Martin Beck’s “environmental” art calls for attractions and sounds of a new era

If you like the idea of ​​partitioning and luxury in the sound of “psychologically ultimate seaside” or “best birds”, you’re not alone – in fact, it’s part of a lineage that goes back to a series of mind-changing recordings that debuted in 1969. These 11 volumes. environmenta series of LPs, with long-term choices of natural sound and auditory abstractions (such as computer-generated bells), are significant in the history of environmental music and new era culture. Now, over fifty years later, they are the subject of Martin Beck’s new artwork.

The original record is both obscure and ubiquitous, recorded in record-breaking bins and hidden in plain sight. “When I first started buying them, they were priced at $1.50 or $2,” Baker said. “Now they’re a little up, maybe because I bought a lot.”

Baker, who environment– The inspirational work is the subject of a show at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut (until October 5), first to learn about the story of the series in a speech by a friend at Columbia University, “an architectural theorist prepared a book about psychedelic and space in the 70s,” he said. “Records are footnotes, and after I looked up and started reading the liner notes and found more information, it was obvious that they were treasures.”

environment More than just footnotes, at its peak, attracted the attention of wide-eyed (and-breathing) –Newsweek Calling the first volume a “sound supplement” and a distribution agreement with the Atlantic Records. But from the start, it was a weird business, hosted by Irvresario, a utopian visionary and a arrogant pitcher who has extravagant claims. advertise environment Saying that these records can “replace aspirin, sedatives, other drugs” and so-called “hearing test responses” because certificates on LP sleeves include “a gentle, subtle trip”, “a wonderful journey of making love”, “speed of making love”, “reading speed”, “speakers”, “speakers” seem to be drip, as well as “Alligators” and “Alligators” and “Alligators” and “Alligators” and “Alligators” and “Alligators”, and many Star Quality!

These records, along with promotional materials used to position them as lifestyle accessories and productivity aids, are added to Baker’s art esseses, which include everything from wall works and videos to the atmosphere of the overall design and performance. The first room of the exhibition greets visitors, the album cover is cut into isolated images (a sensory face, swamp, lightning), the debris is located in the frame with white coverings, as well as a series of large, complex fern drawings covered with text (“relaxed spa, hypnotherapy clinic, spiritual clinic, spiritual institutions, spiritual institutions”…”). A separate room is dedicated to video work – by environment Recordings – In the day, in the Joshua Tree in California, subtle scenes of New York City and interior interiors are there Baker spends some time. (Otherwise he was born in Austria, otherwise he was located in New York and Vienna.)

Baker says he approaches environment Through two ideas. “One of them is that they literally provide a tool to map one space to another, turning the architectural space into natural space. It’s almost like there’s a conflict: where are you? Are you at home? Or are you in nature?”

He continued: “It has something to do with the interest in the atmosphere of the space, especially the atmosphere of the exhibition. What is the atmosphere when you walk into the exhibition? What is it not affecting the arrangement of objects in the space, it actually helps your body, or is it helps you like the body, makes you comfortable? Will it make you comfortable? Will it make you comfortable? Will it make you feel comfortable? Will it make you frustrated?

Baker feels the connection between “simple acoustics change your relationship with space without really seeing anything” and “what topic or lining notes around these records and the PR language behind it” (the PR language behind them). In a capitalist economy, you will feel better, but you will feel kind toward one exploitation.

The citation of well-being shows that the steady rise of a healthy culture remains healthy and restored, but also oppressive and creepy, decades later. Baker pointed out that long-term detection has been encountered environment In recent academic books Hush: Media and Voice Self-control By Mack Hagood and Open, watch, drift: A psychedelic past of ambient music Author Victor Szabo. Proof of environment Volume 12 was even redirected through Volume 12 of the new concept imagined by Machine Leather in Australia. In the form of sound installation and the vinyl LP released in June Environment 12 The sharp study of the origins and speculative inferences of the series, illuminated in part by the generative voice clone, is all about what the machine listens to describe as “a collection of songs and allegorical recycled from the ruins of future history.”

As far as he is concerned, Baker is more stable when he suddenly appears in the new era. “Back to the late 60s and early 70s, these were products,” he said of environment Record the desire for improvement, realization, and anything else they may have to offer. “Now, of course, there are industries dedicated to this industry, and everyone uses tools to try to operate better in different situations.”

Ironically, the sound environment Bring Baker to a new country, as an artist, his conceptual tendencies gave way to more basic gestures. When he first studied the series, he said, “I started thinking about nothing I’ve done as an artist over the past 20 years has involved my hands and I was curious about the skills I could still take to use art. “So he began to make drawings from the Aldrich exhibition and put the title on the exhibition: “…once, days or weeks.” ”

“For years, I’ve been collecting and shooting images of ferns, thinking that one day I’ll do something with them, even if I don’t know much,” Baker said. “I started making drawings of them and was really attracted by the idea that I didn’t need too much. I just need a pencil and a piece of paper. It doesn’t involve production. I don’t need anyone else. I can do it on a kitchen table.”

When he draws, he begins combining poetic phrases taken from text compiled by Irv Teibel environment– Related Copy of Ads – Follow the words “Concentrated Noise Masked Creativity / Noise Masked Relaxation Sleep / Isolated Noise Masked Reading / Social Interaction Relaxation Sleep”.

“The first few attempts were small, and there was no work at all, they were just bored,” Baker said of his initial drawings. “At some point I thought: Why not try changing the scale? This ended up really exercising. Their body scale was ridiculous, doing it with just a pencil, spending weeks painting for weeks. I couldn’t draw for more than three hours a day because my fingers started, because my fingers started. It appeared.”