where fuzzy edges and hues of color can lead one to wander...

luna-3 soviet moon images, october 7, 1959

'it seemed i was observing the earth from the outside. i was in great empty space and saw the planets rolling quietly.'
františek kupka
*quote from four possible landscapes liner notes, steve roden

'i am in the middle of a mass of thousands of very small particles that are brilliantly lit up like they are luminescent. they are bright yellowish green, about the size and intensity of a firefly on a real dark night. i have never seen anything like it. they look like little stars. they swirl around the capsule and go in front of the window.'
john glenn, november 1960
*quote used as inspiration for various works by steve roden such as transmission 11/60 (stellar regions), 2002, and transmissions exhibition, 2005

i keep coming back to these two quotes which seem to be a recurring theme in the large body of work from steve roden. kupka's words sound much like the experience john glenn had when first viewing the earth from above, each articulating a new perspective, looking from the outside in - gathering various correspondences and creating new meanings.

it was from four possible landscapes that i decided to piece together other works by roden, not only for the kupka quote, but because it is a work where the sounds seem to become a painting in unseen space, reminiscent of the painterly process, as though they were physical drips of paint on a canvas.

roden's work is so dense with associations that he is able to draw, that i have found myself discovering an almost overwhelming amount of connections: where he takes personal experiences and creates otherworldly comparisons such as linking memories of a bench in centre pompidou with robert bresson and the moon (jellyfish so like the moon as a title, for example), translating these relationships into a poetic moment in time...





floating discarded dissonance
moving like a train
sounding like a bell.

***

a combination of movement and light
a combination of blue and yellow
a combination of things
seen and unnoticed.

***

i slowly begin to lose the laws of gravity

i slowly begin to float
away from this earth.

***

i am beneath
the complete
surface of things

scraped
and unseen.

images and excerpted text from
steve roden, i speak through a hole in my head, 2000
new plastic paper, special edition with original drawing

steve roden, drawing from mir (we need to say goodbye)
studio 5 beekman (now diapason gallery), 2000

'mir (we need to say goodbye) was inspired by four things i happened to stumble upon at the same time:

• a newspaper article on the demise of the russian space station mir
• the death of robert bresson
• the writings of thomas merton
• a 1950's kid's book on satellites. '

....'somehow the demise of mir - this empty vessel that once signified the glory of man's attempted conquests of space - now left to float endlessly in the blackness of space until it disappears, seemed to collide for me with bresson's death - the purity of his films contain a different kind of emptiness (and certainly a floating empty vessel is a clear metaphor for death itself). merton's writings fit into the equation simply because of timing - i was reading his diaries while i came across the mir article and when bresson died. merton's constant searching as well as the attempt at an emptied/full life of a trappist monk - all seemed as well to fit the idea of floating silent emptiness. all 3 orbitting something, be it a planet, a quest, or an idea. the sound piece, composed using only the processed sounds of a microphone flying through the air, reflects the lines i have drawn between all of these things - a kind of intimate, floating, solitude. my interest is not in a clear presentation of the material that influences me, but an attempt to use this information physically, as well as inspirationally, in approaching the making of artworks. their influence is felt in intuitive movements, as well as fragments of their physical presence.'

steve roden, three landscapes (a glacier for peder balke, a waterfall for bjornstjerne bjornson, a cabin for edvard grieg), 2007

other works of relevance by steve roden:

- satellites (mute objects), 2001-2002
a continuation from mir and bresson's death.... 'every sculpture is modeled after an existing unmanned satellite, based on research from astronomy books from the 1960s. each work is titled after one of the nameless characters from all of the films of robert bresson (as there are 50 unnamed characters in all of bresson's films and i had hoped to make 50 pieces - one for each character). the titles are the first initials of the character's descriptions in the credits: "the book seller", "the girl's father", "the police man", "the woman in the photo shop" etc.'

- the surface of the moon, 2001
inspired by a list of craters, mountains, and other objects from a turn of the century map of the moon in an astronomy book called celestial objects for common telescopes. *

- moonfield, 2002 and moonfield, 2003 *
...'inspired by a work by joseph cornell consisting of a bottle with a photo of the moon inside'.... 'with the sound of yuri gagarin's first transmission'... (see also moon gatherers, 2003 *)

- chamber music, 2003 *
inspired by the work of luke howard, an amateur meteorologist who created the system of cloud names in the early 1800's that are still in use today.

- fulgurites, treble exhibition, the sculpture center, 2004 *
...'named after the phenomenon of natural glass being created when lightning strikes the earth.' ....'the idea of this piece of glass as a kind of poetic residue of a moment captured in physical form - an event frozen in time.'

- ear(th), 2004 *
'i am much more interested in simply allowing the earthquake data to generate a sound composition and to allow for my own misreadings of the data to suggest placements, sound ideas, performances, and sculptural forms. for me, this process is a kind of alchemy - to allow the materials to be transformed into something completely connected to, yet seemingly distant from, the source.'

- transmissions from space, fresno metropolitan museum of art and science, 2005
inspired by:

• rimbaud's vowel color rules: a= black, e= white, i = red, o = blue, u = green
• using roden's vowel number rules: a = 1, e = 5, i = 9, 0 = 15, u = 21
• recordings of satellites by amateur astronomers from the 1960’s through the 1980’s found online
• john glenn's original text

- day ring, 2006 *
sound installation for james turrell skyspace at the henry art gallery in seattle where an hour long composition plays only at certain times of the day (companion piece night ring plays continuously at night)
with two beautiful samples from this installation: moonneptune and
mercuryuranus


- looking for faces in mothwings (100 intersections), sounds like drawing exhibition, the drawing room london, 2006 *


- film three landscapes (a glacier for peder balke, a waterfall for bjornstjerne bjornson, a cabin for edvard grieg), 2007 *
ink on clear 16mm film leader transferred to video, 29:00 w/sound (images above)


- fallen / spoken, 2000 - present *
translation of par lagerkvist's book valda dikter:
'and so i began poem by poem, writing in the book itself, and trying to find logic in a word and it's use, perhaps several times in a single poem. the first poem - angest, angest ar min arvedel - went relatively smoothly, in that angest could easily become angels, min become small (related to miniature), and arvedel sounded a lot like marvellous... so it became angels, angels small and marvellous... sar became stars, strupes became stripes, varlden became verdancy, and so on'...

angels, angels small and marvelous

angels, angels small and marvelous,
small group of stars,
with glowing skin of verdancy.
your vine laden sky
and mitten covered hands,
your sticks of silver
and stones of gold
as large as mountains
have no value.
for your heart is everything,
your silence, spark of stillness!

that familiar sound i hear while drinking rum,
that clean dripping water moving through my finger,
that river moving upstream through my hand
where blood leaves motionless frozen traces.

now, my voice slides from your fingertips,
my hand's river goes slowly, over
the breath of morning fog,
the hills of colored yarn
and the garden of clouds!

angels, angels small and marvelous,
small group of stars,
with glowing skin of verdancy.

steve roden, light forms

some favourite recordings (cd and vinyl):

• one stone. and arcs and ears, 7" colored vinyl record, new plastic music, 2007 *
  
• dark over light earth, new plastic music, 2007 *
  
• oder delias or butterflies, nonvisualobjects, 2005 *
• transmissions (voices of objects and skies), fresno metropolitan museum of art and science, 2005 *
  
• ear(th), art center college of design, 2005 *
  
• light forms, semishugure, 2003 *
  
• 3 roots carved to look like stones, sonoris, 2003 *
  
• winter couplet, new plastic music, 2002 *
• schindler house, mak center for art & architecture, 2001 *
  
• four possible landscapes, trente oiseaux, 2000 *
  
• archival footage, 10" white vinyl record, anomalous records, 1999 *
  
• the radio, sonoris, 1999 *
  
• crop circles, ameublement d'oiseaux, 1998 *
• humming endlessly in the hush, new plastic music, 1995 *
  
• so delicate and strangely made, new plastic music, 1993 *

(title from four possible landscapes liner notes, steve roden)

((this a mere fraction of steve roden's astounding catalogue of work which i perhaps even wandered from, with the hopes of doing more like these in the future))

steve roden, wandering 6, 2001