I wrote a book review!

I was really excited when Collier Brown of The OD Review invited me to do a book review so I chose a new one from Overlapse, who I have been kind of infatuated with, its: Mandy Barker’s “Altered Ocean”.

All will be revealed here:

https://theodreview.com/2019/11/18/altered-ocean-mandy-barker-reviewed-by-doug-fogelson/

Roland Bucher: Viaje (Album Art)

Very honored to have one of my images used with this incredible project and innovative instrument.

Here’s the info:

»VIAJE« is the debut album by Swiss musician Roland Bucher and was produced with an instrument developed and built by the artist himself, the noise table. »VIAJE« presents the culmination of almost a decade of exploring the possibilities that the curious device offers. Combining the physicality of the improvisational praxis with a classical approach to composition, these five songs highlight the emotional, narrative and atmospheric potentials of granular noise. »VIAJE« was not only produced with an unheard-of instrument, it also comprises music that no-one ever has heard quite like that before.

Combining the reacTIVision software with Max/MSP programming, the noise table is both a controller and a granular synthesis sampler. This makes it possible for Bucher, a seasoned drummer in bands like Blind Butcher or Kion, to improvise freely in front of an audience. Small musical instruments and everyday objects provide the input for the samples. Those samples are then connected to objects that Bucher moves around on a glass window inserted into the table which is being filmed from below, thus controlling the output. Starting from improvisations much like in his live sets, »VIAJE« slowly took form during Bucher’s 2018 visits to Chile and Brazil as part of a scholarship programme which also saw him perform several times to South American audiences.

The quiet moments on these five tracks are all part of a greater dynamic, one that is thoroughly composed by still marked by the physicality of how the sounds were achieved. The juxtaposition of the abstract and tangible is mirrored by reality effects that create moments of irritation. After »Acamar« opens the record with a crescendo of harsh electronic sounds, »Curinanco« seems to draw on natural sounds and even birdsong. Can this be… real? And if so, what about the raging jazz drumming of »Ircan« - is all of that played by hand, or just something that Bucher triggered by moving around some objects on a piece of glass? Also »Praecipua« and »Cau-Cau« surely do not answer these questions. Both under five minutes long, they however brilliantly prove that a complex entity like Bucher’s noise table can yield very different, direct emotional responses. After the blistering first three tracks, they serve as a melancholic coda to an album like none other.

credits

released November 8, 2019

All music composed, recorded and mixed by Roland Bucher
Mastering by Rob Viso
Cover Photo by Doug Fogelson
Cover Design by Sabina Oehninger

LINK: https://hallowground.bandcamp.com/album/roland-bucher-viaje

Alpineum Produzentengalerie

Summer 2018 I am invited to be the Artist-In-Residence at Alpineum Produzentengalerie in Lucerne Switzerland. I will be able to use the entire gallery as my studio for one month and then host an open studio for the public at the end of the stay. Looking forward to breathe the fresh air and be close to the fantastic landscape of the Swiss Alps, also to be with the creative community in Lucerne. I have many projects in mind to work on with this precious window of time!

http://alpineum.com/

Experimental Approaches: Part II

Experimental Approaches: Part II

March 16th – April 28th, 2018       
Reception: Friday, March 16th 5:00pm – 7:30pm
 

Schneider Gallery is pleased to showcase the second part to our two-part group exhibition of experimental photography. Part II features work by Alison Carey, Doug Fogelson, Bryan Hiott and Accra Shepp. The artists in this exhibition explore a diverse scope of approaches to photography, employing non-traditional materials and historical processes.

Alison Carey’s photographic constructs are influenced by biology and paleontology, natural history, and the geology of our earth and moon.  Her series, In Memoriam, recontextualizes taxidermied creatures from the Field Museum of Natural History by placing them into newly constructed dioramas. The photographs are a homage to these animals for their contribution to scientific study and for serving their afterlives as specimens on public display.

The photographs in Doug Fogelson’s series Chemical Alterations explore the natural world and the impact of climate change, ecocide and extinction by directly altering the film’s surface with industrial chemicals.  The destruction of the image symbolically points to humankind’s relationship to the environment while also referencing the photographic medium itself.       
 
Bryan Hiott’s wet plate collodion portraits create moments of stillness in which the subject reveals something beyond surface appearance.  To sit for a portrait in this process is to engage in a dialogue between the present and the past, between what is hidden and what is revealed.
 
In his new body of work inspired by a residency in Italy, Accra Shepp explores the relationship between the past and present through two and three panel contact prints using the cyanotype process.  Dating back to the 1840’s, the cyanotype’s signature intense blue forces a shift in how we understand the images while simultaneously linking us to our past.