Sound Sample/Video Sample

Sound and Video Sample 2013 from Jason Zeh on Vimeo.


https://vimeo.com/73114426

This is a mix of elements from various tracks combined with clips from the A Vacant Lot To Be In Artist edition VHS.

The last 2 fliers for the CWNM 2013 series.

Crow With No Mouth 2013 Needs Your Help.

Please consider going here so that I can continue making these fliers for the series. I am unsure of the specifics, but it seems that one of the grants that Jesse had been awarded to fund this year's concert series ended up disappearing. Without your support, CWNM will be unable to fund the rest of the shows.

Printing Proof: A Vacant Lot To Be In Artist Edition VHS & Audio Cassette

Pivot Arts in Chicago

Find info about the artists here.

Refractions at a Steep Angle of Incindence

7pm, June 19th
4101 N. Broadway Ave.
$10 Suggested Donation.
RSVP to info@pivotarts.org

As part of the Pivot Multi-Arts Festival, Coppice is partnering up with the Buena Park Neighborhood Association and High Concept Laboratories to create and curate experimental sonic experiences in a defunct cleaners in uptown. The show will feature visual art created by current HCL Sponsored Artist Nora Maité Nieves.

Pivot Arts develops new work and presents performances throughout the year culminating in a large-scale, multi-arts festival. Our vision is that of a vibrant community where unique collaborations between artists, businesses and organizations lead to the support and creation of innovative performances.
Pivot’s inaugural Multi-Arts Festival is a celebration of innovative performances in our community.  This year’s festival reignites the spirit of the Vaudeville Era by performing in unique and historic spaces throughout Uptown and Edgewater!  Top Chicago innovators including: Manual Cinema, Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak, Mucca Pazza, and Theater Oobleck lead celebration of multi-disciplinary performances in a former Vaudeville Theater, an at-one-time Charlie Chaplin film studio and other exciting spaces.

Summer 2013 lineup.

COPPICE

JASON ZEH

JASON SOLIDAY

N.N.N. COOK 

TROY SCHAFER

LIZ MCCARTHY
ABBÉY ODUNLAMI
ROBERT HONSTEIN
SCOTT BARTON
TIRTZA EVEN
Everything is Terrible/CHANNEL 2020
THE INCONVENIENCE
EXIT GHOST
NORA MAITÉ NIEVES
THEATRE SEVEN OF CHICAGO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Selfies and Stills

The colorful ones are stills from Auto Tracking 1: the video component of the artist edition of A Vacant Lot To Be In. The others are pictures of my face and a studio shot.

Teaser: A Vacant Lot To Be In artist edition VHS

Wall Paper

http://www.extrapool.nl/beelden/Slimtarra/SLIMTARRA_Jason_Zeh.tif
http://www.extrapool.nl/slimtarra

More Teasers

Here is the finalized, full color, artwork for the cassette and VHS that will come with the artist edition of A Vacant Lot To Be In. I am about to send them off to the Risograph printers after running into some problems and other work demands over the last week. These are going fast. So, contact CIP if you want to reserve one.

More Images from Hammer Anvil Stirrup in Lincoln, NE

Review of Hammer Anvil Stirrup

Read it here.

"The sounds created aren’t always musical. One of the key sonic components of Jason Zeh’s '3 Examples of Extended Tape' is tape hiss along with other noises and hums created by three cassette players run through a mixing board."

Artist Edition VHS Cover

Here is the Black and White art for the VHS that comes with the Artist Edition of A Vacant Lot To Be In.

The final version will be a full color Risograph print of this design. If you are interested in getting one, make sure that you reserve it soon. They are quickly disappearing.

Update: as of now, there are only five of these left that are unspoken for. If you want one contact Crippled Intellect Productions.

Hamer Anvil Stirrup: People Make Things That Make Sounds

Photos by Craig Roper and Bryan Day


I have a piece in this sound art exhibition in Lincoln Nebraska right now. The show is called Hamer Anvil Stirrup: People Make Things That Make Sounds and was curated by Jay Kreimer and Bryan Day. 

LUX Center for the Arts

2601 N 48th St, Lincoln, Nebraska 68504

Hammer, Anvil, Stirrup: People Make Things That Make Sounds
Reception: May, 3 from 5-8pm
May 3-June 28
... Sponsored by: Garner Industries

Lincoln artist, Jay Kreimer and San Francisco musician, Brian Day invited a group of contemporary sound artists from around the country to make work that engages your eyes and ears. A variety of mediums are used to create curious instruments that make sounds that are familiar and foreign. Participating artists: Harry Bertoia, Scott Cook, Bryan Day, Anne Hege, Tore Honore’Boe, Joseph Jaros, Tim Kaiser, Ben Kreimer, Jay Kreimer, Sung Kim, Cheryl Leonard, Reinhold Marxhausen, John Collins McCormick, Tom Nunn, Ed Ruchalski, David Samas, Jeff Snyder, Robert Stewart, Jeff Thompson, Jon Yates and Jason Zeh.

Hammer, Anvil, Stirrup: People Make Things That Make Sounds

Hammer, Anvil, Stirrup: People Make Things That Make Sounds
Reception: May, 3 from 5-8pm
May 3-June 28
... Sponsored by: Garner Industries

LUX Center for the Arts

2601 N 48th St, Lincoln, Nebraska 68504

Lincoln artist, Jay Kreimer and San Francisco musician, Brian Day invited a group of contemporary sound artists from around the country to make work that engages your eyes and ears. A variety of mediums are used to create curious instruments that make sounds that are familiar and foreign. Participating artists: Harry Bertoia, Scott Cook, Bryan Day, Anne Hege, Tore Honore’Boe, Joseph Jaros, Tim Kaiser, Ben Kreimer, Jay Kreimer, Sung Kim, Cheryl Leonard, Reinhold Marxhausen, John Collins McCormick, Tom Nunn, Ed Ruchalski, David Samas, Jeff Snyder, Robert Stewart, Jeff Thompson, Jon Yates and Jason Zeh.

New Flier

Two Color Schemes

Cover Mounted

Back Cover

This is really interesting...

...to me at least.

At the risk of sounding like a douche, I wanted to say a little about my visual art and use the above images as a reference point. The first image is the artwork that I recently sent to the label that is putting out a cassette for me. I greatly respect that label as it has been going for quite some time and releases work by some truly inspiring artists. I was honored and humbled to have been asked to submit some work for this cassette series and, as is often the case with me, I took far too long to complete the audio. Then, it took me far longer to finish the art work. I struggled with a few ideas for the cover and finally decided on a concept that I thought was good. I executed the idea that I had in mind and edited the image so that it should fit perfectly within the dimensions of a cassette case.

Anyone who has been following my visual art will have noticed that, over the last few years,  I have been breaking outside my standard black and white xerox art and have been straying away from the use of bold and often earthy tones into more garish pastels. Another stylistic change that I have undergone in the last year, specifically, is that I have been working on incorporating frames into my art. In the realm of record covers, this is a move that has been met with considerable confusion. Just about every time I send the art off to the label that is dealing with it, the response I get is something like, "do you want me to crop out the frame?"

I fully understand the confusion. We usually think of frames as being things that are used to present art. They are devices that identify visual space as art and cordon it off from the outside world. Because of the disruption of visual space caused by the frame, the abstract expressionists often rejected its use. It may have been a way of blurring the boundaries between the experience of art and that of other visual experiences. It may have been an attempt to separate that kind of painting from the pictorial associations of past art movements. It may have been an attempt to draw attention to the objecthood of a painting in contrast to its former role as mere depiction of something external to it.

With this understanding of the frame in mind, it makes sense that people would be unwilling to easily accept a frame as part of the artwork for an album cover. But that is why I first started using it. Years ago, when I first began trying to show my work in public, I started collecting odd frames to put the pieces in. Much later, I became interested in photographing xerox art in frames to cast them as three dimensional objects rather than as flat designs.

Another issue that came up in this work takes me back to the abstract expressionists, specifically Robert Motherwell. A few years ago, I was reading his collected writings and became very interested in a series that he referred to as "opens." I was lucky enough to see one in person in Grand Rapids MI (it wasn't my favorite, but was pretty cool nonetheless). These pieces are characterized by very large expanses of one color (there might be some with more than one color though) and very simple lines that start to outline a geometric shape, but then intersect the outside edge of the canvas. The result is an implied form that continues outside of the visual field and kind of opens the canvas up to continue out into the rest of the world. This idea was really interesting to me and its influence started to work its way into my work.

When I came up with the idea for this record cover, I think I pushed my ideas about what I was doing with frames a step further than I was able to achieve before. In the first image, you can see that the bottom edge of the frame is cut off. I intentionally did it that way because the bottom black line of the xerox art is supposed to function as a stand in for that fourth wall of the frame. The whole idea of that piece is an interaction between the image and the frame so that they both work together to complete the rectangle. The result, for me at least, is that, like Motherwell's "opens" the piece opens the cover of the tape out into the world by implying a continuation of the image outside of what is visible. But, more importantly, it sets up a dialogue between the xerox art and the frame. The frame is trying to contain the image, but it is unable to do so because the bottom of it is cut off. As a result, the xerox art piece (which is rectangular, like a frame) steps in to close off the image at the bottom. At the same time, the top, left corner of the image is left open. Therefore, it relies on frame to keep everything closed up nicely. Because the xerox and the frame both need each other to box everything in, it becomes obvious that the function of the frame has been radically transformed. It is part of the image rather than external to it.

If you look at the actual, proposed, cover art, the bottom of the frame has been photoshopped back into place. Now it is just a frame again. The art is the thing inside the frame. The frame is not part of the art. There is no reason to think about the purpose of the frame on the cover.

If the cover goes to print like this, we will all survive. There is no big problem. It just provided a really amusing opportunity for self indulgent thinking: maybe one that is only amusing to me.

Printed Covers