Strokellectanea

 

The musicsphere for working on Strokellectanea project, a series of blissful generative graphics, orbited through Glenn Gould’s The Goldberg Variations (1955) to Henryk Górecki’s String Quartet No.3 to John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman CD to Per Nørgård’s Symphony No. 3 to Van den Budenmayer, and then concluded with Gould’s The Goldberg Variations (1981). The inclusion of Van den Budenmayer in the selection was admittedly atypical. After all, Van den Budenmayer was an eighteenth-century Dutch composer. Nothing paranormal about this Dutch composer though. Music by fictitious Van den Budenmayer, whose works were done by a twentieth-century Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner for Krzysztof Kieślowski’s films, was as memorable as cheery sound of microwaved popcorns.

No Comments / Oct 09.09 / Graphics / by Jen-Kuang Chang

Sphere VIII

In a day with puzzlingly blustery weather condition like this, it was very becoming to simply ground myself in the coziness of my bed and sacramentally revisit “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I flipped through one oddly comforting page after another while symmetrically sipping countless cups of organic coffee. Marquez’s short story delivered the literary magic and I, as usual, was tempted to hear the musical spectrum of an alphabetical quartet hidden between the lines as relentlessly as an amateur fire-eater with no tomorrow.

Sphere VIII | 2009 | Jen-Kuang Chang

Few hours later, winds were still arguing about something silly. I revived myself with few heavenly bits of Fève chocolate handmade by Recchiuti Confections in San Francisco and allowed attitude of 85% cacao nibs to wigglingly couturify Sphere series that was about to be made.

No Comments / Sep 30.09 / Graphics / by Jen-Kuang Chang

Diagram VI

To again remind myself the venerable code of environmental responsibilities as one of restless beings in this universe, I decided to reprocess items in my trashcan-of-the-day and attempt to milk any hidden artistic preciousness out of them.  The trashcan, quietly parked in a desolate corner in my kitchen far away from the refrigerator that contentedly humming an unidentifiable masterpiece in a very low frequency, bagged somewhat smelly collective of everyday-debris like the leftover of my soul.  I carefully browsed through them with the utmost admiration. Few minutes later, an inconceivable idea was conceived and I found myself momentously scanning all the garbagy artifacts with my unwilling flatbed scanner.

Exactly 36 minutes later, my task of documenting this averagely average day with this moderately odd method came to a sensible closure.  Another 8 minutes were solely spent on tediously cleaning and de-odorizing my flatbed scanner.  Filing all scanned images took another 4 minutes and it was during the filing procedure that I fortuitously unearthed the Diagram series, completed in the early part of 2009, in my dangerously populous hard drive.  They necessitated to be resuscitated, I muttered.

No Comments / Sep 14.09 / Graphics / by Jen-Kuang Chang

Opaque II

Waking up needlessly early in this breezy Saturday morning has been a questionable question of the day. I dragged my still-sleepy legs to the kitchen and made an ambitious pot of organic coffee while anticipating the torturous pressure to imbibe every dips of deliciousness. Each coffee brewer has her own unique fortitude and attitude, and mine is no exception. I waited quietly and deferentially while my coffee brewer sang the lovely hymn of low-priced happiness.

For five motionless minutes, I waited. It was so quiet that I can unmistakably observe my soul draggling few seconds behind the daily schedule.

After the third opulent cup of coffee and two bits of 85%-cocoa chocolate later, I timidly began to work on Opaque series with Sunshine Cleaning dvd put on repeat on my TV set as atmospherical backdrop.  Every 90 minutes or so, I stopped working and gawked at my teeny 19-inch TV screen when Norah, played by Emily Blunt, said “No, the bodies are gone. But it’s weird, you know, ’cause we’re, like, connected to them in a strangely intimate way.”

No Comments / Sep 05.09 / Graphics / by Jen-Kuang Chang

Millay Colony for the Arts

Let the record show that we, half-dozen of creativity-high creatures assisted by Calliope, our fabulously fabulous residency director, writer, and sword-fighting expert, invaded the picturesque campus of Millay Colony for the Arts and colonized it with our brilliantly outlandish thoughts and laughter on August 2009 as indicated in the human being’s calendar. The colonization unfolded during that not-as-long-as-we-hoped month, circuitously spreading our pacific domination to Chatham, Art Omi, Mass MoCA, Great Barrington, Tanglewood, Hudson, and Stockbridge. Human beings, especially those with chocolate shops, seemed to greet us with hyper enthusiasm as I for one frequently needed to restock my dark chocolate bars collection to prolong my immunity from worldly strains and worries.

In addition to unpremeditatedly terrorizing Millay campus’s other affable creatures such as deer, wild turkeys, bunnies, and spirited B-U-G-s and M-I-S-Q-U-O-T-E-s, I spoiled myself and spent most of my day letting inaudible sweet songs replenishing my drained little being and occasionally guessing what deliciousness Chef Donna has prepared for us.  Around 6:30 every evening, residents emerged from their own creativeness and congregated in the dining room, indulging themselves with warm and lovely conversations.

After dinner, we all sat together and stared at Sujin, our interdisciplinary artist, transfixed, while she furiously and indiscriminately writing down all the happenings and every juicy bit of daily details in the residency journal.  Painter Giovanna would sit gracefully and unhurriedly tell us her enchanting encounter of a black bear’s ass, with painter Kirsten envied us by adding her storied happenstances with deer, mud, friendly neighbors, and all that magical things found only in the exquisite Poetry Trail.  Poet Bruce would then make his trademarked Gin & Tonic and said to me “JK, you look like you need some cocktail” and soundlessly reciting Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poems into the dark and endless night sky.

Poet Bruce Snider reciting Millay’s poem | August 2009 | Recorded by Jen-Kuang Chang

Millay Colony for the Arts

Comments Off / Sep 04.09 / Travel / by Jen-Kuang Chang