Article 1

Times Union, Albany, NY

OFF THE CHARTS, MAPS AND THEIR MYRIAD MEANINGS INSPIRE ARTISTS IN WIDELY DIVERGENT WAYS

JOSEPH DALTON Staff writer

Sunday, August 1, 2004

It may be a given that the Earth's oceans and rivers, islands and continents are fully mapped, but artists are proving there's still plenty left to explore. As visually appealing objects and as rich symbols of both nature and human culture, maps have become fodder and inspiration for artists of many different genres and styles. Consider:

Maps are a regular part of the colorful and playful collages of the Albany artist known as Piper, who created the collage on this page for this story. ``Graphically, they're interesting,'' she says.

The local sculptor Chris Cassidy is creating a relief map of the Hudson Valley out of 660 terra-cotta-colored bricks. His ``You Are Here'' will become a permanent installation in the community building of the new Empire Commons on the uptown campus of the University at Albany.

Annea Lockwood, a composer who lives near Peekskill, charted the Hudson River's 315-mile course in the 1980s, using a microphone. She edited and mixed her recordings into the hourlong audio work ``A Sound Map of the Hudson River.'' Her latest project is a similar treatment of the nearly 1,800-mile Danube in Europe.

And on Saturday night at Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass., the Chinese-American composer and conductor Tan Dun will lead Yo-Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in his composition ``The Map,'' a concerto for cello, video and orchestra. The widely hailed piece integrates video recordings of rural Chinese folk musicians within the fabric of the traditional orchestra.

MUSICAL FOLK TRAIL

In the early 1980s, while a music student in Beijing, Tan Dun traveled back to his native Hunan province. In the village of Tujia, he encountered a man who made extraordinary music using rocks and his voice.

``He talked to the wind, clouds and leaves. He talked to the next life and the past one,'' recalls Tan in his program notes for ``The Map.'' ``At that moment, I felt he was a map.''

Tan, 46, always meant to make a return visit to study with the man and record his music, but life and success got in the way. After immigrating to the United States in the late 1980s, Tan has risen to international fame as a composer of vibrant music for orchestra, theater and film. Among his many honors, his score for the film ``Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'' received an Academy Award.

Finally, in 1999, with an upcoming commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra in mind and video recording equipment in hand, Tan returned to rural China. Although the shaman had died, Tan still reaped a cornucopia of distinctive video recordings of indigenous Chinese music in performance.

Folk music has, of course, inspired composers for generations. And during the 20th century, field recordings were pursued by composers like Bela Bartok in Hungary and Charles and Ruth Seeger in North America. Yet by using the actual recordings as a tightly integrated part of an orchestral performance, Tan Dun has made a new bridge.

CREATIVE CLIPS

As a collage artist, Piper's raw materials come from all manner of sources. Photos, anatomy diagrams and cartoons are all fair game. Maps are a particular draw. Piper's works are regularly seen in local shows, in particular with the Albany Underground Artists collective.

A few years ago Piper and a roommate, the artist Corina, had a find when they bought an outdated encyclopedia at a garage sale. ``We destroyed the whole set,'' she says while pointing to pieces of it in various works around their Mansion neighborhood apartment.

A stylized image of an owl was constructed by Piper and Corina entirely of colored paper, clippings and the like. The bird's eyeglasses are cut from a map.

``He's looking through the world with wisdom and experience,'' Piper explains.

Amid the stacks of art board, magazines and sundry papers in her studio, Piper has numerous maps close at hand.

``World maps are good because they have less on them, ... (but) I'm really into maps of the states,'' Piper says.

A current work-in-progress uses a foldout road map of Texas cities. The irregularly shaped boxes for each metropolitan region have become frames in which Piper is mounting objects, including keys and computer circuitry boards.

``My life is compartmentalized, and the keys are in different compartments,'' says the 27-year-old artist, who's newly engaged to a computer programmer.

CHARTING A RIVER

Annea Lockwood has been making regular visits to the Danube River for the last three years. She sits by its banks and turns on her digital recorder, or she'll use an underwater microphone known as a hydrophone.

``Every time we go, we just start where we left off,'' says Lockwood, 64, who travels with her longtime companion, composer Ruth Anderson.

The Danube traverses 10 countries and seven languages. ``A river of language and culture,'' says Lockwood, who recently returned from a visit to the Danube's basin in Moldova. She now faces the task of editing 45 hours of water sounds into a two-hour piece that charts the flow of the river.

``Nobody commissioned this. I just felt like doing another river,'' says Lockwood, who began working with water sounds in the 1960s. Her ``Sound Map of the Hudson River'' was commissioned by the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, which showed the two-hour installation version in 1983. A recorded version was released on CD in 1989 by Lovely Music.

``Underlying my interest in the Danube, because of its history and culture, is a question: What is the nature of a river?'' Lockwood says she's partial to the answer that a geologist friend gave her: ``A river is a transportation system for rocks and land.''

MODELS AND MINDSETS

Lately, Chris Cassidy looks more like a bricklayer than an artist. And at this stage in his project, ``You Are Here,'' that's how he's spending his days.

But first came making a model relief map of the Hudson Valley. Next was sculpting 660 bricks that, when laid together in the proper order, will form that map. The bricks were completed last summer and fired in the fall. Now, at last, Cassidy is laying them, one by one.

When it is completed in a few weeks, ``You Are Here'' will measure 14 feet wide by 6 1/2 feet tall. It forms a mantelpiece for the community building of the University at Albany's new Empire Commons.

Bricklaying may be new for Cassidy, 36, but maps aren't. ``All my work has been about place with different kinds of representation of place, like maps and models,'' he says.

For an earlier work, ``From Albany to the Adirondacks,'' Cassidy laid 15 points on a map, and went to those actual spots to gather soil samples. For the final piece, he displayed the samples -- along with whatever started growing in them -- beneath the original map. It was included in the 2003 Mohawk-Hudson Regional.

Maps, Cassidy believes, have been so much a part of the human experience for so long that they're almost an automatic part of how many of us think about the world. He says, ``I'm interested in what it is like to be walking around a place with a map in your head that you might not even be aware of.''

Times Union, Albany, NY
OFF THE CHARTS, MAPS AND THEIR MYRIAD MEANINGS INSPIRE ARTISTS IN WIDELY DIVERGENT WAYS
JOSEPH DALTON Staff writer	Sunday, August 1, 2004
It may be a given that the Earth's oceans and rivers, islands and continents are fully mapped, but artists are proving there's still plenty left to explore. As visually appealing objects and as rich symbols of both nature and human culture, maps have become fodder and inspiration for artists of many different genres and styles. Consider: Maps are a regular part of the colorful and playful collages of the Albany artist known as Piper, who created the collage on this page for this story. ``Graphically, they're interesting,'' she says. The local sculptor Chris Cassidy is creating a relief map of the Hudson Valley out of 660 terra-cotta-colored bricks. His ``You Are Here'' will become a permanent installation in the community building of the new Empire Commons on the uptown campus of the University at Albany. Annea Lockwood, a composer who lives near Peekskill, charted the Hudson River's 315-mile course in the 1980s, using a microphone. She edited and mixed her recordings into the hourlong audio work ``A Sound Map of the Hudson River.'' Her latest project is a similar treatment of the nearly 1,800-mile Danube in Europe. And on Saturday night at Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass., the Chinese-American composer and conductor Tan Dun will lead Yo-Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in his composition ``The Map,'' a concerto for cello, video and orchestra. The widely hailed piece integrates video recordings of rural Chinese folk musicians within the fabric of the traditional orchestra. MUSICAL FOLK TRAIL In the early 1980s, while a music student in Beijing, Tan Dun traveled back to his native Hunan province. In the village of Tujia, he encountered a man who made extraordinary music using rocks and his voice. ``He talked to the wind, clouds and leaves. He talked to the next life and the past one,'' recalls Tan in his program notes for ``The Map.'' ``At that moment, I felt he was a map.'' Tan, 46, always meant to make a return visit to study with the man and record his music, but life and success got in the way. After immigrating to the United States in the late 1980s, Tan has risen to international fame as a composer of vibrant music for orchestra, theater and film. Among his many honors, his score for the film ``Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'' received an Academy Award. Finally, in 1999, with an upcoming commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra in mind and video recording equipment in hand, Tan returned to rural China. Although the shaman had died, Tan still reaped a cornucopia of distinctive video recordings of indigenous Chinese music in performance. Folk music has, of course, inspired composers for generations. And during the 20th century, field recordings were pursued by composers like Bela Bartok in Hungary and Charles and Ruth Seeger in North America. Yet by using the actual recordings as a tightly integrated part of an orchestral performance, Tan Dun has made a new bridge. CREATIVE CLIPS As a collage artist, Piper's raw materials come from all manner of sources. Photos, anatomy diagrams and cartoons are all fair game. Maps are a particular draw. Piper's works are regularly seen in local shows, in particular with the Albany Underground Artists collective. A few years ago Piper and a roommate, the artist Corina, had a find when they bought an outdated encyclopedia at a garage sale. ``We destroyed the whole set,'' she says while pointing to pieces of it in various works around their Mansion neighborhood apartment. A stylized image of an owl was constructed by Piper and Corina entirely of colored paper, clippings and the like. The bird's eyeglasses are cut from a map. ``He's looking through the world with wisdom and experience,'' Piper explains. Amid the stacks of art board, magazines and sundry papers in her studio, Piper has numerous maps close at hand. ``World maps are good because they have less on them, ... (but) I'm really into maps of the states,'' Piper says. A current work-in-progress uses a foldout road map of Texas cities. The irregularly shaped boxes for each metropolitan region have become frames in which Piper is mounting objects, including keys and computer circuitry boards. ``My life is compartmentalized, and the keys are in different compartments,'' says the 27-year-old artist, who's newly engaged to a computer programmer. CHARTING A RIVER Annea Lockwood has been making regular visits to the Danube River for the last three years. She sits by its banks and turns on her digital recorder, or she'll use an underwater microphone known as a hydrophone. ``Every time we go, we just start where we left off,'' says Lockwood, 64, who travels with her longtime companion, composer Ruth Anderson. The Danube traverses 10 countries and seven languages. ``A river of language and culture,'' says Lockwood, who recently returned from a visit to the Danube's basin in Moldova. She now faces the task of editing 45 hours of water sounds into a two-hour piece that charts the flow of the river. ``Nobody commissioned this. I just felt like doing another river,'' says Lockwood, who began working with water sounds in the 1960s. Her ``Sound Map of the Hudson River'' was commissioned by the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, which showed the two-hour installation version in 1983. A recorded version was released on CD in 1989 by Lovely Music. ``Underlying my interest in the Danube, because of its history and culture, is a question: What is the nature of a river?'' Lockwood says she's partial to the answer that a geologist friend gave her: ``A river is a transportation system for rocks and land.'' MODELS AND MINDSETS Lately, Chris Cassidy looks more like a bricklayer than an artist. And at this stage in his project, ``You Are Here,'' that's how he's spending his days. But first came making a model relief map of the Hudson Valley. Next was sculpting 660 bricks that, when laid together in the proper order, will form that map. The bricks were completed last summer and fired in the fall. Now, at last, Cassidy is laying them, one by one. When it is completed in a few weeks, ``You Are Here'' will measure 14 feet wide by 6 1/2 feet tall. It forms a mantelpiece for the community building of the University at Albany's new Empire Commons. Bricklaying may be new for Cassidy, 36, but maps aren't. ``All my work has been about place with different kinds of representation of place, like maps and models,'' he says. For an earlier work, ``From Albany to the Adirondacks,'' Cassidy laid 15 points on a map, and went to those actual spots to gather soil samples. For the final piece, he displayed the samples -- along with whatever started growing in them -- beneath the original map. It was included in the 2003 Mohawk-Hudson Regional. Maps, Cassidy believes, have been so much a part of the human experience for so long that they're almost an automatic part of how many of us think about the world. He says, ``I'm interested in what it is like to be walking around a place with a map in your head that you might not even be aware of.''