Jay Needham

Opened.

2007
I dug out my old stamp collection and remembered that it was not really mine, but someone else’s. It consists of a shoe box of loose stamps from around the world, cancelled and therefore of no value to the real collector. I kept it through the years though, somehow protected it and also began to imagine a correspondence, a fiction that spoke about travel using my own footage, writings and sounds.
The piece is a continuation of the work that started with 13 buildings and features spare recounting of a monolouge left on an answering machine. OPENED relates to 13 buildings, but neither is the first in the series. The sounds gathered for this piece are of Spring rainstoms in Southern Illinois.

Jay Needham

Jay Needham is an artist, radio producer and composer whose sound and visual works are often concerned with the politics of borders and acts of listening. Although he primarily centers his creative and critical practice on radio and the transmission arts, screenings of his video series on memory and architecture have appeared at festivals and conferences worldwide. 13 Buildings premiered at the 9th. Videomedeja in Serbia with additional screenings at the Sydney Opera House during d/art 2006. The series has been distributed by the Centre for Art and Technology, Finland on the DVD Flux Vol.1 and Vol. 2. The second installment titled OPENED screened at the VIBGYOR Film Festival in Kerala India and during the Simultan Video and New Media Art Festival in Timisoara, Romania.

His radio documentary Listening at the Border was a special presentation during Sonic Interventions at The University of Amsterdam in 2005. Broadcast on numerous NPR stations in the United States, the work traces several years in the life of an NSA sound spy. Additional programming events include Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre and during Radiotesla as a part of War, at Tesla im Podewils Palais, Berlin, Germany.

Other works include his micro radio work There and Back performed and aired as a part of Particle/Wave during Pixel Ache 2005 at The Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki and the recently installed Tell Us Your Secrets during Waves, curated by RIXC and Armin Medosch at The Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga 2006.

A Slow Crash, his narrative work for radio, aired and streamed as a part of New Media Scotland’s Resonant Cities program and was released on Deep Wireless II in 2005 by New Adventures in Sound Art.

Jay is a frequent collaborator with The Association Panamericana para la Concervacion, a rainforest conservation NGO based in The Republic of Panama.

Writings and selections of his sound works will be published in 2007 in Hearing Places edited by Ros Bandt. Cambridge Scholars Press. (In press)

He is currently producing, researching and composing a radio feature on his family’s relation to the origins of the atomic bomb. A live FM performance of that work will premiere in Brussels in October during The Radiophonic Biennale. Needham holds an MFA from The School of Art at California Institute of the Arts. Jay teaches courses in Sonic Arts, in the Department of Radio–Television, College of Mass Communication and Media Arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Breast Pump

POLYGRAPH

A friend recently told me about a lie detector test he voluntarily took, to proceed further in his job. It was not necessary for the job he had, but if he wanted to earn more money he had to take the test. He deals with investments, so he is sometimes responsible for information worth a lot of money, therefore, he must be trusted. The test took place over two days, the doctor examining him had 25 years experience using a polygraph. My friend told me about all the different pieces of machinery attached to him; a clip on his finger to measure heart rate,one to measure perspiration. A contraption across his chest which measured breathing rate, and a sensor pad on his seat to detect any tiny unusual movement. I found it fascinating, not exactly the question of 'truth' and 'trust' but the attachment of wires and synapses to the human body. And the fact that this machine was painstakingly designed in the first place, and it still, in 2011, takes 2 days to conduct the test. I am interested in the apparent delicacy of the human body's slight changes influencing this incredible machine, the any other machines that attach to the body, hospital equipment, intravenous drips, dialysis machines...

Jefferson's Polygraph

The Empress of House Plants

http://51chevy.wordpress.com/the-bird-of-paradise-house-plant/

Sale 14244 - The Private World of Truman Capote New York, 13:00 9 Nov 2006

Buyers of property lots offered in this catalog will not acquire any copyright, intellectual property, publicity or similar rights in the property (including without limitation the artwork, photographs, books and manuscripts being offered) or in the images or likenesses that may be contained therein. Accordingly, buyers of lots may not publish, reproduce, distribute or create derivative works of any such property without the prior consent of the holders of such rights.

Please note that Truman Capote's personal wardrobe lots are in various states of condition. As with all lots offered at auction, we recommend that potential auction participants request detailed condition reports before bidding.

The Truman Capote Literary Trust is neither a participant nor sponsor of this sale.

1001 Capote, Truman. Various titles. 3 volumes: A Christmas Memory. New York: 1966. Original cloth, slipcase. 1st edition, in original plastic wrapper. * The Thanksgiving Visitor. New York: 1967. Original cloth, slipcase. 1st edition, in original plastic wrapper. * One Christmas. New York: 1983. Original cloth, in slipcase. 1st edition. With Truman Capote library stamp to upper cover of slipcase. Sold for $1,076 inclusive of Buyer's Premium	1002 Capote, Truman. Various titles. 3 volumes: In Cold Blood. New York: 1966. Original cloth, no jacket. 1st edition, with Truman Capote library stamp. * Music for Chameleons. New York: 1980. Original cloth, slipcase. Limited author's edition, with Capote library stamp. Damage to slipcase. * The Muses are Heard. New York: 1956. Original cloth, DJ. 2nd printing. Condition varies. Sold for $359 inclusive of Buyer's Premium
1003 Capote, Truman. The Dogs Bark. New York: 1973. Original cloth, no DJ. 1st edition, with Truman Capote library stamp. * Another copy. New York: 1977. Paperback edition, lacking library stamp. Sold for $179 inclusive of Buyer's Premium	1004 Capote, Truman. Music for Chameleons. New York: 1980. Original cloth, DJ. 1st edition* 2 additional copies, in DJs, later editions. Condition varies. $300 to 500
1005 Capote, Truman. Various titles. 5 volumes: In Cold Blood. New York: 1965. Original cloth, DJ. 1st edition, with Capote library stamp. * Music for Chameleons. New York: 1980. Original cloth, DJ. 3rd printing. *One Christmas. New York: 1983. Original cloth, slipcase. 1st edition, lacking Capote library stamp. * The Muses are Heard. New York: 1956. Original cloth, DJ. 2nd printing, with Capote library stamp. * Trilogy. New York: 1969. Original cloth, DJ. 1st edition, with Capote library stamp. Sold for $657 inclusive of Buyer's Premium	1006 Capote, Truman. The Grass Harp. New York: 1951. Original cloth. 1st edition, with Truman Capote library stamp. * The Grass Harp (Play Version). New York: 1952. Original cloth, DJ. 1st edition, with Truman Capote library stamp. Shelfwear, jacket chipped with 1 1/2 inch closed tear. Sold for $418 inclusive of Buyer's Premium

warming objeects

Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry (NY: Fa

this book is like relish, i can't have enough but its incredible. probably because the characters are completely fabricated. but the sentiments, the nostalgia and hope and despair is all real and from somewhere true.

'The book emulates the celebrity auction catalog (think of the six-volume Sotheby’s catalog for the many personal collections of Andy Warhol and you’re on the right track). The twist is that Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris are fictional characters and their joint possessions, carefully itemized and offered in rough chronological order in the auction catalog, are supposed to reflect the arc of their relationship, beginning with “the first known photograph of the couple together” (Lot 1005) and ending with various lots suggesting two lives going in different directions.

Shapton’s auction catalog mimicry is pitch perfect; her lot descriptions satirize the dead-pan verbiage of the high-brow auction house. And, in fact, Shapton’s “auction catalog” appears to have fooled the Library of Congress, which catalogs the volume not as fiction but in the CT class, or Auxiliary Sciences of History: Biography. Shapton must have had a blast collecting or faking the items to be included in the 332 lots: fake snapshots, tourist postcards, lingerie, clogs, 18 bras for “Lenore” and 18 tee-shirts for Harold, cheesy paperbacks, vintage sunglasses, stuffed squirrels…

On the other hand, Important Artifacts and Personal Property is less successful in giving much depth to the relationship between the two characters. Auction catalog language is deliberately wiped free of emotion and subjectivity, so Shapton often resorts to personal notes, letters, and annotations by Lenore and Harold themselves, buried in the descriptions of the various lots, as a vehicle for depicting the status of their changing relationship. For example, here is Lot 1253:

An unusual chair and a handwritten note
A vintage 1930s leather and oak chair. Good condition, some marking to leather. A note on the back of a receipt for groceries reads: “You said you’d be back at 8, you could have called. Have gone to the movies. here’s your present – Happy Birthday. L 9:45”
24 in. wide x 30 in. high x 18 in. deep
$700-900

The problem, of course, is that most of our personal possessions don’t really say much about us in isolation. (The fact that I have a Hello Kitty mug of Badtz-Maru in my office won’t tell you anything about me unless I tell you the story behind it.) When items in Shapton’s book do point to biographical traits of their owners, the message often seems forced.'

From the http://sebald.wordpress.com/