August 12th - ISEA
Ethereal music and fictional speech opened this, the final day, for NPR at ISEA in San Jose courtesy of the Oneiromantic Ambiguity Collective, which is comprised of Gregory Scharpen, John Scharpen, and Matt Waldron and their self-named “Strange Music”.
Strange Music from the Oneiromantic Ambiguity Collective
That moved into funk and soul at the hands of Mr David Madrid and his “Block 2 Block” show. He was joined by co-host Alex, hip hop star Two Left Feet as well as Raj Jayadev, editor of Silicon Valley Debug . The theme of today’s show was downtown San Jose – what it lacks, what it has, how regular people can get involved. “San Jose has its own sub-culture. That will never die but the city is trying to cover up that history,” said David Madrid.
The final episode of “Block 2 Block” on NPR
That’s something that Diana Solomon from local radio station KKUP picked up on in the next show. She and Zefrey chat about San-Jo and its culture, its government, its love of technology and its under-nourished art scene. “We have a lot of culture in spite of the authorities”, she says. Diane also tells us about KKUP, which is, she claims, one of the last 100% listener-supported, volunteer-run radio stations in the US, and regular home of “Block2Block”.
Diane Solomon from local San Jose radio station KKUP 91.5 FM
We then went outside on the street and to its music-listening pedestrians who were polled by Saul Albert in the final “Traffic Island Disks” of the week. The show nearly turned into Traffic Island Frisks as one young lady offered to flirt with Mr Albert in place of her date that never showed up, but it ultimately took a loftier theme as sin, the avoidance there-of filled out the airwaves via the listening pleasure of the next interviewees, most pointedly the gent who was listening to a preacher discuss the innately sinful nature of the human being.
Traffic Island Disks
Back in the studio words went out the window as Jack did some wild singing and screeching in a most industrial manner. It was a continuous wail of sounds pleasant and pleasantly unpleasant.
Screaming Jack screams
After that the sound went out onto the street in this beautifully hot day. As coincidence would have it, LeE bumped into a woman who had just come from an event that he was supposed to be talking at. We then had a few words from Saul Albert and then from a random stranger who might have just got a job, we don’t know. The interviewers became the interviewees.
Out on the street with the people
The ZeroOne festival included an overwhelming amount of artwork; just a few of the artists involved passed by the NPR microphone. One group that did so, providing our next show, was two of the three creators of “Moveable Types and Instant Spaces”, whose installations around the city included putting a shower curtain in Cesar Chavez Park.
ISEA: Movable Types Instant Spaces
Out on the street, and with the help of Porter, LeE and Zefrey interviewed some Museum Experience Representatives and a journalist. They talked about their jobs and they talked about the festival.
Out on the Streets with museum workers and journalists
Then we had artists from Defendex on the air who talked about their project and the week’s show as a whole. Defendex ESPGX, which was designed to look like an old 1950’s computer, played on the topic of fear.
ISEA: Defendex
Some general sounds of NPR: squeeks, interviewing the video-taper while she films, talking to the lady with the ice cream. That kind of thing.
ISEA: Talking to strangers on the street
Young artists were then in the spotlight as the ISEA/UNESCO ambassadors (scroll down the page) stopped by for a chitchat. Young multimedia artists from Australia, Moldova and, um, San Jose, talked about their projects and their time at the festival.
ISEA: UNESCO youth ambassadors
Following on from her on-the-spot report earlier in the week, Trena Noval visited the NPR studio to give a post-mortem on the Free Soil Bus Tour. This educational tour highlighted the history of the local tech industry and its toxic impact on the land and locals. The mushrooms made an appearance again, before talk turned to the C5-sponsored “Quest for Success” in which groups competed for a residency at the local Montalvo Arts Center. Trena was one of the judges for this game.
Trena Noval and the damaged Silicon Valley ecosystem
Out on the street we had Zefrey and Porter and scientologists and talk of Friday night’s Survival Research Labs performance and that evening’s painting performance from the San Jose Institute of Contemporary art. And the gym opposite the ticket booth, whose floor-to-ceiling windows provided an ample view of the world of keeping fit to our busy radio-a-teurs.
NPR people talk to other people and to each other
LeE and Zefrey had already praised Joe McKay’s color game when what do you know but the man himself turned up and chatted about it, in which participants have to mix specific colors before their opponent. Mr Mackay then discussed his “PreReview project” – a site where people review films they haven’t seen – before moving on to discussing the best way to die, quite cheerfully of course.
ISEA: Joe McKay
And then, after a little chitchat, NPR headed out in a cloud of feedback, music, and credits. That was that for ISEA and ZeroOne 2006.
Last sounds from Camera 12, San Jose