A Studio Visit with Matthew Shlian

ghostlystore:

image

The artist’s studio is always a fascinating place to visit. Through its array (or disarray) of tools and artifacts, it tells us as much about how the work gets made as it does the individual behind the work.

While Matthew Shlian was producing Apophenia, his latest series for Ghostly International Editions, we asked Ann Arbor photographer Cullen Stephenson to pay a visit and document not only Matt’s working process, but his studio space as well. Enjoy the look inside.

image

Read More

For Slowing Down

One of the pieces that stuck with me this year was by the electronic musician Fort Romeau, about the idea of Slow Listening. It’s a love letter to vinyl, but can be read to include any form of uninterrupted listening (running, solo driving, sitting on a plane).

The Slow Web, a piece by Jack Cheng, which was published around the same time really cemented this as a movement in my mind.

Slow was everywhere this year and it hit me again at the airport yesterday.

…..

Being of Midwestern descent, I’ve always run from “slow” as a putdown of the region. I’ve come to realize with art and tech, it’s actually more about a certain faith in process, that distracting yourself, is actually cutting corners.

This year’s busy trap aricle, was one of a handful in the NY Times that warned of busying ourselves into oblivion. That in our need for incessant meaning, we create a chaos which doesn’t allow us to actually retain, or feel, much.

drip.fm, the company that Miguel Senquiz, Haig Papaghanian, and I have been building is also about this. It’s not about unlimited options at any given moment. It’s about experiencing culture as it is, not as an opportunity cost.

ghostlystore: Ghostly friend and collaborator Rob Fissmer, aka Raeo, who was featured on the blog earlier this year, lent us his time and skills to create the latest mixtape for Freunde von Freunden, the international interview magazine based in Berlin. Head on over to their site to listen to the mix, and while you’re at it, check out the wealth of inspiring, meticulously presented content. Weekend reading anyone?
Pop-upView Separately

ghostlystore:

Ghostly friend and collaborator Rob Fissmer, aka Raeo, who was featured on the blog earlier this year, lent us his time and skills to create the latest mixtape for Freunde von Freunden, the international interview magazine based in Berlin. Head on over to their site to listen to the mix, and while you’re at it, check out the wealth of inspiring, meticulously presented content. Weekend reading anyone?

ghostlystore:

Sougwen Chung: Works in Progress

Today marks the release of Sougwen Chung’s second print series, Étude Op. 2, No. 1-4, for Ghostly International Editions. To coincide with this release, we asked Sougwen to give us a compass for where she’s heading next. (Click the images above for a slideshow and learn more about each image in her descriptions below.) 

Whether it’s the result of restlessness, unbridled curiosity, extensive traveling, or simply the cumulative effect of all of these factors, the breadth of Chung’s work has surged in the past year. From a newfound fascination with origami to elaborate projection mapping and live visuals, these works in progress suggest that the artist we already esteem, is just getting started.

Row 1 (left to right)
  • Macro shot of the interior of a tessellated paper piece. Making connections between code-driven visuals and the simple materiality of building form with paper creasing and folding.
  • A snapshot of a recent work in progress piece, entitled Prélude. Experiments with light projection on a planar surface. 
Row 2
  • Still from a timelapse light sketch, made on my studio wall. 
  • Embrace of Indeterminacy  framed. Violin, and korg nanocontroller I use while performing visuals for Sepalcure. Working on creating a piece that can integrate these three tools meaningfully, or at least, elegantly.
  • Prélude intro, more here
Row 3
  • Drawings I’ve made over the years
  • Another projection experiment, Optogenesis. This time on a hyperbolic paraboloid structure, accompanied by a track by Tim Hecker.