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side track
2006
08-25
PhotoStatic Archive complete.
After beginning the project some four years ago, we are now pleased
to announce that the pdf for PhotoStatic Magazine no. 1 has been
uploaded, completing the collection. Have a visit at
psrf.detritus.net.
02-10
Slapdash Platform. A second improvisational setting in as many
months, The Tape-beatles once again joined Tonic Train and Martin
Blažíček at Školská 28, quickly becoming THE
Prague venue for “uncomfortable” works (i.e. things that
don’t easily fit elsewhere). This time the line-up expanded to
include Patrícia Guerreiro, Pavel Sterec, Ondřej
Vavrečka, and Miloš Vojtěchovský, and included not
only multi-machine projector and circuit-bending improv, but also a
reading and some performance art. More about it here,
with pictures.
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Köln’s Stadtgarten Abuzz at “G.N.P.”
Part of “Reconstructing Song” Series
2006-12-02
A Kölnish audience recently had the opportunity to see your trusty
Tape-beatles present their retrospective work “G.N.P.” and, to all outward
appearances, were impressed by it. A good thing, too: why drive all the way from
Prague to be jeered? The local kölsch is certainly an attraction, but you can
get good beer in Prague, too. I’m quite pleased to report that jeering was
not on the dance card, and the applause at the end was enough for the boys to
notch up another success on the belt of their campaign to slowly take over
the world through excessive modesty and self-effacingness. A round of
kölsch for all!
The Tape-beatles were followed on stage by The Books, after which the two groups
had a polite conversation and swapped CDs.
“G.N.P.” Gets First Official Screening
in Prague
Opening for Underground Legend Serhat Köksal
2006-09-24
It certainly must seem to outside observers (if, indeed, there are any)
that our performance schedule has become in recent years rather, shall
we say, rarefied. This is not from any lack of willingness on the part
of the two remaining members of the group -- it’s just that, well, you
know -- there are other things in life that must be attended to, and we
have never been ones (for the most part) to shirk our responsibilities.
No! Never let it be said that we are shirkers! But perhaps that
commentary is best left aside for the moment.
There is more important news to relate. For it came to pass, on Saturday
last, that the Tape-beatles once again performed their current showpiece
“G.N.P.” for any and all comers. That is to say, any and all that came
to an “Experimental Space” in Old Town Prague and plied admittance. For
those were the terms, and we stood by them.
This “Experimental Space”, called NoD (to be pronounced “no dee” for “no
dimensional” works) is one of the premier venues for experimental
artworks in the Czech Republic. The evening was sponsored by MOFFOM, the
Music on Film Film on Music festival, held every year in Prague.
Accompanying The Tape-beatles on the playbill was veteran experimental
electronic media artist (he works in both sound and video) from
Istanbul, Serhat Köksal, a favorite of the late John Peel.
The Tape-beatles trotted through their fixed score for “G.N.P.” with
minimal screw-ups, this time with the addition of few subtitles in
Czech, as a courtesy to the local audience. Afterwards, Köksal
blistered the crowd’s senses with a terrific onslaught of beautiful
sound and digified video ripped from the playlists of the Turk’s
evidently voracious media appetites.
Links: |
Roxy/NoD |
MOFFOM |
2/5BZ |
Tonic Train in Prague; Invites Tape-beatles to Group Improv
Joined by Czech filmer Martin Blažíček
2006-01-19
It’s been mentioned on these pages before of the existence of a
yearly cycle of events called
Art’s Birthday,
celebrated mainly on the airwaves and the internet. Each year around
January 17, people gather in cities around the world and hook up via the
æther, girding the globe with collaborative energy. Part of this
year’s meet-up in Prague took place at
Školska 28*,
a gallery and tearoom in the city’s very heart, under the rubric “
Mini Radio Burza.”
Among the numerous guests invited to add luster to the events was the
circuit-bending duo
Tonic Train
(Sarah Washington and Knut Auferman), whose sensibilities (need it be
said?) are in alignment with your trusty Tape-beatles. We conspired to
add a last-minute addition to the “Mini Radio Burza” agenda,
a collaborative, improvized, experimental show to close out the events
at Školská. Joining us was Czech experimental filmmaker
Martin Blažíček
(who, by the way, recently donated to the Tape-beatles a small
attaché full of 8mm footage, yet to be examined by our prying
minds).
Our event took place Monday evening, January 16, with about two dozen
people in attendance. It began innocently enough, with a brief set
played with talking toys mostly with a didactic purpose in mind, made to
teach children the state capitals and the like. This cacophonous mash-up
then segued into a kind of Photoshop “jam” centered around a
bit of freeware called
SoundOfAnImage,
which converts an arbitrary picture, pixel by pixel, into midi
instructions that can then be heard. Lloyd Dunn generated graphics in
Photoshop on the fly and turned them into a kind of music, supported by
a musical bed supplied by Tonic Train.
Next, we screened a piece for the local audience, with John Heck
projecting a fragmentary 16mm print of Prague historical scenes, to
which visual counterpoint was added by Lloyd on video, and Martin on
16mm. Visual textures and light patterns in motion by Martin were
created using a textured glass ashtray acquired by dashing down the
street to a nearby store. Such escapades are typical of the
Tape-beatles’ work, and the reader can well see that a harmonizing
mindset has been found among the Czech artists they’ve worked
with!
The final experiment of the evening pulled out all the stops.
Characterized in the planning meeting (held the previous week over
brunch at the Fraktal café) as the “loop piece,” it had
all five artists joining in with their best repetitive material in a
spectacle that exceeded everyone’s expectations. Over Tonic
Train’s rich, somewhat sad, audio bed, Heck’s loops of
endless firemen sliding down a pole and extreme slow-motion drops of
water falling and splashing viscously, Dunn applied stuttery looped
mpegs from the
Prelinger Archive’s
holdings, dealing with television, natch; but later moving on to medical
footage of gait defects – nude people parading across the screen
shot in Romania in the 1920s. Blažíček’s virtuosity
at movie projector filtering and “painting” with light and
motion added dazzling overlays and effects throughout.
*Lloyd works at Školska 28 in the capacity of technical support and
web design and was involved in organizing the “Mini Radio
Burza” events.
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