Artomatic Opens Tonight!

John, J.T. and Matt will be at Artomatic tonight for the opening reception of the cities (country’s? world’s?) biggest art show. Be sure to stop by our collaborative installation on the 2nd floor (space 2-15-P-4) and say hi. We’d love to hear your feedback on the work so don’t hesitate to leave a note in our book or come back to this blog to leave a comment.

Also, in the spirit of promotion, be sure to stop by J.T.’s solo installation at Artomatic also on the 2nd floor (space 2-3-P-4).

See you there!

Final Artomatic Installation

I am going to Artomatic today to finish the installation (this is John speaking, er typing).  I’ll finish hanging the Kirkland/Adams component, tidy up some things for Matt, and execute my wall drawing.  Don’t miss the opening this Friday, May 29 at 55 M St. SE, Washington, DC.  In the meantime I have included a few of my Ghost Music Studies which were created as a reaction to the composition that will be used for the performance/drawing collaboration with Matt Sargent and I.  These drawings are rough sketches developing a vocabulary of marks that will be used in the final performance.

“Ghost Music Study 1″, John M. Adams, Graphite on Yupo

“Ghost Music Study 3″, John M. Adams, Graphite on Yupo

“Ghost Music Study 8″, John M. Adams, Graphite on Yupo

“Ghost Music Study 9″, John M. Adams, Graphite on Yupo

“Ghost Music Study 11″, John M. Adams, Graphite on Yupo

“Ghost Music Study 19″, John M. Adams, Graphite on Yupo

My drawing at Artomatic, is a reaction to the same sound piece that Matt created for JT’s work  (seen in photograph format at Artomatic, but it also exists in a video from that will be used for the main exhibition that will happen at a later date.).  I would expect it to have a softer touch, with less crisp edges, and more “grain” from the drawing surface.  We will see what happens when I finish it…

Reviews of Adams’ Show At GRACE

“Sitting Still 97″, oil and acrylic on birch, John M. Adams, 2009

My solo exhibition at Greater Reston Arts Center is on view until Saturday, June 6, 2009.    Read Kevin Mellema’s thoughtful review here and another review in the Observer here.

rocks & feedback loops: making music for Space Between

excerpt from Boulder / Tree / Wall (Matt Sargent & JT Kirkland)

The link above is the current version of my audio contribution to our Art-o-matic presentation of Space Between.  The music functions very similarly to the process of JT’s photo contribution to the project.  In JT’s photos, he uses extreme close-ups of natural surfaces (rock, bark, and a brick wall), and then very gradually adds saturation to the photos over a long period of time (I believe in this installation in the range of 20-30 photos, each with the saturation gradually turned up, from 0% to 100%).

I created this piece above, using a similar process.  I used a repeated sample consisting of very small brownstone pebbles, collected in a rather pastoral part of Connecticut where I teach music lessons.  The pebbles are gently scattered onto a large plank of wood, wired up with a contact mic.  This sample is repeated over about 13 minutes.  As the recording repeats, my computer gradually sends more of the signal through a web of granular synthesis objects (essentially, taking the rock sound and breaking into many minute sounds at once — rock to sand).  They are arranged in a feedback loop method, so that as the saturation grows, it feeds into itself, creating an even greater sonic effect, which by the end is essentially self-oscillating.

It was a wonderful challenge working in such a linear way.  Most of my own composing work is very nit-picky and precise in process, so I tried to maintain the slow-growth mentality throughout, letting the process speak for itself without my own doctoring.

Sketch of Artomatic Installation

Artomatic installation is underway.  At present, the walls are painted, lights installed and a portion of the work hung.  We feel optimistic that the final installation will be great.

To give a sense of where the installation is going, please take a look at the image below.  The image was created in Microsoft Excel and the three of us have passed it back and forth several times to tweak our plans.  We’ve removed all the text so as to not give everything away, but this is roughly what the installation should look like once completed.  We target this weekend for being done with it all.

The opening reception is scheduled for Friday, May 29.  All three of us will be present.  Hope to see you then!

Sargent in SPCTCLR VWS (Brooklyn, NY)

I am participating in a group art show called SPCTCLR VWS, opening on Fri. May 15th in Brooklyn, NY.  The event is hosted by the Scribling Real Estate company, along with an ambitious (and evidently persuasive!) curator, Mary Mihelic.  The work of over 60 artists will be spread across a large condo development in Brooklyn Heights.  Many of the artists were participants in the Sculpture Key West residency program over the last year, and those artists assisted in choosing additional artists to fill out the line-up (I was selected by my former teacher, Robert Carl).

My piece in the show is Six Guitars, Dispersing, a sound installation that I premiered back in the Summer of 2007 at JT Kirkland’s “Supple” @ the Warehouse Gallery down in Washington D.C.  At that show, the piece was presented on headphones, in respect to the other artists sharing the tight quarters.  In the Brooklyn event, it will be in a more effective & expansive surround-sound presentation.  You can preview a clip of the installation here:

Six Guitars, Dispersing (7 min. excerpt)

Collaboration Relationships

The Space Between collobation project we’ve undertaken is comprised of three relationships.  These relationships define how the collaboration will occur and be displayed in the full exhibition.  Let’s break it down:

1. John M. Adams / Matt Sargent: Matt will have percussionist, Bill Solomon, perform one of his compositions in front of a live audience.  As the performance occurs, John will create a wall drawing as an intuitive response to Matt’s piece.  After the live performance, John’s drawing will remain on display.  Matt will install a permanent sound installation in the gallery space.
2. Matt Sargent / J.T. Kirkland: J.T. will install three related videos made from digital still-photography that over time slowly transition in saturation between color and black/white.  Matt will respond to the videos by creating a soundtrack for each video.
3. J.T. Kirkland / John M. Adams: Beginning with two almost identical pieces of plywood (in terms of type and size), one artist will create a work (painting, mixed-media, etc) from one of the plywood pieces and pass it to the other artist.  The other artist will then use the matching piece of plywood to create a response to the other’s work.  This process will happen many times with each artist both initiating and responding.

As evident in the above descriptions, each artist will pursue their own unique practice to create work influenced by or in response to their particular collaborating partner.

More specifics of the project’s various collaborations to come at a later date.

Art-o-Matic Site Selection Complete

This past Saturday, John and J.T. visited this year’s Art-o-Matic location for the first time in order to do site selection.  Because J.T. is doing a solo installation at AOM as well, and his selection time conflicted with the time for the collaboration, John was entrusted to pick the site for Space Between.  A painter’s painter, we knew John would select a fantastic location and he certainly delivered.  The AOM teaser for Space Between will be located in the southeast corner of the 2nd floor.  The space is isolated but has an abundance of natural light pouring in from the floor-to-ceiling windows.  The wall looks out directly into Nationals stadium.

So what will the three of us be doing for AOM?  Well, you’ll have to come out and see it for yourself.  Without giving too much away, the installation will contain the following:

• A story-board arrangement of 21 photographs
• A small, mixed media diptych
• A graphite wall drawing
• Digital prints of a composition score
• A sound installation

Hopefully you’re curious to see how this comes together – how three artists are working independently yet conversating between each other through their work.  We think it will be a dynamic presentation.  Come see it!  It opens on Saturday, May 29.

Sargent performance/interview with Real Art Ways (Hartford, CT)

Bill Solomon (percussionist for the “Ghost Music” piece in this collaboration), Lief Ellis, and I, performed at a Real Art Ways “Creative Cocktail Hour” on March 19th.  The event was a multimedia collaboration between our trio and two video artists (Devan Mulvaney and Liz Stephens).  As the artists show their videos, the three of us build improvised sound pieces out of percussion, lap steel guitar, field recordings (off of the video tracks), and live processing/resampling of sound using homebrewed software/hardware and laptops.

Real Art Ways interviewed us at the event, check it out here:
Hartford Sound Alliance – Real Art Ways

You can also view a sample from one of the performances on YouTube.

(If you’re really interested, you can view all the video footage at Lief Ellis’s podcast.)

This music is a great deal different than my normal composing, which tends to be very soft, spatial, and precise.  (I will be posting some samples of “Ghost Music”, one of my pieces for this project, which is well within my usual mode of operation).  It’s been quite refreshing to explore this field of improvisation, or maybe more accurately, “live composition” — I’m always surprised by the sheer physicality and the range of ideas that come from working in the trio.

Adams Interviewed in Elan Magazine

Below is an interview reproduced from Elan Magazine (they have not updated their website to reflect the current issue, so I decided to post it for them until they update their site).  You should be able to click on each image and view it larger to make it easier to read.  Included in the article is information about my  upcoming solo show at GRACE, which runs April 25- June 2, 2009 (opening reception from 6-8pm on Saturday May 2).  In addition, I also talk a little bit about the “Space Between” collaboration.

More later on this project – I need to get some things ready to hang for the solo this week!

-John M. Adams