Artists include Nzuji De Magalhaes, Kip Fulbeck, Nathan Gibbs, Loren Holland, Bryce Hudson, Delilah Montoya, Toni Scott, Laura Kina, Bradley McCallum, and Jacqueline Tarry. The exhibit was curated by Jillian Nakornthap and Lynn Stromick:

Embracing Ambiguity: Faces of the Future

It is estimated that there are 6.8 million multi-racial individuals living in America. It was not until the year 2000 that Americans were allowed to choose more than one ethnic category on the United States census. Embracing Ambiguity: Faces of the Future features painting, sculpture, video and mixed-media works by ten multicultural artists living and working in the U.S. In a world where labels are often forced upon us, these artists are searching for new, more layered ways to respond to the question: "What are you?"

For centuries, the majority group in power has felt the need to label what they deemed to be the "exotic other" or any person that was foreign to them. During the 18th century, in the Spanish colonies, artists used casta paintings to depict the results of the Spanish conquerors intermixing with the native people. Casta paintings were formulaic studies that illustrated couples of different races with their mixed offspring. Reflecting the trend of the Enlightenment to scientifically categorize the world, these paintings contained inscriptions like mulatto, wolf, and coyote. The paintings reinforced the superiority of the pureblooded Spaniards and attempted to quantify the percent of pure (Spanish) blood in the mixed-race individuals.

Going forward in American history, the One Drop Rule stated that any individual with a trace of African ancestry was considered black. In the 1960s, Jim Crow laws kept races segregated in public places. Anti-miscegenation laws forbidding interracial marriage were also still in effect. On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, set a precedent. Mildred Loving, an African and Native American woman, and Richard Perry, a white man, were sentenced to a year in prison because the state of Virginia would not recognize their marriage; the couple would not have to serve a prison term if they left Virginia. The couple left, but took their case to the Supreme Court, who ruled that Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statue was unconstitutional. Ironically, Barack Obama or 44th president and a child of mixed race parents, was born in 1961 before the ruling took place.

This exhibition opens a year after the election of Obama, our first multiracial president. It was his image on a Time magazine cover that sparked our curiosity about the American identity. The photo of Obama was similar to that of a computer-generated face that appeared on a cover thirteen years earlier. Dubbed "The New Face of America," the image was a composite of many different races. It visually reinforced the idea that Americans were not so easily defined. The artists in this exhibition have an advantage in the search for answers as they represent with images what words may not be fully able to express. Their artistic expressions allow these artists to question the past, and look forward to the future with new visions and voices. We hope this will be a future without boxes, where no one will be limited to "check only one."

-Lynn Stromick and Jillian Nakornthap, January 2010

(The curators wish to thank Mike McGee, Marilyn Moore, Martin Lorigan, Joanna Roche, the exhibition design students, the artists and lenders, the Art Department, the Art Alliance, the AICC, the Multicultural Leadership Center, our families and friends. This exhibition would not have been possible without all of your support and guidance.)

La Orquesta de Baja California joined forces with Nortec Collective artists Bostich and Fussible on Sunday for a free concert in the plaza outside Tijuana’s cultural center. It was the final day of Entijuanarte, a three-day contemporary art festival featuring work ranging from painting and photography to digital and performance arts.

I’ve seen Nortec Collective artists perform before and it usually involves a lot of sitting behind laptops. But Sunday was a much improved live performance. Nortec’s signature sound comes from layering samples of banda brass over electronic beats. And for a city increasingly recognized for cultural hybridity, it’s only more fitting to have a high-brow orchestra perform pop culture riffs alongside electronic music for free in the public space.

The concert started with “Tijuana Makes Me Happy,” which garnered cheers despite a bad audio mix early on. “Tijuana Sound Machine,” the title track from the latest release by Bostich and Fussible, was well received; the song’s music video recycles the city’s campy heritage in a fun, sequin-covered spectacle.

In its early stages, the Nortec Collective seemed to be more widely received internationally than on its home turf. But that seems to be changing as the youth embrace the city as their own, taking pride in Tijuana’s cultural identity.

YouTube videos from Sunday, October 4, 2009:

Here’s a very rough track. I’m recording using the laptop’s built-in mic and an acoustic guitar, then processing it with Garage Band effects. It’s quick and easy, but not exactly pretty. I added some drums to fill it out a bit, which points out my wandering rhythm. You can grab the full mix, guitars, effects, or rhythm track to use as you will.

This work by Nathan Gibbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Justine Bursoni is a graduate student in art education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an editor for the online magazine Smile Politely. She came across my Self-Portrait art piece online and wanted to include it in a lesson plan for a group of fifth and sixth grade students. She asked how I created my piece, and after giving her some tips, she had her students create their own paint swatch portraits.

“During the lesson,” Justine wrote in email, “the students were quick to note how identity comes in different forms, parts of identity can be shared… but mostly, one’s identity is unique and multi-faceted and how all should be recognized and tolerated.” It’s humbling to have my work aid that learning process, and even more humbling to be included in the list of self-portraits she used in her lesson plan:

• Charis Tsevis, “Barack Obama” (2008)
• Chuck Close, “Self-Portrait” (2007)
• Michael Mapes, “Poor Boy Michael Strange” (2006)
• Nathan Gibbs, “Self-Portrait” (2002)
• Grammy Posters (2009)
• David Hockney, “Mother I, Yorkshire Moors” (1985)
• Paul Klee “Senecio” (1922)

I also want to thank Justine for allowing me to post her PowerPoint presentation and lesson plan. The PowerPoint notes include her comments on the students’ reactions:

• Download PowerPoint Presentation
• Download Paint Swatch Lesson Plan

In the vein of open collaboration and online sharing, I put together some notes from our email conversation to provide a list of steps to help others create their own pixelated portraits.

How to Build a Portrait Out of Square Blocks of Color

In my case, I used Photoshop to create a reference image first. For best results, choose an image where the face has a solid color background. You’ll want to follow these steps in Photoshop to get the right result. These steps assume you’re printing the reference image on a standard 8.5×11 inch sheet of paper.

Photoshop Instructions

• Open and Crop: Open your image in Photoshop. Using the Crop Tool, crop it down to just the face. For this exercise, hold the Shift key while using the Crop Tool to make the crop a perfect square.
• Reduce to Pixels: Go to Image Size (on the top menu, Image > Image Size). Under Pixel Dimensions, change the units to “pixels” and adjust the width and height to 8 for both. This will end up giving you an 8×8 grid of one-inch squares. Important: Make sure the check boxes for both Resample Image and Constrain Proportions are checked. Select OK.
• Set Document Size: Your image is now 8×8 pixels. But you still need to make a second adjustment to the image settings before it can be printed correctly. Go to Image Size once more. Important: Uncheck the Resample Image check box. Under Document Size, set the units to “inches,” type in 8 for width and 8 for height. Select OK.
• Print: Everything is done and you’re ready to print. From the File menu, select Print :)

The final step in creating your pixelated portrait depends on your eye to match the colors. One tip I can offer is that the “value” or black and white levels of each color are more important to recognizing the final image than the “hue” of the color itself. For people to recognize the original image, it’s more important that it have the right amount of contrast than perfectly matching the nuances of each color.

If you do use this process to make your own, I’d love to see your project. If you have a place to upload images, post a link and describe your project here in the comments. Otherwise, send me a note and I can help you post it online.

Special thanks again to Justine for allowing me to publish her class materials and for sending the photo. Seeing that image of them working on their self-portraits puts a huge smile on my face. It’s truly rewarding to see an idea I had almost seven years ago come back to life in the hands of these young minds.

A few weeks ago, the progressive Tijuana magazine ZETA published a candid interview with Pepe Mogt (Fussible). In the interview, he expresses his outrage that fellow Nortec Collective member Roberto Mendoza (Panóptica) individually trademarked the name “Nortec” as his own:

Nortec isn’t something between just the five of us. Nortec is part of the same people of Tijuana that made it possible to define the sound and its own cultural movement. Nortec is a sound. Nortec isn’t a brand, nor is it something that belongs to one person alone, or a specific group of people. At least to those of us in the collective it’s ours in the musical sense, but Nortec came from many people that gave an aesthetic and musical life to this movement; and if we have to mention names, we’d say Torolab, Acamonchi, Ángeles Moreno and an uncountable group of others. (Translation of Pepe Mogt’s comments in ZETA)

Mogt describes the name Nortec as an abbreviation of “Norteño Techno.” He clarifies that the collective registered the name “Nortec Collective” for international distribution, but says he’s unsure of the legalities in Mexico. He says this all came out of nowhere; he was notified on paper and hadn’t yet spoken to Mendoza.

Another collective member, P.G. Beas (Hiperboreal), blogged about the controversy. He confirms the group had no plans to tour in 2008 as each member works on individual or duo projects.

I haven’t the least idea of Robert Mendoza’s plans with his band named Nortec Panóptica Orchestra. The use of the name Nortec like this pisses us off; it’s already disingenuous that a band that isn’t the Nortec Collective uses the name Nortec. It’s obvious that no one in the collective knew that Robert Mendoza would register the name Nortec in Mexico as his own. This would seem obvious, but in some news it wasn’t made clear. Another thing that would seem obvious, but I’d like to underline it, is that we have said a thousand times that without Tijuana, Nortec simply wouldn’t exist. It would be nothing. (Translation of P.G. Beas’ blog post)

Bloggers (BeamTV, Xeelee) clearly agree with the anti-Mendoza sentiment, using words that just don’t have the same ring in English :)

Here’s another diddy, mixed in Garage Band. I threw in a few of the default drum loops for fun. Download the individual tracks for your mixing pleasure: Guitar, Wah, Rhythm.

2 x o o x x x – 4 x o o x x x – A
F#m – A – E – F#m
G# – A – C#m – B
F#m – D – A – E
C#m – A – C#m – B
C#m – A – B – G#

This work by Nathan Gibbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Here’s a track I’ve fiddled with the last few days. I’m posting this for you musicians to remix. I’m licensing it under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. That means you are free to use it as long as give me credit (attribution), don’t make money with it (noncommercial), and license any work you make under the same license (share alike). Contact me if you want to use it outside those parameters.

For your mixing pleasure, download the individual pieces (recorded at 72bpm): main guitar riff (mp3), accent guitars (mp3), bassline (mp3) and reversed cymbols (mp3). The bass and cymbols came straight out of Garage Band, so feel free to discard those and come up with something better. If you use these pieces in some way, post a link in the comments.

Bm7 – A – D
G – B♭ – D
Bm – G♭ – A – E
Bm – A – G – A – G♭

This work by Nathan Gibbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

I’ve played the piano and guitar most of my life. I’ve improvised an endless number of riffs that never materialize into songs. I’m going to try and start recording and posting them online with a flexible copyright, hoping that the creative geniuses out there will make something out of it.

It had been more than 10 years since my last letter went unanswered. It was harder to keep in touch after he moved back to Chicago when we were 15 years old. I’m left with a deep sense of loss; I always hoped we’d reunite one day, reminiscing about the good old days and share where our lives had taken us.

The Krause family drove from Chicago to San Diego in the early ’90s. Benson’s father preached at the 7th & Orange Church of Christ in Escondido. One evening, a group from the church came over to my parents’ house. Benson and I sat in my room to avoid the crowd, learning about each others musical tastes. He picked up my keyboard and began teaching me the chords to “One” by U2. I played and he sang. We may have stumbled through it like an awkward first dance, but it changed my relationship with music forever.

One night, we stared at the ceiling in sleeping bags on the livingroom floor of his parents’ house. We threw out ideas for naming our new band. We had the concept down pretty quickly — something that embodied the idea of being out of place, just a step outside the circle. We settled that night on The Third Half.

Benson wrote the music and lyrics, I played along and generally followed his lead. Kenrick Buchanan joined the mix and we recorded some tracks. Soon after we released our first album “Thirsty,” which we sold for $5 at church.

One Sunday morning, his father Jim was preaching. He spoke about being corrupted by the world and used his youngest son Timothy’s innocence as an example. He said Tim was sitting in the pew making gestures with his hands and wound up being fascinated with his middle finger. Jim explained how it meant nothing outside the context of the world’s negative influence. What he did next is something no one in the audience that day will forget. He rested both wrists on the pulpit with two middle fingers extended upward. “Does this offend you?” he asked. I applaud the man’s courage, but needless to say it caused controversy. Not long after, the family returned to Chicago.

A year later, I boarded a plane at age 16 for my first flight alone. I brought the keyboard and an electric guitar that Kenrick had been teaching me to play. Benson and I recorded sessions that become “Water Compan and the Go-Go-Gadget Arms” and “Join the Family.”

The group in California kept practicing, adding Javier Ortiz and my cousin Josh Gibbs. Meanwhile, Benson sent a solo tape called “Wit’s End.” Through the following year, we recorded music and sent it to Benson to add vocals and mixing. He sent us a tape with the album title “Satisfied: The Final Reunion (version one and two).” It had become harder to stay in touch at a distance and somehow we knew the title was appropriate.

Later that year, I made another trip to Chicago for his sister’s wedding, though we hadn’t spoken in months. Seeing him again, it was clear we were growing older and apart. We recorded a couple of tracks but there was no album coming in the mail.

A year or two later, I got news that Benson’s mother Benja was killed in a car accident. The yearly updates that followed included a lot of ups and downs. The last letter I sent included a Delirious? album “Live & In The Can.” I told him I loved him and tried to send a message of hope. I never heard back and feared it ended up in a box, dismissed as an overly spiritual message.

Music was an ever-present part of his life. In the years since we lost touch he continued to make music as as the vocalist for the band Ophur. Their website allowed me to follow him a bit closer, watching live performances and listening to their latest recordings.

The Benson I knew was a passionate friend, a talented musician, and a loving son and brother. He inspired me creatively and played a crucial role in my adolescence. I wouldn’t be the same without his influence and he will always be a part of me.

[ temporary note: I'm going to update this post in the coming week as I reconstruct some details, upload more images, and add audio from the albums ]

This is the one and only public performance from the group we called Floating Point: Andrew Lynn on cello, Stephan Moore on laptop, Naomi Ture on violin, and myself on guitar.