MTAA – Day 7 Restless Crowd Control

T.Whid: Hi and welcome back to week 2 of MTAA’s couch surfing at Lee Walton’s blog.

M.River: This week we’re ego surfing for the lost gems and quasi classics pulled from deep Google search queries.

T.Whid: Looking around the 10th or 15th page of a Google Video search for ‘MTAA’ we came across this classic from 2001.

M.River: Our friend Fritz Welch asked if we would be interested in doing a environment for a one night performance of music at a local Brooklyn art gallery / music venue called the Good/ Bad Art Collective

T.Whid: We, of course, said “Sure, why the hell not?”

M.River: As it was ages ago and a one night event, here is what we think we did for an artwork called Restless Crowd Control.

T.Whid: 1.Covered the four walls with slide projection of riots

M.River: 2. Made four police barricades stenciled with the word MTAA Please Stand Back.

T.Whid: 3. Set up two video cameras, one to record and one to broadcast a CU-SeeMe video chat site.

M.River: 4. Projected the video chat room on the gallery wall and the gallery into the chat room.

T. Whid: 5. Set up a text to voice loop of the words “please stand back from the barricade”

M.River: 6. Set up the stage for each musician in different parts of the room.

T.Whid: …and last but not least, the music that night included a set music by Willing (Fritz Welch, Ian Christe) and special guest Stephen O’Malley (of Sunn 0))), Khanate and Lotus Eaters).

Restless Crowd Control (RCC) from mriver on Vimeo.

M.River: The event went off as you would expect. With the different stages around the space, the barricades cutting up the floor space, and the images projected everywhere, people did not know where to stand. When Willing came on, they cleared out about half the crowd in the first 4 minutes. People who wandered across the CU-SeeMe event online seemed generally confused as to what they saw. One online guy from France decided to go ahead and get naked. Lots of beer was consumed. And, at the end of the night, we all thought it worked out well.

T.Whid: Yes, all in all, a good night in for art, music and the Internet back in 2001.

M.River: Yes, a shinning moment in a dark age. And speaking of shinning, come back on Wednesday as we continue to mine Google for pure MTAA gold.

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