I'm working. » Pictures

“showing” party

wendy — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:10:27 +0000

setting up for informal showing

wendy — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 02:15:19 +0000

Michael working on Rope&Pulley, etc, etc, etc!

Heavy lifting

wendy — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:39:19 +0000

details

wendy — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:07:35 +0000

A typical email exchange:

On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Wendy Richmond <wendy@wendyrichmond.com> wrote:

Hi Michael
Yesterday was v helpful. I am reflecting!
Quick Q:
Was it hard to make those stand-alone stands for the digital frames? I think it wd be a good way to have a bunch of frames around the room for our showing, so I am thinking about buying some cheap lamps– approx 6 of them. ( we already have 2 that you made)
If it is easier, we could avoid having the cord run thru the pole.
What do you think?
W

MC reply:
They are not so hard to make… I’ve attached a picture of the parts… It is easier to not run the cord through the pole. Gaffer’s tape on the back will keep things in check.
Michael

Governor’s Island, Anthony McCall

wendy — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:30:37 +0000

A beautiful projection installation in the chapel on Governor’s Island, by Anthony McCall.

Sound Inspirations

Michael — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:54:04 +0000

Act I – The HighLine My father and sister came to visit this week and we spent a bit of time out and about in New York City. One of the places we visited was the HighLine – a recently opened park utilizing elevated space along the west side of Manhattan that was formerly a railway freight line. As we walked through one of the more “designed” areas of the park (pictured above) which passes through a building, I heard something which got me thinking about acoustics in a space. At certain spots in the space, I could hear music playing and in others, I simply heard the background. There were also spots where I could hear conversations around me more clearly. This got me thinking about the role of “obstructions” and surfaces in the context of this installation work. This idea seems to resonate somewhat with Wendy’s last post about focusing sound. What if the space had features which reflected the sound so it could be focused in different ways? Act II – Moveable Type I also revisited the “Moveable Type” installation at The New York Times building on 42nd St and found myself much more focused on the sound of this installation. In addition to the ambient sound design that accompanies the transitions between the scenes in the work, it seems to me that each of the 560 vacuum-fluorescent display modules also contains a speaker. This has the effect of providing localization to some of the specific transition sounds. I have a hard time imagining the installation without these sounds. While they are almost akin to “sound effects”, they seem to me to add impact to the visual transitions in a way that just feels right. The little clicks and zaps add dimension and context (perhaps through subtle sonic editorializing) to the information that is displayed. Without these sounds, the quantity of text is overwhelming. I’m also thinking about the connection between the movement of the text and the way the sound reinforces the visual effect of that movement. They’re bound tightly together. Act III – Fashioning Felt The Cooper-Hewitt Museum’s Fashioning Felt exhibition gave me an opposite experience from the one I had while walking through the HighLine. Several of the works in the exhibition were acoustical panels made from industrial felt. I wasn’t aware of felt’s sound absorbing properties. Seeing (and hearing) how much the Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed conference room wall divider (a sandwich of clear polycarbonate between two patterened sheets of waterjet cut industrial felt) absorbed sound make me think of how this sort of material could be used to control the acoustic space of our installation.

working

wendy — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:15:16 +0000

Laptops are the main tool for now.

Morgan Library exhibit

wendy — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:28:43 +0000

from “Creating the Modern Stage”

Alexandra Exter, Construction for a Tragedy ca. 1925

remember bill viola

wendy — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 12:12:45 +0000

Yesterday I was trying to put a digital frame inside a trash barrel to show Michael a Bill Viola-like thing- the monitor at the bottom of a barrel of water… and the frame did not quite fit, so it was at an angle and it was so cool, bc it reflected on the side, and it was so off hand, casual, DISCARDED. Hmm, just like words of these halves of cell phone conversations are so un-precious, so discarded. Wow, words in a trash can. The words are discarded, thrown away. Words are heavy, words are light, so is all about words now. The words we throw around and away so casually… so unprotected.

for NYT

wendy — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:00:45 +0000

early sketches for New York Times CIty Visible

words in a room

wendy — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:03:25 +0000

Before I even thought about an exhibit…this was just a literal way of picturing words in a room.

frame test

wendy — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:22:17 +0000

This is a test on small digital frames, using text from “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”