May 5 2008, 11:14 PM

Suddenly, I understood.

May 1 2008, 9:17 AM

I am starting to make final decisions. Sparkfun module can't function as the actual transmitter for the project, because I can't increase its power enough to get a fair and even transmitting range, so I will purchase a ramsey FM25B or a FM30 and a TM100 antenna. Hopefully that combination will give me a range of at 200 meters or maybe more if I get the FM30, which sounds about the right transmitting range for the project, since you might still be able to make 'eye contact' with the statue from that distance. I assembled a huge set of tv antennas together, those are the one to be installed at the statue, but they won't be the actual antenna that will be broadcasting. TM100 will be the real antenna transmitting but it is not interesting at all to look at, so the tv antennas will help people to immediately get the idea, plus it might help create a much suggeting image. I am working in the SuperCollider code, mainly on the processing of the live mics that will be coming into the computer from inside the statue. A set of 3 or 4 mics will placed, maybe all four inside the statue or maybe 3 inside the statue (one giving me a mainly high freq range, anotjer giving me a low frequency range, one on the base for rumble) and maybe a 4th attached to Taco del Mar cash register that might be used as a trigger for changing vowels, voices and playing back archival sounds. So a set of vowel formants for Soprano, Alto, Counter Tenor, Tenor and Bass will be filtering these inputs on one part of the code. These will be taking care of the actual, real-time resonances of the statue's surroundings. On another part of the code, a series of historical archival sounds will be played, grained and their grains entwined creating a turbulent sound that should be convolved or mixed with the live mics inputs. These archival sounds will be the symbollic resonances inside the statue: Lenin's voice declaring the creating of the USSR, George Bush Senior announcing its end, a music box version of the International Socialist, another version by an a capella male choir, and yet more sounds to be decided. I might get into it some add from Taco del Mar, Red Menace beer, etc. I made up my mind about the performance component of the project: I will encarnate a version of El Eternauta (Argentine comic character that travel in time). I will make myself a "suit" with a series of loudspeakers attached to fm walkmans tuned to the Radio Volodia frequency and turn myself into a walking antenna. I will choose 5 points where to walk to, taking the statue as the epicenter of this 5 point star, and do an action in each one of this points while Lenin sounds' are emanating from me. Tuning the antenna should be a series of choreographed movements happening in each spot prior to whatever action i am doing. I will also be carrying a CB radio, with its antenna, through which I will also be braodcasting ad receiving activity on another range of radio frequencies. So far the actions are: tune the statue, buy a taco at Taco del Mar, do something with the Red Menace Beer, take a bus, turn an "iron curtain" into something else. A series of signs like the one posted on the left of this site will be placed on the borders of the broadcasting sector, delimitating the zone of influence of the statue. Still need to contact the actual owner of the statue for final permissions and Hale's Pale Beers for sponsoring.

April 22 2008, 11:54 PM

I've contacted John, manager of Taco del Mar, and Jay from Royal Grinders. They are both ok with me doing anything at the statue. John even offered me to use a small office at his shop to put my stuff. I still need to contact the current owner of the statue. And people from the Hale's Ale Red Menace beer.

Working title: Radio Volodia

I've performed more tests regarding broadcasting power. Apparently the Sparkfun module works better if you broadcast in a free frequency. At the statue, i could broadcast along the whole "plaza" where Lenin, Taco del Mar and Royal Grinders are. But I still need more transmitting range, ideally, a radius of 150 meters.Actually, if I decide to finally broadcast in only one frequency, I could simply buy an FM Transmitter as the FM30 for $100 or so...

April 14 2008, 3:43 PM

I finally phoned Anne Slope, my point person so far regarding finding permissions for doing something with the statue. I called to ask her who would be the best person to contact first out of a fairly long list of people she had already identified as possible contacts. Amazingly, she tells me that she just got off the phone with John, manager of the Taco del Mar shop which apparently are the owners of the land (or most probably they are currently leasing it), and that he should be the first person I should contact...

April 14 2008, 3:06 PM

I need to take a decision asap about what the final project will look like. I've been thinking about using the statue "visually", the actual object also as a support for the project, but somewhat all the ideas on that end up in the dead end of "decoration", which is basically what the statue has been thorugh so far. So anything I put on it (antennae, speakers, ekeko-like stuff), even though different from what others have put on it, will ultimately be also a "decoration". Unless maybe I extremely saturate it with stuff to the point where it gets almost hidden by it. But somewhat, if choosing to go down that path, the whole radio ideas begin to fade away, not being anymore central or justified, deviating the whole project from its original form...specially if I decide to put speakers all over it. It would also force me to concentrate in a more visual aspect of the project, rather than in its sonic aspects. So I've been going through the first ideas I had back in October of 2007 and started rethinking about a more "inmaterial" version, a more "invisible" approach to the statue, maybe more closely related to the radio as a medium. And also thinking again about the ecenomic variable involved through Lenin, reconsidering the idea of relating him with Taco del Mar, the taco shop a few meters away from the statue. The image of the statue next to Taco del Mar might be the perfect image to describe whatever was of Lenin's Revolutionary Project... I am also thinking about how "market" and "radio waves" share an "invisible" component, about the inmateriality of money. Maybe there is finally a way of doing something to the statue that is extremely related and functional to the project, or even to its broadcasting nature. Maybe simply covering or wrapping him with a red cloth, or with an aluminum paper, which might somewhat help for the antenna thing.

April 10 2008, 1:26 PM

yesterday i performed a series of measurements on the statue confirming that it is conductive, thus susceptible of being turned into an antenna

i can't reach Jessica from the Fremont Chamber of Commerce, i am trying to find some other person that can fill me in on the permissions that i might need for doing the project

i am still thinking about what's the best way of dealing with Lenin itself, as a figure. Does Lenin actually has anything to say today? Is the project really about him? Lenin has become an anachronistic figure, harmless, completely absorbed and neutralized, literally an object on sale, that's why it can stand in the middle of Fremont. Which is the statue today, that by no means would anyone bear to have there? Who is he taking the place of? What is the statue pointing at by not being it? Could Lenin be in place of something else? Is this other voice the one he should be embodying? Who or What would be as unbearable as Lenin might have been if placed exactly there but in 1958? Is he seeing something we can't see and he needs to show us? Or is it more that he is there for us not to see something that he might be distracting us from seeing? What should the project reveal through his emanations?

One image that might illustrate one possible effect of the project is analogous to the beginning of David Lynch's Blue Velvet. In the opening sequence we see a perfect small town, quiet, friendly, clean, shinny, happy... Then the camera "dives" into the grass of a garden, completely changing the scale, and reveals a horrible, noise, monstruous, grouse "underworld" as an underlayer of the "perfect" side of things. Maybe the project takes this direction, capturing the vibrations from its surroundings (produced in a scale that we are not normally aware of) and emanating them back in an ominous manner after being filtered by the statue, showing how under an apparent level of no disturbances lies these latent turbulencies... But again, why is this being revealed through Lenin? Is the nature of that turbulencies related to him? In which way?...

Maybe this statue gets involve in a dialogue with the other statues of Lenin in the US, which "live" in very different situations.

If the statue is somewhat coming back to life, is it really Lenin the one returning from the dead, or is he more a medium through which something esle that needs to be said is finally being said? Something (someone) else that finds through his cracks the way of emerging?

April 7 2008, 2:46 PM

I start reading "The production of Space" by Henri Lefebvre and "Memory, History, Forgetting", by Paul Ricoeur

April 5 2008, 9:21 PM

possible titles:

red menace (reinforces the souvenir thread)

the black sheep (reinforces the object, trophy thread)

Amerikea ("one-path" mind set, centers on glocal crossroad)

April 5 2008, 8:55 PM

The 2008 version of the project takes a few considerations from the first draft, but simplifies considerably the first brainstormed ideas. One of the most important differences is the incorporation of the radio as a possible medium and the possibility of broadcasting as a component of the system. This opens up new ideas: the statue as an antenna, the body as a sensing-transmission device and as resonant (filtering) space, the ether as a memory space, "emanation" as a way of sound diffusion and "animating" the statue.

The 2007 version ended up using a proximity sensor that would play three different sounds deoending on how close to the statue a person was. This range was thought of as concentric rings. As farther you got from the statue, the farther you got from Lenin's original discourse, thus from his voice. So the closer to the statue, the system would randomly choose a fragment from a Lenin speech and play it back. The second ring (a little farther from the statue) would play a male choir a cappela version of the International Socialist song (the "original" idea consolidated in a schematic, and 'not-flexible' organization). The farther ring would play a musical box version of the same song (the idea completely degenerated, transformed into a souvenir). Since the sensor was constatly receiving data, new sounds were being played back before the previous ones ended, producing an interesting multilayered sound constelation.

The project was never made 'in situ', but at the DXARTS Fremont Warehouse. A red plastic wall filled in for the statue, and an empty bottle of Red Menace beer (brewed in Seattle) was placed next to it on the floor.

April 5 2008, 8:31 PM

notes on the first draft (fall 2007)

||ABOUT THE SITE||
...the ideas that got farther and more consistent were related to the lenin statue just a few blocks away from the fremont mecha lab/though it is kind of a local touristic attraction and it has been already appropriated through other artistic gestures, i felt i could take it somewhere else/i am not sure what i was really trying to do but i think eventually would involve some kind of "animation" of the statue, bring it back to life, arise the spirit within it through sensoring its surroundings in some way/so i committed myself in building a little conceptual, historical and material background for the project, hoping the possible discoveries would help know more about my intuition and about what would be a interesting thing to do there

||BACKGROUND||
monuments are intriguing, tombs and statues are generally not the best way to defeat time because it allow the living to change their minds on the subject/i was also going over and over again augusto monterrosso's the black sheep, do you remember it?

"In a distant land many years ago, there lived a black sheep. It was executed by firing squad. A century later, the grieving flock erected an equestrian statue in honour of the slain sheep that looked very nice in the park. In the years that followed, every time a black sheep appeared, it was executed so that ordinary sheep could practise sculpture."

anyways, i started a little research and learned immediately that the lenin statue is actually on sale right now, so the family of the late original buyer can pay the house's mortgage he took for acquiring it/so it is on the street as a displayed item on a shop's window.../the (hi)story of the statue is also interesting: built in slovakia just a year before communism collapsed, it pictures lenin in a more aggressive posture around flames and warlike symbols... also the idea of a "state monument" becoming the souvenir of an american seemed promising, even as a gesture of an open minded person/then i found only three more statues of lenin in the us: one in las vegas, in a casino called red square/the head's statue was cut off and the headless body placed on the lobby/the other one is dallas, right in front of a burger place and has a plaque in its base which reads "america won"/and other in the east village, in the rooftop of the "red square apartments" building/fremont's statue is the biggest of them all and the one in better shape/got pics on the internet of the four/then i look for some materials: i found some nice speeches (his voice, a very important material for my work, and for animating the inorganic), among them the declaration of the ussr, then i found george bush senior declaring the death of communism, and a lot of versions of the international socialist hymn, many of them very interesting!/so i chose two of lenin speeches, the bush speech and three of the versions of the hymn: one sang a cappella by a male choir, a musical box version and verdi's fragment "inno delli nazione" conducted by toscanini, that merges the international socialist with the american national anthem (that single find was worth the search and probably the failure of the project)/as a last material, i needed to relate this also with argentinian or south american reality, so i chose a kind of surrealistic speech by menem, president of argentina between 1989 (year of the collapse of communism, beginning of freewheeling neoliberalism, bush's speech) and 1999: he said that argentina would develop some kind of way to fly to anywhere in the world within two hours by going beyond atmosphere to the stratosphere and landing back... it seemed somewhat appropriate to have an argentine speech about space race...

||SENSING||
so i had the idea, the site and the materials i was willing to work with/what i was interesting in doing, though i obviously knew from the beginning it was far out of my range, was getting to sense as much as i could from the statue's reactions to its environment: the temperature of it surface, its humidity, the vibrations caused by street traffic on its skin (very important!), proximity of people, street activity (sound and movement), light, etc and getting all this information to control (play, mix & process) the sound files by means of super collider... in ways i did not really decide yet/sound emission should be treated in such a way that it sound as "emanating" from the statue (this was a MUST, not yet worked out right)...

eventually i was trying to incorporate economic info i a more direct way, maybe some internet checking of nasdaq but i felt it was enough sensing already.../and i also thought somewhat more appropriate if i was to incorporate an economic variable to check not nasdaq but the Taco del Mar shop that is right next to the statue so that when they reach $250,000 in selling's counting from the beginning of the installation, this would terminate the project while playing loudly and plainly the verdi tune/i thought that maybe in this way i could limit the project in time, incorporate the selling info which i thought important (to a spurious end through the taco shop), superimpose different times (present with the sensors, past with the sound files, future with the transformations) and spaces (seattle, slovakia, us, ussr, argentina, etc) and the black sheep.

so this was the original project, at least its starting point/the version i tried to do was MUCH simpler: get a proximity sensor trigger raw fragments of the basic materials i chose, and document people's reactions, more like a site specific action/ but something as simple as this yet i could not make it so... measure how far both of my brain hemispheres are from each other

April 5 2008, 8:23 PM

Bronze is a conductive material, so it might be possible to actually turn the statue into an antenna, or at least a part of it.

April 4 2008, 10:18 PM

I am considering differents ways of dealing with the statue as a sculpture. I took a 4 inch speaker today with the idea that it would stick to it by means of its magnet, but it didn't. Bronze do not seem to work like other metals... One of the ideas is to "stick" to the statue a series of small speakers and use them to reproduce 'in situ' what might also be broadcast.

Another idea regarding "using the object" is to attach a series of antennas to it.

April 4 2008, 8:48 PM

Two days ago i produced a series of recordings of the statue using a contact mic: inside, on the surface and on the base of the statue. I slipped the mic inside the statue through a couple of gaps left when the rebuilt it after dismantling it for transportation.

radio volodia | FM radio recording [extract 1]
radio volodia | FM radio recording [extract 2]
radio volodia | FM radio recording [extract 3]
radio volodia | ambience recording [extract 4]

VIDEO OF ETHERNAUT PERFORMANCE

baseLenin

baseLenin02

gapLenin

insideLenin01

insideLenin03