Rob Ray

Woop! The other day I found a Flavorpill review of Ahbyezyana - an installation I created with Deborah Stratman and shown at VONZWECK Gallery in Chicago.

Hey all! I'm psyched to announce I'll be kicking off the new season of Moles Not Molar with a presentation of my neo-benshi of The Conqueror (1956) Starring John Wayne and Susan Hayword - directed by Dick Powell.

Moles Not Molar is a great series of artist presentations curated Emily Abendroth and Justin Audia since 2004. I'll be presenting along side Rachel Levitsky, a poet from NYC and Mecca Jamilah Sullivan a fiction writer from Philadelphia.

If you're near the Philadelphia area it would be rad to see you!

Moles Not Molar - Friday Oct 16 2009 - 7:30PM

GRAY AREA at The Crane Arts Building
400 N. American St. [map]
(two blocks north of Girard Ave. between 2nd & 3rd streets)

Woop! I'm preparing my "Into the Wild! - Electronic Art and the Great Outdoors" presentation for the art.tech festival at The Lab in San Francisco!

Topics will include.

• Construction of my Bucky's Animal Spirit ATM
• Selecting Sustainable Power Sources
• Electronic Experiences as Culture Jamming Opportunities

I'm presenting at 3:30 on Sunday Sept 6th. So come on out!

The LAB
2948 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103 [google map]
p: 415.864.8855

I'm psyched to announce my ATM Bucky's Animal Spirit is headed to the art.tech festival at The Lab in San Francisco.

Those of you in the Bay area probably already know The Lab, but just in case.

The LAB
2948 16th Street
San Francisco, CA [map]
p: 415.864.8855

The festival runs Friday, September 4 - Sunday, September 6, 2009 and the line-up is looking pretty awesome! Come on out!

Woop! I'll be giving my "Into the Wild: Electronic Art and the Great Outdoors" Presentation at the Chicago Dorkbot this August!

The August Chicago Dorkbot meeting is held on August 27th at 7PM

Location: Enemy Sound
1550 N. Milwaukee Ave 3rd Fl. [map]
Chicago, IL 60622

http://www.enemysound.com

"Into the Wild: Electronic Art and the Great Outdoors."

Electronic artist and art installation consultant Rob Ray has spent the last five summers integrating and maintaining alternative energy technologies for electronic artworks in the extreme climate of the militarized salt flats of Wendover, Utah. His projects have included the circuitry and power generation of a radio tower designed and built by Deborah Stratman, a push-button system for film projection and viewing, and interpretive audio kiosks for the Center for Land Use Interpretation, in addition to his own artworks. For the first time, Rob will present his experiences and research from these projects. Rob will also explore the technical, fiscal, and creative implications of alternative energy technologies on sound, video, and interactive artworks. This presentation will be particularly useful if you are an artist looking to integrate alternative energy technologies into your practice - or even your home!

Keith just passed along an amazing movie "If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?"

"The unlikely collaboration of two of the least inspiring men of their respective trades: the Rev. Estus W. Pirkle, a Mississippi preacher who had a minor following thanks to mail order sales of audiotaped sermons, and Alan Ormond, a Grade Z filmmaker who gave the world such nonsense as “The Monster and the Stripper” and “The Girl from Tobacco Road.”"

Derek Lowe's "Things I Won't Work With" is an amazing list of blog posts detailing all the crazy things chemicals can do to you.

For example his chlorine trifluoride post starts off this way...

"Let's put it this way: during World War II, the Germans were very interested in using it in self-igniting flamethrowers, but found it too nasty to work with. It is apparently about the most vigorous fluorinating agent known, and is much more difficult to handle than fluorine gas. That’s one of those statements you don’t get to hear very often, and it should be enough to make any sensible chemist turn around smartly and head down the hall in the other direction."

Ha! There's a pretty funny/cool article in this Friday's Chicago Tribune on Hyde Park Arts Center's Artist Run show. While I haven't seen the show, I've heard from a lot of folks the show is awesome. Big props to HPAC and Allison Peters Quinn and Britton Bertran for taking on the show - it must of been brutal (and also fascinating) to curate.

Philip had sent me an email saying "Your cooler is in the HPAC." as I had given it to him on loan to use for shows at VONZWECK after I stopped doing shows at DEADTECH. Funnily this gets a mention in the article. "And VONZWECK, amid the remains of its defunct gallery, lists a beer cooler on “permanent loan” from Deadtech."

Yay! Bucky's Animal Spirit is on Wooster Collective!

Woop! Bucky's Animal Spirit is featured on Hack A Day!

Just saw Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky last night at Kuma's. It was totally great eating the first burger I've had in 8 years while watching this splatterfest.

Hey Hey! I'm extremely pleased to announce my new experimental short Canaries in the Coalmine will be screening at Chicago Filmmaker's Onion City Experimental Film Festival in Chicago June 16th - 20th, 2009!

5243 N. Clark St.Chicago, IL 60640 [map]

If you're in Chicago during that time make sure to check out the fest. You can see last year's award winners on their Call for Entries page.

Woop!

Last night I enjoyed a delicious beer with Jen, Colleen, Adele, Rebecca and Doug. It was a fascinating swirl of discussion about the red dots in chicken eggs, making mole, and cyptozoology; and a great way to slide into the Memorial Day holiday.

I was amazed to learn that Colleen and Adele's place is atop the stairs made infamous in The Three Stooges "An Ache In Every Stake" episode. For you Three Stooges fans, this is the episode where Larry, Curly and Moe try to deliver blocks of ice up an insanely long flight of stairs on a hot day, turning the block of ice into a tiny melted cube at the top. This episode would always crack me up as a kid and here I was at the top of those stairs sipping Maudite!

I found the original 1941 black and white episode on crackle (below) and the 2004 colorized version on YouTube and more detail than you've ever wanted to know about the episode on wikipedia.

Woo hoo!

My new 12 minute video "Canaries in the Coalmine" has been selected for screening at the DIGIT 2009 Digital Media Exhibition and is the winner of their "Excellence in Cinematography" prize

If you're near the area, you can check it out from Friday June 12 through July 4th

Delaware Arts Center
37 Main Street
Narrowsburg, NY. [google map]

I'm accepting submissions for my new "anarchists cookbook" collection of recipes (a better title forthcoming). I would love to get your recipes and your thoughts on their relationship to governance!

This is a continuation of a piece I created last year titled "These cookies are, like, tha bomb." examining chocolate chip cookies and nuclear weaponry as the primary American intellectual exports of WWII.

Please email me if you're intrigued! (Submissions accepted through August 30th 2009)

NOTE: and by recipes, i mean for eating. Not for blowing shit up and picking locks. There's already an anarchist cookbook filled with all that stuff.

Still wondering what the hell I'm talking about?
Here are some thoughts that got me to this point.

• Food as a unique fetish object and delivery mechanism for an idea about the world.
• Foods you prepare for a specific task (ex: a meal you like cook for collaborators while working with a group - and any thoughts you have about why that meal is reflective of group.)
• Food/recipes with a unique history.
• Food as a socio-political weapon.
• Food used in torture.
• Food used as embargo.
• How does a certain food resonate in our collective memory? ex: Apple Pie
• Military MRE recipes/preparation methods.
• Bio-engineered foods. Good/Evil/Neither?
• A friend of mine Deb and I had a great little email exchange about the religious symbology of "Hot Cross Buns". She whipped up a tasty looking batch of Anarchy Cross Buns that combine the classic hot cross bun with the and the Anarchist Black Cross.