This sunday’s developed around homage to the darker forces of the universe. Bert Bergen started the day with a special early morning ceremony accompanied, or vocally led, by Catherine Brooks. It was like church if the waves of the pacific ocean was a pastor.

The afternoon started off with Barn Owls, two long-haired sweet souls with a propensity for meditative sonic space. A cohesive continuation from the morning. Fortune Drum was on next. Rob and Joe make up the vocal and synthetic elements of Bronze. I really like these guys sound, they are a little hard and a lot of fun. Cones then played a rocking set. Wendy is a great drummer and Kurt is a tight musician and puts a lot into his performance.

Then Bert was back with Ascended Master. The size of this band, and their sound, engulfed the environment. Definite sonic warship in action. Josh Churchill closed out things in absolute darkness with his new partner in noise, Rose. These two turn it up to “11″ (more in a volume sense than a classic rock). I wish the smoke machine worked longer, but the atmospheric effect definitely was calling the spirit of the upcoming halloween. The intensity was so great that the life experience gets reduced down to a simple question of mental survival. Far out.
Get high resolution downloads of the above photos at Drew Bennett’s Flickr.

The sound series opened with simulacra, a duo that mysteriously snuck in and out of their beautiful short set without audio or visual documentation. Some groups escaped visual documentation by playing in complete darkness, iXi and Tussle primarily, but neither of those groups are as attractive as Simulacra, oh well, they’re performance will remain in the memories of those who had the chance to see them, if no where else.

Sean Horchy then played his art music acoustic electric custom frequency modulator for a while before turning it over to the audience to experiment with. No one can play it as well as he can, but he really likes to share the experience with others, for which I commend him.

Ship engaged the space next, starting their performance up top in the 7th heaven loft to then jump to the ground and continue from the ground. Frank and David are dear to me and the incarnation of the project. Seeing the intimacy of their performances is one of the few experiences that lead to the development of this project. They brought a more feisty performance then I had ever seen from them, jumping from 10 feet in the air, bells on their toes, swinging, jumping, kicking, and dancing their way through an awesome, often upbeat set. The rad photo of Frank and David counting down was taken by Triplebase artist, Michelle Blade). I only met her on this day, but her paintings are amazing and she does some rad social art too.

I had talked to Lucky Dragons (myspace) about playing only through inter-wave communications. So when the sound series began and I hadn’t heard from the LA based group I started to think they would be a no-show. I should have never doubted they’re glorious ways, as they were spotted by frank rolling around the mission right on time… although a time was never discussed… far out!

Pumpkins closed the first sound series with their blend of west-african/space/trance. These boys, Chris Cox and Gabe Turow are members of Baba Ken and the Afro-Groove Connexion, an afrobeat band based in the east bay. This set was a nice transition into the darkness of the evening.

These are shots of my installation, The Clouds Carved the Mountains, at Triplebase Gallery. I created this space with the intention of making an environment to receive the sounds of music friends. Documentation of these happenings soon to follow.

My friend Rocky De Anda, of Galleria de Raza, recommended I propose a project to the Mission Cultural Council, so I did. I had been looking for a way to interact with the community and still produce my own work. So I offered my leadership facilitation skillz to a handful of after school programs around the mission. After working through trust, leadership, and self awareness games activities, I had the kids write or draw the things they valued and feared most in their lives.

Promoting, organizing, and scheduling my renegade art-related leadership program proved to be much more difficult than anticipated. Once I got the chance to run these sessions, I frequently found myself in a room of uninhibited kids 7-14 years old spazzing out on some of the more creative vulgar language I have ever heard.

The best experience I had was with The Beacon after school program’s Power Eyes group. These girls had they’re group leader present and had a pre-existing foundation together. In the end I found the images of them working together to be the message I wanted to convey most so that’s how I ended up with this product.

Now that I have one experience with community-engaged and public art project, I look forward to the chance of doing another with greater foresight.

Check out the whole together we can cross hot lava! set of pictures on Drew Bennett’s Flickr