Due for a Weekend Workout

I'm due for a weekend workout - i.e. like around in bed for as much of it as possible. I've been working / travelling for the last 5 weekends straight. Bwargh. So tired.

Here is a little piece on the VICEland blog about Paul and his exhibition. It is written by Piers Martin. I used to bump into him a bit more frequently than I do know and conversation would always turn to Shop where I used to work cause at one point we sold Petit Bateau underwear in grown up sizes. Piers has a kids underwear on adults fetish.

Here is Paul the morning after his exhibition opening.


Then on Thursday night I went to some party with Brains where he was meant to be having a ghetto tech battle with Prancehall. Only Brains got there so late, he only played about 5 records. So I guess Prancehall totally slew Brains. Oh well. Prancehall totally invisible manned me [this was no air pie - he looked straight through me], everyone there was about 20 years old and I heard better DJ's in Paris and Hamburg, like Eurokai, recently so Brains and I went home.


Thugly - "Hey Brains - grrreat party!"
Brains - "Yeah. I think there is some liquid poo in my pants."

In the cab we shared on the way home, Paul decided he wanted to learn the secrets of the PhotoFace [TM], which I was only to willing to share with him.


The first sucess.
Me - "Don't smile for the camera!"
Him - "I've got boss eyes. I need to stare past the lense."


PhotoFace [TM] Improv.


Not a member of a death metal crew, but on his second PhotoFace [TM] improv. Double Fisting the "WEBSIIIIIIIIIITTTTE" gang signs. [TM] Julian Van Aalderen who can also do a phenomenal sock puppet.


Awwwwwhhhh shit!! The total chillax PhotoFace [TM] STRICTLY ON ANOTHER LEVEL!

Speaking of Another Level:

Girl you gotta know what ya doin' to me
when you're giving me your sexy thang,
Don't ever change what you do with ya body
it feels so beautiful,it feels so right
explosions goin on with us every night.
I cant hold back the soul with one in the whole,
You can just call me kid dynamite cause your love
sweeter than honey
Girl it aint funny, Got me open wide, world to my dollar bill,
thats where I'm putting my money girl you know

Chorus

You know its the bomb diggy diggy when we get jiggy
let me piggy back ride on it all night long, while i'm singin' my song,
all thru the hoody hoody wanna get that goody goody
You know it's the bomb diggy diggy bomb bomb diggy
Can I get some of your bomb diggy jelly jelly goody chocolate puddy,
wanna get a little bit of your goody ,goody ....goody, goody

Your love's so supernatural,
you got me chasin' after you
I'll go wherever you are just to tell me and i'll be packin' up
I'll be your journey man for love.
Travelin' from hood to hood (ghetto to ghetto)
Any place anytime cause your love makes me feel so good baby

sweeter than honey
Girl it aint funny, Got me open wide, world to my dollar bill,
thats where I'm putting my money girl you know

{Chorus}

so good) oh it feels good when your love comes down on me (so good).
You're blowing my mind. You got me goin' crazy (so good).
oh it's good to me (so good) whoaa oh baby baby yeah!

And I wonder if Brains played my True Steppers record and the Summer Jam one I lent him at Real Gold last night?

xx Lektrogirl

Intentional Computing

PAUL B. DAVIS [BEIGE]
30th MAY - 23rd JUNE 2007
PV WED 30th MAY 6PM


SEVENTEEN
17 Kingsland Rd, London, E2 8AA
www.seventeengallery.com


Paul B. Davis utilises outdated/obsolete computer technologies, including most notably Nintendo games systems, in order to perform specialist interventions into the territory of the digital art medium. While the materials utilised are ready-made, the use principle is entirely hand crafted; Davis altering the existing code while adding nothing new. This idea, the implemented projection of an alternative potential onto a ready-made object, exactly and succinctly captures the structured abridgement – between computers and art, between theory and praxis, ongoing in Davis' practice.


Davis is a founder member of the pioneering programming ensemble, BEIGE, which also comprises Cory Arcangel (Team Gallery, NY), Joe Beuckman and Joseph Bonn. BEIGE members have subsequently used Davis' hacked NES concept to create a distinct body of work that has been shown internationally. See www.post-data.org/beige


This exhibition comprises two large projections. One is a new NES hack that takes its form from the pirate video game cartridges that first alerted Davis to the possibility of intervening with games. These 'multicarts' often had for or five different games on one cartridge and echoing this, Davis is presenting five different works on one machine. Fittingly these pirated works are not all by Davis' hand, as he loots excerpts from other BEIGE collective hacks, questioning authorship in the already grey area of software as readymade. The second piece is a new video, a collaboration with the trans-media collective Paper Rad, which accentuates and aesthecises artefacts inherent in video compression formats, particularly MPEG-4. A third work, in collaboration with Cory Arcangel, titled Fat Bits, is a triptych of monitors which presents close up images of an NHL ice hockey match, converted into imagery housed in a NES. Reminiscent of the timeless NES Ice Hockey game, these abstracted motions of brawling figures present a bacon-esque scene, groaning and grunting in a slow motion and distorted struggle.


Aesthetically Davis' images are solid slabs of reordered, pure proto-modernist colour. With his alterations a new game, a new screen and a new surface emerges. The materiality of a hacked game cartridge, set into the instantly recognisable Nintendo console, guarantees that the recession into a purely two-dimension digital fold is never as total as it is in the work of other digital artists, the work remains an object. Further, the dizzying hyper-graphics of many related practitioners are surrendered in favour of the neat, blocky pixilation of the outdated NES operating system. This show also includes an installation featuring 8-bit Construction Set – an art/music/concept work rendered in vinyl which will be mounted on a record deck within the gallery, visitors being invited to play it out to their own satisfaction.


Quoting his influences as ranging from formalised British computing theory (Alan Turing) to the advent of widespread domestic console gaming (Mario), Davis has pioneered a truly unique strategy through a multiplicity of actions, networks and artistic creations. Davis' practise is at once rigorous, conceptual – even nerdy, while nonetheless fully intimate with the patois, style, attitude and aesthetic of retrogressively inspired, data-bit multi-media contemporary culture, that has recently forced its way into the public consciousness.


Paul B. Davis, as part of BEIGE, has exhibited internationally at venues including the The Whitney Biennial 2004 (NYC), Vilma Gold (UK) Team Gallery (NYC) and Foxy Productions (NYC).