This project shows up-to-the-minute text/image compilations that explore the personal yet distant relationships flowing between fellow web users along similar topics. Go to project

Includes book Illustrations by Boyd Richard
amazon    la pocha nostra

This project examines the representation of American redwood trees from 1850 to the present, tracing its history from the construction of the early bark exhibits, through the growth of the logging industry, and the establishment of the national parks and conservation movements. This study reveals how images of redwoods were used to both exalt and exploit this national resource, and how closely linked these images were to shifts in the construction of American national identity both before and after World War II. Go to project site

Boyd Richard
MA, Visual and Critical Studies
California College of the Arts, San Francisco

Advisors: Karen Fiss, Mitchell Schwarzer, Barry Katz
Outside Advisors: Megan and Rick Prelinger
Additional Support: Tanya Hollis, California Historical Societ

http://www.ethanrosemusic.com

Northwest CD review: Ethan Rose’s “Oaks”
By Douglas Perry, The Oregonian
January 22, 2009, 1:20PM

Ethan Rose has a love for instruments that have been long since disregarded. With previous albums and live performances, the Portland artist has stuffed himself into a room with 50 music boxes or dragged a player piano onstage.

And while hints of the original intention of these instruments, as purely light entertainment, sometimes creeps into the music, more often than not the sounds have been stretched and processed beyond recognition into often beautiful experimental soundscapes.

For his latest album, “Oaks,” Rose took inspiration and actual sounds from a 1926 Wurlitzer organ that provides musical accompaniment for skaters at Oaks Park Skating Rink. Using samples recorded at the rink of both the organ and the sound of the instrument’s inner workings, Rose has created an album that evokes a heady nostalgia. It harks back to both the heyday of the rink and of the organ itself, which used to sit in a movie theater downtown scoring silent films.

Of course, anyone who has heard the organ being played live would hardly recognize it if they were to pop this disc into their CD player. As with previous work, Rose fed the samples into a computer, applied digital effects and made them sound rather modern. There are glints that shine through the cracks of some of his rather thick compositions — the trill of the celeste on “The Floor Released” and an identifiable reediness that runs through “Mighty Mighty” — but otherwise the album feels like it was cooked up with a wall of expensive synthesizers and modulators.

In this sense, there is something rather virtuous about the music Rose makes. He simply wants to give these instruments a second life before they are forgotten entirely. For the Wurlitzer organ at Oaks Park, it means a chance to provide a beautiful soundtrack to a new generation of listeners. (more…)

Part social experiment, part business opportunity, Mother’s Milk Ice Cream Company “challenges the traditional paradigm that there is nothing abnormal about conversion of mammalian milk into luxury food items”.
http://www.mothersmilkicecream.com

In collaboration with Allison South, the site was designed to exhibit the objects, public commissions, and CV of Cris Bruch.
http://www.crisbruch.com