The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco

This past August, I was fortunate enough to visit the new Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. I had really been looking forward to checking it out ever since the huge, black cube in Daniel Liebeskind's revamping of the Jessie St. Power Substation started to rear its head near SF's outpost of Japanese creampuff heaven: Beard Papa's. So naturally, before heading into the museum, I had to have one, and as though to commemorate the occasion, I tried their new cookie crunch one flavor. It has little crunchy bits on the puff pastry itself, which was quite the treat. Suitably sugared up, I was ready to go in.

The first thing that struck me, and one of the things that gets written about immediately (why should this account be any different?) is the architecture of the space. The building is a repurposed power substation, though it doesn't quite feel that way. It is light and airy, and uses its space effectively. The outside of the building, with the jutting Yud Gallery on the side and the Hebrew letter on top, is a bit more evocative than the inside, but it is an old power substation after all!

But aside from curiosity about the building itself (I happen to be a Liebeskind fan, and was disappointed when the freedom tower commission was revoked), I was drawn to visit the museum for the sound installation that was curated by John Zorn. Zorn curated the Yud Gallery (as he is want to do, at venues like the stone and once upon a time at the Knitting Factory before its inevitable fall from grace) by asking fellow musicians and performers to imagine some sort of sonic response to the Hebrew alphabet in general and the letter "Yud" specifically. It is a nice-sounding idea, and I mean this to suggest that many of these artists are adept at writing blurbs or descriptions that read impressively. This could be because of curatorial finesse. However, many of the works that I was able to listen to were, in fact, quite good, and others were less successful. Below is an account of the pieces in the installation and my thoughts on them. I didn't have the chance to hear them all, so I've made a note about those to that effect.

1) "For Lilith" - Z'ev
I did not get to hear this piece.

2) "Kof: I thought I closed the door" - Laurie Anderson
This piece was in the entry-way of the museum, and was "projected" using holosonic audio technology that allows only one listener to experience the piece while standing in a specific spot because the sound is projected there using ultrasound technology (read more about it here.http://www.holosonics.com/). While an interesting use of technology, the result was unfortunate because it was impossible to hear. This is possibly because of the narrow frequency response (only down to between 400-200 Hz). I assume that a possible intention could have been that the speaker / music was being experienced in a secretive manner or confidentially in the midst of a busy gallery, but it was impossible to tell. In all, it was possibly a decent idea and narrative, famous name, but hard to experience: who cares.

3) "Tzadik" - Marina Rosenfeld and Raz Mesinai
This piece was quite interesting. It featured a Female voice, singing (Rosenfeld), and found yet treated samples. A vocal melody was followed by synthesized and metallic (bells and heavy metals) sounds, percussion (cowbells) and drums. I found the use of delay and reverb to create an industrial aural landscape very provocative. At the same time, there was alternation between voice and synthesized sounds, sometimes creating a glitched form of singing. Very well done. A side note: at this point, while reading the list of composers / performers that Zorn had curated, my companion joked: "This is like a Tzadik version of the Bang on a Can Marathon". Not too far from the truth.

4) "50 Gates of Understanding" (Nun) - Erik Friedlander
In this work, Erik Friedlander composed 50 short pieces of 14 notes each. His work was then performed (and recorded) by Jennifer Choi, Sylvie Courvoisier, Trevor Dunn, Mike Sarin, and Erik Friedlander (see my friend's comment again in #3 above). Though not necessarily miniatures, this collection of pieces reminded me of a Webern-esque excercise in permutations. I did not stay for all of the 50 pieces, as it really is a concert piece, not an installation, and it didn't seem to me to use the space in a very interesting way.

5) "The Conversation Memory" (Chet, Samekh)- Lou Reed
I heard this piece (actually 2 short pieces) after "VAV" by Chris Brown, so it was the second one I encountered. "Grace" was the first of Reed's compositions. Basically, it was Lou Reed on solo guitar, but with filtering and phasing effects through which the sound had to travel. There was, of course, some use of feedback, and Reed seemed to favor a heavy midrange tone except for when not playing. During the pauses, line hiss was featured and got phased a bit. The piece was melancholy and recalled some kind of folk theme largely because of the use of guitar. The processing makes the sound get lost in the space of the gallery but also the sculpted audio space of the recording. It was very open and exploratory, reminding me of some of my favorite folk-experimentalists such as Thuja, Tim Hecker, and Scott Tuma. Indie-Rock expressionism at its best, but while recalling Jimi Hendrix somehow (maybe because of the harsh, resonant upper mid-range). Reed didn't shy away from neither melodic explorations nor expressive devices such as wah-wah pedal, heavy reverb and tonally centered blues/country feel. The second of his pieces, "Memory", introduced looped and altered note clusters that shimmered and were filtered to accentuate the harmonic series when the distortion was turned on. This piece was much less successful, unfortunately.

6) "Tell me that before" (Zayin) - David Greenberger
This piece came directly after #3 above, and it was a shock. Immediately following the lush, electronic world of Tzadik, "Tell me that before" began. First of all, the "structure" that makes up this piece is weak. Zayin is the 7th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, so Greenberger decided to make each section have a 7 beat groove and melody, all of which are based on F# (the 7th scale degree). There are 14 vignettes (7x2), to top it off. Come on. All of that could have been fine, except that the music, which "reflects on how memories feel" was aweful. Each one was similar in format, though instrumentation was different. The ones I heard (before fleeing) were spoken stories backed by piano, accordion, marimba, and vibraphone, none of which sounded like midi instruments, though they were purportedly real. I decided to take a break and check out the other parts of the gallery.

7) "VAV" - Chris Brown
This piece is performed by members of The HUB: John Bischoff, Chris Brown, Tim Perkins, Mark Trayle, Phil Stove, Scot Gresham-Lancaster. Kind of a super group of sorts. It consists of synthesized sounds that are "played" by people via computer or other triggering device. Some sounds are sustained and others are percussive instances. It sounded to me like a lot of the sounds were either done by FM or Additive synthesis, to give an idea of the kinds of richer noise (fm) and blips (additive things) that happened. I was unsure of how the piece used the space, or if it was supposed to. The speakers were, unfortunately, situated above the listener basically in the center of the room, so if there was supposed to be a spatial aspect of the music (like pinpointing a performer to a speaker), that didn't happen. To me, the piece initially reminded me of a place that I visited early on in my Bay Area stint called Audium, where the "composer" of the space used all matter of speakers to create different timbres. Actually, "VAV" is nothing like Audium in concept or execution, but the sonic world is so similar as to remind me of it and other west coast knob-twirling explorations (think Stockhausen filtered through Buchla leading you to Alphaville). It is academic while at the same time rather visceral. One could follow the "form" and the sounds were engaging, though it remained a "cold", isolated music. I really enjoyed the textural, tonal, and noise "themes", and other newer synthesis techniques (wave-table?), even though I thought there could be more depth. I was a little bit dismayed when the piece ended on a single tone, though. Kind of a traditional and rather linear ending to a piece that seemed anything but. If nothing else, this piece opened up a few questions to me about the nature of music in a gallery setting rather than sound installation pieces. It also made me decide to buy a CD of Chris Brown's music at Amoeba the next day for further listening. I got this CD, but haven't checked it out yet.

8) "Heavenshow" (Hei)- Jewlia Eisenberg
I did not have a chance to hear this piece.

In all, the Yud gallery was an enjoyable experience, though I began to wonder about the idea of installation in general. I have more questions about the experience than answers: How is one supposed to experience this exhibit? All too often, the pieces were just that, pieces, not installations. So the act of "controlling" one's listening environment (which is how I am accustomed to experiencing an installation) didn't really occur. How was this gallery different from a normal electronic music concert? Is the Yud Gallery an appropriate venue for sound? Are museums appropriate venues for movies? While I enjoyed listening to the pieces in the Gallery, I feel as though my expectation of it being an installation wasn't met. Then again, maybe I wouldn't have sat still any other time to listen to those works. I just hope they weren't supposed to be heard straight from start to finish.

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Also on exhibit was a show that dealt with the idea of "Genesis" in artwork. The above play by play has taken longer than I wanted to, so I am going to make some brief comments about some of the works that I found most interesting. The exhibit as a whole was fantastic, however.

-Anne Hamilton's "Corpus Video": She loops the video text, 'in the beginning'. Hard to explain why, but this was a very effective, if compact piece.

-Alan Berliner - "Playing God": This was a wonderful interactive piece that had randomly generated words from the first couple of lines in genesis flashing on a number of screens (between 5 and 7, I am forgetting now). The viewer hits a button similar to those found on slot machines and the words stop, either creating a sentence at random. A number of words set off video clips highlighting meaning in some fashion. It becomes a game of sorts and is very well done.

-Ben Rubin - "God's Breath Hovering Over the Waters (His Master's Voice)"; This piece left one of the greatest impressions on me from the exhibit. It was a model of the echo HORN antenna that was used by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson to collect cosmic sounds of the big bang in the 1950's. Instead of collecting sounds, this model transmitted an interview about the project as well as a recording of that very sound. The very act of hearing the big bang is revelatory, but to do so through the filter of the first device that "heard" these sounds was fantastic. Rubin was smart to include a picture of the RCA victor nipper dog logo, drawing attention to the dual function of the horn.

-Trenton Doyle Hancock - "In the beginning there was the end, in the end there was the beginning": This was a really fun piece that was a collection of other works, including: "Flower Bed II", "Wow, that means in the beginning there was the end", "Come with me", "Sibling Rivalry, "The end of Almacroyn", and "mound #1 and his daddy". They all dealt with a creation myth that Hancock created that deals simultaneously with monkeys, evil vegans, and mounds of various sorts. Wild, vividly made, and quite fun.

Also on view: A. Rodin's "Hand of God", Marc Chagall's "Creation of Man", Matthew Ritchie's "Day One".

This museum is a wonderful addition to San Francisco's array of cultural institutions, and left me looking forward to the next exhibitions.
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Side note #2: Earlier in the day, I went to blue bottle cafe. I have to say that for nearly $20 for a pot of coffee (to be shared by two people), I was less than impressed. Sure, its about as perfect a cup of coffee as you can ever hope to get (very tasty), but was it worth the line? Maybe once. But I won't be going again! People in the Bay Area seem to love lining up for food be it bread, pizza at the cheese board, coffee, fried chicken sandwiches (bake sale betty). Whatever. They need more restaurants or something. Here's a picture of the siphon pot of coffee.