State of the Arts: July 22, 2009 Archive

Listening to the sounds we can't hear

Posted at 10:32 AM on July 22, 2009 by Euan Kerr (1 Comments)
Filed under: Sculpture, Technology

If you have ever wondered about the sounds of an insect eating a leaf, or even the mist condensing on a window, you are not alone.

These are the kind of sounds which sonic artist Diane Willow hopes to collect with a new microphone she will use for her work "Listening to the Silent Landscape of the Everyday."

Willow, who teaches at the University of Minnesota will gather sounds with a highly sensitive contact microphone which allows her to listen in the tiny sounds all around us which are beyond the sensitivity of normal human hearing.

Willow, who came to the U from MIT, has used other recordings in sculptures and other works. She will develop interactive pieces from the new recordings.

You can see at video of "Serenade," a piece she did in Beijing here

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RIP, Ruben Trejo

Posted at 1:03 PM on July 22, 2009 by Ken Paulman (0 Comments)

Ruben Trejo, one of the country's premier Mexican-American artists, has died. He was 72.

Trejo has been on faculty at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Wash., since 1973, but has roots in the Twin Cities. He was born in a railcar in St. Paul, and received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Minnesota, according to an obit in today's Spokesman-Review.

Trejo's work has been exhibited nationwide, including at the Smithsonian.

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Davis Guggenheim and the feathered fish

Posted at 4:50 PM on July 22, 2009 by Euan Kerr (0 Comments)
Filed under: Film, Music, Technology

Film maker Davis Guggenheim says someone in his team told him just before his film "An Inconvenient Truth" went before an audience for the first time that his movie was "a feathered fish."

"What's that?" Guggenheim asked.

"It doesn't swim and it doesn't fly," came the terse response.

"And this is someone who's supposed to like the film," Guggenheim says. Then a studio executive told them no-one would pay to see the film.

Of course it then went to the Sundance Film Festival, became a box office smash, and won the best documentary Oscar.

"And then going with (Al Gore) to get the Nobel Peace Prize, that was pretty cool," he laughs.

Looking back though, he says they made the film in a vacuum, and that was ultimately a good thing. They were convinced that they had an important message to spread, and they were shielded from common wisdom which might have scuppered them.

Guggenheim was in the Twin Cities to talk about his new documentary "It Might Get Loud." It is is built around the meeting of three rock guitar legends: Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, U2's The Edge, and Jack White of the White Stripes.

He says he didn't want to make a traditional rock film, and he has succeeded. He interviewed all three of his subjects separately on their home turf and then put them together on a giant soundset in Hollywood (he say's it's where they filmed "The Perfect Storm") and made them talk to one another.

While nominally about the art and science of the electric guitar, the film delves into what it means to be an artist, and how each of these three musicians developed their own approach to what they do.

And then they jam together. It's a fascinating piece of film as three icons from very different parts of the rock world watch and learn from one other.

The film opens in the Twin Cities in late August. We'll have a piece closer to that time but in the meantime here is the trailer.

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