The 730 Projection

Shadow and view south. Photo by Dick Blau.

Beginning at sundown on August 15, 300 images from photographer Dick’s Blau’s The 730 Project will be projected onto an empty storefront window on Wisconsin Avenue, immediately west of Mo’s Irish Pub (142 W. Wisconsin Avenue). The show will run in a continuous hour-long loop from dusk to dawn accompanied by a soundtrack recorded and composed by Morgan Jones. The recording was made during the initial public viewings of The 730 Project in January, February, and March of 2018 in the lounge of Mo’s Steakhouse (720 N. Plankinton). The final track is a collage that features the keyboard work of house pianist Jerry Weitzer, mixed with sounds of the surrounding streets.

Photographer Dick Blau (www.dickblau.com),
Professor Emeritus and co-founder of the UWM’s Department of Film Video, Animation and New Genres, says:

I have been living at 730 North Plankinton Ave between Wisconsin and Wells and making photographs of my immediate neighborhood since 2009. Shooting at all times of the day and night through all weathers and seasons, I have built an archive that includes photographs of historic buildings; images of the surrounding streets and nearby river; marches, parades, and public events; workers, concertgoers, and passersby; random and deliberate beauties on the sidewalk; small human dramas at the bus stops; and the parallel life of the neighborhood gulls.

As my print drawers began to fill up with 730 pictures, I started thinking of it as an art project and began working out how it might be displayed. There were two empty spots in the lobby of my building; both were centrally located, near the mailboxes. This was ideal. 80 people would flow by daily. Over time my installation might prompt a kind of conversation.

I started by taping the pictures up. Just the pictures. No name attached. I would change them every 7 to 10 days or so. There was no explanation. The only rule was implicit: the pictures had all been made either within or within sight of our building. Because the building is locked, I came to think of 730 as a somewhat private affair; when I was describing it to friends I used to call it a “semi-public art project.”

My neighbors’ response to the images was delightful. Mixed in with the recognizable images of the neighborhood and its current events were a series of abstractions I had made in the often-overlooked parts of our common space. I saw it as a kind of challenge: to make an  art object out of something that would normally be dismissed as “nothing” just by the way you framed it.

People in the building began to talk  to me in the elevator, trying to figure out where they had seen a certain image. They began suggesting things Io might photograph. 730 became a kind of game, a playful sort of pedagogy that encouraged people to look at things they’d never noticed and see them in a different light. As I taped up more and more pictures, the Board of Riverfront Lofts got involved and offered to by me some frames. Thus, the 730 Project was born.

Eventually, I could see that my print files were close to overflowing, so I began to think about where else I could store my old pictures so as to have room for the new ones I was printing every day.  Realizing that there was a good deal of history as well as art in my photographs, I approached the Milwaukee County Historical Society. It’s a wonderful civic institution in a gorgeous building just up the block from where I live. In 2017, I donated the 200 photographs I had shown at 730 North Plankinton Ave to its Archive.

I was still faced, however, with the problem of how to bring 730 further into the public realm. There were simply too many pictures that I wanted to show. I then decided to make the photographs into an hour-long film loop and play them on the three large television monitors in the bar at Mo’s Steakhouse, which is just across the alley to the south.  Consequently, I staged four 4-hour screenings at Mo’s over the next three months, with piano accompaniment by Lou Cucunato and Jerry Weitzer.

This next iteration of  730 takes it even further into the public realm. With some 300 images and a soundtrack recorded and composed by Morgan Jones, it  will become The 730 Projection. In keeping with its focus on the local, 730 will now play in an endless loop for an entire month, illuminating the night on a particularly forlorn stretch of West Wisconsin Avenue that lies just around the corner.

Afterwards, I will see if I can locate the 730 Project more permanently, coming full circle by installing photographs from the series in the very buildings that they picture.

The 730 Projection is sponsored by Mo’s A Place for Steaks, with technical support from Stamm Industries. Public Relations and sales are handled by Everything Goes Media with support from the Westown Association and Downtown Milwaukee. Graphics are by Ken Hanson. Many thanks as usual to Tom Bamberger for his wide-ranging help.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. It has not been verified for its accuracy or completeness.

Recent Press Releases by Dick Blau

The 730 Projection

Aug 14th, 2018 by Dick Blau

300 Images from Photographer Dick Blau’s The 730 Project Shown Dusk to Dawn on Wisconsin Avenue Storefront Window