Clint Sleeper

12-5-14
Clint Sleeper: An Artist Talk in Three Themes

On December 5^th I attended an artist talk that was given by Clint Sleeper called An Artist Talk in Three Themes.  His three themes being: jokes, instruments and installations, and public art projects that he was working on at the time.  For his first theme of jokes is the No Strings Attached Auction that he and a friend went to.  There is a section on craigslist also called no strings attached, so he and his friend made very elegant looking cards and printed some of the ads from craigslist onto those cards and handed them out to people.  I thought this was a good joke that he came up with and especially how he executed it at the auction. He showed us his joke on how he took broken TVs and made sounds appear on screen to the tune of Alanis Morissette’s song “Ironic”.  The last of his jokes was the Guitar for Dark Comedy: Robot vs Future in which he and a friend hung razor blades from guitar string in the Sheppard Gallery at the University.  

For his next theme being about what instruments and installations he had made he began by showing us a video on his photo pedals that he made by taking broken guitar pedals and put them back together in order to continue trying to combine experimental art and technology with music.  The next instrument he talked about was the Coke Binge Eulogy.  This was a performance he had given using light sensitive audio, and had records and tapes playing at random as well as being turned on and off at random.  For a while Mr. Sleeper was really into making music, but eventually realizes that he’s not and shows us this in his installation on MIDI Televisions.  These televisions are recycled televisions that are then controlled by MIDI controllers or compositions as well as other things in order for each TV to play a differently pitched sound, similar to the Ironic TVs.  Another instrument Mr. Sleeper put together was in collaboration with a man who originally had an EMF machine hoping to see if there were any ghosts hanging around an old thrift store that was being redone into a living museum.  This really interested me because I like to watch shows about ghosts and stuff so I thought it was really interesting that he made his own EMF machine in addition to the one that the man brought with him to the old thrift store.  Another instrument that he created at the old thrift store was his Strings at Elsewhere project which consisted of stringing piano wire across fabric shelves and either strung them with a bow, plucked them, or used other material to run across the wire. 

Some of his larger public art projects that he talked about were his swings and benches that Mr. Sleeper placed around town as a public gift, or it may be seen as rejecting capitalism. He also would repair broken park benches around town as well as painting other ones that needed it. I really liked what he did for this project because I see many things in public that are broken and nobody is willing to fix them unless they are told to and most likely will only do it if they are paid for it.  Even though it was a project more for himself and his thesis he was writing at the time, he was still helping the public space look better and get things done that probably wouldn't have been fixed for another year or two.  

In all I really liked this lecture and thought it was very interesting, especially the projects that worked with circuit boards and light sensors.  I also really liked Mr. Sleeper's public art projects and how they were a gift to society or were seen as rejecting capitalism.  I had never been to an artist talk so I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I really liked this one.