Among the 11 projects in the Postcards from Gowanus program, each of which employ various methods to creatively mapping the Brooklyn neighborhood in which the gallery is situated, there will be four artists hosting workshops, and we'd love for you to join us!
These are the projects we’ll be workshopping on Saturday, February 20—
1. Bianca Ahmadi: A photographic exploration of the Gowanus neighborhood. My workshop is an experiment. I am gathering a group of strangers and we are going to shoot photographs around the Gowanus. Film and digital. We are walking around and seeing what looks good, etc. My workshop is more about the experience and then applying that experience to the final exhibition. After the workshop, I will ask them to develop their shots and choose their favorites. These selections will be presented in a book, which would be similar to a photo album.
2. Patrick Carey: Playing off the idea of a post card, I propose to create digital post cards using mobile devices in the area around Cabinet's gallery in the Gowanus. I plan to have participants record some aspect of the neighborhood, whether it be a photo, sound, or moving image using only their mobile devices. These 'postcards' will not only act as a record of the time and place but will also reference the specific time in which they were made, with the technology acting as historical marker. I also plan to use a mobile device with GPS built in to record the locations of specific 'postcards' with the hopes to translate that data to a more robust web based project that could be tied in with the overall exhibition in the Cabinet Gallery.
3. Amir Husak: “Gowanus Unheard” is an experiment in sonifying mental images of experiential space. Upon finishing the walking tour of the neighborhood, the participants are asked to draw a map (from memory), which is then "carved" out of the sonic spectrum of the audio recordings. Using several digital algorithms to create an interaction interface between map drawings of the area and the audio, “Gowanus Unheard” converts the hand-drawn sketches of the Brooklyn neighborhood into a series of sound compositions.
4. Penny Duff: With my ongoing “Sounding the Infra-ordinary” project, I am attempting to literarily mediate the acoustic environment by documenting a series of collaborative soundwalks in order to attempt to develop a literary correlate to audio field recording. For this instance of the project, I will explore the everyday acoustic environment during a series of listening and literary documentation sessions throughout Gowanus. Both alone and accompanied by others, I/we will attend to different locations in this sonically diverse neighborhood—capturing the rhythms of life from morning to night. The results will ultimately be juxtaposed with historical recollections of the neighborhood.
The day of collaborative workshops with other artists participating in the exhibit is this coming Saturday, February 20. We'll be out and about in the neighborhood conducting creative research from roughly 1-4pm.
