vertexList

 

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Jackson B.

Jackson Heights, NY

I attended the Opening Reception for Paul Slocum's new media and sound projects, entitled, DIY Computing. It was hosted at Vertexlist, this cool gallery in Williamsburg, that seems to have someone's apartment in the back.

The gallery was nice and cozy. I was really excited to see Paul's work, and to hear his music as well. He is one half of a great band called Treewave. Vexterlist was a great setting for his works because it's small enough there to feel very personal no matter where you stand during a performance.

Vexterlist's location is convenient, in that it's on the outskirts of Williamsburg, but it's on a nice quiet street. I was very impressed with Paul's work and really enjoyed his music. The entire concept of re-using and creating circuit boards in art is very close to me. When I work on computers I frequently look for interesting patterns and designs in solder traces and chip placements. Paul had an interesting spin on this, in that he designed the boards to look like the art and doodles frequently found on the home-made paper covers of school books in grade school.

I've wanted to see Treewave perform for quite some time, so seeing Paul play alone was a real treat. From the software that he uses on his Commodore, to the hacked cartridges on the 2600, everything was fresh and fluid.

It's amazing how much incredible sound can come from within the confines of these 8 bit machines. They say (and I'm sort of paraphrasing Cory Arcangel) "The limitations of these old 8 bit machines force you to really get creative when you're using them nowadays." On the topic of Cory Arcangel, he was actually at the opening reception and did a new musical piece that he's been working on. Cory's performance was pretty strange, in that he played the glockenspiel along with a few songs off of the Bruce Springsteen album, Born to Run. His performance was a bit strange, and had the crowd scratching their heads a bit, but I have to admit that I was sort of intrigued. Playing the glockenspiel solo, sort of reminds me of the same music that is produced from the original days of nintendo, in the sense that you are very limited to the amount of notes you can play. The musical palette, if you will, is a bit confined, and so for me, it meshed with much of Cory's 8 BIT work, like the 8 Bit Construction Set. While I was there I bought a signed copy of his record, "The Glockenspiel Addendum to Bruce Sringsteen's Born to Run".  If I owned a vinyl copy of the 8 Bit Construction Set, I would have loved for him to sign that. Unfortunately Paul Slocum didn't have any music for sale, otherwise I would have bought some for sure.

If you haven't been to Vertexlist before, go to their website and find an upcoming show and GO!

Likewise, if you haven't seen Treewave (  http://www.treewave.com  )perform, or Paul Slocum perform, by himself  GO!

Also, if you haven't seen Paul's art before, do GO and check it out too.

And one last recommendation, if you haven't had a chance to see Cory Arcangel perform or talk, google him and find lots of his amazing work. You can also watch a webinar/presentation he gave at Columbia in 2005 here: (   http://www.columbia.ed...   )

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