One of the neat things about an exhibit of this size and scale that focuses on a creative space are the incidental events that happen in-between the programming. I have had the pleasure of introducing George Joseph Miller IV and Reid Garrison Miller as both employees at the DePaul Museum, but also as accidental comrades who have been like family to Beth Wiedner and I for the past decade. Joe and Reid aren’t twins, but they are a matched set of filmmaker/musician/engineer brothers who became integral to our daily operations, and constant collaborators in the ensuing years.
One of the things that comes part and parcel of testing an audio recording studio is checking room sounds, and they helped us do that in spades. Joe tracked the first sessions in the main gallery with his friend Katie Sullivan (audio below), and the high irregular ceilings and marvelous cork floors turned out to be ideal for audio. A truly happy surprise. A few weeks la then did a session with a stripped down version of their band, Zikr adding Mike Frigo’s cello and Jimmy Steyskal’s sound manipulations in our radio broadcast booth. Zikr rounded everything out with a full band session in the Rumpus room with Matt Shaw, and Bill Connors as an ad-hoc house band for the Bird Sanctuary opening.
It was a real breath of fresh air to have these folks decorate the gallery with sound on a regular basis, and I know in some ways we set them up with some false hope, because this was likely the last time any of them got to show up for work with their gear, and get paid to play music on the clock. Sorry fellas! Joe and I ended up starting a band within the confines of Nomadic called Tourism, but we’ll get to that later on. Zikr ended up morphing into the most excellent and warmly pummeling band, dim.
Faiz
Website: https://dimchicago.bandcamp.com/
Website: https://www.physical-medium.com/
