Last Sunday at Cafe Oto

Wednesday 19 September 2012

This is at the sound check for Robin Fox’s gig at Cafe Oto last Sunday.

I played my set just before Rob came on with his computer rig that plays the sounds his software generates as both audio and as waveforms projected across the room with a laser.

My piece was pretty good, I guess, but then who’s going to remember when it’s immediately followed by this?

My own drab little table of gear just tried to look inconspicuous behind the smoke machine.

Gig this Sunday! Cafe Oto – 16 September

Saturday 15 September 2012

How’s this for short notice? I’m the last minute addition to Cafe Oto’s amazing Robin Fox gig tomorrow night. I’ll be playing a set of live analogue electronic feedback opening for Rob’s laser and synth rampage. Details here.

Australian Cover Versions

Thursday 13 September 2012


This is the fourth version of this painting I’ve made and I’m starting to get the hang of it. The process is more efficient, I’m getting better control of the colour, and doing just enough to completely obscure the original cover art. I always wanted a series, to show up differences created by human fallibility and indiscriminate entropy.

The bottom right image above shows the “finished” painting, although it won’t be complete until it has been sufficiently “matured”. The first one I painted is starting to wear out nicely.

I Am The President Of Capitalists Inc.

Wednesday 5 September 2012

“Would you like to join a society called Capitalists Inc.? (Just so no one would think we were Communists.) Anyone joining automatically becomes president. To join you must show you’ve destroyed at least one hundred records…”

— John Cage, Lecture on Nothing, 1949.

It’s John Cage’s 100th birthday today, and like everyone else I think I’m the only person who gets what Cage was really about and it just happens to align exactly with my own way of thinking.

I can’t remember if it was Cage himself or someone he was quoting who made the Sphinx-like statement that the opposite of every idea is another good idea. For all my infatuation with Cage’s music, I still like to take the kill-the-Buddha approach to his ideas and see what happens when they are deliberately opposed or misinterpreted.

I Am The President Of Capitalists Inc. was a performance and art exhibition I made in 2003. Its premise was to misunderstand Cage’s intellectual teasing quoted above and interpret it as a literal instruction for some sort of expressionist, confrontational, bourgeoisie-titillating aktion – all of which are opposed to Cage’s aesthetics.

To add insult to injury, my performance was conducted with the air of a re-enactment of a once-vital artistic statement which has since been embraced by the regime it once opposed and stripped of all subversive potency.

The golf club was a last minute idea, as I found it in a cupboard in a back room of the gallery. I now understand why golfers wear gloves.

Once all the records were smashed, I handed out business cards commemorating my new status. The room was left in that state for the rest of the exhibition: broken records, beer bottles and sundry detritus. A television was placed in the back corner playing the video of the performance, with the screen angled away so punters had to walk over the pile of rubbish to see what was going on.

During the exhibition some unexpected events took place in that room, but I’ll save that for another time, soon.