i didnt have my camera at Cory’s TEAM opening but i did snag it before walking over to the New Museum to see his lecture/stand up routine/avante gardian performance
wheres cory wheres cory i think i see paul b davis
oh wait nevermind that is the EAI guy maybe
or the Rhizome dude?
subculture alert
yay!
i wrote this about a Cory lecture in the 2004 Live Through This book essay to give you some random context:
… And this is the spirit of the art itself, too that you can feel reaching out to you in the art object- like I go to this Whitney performance thing as part of the 2004 Biennial with Dash, Ry, Katie Davis, Scott Hug and Phiiliip. There, Cory Arcangel is on the stage in the café area with a whole bunch of contraptions debuting his IPOD piece. And he’s just this stand up comedian-level hilarious nice person, standing in front of some screen that says “Dollarz +data Noise, hacking the hell out of the nintendo entertainment system, upload that HIZZY to the DIZIEEE!!! RAM?” like totally, totally psyched on what he’s doing while everyone is just like what the flying fuck is this? And then by the end of this talk/performance no joke, how cliché, but this very elderly woman next to me grabs my knee and is like “I think I get it, I do!” with her old lady face I mean, bananas. He’s taking what is, if not always highly complex, then exceedingly intimidating stuff and making it accessible and interesting to what you’d think would be the most skeptical of audiences. It’s not just a nice afterthought for Cory, it’s part of the art- its prime moving force is to communicate and demystify. Intrinsic to the hacker sort of subculture or whatever you wanna call it is the mandate to share – any cool hacks, codes, viruses, etc., are posted shareware, free use, copyleft to use the vernacular. For his Foxy Production Infinite Fill show Cory and his sister Jamie posted and open call online for submissions. He even has elaborately photoed instructions on his site so you can actually make any of his artworks yourself.
—
side note: was i on speed when i made this book i cant remember it fucking sounds like it
back to the lecture at hand sorry
so Cory told a story of how he got temporary amnesia for a few (months? too long) and he had to develop a rigorous approach to writing his ideas down. then when his memory came back, he then had no way to filter his ideas (which he used to do by never writing ANYTHING down and letting natural memory delete the boring ideas) and is overwhelmed with dumb art ideas
not all of them were dumb. this one is his belief that by turning use your illusion 1 and use your illusion 2 into one curated single album, that this album would be better than appetite for destruction
sidenote: his brother whom i have never met was in the front row and looked like cory crossed with axl rose crossed with ice hockey
that says “my neighbor’s windchimes play Wanksta (50cent)”
the most curious thing to me about this is that there is a song called “wanksta”
another confusing to kathy hip hop reference
if i was green i would die
awesome
cory went to oberlin conservatory of music and there were many music geeks in the audience sniggering uncontrollably at these
i have no idea what this means for example
the lecture was 50 ideas from his idea list
not so we would go an do them, mind you
he said he tried actual standup recently and was boood offstage
this sounds dumb but in sound sound was hilarious
why aren’t there yves klein paintings of the official “jay z blue” cory asks?
why indeed
why arent there spray tan paintings? i mean come on people, he pleads, arent there 40,000 artists graduating each year from gradschools?
check it out, stefan!
if this is too long a song for you feel free to scroll ahead
jose, who i really like, says when he finds art boring, “i’d rather watch toast burn”
he has a blog of just reposts of ther blogs that begin with “sorry i havent posted in a while”
genius
awesome
was he making fun of the New Museum?
confused
confused
hilarious
WORST IDEA EVERRRRR
this was in the show at team
this as well
unknown
also in TEAM show
two computers sending OUT OF OFFICE auto replies back and forth
his parents wouldnt come unless they could bring their dog, and the New Museum wouldnt let the dog in unless it was part of the performance, so the perfomrance ended with this dog
“hilarity ensues”
brief break to reflect on the lecture and drink margaritas and eat more Chile Rellenos
is this what i think it is?
our beer came with the labels pasted on upside down
after aurel lefft there were teens and then the teens left and mat from weapons came over for a long time.
today there were more vegan sammies right on schedule
and patrick looking gay with an energy drink
back to cory: was the lecture anything more than a compendium of one-liner ideas that were never worth excecuting because the time it would take to excecute them would be enough to make you bored of the idea?
the answer: sure!
the real question i would have asked during the Q and A if i werent in the absolute back row: are people always going to use technology so clumsily and will these endearing man/machine errors and conceptual and technical breakdowns continue indefinitely? is this a never ending story?
here is the Cory LTT blurb again 2004 by the by. oh how far we’ve come!::
Cory Arcangel (BEIGE)
Cory is a computer nerd first and an artist second, which is to say his aesthetic and conceptual allegiance is to his dork peers and not the history of art, though both inform his work. He is so fully integrated into not only the aesthetic universe but also the mechanics and language of programming to prevent any flippant use of the digital medium: Cory doesn’t make art about “digital concerns” but, being digitally concerned, makes art. Think of him as a sculptor rearranging 8bit chunks of unalterable Nintendo Entertainment System image data into phenomenal bricolage video cathedrals. Or as Alex Galloway of Radical Software Group suggests, think of him as a math artist, as at the ground level Cory’s art really is .dw spritedata_start20 or set $2006 $3F. Often in his work he must first develop the language and structure with which he can begin to think about programming the result: for example he created the way in which Paper Rad’s Jacob Ciocci could compose the music compositions for Super Mario Movie. Noteworthy for its innovative use of medium and technical mastery, Cory’s gallery work brings up many interesting new ways of conceptualizing digital artmaking, but is most groundbreaking for coupling conceptual elegance with rare emotional depth. His luminous Mario cloud chapel at TEAM was his first major foray into the art world, making anyone who thought digital was a “cold” medium think again about its emotive potential. He’s organized art shows, video screenings/ performances (Another Bad Creation at Deitch), and music tours (Summer of HTML with Paperrad.org) always committed to the excitement of collaboration, ways of making music, and ways of making old video games do awesome things.
Cory is a founding member of Beige, a.k.a. the Beige programming crew/ Beige Records, a loose knit crew of like minded computer programmers and enthusiasts making music and weird computer stuff. Graduating from the Oberlin Conservartory of Music, Cory dreams of making a replica of EddieVan Halen’s 1978 “Frankenstrat” guitar and listens to acid house. He would like everyone to know he loves surfing the INTERNET. He has been included in Seeing Double at the Guggenheim, the 2004 Liverpool Biennial, and the 2004 Whitney Biennial of American art, where he debuted the spectaculat 8 bit faux- ipod and did a night of jangly green screen videos shot live with a bunch of really psyched teenagers. Cory also organized The Infinite Fill show at Foxy Productions with his sister Jamie, an open call black and white only art show based on the old MAC Paint. He has a major forthcoming show at Deitch Projects in collaboration with Paperrad.org, for which he says “picture title screens, messed up fantasy worlds, castles floating on rainbow colored 8bit clouds, waterfalls, underwater dungeon nightmare rave scapes, dance parties, floating / mushrooms level scenes, Mario alone on a cloud crying, fireball flicker patterns, and video synth knitted 60 frames per second seizure vidz. Each scene will also have music & all being generated by this one 32k 1984 cartridge!!!!!!!!!!!” More excited about the prospect of mailing this mystery hacked Nintendo cartridge to his friends and influences, judging by the exclamation points, he says “imagine getting this in the mail one day out of the blue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!…>>!!!!!
and as long as we play reminisce, here is the essay he contributed to the book also:
———- Forwarded message ———-
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 16:42:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: cory arcangel
To: Katherine Grayson
Subject: Re: +++
On Wed, 1 Sep 2004, Katherine Grayson wrote:
> hey cory been meaning to ask you:
>
> was there one moment, event, etc where you were aware that something new was
> going on with things and were excited and wanted to get involved- whether
> its the art community, or music, or in general? can you think of something
> that was really inspiring and indicative of a new sorta goings-on?
>
> ok
oh ok,…good question.
I could prolly think of a few
the most OBVIOUS time was…when i first heard the record “maxi german
rave blast hits 2000″ by Bodenstandig 2000:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/b/bodenstandig-2000/
maxi-german-rave-blast-hits-3.shtml
It was 1999, and my roommate at the time Paul B. Davis and a few friends
(this group would later be called BEIGE cause that was the name of our
record label) were working on our record called “the 8bit Construction
Set” which was a DJ battle record where one side we made with a commodore
64 and the other we made with the Atari800,….anyway so basically we had
been collecting and studying these old 8bit computers for a few years,
learning how to make music on them, and whatever (later I would get
obsessed with making videos on them)…….we did this just by ourselves
in our room which was piled high with any kinda computer junk you can
imagine (also remember ebay had just started to get popular)..it was kinda
like we were archaeologists who just discovered some weird land that we
kinda remember from when we were like 6 years old, (but not really cause
by the time we got down with computers they had mice, and trash
cans)….so kinda by ourselves we had gotten pretty deep into the 8bit
world. So then through a contact at a UK record label who knew we were
doing this stuff we got a email about this new record on Rephlex Records
by this group of two German Guys called Bodenstandig 2000 :
http://bodenstandig.de/
Bodenstandig were 2 German guys who described themselves as “Hard Rocking
Scientists”, and their record was the best thing I had ever heard. Think
pure real deal 8bit chip tunes (“chip tune” means music made on the
original sound chips of old video games and home computers) with harmonic
german folk singing over the top. Like a video game folk music, but more
important not silly, or ironic,…. also, the music wasnt samples, but
actually made on a music program that one of the members of the band wrote
for the atari ST home computer (If you have ever programmed computers you
know it is ULTRA hardcore to program your own music tracker and sequencer,
especially for a 16 bit machine). So the record was basically the REAL
DEAL. These weren’t guys doing it cause it was retro cool, but doing it
cause they loved it, and had always made music that way. It was just
awesome. Their lyrics were even about being computer nerds (this song
talk about how back in the day you had to actually make your own computer
cables…..):
Back then, we were nothing but cablefreax, lonesome cablefreax
Soldering was our joy
Soldering, not killing, cyberspace, not spam
Soldering was our destiny
Some even called us cyberpunx
Though they don’t exist at all
Our insulating tape was striped in black and yellow
We sieved silicon.
So, after that record I knew something was up. Paul and I’s first
reaction was we had already been one upped, and we hadn’t even released
our record yet!! ha ha ha (the 8bit Construction Set wouldn’t be finished
for a few more months). But more importantly here was a record made by
computer nerds on totally junk $5 computers. I had never seen anything
like it before….totally 100% punk nerdzone. It was the first genuine
expression of a generation that grew glued to computers and video games
I had ever seen……. I instantly knew this record was where it was at.
Needless to say I was totally blow away……….
We eventually met Bodenstandig over email, and a few years later in 2001
“the 8bit Construction set” (we had somehow become a band at that point)
was flown to Munich to particiapte in an exhibition called “Make World”,
and as part of the show, there was a performance night called RoXor
(computer nerd for “to rock”) organized by an European group called
micromusic (a web community that sprung up around the obsession of low fi
chip music) . Our record was well recieved by the hip-hop comminuty in
the US (are only US show at that point was with Cannibal OX, + Kaiju at a
Soundlab show in NYC) and and we still hadn’t found any like Nerds in this
country. But at this show in Germany I realized there was a whole scene
of geeks making this kinda music (please note, nerd and geek are no long
negative words) Anyway performing music at the opening night in Germany
was Bodenstandig 2000. The best picture I remember is of
the two German guys rapping over 8bit Ragga beats about teletext porn.
It was insane …so was Rolemodel, a young swedish kid who grilled me
before the show about my 8bit programming chops (it was obvious very quick
he could program me under the table) named Johan who had just released his
gameboy music program called littlesounddj….this is a program that lets
you make songs on your gameboy . It was and is responsible for most of
the “gameboy” musicians that perform today….for his performance he just
sat there making his gameboy tweak out in various dance type tracks….I
remember thinking the sounds the gameboy were making were soooooo weird,
they had to be the work of the person who actually programmed the
sequencer….like a mad scientist torturing his creation…. , and last
was the YM Rockers…. they were English kids who make Atari ST dance
music, and regularly, to this day, release Atari ST music compilations on
floppy disks!!!!!!! how rad is that????. But anyway at that point I
realized in each country there were kids who decided either cause they
were nerds, or were lazy, or never knew any better, never stopped playing
on their crap computers, and decided to go about their business as if 32
bit machines were never invented. i am 100% a product of this
universe………
🙂
Cory
+
SIGNATURE—>
MY HOMEPAGE:
www.beigerecords.com/cory/
BEIGE PROGRAMMING ENSEMBLE HOMEPAGE:
www.post-data.org/beige/
BEIGE RECORDS HOMEPAGE:
www.beigerecords.com/
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