So I'm very happy to be–
introducing Andreas Buchwaldt as our
speaker today. Andreas is a Danish-born
Saskatoon based artist working
across a range of media including
kinetic sculpture, sound, video and dance.
His practice explores ways of
reimagining the built environment and
interpersonal communication through
materiality. This research is partly
inspired by the hypothetical space of
science fiction. Andreas holds an MFA
from York University in Toronto and a
BFA from the University of Saskatchewan.
His work ‘Growing on You’ a kinetic sound
installation is currently on view at
Whippersnapper Gallery in Toronto until
October 27th. It was part of the
Nuit Blanche exhibitions on October 1st
and I should mention that if you go to
Whippersnappers, open Wednesdays–
No, Thursdays–That's what–I made a mistake [laughs]
–Thursdays to Saturdays 1 o'clock to 5 o’clock–
>>Andreas: –Uh, 7 o'clock. 
>>Host: 7 o'clock, oh okay, actually–
And, so Andreas has exhibited his work at
Art Mur in Montreal, Eastern Edge in St.
John’s, Struts in Sackville New
Brunswick, Neutral Ground in Regina, and
AKA in Saskatoon. Before relocating to
Saskatoon, Andreas was the sculptor-
facilitator at The Banff Centre, so maybe
some of the professors might have been
to Banff and met Andreas. So yes, please
welcome Andreas for me. 
[Applause]
Andreas: Okay, well thank you for having me,
I guess I don't need to introduce myself
but–so this is kind of like a general,
kind of, survey of my work that I've made
kind of just a little bit in grad school
and then over the past four or five
years. Yeah, so I'm in that awkward stage,
like I'm not quite an emerging
artist, I'm not quite a mid-career
artist, I'm kind of falling in between
so I hope there's something to offer all
the students in the crowd ‘cause I'm
not that far removed from where you guys
are now and yeah. Hopefully, I can give the
faculty something to chew on as well.
Yeah, so I like–I just–like the way I give
artists talks–I just throw out ideas. I
don't really like, polish them up and
finish them for you. I'm just going to–
just toss them out there little–little
sentences that might not make sense–
we'll just see where we get to.
The things I'm going to talk about–like
architecture, the built environment,
urban planning, this idea of science
fiction, and time travel, and raising the
dead, the machine, automation and
artificial intelligence–a little bit–the
body and prosthetics, and just talking a
little bit about like having a
multidisciplinary practice, so like
Louise mentioned, I'm working with like
music and dance and art, and computer
programming and performance, a bit of
theatre. Yeah, so I've got lots of
things to cover, um, yeah. So that's my
name, that's my website–this will pop up
at the end if you guys are curious about
checking out more or rewatching some of
the stuff you've seen today. So, um, just
to begin–my thesis project at York
University was based in looking at the
language of architecture, essentially
like the planning phase of architectures
or architectural models and diagrams and
blueprints and things like that, and then
using the machine and kinetic art as a
way to kind of intervene on that kind of
language and to bring in a new dialogue
because if there's anything that needs
you know, imagining or reimagining or a
critical viewpoint into is the way we
design our cities–specifically Toronto
because you know, everywhere has problems,
we have our own set. So my–my kind of
focal point was this idea of flexible
architecture, like how can you–when
you're planning a structure, kind of open
it up and how can–you can imagine it as
something that can be changed on the fly
or something that’s–what’s that word–anyway,
we'll get there. So this is a white silk
screen on a blue piece of spandex strung
to four motorized arms and then computer
programmed to kind of stretch and change
its orientation in space. The blue–
it kind of–it’s–from the blue print
aesthetic obviously of old planning–
they don't really use this aesthetic anymore
but also the blue for me kind of
represents the kind of infinitely
digital, like the space of a computer
that can go on forever. So this is–the
drawing itself–kind of this–kind of
split-level architecture that you see in
Toronto. I'm interested in these spaces
‘cause they are actually quite flexible
and they've been around forever and
people keep changing their uses via like–
a residence or a business on the
bottom, and the businesses keep
changing and occupants on the top keep
changing. I just think it's like–it's an
interesting space. I come from Saskatoon,
kind of a suburban mentality and we
don't really have this thinking a lot
playing out, we usually have our suburbs
and then we have our business zones, and
our industrial zones and they're not
merging very often. So when I lived in
Toronto, you know, although a lot of
people may take us for granted it was
kind of–it wasn’t a shock but it was just–it was
something different, it really made me
focus on it. So this is the work–
I’ll just play a clip for you
[Whirring mechanical sounds]
Okay, so alongside this kind of research
I was doing with the model, I was
looking at past examples of you know,
architectural failures. The main one that
comes up a lot is the study of
Pruitt–Igoe–I’m not going to really
unpack this whole–what's a long history,
a lot of different viewpoints, a lot of
different papers have been published on
it. Essentially it was a housing project in
St. Louis and then the main cause of its
failure it was like rampant racism and
just the building wasn't up-kept
properly and the entire housing complex
failed–like, this is just one of–I think
it was fourteen of these places that was
demolished, maybe not even 20 years after
they were built, like–it’s just–it’s just
kind of an abomination of what these
things were. So looking at this as like a
focal point and then trying to expand
that into like a larger more generalized
art piece or art dialogue–also looking
at the idea of 9/11, and our fascination
with watching things implode–not implode, I guess
being destroyed. So–and also
taking this idea and working it into the
idea of the architectural model as the
basis for all of these ideas. So this is–
it’s a very clean structure made from
these just flexible plastic sheeting and
foam pillars and you kind of have this
grid work of a building and then I used
motorized motors to pull it down to kind
of simulate an implosion and then they
would release the tension–the motor–
and then the building would rise up and
in the gallery you could watch it rise
up and down. So there is in a depressed
state and we can just quickly watch this–
So, I think with this work, we can talk a
little bit about the idea of time travel
and about how, kind of, technologies can
allow us to replay an event and rewind
it and watch it in reverse.
I think there's a kind of a desire when
looking at this work for me–making
this work to maybe like going back to
a previous state–maybe we can fix the
problems then before they play out in
the future,
but then this–you know, there's also this
idea that like all we want to do as the
non-critical part of ourselves is just
to watch these demolitions over and over
again. There's some kind of fascination
with that–that morbid fascination. Yeah,
like a funny little anecdote that I
didn't really intend but there's kind of
a transition from modernist architecture
to post modernist architecture as it
crumples and you kind of end in this–
it's almost like you're watching history–
aesthetic history play out in the work.
Just the guts of it underneath, just kind
of how rough it can be–when I'm first
starting to learn how to make machines.
As I'm building these machines, it's just–
still in grad school, I'm playing
with these these mechanisms that I knew
from as a child right, the simple things
because I'm just trying to make these
works at the beginning, I just want to
keep it simple. So, these–you probably
know them, you depress the base, the
animal collapses. If you add a motor
to that you basically have a
structure that's going up and down just
like I was working with before. So I had this idea–
I wanted to make a–kind of a
performance with the machine and I
wanted to be part of it I kinda wanted to
DJ the sculpture so I set up this
shadow play performance, you have these
three structures that kind of look like
buildings when projected and three light
sources so you kind of get this
interplay of lights weaving in and out–
a little bit of the Plato's Cave idea
watching a kind of a false reproduction
appearing before you in shadow but also
looking at a lot of Canadian artists
working in the–times of 2012, so like
Daniel Barrow and Shary Boyle were
doing a lot of kind of shadow play
performances and I was really interested
in that–that kind of aesthetic based on
early Victorian lantern shows–I don't
know if you know what that–but just kind of
like, pre-cinema,
pre-theatre, just–well, not pre-theatre, but
there would just be someone standing in
front of a light making shadow puppets
or having, you know, specialized cutouts
and, like these amazing–like,
performances will play out. So we can
watch this quickly. That's the structure
itself, this is my little control box
wired into a briefcase–
I'm also controlling a soundtrack which
starts simple and then becomes more
frenetic as the action on screen becomes
more frenetic, and–
[Music]
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Okay, so–I just to frame that–that was
a part of a performance art festival in
Sackville, New Brunswick, shown in an old
vaudeville theatre that's a kind of–
these theatres were set up before the
film–just kind of small acts would pass
through there–yeah that’s that. Okay so, that
project got me thinking about a number
of things specifically the idea of the
machine as a performer in itself that
didn't require my actual hands
programming it, that maybe it could
become an entity in itself which I could
collaborate then with the machine, and
this idea of raising the dead that I've
kind of talked about a bit about rewinding
history or going back and then bringing
something back from the dead–and so, this
is the very rough piece, it's never been
shown–I just kind of bring it up in
artist talks it was just like a sketch–
but–this is my friend Bruce Montcombroux,
he’s a professor at MacEwan University in
Edmonton–and, he plays the saw, I play the
accordion, both of us suck at it, and–but
I had this–I had a bit of knowledge with
Arduino which essentially–like a
computer that senses the environment and
then outputs something so we can–it can
read our–what our instruments are doing
and then control a robot with it.
So we have this very simple pile of tubing,
there's a light going through it and
it's not much and it's hooked up to the
ceiling on a winch motor and as we play–
the thing rises and as we kind of stop
to play or play lower notes it descends–
doesn't sound like much but when you put it
together in a dark room in a cold studio
in Toronto, there's a bit of magic that's
created there. So–okay so
that's his saw, essentially his arm is
going up and down and he's bending the
saw and it's sensing the distance to the
ground so you can kind of control it a
bit like that–and this is my accordion–
this little piece here is called a
stretch sensor so you can actually sense
how much it's being pulled and the
accordion functions on a pull push
mechanism so that's how I was sensing my
instrument–and then together we sat in
the studio and did this–
[Music]
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Okay, what else can I say about that–so essentially
I guess there's that joke that art is
either about sex or death and just feels
like death is like following me around
in all these projects and then another
thing that followed me around from now
until like–for the past three years is
the accordion and just using that
mechanism over and over again, the study
of error being compressed and expanded
and having hair push and pull through
accordion reeds, essentially making sound–
and just trying to use that mechanism
over and over again in different facets.
Also, exploring different ideas like
performance or robotic sculpture. So, this
next piece–there was a house in northern
Toronto–the suburbs in northern of Toronto–
like, Wychwood area–it's a real fancy
neighbourhood–a bunch of architects–
like a conglomeration of architects
bought this beautiful home but it was
more profitable to build a giant condo
complex on top of it so they were going
to demolish it but they also had
connections in the art community and
asked artists and performance artists
and landscape architects and architects
and musicians to come and kind of
transform the space. So there was like a
two-week mini residency and then–I was
invited as well and so I was–we could select any
room in the house or like somebody dug
up the backyard and made these weird bonfire
mazes, someone ripped out all they
carpet in the entire house–it was like
actually quite mildewy carpet and
built a disgusting maze in the basement
that you could walk in–it was so dark that
you would like, come face to face with a
dirty smelly carpet. Incredible, incredible–
there was like an asthmatic warning on the
thing like if you has asthma–just stay out of there [laughs]
–and I found this room–it was a double
room so you–two rooms on either side
with a walkthrough closet in the middle,
opposite swinging doors face to face
with each other. So this is one of
the rooms, this is the other room–I’d say
it’s a beautiful house–beautiful on the
outside–it hadn't been taken care of on
the inside, but still–still–
the opinion of all of us was that it
probably should not have been destroyed.
So there's a kind of blueprint layout of
it–Room 1, Room 2, the bellows on each side–
those kind of swinging
things you can imagine–and so when the
piece was done, these two giant bellows
that–when you pulled the door as you
normally would it would push air through
a sound box which is essentially just
half of my accordion–the same one you
saw in the video before bolted to the
wall, so you could play the accordion.
Also a hole cut in the wall because why
not, and it kind of like–you were kind of
isolated via like these prison cell
framing structures but you can still see
one another–yeah.
So, that's from the other room and then–we
only had one night to show the work so
it was kind of a nighttime thing. It was
open for the public to kind of mess
around with but the kind of highlight of
the piece was that we joined up with some
of the musicians who were–had another
project going and we had this kind of
improvised sound jam
and because–especially us, we’re horrible
musicians–it became kind of like this
improvised dissonant sounding–I
called it a funeral dirge, and I kind of
thought like it was kind of a way to say
goodbye to the structure and was sad and
melancholic and was perfect–yeah.
Alongside this piece, I had gained an
interest in this idea of improvised
sound and like a collaborative approach
which I would take forward in other places.
So we can see this performance–
[Music]
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Okay, so just–unpacking this idea of the
accordion a little bit more, it's kind of
something I fell into, kind of like–I don’t know,
something you can’t really explain as an artist–
the reason you're attracted to certain
things but then when you try to
conceptualize it after–I would just say
it was just like–I saw this thing, it
breathed like I did, I–when I played it, it
vibrated on my chest so it's a very
bodily feeling of an instrument and
it just felt right like it's just like
the perfect source from which to expand
and just explore different things–yeah.
So, with all that stuff in relating to
the body and the study of death, I'm like
well you know I have a body as well like
how can the accordion–how can I get
closer to it? So, there's many iterations
of this and it's kind of funny to see
this, like it’s my first attempt, very
clunky, very heavy. So essentially I'm a
walking accordion, basically like a walking
version of that project in the house–you
can pump my arms, you can play my chest,
you can kind of have a little
conversation through this like–what you
call it–a confessional booth style screen
in the front and this is part of a music
festival performance–just kind of like
we were some artists on the side, doing
weird things–I’m sorry–
where did it go–okay, yeah–basing it
on the idea of the diving bell, this kind
of protective structure–it was my first
time doing performance and I was a
little bit nervous and I think I, you know, kind of
subconsciously built this structure for
myself to interact with people but
also to get myself some personal space,
some distance–and so here's a–playing
out in a crowded room–pretty weird, I won't
show you the video of this because the
documentation is horrible, the–
didn’t work very well–I just–it’s weird–
it’s so awkward watching it.
Yeah, but like with any kind of machine
building I–like basically all art
practices, right? It's a prototyping
process so you build one, you learn from
it, you build the next and it's a
generative thing. So, I was thinking
this isn’t–this isn't good enough–I’m
not–I’m not one with the accordion,
I'm just kind of lugging it around so–let’s see if I
missed anything here–yeah, so just like
this idea of using the body as a host
potentially and the accordion being like a
parasite or maybe it's a symbiotic
relationship, maybe it's giving something
back–I would say it is. Yeah, so taking
every major joint in the body–you've got your–
an elbow–shoulder–elbow, armpit–
little fart–fart bits–some hip flexors, and
the back of your knees and then your
neck.
Each of these tubes is like one or two
notes essentially so as you walk–you
can do anything right, it just translates
that motion into a perfect sound, it's like
a one-to-one thing, so if you skip along
in a nice pace, you've got a beat–you've
got something ready to go.
If you're kind of moving awkwardly, you just
have like a mash of things–so there's
the back of it and kind of built with
you know, I just–I just wanted to make it–
this is like, what's the–what's the
fastest way you can make a machine is
you go to Home Depot you go to your
hardwoods–hardwood stores and you just
get what's off the shelf right–so I'm
using a climbing safety harness, knee
braces from Shopper’s Drug Mart, tubes for
dryer ventilation and a dust mask and
yeah–that was basically that. It starts
to kind of explore this idea of–also the
prosthetic and enhancing the human body.
We can see this playing out in all sorts
of fields, you think of like Hollywood
right? We're just obsessed with these
kind of superhero movies about these–
these people like us with extended
powers that we can do all sorts of
things and what are the possibilities of
that, right–but if you're also part of
the DIY scene or you pay attention to
that–people are also doing it with
their own bodies and artists are doing it right?
Like there are
cameras in their heads or they’re tracking
their own movements in the world via
like GPS tracking–tracking their steps
essentially–that's kind of a prosthetic
because it gives you kind of enhanced
knowledge of your own life to know how
many steps a day you take, how many calories
a day–just all these things that are
being added on top of us.
So, I think this is kind of a way to kind
of jokingly talk about that subject as
well and maybe as artists–kind of any
illogical reaction to things happening
in contemporary society maybe this is
just an illogical prosthetic–something
you don't need–maybe do you need it–yeah.
So let's have a look at that play out,
I'm okay with showing this video ‘cause
it's not me performing, [laughs] it’s pretty
goofy.
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>>Andreas: She got really tired at this point ‘cause I just made her do loops–
but the sound gets tired as well–
[Music]
Okay so–yeah, so after that project you
know, what do you do with that work right?
Of course you’d multiply the suit, you
make it a bit more flexible, you make it
something where the music–I wasn't able
to control the music as well as I wanted
it to–I wanted to have access to be able
to change the notes on the body and I
wanted to construct a narrative because
essentially these were costumes for a
theatrical production potentially.
So, yeah–interested in a collaborative
approach, I–collaborative, essentially it’s
my project right, so like I–the
umbrella term ‘I own the thing’ whatever,
but I need–I need help, right, so I'm
paying a choreographer–a friend of mine–
paying a musician friend of mine to help
me kind of understand music theory and
we're working together to kind of make
the piece. Yeah, so I don't know if I want
to dive into this quite yet but I will–
this idea of science fiction right, and this idea
of like–like Louise said in that
introduction ‘the hypothetical space’
right, so a lot of science fiction
narratives play out like ‘what if the
world was like this, how would that in
turn play out and what would you see, how
would social dynamics change between
people’ so I was just trying to take this idea
of like–well let's just imagine these
human beings as a completely different
life form–they have these suits, they're
making sound based on their movements–
maybe that's a language, maybe they can
talk to each other and they can play out
in these narratives and we're just going
to just put them together and see what
happens. Yeah, just to throw some
names out there if you guys are science
fiction readers, like Ursula Le Guin was
a big one for me, Stanisław Lem, the
Russian writer, and Philip K. Dick–just–
they're kind of old because that's where
you get all the old paperbacks–that’s the only
thing I could afford to read–anyway,
they're great. Yeah, so let's watch that–
so just essentially to kind of explain
this a bit better, they're wearing
wetsuits
and they are kind of the pads on them
are these sewn in velcro discs and
then the tubes are the same two
materials as before–they're wearing ski
masks as well on the face and–yeah so these
tubes can be swapped in and out sort of
like it can you know recompose the
entire body, which notes are playing
where. These guys are friends of mine from
Saskatoon are all part of this kind of–
it’s called AcroYoga, I’m not-I wasn't quite interested in
the idea of a AcroYoga ‘cause it's a weird
mishmash of cultural appropriation and
weird yeah just–it was very weird
practice but they have incredible body
strength and all these ways of holding
each other and moving around and I just
wanted to take advantage of all of that.
So we’re–this is my studio–which I
painted the floor green, bought a cheap
thing–curtain–we strung it up and
it's you know, almost as good as a
Hollywood green screen studio. If you
guys are interested in that kind of
technique–I don’t know how many of you are video artists
here–not that hard to do,
and in you know–in the field of art nobody
cares how well you did it, it's just an
interesting technique. So, doing these
kind of hold positions and also
crumpling in where all these bodies
become one–these are very–very–like this is
done in the world of contemporary dance over and over again
but I thought you know this is something to
maybe explore anew with these weird
suits. So we're doing this in the middle
of summer, it's super hot and these
people wear these like inch–like
quarter-inch thick plastic suits and
everyone's just pouring sweat
so we have popsicle breaks all the
time. Because I filmed it on a green screen
background, I could like take the body
out of where I was filming and then
recompose it as I saw fit. So, if we're
talking about like, the way a
choreographer choreographs bodies on a
stage–there was that, what was happening on
camera, but then in the editing procedure
I can–I can choreograph the bodies in
the space of the video as well and that
was like a really–like mind-blowing for me, it was
just having that control–that kind of
extra layer added to it. So you can come–
come up with weird compositions like
this and we'll see that play out in the
video.
Yeah, so kind of weird line but like I
kind of have this idea of like treating
the body like an email or something–you
can multiply it, send it out to a lot of
different sources, you can cut it up, cut
and paste certain parts of it–you're
just–yeah, just treating the body like–
‘cause it's become digitized right and
there's all these things that we do to
digital media so I'm just trying to play
with that aesthetic. This is a bit long a
video but I haven't shown it in an
exhibition yet so I'm like–I like to
show basically the work in its entirety
and we can maybe talk about it after and
what you guys–how you responded to
it. So–it's five minutes long.
Oh no, we've lost sound. Okay, tech support–
I think I just kind of jostled the cable maybe–
Oh, thanks.
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>>Andreas: Okay, so there's that playing out, okay
so–then I'll just finish–I’m doing pretty
good for time, right–yeah, okay so this is kind of
leading into the project I did at
Whippersnapper Gallery the thing you
guys can all go see if you make your way
downtown to Toronto. Whippersnapper is on
Dundas West right at the entrance to the
Kensington Market in between Kensington
Street and Augusta–like Louise said, open
from Thursday, Friday, Saturday from 1:00
to 7:00 and, yeah.
So, essentially just as my thinking is
progressing I'm thinking well I’ve kind of
taken that performance as far as I can
take it at the current moment but I'm
interested in this machine as an entity
in itself without–even the human has an
activation point and the idea of
automation and we're talking about the
change in our kind of labor structure in
North America as you know jobs are being
exported elsewhere but also jobs that
were being exported, they're also
disappearing because they can be
replaced by machines and kind of like
across a lot of industries, and so I’m thinking about
a lot of these ideas–thinking about
networks, and thinking about–yeah, I guess
we can talk a bit about that after, so
yeah so let’s just talk about what’s going on.
I've got 20 motors in these boxes
that are all controlled via a central
kind of computer that controls all those
guys so each of those rotates
individually which pulls and pumps the
accordion–you guys are kind of used to that, kind of
mechanic by now and it kind of carries
out this musical composition that I
worked on again with the same musician
friend and as before and I'll play the
video and then I'll kind of unpack it a
little bit. So that's a bit closer up–
kind of starting to refine my aesthetic
a little bit–it's kind of like–it’s hard
to explain maybe I'm over explaining it
a little bit but I think it comes from–
like my background as a Danish immigrant and
the city of Scandinavian design is a
very clean untreated wood surfaces,
everything is nicely sanded–a lot of
round corners
and that's the kind of environment I
grew up in and also the family
environment that I lived in ‘cause we
brought over all this furniture and all
this stuff, and all these little toys–but
then again we moved to Saskatoon, I grew
up there for about 20 years in like
stark suburbia where the idea of
repetition is always apparent–always in
your field of view so that also is like
always playing–playing out. But then
living in Toronto for you know a number
of years–you can kind of see the ad-hoc
structure, the way the city is laid out.
It's a bit of a lack of money, a little
bit of poor planning, but this–this city is a
bit chaotic in a beautiful way. So, you
know maybe that's playing out in the
wiring system. So, that’s the close up of the
kind of crank system and just a short video
here–this is in my studio–this is kind
of like an example of what it could do
but it does so many more things if you
go see it at Whippersnapper–so many more
surprises.
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[Music]
[Music]
>>Andreas: Okay, let’s go back to image of it–yeah, okay so
just to kind of unpack that a little bit–
the kind of kernel for this idea, I
think–I’m trying to make the robot–the
machine–a kind of an entity on itself
and knowing that my programming
knowledge is limited and even–even with
the best programming in the world we can
only kind of start to graze this idea of
artificial intelligence. So I can only
kind of graze the very basic components
for life so I'm looking at things that
relate to architecture that are organic
as well as very simple so I kind of hit
on this idea of mold or moss, like in
something that grows on the surfaces of
architecture–interested in this idea
of site adjusted work, something that can
go into any space potentially you can
kind of see like there’s–there’s a plan
that's all kind of improvised and the
Whippersnapper has its own variation of
this and I'm really excited to like,
install it–you know, five or six different
places and like wrap it around the
corner, down a hallway, up a huge wall or
you know just–just different things and
organize the notes in different ways and
create different emotional spaces with
the work. Yeah, and it’s–the idea of an
emotional space I think is really
interesting and kind of how we're
manipulated by, you know, the way the
Western music system is used in like–the
way it plays out in movies or even
in just a regular piece of music–
you know, sad notes make you sad and
happy notes make you happy, right–and just
like playing in this world right ‘cause you
can't quite get away from it–what I
use–so these are all parts from the
accordion–the reeds from an accordion, so
I'm locked into a b c d e-sharp, whatever.
So, the way–a kind of structure to that
is the kind of different walls emanating
different emotions essentially so in
Whippersnapper–this one too i think–there’s
like a happy wall and a sad wall, and a
dark pocket over here and–the ceiling
is kind of a low note so you kind of
always–it’s kind of like, you know, there’s something–
something dark above you.
I just–you know, there's no real purpose
for it, I'm just trying to hit the viewer
in the gut, I just want you to–to be
trapped in there and to feel something.
You can feel whatever you want but you have
to FEEL something. Yeah, so that's it for
my work. I think I've got five minutes to
tell you a story–I’ve been dying to tell
the story ‘cause I want to talk about
where my work is headed and I really
wanna practice telling the story and
it's totally true and it's crazy. Okay, so
this idea of the object as–or the–the
machine as an entity in itself–a simple
machine and then where can this go? I was
packing up–I had a studio in Toronto and
I was packing up all my things to go to
Banff so I got this crate–a big plastic
crate and I just stuffed it full of my
tools and some half-built sculptures–a
lot of heavy metals and stuff and I put
it together and I bolted it shut. [Gestures] It was
about this big, really, just grey–kind of
looks like nothing and I'm lugging it
from my studio to my apartment and it's
like a ten minute walk right and I only
get halfway and it's just like
unbearably heavy and my back's about to
give out so I just put it on the
sidewalk and I go home ‘cause I know
my roommate’s home and then he's just–you
know, we'll just run there, we'll run back
and we'll just–we'll bring it back to
the apartment and I'd can get rid of it.
So I grabbed my roommate, we come
back and it's gone. And I'm looking around
like where the hell's my case and I'm
like oh no I've lost it, all my stuff–
that's not that valuable–
but it's been moved to a field–like
it was a playground of a high school so
right into the middle of the field, and we're
like ‘whoa this is so weird’ like
someone's really messing us–it’s
really hilarious.
So we tramp through–I think it’s–I think there’s snow–
anyway so we both get on either side of
this thing and then we start lugging it
and this person just runs out of this
house, just–just bolts–she’s a woman, she's
really well-built–shaved head and she's
really angry, she's staring at–she’s
yelling at us to stay in place–and she
tells us the bomb squad is coming. [Laughter]
Yeah, and–and I'm like, I’m scared ‘cause
this woman is like enormous and could crush me
and as we're waiting there–I don't get
the explanation till later ‘cause she’s–
she thinks that we are insurgents or
something. Yeah, and so it happens that I
place that package next to kind of an MP
of Toronto's house who was in the middle
kind of this–kind of tense political
situation and a lot of hate mail was
coming her way and she was actually
being guarded by the Canadian Military
at the time–so that was this woman who was
coming out to to grab us [laughter] and so–I had to
like, open this case in front of them
like the the bomb squad comes and–
they're kind of looking over my shoulder
and I open it up and it's just like a
bunch of like bolts and nuts. Anyway, so
that plays out–this happened maybe three
years ago and I just really started to
think about it again as like–this object–
this thing was like so threatening and
it was just like this idea of the
threatening object, not because that it
actually is but because it's a source of
the unknown or mystery. I just kinda want
to play with that emotion and then use
kinetic sculpture in a way that
activates that object to become
threatening–maybe opening up a dialogue
about that kind of thing–the idea of the
unattended baggage–not trying to
place any blame on anyone for causing
that fear but just reflecting on our own
suspicion of that fear.
And, that’s–that's it. 
[Applause]
>>Andreas: Well, thank you.
>>Audience: I’m just wondering, with the–
like are you programming it to make the music
or does the machine play itself?
Because I find it–like, the machine playing itself–that’s
threatening because like, ‘Oh, like now
this is making music, not you–‘
>>Andreas: Great–I would love it if it made music–
I guess I–it's always going to have to
come from programming, that someone would
have to program. I try to introduce a bit
of randomness, to say–I could describe it
as like I’ve programmed kind of like these
musical sentences and there might be
20 to choose from in the programming and
the computer’s like okay I'm going
to play five of these and it selects
five sentences and puts them together
into like a minute-and-a-half performance– so it's
a bit of the computer figuring its own
self out, and then a bit of my–my kind
of composition over top. Yeah, I would
love–I would love to kind of get into
that really intense programming, like
you’d have to probably like go to Google to do, like the
idea like mapping and these kind of
generative sound systems and–and
studying music like that–I just don't have
that skill.
>>Audience: So when it’s turning, that’s–like when this one’s turning this way and this one’s turning another way, that’s your programming?
>>Andreas: Yeah, but–but your idea’s better.
[Laughs]
>>Audience: How did the composer work–didn’t you say that you worked with a composer?
>>Andreas: Yeah
>>Audience: –so did you give him–did you do some parts of it first and then he made up a composition
to go with what-or did he just give you his composition and then you had to figure it out?
>>Andreas: Mmm, well there's actually like a lot of
lessons, and like–like I wasn’t–you know,
I didn't want to just have this
person come in and just compose and give
me a thing so I asked her to teach me
and we kind of went through a bit of the
musical canon–she teaches violin–and I think
the most creative aspect of that was
that we made these kind of cards–there was
kind of like–imagine like
a cut out triangle with three notes for
a chord and she would play those and we
would talk about the emotional space of
that note, so then we made 50 of these
cards–I really should have a slide of that,
that's a good question–and then we kind
of use those triangles to make a map of
how two chords could go together because
if you look at the way it is–like that's
three notes and that three notes but
they share note in common so you have to
kind of compose the space of
interlocking notes
essentially. So it was a little bit
of both. At one point she handed me a
sheet of paper that was the whole thing
composed and then I went back–I think we
did that swapping two or three times to
kind of both be satisfied.
>>Audience: It’s mind-boggling.
>>Andreas: [Laughs] It’s fun.
>>Audience: This piece in particular which I saw,
reminded me of a little bit of Marshall McLuhan, and it’s not just–you know,
McLuhan’s thing was artists take technologies that
are no longer functional and,
at that point, artists are able to do something new with them–they best work with stale technology–
–and it’s interesting, these white drier tubes
are now illegal in Ontario– 
>>Andreas: Across
Canada, yeah.
>>Audience: but what–when I saw it, you know–I
thought more of kind of the
turn-of-the-century like [inaudible]
–you know, and I think this is your most successful musical piece
as well–it’s a little bit like watching
an orchestra, you know, where you are able
to see where the various parts of the orchestra function–you know, how musicians make
the sounds that they make–so it’s very
captivating,
but it's funny–you know, you talk about architecture
and the contemporary city,
but I really saw this as a musical
apparatus–you know, this look at how music’s made–
but, do you see that, like do you see where your work’s going–
I mean you can go so many ways–this idea of
you know, a specific musical direction or choreographic direction–
>>Andreas: Yeah, it’s a good question, I guess there’s like the
McLuhan part and then where is this going–
I'll just start with where this is going.
I think right now I'm interested in
fracturing the practice and going the
musical route–so I'm working with
this composer on that collaborative kind
of more performance-y gig, like we're
going to we're going to perform after a
band in Saskatoon–we're going to try
that out, just enter that world and
become very musical with that. It's hard
to be–to maintain criticality when you
when you're using music in a
contemporary art world, so I'm a little–
I'm hesitant or I just–I’m scared to
1038
00:56:12,060 --> 00:56:18,030
go down that path too much–
>>Audience: Well, John Page did okay–
>>Andreas: Yeah, but that
was a different time and I think that
was experimental and more exciting back then [laughs]
Yeah–the idea of McLuhan I can't
really–I think it's a good point–the
accordion also has a lot of history like
every–every culture seems to have, you
know, two hundred years ago the accordion
seemed to find some sort of place within
that or before like, Italian, French, the
Cajuns, the Acadians–it just plays out,
it’s really interesting and it has a kind
of weak sound–like weak vibration sound
that harkens back to something older, so
yeah–and I think people have forgotten
about the accordion in general. I would just–
I would just say like that idea is–is–I
better talk about it–the idea of the green
screen, right–like so Hollywood has
been using green screen for so long and
I think now is the time when we can just take
that away from them and just use it so
much better–superhero crap–but just like–
we can do different things, yeah.
>>Audience: How did you make the drier chord make the right note–is there something you have to tune?
>>Andreas: Yeah, so all that's been done ahead of time
‘cause it’s like if you pop open an
accordion it has–it’s called a reed bank so
like maybe 20 in a set–little metal
tabs and you just pop them out and then
you have a little tab that you can mount–
I mounted them at the end caps and
that–that takes care of that–when the wind
passes through that–that makes the note.
>>Audience: Have you considered maybe showing
this work in an abandoned church–sort of
the idea of organ playing and all these
emotions that you were talking about–I think
it will kind of be interesting to see
this work played in like a different
setting, like
outside of a gallery setting–
>>Andreas: Absolutely–
>>Audience: –and in a church, I think that will be interesting to see.
>>Andreas: I think the idea of different spaces
having different acoustic properties I
think is really interesting and yeah, a
church would be great–maybe there’s a way I can
figure out how to not–‘cause like, it is a weak
installation, and like–popping holes
and something like walls–but it's a
good idea, yeah. I think it could play out
really nicely on the floor. I could
find a way to do that–yeah, like there's
all sorts of weird things, like the
channel between–underneath the street, right,
like in some of those like, subway
terminals in Toronto could be amazing too,
um, yeah.
>>Host: Thank you very much.
[Applause]
