#Lejaren Hiller art

[oakendesk]

Detective Fiction Weekly Dec 23 1933

Lejaren Hiller

[random-brushstrokes]

Lejaren Hiller Sr. - Absinthe (1928)

[mote-historie]

Lejaren Hiller, Iconic Pulp Cover: Absinthe, for Flynn's Weekly Detective Fiction Magazine, 1928.

About

On offer is a remarkable published pulp cover painting by Lejaren Hiller (American, 1880-1969), titled Absinthe, for Flynn's Weekly Detective Fiction Magazine - April 21, 1928. Between 1924 and 1939, the artist created hundreds of covers for this long running title, and this is among the most captivating. The image showcases an up-to-the-minute smoking flapper girl feeling strangely fine as the hallucinogenic effects of the bottle of absinthe she has just consumed wash over her body, soul and mind. To further the hedonistic mood, smoke plumes seductively drift off into the cafe where she is seated. The setting evokes the fast-living expatriate Americans who took to Paris after World War I, escaping prohibition and their own demons. We found an interesting visual from the Elspeth Brown book The Corporate Eye, which examines photography as a mass media technology and its influence on the progressive age in American culture. It shows Lejaren Hiller's proof photograph of the model as used to create this now iconic pulp cover. That image is seen below. It is possible that a copy of this photograph was mounted to the illustration board as a guide to Hiller's painting, as he often explored such mixed media methods in his work. Painting is French matted and housed in an antique period fine frame under glass. (x)

[the1920sinpictures]

1928 "Absinthe" by Lejaren Hiller, art for the cover of the magazine "Flynn's Weekly Detective Fiction". From Art Deco, FB.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Lejaren a Hiller — Life magazine — October 1914

(via The Pictorial Arts: Illustration and Photography)

* * * *

"Every phenomenon arises from a field of energies: every thought, every feeling, every movement of the body is the manifestation of a specific energy, and in the lopsided human being one energy is constantly swelling up to swamp the other. This endless pitching and tossing between mind, feeling, and body produces a fluctuating series of impulses, each of which deceptively asserts itself as “me”: as one desire replaces another, there can be no continuity of intention, no true wish, only the chaotic pattern of contradiction in which we all live, in which the ego has the illusion of will power and independence.

Gurdjieff calls this “the terror of the situation". His purpose is not to reassure; he is concerned only with an impartial expression of the truth. If we have the courage to listen, he introduces us to a science which is very far from the science we know."

~ Peter Brook, in Parabola, Summer 1996 [Ian Sanders]

[jhavelikes]

Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–1989 brings artworks produced using computers and computational thinking together with notable examples of computer and component design. The exhibition reveals how artists, architects, and designers operating at the vanguard of art and technology deployed computing as a means to reconsider artistic production. The artists featured in Thinking Machines exploited the potential of emerging technologies by inventing systems wholesale or by partnering with institutions and corporations that provided access to cutting-edge machines. They channeled the promise of computing into kinetic sculpture, plotter drawing, computer animation, and video installation. Photographers and architects likewise recognized these technologies' capacity to reconfigure human communities and the built environment. Thinking Machines includes works by John Cage and Lejaren Hiller, Waldemar Cordeiro, Charles Csuri, Richard Hamilton, Alison Knowles, Beryl Korot, Vera Molnár, Cedric Price, and Stan VanDerBeek, alongside computers designed by Tamiko Thiel and others at Thinking Machines Corporation, IBM, Olivetti, and Apple Computer.

Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–1989 | MoMA

[seattlemysterybooks]

philsp

January 19, 1935 issue

cover art by Lejaren Hiller

Eugene Thomas, “The Lady from Hell” (Vivian Legrand/The Lady from Hell), not the same as the story of the same name in the May 2, 1936 issue   

Anthony Rud, “Riddle of the Severed Finger" (Jigger Masters)    

H. H. Matteson, “Hoh-Hoh, The Conju Man” (Hoh-Hoh Stevens)  

Eugene P. Lyle, Jr., “The Girdle of Serpents"

Howard McLellan: Getaway Molls ·  

Paul Berdanier ~ Illustrated Crimes: The Murder on the Padanaram Bridge  

Fred MacIsaac, “The Man with the Club Foot” (Part 3 of 5) 

Edward Parrish Ware, “Killers in the Cane” (Ranger Jack Calhoun)    

Justin Pate, “Timed to Die"   

Seattle Mystery Bookshop

[mayolfederico]

John Cage ~ «Per gli uccelli». Quinta conversazione

John Cage ~ «Per gli uccelli». Quinta conversazione

John Cage, Whitout Horizon, N° 3, 1992   Quel che mi auguro è la possibilità di vedere accadere qualsiasi cosa. Non importa cosa, vale a dire tutto, e non tale o tal altra cosa in particolare. Il problema è: qualcosa sorge. Ma la legge che dovrebbe reggere questo qualcosa non è ancora qui. Ora, se ci fosse una tendenza secondo cui quella tale cosa in particolare deve apparire piuttosto che tal…

[shijinpunnaykaljoseph]

#Blog Post 9. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MUSIC

 Music is undoubtedly one of the most intriguing human intelligence activities. For composers, artists, authors, engineers and scientists, computers are a fantastic tool. All of these give music a different perspective, but all of them can benefit from computers ' precision and automation. Computers have more to offer than just a decent calculator, printer, audio recorder, digital effects box, or whatever the computer's immediate useful purpose. The computer's real significance lies in the new paradigms of art and scientific thinking that computation creates. The technology of using Artificial Intelligence for creating music is latest innovations in the field of technology. Discussion days are over when artificial intelligence (AI) will impact the music industry. In many ways, artificial intelligence is already being used. Today, in music composition, production, theory and digital sound processing, you can find AI applications. In addition, AI helps musicians test new ideas, find the best emotional context, incorporate music into modern media, and just have fun. In huge data sets, AI automates processes, finds trends and observations, and helps create efficiencies.

 Into the history

First phase

Work at this time focused primarily on algorithmic composition which aimed at a new composition that is aesthetically satisfying:

     In 1957, Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson of Urbana's University of Illinois programmed “Illiac Suite for String Quartet”, the first work entirely written by artificial intelligence.

     In 1960, the first paper on algorithmic music composition was written by Russian researcher R.Kh. Zaripov using the "Ural-1" computer.

 Breakthroughs

The more significant level of music intelligence emerged in the generative modelling of music as research began to focus on understanding music.

        In the 1970s, interest in algorithmic music also reached the pop scene's well-known artists. David Bowie, an unquestionable iconic figure in the music industry, was the one who first started thinking in this direction. He created Verbasizer, a lyric-writing Mac app, with Ty Roberts.

       In 1975, it was N. Rowe from the MIT Experimental Music Studio has created a smart music perception system that allows a musician to play freely on an acoustic keyboard while the computer infers a metre, its tempo and note durations.

      In 1980, David Cope founded EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence) from the University of California, Santa Cruz. The system was based on generative models for analysing and creating new pieces based on existing music.

 Current research

AI and music research continues on composition of music, intelligent analysis of sound, cognitive science and music, etc.

     Initiatives like Google Magenta, Sony Flow Machines, IBM Watson Beat, would like to find out whether AI can compose music that is convincing.

     Pop music composed by AI was first published by the Sony CSL Research Laboratory in 2016 and the results were impressive. Daddy's Car's is a cheerful, bright tune that resembles The Beatles. The AI system offered to write the song melodies and lyrics based on the original parts of The Beatles, but the further arrangement was rendered by live musicians.

      Taryn Southern became a sensation after taking part in the American Idol TV show. The next logical step was for a new album to be released. Southern decided to take a non-standard approach — to use AI to write an album. She opted for a startup called Amper as a tool. This programme is capable of producing sets of melodies according to a given genre and mood with the help of internal algorithms. The outcome was the “Break Free” song.

      CJ Carr and Zack Zukowski are engaged in a very unusual thing founded by Dadabots Boston programmers— they teach artificial intelligence how to write "heavy" music. The developers presented the black metal album "Coditany of Timeness" in 2017 and presented the results of the algorithm that composes music in the death metal style to the public. According to them, the algorithm produces a pretty decent music for this genre, which needs no corrections, so they decided to give him the willingness to write live tracks on YouTube.

Interesting developments in the Musical Intelligence field

Research now focuses on using artificial intelligence in compiling musical composition, performance, and digital sound processing, as well as selling and consuming music. For teaching and creating music, most AI-based systems and applications are used. Some of them are here:

     AlgoTunes is a software company that develops music-generating applications. On the site, with one keystroke, anyone can create a random piece of music with a given style and mood— but the choice of settings is very limited. Music is created in a few seconds by a web application and can be downloaded as WAV or MIDI files.

      Founded in 2015, MXX (Mashtraxx Ltd) is the world's first artificial intelligence mechanism to instantly convert music to video using a stereo file. MXX enables you to adapt music to specific user content, such as sports and playing, computer games plots, and so on. Audition pro, the first MXX app, allows anyone to edit music for video: load an existing song and automatically adjust the increase in sound frequency, amplification and pause according to the video's dynamics. MXX also provides services to leading commercial libraries, music services, game developers, and production studios that include music tailored to modern media.

      Orb Composer — a program designed by Hexachords to help compile orchestral compositions at genre selection stages, instrument selection, track composition.

       OrchExtra may help collect a complete Broadway score from a small high school or city theatre ensemble. OrchExtra plays the role of missing devices, recording variations in tempo and musical language.

Is AI a threat to musicians?

AI's capabilities create tension among the groups of musicians and producers who see it as a challenge to their jobs first. AI-music start-ups ' argument is that AI is a creative tool that frees musicians to create more and better art. While AI can outperform humans to help you sleep in areas like video backup music or soundtracks, it is not capable of creating great original music without human intervention.

 Conclusion

AI will eventually change the music industry as computers and AI become more powerful and accessible. The choice is how we work with AI, though. The reason that robots can take over our jobs is that we are robotic about the jobs. However the creation and production of music is a creative process. After all, the possible mechanism of typically developing legendary songs happens on its own, from deep within the heart of the poet, his passionate feelings and unique experience of life. Giving more control over AI applications to musicians is important rather than letting AI take over. After all, we love musicians because of their humanity and personality — not just their music itself.

 References

1.      Deahl, D. (2018). How AI-generated music is changing the way hits are made. [Online] The Verge. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/31/17777008/artificial-intelligence-taryn-southern-amper-music [Accessed 9 Nov. 2019].

2.      Drake, J. (2018). AI & Music. [Online] Soundonsound.com. Available at: https://www.soundonsound.com/music-business/ai-music [Accessed 21 Nov. 2019].

3.      En.wikipedia.org. (2019). Music and artificial intelligence. [Online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_artificial_intelligence [Accessed 21 Nov. 2019].

4.      Kharkovyna, O. (n.d.). Artificial Intelligence and Music: What to Expect? [Online] Medium. Available at: https://towardsdatascience.com/artificial-intelligence-and-music-what-to-expect-f5125cfc934f [Accessed 21 Nov. 2019].

5.      Li, C. (2019). A Retrospective of AI + Music. [Online] Medium. Available at: https://blog.prototypr.io/a-retrospective-of-ai-music-95bfa9b38531 [Accessed 21 Nov. 2019].

6.      Love, T. (2019). Do androids dream of electric beats? How AI is changing music for good. [Online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/22/ai-artificial-intelligence-composing [Accessed 21 Nov. 2019].

7.      Marr, B. (2019). The Amazing Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming The Music Industry. [Online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/07/05/the-amazing-ways-artificial-intelligence-is-transforming-the-music-industry/#23c4c1a65072 [Accessed 21 Nov. 2019].

[alchymiemusic-blog]

Debut album from Spectral Reflections featuring Alchymie available TODAY!

Echoes of the Sea

Featuring Alchymie on piano

September 16, 2019

Spectral Reflections is the vision of Virginia and James Wilson owners of The Live Room. The Live Room, begun in 2013 by the Wilsons, focuses on providing audio/video production services, musical compositions, recording, mastering, and production for live events and in the studio. Musicians and audio synthesists with over 30 years experience as multimedia artists, digital designers and producers of audio and video; they bring this expertise and their inherent artistic teamwork to New Age music focused on wellness and healing. Together they have had the opportunity to work with and study under pioneering visionaries of audio, video and film such as Hollis Frampton, Woody and Steina Vasulka, Tony Conrad and Lejaren Hiller. Their work has been supported by The National Endowment for the Arts, the professional sports industry of Buffalo, New York and Tampa, Florida, and by numerous start-ups and high tech giants across the United States.

With Echoes of the Sea, Spectral Reflections takes you directly to the ocean side with soothing music for a complete uninterrupted hour of relaxation. Traditional orchestral instruments mixed with evolving synthesized tones, creates an ideal environment for the beautiful piano of Alchymie, all laid on a bed of gentle ocean waves. These elements combine to create a sonic atmosphere that will leave you relaxed, centered and energized.

[catsynth-express]

MoMA Part 2: Stephen Shore, Thinking Machines, Max Ernst, Is Fashion Modern

Our initial report from MoMA focused on the current exhibition of print and 2D works by Louise Bourgeois. But in November, the entire museum was a trove of intriguing exhibitions – even with the current construction – and today we look at four more of them.

We begin with Max Ernst: Beyond Painting, a survey exhibition built around the celebrated Dada and Surrealist artist’s frequent description of his own practice as “beyond painting.” It does actually include paintings, but also is many early drawings and works on paper as well as his sculptures and early conceptual work.

Ernst first came to prominence as the founder of the Cologne branch of Dada after World War I (in which he served in the German army). Like other in the Dada movement, much of his work was deliberately provocative and low-fi and went outside of traditional artistic practice. One of the seminal works from this early period was the portfolio Let There Be Fashion, Down with Art, which mixes technological drawings, equations and other elements in absurd and non-sensical ways. Despite the tone and organizing concept, some of the individual illustrations are quite beautiful.

In the above page, we see a feminine figure juxtaposed with geometric and architectural elements. It could have easily been one of Louise Bourgeois’ drawings from three decades later! It also reminded me of the composition in some of my photography.

“Beyond Painting” did include paintings, particularly from Ernst’s surrealist period after relocating from Cologne to Paris.

[Max Ernst. The Nymph Echo (La Nymph Écho). 1936. Oil on canvas.]

The hard-edged lines have given way to the dreamy organic shapes frequently employed in surrealism. But Ernst’s renderings have more of a biological feel – there is abundant vegetation, and some elements appear as microscopic life forms but on a human scale.

Despite his reputation as a provocateur within the often dark worlds of Dada and surrealism, Ernst’s work often has a very playful quality, even endearing at times. That comes out most in his sculptures, some of which can even be described as “adorable”

[Max Ernst. An Anxious Friend (Un ami empressé). 1944 (cast 1973)]

This one, in particular, is worth walking around, as there is another figure on the back side.

The exhibition culminates with 65 Maximiliana, an illustrated book co-created with book-designer Iliazd. [Max Ernst. Folio 10 from 65 Maximiliana or the Illegal Exercise of Astronomy (65 Maximiliana ou l’exercice illégal de l’astronomie). 1964. Illustrated book with twenty‑eight etchings (nine with aquatint) and six aquatints by Ernst and letterpress typographic designs by Ilia Zdanevich (Iliazd). Page: 16 1/16 × 12 1/16″ (40.8 × 30.7 cm). Publisher: Le Degré 41 (Iliazd), Paris. Printer: Georges Visat. Edition: 65. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of David S. Orentreich, MD, 2015. Photo: Peter Butler. © 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.]

In addition to Ernst’s aquatint illustrations and Iliazd’s fanciful typography, the book also features a completely invented hieroglyphic script by Ernst. It brings his career full circle to those early Dada books from Cologne.

As described above, beauty and artistic interest often originate outside traditional artistic practices. The exhibition Thinking Machines explores the artistic ideas that emerged alongside early computer technologies as well as the beauty of the devices themselves.

It is easy in the age of ubiquitous, distributed, and often invisible computing that the most powerful computers were singular and central elements of many workplaces and institutions. The Thinking Machines CM-2, made in 1987, both fits in the emerging dystopian future imaged in the era but also collapses complexity to beautiful patterns in the red LEDs against the black cubic casing. Apple has always been known for their design, and some of their early offerings were featured, including the Macintosh XL (successor to the infamous Lisa).

While the machines themselves were works of art, artists immediately saw their potential for exploring new ways of creating – we can only imagine what Max Ernst might have done with these technologies! But we don’t have to imagine with others, such as John Cage. Here we see both the score and record for HPSCHD, his collaboration with Lejaren Hiller that featured computed chance elements and computer-generated sounds on tape alongside live harpsichords.

The intersection of music and technology is at the core of what we do at CatSynth, but we have also long been interested in technology in other arts. The exhibition included samples of sonakinatography, a system of notation for motion and sound developed by Channa Horwitz.

The notation system uses numbers and colors arranged in eight-by-eight squares and can be used to represent music, dance, lighting, or other interpretations of motion over time. The notation and a proposed work were submitted by Horwitz for 1971 Art and Technology exhibit at LACMA – although the proposal for the piece with eight beams of light was included in the catalog, it was never fabricated. Horwitz work was buried beneath the work of male artists and she was not invited to speak or meet with industry representatives collaborating on the exhibition. This led to an outcry about the exhibition’s lack of women, a problem that echoes to this day in the world of art and technology. Fortunately, women were recognized in this MoMA exhibition of early technology in art. In addition to Horwitz, we saw work by Vera Molnár, a pioneer of computer art. In the print below, she digitally riffs on a drawing by Paul Klee.

Surprisingly, MoMA has rarely delved deeply into fashion in its exhibitions. For a long time, the biggest major exhibition the museum held for this medium was Bernard Rudofsky’s 1944 exhibition Are Clothes Modern?. But the museum is revisiting the topic in a major way with the current Items: Is Fashion Modern? a deliberate play on Rudofsky’s original title. The exhibition includes 111 garments and accessories and places them in both conceptual and chronological organizations. There are of course mainstays of fashion such as the “little black dress.”

It is hard to look at a fashion exhibition without thinking “Would I or would I not wear this?” In the above example, the dress on the left is something I would wear, while the one on the right is something I would not (except perhaps as a costume for a film, etc.). But side by side they show a range of tastes and styles and how they shape and reflect our images of our own bodies. The most intriguing design in the “I would wear this” category was this dress from Pierre Cardin’s “Cosmos Collection”. Even if this was intended to represent “the future”, I could see it easily working in the present, whether the present is 1967 or 2017.

[Cardin. COSMOS]

The exhibition did also touch on new technologies and innovations, such as with this dress that uses 3D printing technology.

[Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louise-Rosenberg. Kinematics Dress. 2013. Laser-sintered nylon.]

Of course, not all fashion is “high fashion”, and the exhibit deliberately covered both. There were the ionic baseball caps of the New York Yankees and their evolution over the years (someone had to design each one of them). And even a display of Jewish kippas, ranging from the simple to the whimsical.

I was particularly amused to see the Yankees-themed kippa. It was two “religions” colliding.

Our final exhibition is the MoMA’s large and comprehensive retrospective of works by photographer Stephen Shore. I have to admit, I was not particularly acquainted with Shore’s work, and after touring the exhibition I realize I should have been. In many ways, Shore’s work is photography writ small, often employing simple camera technologies, including a novelty Disney toy camera from the 1970s and Instagram on an iPhone in his current work. And his subjects range from the foment of 1960s New York and Andy Warhol’s Factory to stark rural landscapes.

[Stephen Shore. New York, New York. 1964. Gelatin silver print, 9 1/8 × 13 1/2″ (23.2 × 34.3 cm). © 2017 Stephen Shore, courtesy 303 Gallery]

[Stephen Shore. U.S. 93, Wikieup, Arizona, December 14, 1976. 1976. Chromogenic color print, printed 2013, 17 × 21 3/4″ (43.2 × 55.2 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of Thomas and Susan Dunn. © 2017 Stephen Shore]

I particularly like the “ordinary” nature of some of the settings, main streets, highways, abandoned booths. The juxtaposition of New York against the small town and rural landscapes feels quintessentially American. Shore was also known for working in color, especially after leaving New York – this was something that wasn’t done so much in the world of art photography at the time. He also deliberately subverted the idea of art photography at times, including in his 1971 exhibition All the Meat You Can Eat, which was composed mostly of found imagery (commercials, postcards, snapshots) in dissonant arrangements that were more theatrical than anthropological.

Shore also did commission work. A few of these took him abroad, including to Israel, where he combined his interests in photography and archaeology. His most recent work fully embraces the modern technology of Instagram sharing – you can follow Shore’s Instagram account – and on-demand printing. The subject matter is varied, often focusing on small-scale or interesting framing of everyday items, but there are also occasional snaps that wouldn’t appear out of place on a tasteful personal account.

It’s not uncommon for me to be inspired to pursue my own work after an exhibition. This was certainly an example, as Shore’s photography mirrors many of own work in the medium, particularly focusing on place and texture, as well as traveling the country to pursue one’s art. Indeed, the inspiration was a bit more poignant because wondering the images I felt that this was exactly what I should be doing. It perhaps that realization that led me to tear up a bit as I left.

MoMA Part 2: Stephen Shore, Thinking Machines, Max Ernst, Is Fashion Modern was originally published on CatSynth

[oakendesk]

Detective Fiction Weekly Sep 3 1932

Lejaren Hiller

The Shadow Magazine Sep 1932

George Rozen

The Shadow Magazine Sep 1932

Jerome Rozen later re-painted George Rozen's cover

detail

[oakendesk]

Black Book Detective Feb 1935

Rafael DeSoto

Detective Fiction Weekly Jan 19 1935

Lejaren Hiller

[oakendesk]

Detective Fiction Weekly Mar 25 1933

Lejaren Hiller

[oakendesk]

Detective Fiction Weekly Apr 21 1928

Lejaren Hiller

True Detective Mysteries Mar 1928

Dalton Stevens

[seattlemysterybooks]

top: ebay

bottom: philsp

January 23, 1926 issue

cover art by Lejaren Hiller

Roy W. Hinds, “Piano Fingers” (Part 1 of 2)  

Anonymous, “When a Lass Cheated the Maiden"  

J. Jefferson Farjeon, “The Deserted Inn” (Detective X. Crook)    

Barclay Northcote: Forgotten Felons   

H.S. Sheffield, “The Murderer”    

Capt. Patrick D. Tyrrell , “A Chain of Circumstances"   

T.T. Flynn, “Poe’s Peerless Pack”   

Anonymous, “The Gambler”    

Joseph Gollomb, “One Out of Four"   

Austin Wood, “Measured Hours”    

Arthur Preston Hankins, “Disks of Ill Omen” (Part 2 of 2) 

Anonymous, “An Old Wrong Righted"    

Anthony Wynne, “The Dancing Girl” (Dr. Eustace Hailey)    

Seattle Mystery Bookshop