the Jesse Kaminsky

Deflated 2011

2012-01-31T17:43:00.000-05:00

helium, 200 latex balloons, cotton string
photographed every 5 minutes

old and new animation

2012-01-30T19:35:00.000-05:00

I'm not an expert when it comes to exporting video. My interest in animation has more to do with the creation and degradation of the object than the rendering process or selection of codec. Still, I think I've found a way to animate and export some older animations to youtube. The process by which these are made is fairly simple and can be described in a few rules:
1. set zoom at %101
2. photocopy empty page
3. photocopy output
4. repeat
In many cases, I have made adjustments to the contrast and dark/light relationship on the fly. Animation made on Final Cut Studio. The images are, for the most part, made by the photocopy machine.
I'd recommend full screen.

Failure 1 (2008/2010) Made possible in part with support from the Berwick Research Institute

1=1 (2008) Made possible in part with support from the Berwick Research Institute

Failure 2 (2010)

Failure 3 (2011)

Imperialisms January edition

2012-01-23T00:35:00.000-05:00

This coming Tuesday, January 24th! Angela from Weirdo records and I will return to River Gods in Central Square Cambridge to share some obscure foreign rarities. All your favorites Iranian garage, Thai funk and Indian synthpop, to name a few.

In protest of SOPA

2012-01-18T00:34:00.000-05:00

I have blacked out my other sites today in protest of the SOPA and PIPA bills which are moving through their respective houses of government this week. I am not blacking out this blog but instead putting some information on this potentially dangerous legislation and how it could ruin the internet. I will be blacking out the radio show this week as well.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Also, lots of information here:sopastrike.com

2012-01-17T01:18:00.003-05:00

This Friday! I'll be joining the good folks at Picó Picante to play some dance music in an international style. It's always free but get there early to see me (I'm on early) and to not get stuck in the line.

Imperialisms come early this year!

2011-12-13T14:15:00.000-05:00

December 20th, despite what the flier says.facebook

WMBR fundraising this Wednesday!!!

2011-11-01T12:04:00.000-04:00

617-253-8810The WMBR fundraiser is upon us and my turn at bat is this coming Wednesday (November 2nd) between 6-8pm. We only do this once a year and rely on listeners to make up a huge portion of our operating budget so we do need your help. There are some excellent premiums that I helped pick out, available to all pledgers to WMBR in general, you can see them here (I even designed one). I have a special way to thank donors to my show: with a brand new, super-special, Intercontinental t-shirt, designed by the amazingly talented artist John Dretzka. It's available for a $50 donation, and you get it in addition to the regular WMBR shirts and stuff for that level donation. It will be on a Smoke colored Anvil t-shirt.

This is kind of what it looks like on a young white dude:

ALSO, there is a brand new Intercontinental sticker, designed by me, that will be given to all donors of my show, regardless of the amount. It will be 3"x3":

ALSO, there will be some special cds and LPs and stuff that we'll be giving away ONLY during my show. These will not be available from WMBR in general, they will be given away as drawings between 6-8pm, you can only get them by calling 67-253-8810 tomorrow.ALSO, for a pledge of $150, you can come down and do an hour of my show for me! Come hang out in the vast WMBR record library and see our basement music factory for yourself! We can talk records.All this and you will be taking part in one of the most exciting radio stations in New England and and world. Where you spend your money is perhaps the most important way to effect the cultural landscape of your world. Please consider helping out this amazing station and my little show.

Kala Bandar Records is Born

2011-10-11T19:54:00.001-04:00

I have started a record label! The first release is set to come out two weeks from tonight at a record release party as part of the monthly series called Imperialisms, at River Gods in Cambridge, MA. The first record will be a (fully authorized) compilation of international music from the 60's and 70's, which I'm calling "Intercontinental Transmissions volume 1." Here's a picture of the cover, more information can be found over at:

http://kalabandarrecords.blogspot.com/

Imperialisms youtube edition at River Gods

2011-09-26T21:52:00.001-04:00

This is tomorrow!

Packrat on Bumpkin Island

2011-08-16T16:32:00.034-04:00

This is the companion post to this more formal-looking page.
Packrat was excited to be a part of the 2011 Bumpkin Island Art Encampment. Bumpkin Island is a small island in the Boston Harbor with an interesting and layered history of human occupation. At various points in recent history, it has been used as a farm, children's hospital, military base and park. It is clearly within eyeshot of downtown Boston but is far enough removed that it was used as a camp for German sailors during World War I.

There is architectural evidence of 4 clearly delineated waves of human occupation. Currently, it has more historical relics than useful facilities and is maintained as a park with a strangely casual relationship between historical preservation and ecological practicality. The vegetation has the typical conflict between native and invasive species but is made richer by the persistence of overgrown ornamentals and fruit trees from long gone gardens and agricultural fields. Because the island is a park, much of this historical record is preserved. We became interested in the diverse histories of objects on Bumpkin island as a key to understanding some of the complex relationships that make up the current Bumpkin Island. Packrat is Dirk Adams, Helen White and Jesse Kaminsky.

We chose to work in the oldest surviving structure on the island, a farm house from the early 1800s. We were allowed to clear some of the brush, since it was an invasive species.
these were our tools:
We began by collecting samples. We proceeded as if we were going to collect a sample of one of everything on the island and started with that was most interesting to us. We acknowledge the bias in this method. Here, we are collecting a portion of the Pokeweed plant.
That sample is bagged:
Numbered:
and logged. We identified the object and categorized it according to what type of process brought it to the island: atmospheric, oceanic, anthropogenic or terrestrial
We then flagged the location of the sample with a numbered flag

and created an infrastructure of wooden stakes along the walking pathsDirk carried a lot of the flagsWe then tied color-coded string to the numbered flagThe string was color-coded to mean: blue=oceanic, black=atmospheric, red/orange=anthropogenic and green=terrestrial. We colored the string with sharpies, like this:The wooden stakes were used to route the string back to the central collectionWe ran the string coming from the flags along the stakes so that atmospheric was at the top, followed by oceanic, terrestrial and anthropogenic.The stakes were pre-marked in one-inch increments, we used staples to hold the string loosely in placeI estimate we covered a half-mile of trailsHere are the numbered balls of string, waiting to be connected to the central collection funnelSince we were working in a public park, we had to be careful to route everything away from where people walked or high enough overhead that it would not be in the way. Here are some of the strings routed from one of the main hubs, over the walking path and into the old farmhouseOur central collection funnel was made with the same cotton string we tied to the flags. We needed to secure string around the doorway to build the funnel so Dirk and I played catch with a ball of string for 6 hours. I had a broken wrist alreadyAn important restriction with this art encampment is that you could only build with what you can carry. String can be carried in a very compact spool and yet can take up a remarkable amount of space when it's unwound. I fell in love with this curve early on.and the way the early morning sun came through the windowHere is the first wall, almost finishedlaying out the framework for the second wallthe second wall makes it more of a funnelPhotographing a large scale installation is always difficult, especially without a wide angle lens. I use the photoshop to photomerge a lot, here is my favorite panorama that I made in photoshopHere is another one from the side that turned out a little rougherand a nice shot of the morning light coming through the eastern window
After the funnel was complete, we placed the 35 samples we collected inside so that you could trace the line back to the original, flagged locationHere are a few other samples we collected, number 10 is a rose hipand number 11 is raspberry
After 3 days of installation and 6 hours of living time, we began dismantling the funnel. We started by rolling the string up on the flags back to the main funnel. The larger ones were farther away. Here are a bunch of them waiting to be cut loose.
Look for them at the Bumpkin Island follow up show at a Fort Point gallery soon.

Packrat gif

2011-08-02T21:34:00.002-04:00

large, sprawling installations that involve temporal processing are difficult to capture in still photograph but this animation does little more to capture the Packrat piece that was at the Bumpkin Island Art Encampment this weekend. Still, I think it's funny. Packrat is Dirk Adams, Jesse Kaminsky and Helen White

balloon flower

2011-08-02T21:32:00.004-04:00

Bumpkin Island Art Encampment

2011-07-27T16:23:00.004-04:00

I'm very excited to be taking part in the 2011 Bumpkin Island Art Encampment as a part of the Packrat collective. We'll be building giant funnel webs out of string and collecting and analyzing the constituent parts of the island. More information here and here

celebrating two years of Imperialisms tonight at River Gods. TONIGHT

2011-07-26T13:26:00.003-04:00

Imperialisms returns to River Gods in Central Square tonight but this time it's with gifts. We've been holding down this monthly night of rare foreign language records for two years and we're celebrating by giving away some limited Imperialisms t shirts and Intercontinental stickers. Come by from 9-1am for all the crazy sounds.

If you haven't been, Imperialisms is a monthly dj night that I perform with Angela Sawyer of Weirdo Records, you can find a gallery of all the wonderful fliers that Angela has put together and some of my playlists here
and this months event is on facebook

djing for Group Doueh and Khaira Arby at Oberon TONIGHT!

2011-07-05T16:19:00.002-04:00

The Imperialisms duo (me and Angela Sawyer) will be djing tonight at Club Oberon for the Group Doueh/Khaira Arby show. Khaira Arby will be joined by the horn section from Debo Band, should be very exciting. It's co-presented by End of an Empire and Bowery Boston.

tickets: http://www.boweryboston.com/event/47037/

Invasion at 57Delle Project Space update

2011-05-27T12:15:00.006-04:00

Finally, documentation from the show "Invasion" at 57Delle Project Space is online. It was an honor to be among the final two shows to happen at that space before it was gutted to make way for condos. Thanks to everyone involved in 57Delle. Everything that lives, dies.

http://www.jessekaminsky.com/projects/invasion_2011/invasion.html

djing at the ICA Boston for The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl

2011-05-27T11:26:00.002-04:00

hey, I'll be djing for one hour on June 3rd, playing all pre-revolutionary Iranian 45s, as a part of the ICA Boston show "The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl"

Imperialisms in April

2011-04-24T12:45:00.004-04:00

Carnevale in Venice

2011-04-01T16:32:00.002-04:00

I'll be djing at this event at Oberon on April 13th, playing all Italian rock music, opening for The Upper Crust.

2010 Annual Report

2011-03-18T13:56:00.010-04:00

Pursuing multiple creative endeavors while holding down a day job can be difficult. Over the past couple of years I have developed a couple of strategies to help me focus energy towards things I'd like be doing with life. I'm essentially measuring time spent on various activities, comparing it to what I did last year and to how I'd like to be doing. Ultimately, it is meant to form my daily activities but the byproduct is a lot of historical data, which has led to this annual report. For reference, here's my report from 2009 in two parts: part 1 and part 2

and here's what 2010 looked like

Invasion videos by Video Sphere

2011-02-21T13:28:00.006-05:00

thanks to Werner Grundl at VideoSphere

Imperialisms at River Gods

2011-02-21T13:25:00.002-05:00

Invasion at 57 Delle

2011-01-18T17:37:00.004-05:00

I'll be showing a big new installation in February at 57 Delle, a fantastic space in Mission Hill, Boston. There will be two social events, an opening reception on Saturday, February 5th from 6-9pm and a closing reception on Friday, February 25th, from 6-9pm. The sculpture will change dramatically between the two dates. Regular weekend hours tbd and additional viewing times by appointment.

Imperialisms in January

2011-01-18T17:28:00.003-05:00

Imperialisms is our monthly night of crazy foreign-language records.
At River Gods in Cambridge, as always. I'll be trading sets with Angela Sawyer of Weirdo Records from 9-1am, delicious food until 10pm
Imperialisms on facebook

the Intercontinental on cmj

2011-01-08T17:50:00.004-05:00

for real, this time. I was briefly on the front page of the brand new CMJ website. The permanent link to the article is here:
cmj.com/features/2011/01/radio-profile-the-intercontinental-wmbr/

new years sculptures

2011-01-01T18:22:00.007-05:00

I have a show upcoming at FiveSevenDelle in Mission Hill. 2 February dates to be announced shortly.

http://fivesevendelle.com/
http://fivesevendelle.blogspot.com/

fragments

2011-01-01T17:12:00.007-05:00

studio fragments

Latin Meets Rock n' Roll number III

2010-12-03T10:43:00.003-05:00

Tuesday, December 3rd at the Midway Cafe in Jamaica Plain

Latin Meets Rock n' Roll

2010-10-29T18:59:00.002-04:00

happening this Tuesday at the Midway cafe in Jamaica Plain. It's the Boston release party for the Barbes records compilation "The Roots of Chicha volume 2" and I'll be playing a bunch of chicha singles.

The Intercontinental featured in the College Music Journal

2010-10-25T12:11:00.008-04:00

the Intercontinental was featured in the September issue of the College Music Journal. A small feature was published in the print journal in an article by Marisa Aveling called "Five Special Specilay Shows" [pdf] and a longer feature appeared online at cmj.com. Here is the basic text from the online version:

Specialty Show Profile: The Intercontinental, WMBR

Jesse Kaminsky, host of The Intercontinental – WMBR’s ‘international’ specialty show
Give us a brief rundown on the history of the show. I started the Intercontinental in 2006 as a way to explore some of the more obscure sounds from around the world. I felt like the ‘world village’ idea of a global culture was the dominant model for foreign music on the radio, and that really left me cold. That mentality seems to be based on the idea of the west as cultural compass and bankroll and felt a lot like the mondo type exhibition without context. I was really interested in tapping into the type of cultural movements that have been happening for centuries independently of the US. The Yugoslavian fascination with mariachi music or Japanese-Cuban music, for instance, produced some really fascinating records, made only for the domestic markets in those countries.

How did you get interested in ‘international’ music in the first place? Growing up in Arkansas before the internet was a really off the ground, it was difficult to find anything other than local bands and the current top 40. I was really hungry for something else, though, so I just tried to use every resource to cast a wide net and listened to anything that might possibly be interesting. I would ask every foreign exchange student what they were listening to. I had a lot of weird tape dubs of Yugoslavian ska punk bands in high school. I went to local punk shows in high school but was also trying to find where to order Conlon Nancorrow CDs or whatever music was the farthest from what I already knew, it was all in pretty much the same category for me. I didn’t really focus exclusively on international music until the idea for the show came along, it’s really taken over my life since then.

The music you play comes from almost every country imaginable. How do you source it all? It can be really difficult to crack into a stream of culture that wasn’t meant for you, especially if it doesn’t exist anymore or is all in a script that I can’t read. The internet is great, though, and I’ve found that people can be very helpful with information if they can see that you’re serious about it. I can’t read Farsi so I scanned all my Iranian singles and put them on my website and suddenly people are emailing me from all over the world with translations and history, they’re amazed that someone like me has interest in pre-revolutionary Iranian pop music. There are dealers for anything, though. I do a lot of trial and error purchasing, buying things based on the picture or something. If you buy enough Turkish disco singles you eventually start to figure out what’s good or what to avoid. Once you have a handle on part of it you can do associative things like: if Yugoslavia had such a great newwave/synthpop thing in the 80’s then what about Hungary, or Poland. If you look it up, it’s there!

What’s the weirdest piece of music you’ve ever found and played on your show? There is some music from the Dagestan region of Russia that’s really singular. It’s a kind of techno with traditional rhythms and melodies. Drum machines and accordions with reverbed out mcs, totally unlike anything I’ve heard anywhere else. There’s also a really strange Dagestani version of Jimmy Ajaa (the Bappi Lahiri Hindi disco song that MIA covered) that was reworked to be a praise song for Allah that’s a strong contender for weirdest song.
www.jessekaminsky.com/intercontinental

This entry was posted on Monday, October 18th, 2010 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Industry Profiles, Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Failure gifs

2010-08-20T22:07:00.020-04:00

While I'm finishing up soundtracks to the two photocopy-based animations that premiered at Backyard Bandwith last Saturday, here are some animated gifs from some of the nice parts.

Failure of a system is based on the idea that more can be understood about a situation that has failed than succeeded. Stress tests are based on this idea, that limits can be understood when failure occurs. Understanding a thing's failure can give a better understanding of its physical makeup, its tendencies and its restrictions. The failure of a photocopy machine means that it has not done its job of replication well. The tool is turned on itself and the essential material qualities emerge.

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solos and duos

2010-08-14T03:35:00.003-04:00

Last week I played a short solo saxophone set and some duos with Josh Jefferson at PA's lounge. Thanks to everyone who came, if you weren't there you can hear it here: mp3

failure of a system

2010-08-11T13:35:00.003-04:00

How many blogs have you seen that look like this:
7 or 8 posts in a brief period of time, very excited about the idea of having a blog, sharing with the world, big plans.
1 post 4 months later, discussing the time off, busy lifestyle and pledging renewed commitment to the online adventures.

consider this to be one of those.

--------
I'm working to finish a new photocopy-based animation for the next backyardbandwith

If you don't know bybw, it's an outdoor film event that takes place in Jamaica Plain several times a summer. Usually silent films and live music and home made pies! It's well worth a visit. 21 Brookside Avenue in jp.

I'm reworking some of the earlier animations that I've posted here before, but this time it's in color. stills below:

at home map making

2010-07-30T15:26:00.002-04:00

Second phase of the Personal Form of the City, how to continue a project without institutional support.

I'm looking for people willing to take part in some map-making experiments. It can be fun and can be easy, here are the instructions:

map 1
draw a map of a neighborhood that you have lived in for a significant amount of time (usually your current one).
think about the paths you travel through the neighborhood and why you use those routes.
think about how you leave and enter the neighborhood and what makes the perimeter.
imagine all the interior spaces that you've been in in this neighborhood and other buildings that you've wondered about.
think about destinations, places you've spent the most time and why you spent that time (waiting for a bus, at a park, shopping, etc.)
feel free to add information if it's important.

map 2

Think of it like a map of your linear path through space, but drawn according to a time-based scale
One useful idea for doing it might be like this:
1. mark the beginning and end of your commute
2. think about how long it takes to get there and find the half-way point.
3. fill in the details. Include everything that you find significant/use to navigate or time yourself along the way and all time markers that occur to you (when you know you're almost there or running late or areas that are always slow or fast to move through or whatever.

email me for details on how to send it to me, you can either mail it (best way) or email it (no problem).

Imperialisms at RIver Gods

2010-05-25T15:49:00.003-04:00

It's become a monthly thing at River Gods. Usually the last Tuesday, I join forces with Angela Sawyer of Weirdo Records to present 4 hours of weird foreign music. Much of it comes from the psychedelic 60s/70s but we do stray into genres as disparate as cumbia, new wave, disco, luk thung, garage rock, electro and the like. You can find playlists and past fliers (beautifully designed by Angela) here

the Boston globe just gave us a mention:

Cereal in the Looper Supergroup at Rought Night II at Outpost 186

2010-04-29T14:42:00.004-04:00

I'm playing with Cereal as a subsection of the Looper Supergroup, which debuts on Thursday, May 6th as a part of Rough Night II at the Outpost 186 in Cambridge. Does that make any sense? No?:
-Cereal is an improvising horn trio collective.
-The Looper Supergroup is a group that is bigger than cereal but not less improvising. It features horns, guitars and a theremin.
-Rough Night is a monthly series of sound and visual art curated by French Clements. It takes place at the Outpost 186.
Watch for it.

I need you

2010-04-05T21:08:00.003-04:00

Wanted: you and your housemates.
or
you and your co-workers.

Are you interested in taking part in the Personal Form of the City project but can't make the workshops or don't live in Boston? Maybe you did it already but still have more patience for my projects. I'm looking for participants in a related project who are willing to work with their house mates or co-workers to draw a map of their commute. It's simple: you can do it on your own time, you don't have to work with the other people, and you don't have to know how to draw.
If you think you're interested, email me at jskaminsky [at] gmail and we can work out the details.

Maps of maps of the south end

2010-04-02T00:08:00.001-04:00

We've now had 3 mapping workshops to date, the most recent taking place at Northeastern University. Thanks to Sophia Ainslie and her experimental drawing class I now have a pile of great maps to sort through, those images are coming soon. In the meantime, here are some portions of maps that were made by participants in MyTown, a fantastic organization located in Boston's south end that trains Boston-area teenagers to give historical walking tours of the south end. They took part in the first workshop in which I asked them to make maps of their tour route. One theme that emerged was the "map within a map":

There are still 3 workshops upcoming in April and as always, registration to each workshop is always open. Groups and individuals both welcome.

Photos from the First Workshop

2010-03-12T20:23:00.007-05:00

On Thursday Jesse held his first workshop with a group of local teens, drawing maps of the South End and their pathways throughout the city. Photos are coming soon! In the mean time, don't forget to register for the upcoming workshops on Tuesday March 16th, Tuesday April 13th, and Wednesday April 28th! Contact Cynthia Woo at cwoo@bcaonline.org for registration and inquiries.

Registration Open for Workshops!

2010-03-08T21:24:00.005-05:00

You can still rsvp for the first workshop, it's easy. Sign up now!

Cereal plays Rough Night II

2010-03-03T10:35:00.004-05:00

The Personal Form of the City workshops

2010-02-28T12:36:00.008-05:00

From March 1st to April 30th I will be Artist-in-residence at the Boston Center for the Arts. It's the first residency that they've hosted and it will serve as a pilot for the program. My work during this time, "The Personal Form of the City," will focus on the activity of mapping my personal experience in Boston and will involve my drawing a map of Boston from memory.

Everyone who lives in the city inhabits the same physical environment but no two people use it in the same way. Our use of the city informs our mental landscape and so everyone's personal city is shaped differently. It's difficult to describe what you don't know so I'm hoping to use drawing as a method to tap into my unconscious use of the world.

As a part of the project, I will be hosting three drawing/mapping workshops. These workshops are free and open to the public. Participants will map their neighborhoods, commutes and daily lives in the city and through the act of drawing will learn about the way they each experience the city. I'll be incorporating the maps from these workshops into my larger maps of the city. These will be two-hour workshops and no drawing experience is necessary. Ages 13 and up.

March 16, 2010 4-6pm
April 13, 2010 4-6pm
April 28, 2010 4-6pm

Workshops are limited to 20 participants.
Please pre-register by March 9th for the March 16th workshop,
contact Cynthia Woo at cwoo [at] bcaonline [dot] org, or 617.426.1119.

They're also posted here: Boston Center for the Arts

The Music of Iran - a guest post on Radio diffusion blog

2010-02-16T15:31:00.005-05:00

I wrote this little essay for the mighty music blog radiodiffusion, curated by the gentleman behind, among other things, the Sublime Frequencies compilation of Indian steel guitar soundtrack music called Bollywood Steel Guitar. If you haven't been there before, it's worth thumbing through his vast collection of obscure records from all over the world. My little post, with mp3, can be found here, or you can read the text below. You can view cover scans of most of my Iranian records here:

Information on the popular music of pre-revolutionary Iran is hard to come by if you don’t read Farsi. Most reissues of the music are in Farsi and have little to no liner notes, save for Göhkan Aya’s well researched essay for the Raks Raks Raks compilation released last year on Raks Discos. This is perhaps due in part to the political situation surrounding the music and culture, much of what was recorded prior to the 1978 revolution became illegal with the new regime and was destroyed when found by the police. Performers who had substantial careers prior to the revolution had to flee the country or risk persecution as even the simple act of a woman performing as a soloist became illegal, not to mention the performance of westernized Persian music that had become increasingly popular under the last years of the Shah. Records that you find now from that period in Iran have likely survived many hardships and they almost always show it in one way or another.

Stuart has already covered much of the cultural history of Iran in his previous posts so I’ll leave that for now and say that this track from the singer Pouran. She began singing in 1951 at the age of 18, using the stage name of “Unknown Lady” or “Lady Anonymous Singer, ” depending on how you translate the Farsi. She married her vocal instructor, violinist Abbas Shapouri, and altered her stage name first to “Lady Shapouri, ” then to the simpler “Pouran, ” collaborating with Shapouri for the duration of their seven-year marriage to produce some of her most popular songs. At the height of her career, she was well regarded as an actress and singer, possibly recording as many as 2000 songs, although that’s really an impossible number to confirm. After her divorce, she continued to perform and record, often appearing on Iranian National Radio, until the late 70’s, when the revolution forced her to stop performing and flee the country. She died in 1991 during a visit to Iran and is buried in the Imamzadeh Taaher cemetery in the city of Karaj.

As an example of the difficulty in finding information on this era of recorded music, this line from the Google translation of her Wikipedia page jumped out at me: “Art said his toe in Salt Lady nephew heartsome other is born of that era” in reference to her musical association with her first husband.

Without much of a discography available, I’d guess that this record is from the later part of her career. It’s released on Ahang Rooz, the first and largest of pre-revolutionary Iranian record labels, and has the analog synthesizer sound that seems to have enjoyed some popularity in the later 70’s. The single includes the two songs: “Shahr-e Paeez” (The City of Autumn) and “Ye Roozam Maa Ra Faramoosh Mikoni” (One Day You Will Forget Me).

Thanks to Hamineh, Kourosh and Ramin for their help on this post as well as for all the other information that they’ve helped me with. Any factual errors or misunderstandings are mine.

Catalog number AR-2519 on Ahang Rooz of Iran. No release date listed.

http://radiodiffusion.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/pouran/

photocopy animations from 2008 part 2: Failure

2010-01-27T12:45:00.002-05:00

This is an excerpt of the photocopy animation 'Failure.' Again, low resolution on youtube.

photocopy animations from 2008 part 1: 1=1

2010-01-26T21:02:00.003-05:00

This video was created in 2008 as part of my time as the Berwick Research Institute Artist in Research. It was made almost entirely with a photocopy machine (original page was a laserjet printout) and animated with final cut pro. This is a low resolution version on youtube because I'm not that adept at video yet.

2009 Annual report II

2010-01-15T16:25:00.004-05:00

Daily breakdown of my activity for 2009. Commuting time and sleep were only tracked October-December. Represented commuting time for January-September was based on average round trip time of 40 minutes for bicycle commuting and 75 minutes round trip for transit (actual time is likely higher). Sleep pattern for January-September is likely similar to October-December. Rest of time is untracked. For whatever reason, these charts go up to 25, even though the days tracked here were 24 hours long.

2009 Annual report

2010-01-14T14:56:00.023-05:00

How do you define a year? Here's a couple of ways to diagram the way I spent 2009.

and here's a couple of month by month breakdowns:

this one makes almost no sense but is a nice graphical non-illustration:

there are several projections in this. The 'work' and 'commuting' totals are projected. The 'other' total is every hour in the year that is unaccounted for.

and more ways to view my month-by-month breakdown of activity:

2010-01-05T19:07:00.022-05:00

Blind Portraits-
These are from a series of mostly blind portraits. Newest ones at the top, going back to 2001. Most are ballpoint pen on paper, but some are pencil on paper.

review of John Malpede's Bright Futures at MIT CAVS

2010-01-04T15:15:00.003-05:00

This review was published in Big Red and Shiny issue 112, December 2009.

BRIGHT FUTURES @ MIT CENTER FOR ADVANCED VISUAL STUDIES
by JESSE KAMINSKY
December 21, 2009

Parsing the causes and consequences of the current financial crisis can be truly daunting, especially if you, like me, are untrained in the current financial cover-up lingo. To the casual observer, there seem to be as many theories about why we're in this mess and how we can get out as there are experts, with the only unifying factor among them being unhappiness with our current trajectory. Though it's unclear what the full impact of this collapse will be, it was only beginning to manifest as John Malpede began his fellowship at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS).

The response to the crisis within MIT was analogous to the broader national dialog in that it was a diverse and contradictory range of opinions and ideas. This disparity in opinion was particularly evident in two discussions that emerged from MIT around this time; "The Quiet Coup," written by Simon Johnson and published in the Atlantic Monthly in May of 2009 and a panel discussion entitled "How to get a job," delivered by three veteran financial managers to a group of anxious graduating students. Intended to ease the anxious minds of graduating financial engineers, the panel discussion instead served to expose the arrogance and selfishness of the three presenters and by proxy, the entire financial sector. On the other hand, the "Quiet Coup" is a caustic attack on the entrenched American financial oligarchy by Johnson, a former chief economist at the IMF and current professor at the Sloan School, in which he describes a bleak international forecast unless we breakup the oversized, self-unregulating network of risk-takers that make up the financial sector. Taken as counterparts, these texts present a shockingly dysfunctional portrait of the American socio-financial landscape and it is this contrast that drives Bright Futures.

Bright Futures premiered at the Tisch School for the Arts at NYU as a part of Performa 09 but this most recent iteration, presented at the brand new Fumihiko Maki-designed home of the MIT Media Lab, was an expanded, multimedia presentation incorporating remixed video of previous versions and a large-scale sculpture and performance by students from an MIT class, "Things Fall Apart," taught by Wendy Jacob. It was divided into three interrelated acts, beginning with a video installation in three parts by Mary Ellen Strom and students from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts that played as the audience gathered. The videos showed a series of headshots of the performers and seemed to serve as a trailer for the main feature. The sculpture, an oversized house of cards suspended in the crisp new first floor atrium by an elaborate construction of wooden beams, pulleys and ropes, served both as backdrop for the performers, projection screen for the videos and kinetic interaction with the performers as it crumpled and revived itself during the discussion. The main event - and strongest component by far - was the panel discussion and audience questions.

Bright Futures was promised in the accompanying pamphlet to be a "100% non-threatening participatory event," an oxymoron if ever there was one, but nonetheless, I was relieved to see that all the pages of script had been handed out long before I arrived. The setting was similar to any college panel discussion, save for being in the lobby with gigantic playing cards, and it was this matter-of-factness that served as the dramatic matrix for the discussion. Three performers dressed in business casual – Malpede in the center, flanked by Nell Breyer and Tanya Selvaratnam – delivered word for word the "How to get a job" presentation, taking only occasional improvisational liberties by repeating certain phrases for emphasis. Even knowing that it was spoken verbatim from a real financial discussion, it was hard to believe. The three candidly rationalized layoffs for the less productive and multi million-dollar bonuses for themselves, while justifying nepotism, deregulation and a return to business as usual once the credit markets unfreeze. Periodically, as in any casual panel conversation, they were interrupted by members of the audience with 'questions' that were actually randomly chosen paragraphs from "The Quiet Coup," the script that had been handed out. The randomness with which the paragraphs were chosen often meant that they had no direct relationship with the discussion and minimized their impact for those not familiar with the article in advance but it did lend to interesting moments of dramatic indeterminacy. The success of this arrangement drew from its casualness; its ability to deliver this devastating critique and still almost pass as a conventional panel discussion. The setting and dress fit the parts and the audience questions were flatly dismissed in a manner that summoned the PR phrase "answer the question you wish you had been asked." Similarly, the audience's paragraphs sounded very similar to the 'let me show you what I know' type of rambling question that often pops up at panel discussion Q&A's. But the matrix was broken toward the end of the presentation when, as the presenters are discussing a particularly expensive night on the town, students from the audience rose and took position as puppeteers of the giant house of cards. Wearing hard hats and gloves (they are future financial engineers after all), they gently collapsed and re-erected the giant house of cards. The effect was somewhat surreal, especially since most of the action to this point was so dialog based that I had almost forgotten the cards by this point, even if the metaphor was a bit overbearing and expected.

Following the conclusion of this panel discussion was a surprise third act as the student puppeteers began to roam around the room reading bits and pieces of scripts on their own. The content ranged from seemingly personal diary stuff to excerpts from the Yeats poem "The Second Coming." They broke into groups with varying degrees of enthusiasm to perform in a number of cut-up and fold-in type arrangements. Coming so seemingly spontaneously on the heels of more formal panel discussion, their performance felt like a confusingly whimsical counterpoint to the grave and dangerous world they are about to enter.

All images are courtesy of the artist and CAVS.

dear blog,,,,,

2010-01-04T14:30:00.000-05:00

hello,
as if it were still 2001, I've started this blog for images and idea fragments that don't fit on any of my websites.
If you found your way here via some other path, my websites:
jessekaminsky.com
or
jessekaminsky.com/intercontinental
or
the Intercontinental on facebook
for radio related material.

stay tuned.

Jesse