tom moody

tom moody's weblog
(2001 - 2007)

tommoody.us (2004 - )

2001-2007 archive

main site

faq

digital media tree (or "home" below)


RSS / validator



BLOG in gallery / AFC / artCal / furtherfield on BLOG

room sized animated GIFs / pics

geeks in the gallery / 2 / 3

fuzzy logic

and/or gallery / pics / 2

rhizome interview / illustrated

ny arts interview / illustrated

visit my cubicle

blogging & the arts panel

my dorkbot talk / notes

infinite fill show


music

video




Links:

coalition casualties

civilian casualties

iraq today / older

mccain defends bush's iraq strategy

eyebeam reBlog

hullabaloo

tyndall report

aron namenwirth

bloggy / artCal

james wagner

what really happened

stinkoman

antiwar.com

cory arcangel / at del.icio.us

juan cole

a a attanasio

rhizome.org

three rivers online

unknown news

eschaton

prereview

edward b. rackley

travelers diagram at del.icio.us

atomic cinema

lovid

cpb::softinfo :: blog

vertexList

paper rad / info

nastynets now

the memory hole

de palma a la mod

aaron in japan

NEWSgrist

chris ashley

comiclopedia

discogs

counterpunch

9/11 timeline

tedg on film

art is for the people

x-eleven

jim woodring

stephen hendee

steve gilliard

mellon writes again

eyekhan

adrien75 / 757

disco-nnect

WFMU's Beware of the Blog

travis hallenbeck

paul slocum

guthrie lonergan / at del.icio.us

tom moody


View current page
...more recent posts



Continuing our Art Guys series, this is a review I wrote for Art Papers when I lived in Texas and never sent in because I couldn't make it work...until today. It's a bit late for the magazine's deadline so here it is online:

"Jets," by The Art Guys
Dallas Museum of Art, November-December 1991


The main concourse of the Dallas Museum of Art ascends in a series of broad, gently sloping ramps, creating spaces reminiscent of airport architecture. Appropriately, that's where the Art Guys placed their installation Jets during the 1991 Dallas Video Festival.

Sixteen TV monitors fanned across the ceiling over the ramps, linked by black cables to a neat bank of VCRs on the wall. Each monitor faced down with its back securely bolted to the ceiling--or so we hoped. The screens glowed pale blue, green, or violet, the ambient colors of footage taped from the sky at different times and places, and intermittently roared to life as an airplane passed across the screen.

The artists phased the tapes so at a given time some screens showed empty sky and others tracked commercial aircraft landing or taking off in wobbly, hand held fields of view. The random distribution of the zooming images along the corridor kept the viewer off guard: as you followed the progress of one jet, another would loom unexpectedly behind you.

The network of cables crawling across the ceiling and down the wall to a controlling ganglion could emblematize the global transportation and communication systems on which we are so dependent, while the fragility of the systems could be felt in the nervous-making Damoclean placement of the monitors. That's one level of interpretation.

Yet sitting beneath them for a few minutes revealed something a hurried passerby might have missed: their curious kinship to natural phenomena. The random lightening and darkening of screens and the antiphonal whining of the jets became paradoxically calming, like stars blinking or insects chittering in the breeze. Thus do our daily threats become reassuring background texture.

- tom moody 2-08-2007 10:13 pm [link] [10 comments]



Art Guys - Tampa

Art Guys - Tampa 2

Third installment in The Art Guys series, these are photos from their current survey exhibition at the Tampa Museum of Art. The cluster of portraits originally came from a show they did in '90 called "See Through Us," an open call where other artists were invited to render them in various media. As a participant I tried to be as thift store painting-like as I could, hence my canvas of Michael Galbreth with oversized Mr. Spock ears and Jack Massing with crab appendages sprouting from his head (look, I'm in a museum now!). Although the painting above and to the right of it with Jack's face growing like a wen from Michael's forehead is far more successfully "thrifty." The tasty installation of these paintings is by Jade Dellinger, who curated the show. On the right in the lower photo is Smushed Faces, 2000, printed vinyl.

- tom moody 2-08-2007 10:12 pm [link] [add a comment]



mood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ring
mood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ring
mood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ring
mood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ring
mood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ring
mood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ring
mood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ring
mood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ringmood ring

Mood Ring, 2007, GIFs, HTML
Not intended for RSS readers.

- tom moody 2-07-2007 10:05 am [link] [3 comments]



"Abstract Thinking (Photons)" [mp3 removed]

Another variation of this piece, incorporating a special effect sound from, let's just say, a popular televised science fiction drama. There is now an added "tripped out" middle section with some layered sputtering LFO noise and a snare run through an effect-pedal octave sequence.

Update: Added a new synth part to this. I think I'm still working on it (see comments).

Update 2: the piece is pulled for further tinkering. When it rises Phoenix-like it will probably have a new title.

Update 3: Or not. I put it back up, with the original, underlying synth tracks all sliced up and made to obey the meter.

- tom moody 2-07-2007 10:03 am [link] [9 comments]
























Untitled (Chris Ashley), 2007, GIFs, HTML
Not intended for RSS readers.

- tom moody 2-06-2007 8:21 am [link] [10 comments]



At the Whitney Museum coat check, I swear my recollection is they just take your bag and give you a plastic chip. At MOMA they make you open your bag, ask you about the contents, and reject certain items! Here's how a recent visit went down:

"Sir, you have to open your bag."
"You're kidding. OK, check it out. There's a scarf in here, a music software manual, my Daytimer..."
"What's in that pouch?"
"Checkbook..."
"I'll have to ask you to carry that."
"You're kidding. Say--when did you start doing this, interrogating people about their bag contents?"
"I've only worked here six months but" (eyes widening) "of course all bags have to be inspected since 9/11."
"Yeah, right, but that was six years ago!"

At this point some tourists were looking over uneasily, wondering what the "scene" was about.

Thanks, MOMA, for setting a friendly, contemplative mood at the entrance to your museum.

- tom moody 2-06-2007 8:00 am [link] [7 comments]




















- tom moody 2-05-2007 9:18 pm [link] [5 comments]



Memo to Gary Hill
Re: Your Show at Barbara Gladstone

The giant CGI animatronic eagle angrily flapping its wings and making power lines crack like bullwhips in multi-channel surround sound appeals on some goofy level, but the lake of crude oil you placed in front of it with the gold bullion in the center takes us into the realm of metaphor fatigue. Thanks for telling us via the press release that the piece was about the US occupation of the Middle East. The guard in the gallery barking at people when they get near the work is not too cool, though. Especially when it's a sheet of black, glassy-smooth oil in a semi-lit room that you might want to look at closely, if for no other reason than to see if it's as much like Noriyuki Haraguchi's work as it seems.

And if you must place telescopes around the space, you might want to aim them at something besides those custom gold coins of your grimacing face "undergoing fictive scenes of torture" that are placed on spotlit sculpture stands in the same room--it seems redundant, and not in a good way. Again, it's nice to have the press release handy to tell us that your installation, "through its use of the metaphor of market exchange, distances the true act of brutality, even when the acts of surveillance bring it so close the viewer's body." We're worried about the war, too, and thankful that a festival artist such as yourself has a big gallery to get the message out.

Update: Breaking: The real reason for the guard was that gold bullion--one of the ingots was just stolen from the Fondation Cartier version of this piece. See the comments to this post--thanks, James.

- tom moody 2-04-2007 10:40 pm [link] [17 comments]