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An Album That Waited for Its Audience

Car Gabriel Orozco’s

Removing the Middle of a Car

Gabriel Orozco’s La DS from 1993 began with a Citroën DS, already an icon of twentieth-century automotive design. Orozco cut the car lengthwise into three sections, removed the central strip and joined the remaining outer parts together. The result still resembles a DS immediately, yet it has become impossibly narrow.

What interests me is how little material had to disappear before the object stopped functioning as a car and started functioning as an idea.

Almost every familiar signal remains: headlights, windows, wheels, aerodynamic curves. Our brain completes the category instantly.

But the proportions are wrong.

That gap between recognition and impossibility makes the sculpture work for me. Orozco did not need to invent a strange futuristic vehicle. He changed one structural rule inside something we already know.

It is close to what happens in experimental music when a familiar rhythm loses one beat or a conventional instrument receives an impossible tuning.

Sometimes transformation does not require adding anything.

Removing the correct part can be enough to make the entire object unfamiliar again.

https://www.kurimanzutto.com/artists/gabriel-orozco

#GabrielOrozco #LaDS #MexicanArt #ConceptualArt

Removing the Middle of a Car Removing the Middle of a Car kurimanzutto.com gabriel orozco - Artists - Kurimanzutto Gabriel Orozco’s La DS from 1993 began with a Citroën DS, already an icon of twentieth-century automotive design. Orozco cut the car lengthwise into three…
Cinema Escaping the Rectangle

Cinema Escaping the Rectangle

Toshio Matsumoto did not limit experimental film to unusual images inside a conventional cinema screen. During the late 1960s and early 1970s he worked with expanded cinema, questioning what his retrospective material describes as the standard “one projector, one screen” relationship between film and audience. For My Crushed Right Eye from 1968 could be presented with three simultaneous projections, while Space Projection Ako in 1970 pushed the idea further into spatial presentation.

This interests me much more from a VJ perspective than simply synchronising a video to music.

Once several projections occupy a space, editing no longer happens only in time. It happens across walls, screens and the viewer’s field of vision.

The audience effectively performs part of the edit by deciding where to look.

Modern projection mapping and realtime visuals have access to technology Matsumoto could never have imagined, yet the underlying question remains surprisingly current:

Why should a moving image stay inside one rectangle?

The moment that rectangle disappears, cinema begins behaving like architecture.

https://www.imageforum.co.jp/matsumototoshio/

#ToshioMatsumoto #ExpandedCinema #ExperimentalFilm #LiveVisuals

Cinema Escaping the Rectangle Cinema Escaping the Rectangle ??????? ??????????????????-??????? ??????? ??????????????????-??????? ???????? ??????????????????-????????2017?12??????????????????????
Autechre

The Algorithm Is Not the Composer

Autechre’s Confield, released in 2001, became closely associated with generative and algorithmic approaches to rhythm. Sean Booth has repeatedly pushed back against the idea that this means pressing a button and allowing software to compose randomly. Their systems use rules, recursive processes and real-time control, but listening and selection remain central.

That distinction matters.

When a musical system generates results we did not explicitly place note by note, it is easy to imagine that authorship has moved into the computer. But somebody designed the boundaries, chose the relationships, listened to the output and decided what was worth keeping.

Autechre’s work makes me think of generative visual art in exactly the same way. Code can produce thousands of possibilities. The interesting part is rarely that the machine produced something unexpected.

The interesting part is why the artist recognised one unexpected result as meaningful.

Automation can generate variation.

Taste still has to decide what becomes the work.

https://autechre.warp.net/release/356362-autechre-confield

#Autechre #GenerativeMusic #MaxMSP #ElectronicMusic

The Algorithm Is Not the Composer The Algorithm Is Not the Composer Autechre’s Confield, released in 2001, became closely associated with generative and algorithmic approaches to rhythm. Sean Booth has repeatedly pushed bac…
Dub

Dub as the Glue

New Zealand duo Pitch Black, Michael Hodgson and Paddy Free, have been performing together since 1996. Their music moves between ambient electronics, acid lines, heavy rhythmic structures and dub. Their own description of the project is revealing: dub is the glue holding those different musical directions together.

I like that way of thinking about genre.

Usually we describe a track by deciding which genre it belongs to. “Glue” suggests another use. A genre can become a method that allows unrelated materials to coexist.

Dub is particularly suited to that role because so much of its identity lies in production decisions: space, delay, bass, subtraction, echoes and changing relationships between elements. You can apply those ideas without copying a traditional reggae arrangement.

Pitch Black’s live performances also combine electronic sound with an important visual component, making the project feel closer to an audiovisual environment than simply two people reproducing studio tracks.

Sometimes influence is strongest when you stop copying its surface and start using its logic.

https://www.pitchblacknz.com/about.html

#PitchBlack #NewZealandMusic #Dub #ElectronicMusic

Dub as the Glue Dub as the Glue pitchblacknz.com Pitch Black New Zealand duo Pitch Black, Michael Hodgson and Paddy Free, have been performing together since 1996. Their music moves between ambient electronics, acid…
Brazilian Music

Electronic Music by Correspondence

Brazilian composer Jocy de Oliveira was already combining electronic sound with theatre and multimedia in the early 1960s. For Apague Meu Spotlight, presented in 1961, technological limitations in Brazil led to an extraordinary working method: electronic material connected with Luciano Berio had to travel between Brazil and the Studio di Fonologia in Milan on tape.

That detail stays with me.

Today two musicians on different continents can exchange an Ableton project in seconds. In 1961, collaboration with an electronic studio could mean physically transporting recorded sound across an ocean.

The delay must have changed the creative process. You could not endlessly adjust something in real time. Decisions had weight because communication itself required time and material.

De Oliveira continued combining electronic music with theatre, video and multimedia for decades. In 2026 her work received renewed attention through the documentary Universo Circular.

Electronic music history is often reduced to a few European and North American studios. Jocy de Oliveira makes that map considerably larger, and more complicated.

Home

#JocyDeOliveira #ElectroacousticMusic #BrazilianMusic #Multimedia

Electronic Music by Correspondence Electronic Music by Correspondence jocydeoliveira.com Jocy de Oliveira Site da Jocy de Oliveira
Album That Waited

An Album That Waited for Its Audience

Beverly Glenn-Copeland recorded Keyboard Fantasies in 1986 while living in Huntsville, Ontario. The album was made entirely with a Yamaha DX7 and Roland TR-707 and self-released on cassette in an edition of only around 200 copies. Very few sold. Almost three decades later, a Japanese record collector contacted Glenn-Copeland, and the recording gradually found the international audience it had never reached in the 1980s.

What interests me is how completely an audience can change without the recording changing at all.

In 1986, the mixture of digital synthesis, meditative songwriting, programmed rhythm and spacious production apparently had no obvious market. Later listeners heard connections with ambient, new age and early electronic dance music.

We often talk about records being “ahead of their time,” but perhaps that gives time too much intelligence.

The music was already there.

What had to change was the network around it: collectors, reissues, listeners and musical reference points.

Sometimes an unsuccessful record is not rejected by history. History simply arrives late.

https://beverlyglenncopeland.com/

#BeverlyGlennCopeland #KeyboardFantasies #DX7 #CanadianMusic

An Album That Waited for Its Audience An Album That Waited for Its Audience BEVERLY GLENN-COPELAND BEVERLY GLENN-COPELAND Beverly Glenn-Copeland recorded Keyboard Fantasies in 1986 while living in Huntsville, Ontario. The album was made entirely with a Yamaha DX7 and Roland TR…
Acid Before Acid Had

Acid Before Acid Had a Name

In 1982, Indian musician Charanjit Singh recorded Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat. The idea was straightforward but unusual: translate Indian classical ragas into electronic disco. Singh used a Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer, TR-808 drum machine and Jupiter-8 synthesizer, equipment that would later become deeply associated with acid house and electronic dance music.

The record originally attracted little attention. Decades later, its combination of bubbling 303 sequences and machine rhythm sounded uncannily close to musical developments normally associated with Chicago several years afterwards.

The tempting story is that Singh “invented acid house.” I think the more interesting point is that similar technological possibilities can appear in completely different musical cultures before anyone agrees on a genre name.

A machine does not arrive with its future already decided.

The TB-303 was designed as a bass accompaniment device. Singh heard it through Indian ragas. Chicago producers later heard something else.

Musical history becomes much richer once technology stops travelling along a single supposedly inevitable path.

https://minimalwave.com/releases/release/synthesizing-10-ragas-to-a-disco-beat

#CharanjitSingh #TB303 #IndianElectronicMusic #SynthHistory

Acid Before Acid Had a Name Acid Before Acid Had a Name In 1982, Indian musician Charanjit Singh recorded Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat. The idea was straightforward but unusual: translate Indian class…
Egyptian Music

Improvisation Inside a Twelve-Piece Machine

Maurice Louca’s Elephantine was recorded in Stockholm with a twelve-piece ensemble containing two percussionists, bass, vibraphone, saxophones, bass flute, tuba, clarinets, voice, oud, violin and Louca himself on guitar and piano. Released in 2019, the record moves between written composition and improvisation while drawing musicians from Egypt, Iraq and several European countries into one ensemble.

That line between composition and improvisation interests me.

With twelve players, complete freedom could easily become chaos. Write everything down, and the individual personalities might disappear. Louca seems interested in the unstable area between those extremes, where enough structure exists for a large ensemble to move together but enough space remains for musicians to change what happens inside it.

Electronic production has a similar problem. A sequencer can organise almost everything with absolute precision, but precision is not automatically life.

Sometimes the most interesting musical system is not the one with the most control. It is the one that controls exactly enough.

https://northernspyrecs.com/product/elephantine/

#MauriceLouca #EgyptianMusic #Improvisation #ExperimentalMusic

Improvisation Inside a Twelve-Piece Machine Improvisation Inside a Twelve-Piece Machine Northern Spy Records Northern Spy Records Northern Spy Records — official site and store. Browse the catalog, artists, news, and tour dates.
Electronic Music

The Subway Became Part of the Synthesizer

When Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles travelled to Hong Kong in 1996 for the International Computer Music Conference, Henke carried a recorder through Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Those field recordings later became part of Monolake’s Hongkong. The closing track, “Mass Transit Railway,” is based on sound captured inside a Hong Kong subway train. The album was produced with instruments including a Prophet VS, Yamaha SY77 and TG77, Ensoniq ASR-10, Waldorf Microwave and an Atari running Notator, alongside a step sequencer Henke wrote in Max.

What interests me is how naturally the city enters the electronic system. The subway recording is not simply atmosphere placed behind a track. It becomes another component in a studio already built from samplers, synthesizers and code.

Sampling a city does something strange to geography. A train journey becomes repeatable. A moment that happened once can be filtered, looped and reorganised twenty years later.

Electronic music can sometimes feel completely synthetic. Hongkong reminds me that a machine-made composition can still contain a very specific street, vehicle and moment in time.

https://www.roberthenke.com/releases/ml-000.html

#Monolake #RobertHenke #FieldRecording #ElectronicMusic

The Subway Became Part of the Synthesizer The Subway Became Part of the Synthesizer roberthenke.com Monolake - Hongkong When Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles travelled to Hong Kong in 1996 for the International Computer Music Conference, Henke carried a recorder through Hong…
But the

A Painting Made for a Ritual

Nepalese paubha paintings can look astonishingly dense to someone encountering them simply as images. Deities, architectural forms, geometric structures and repeated motifs occupy almost every part of the cloth. But the tradition was not developed merely to create something visually impressive.

The Nepal Academy of Fine Arts places paubha among traditional arts closely connected with religion, narrative, ritual and everyday cultural life. The Nepal Art Council continues to present the form as part of a living Himalayan artistic tradition rather than only an archaeological inheritance.

That changes how I think about composition.

In contemporary art we often assume that an artwork exists primarily to be looked at. A ritual painting may also function as an aid to devotion, storytelling or contemplation. Its organisation therefore follows another logic.

The density is not necessarily decorative excess. Information has to be located, recognised and revisited.

A screen interface also organises symbols so that a viewer knows where attention should move next. Paubha painting reminds me that complex visual information systems existed long before we started calling anything an interface.

https://www.nepalartcouncil.org.np/publications/paubha-scroll-paintings/

#Paubha #NepaliArt #HimalayanArt #TraditionalPainting

A Painting Made for a Ritual A Painting Made for a Ritual nepalartcouncil.org.np One moment, please... Nepalese paubha paintings can look astonishingly dense to someone encountering them simply as images. Deities, architectural forms, geometric structures an…
Cabaret Crusades

History Performed by Clay

For Cabaret Crusades: The Path to Cairo, Egyptian artist Wael Shawky reconstructed episodes from the medieval Crusades using approximately 120 handmade clay puppets. The larger trilogy draws on Amin Maalouf’s The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, shifting attention toward historical narratives recorded from an Arab perspective.

The choice of puppets makes the work stranger than a conventional historical reconstruction.

A puppet cannot pretend that we are watching reality. We constantly see the mechanism of representation. The figures are obviously artificial, yet they perform events whose consequences were violently real.

That distance interests me.

Film normally tries to make historical reconstruction convincing through costumes, locations and actors. Shawky removes that illusion almost completely. History becomes theatre, and because the manipulation is visible, we start thinking about who is moving the characters.

Perhaps that is appropriate. Historical narratives are also constructed. Events happened, but every retelling involves selection, framing and perspective.

The puppet strings are simply more visible than the ones inside a history book.

https://www.lissongallery.com/artists/wael-shawky

#WaelShawky #EgyptianArt #CabaretCrusades #ContemporaryArt

History Performed by Clay History Performed by Clay Lisson Gallery Lisson Gallery Wael Shawky tackles notions of national, religious and artistic identity in contemporary art through film, performance, and storytelling.