Rest

Rest, 1-4
Cole Pierce, 2009
Acrylic on Canvas
65"x65"

Active Archive

Active Archive
Cole Pierce, 2009
Oil Paint, 3.5" Floppy Discs, Nails
Dimensions Variable
Currently 58" x 80"

Tight Quarters

Tight Quarters (Signal Distortion), Excerpt
Cole Pierce 2009
Digital Video and Sound Installation
10'04

Tight Quarters, Full Version

The working title for this piece is Distortion/Tight Quarters (2009) and is intended it to be a wall sized projection.

The source material for the video is a glitch between a DVD recorder and a monitor. The audio was originally a piano recording, but it has gone through several generations of analog and digital manipulations.

Style

The infinitely reproducible item collides with obsolescence, leaving an emptiness that I associatively compare to the point past comprehension. 

Tv distortion video stills

tv distortion ending

tv distortion ending, originally uploaded by colepierce.

tv distortion

tv distortion, originally uploaded by colepierce.

Found Answering Machine Tape

I digitized a portion of this tape I found in the attic of a house I had a studio in (Colfax).  There is one message but the majority of the 20 minute recording is noise, cracks and creaks.  I might use it as part of an art installation in the future, but don't have any real plans yet. Download a high quality 243 mb AIFF recording of the tape here . Or a 27 mb MP3 here. 

Art Collecting, I own ten countries

I recently acquired ten sculptures of countries through an art trade with Chicago based artist and collector Ben Foch. Read about his project The World in this Proximity article. In short, Ben made a sculpture of every country and priced them according to their GDP value (1 USD to 1 Billion GDP/PPP). The piece was exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in January of 2009. I traded my series of triangle paintings that I showed at Old Gold last November. When I was initially trying to decide which countries I wanted to own, I had no idea what strategy to use. I looked for a continent, but there was not one intact due to previous sales. I considered picking countries that I thought were cool, or had interesting music scenes happening, but Iceland was taken and Sweden and Norway are ugly. I almost chose every country in the southern 30 - 45 latitude region. Instead, I picked countries for formal reasons, their size and shape and sexy curves.

Selection of Ben Foch's The World, 2009
Installation View, my living room.

Pakistan and New Zealand
Chile
Myanmar

The World

Peru
Saudi Arabia
South Africa
Turkey
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan

Destroyer

My 2 yr old daughter made this fantastic sticker design. 

The Wanderer, Illustration by "Phiz"

wanderer by phiz, originally uploaded by colepierce.

Phiz does these great illustrations in Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

Nelson Will Take Over From Now On, side B

Side B of Tyler Carter's mixtape Nelson Will Take Over From Now On (circa 2002). 55 minute mp3 zipped and uploaded to sendspace. idm, downtempo, hip-hop tinged. download it here.

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

CHAPTER XXXVIII
A DISSOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP

I did not allow my resolution, with respect to the Parliamentary Debates, to cool. It was one of the irons I began to heat immediately, and one of the irons I kept hot, and hammered at, with a perseverance I may honestly admire. I bought an approved scheme of the noble art and mystery of stenography (which cost me ten and sixpence); and plunged into a sea of perplexity that brought me, in a few weeks, to the confines of distraction. The changes that were rung upon dots, which in such a position meant such a thing, and in such another position something else, entirely different; the wonderful vagaries that were played by circles; the unaccountable consequences that resulted from marks like flies' legs; the tremendous effects of a curve in a wrong place; not only troubled my waking hours, but reappeared before me in my sleep. When I had groped my way, blindly, throught these difficulties, and had mastered the alphabet, which was an Egyption Temple in itself, there then appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary characters; the most despotic characters I have ever known; who insisted, for instance, that a thing like the beginning of a cobweb, meant expecation, and that a pen and ink sky-rocket stood for disadvantageous. When I had fixed these wretches in my mind, I found that they had driven everything else out of it; then, beginning again, I forgot them; while I was picking them up, I dropped the other fragments of the system; in short, it was almost heart-breaking.

pp 444-445

yoko ono is now following me on twitter

Nelson Will Take Over From Now On, side A

Tyler Carter mixtape, circa 2002. This is side A. Nelson's Mandate, 55 min mp3 zipped and uploaded to sendspace. Side B will be available next week. If you listened to the first T.Carter mixtape, you know the drill: idm, indie rock, clever interludes, spoken word samples. Download it here.

About LD . . .

Alas, I digitized a Tyler Carter mixtape for you.
idm, post-rock circa 2001, sprinkled with TC's
bedroom turntablism. Richard Nixon samples
galore. Download a .zip from sendspace here:
Check out Tyler's blog: iwantedtowriteanemail

floppydisc

floppydisc3, originally uploaded by colepierce.

dipped in oil paint

Always Infinity Universal Inner Tube

P1000280, originally uploaded by colepierce.

meeting notes

my notes from a meeting at work, mandatory for all staff to attend.

Angles, 2009

Little Village North Lawndale High School / Chicago Ave Bridge

Seven Random Things

I was tagged by both Harper Reed and Melissa Pierce to do this meme. At the end of this post I will tag 7 lucky people to post their own 7 random things about themselves.

First off, even though this post is about random things, there is nothing random about this list and they are not things. This list of attributes, events, situations and idiosyncrasies were methodically chosen. This meme, or viral blog thingy is like an online icebreaker, or teambuilding activity in the blogosphere. Weird, huh? If I were going to make a list of random facts about myself I’d have to make a list of every fact about myself and then pull 7 out of a hat. I just don’t have that kind of free time on my hands. So I’m going to pick 7 things that most of you do not know about me, that are odd, quirky, unique, maybe banal, things that make me seem cooler than I am and things that make me seem funnier than I am.

One
I have webbed toes. In between 2 toes on each foot, the second and third toes are webbed.

Two
I grew up on a tree farm in Iowa, but most of our land was CRP acres, which means my dad was paid to keep it real, no commercial development. Kind of like growing up on a state park, rural isolation, which for a 9 year old is complete freedom. Another weird fact from when I was 8 or 9, some older kids nicknamed me Piernov: a. because I was a fast runner and pierna is leg in Spanish, b. the resemblance of Pierce to pierna, and c. no idea why it became Russian.

Three
Somewhere around 2003-04, Brock Manke dubbed me the “Thomas Edison of Trash Culture”. I’m not sure what this means but it sounds cool. Brock used to dj at Innjoy on Tuesdays, which is where I met my wife Melissa. Harper introduced me to Melissa on one of those Tuesdays, and these 2 are who tagged me in this meme.

Four
I’ve been on a Bosnian TV show called Central Prison. Actually it was my grad school colleagues and I sitting in on the talk show interview with our teacher, Damir Niksic. He hooked us up with a spot to do a video installation in the Sarajevo Winter Festival. Some other funny stuff happened on that trip, like the girl informing me I have a “multicultural face”, and Fenchel and I djing a bar until they made us stop after I played “Purple Bottle” by Animal Collective. By the end of the trip my colleagues and I referred to each other as Dannys. It’s a long story.

Five
My art practice has led me to some odd activities. I have made paintings with an eggbeater. I have dunked a pair of ski boots in a bucket of paint. I made a video of myself playing basketball on a court full of mulberries. I convinced 18 people to make a mixtape for Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston (back in the day), and send the tape to me. I sent the box of tapes to the celebrity couple, without promise of receipt. By chance, one day Brad Pitt was drinking a cup of coffee outside my workplace and I asked him if he received the box of tapes or if he knew about my project. He knew nothing, and calmly asked me about it, then was whisked away by his people. In college, while on a semester arts gig in Chicago, my class was assigned to do a public art performance. I dressed up in a dog costume, got on all fours on a skateboard while Michelle Deva Jebb (in exorcise gear) jogged and pulled me around the Gold Coast neighborhood. There were always people jogging with dogs in that area. I barked at a dog.

Six
I like my coffee black and my whiskey neat, however I embrace herbs, spices and sauces in and on the food I eat. I can cook a good stir fry, some excellent soups, have perfected a collard greens recipe and am working on the perfect gumbo.

Seven
I have worked at the Chicago Teachers Center of NEIU ever since I moved to Chicago in 2001, in many capacities. Here is a list: Videographer, Teambuilding Facilitator, Improv Workshops, Movie Workshops, Climbing Wall instructor, Leadership Camps, High Ropes Course, Video Afterschool Clubs, and once and only once - Bus & Field Trip Coordinator for a summer program.

There, its done. Now its time for me to pass on the energy ball. Here are the next 7 people to post 7 random things about themselves on their blog.

1. Tyler Carter
   
2. Julie Rudder
   
3. Roxane Hopper
   
4. Steve Nyktas
   
5. Miguel Cortez
   
6. Jason Shanley
7. Martine Syms
   

The rules of this ‘game’ for those that I have tagged:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter

Th

red line window

red line window, originally uploaded by colepierce.

The world looks so rational from here.

Floppy Discs Drying

DSC00263, originally uploaded by colepierce.

2008 in Review, Best Music Albums

I made this list in my sleep last night.

1. Koen Holtkamp - Field Rituals, (Type)
2. Tape - Luminarium, (Hapna)
3. Jacaszek - Treny (Miasmah)
4. Machinefabriek - Dauw (Dekorder)
5. Dead Letters Spell Dead Words - Lost in Reflections (When Skies are Gray)
6. Alva Noto - Unitxt (Rastor-Noton)
7. Paavoharju - Laulu Laakson Kukista (Fonal)
8. Fennesz - Black Sea (Touch)
9. Flying Lotus - Los Angeles (Warp)
10. TV on the Radio - Dear Science (Interscope)
11. Mira Calix - The Elephant in the Room: 3 Commissions (Warp)
12. Bersarin Quartet - Bersarin Quartet (Lidar)
13. Deerhunter - Microcastle (Kranky)
14. Ellen Allien - Sool (Bpitch Control)

In Process Wall Installation

Piano Clockworks Sound Installation

Video documentation of a sound installation I exhibited at Old Gold in 2008.