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
I’m discovering a whole new dimension of discovery. I don’t need much inducement to follow a lead on Bandcamp or Instagram. I have a lot of respect for what I find there. I keep becoming more convinced that music merchandise is the where the most exciting industrial design is. And that merchandise can precede the … Continue reading DISCOVERING TERRA NAOMI AND A NEW DIMENSION OF DISCOVERY
HIGHLY COLLECTIBLE & TRULY RARE REG MOMBASSA FANZINE. This very limited edition of my Sydney Opera House book (editionsballard.etsy.com) contains a whole section that will never be repeated, a unique appreciation of the art & music of Reg Mombassa intertwined. The next edition will be an altogether more ordinary thing. No concrete-seeming hard covers, no … Continue reading Truly rare Reg Mombassa Fanzine
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
