Sprawl: Sougwen, David Last and Margaret Schedel

Opening: Friday, September 23rd 2011 7-10pm. On view until October 2nd, 2011.

Sprawl is an open edition of live drawing installations hosted at Devotion Gallery which aims to create a momentary graphical map of an intersection between creative improvisation and substructure. Edition one features Sougwen, David Last and Margaret Schedel. Using chalk for its approachable immediacy, Sougwen and David Last improvise an expanding thicket of abstract organic forms, reminiscent of bits of plants, animals, smoke, nerve clusters or rivers seen from the air. Noting the paradox that a limiting structure can provide the most open sense of creative freedom, a faint structure based upon projections of computer-randomized forms is applied to the wall before the performance. The artist's role within this system is to react to the moment, through both visual creative urge and sound inspiration; while using the landscape of pre-defined random activation as a method of sparking inner dialogue. The human mind, being a pattern recognition machine, pulls relationships and structures out of chaos, and the line-sprawl expands like ivy across the walls and ceiling of the space.

 

The performance takes place within an audio environment composed of two elements; an abstract electronic re-interpretation of the sounds of the chalk line strokes themselves, and a 'carrier environment' in the form of abstract and ambient musical sounds. Live abstract/ambient music performances and artist-curated mixes are mixed with the processed feeds from contact-microphones. The sounds not only create the environment the performance is contained in, but another point of inspiration for the artists' crystalization of form.

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SPECTROGRAPH: Maximus Clarke + Ted Hayes

Opening: Friday, August 19th, 2011. On view until August 28th, 2011

Can images and sounds be understood through their decomposition—and how are we to decompose them? Maximus Clarke's and Ted Hayes’ split show at Devotion Gallery peers through images and tears apart sound in an effort to limn their boundaries and recapitulate them in new forms, consuming their source media in the process.

Clarke's "3DOLATRY: Constructions + Deconstructions I-VI” is a series of anaglyph stereographic portraits that evoke a hyperreal yet synthetic continuum, then morph into impossible compositions that subvert both the 3D medium and the truths of vision itself. (Anaglyph 3D glasses will be provided for viewing the images.)

Hayes' “Deconspectrum” guts our monolithic perception of sound and lays out its component viscera in the form of flickering, colored light-cubes, leaving them out in the open to decompose into a new and unprecedented autonomy.

Max Clark
3DOLATRY: CONSTRUCTIONS I-VI 

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Morgan Packard: Dihedral Product

Generative crowd sourced sculpture with music performances.

Construction begins August 6th. Public invited to participate. See below for list of performances.
Opening Friday, August 12th, 2011. 7-10pm. Generative audio by Morgan Packard. On view until August 14th.

Sol LeWitt knew that artists of many diverse types use simple forms to their own ends. Musician and multimedia artist, Morgan Packard believes that simple rules, when allowed to unfold, create the splendor of the world. In Euclidean geometry the simplest non-curved flat shape is the triangle, and the simplest non-curved three-dimensional shape is four triangles connected by their edges—the tetrahedron. In this crowd-sourced artwork the public is invited to create tetrahedrons from recycled office paper and a few pieces of tape while musicians perform. Under Morgan’s direction the participants will attach the vertices of the tetrahedrons to create a constantly expanding sculpture, filling the gallery with a geometric wonderland intersected by sonic vibrations.

PERFORMANCES:

Saturday, August 6th: Sculpture construction from 2PM to 9PM. Live ambient performance by RJ Valeo from 7PM to 9PM

Sunday, August 7th: Sculpture construction from 2PM to 9PM. Live Ambient set by David Last from 5PM to 7PM

Monday August 8th: Sculpture construction and sound from 7PM to 9PM. Live ultra-subliminal techno by Scott Vizioli

Tuesday August 9th: Sculpture construction and sound from 7PM to 9PM. Live organic electronic sounds by Ezekiel Honig

Wednesday August 10th: Sculpture construction and sound from 7PM to 9PM. Sound design by Brandon Wolcott (recorded)

Thursday August 11th: Sculpture construction and sound from 7PM to 9PM. Sound design by Kenneth Kirschner (recorded)

Friday August 12: Opening for completed work from 7PM to 10PM. Generative audio by Morgan Packard 

ARTIST BIO: 

Morgan Packard is a musician, computer programmer and multimedia artist. As a musician he has travelled and performed in lots of interesting places, with highlights including Montreal’s Mutek festival, Serbia’s Dis-Patch, and Brooklyn’s own Bunker party. With Interval, a company he runs with visualist Joshue Ott, he creates mesmerizing iPhone/iPad software, including Thicket, a pioneering audiovisual featured by Apple in their