YHBHS voyage
into sound, space, + light

"The Integratron is an acoustically perfect tabernacle + energy machine sited on a powerful geomagnetic vortex in the magical Mojave Desert..."








YHBHS is traveling to the Integratron this weekend to gaze at the Perseid Meteor Shower Star Party... An annual benefit for the Mojave Desert Land Trust sponsored by Joshua Tree National Park Association. I've got a booking for the Sound Bath at 9 a.m and a schedule of events planned for this desert getaway. Any opportunity I have to drive into the desert sun, I'm game! Also coming up in October, High Desert Test Sites weekend.....

"HDTS returns this fall for a weekend of new experimental art, architecture, and design projects sited in the Southern California high desert. Curators the McCarthy Family, Robert Stone, and Brooks Hudson Thomas have invited an exciting group of emerging and established artists, architects, and designers to create new works for HDTS 2011."



What is the Sound Bath?
"The Sound Bath is a 30-minute sonic healing session that you can experience while resting comfortably in the Integratron's highly resonant, multi-wave sound chamber. We play a series of quartz crystal singing bowls live, each one keyed to the energy centers or chakras of the body, where sound is nutrition for the nervous system.

Imagine lying on comfy mats in the center of this relaxing and resonant high-energy field, while having your body bathed in exquisite sound for 30 minutes. The results are waves of peace, heightened awareness, and relaxation of the mind and body. "

"George Van Tassel, creator of the Integratron, was a legendary figure, an aeronautical engineer and test pilot who worked for Lockheed, Douglas Aircraft and alongside Howard Hughes at Hughes Aviation . He was also one of the leaders in the UFO movement who held annual "Spacecraft Conventions" at Giant Rock for 25 years. Van Tassel said UFO channelings and ideas from scientists such as Nikola Tesla led to the unique architecture of the Integratron. He spent 18 years constructing the building."




images sourced from flicker...


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"I think that true freedom is rare
and that you have to hunt for it. "

- Andrea Zittel

Andrea Zittel. These images are a few of the works that
are installed at Andrea Zittel's Joshua Tree home and studio.
(Finally unloading some of the images off my camera from a couple weekends ago.)




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"In the early 1990s, Andrea Zittel began making art in response to her own surroundings and daily routines, creating functional objects that fulfilled the artist’s needs relating to shelter, food, furniture, and clothing. She produced her first “Living Unit”--an experimental structure intended to reduce everything necessary for living into a simple, compact system—as a means of facilitating basic activities within her 200-square-foot Brooklyn storefront apartment.

"One of the main things that I have been wondering about is how one can actually live a "liberated" life, or if this is even possible. My idea right now is that perhaps the only real way to liberate oneself is to slip in between the cracks of larger authoritative systems. It interests me how often we do this by making smaller, more enclosed systems that are even more restrictive than those in the outside world. You can become so cocooned in these little self-invented structures that you almost believe the larger systems don't actually exist anymore. "

I wanted to try to remember an Allan Kaprow quote that I read last summer that really stuck with me. It was about how you take art, figure out that rules that make it art, and slowly eliminate them one by one. He was talking about the non art object. It was so interesting to me – I think about what a normal human reaction would be to the eventual creation of non art.

I think that the irony is that Allan Kaprow took art to the non art status to such an extreme that he almost eliminated art itself. Ultimately, by eliminating rules he brought up the importance of rules as a form of social consensus. It made me think how rules and structures are ways that we create bonds with other people. They help define communities and identities. Perhaps we should see rules to some extent as creative gestures and not purely as limiting forces.

- Andrea Zittel in conversation with Allan McCollum, here...






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joshua tree










Off to check out Von Tundra's furniture and works in Joshua Tree this weekend...
Perhaps I'll see you there?


"Von Tundra is a Portland-based design house specializing in the creation of contemporary furniture, fixtures, installations, and interiors. Since the group’s founding in 2007 its three members have honed an aesthetic vision that unites Modernism’s efficient lines with the warmth of familiar materials and handcrafted integrity. As both a licensed company and artist collaborative, Von Tundra has the ability to engage a variety of creative activities, from client-inspired projects to conceptually focused gallery exhibitions."



photographs of joshua tree via karl french here...









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