So it might seem less than ideal to create a “Photo of the Week” post for an audio project…but it is a great way to introduce you to a new IMA project created by Nugget Factory intern, Zack Barr. He spent the summer recording various ambient sounds of IMA, creating an audio library, and composing his own tracks mixing, editing and enhancing the raw audio files. And now we are handing them all over to you. Want to submit your own mash up? Keep reading…

Here is an excerpt from Zack’s abstract about the project:

The 20th Century saw innumerable developments in the ways by which humans could document and describe their lives and surroundings. Experiences and perceptions that had previously been subject to the distortions of memory could increasingly be captured and preserved in new and improving mediums. In the early half of the 19th Century, the ability to produce permanent photographs was solidified; with this, a natural and logical inclination lead people to use this ability as a means of creative expression. In the 20th Century, developments in film and cameras, the increasing ability to produce them, and the general shift from analog to digital have allowed modern man to capture, realize, and share visual perspectives with never-before-seen dexterity. Likewise, developments in sound technologies have given us the ability to capture and preserve the myriad sounds that surround us. We have the ability to record, and replay at any time, the grind of any machine or the song of any bird. This ability is especially important for the purposes of historic documentation as, for instance, the sound of some particular city was likely vastly different 50 years ago from the sound of that same city today. We can’t really comprehend what the world would have sounded like to the 15th-Century man. Thus, these “field recordings” can prove very useful in documenting life in the aural realm, just as paintings, photographs, and films have done in the visual. Using these visual images, people have come to creatively explore ideas, tell narratives, and share perspectives. The images are processed, arranged, and displayed in ways that suit these creative needs. In saying this, similar expression can be realized through the interpretation of sound recordings.

• Did you know that you can buy an “Audio Mash Up Construction Kit” on Amazon.com?
• In addition to this project, IMA offers a ton of its audio and video content (really high quality video!) for free download on iTunes.
• Want to share your mash up with us? Submit a comment and give me an e-mail address to get in touch with you. We’ll add your contribution to the available downloads on the iTunes U project.
• Read about the controversy DJ Dangermouse created when he mashed Jay Z’s Black Album with the Beatles White Album to create The Grey Album.

Remember how we said we were going to beef up content on Flickr? Well, it has begun with this set of images documenting the anoxic treatment of a work of art by Thornton Dial.

What is anoxic treatment? Well you either know or you don’t…so if you know, aren’t you dying to see how IMA conservators did it? If you don’t know…aren’t you dying to? Don’t miss out on this chance to expand your vocabulary and knowledge of art conservation.

You will see more conservation on Flickr as the year goes along. The photo-sharing site has proven to be a very useful tool to feature this kind of content. We hope that it is useful in sharing some behind-the-scenes insight for our visitors (and blog readers), but we also hope that those of you who are conservators from other places will find this to be a useful forum for discussion.

And if you visit Flickr you will also find:

• A brand new set of photos Daniel and I created during our visit to the ISEA 2008 conference in Singapore
• New answers to the question: “If you lived forever, what would you take with you?” (Of course inspired by the current exhibition, To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum)
• Photos documenting the Earthworks Camp, a collaboration between IMA and IPS

I had the pleasure of taking a tour through the IMA’s conservation lab last week, for a chance to get a quick look at their space and see a sliver of all of the amazing things that go on down there. I am intrigued by conservation: it requires a high degree of patience, the hand skills of a surgeon and knowledge of a wide range of subjects like chemistry and art history. The lab is a huge space, 7000 sq. ft, and has separate rooms for painting, works on paper, sculpture and textiles.

The last room we toured, textile and fashion conservation, was the highlight for me. I have taken some Costume History classes, so I’ve had a minute amount of first hand experience handling the F.I.T. collection- and this was mostly for examining construction. I don’t really know anything about the steps that need to be taken for preservation or display. They mentioned Shared Beauty, an exhibition of Eastern rugs and Western beaded handbags, which had recently gone up in the Paul Textile Arts Gallery. So, I took a swing through the exhibit to see what it was all about. I was floored! I was hooked! Okay, no more rug puns.

I decided to learn a little more about Shared Beauty, and got a chance to meet with Kathleen Kiefer, the Senior Conservator of Textiles, and Jessica Barner, the textile conservation technician. Kathleen explained a little more about the work they did to get the bags and rugs ready for the show, and Jessica gave me a tour of the lab and the gallery space, showing me some specific examples of the work they did to prepare the objects for the show.

Most of these objects were in great condition, and the vast majority of their time and effort went into preparing the rugs for hanging. It’s a delicate process involving, first, the repair of any damage the rug might have sustained, like worn or loose areas, but mostly the careful stitching of Velcro (on a twill tape support backing and perfectly centered) onto the backs of the rugs. This matches up to Velcro that is affixed to the wall. The silk rugs get propped onto strainers, angled boards covered in ultra-suede, to remove some of the pull of gravity off their more delicate knots and weave. Kathleen also mentioned that they had to devise a safe way to get the upward facing fringe to lay flat against the strainers. She used gold thread, tacked at intervals, to combat gravity and invisibly keep the fringe upright.

For the bags, not much work was needed. However, laying flat with no armatures or mounts, the bags did need a little more body shape. Kathleen and Jessica (assisted by Petra Slinkard, Curatorial Assistant, Textile and Fashion Arts; Brose Partington, Mount Maker; and Susan Mefford, a Textile Lab volunteer) created custom pillows for each one out of specially selected materials. Because the bags are enclosed in cases, the most important aspect is the material in and around them. A lot of fabrics and materials like plastics will give off gases harmful to the objects nearby. The ultra-suede used for displays is chosen specifically for its chemical stability. It also comes in lots of colors!

I highly recommend this exhibit. The bags are breath-taking in their intricacy; they glitter in their cases, miniature representations of the motifs on the rugs. The rugs are grand, lush interpretations of millennia old traditions, but look so modern. I longed to touch everything- a feeling, I think, that is natural in a gallery of objects so deliciously tactile. When you visit, you can think about all the loving attention each object got in order to make it there for you!

• Shared Beauty is open on the second floor through March 8, 2009.
• Simply Halston, a sampling of women’s wear by (Hoosier!) fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick, is open in the gallery next door until January 4th, 2009.
• The word textile, from the Latin texere, to weave, technically means interwoven threads, while fabric can mean woven, knit, looped, knotted, or fused fibers.
• The oldest carpet in the world, the Pazyryk carpet from 500 B.C.E., was discovered frozen in a Siberian cave burial site in 1949.
• The rugs in this show come from 5 major areas: Iran, Turkey, Caucasus (modern day Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia), India, and Turkmenistan.
• The IMA began their textile collection in 1888 with the purchase of an Irish embroidery.

120 feet of words to be exact. Jack Kerouac captured the beating heart of a generation – one of wanderers, writers, and dreamers – with his iconic novel On the Road, written in one sweeping session of 20 days in the spring of 1951.

The single piece of paper (which is really tracing paper sheets taped together), ancient in its tea-like stain and torn edges, personal in its hand-written corrections, and inspiring in its fervent immediacy, is a testament to all that is, or was, “Beat” – a more free approach to self-expression, non-conformity, a bohemian lifestyle, among many other characteristics. The Beats wrote about sex, drugs, jazz – more than enough to shock our postwar nation’s elders and enough to invigorate their children. Kerouac compiled notes from journeys across America to create the closely autobiographical nature of On The Road, sometimes accompanied by anyone from Neal Cassady to Allen Ginsberg. Even though there was exceptional attention paid to Kerouac’s fortnight feat, the novel had been taking form long before the author’s almost overnight success, in between scribbling lines at Cassady’s and exploring each state he visited in great detail.

How did the scroll end up here? Aside the fact that it is on tour at museums and libraries across the country, Indianapolis Colt’s owner Jim Irsay bought the scroll in 2001 and Jim Canary of Indiana University has been its conservator since.

To me, the beauty of On the Road is its timeless appeal of the great American road trip we all want to take, with those fearless zealots that we call friends and the never-ending search for inspiration in a world that becomes all to familiar with daily life.

Who’s who in On The Road

Real-life person/Character name

Jack Kerouac / Sal Paradise
Gabrielle Kerouac / Sal’s Aunt
Alan Ansen / Rollo Greb
William S. Burroughs / Old Bull Lee
Joan Vollmer / Jane
Lucien Carr / Damion
Neal Cassady /Dean Moriarty
Carolyn Cassady / Camille
Hal Chase / Chad King
Henri Cru / Remi Boncoeur
Bea Franko / Terry
Allen Ginsberg / Carlo Marx
Diana Hansen / Inez
Joan Haverty / Laura
Luanne Henderson / Mary Lou
Al Hinkle / Ed Dunkel
Helen Hinkle / Galatea Dunkel
Jim Holmes / Tom Snark
John Clellon Holmes / Tom Saybrook
Herbert Huncke / Elmer Hassel
Frank Jeffries / Stan Shephard
Allen Temko / Roland Major
Bill Tomson / Roy Johnson
Ed Uhl / Ed Wall

On the Road Again with Jack Kerouac and Robert Frank is open at the IMA now through September 21.