monotheatrum and friends

2009!!

2009-03-09T10:36:00.000-07:00

wow. it has been a crazy eight or nine months let me tell you. Our second child was born (forgot to post about that) the monotheatrum ended its run at the AGH (i forgot to post about the 20 musicians who occupied the structure on closing weekend), and then i participated in a collaborative work at the Gladstone Hotel as part of UpArt (forgot to post about that). And now 2009 is already full steam in gear, and I have exhibitions at Latcham Gallery and Rodman Hall, performances at Cambridge Gallery, at the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues festival in B.C., plus all kinds of other stuff. Naturally, I started this year in a complete funk, and tried to work through it by cleaning up the studio and making odd looking shields out the half ton of wooden debris, trying to concoct fast simple ways of inlaying chunky pieces of wood into other chunky pieces of wood. The results are somewhat mixed, I think.

Yesterday, I put in the first official hours thinking about the ways I will construct the next performance stage.
It is a much less architectural piece, more intuitive, more poetic perhaps, essentially based on the notion of recreating a dense forest around the performance area as the focal obstruction. I have an idea what it will look like. I'll post a drawing in the coming days.

cheers

amchok gompo dhondup

2008-08-06T07:46:00.001-07:00

hey,

amchok gompo dhondup is such a good sounding name, don't you think? say it aloud and your mouth suddenly feels better, all those nice round 'o' tones opening everything up. anyways, he was at the AGH performing a concert of his original songs, based on the Tibetan folk music tradition into which he was born and raised, and took an interest in the structure. i wasn't free to come down, but i gave him permission to enter and use the monotheatrum as he saw fit. i still don't know what exactly occurred, but did receive the following picture.
this is exactly the kind of behavior i want the monotheatrum to encourage. in fact, during the final weekend at the AGH, i will attempt to open the structure up to any musicians or performers who would like to keep it activated. if you are such a performer, and have some time this september 5, 6, or 7, do let me know.

cheers
t

holy jeez, i forgot to post

2008-08-05T08:44:00.000-07:00

wow,
august 5 already, about a month left before the monotheatrum gets packed away, before the urban moorings exhibition gets dry-docked (i have included a picture of the Viking Soliloquy Chair, now floating in Hamilton's Cootes Paradise as an enticement to you). All this, and still i haven't bothered to mention what a great performance night we had June 5 at the AGH. Singer songwriter Jacob Moon, soprano Lindsay Michaels each took turns within the structure, while a receptive audience tried to make sense of it from the outside. It turned out that the monotheatrum was far more obtrusive than even I had thought it would be; you can't just hold in your mind the belief that the audience is there, you can't turn the audience into an abstract idea because the proximity between them and you is way too close. Inevitably you are caught between the spheres of public and private, and to peform becomes something similar to a leap of faith.

Here's what Jacob Moon wrote about his experience:

"For me the Monotheatrum was the ideal practice space: a womb-like enclosure that blocked out the outside world, so hostile to creative concentration with all its moving distractions and pretty colours. Inside, I was aware only of the sound I was making. And I found myself luxuriating and crawling into it, like a Russian doll: it was just me, inside the sound of my voice and guitar, inside the vaguely imagined outer atmosphere, where I knew there was an attentive silence, and beyond--the hearts and minds of the almost-forgotten audience. But what a long distance they seemed to be from me!"

lighting and interior

2008-05-21T15:23:00.000-07:00

hey,

not much time. but today we finished up the lighting, some of the final details, and installed a sound component in the interior--basically 35 minutes of me trying to keep my guitar and voice in pitch. but the illusion works, you can sit in the gallery space and experience a singer tucked into a yurt of felt, trying to work out his issues between himself and the cosmos.

Tomorrow is the opening reception, which I hope I won't be too stunned to enjoy it, in a few weeks we will bring in some musicians to test it out live with an audience.

All in all, a very good experience, and hopefully the dawn of some further experiments in performance venue design.

cheers
t

2008-05-14T19:28:00.000-07:00

well hoopass,

everything trucked over without incident and got dumped into the Art Gallery of Hamilton, into a little room called the Young Gallery. Even laid out in pieces on the floor the sculpture started to percolate with a strange kind of kabuki-eskimo ceremonial hut-like energy. Mostly I think that's good. It will certainly add some gravity to the performances when they happen.

We had the structure assembled in about 15 minutes or so, and with a team of four people, came together fairly effortlessly (my props go out to greg, paula, tina, and ben for their help). I then cut two flaps for the entrance and was able to join the entranceway into the dome. The felt sags in some places, and I have managed to bleed on it twice, but it's hopefully nothing a little creative lighting can't fix.

I'll write a little more on the interior next time.

felting

2008-05-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

hey,

so just as i finish tweaking my frame, with the thought of what i might use as a skin just beginning to eek into my brain, doesn't the owner who rents me my studio tell me about the abandoned bale of industrial felt in the parking lot. It's been there for a year. No one wants it, and boy wouldn't it be great if someone could make use of it.

The felt has illustrated what I feel are the basic issues surrounding serendipity. I mean if an opportunity comes along that may not be within your aesthetic parameters, but will work, will change the nature of your structure in a host of interesting ways, and will allow you to claim without fudging that your entire sculpture has been made from reclaimed, salvaged, and abandoned materials, you have to jump at it, no? The presence of the felt is almost cosmic, revealing itself only at the moment I was ready to receive it, and literally presenting itself no more than 50 yards from my studio door. I think the only answer is, 'the monotheatrum must be made from felt, because the heavens decree it'.

The felt has been mostly a joy to use. It's heavy enough to add strength to the pieces, holds its shape pretty well, is easy to cut and apply, gets dirty just by looking at it, and acquires strange dents for no reason. Most importantly, it's translucent, so i will be able to light the structure from the inside.

Tomorrow, the felted skeleton will be assembled on site at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. It will be the first time the monotheatrum will be functional. Ho-yay!

2008-04-18T11:09:00.000-07:00

hey kids,

So it's been a really energizing, really productive few weeks--i had to ready a work for an exhibition called TH&B, another performance structure, this time riffing on the idea of a precious singer-songwriter's stool. Mine has a hood, possibly as a way to cater to the anxieties and pretensions of the average North American musician (I include myself in that group.) Anyway, I am really happy with the work, and the exhibition opening turned out beautifully, something like 700 people in attendance.

Mind you, I did get a bit behind in work for the monotheatrum, so this week I blitzed it and managed to finally start erecting the dome section of the sculpture. I don't have much time to monkey around with now, so the dome has to come together and the skin has to be applied quickly and, God help me, painlessly.

It's great to be alive right now.

2008-03-27T15:52:00.001-07:00

hey,

it's been a while since the last post, but progress is being made, tea is being consumed by the boatload, and the threshold into the monotheatrum has been erected, at least in a skeletal way. i am now finishing the manufacture of the quarter circle ribs for the dome; when they are done, the skeletal dome will attempt to rise. My ambition is to have the dome portion completed by the end of March. I don't think I will acheive my ambitions, but I may just come close.

Rock!!

aesthetics

2008-02-27T11:56:00.000-08:00

so in terms of how my many anxieties go during this process--the last two weeks of bending and gluing and trying to fit things together--i think i am in okay shape. there are times when i look at what i am building and it gets filtered through the Lee Valley filter of good joinery, polished edges, and nice details that only very tiny, very expensive tools can create. When this happens, a momentary feeling of madness and a fleeting personal implosion occurs. I start to envy anyone with a proper job; I fantasize about not having to put on the same pair oily pants to the studio every day in favour of wearing something with, I don't know, a pleat in them. I start to exaggerate the thrills there must be in carving wildlife animals from tiny blocks of very expensive wood.

And then, luckily, the feeling goes away. I spend the bulk of my time deeply immersed in the rough-hewn, knotty, but still somewhat ordered aesthetic that drives the building of this project. There was a point in the design of the monotheatrum where it started to look too symmetrical, too engineered, and other times where it seemed way too farmy (you can see by the two rejected designs posted above). Even the design I chose to use seemed way too sterile on paper and computer--only in the process of fabricating the structure with reclaimed wood did a feeling of wildness instantly crept back in. And this balance between design and improvisation, between engineering and art, measuring and eyeballing, finishing and unfinishing, blah, blah, blah, -- it seems to be the thing which maintains my interest and my energy.

In other words, as long as the thing looks a little bit like it was made by wolves, I feel good about it.

Success!

2008-02-20T07:01:00.000-08:00

So I've got things working nicely for the moment now; the new wood steamer works like a charm, and sports nifty features like a thermometer so I can make fairly precise adjustments and ensure that the steam doesn't get too wily. I am also pleased that the quantity of salvaged oak I have bends great and is ample enough to use for the entire skeleton of the structure. I milled my oak up into half inch strips yesterday in Dave Hind's barn, and managed to do so without losing any limbs or destroying any expensive equipment. Nonetheless, I am sore. I am still not used to an honest day's work.

The great side effect of this little bit of progress is I am actually beginning to feel in charge of this project. Even better, I have been connect to the emotional part of the building process, how personal and necessary it is for me to build this structure. Which is great; it makes me feel alive and insane at the same time.

As an interesting moment of serendipity, I came across the following quote from Carl Jung the other day about the tower he built for himself in Zurich in the 1920's. Jung's autobiography, "Memories, Dreams, and Reflections" was a big force in my life as a young adult, it's nice to think about this quote somehow burbling away in the back of my head, never really leaving:

"Gradually through my scientific work, I was able to put my fantasies and the contents of the unconscious on a solid footing. Words and paper, however, did not seem real enough to me; something more was needed. I had to achieve a kind of representation in stone of my innermost thoughts and of the knowledge I had acquired. Or, to put it another way, I had to make a confession of faith in stone. That was the beginning of the “Tower,” the house which I built for myself at Bollingen."

Right on, Carl. You confess in stone, I'll confess in reclaimed lumber.

bending wood pt.2

2008-02-11T12:42:00.001-08:00

so i am posting this image because it shows my very first official concept drawing of the monotheatrum. it has a sort of groovy vibe to it---it looks to me like a shed where hobbits would go to get away from their parents and smoke up-- so i have modified the design slighty, injecting a little more lutheran shipbuilder uptightness.

the only reason i am posting this picture is that it helps me retain my optimism, something i sorely need after my weekend of failed wood bending. the steaming and bending of wood went as predicted, i just wasn't ready to witness the PVC tube i used for a steam box wilt like a dandelion stem before my very eyes. Steam is hot apparently. Not to worry, after a little more research and a small investment in something called 'schedule 80' PVC, i will now reconstruct the steamer. I am abiding by the following instructions should anyone care: http://www.geocities.com/bawanewsletter/steambox/steambox.html

bending wood

2008-02-07T12:57:00.001-08:00

what the hell am i doing trying to bend wood?? anyways, i jigged the monotheatrum design so that it utilizes only one basic arc, a quarter section of an 11'x 8' oval. In the picture you can see this arc cut out of MDF, alongside some other arcs needed for the archway section. the idea is to build the main supports by laminating bent strips of wood together. i am going to bend the wood using a steamer, pictured above. And no, I am not storing or using that propane tank indoors, i just rigged it up to take a picture of it. I moving it to my porch today to test some wood strips with it.

safety first!

stage one and stage two

2008-02-07T06:28:00.001-08:00

Stage one, an entrance into the monotheatrum has been compiled from beached lumber, mostly hardwood. I have tried to assemble the disparate types and shapes and warps of wood into a kind of of caveman's butcher block/monolith. The whole thing is pretty freaking heavy, which is reassuring in a way. I'm still waiting to sand and finish it. I want to use something natural on it like tung oil and beeswax, so it smells a little bit like a pagan temple.

The entrance stage slides under the main stage, which I have raised to a height of five inches. Five inches is the minimum height a performer needs to be lifted in order to really 'feel on stage'. It also creates a slightly hollow thump when you stomp on it; I think blues musicians and angry spoken word artists will make nice use of that. The wood for the main stage are cleaned up joist boards stolen out of an abandoned farmhouse. I wouldn't be surprised if the wood is 150 years old.

I am going to leave these components now in order to tackle the nightmare of curving wood for the dome. Lord give me strength.

t

jan.2-work begins

2008-01-02T13:02:00.000-08:00

hey,

The image on the left is a computer generated profile of the monotheatrum, an idea i have been working on for over a year now, and which i have now begun constructing. The monotheatrum is a freestanding, nomadic amphitheatre designed to house a single performer but no audience whatsoever. It is not a rehearsal space. It is a formal stage dedicated to events performed for any manner of personal, spiritual, misanthropic ends. It is an audience deprivation chamber, an architecture promoting obscurity as its highest goal. Sound travelling outside the structure will have the potential to become a public event, while the actual performance remains private. The monotheatrum will have its debut at the Art Gallery of Hamilton (Ontario, Canada) late this spring. I am still early into the construction of this structure, and I am still riddled with doubts as to my ability to build it to my own satisfaction.

Nevertheless, I told myself that I would publish a blog to chart my progress, once building gets underway.