instant, one also might detect a compressed set of emotions in the scene that range from desire, to failure, to subsequent redemption – the fundamentals of a classic narrative. In a sense, the improvisations that occur when actuality tempers our wishes are a skeletal array of touchstones for this project; nevertheless, they are points transposed from the period of a few moments in the space of a doorway and stretched out into several years on the Tyrrhenian Sea.

In 2003, I set off for the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily, the island of Lisca Bianca specifically, to find the character Anna who disappeared from Michelangelo Antonioni's 1960 film L'Avventura; however, I accidentally went to the wrong island. I returned a year later to the right island and swam ashore, but I found nothing. Sound recordings were made during both voyages of my boat’s small outboard engine as it labored in transit to the wrong and right islands and my grand journey eventually assumed the diminutive and archaic format of a 45 rpm record, Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island. The unique, silver master plates for the A and B sides of the record are presented in A Triangulation, their encoded sounds and story clearly visible, yet ultimately inaccessible, as the master plates cannot be played.

Working alongside the two reflective plates of A Triangulation is the third component of the project, An Island. A single reel of Super-8 film was shot in a continuous take during a 2006 return to the Aeolian Islands, yet the objective was not to travel once again to Lisca Bianca, but to navigate accurately to the wrong island. Although the film itself was never intended for presentation, the very last frame of the film, the end, was selected for enlargement. This singular frame is the trophy from a return trip to an island that formerly represented a colossal blunder on my part. As well, the last frame of the footage is a bookend, providing finality and closure.

The title, A Triangulation, refers to a navigation technique whereby the properties of triangles are used to precisely determine a location by means of compass bearings from two points a known distance apart. Within the context of this project, one might consider the technique of triangulation in relation to positions in time, as well as in regards to physical location; conversely, the numerous ambiguities, deviations, as well as the mysterious disappearance of Anna at the core of this series of expeditions, operate in stark contrast to the exactitude of the triangulating process. Along these lines, the vaguely titled, An Island, also plays with notions of accuracy by utilizing an indefinite article to describe the island that is neither clear, nor precisely defined. Although we know that An Island is not the right island of Lisca Bianca, it becomes questionable whether the original name wrong island is entirely useful, particularly given that the island was traveled to intentionally and successfully on the most recent trip. As with many different types of adventures, transformations have emerged en route: objectives have changed, techniques altered accordingly, and original presumptions questioned.

Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island




Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island, 2003–2006, 45 rpm white vinyl record, total running time 3 minutes and 30 seconds (each side), 1 color offset printed label, die-cut white paper sleeve, 4 color offset printed cardboard jacket with 1 color offset printed message inside, w 7” x h 7”. Edition of 500 for North Drive Press' NDP#3, co-edited by Sara Greenberger Rafferty and Matt Keegan, edition of 100 for The Golden Hour, curated by Susanna Cole and Erin Donnelly for Gigantic ArtSpace in New York City, and 2 artist's proofs.

Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island features sound recordings made en route to the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily in search of "Anna" who disappeared from Michelangelo Antonioni's film L'Avventura. Recordings made of the outboard engine in 2003 (traveling to the "Wrong" island – Bottaro) and 2004 (traveling to the "Right" island – Lisca Bianca) were pressed at United Record Pressing (URP) in Nashville, Tennessee, via Tokyo, Japan. Cover image of Anna (Lea Massari) only comes into focus at distances further than 3 feet.

In twighlight, general outlines of ground objects may be distinguishable, but the horizon is indistinct



In twighlight, general outlines of ground objects may be distinguishable, but the horizon is indistinct, 2004, Marine Plywood, CD player, 2 speakers, audio: total running time 32 seconds, looped, h 5’6” x w 32’ x d 4’9”

In twighlight, general outlines of ground objects may be distinguishable, but the horizon is indistinct, 2004, is a 32-foot wide staircase that has been truncated at its third step. The staircase would connect to the upper level of Smack Mellon gallery, were it to continue. It is constructed of Marine Plywood in homage to the minimalist objects that in part inspired it. Speakers hidden beneath the two endpoints faintly play in continuous loop the first few bars of a rendition of Perry Como's Sunrise, Sunset. This project is a collaboration with Christopher Ho.

Special thanks to Eric Zeszotarski of Solid Studio

Outdoor Area



Outdoor Area, 2003, 2 humidifiers, seawater, 1 CD player, audio: total running time 4 minutes and 33 second, looped (installation views)

Outdoor Area consists of two humidifiers filled with seawater from an inlet immediately outside and visible through the gallery windows. Additionally, a CD player on a continuous loops an audio recording of the exhibition curators – a Norwegian collective – standing as silently as possible in the gallery for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. This project is a collaboration with Christopher Ho.

As the World Turns (Brutally)

As the World Turns (Brutally), 2001, audio, total running time 2 minutes and 41 seconds, installed as part of Art in General’s Audio in the Elevator program

As the World Turns (Brutally) is an audio piece constructed for Art in General’s elevator in which all sounds point to the fact that humanity, despite being able to harness various elements of technology, will ultimately fall prey to its own viciousness. The soundtrack calls into question the human need for excessive brutality by isolating certain horrific moments in the Steven Spielberg film Saving Private Ryan. Screaming, crying, grunting, struggling, punching, explosions, and every gunshot in the movie are layered upon each other to a point of emotional excess and preposterousness. This frenzied and vicious collection is complimented with an amalgam of whimsical, although emotionally saccharine John Williams’ scores from earlier Spielberg films Close Encounters and E.T., thereby propelling the absurdity component even further.

Orphan

Orphan, 2001, total running time 44 minutes and 17 seconds

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless. – Thomas Edison

Orphan is a 44 minute, 17 second sound piece that took one year to create. For the first six months of the project, every week samples were randomly extracted from the New York region airwaves. The material gathered, which ran the gamut from rash cream commercials to "blazin’ hip hop," was the raw material upon which a series of experiments were to be conducted. The intention of the research was to ascertain if the authoritative language and tone of voice utilized on commercial radio could be broken down and distilled into an essence. Once the soon to be obsolete products were edited out and the remaining absences filled, it only remained to organize the residue into a presentable form.

Could the new hybrid function in an assertive manner like the parental source promotions, however with the end goal of selling absolutely nothing? The answer we have found, after much trial and error, is a swaggering and secure yes – the poised language of marketing can be mined and forced to function on new terms, yet with a certain number new and unpleasant side effects coming to the forefront.

Genetic tampering, even with seemingly simple Am/Fm radio source material, is messy business with unpredictable results. Your engineered product may look fine now, only to dissolve before your eyes moments later. Instability becomes the norm and that’s the risk of advancing evolution. It might seem difficult at first listening to our alpha voice die – it’s always hard to loose a leader – however, there are few pleasures greater for a victim of commercial over–saturation than witnessing power itself stuttering and spurting, untethered by sales objectives, eventually degenerating into nonsensical tongues. Think of Orphan as something reclaiming territory by generating a waste of time. This project is a collaboration with Tom Kehn.