Transmittal
"Relay" by Max Goldfarb
“free103point9 hosts, “Transmittal,” a transmission arts exhibition of local New York artists and international radio artists, in Catskill, New York this spring. “Transmittal” is curated by Galen Joseph-Hunter, free103point9’s Executive Director and author of “Transmission Arts: Artists and Airwaves” (PAJ Publications: 2011.) Works include video, sound, radio, installation, performance, and work-on-paper. An opening for “Transmittal” will be held Saturday, April 28 from 5-7 p.m., and the exhibition is open from Apr. 27 through June 1 at the Greene County Council on the Arts Gallery at 398 Main St. in Catskill.” – free103point9.org
"Deluge" by Phillip Stearns
I’ll be showing Deluge, a light and sound sculpture consists of 35 hand made modules, each containing a transistor receiver that generates white noise, an amplifier w/ speaker, and 12 LEDs. Static from a broad spectrum of unused radio frequencies is gently amplified through a small speaker, and visualized by a string of LEDs. Together the cloud of individual modules create the impression of rain.
Glitch Textiles Update: Available At Eyebeam + New Arrivals
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Glitch Textiles are now available at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center’s Bookstore. They’re selling at a 25% discount from my online store prices.
Plus, three new blankets just arrived! The images DCP 02802 and DCP 02803 are from Year of the Glitch post #66 from March 7th. The third was created from an image made with a prepared Olympus C-840L digital camera, a gift from artist notendo (Jeff Donaldson).
Deluge in Progress
Currently wrapping up construction of Deluge. This project will be exhibited as part of the Transmittal group show curated by Galen Joseph-Hunter for Free103Point9 at Greene County Council on the Arts Gallery in Catskill, NY. Opening is April 28th, 2012 at 5-7pm.
Artists Wanted – Entry
Phillip Stearns. Click “Collect Me” to help me win $10,000 and a show in the most immense exhibition of art in New York City : Art Takes Times Square.
Cameras of Year of the Glitch
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Images and information about three cameras used in recent Year of the Glitch posts and the DCP Series are now public. The Kodak DC280, DC215, and DC200/210, have played a key role in my exploration of hardware and software based image generation/corruption. In the near future, these pages will be updated with more detailed information about specific techniques and circuits involved in creating the variety of images found in both the YOTG project and DCP Series.
Cameras Featured
 Kodak DC 280 |
 Kodak DC 200/210 |
 Kodak DC 215 |
New Glitch Textiles
 DCP02673 |
 DCP_0190 |
Two new additions to the Glitch Textiles series just arrived, are pictured above. To celebrate Leap Day, I’ve created a store where they can be purchased directly from me.
Going forward, I’ll be looking into patterning some textiles from my own Dither Study series of works inspired by Daniel Temkin’s Dither Studies and featured on Year of the Glitch. If you’re not already following Year of the Glitch, do so today! The project is only 4 followers shy of 1000 and it would be really awesome to make the 1000 follower milestone on Leap Day.
Glitch Textiles
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- YOTG #32 as a blanket
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- YOTG #32 as a blanket
Experimenting with making woven blankets out of images from Year of the Glitch. Here are some photos of tests. #32 is featured in there!
There are 4 blankets in this collection. The first four images are two blankets made with a mechanized knitting process. The last two images are two different blankets made using a Jacquard loom.
SOPA and PIPA Protests: Photos
Protesters outside the offices of Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand
[ Images from the Protest against PIPA and SOPA in NYC]
On Thursday January 18th, a crowd of roughly 2400 people amassed before the offices of NY Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand in protest of the PROTECT IP Act (AKA PIPA, the Senate version of SOPA). The protests were organized by The New York Tech Meetup, a community that gathers monthly, where 9 or 10 companies get 3 to 5 minutes each to demo something cool to New York’s tech community (geeks, investors, entrepreneurs, hackers, etc).
The two controversial bills, SOPA and PIPA, seek to eliminate internet piracy, but technologists are opposed to them on the grounds that certain provisions within will enable corporate interests to require search engines and other sites to effectively censor content. Additional concerns regarding the cost of monitoring content, to comply with regulations proposed in the bills, are a major factor contributing to the broad opposition coming from technology startups and tech workers.
Year of the Glitch: A 366 Day Project for 2012
“56. What makes good glitch art good is that, amidst a seemingly endless flood of images, it maintains a sense of the wilderness within the computer ” — Hugh S. Manon and Daniel Temkin, “Notes on Glitch”
Year of the Glitch is a 366 day project aimed at exploring various manifestations of glitches (intentional and unintentional) produced by electronic systems.
Each day will bring a new image, video or sound file from a range of sources: prepared digital cameras, video capture devices, electronic displays, scanners, manipulated or corrupted files, skipping CDs, disrupted digital transmissions, etc.
These images are not of broken things, but the unlocking of other worlds latent in the technologies with which we surround ourselves.
DIY Renewable Electricity: Solar and Dynamos
DIY Renewable Electricity: Solar and Dynamos
a class taught by Phillip Stearns @ 3rd Ward
Where does your electricity come from?
To contextualize the complexities of energy production we’ll look at the life cycle of the materials and energy used to harness electrical energy from our environment. We will investigate the most prevalent electricity generation methods and the industrial processes involved in mining, refining and burning the fuels used in each. We will then create our own renewable power generators as an alternative means of powering our energy-hungry electronics.
In this workshop we will focus on creating a small solar array strong enough to charge a couple of AA batteries. We will also build simple dynamo generators that convert a permanent magnet DC motor in a device that generates electricity from mechanical energy. These power sources can be used in future electronics workshops offered at 3rd Ward.
Instructor
Phillip Stearns is a practitioner of sonic and visual arts; music composer and performer; electronics sculptor and installation artist. He views technology as a site for exploring the global society-environment system and how changes in the relationship between society and environment manifest in our technology—particularly as solutions to a cascading set of problems created by contemporary culture. Through the medium of networked systems, his work explores the horizons of information, politics, noise, control, proximity, subversion, corruption, interconnectedness and interrelatedness. Central to his practice as a visual artist and a performer are the use of custom electronics, hand-craft, hardware hacking, media technologies and iterative processes marked by a judicial use of materials, restraint, simplicity, a careful balance between conceptual depth and playfulness. He has presented, performed, lectured, exhibited, led workshops and screened works at various festivals, conferences, residencies, museums and institutions around the US, Latin America and Northern Europe.
Enroll in the DIY Renewable Electricity Workshop today:
3rd Ward Basic/Custom Member Price: $80 + $50 Materials Fee
Nonmember Price: $100 + $50 Materials Fee
Glitch Theory: “Notes on Glitch”
Jose Irion Neto, Untitled Databent JPEG-LS (2010)
In its 6th edition, titled “Wrong”, The online journal, World Picture, recently published an article, “Notes on Glitch” by Hugh S. Manon and Daniel Temkin with a companion gl1tchw0rks gall3ry curated by Temkin.
“Notes on Glitch” covers an impressive amount of ground, offering perspectives on well known problematics of the newly emerging form of Glitch art, theorizing about issues of authenticity, effort, aesthetics, methodology, materialism, as well as presenting some interesting trajectories for further thought.
This article is by no means comprehensive and is in no way making a claim to be. It does put together a great resource for those interested in learning more about this growing phenomenon within electronic culture. I’m certainly excited about the conversations this piece of Glitch theory is sure to generate within the community and beyond.
Compression Study 01
With the opening of the Algorithmic Unconscious group show at Devotion Gallery earlier this month, my interest in iterative video processing has been renewed as a method of exploring compression algorithms. You might be familiar with the technique, it was the same used for the epic Alvin Lucier inspired Video Room where YouTube user canzona uploads, downloads and re-uploads a video to youtube 1000 times. Where his work explores the impact of the compression schemes native to YouTube, the new video work above explores the motion JPEG-2000 compression algorithm.
The source video is a custom made 16 second loop cycling through the 8 fully saturated primary and secondary additive colors—black, red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta, white. In quicktime, the JPEG-2000 compression algorithm is chosen to export a .mov file of the lowest quality (smallest size). At this setting, the compression algorithm is repeatedly making decisions concerning what information is relevant or important while discarding the rest—up to 99% of the original data. The result is a considerably low quality reproduction of the original with visible data-compression artifacts. By applying a handful of filters to the compressed file and then re-compressing, data-compression artifacts are amplified. By repeating this iterative or recursive process hundreds of times, an effect similar to feedback is achieved where the visual output becomes degraded from the original and the artifacts take on a generative nature.
For this study, 193 iterations were time compressed to fit within a roughly 10 minute span. The video was then paired with audio from “Metamorphopsia”, a track from the Macular Degeneration project.
Leading up to this completed study, several attempts were made to work with h.264 on fades between black and white frames. Similar work was down with audio compression algorithms and white noise. Further works in this series will investigate the effects of different compression algorithms on simple patterns of varying motion, shapes, and transition effects.
As a note, this work is less about abstraction and more about taking the concepts of Concrete Art to a place where expression re-emerges through the algorithm, which I am taking to be an abstraction of human perceptual features mediated by a deterministic system of discrete logic.
Apeiron Peras in Recent Some Magazine Issue “Electric”
Apeiron | Peras is featured on page 11 of the latest issue of Some Magazine.
Toktek Vs. Simonz Berz @ 319 Scholes
Date: Saturday, October 8th 2011
Time: 8pm Doors
Location: 319 Scholes @ 319 Scholes St. Brooklyn, NY 11206
Tickets: $10 at the door
Info: http://319scholes.org/leisure_october2011/
Description: Leisure, a concert series produced by 319 Scholes, welcomes special international guests Tom Verbruggen (Toktek) and Simon Berz in a program curated by Phillip Stearns featuring performances by locals TwistyCat, Jeff Donaldson Vs. Phil White, Phillip Stearns. The evening promises to be a “spastic, sweaty and intense” display of electronic music from a wide array of sensibilities spanning drone, noise, glitch, and ambient genres.
Soundwalk 2011 – October 1st
Coming up on Saturday October 1st in Long Beach, CA: Soundwalk 2011
“SoundWalk is an ear-oriented art event produced annually by the Long Beach artist group, FLOOD. The evening operates under the concept of a five-hour audioscopic experience as provided by sound art located in various indoor and outdoor spaces situated in Downtown Long Beach. The artwork combines, in multiple ways, a wide range of media as well as other interplayful sensory elements. There are sculptures, environments, installations, both interactive and passive, as well as scheduled performances.” —source: http://soundwalk.org/
For Any Number of Brass Instruments: 2011-2012 (For Radu Malfatti) will be included amongst the 42 different installations and artworks. Scores will be available at the information desk for the event. The composition is text-based, easy to read, and anyone can participate, even if you do not have an instrument. If you do play a brass instrument, please bring it and join in the year-long performance. You may perform this composition wherever you are and whenever you wish, so long as it’s before New Years 2012.
Incomplete Darkness
Inspired by the recent appearance of lenscapped work by Jeff Donaldson, Incomplete Darkness is a new series of digital photographs utilizing the sensor noise as image source.
Vote for DCP Series
Please show your support by voting for my portfolio in 3rd Ward’s Solo Show Competition by clicking HERE. You can vote once a day. The works are selected images from the DCP Series and are created using various circuit bent Kodak DC series cameras.
Proto-chiptune 100% Solar Powered @ Maker Faire
Maker Faire 2011 in NYC is chock full of some amazing projects. The sheer quantity and variety of makers showcasing work is staggering. To see everything is definitely more than a two day affair. This year I was invited to present a self-built solar powered music making system for 3rd Ward, where I currently teach the art of making DIY Synthesizers and small scale solar charging systems.
This solar music making station (Protochiptune Project) is powered by a Voltaic Systems 15 Watt panel connected to a 7.5Ah 12V Seal Lead Acid Battery. A 10A solar charge controller does all the power management to drive the music synthesizer’s three 5 Watt amplifiers. The microchips used are from the 4000 series CMOS digital logic family, including such chips as: hex inverting buffer (40106), 12-bit binary counter (4040), 8-to-1 selector switch (4051), quad 2-input AND gate (4081), and divide by n counter (4018). These chips are used together to produce a range of pitches and rhythms that can be sequenced or programmed by moving jumper cables on the breadboard, making a mini patchable modular synth.
At Maker Faire, kids were really attracted to the crazy jams coming out of this thing. Those who were bold enough were allowed to move some of the jumpers around on the board and make up their own musical patterns.
Hacking the Logitech C270
Picked up a Logitech C270HD 740p webcam on ebay for about $23. While waiting for hurricane Irene to arrive, I’ve been prodding about the innards, mostly the CCD element, looking for anything interesting…
Red Hook Art Lot: Update August 16th, 2011
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Garden thieves have stolen a total of 3 cantaloupes: 1 was outside the fence, the other two were inside the fence. There are 2 more fruits growing, but I doubt they’ll remain long enough to ripen fully. The upside to all this is that a hungry belly in need of a sweet delicious cantaloupe got what it deserved. Other good news: there were a handful of tomatoes and 3 more cucumbers ripe for the picking. Morning glories are also flowering along the fence, providing a little bit of color, though the vines still do look a bit sad and undernourished. Pinto bean vines are starting to produce as well and may provide enough dry beans for a bowl of chili. I’ll let the images do the rest of the talking.
DIY Synthesizer Class @ 3rd Ward
Self-Built CMOS Music Pattern Generator/Synthesizer
Get ready! If you’re interested in learning how to make your own electronic musical instruments (and live in New York), I’m going to be offering my DIY Synthesizer class at 3rd Ward. This will be a 4-class session taught on Tuesdays September 13, 20, 27, October 4 in the evenings from 7p to 10p.
We’ll start with the basics of electronics and move quickly into building very simple sound circuits. In addition to learning basic electronics concepts, how to identify components, what those components do, and how to read and write schematics you’ll take home your own self-built synthesizer based on circuits and applications taught during the course. For more details and course signup, click here.
This course has been offered at Harvestworks twice before. Here is some video of really incredible student work done during the course:
Wappingers Farm Update: August 7th
Electronics and vegetables. Someday I’ll be able to explain simply how the two are related. For the time being, I can only say that I have this crazy obsession with growing things, which usually means creating an environment supportive of life, planting a few seeds with the help of friends, and letting things take care of themselves (thanks Masanobu Fukuoka). This season has been especially difficult, not only because of my generally neglectful attitude towards farming, but the weather has been rather manic: generally cool weather punctuated by bursts of record setting hot spells, long stretches of abundant rain, and then weeks without. The tomatoes have fared the worst. We (the owners and friends) planted 4 and a half 25ft rows, twice as many plants as last year, which have yielded only a fraction of the fruit.
There is good news, however. The corn and squash in the lower portion of the field are doing incredibly well. A big surprise considering a.) there is no deer fencing, b.) we didn’t spread manure on that field, and c.) the watering system doesn’t reach the bottom half of that field. Of course, the garlic pictured above was also part of the success story, along with some peppers and potatoes—planted (unwisely perhaps) from some purchased at a local organic grocer.
After planting a row of garlic for next season, we went into the woods to hunt for mushrooms and found quite a few good looking specimens plus a few critters. A red spotted newt was hiding out in a pile of leaves next to a massive cluster of jack-o-lantern mushrooms.
In my usual casual fashion, after another two weeks of letting the field do its thing, I’ll return on the weekend of August 27th. I’m not expecting there to be much more than a few choice squash and fresh herbs, but I am looking forward to experiencing the Duchess County Fair in Rhinebeck. And now for some more tree fungus:
Turkey Tail - Coriolus Versicolor
Crown Coral - Clavicorona Pyxidata
Alpha, Beta, Gamma @ ISCP
Radioactivity is visualized by a flickering fluorescent tube.
Alpha, Beta, Gamma will be on exhibit as part of Jau-Lan Guo’s salon presentation at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP).
The presentation and exhibition opening is at 6:30pm EST on July 26th. ISCP is located at 1040 Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn, NY.
More information about the event can be found here.
Art Lot Update: 7/25/2011
First pick of the season: Three 8 inch cucumbers grown at the Red Hook Art Lot
The project Wind, on exhibition at the Red Hook Art Lot through September as part of the group show “All Jokes Aside” curated by Natalia Zubko, has borne its first fruits.
Though not intended to be an urban gardening project, Wind is becoming an example of the possibilities of edible landscaping designed for a minimum of input and upkeep. Beyond the initial labor of preparing the land and planting, bi-weekly watering with monthly light feeding is all that has been necessary to produce vigorously growing plants.
To prepare the land, shallow ditches no deeper than 10″ were dug along the fence. These were filled with organic gardening soil purchased at a regional hardware store. Seeds were planted directly or grown indoors and planted as seedlings. Most seeds were sourced from previous years of planting and saved from plants growing along the sidewalks of NYC. As soon as the plants became established, mulch purchased at a regional hardware store was spread around the plants to retain moisture and regulate temperature.
This must be a slicing variety
Cucumber Salad: slice cucumber, drizzle with sesame oil, soy sauce, and honey.
