I'm surrounded by really talented people part 1

Tonight Postcommodity, an indigenous artist collective in residence at SFAI (from Arizona), performed a sound art composition:

It lasted probably 45 minutes. It was really though provoking. At first I was trying to figure out how one is supposed to listen to it, and decided I would try visualizing scenes to the sounds. So I imagined thing like a tractor crossing paths with an alien spaceship, etc. After about 3 minutes of the tractor still driving under the spaceship, I lost interest. So then I started thinking about what I would do if I was twisting those dials and the kind of sound art that I would make. That was fun and I bet I could be really (successfully) weird with this stuff. Finally I settled on trying to figure out exactly what Postcommodity's concept was. I have no real idea - but I decided that the guys on the left were earth and the guys on the right were air. And all their sounds were feeding into each other like, well, earth and air.

At one point Raven (second from the left) used some kind of antler to scratch a surface which created a crazy screechy sound and Kade (second from the right) blew into some kind of tube, then those sounds reverbed all over the place.

Raven with that antler thing (left)

Walking out slowly I felt pretty strange (I was also really tired from my ridiculously dehydrating run this afternoon). Sounds like this however, ones that are loud and non traditional and sometimes even uncomfortable, kinda rattle through your body. Mentally and physically. Its an immersive experience and it leaves you still immersed in it when its over.

Postcommodity has been in residence here at SFAI working on 6 different projects for upcoming shows. Some musical (like this to be shown at a festival in NYC) others sculptural or installationy (separate post on that). I saw on their website that they will be included at the Sydney Biennial in 2012 - Fancy!

At some point I need to get one or two of these guys into my studio, Kade has already offered to take photographs with his expensive camera if I can get work done before they leave. Good incentive because the red drawings are pretty hard to photograph.