i'm here in new york (aka njork, rhymes with bjork) after an epic amtrak adventure. a derailment near new york snarled train traffic north of the city--all the way to vermont apparently--and it forced the normally uneventful trip into a train switching, engine switching, brake catching on fire comedy of errors that, were i not such a calm and choas loving person, could have made for a miserable day. i finished my novel just as we rolled into penn station, as if it were a perfectly backtimed event.
here's the press release for my event here:
August 18, Jersey City, NJ: On a dare from a friend, video artist Matt Bucy has created a new version of the classic film The Wizard of Oz. His work, Of Oz the Wizard is an extraordinary, mind-altering, syntax-shattering film that reconstructs the venerable classic – in alphabetical order.
On a drive from Vermont to Rhode Island, an artist friend of Bucy’s lamented that nothing new was possible. Bucy disagreed and started concocting ideas that in all probability had never been done and began taking incongruous ideas and crossing them. After several miles, the idea of taking an ordinal operation--sorting--and crossing it with an existing work of art came to mind.
“I thought we could create a totally new kind of work that wouldn't be original but also wouldn't be a copy by applying database operations” explains Bucy, “the new works would be kind of like a visual and aural concordance!”
Then the question arose: what movie to use? “We tried out a bunch of ideas, but The Wizard of Oz seemed the best candidate because we figured almost everyone has seen it and knowing the original seemed critical for this kind of thing to have impact,” said Bucy.
He then set about looking for software that might be able to take apart an entire motion picture word by word and found nothing. He ended up writing the software himself.
Software comes naturally to Bucy. He spent a good part of his youth writing software and his early career writing digital audio editing tools for New England Digital, producers of the first commercial synthesizer, the Synclavier. He noted that errors in audio software often produced amazing and beautiful sequences of sound, leading to his experimentation with similar kinds of "bugs" in his own video software.
Bucy and another friend did the dicing of The Wizard of Oz, which took about a week to slice into about 12,000 pieces. The words were sorted into the computer program “Excel” and then the new, sorted list, combined with some additional software created by Bucy, formed the rough draft.
“We marveled at it for some time,” said Bucy, “and even tried it out at a dance party as a projection behind the deejay.”
They were encouraged by the creation and further refined it to produce the final version that will be screened August 26-28 at the Jersey City Museum as part of “Chillfest, the mostly gay and lesbian film festival of Jersey City.”
Bucy works out of White River Junction, Vermont in a studio located in a 45,000 square foot rambling industrial bakery that he purchased in 2000 and renovated into 40 artist studios. He attended Middlebury College in Vermont, receiving a Bachelors degree in Studio Art in 1986, and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, receiving a Masters of Architecture degree in 1990. Along with his film and software work, over the last ten years, Bucy has converted two large industrial buildings into artist centers, designing the renovations himself and general contracting the projects. He is currently designing buildings for a Radical Faerie Sanctuary in southern Vermont and contemplating building a self-sustaining homestead for himself somewhere near White River Junction.
Bucy will be at the Jersey City Museum on Sunday, August 28 at 2:30pm to participate in an artist discussion on the creation of Of Oz the Wizard. Admission to the discussion is free, and the museum is located at 350 Montgomery Street in Downtown Jersey City. Of Oz the Wizard can be seen on Friday, August 26 from 11am to 5pm, and on Saturday, August 27 and Sunday, August 28 from 12pm to 5pm.
For more information on Of Oz the Wizard or Chillfest, visit www.jerseycitymuseum.org or call 201-413-0303.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
njork
i'm here in new york (aka njork, rhymes with bjork) after an epic amtrak adventure. a derailment near new york snarled train traffic north of the city--all the way to vermont apparently--and it forced the normally uneventful trip into a train switching, engine switching, brake catching on fire comedy of errors that, were i not such a calm and choas loving person, could have made for a miserable day. i finished my novel just as we rolled into penn station, as if it were a perfectly backtimed event.
here's the press release for my event here:
August 18, Jersey City, NJ: On a dare from a friend, video artist Matt Bucy has created a new version of the classic film The Wizard of Oz. His work, Of Oz the Wizard is an extraordinary, mind-altering, syntax-shattering film that reconstructs the venerable classic – in alphabetical order.
On a drive from Vermont to Rhode Island, an artist friend of Bucy’s lamented that nothing new was possible. Bucy disagreed and started concocting ideas that in all probability had never been done and began taking incongruous ideas and crossing them. After several miles, the idea of taking an ordinal operation--sorting--and crossing it with an existing work of art came to mind.
“I thought we could create a totally new kind of work that wouldn't be original but also wouldn't be a copy by applying database operations” explains Bucy, “the new works would be kind of like a visual and aural concordance!”
Then the question arose: what movie to use? “We tried out a bunch of ideas, but The Wizard of Oz seemed the best candidate because we figured almost everyone has seen it and knowing the original seemed critical for this kind of thing to have impact,” said Bucy.
He then set about looking for software that might be able to take apart an entire motion picture word by word and found nothing. He ended up writing the software himself.
Software comes naturally to Bucy. He spent a good part of his youth writing software and his early career writing digital audio editing tools for New England Digital, producers of the first commercial synthesizer, the Synclavier. He noted that errors in audio software often produced amazing and beautiful sequences of sound, leading to his experimentation with similar kinds of "bugs" in his own video software.
Bucy and another friend did the dicing of The Wizard of Oz, which took about a week to slice into about 12,000 pieces. The words were sorted into the computer program “Excel” and then the new, sorted list, combined with some additional software created by Bucy, formed the rough draft.
“We marveled at it for some time,” said Bucy, “and even tried it out at a dance party as a projection behind the deejay.”
They were encouraged by the creation and further refined it to produce the final version that will be screened August 26-28 at the Jersey City Museum as part of “Chillfest, the mostly gay and lesbian film festival of Jersey City.”
Bucy works out of White River Junction, Vermont in a studio located in a 45,000 square foot rambling industrial bakery that he purchased in 2000 and renovated into 40 artist studios. He attended Middlebury College in Vermont, receiving a Bachelors degree in Studio Art in 1986, and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, receiving a Masters of Architecture degree in 1990. Along with his film and software work, over the last ten years, Bucy has converted two large industrial buildings into artist centers, designing the renovations himself and general contracting the projects. He is currently designing buildings for a Radical Faerie Sanctuary in southern Vermont and contemplating building a self-sustaining homestead for himself somewhere near White River Junction.
Bucy will be at the Jersey City Museum on Sunday, August 28 at 2:30pm to participate in an artist discussion on the creation of Of Oz the Wizard. Admission to the discussion is free, and the museum is located at 350 Montgomery Street in Downtown Jersey City. Of Oz the Wizard can be seen on Friday, August 26 from 11am to 5pm, and on Saturday, August 27 and Sunday, August 28 from 12pm to 5pm.
For more information on Of Oz the Wizard or Chillfest, visit www.jerseycitymuseum.org or call 201-413-0303.
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1 comment:
Holy Be~Jesus! I assumed you being special only WOW what a amazing dossier I'm nowhere, comparative to your league. I feel so inferior now thinking maybe i need beg for an appointment just to post a comment here. I pray you've a micron of space within your heart for under-achiever's for i view your accomplishments so impressive!
Regards
~SD
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