NICK CAVE, THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE’S SPIRIT CREATURE. (Photo of Nick soundchecking in the Concert Hall in 2013. I found this on Pinterest without a photographer’s credit, sadly.) . . My book is available at editionsballard.etsy.com . . One of the strongest threads running through the book is how the Sydney Opera House has become … Continue reading Nick Cave, the Sydney Opera House’s Spirit Animal
What’s different about my book is that it considers how the Sydney Opera House is brought to life. As the economics of publishing has pushed architecture books towards the profession, with the life, the “program” outside their scope, I describe performances and food culture that could only happen at the Opera House. The resident Australian … Continue reading The Sydney Opera House is a Living Thing
Two things were in my peripheral vision in January as I completed my book on the evolution of the Sydney Opera House as a living thing. One was Solange’s poetic stagings of performances of her A Seat at the Table album in response to late modern art and architecture … Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum … Continue reading MONA FOMA and the future of rock’n’roll
Creating my Sydney Opera House book was as much about creating a process for making books as the object itself. The first music-merchandising book I made goes all the way back to the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Murder Ballads album. The illustrations in the cd’s booklet, from a 19th century Grimm’s-like Cautionary Tales … Continue reading Brilliant Books for Musicians
The notion that a building might be programmed or “played” with the dexterity of an instrument, with both its culture and architectural characteristics being finely tuned to an artist’s work, without any physical alterations being necessary, has been apparent in the most challenging and memorable performances staged during Vivid LIVE over the last decade. There … Continue reading Solange and modern architecture
AN INDEPENDENT RECORD RATHER THAN AN INDEPENDENT BOOK … (photograph is of trombonist Ryan Porter) Today independent releases are standard for music. There’s no sense that individual musicians or bands are releasing their own music because of a failure to be noticed and supported by a commercial record label, or as a warm up to … Continue reading An Independent Book as an Independent Record
“We’re building something here, detective. We’re building it from scratch. All the pieces matter.” Lester Freamon. The Wire This abstract photo is of the spotlights set flush into the floor along the front windows of the Apple Store in Sydney’s CBD. Going into the Apple Store yesterday was a valuable reminder of the value of … Continue reading All the Details Matter … Incremental Technological Change
