Sunday, January 12, 2014 6 pm OptoSonic Tea mini festival
Live sets by: - Private Language (Melissa F. Clarke with Nat Roe) live video and audio - Barry Weisblat (35mm slide projection) with Marica Bassett (electronics) - Erik Z (live visuals) with Brian Chase (drums) - Katherine Liberovskaya (live visuals) and Erin Sexton (tactile electronics) - Ursula Scherrer (live visuals) with Shelley Hirsch (voice/improvised text) and Bruce Andrews (performance poetry) - Jeff Donaldson with Philip White (electronics) Respondents/moderators: - E.S.P.TV <http://E.S.P.TV> (Victoria Keddie and Scott Kiernan) $ 10-15 suggested Silent Barn 603 Bushwick Ave. Brooklyn NY 11206 http://www.silentbarn.org/ OptoSonic Tea is a regular series of meetings, started in 2006, dedicated to the convergence of live visuals with live sound which focuses on the visual component. These presentation-and-discussion meetings aim to explore different forms of live visuals (live video, live film, live slide projection and their variations and combinations) and the different ways they can come into interaction with live audio. Each evening features two different live visual artists or groups of artists who each perform a set with the live sound artists of their choice. The presentations are followed by an informal discussion about the artists' practices over a cup of green tea. A third artist, from previous generations of visualists or related fields, is invited specifically to participate in this discussion so as to create a dialogue between current and past practices and provide different perspectives on the present and the future. Organized by Katherine Liberovskaya and Ursula Scherrer About the artists: Private Language appropriates, collages and processes radio signals using digital and analog means, as well as exploiting sonic qualities inherent to the playback device.Visually, kaleidoscopic geometrical solids frame diaristic encounters with culture as surreal, uncanny and sometimes alienating. Melissa Clark recently was an artist in residence at the Simon¹s Center for Art and Geometry at SUNY Stonybrook, and has performed at spaces such as 319 Scholes, NY, Eyebeam, NY, Issue Project Room, NY, with the Queens Museum, NY, the Electronic Music Foundation, and the International Biennial of Contemporary Art ULA-2010, Venezuela. She is a graduate of NYU¹s ITP program with a 2 year Tisch Fellowship. Nat Roe has used his weekly late-night radio program with WFMU since 2008 as a platform for sound-collages that explore a nuanced relationship with popular culture. Nat co-directs Silent Barn, a preeminent underground performance space in Brooklyn which seeks to collapse distinctions between public and private behavior. He has performed in spaces such as Eyebeam, NY, Roulette Intermedia, NY, The Filmmaker¹s Cooperative, NY, and has been interviewed in publications such as Frieze Magazine, The Village Voice, The New York Times and L Magazine. Melissa F. Clarke is an interdisciplinary artist whose work employs data and generative self-programmed compositional environments. Barry Weisblat was born in Brooklyn in 1975 and remains one of the unsung heroes of deep and investigative Sound. Thought. Beyond a long-running commitment to participating in the underground's underground of improvisation and a dynamic sense of musical conversation, Weisblat has extended his reach and pool of knowledge beyond rubbing the surface of the black box of sound to designing and implementing his own systems. Translating light into sound, sound into action, action into thought, and thought into light, Weisblat's ceaseless curiosity and simultaneous obsessive desire to participate and join in dialogue has pushed his output farther out than most people can see or conceive of. Some collaborations include work with Michael Bernstein, Margarida Garcia, Andrew Lafkas, Toshio Kajiwara, Matt Valentine, Theo Angell, Otomo Yoshide, Mattin, Tim Barnes, Greg Pope, Toshi Nakamura, Sean Meehan, Dion Workman. Zaïmph is the solo project of ambient noise artist Marcia Bassett. Although legendary for white-hot guitar and vocal brutality, Zaimph's recent recordings and performances infuse cracked-raga song structures with dense electronic and synthesizer drones to create soundscapes where a lurking apocalypse is eclipsed by shimmering, meditative beauty. As a co-founder of Philadelphia's shambolic psychonauts un and tectonic drone pioneers Double Leopards, Bassett is deeply entwined with the American noise underground, and has mapped regions still only dimly understood by subsequent sonic travelers. From 2003-2008, Bassett joined Matthew Bower in Hototogisu, where her mastery of cacophonous eardrum shred achieved monolithic proportions. During the same period, she explored American underground psychedelic folk-improv music with Steve Gunn and Pete Nolan in GHQ, and with Tom Carter in Zaika. Zaïmph CDs, LPs and tapes have appeared on independent labels such as Gift Tapes, Hospital Productions, W.M.O.r, Utech Records, Gypsy Sphinx, Volcanic Tongue and No Fun records. Bassett has released numerous Zaïmph recordings on her own Heavy Blossom imprint. In 2012, Bassett retired Heavy Blossom and started Yew, a label showcasing Zaïmph and other aesthetically allied projects. In addition to her work with Zaïmph, Bassett is a frequent collaborator with a wide spectrum of musicians including Helen Espvall (Espers), Samara Lubelski, Margarida Garcia, Jenny Graf (Metalux), Taylor Richardson (Infinity Window), and Barry Weisblat. Brian Chase is a drummer and composer living in Brooklyn, NY. Growing up on Long Island, he started taking private music lessons at a young age, leading to a BM from the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio. Brian is probably best known as a member of the group Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a band that has toured extensively throughout the world and has been nominated for three Grammys. On the new music side, Brian is very active in the community largely based around John Zorn's club, The Stone. In this setting, performance collaborations include those with Alan Licht, Chris Cochrane, Anthony Coleman, Jeremiah Cymerman, Thollem McDonas, David First, Jessica Pavone, and Robbie Lee, amongst more. As a composer, Brian is deeply interested in the Just Intonation tuning theory and is influenced by the work of La Monte Young as introduced to him by Jon Catler. In this light, the Drums and Drones project emerged in which the principles of Just Intonation are applied to drums and percussion, as well as aesthetic approaches emphasizing the physiology of acoustics and practices of 'deep listening.' The debut album of Drums & Drones was released in February of 2013 on Al Margolis' Pogus label and includes videos by artists Ursula Scherrer and Erik Zajacesowski. Some of Brian's additional recorded works include those with saxophonist Seth Misterka, vocalist Karlie Bruce, percussion group Man Forever, the North Sky cello ensemble, and minimalist punk rock band The Seconds. Influential drum and percussion teachers are and have been Susie Ibarra, Greg Bandy, and Michael Rosen. Away from the drums, Brian is a regular practitioner of Ashtanga yoga. Katherine Liberovskaya is a video/media artist based in Montreal and New York. Involved in experimental video since the 80s, she has produced numerous videos, video installations and performances shown at various events and venues around the world. Since 2001 her work predominantly focuses on collaborations with composers and sound artists notably in live video+sound performance where her live visuals seek to create improvisatory "music" for the eyes. Frequent collaborators include Phill Niblock, Al Margolis/If,Bwana, Zanana, Kristin Norderval, Hitoshi Kojo, David Watson, David First and o.blaat (Keiko Uenishi). Recent projects have involved: Shelley Hirsch, Chantal Dumas, Leslie Ross, Richard Garet, Dorit Chrysler and Emilie Mouchous. Concurrently she curates and organizes various moving-image related events and series, notably the Screen Compositions evenings at Experimental Intermedia, NYC, since 2005 and, with Ursula Scherrer, the OptoSonic Tea series at Diapason, NYC, since 2006. www.liberovskaya.net <http://www.liberovskaya.net> Montreal-based artist Erin Sexton explores matter, energy, space, and time through sound, performance, installation, and video. With analog electronics, electromagnetic fields, and pseudo-scientific improvisation she creates direct links between lived experience and the processes of nature, drawing us through immediacy into contact with the micro-macro cosmos. http://erinsexton.com The poetic quality of Ursula Scherrer's work reminds one of moving paintings, drawing the viewer into the images, leaving the viewer with their own stories. She transforms spaces and landscapes into serene, abstract portraits of rhythm, color and light - inner landscapes in the outside world where the images have less to do with what we see then with the feeling they leave behind. Scherrer is a Swiss artist living in New York City. Her aesthetic training began with dance, transitioned to choreography and expanded to photography, video, text and mixed media. http://www.ursulascherrer.com Shelley Hirsch is an award winning, critically acclaimed vocalist, composer, and storyteller whose mostly solo compositions, staged multimedia works, improvisations, radio plays, installations and collaborations have been produced and presented in concert halls, clubs, festivals, theaters, museums, galleries and on radio, film and television on 5 continents. She can be heard on dozens of CD's including the most recent releases - "Where Were You Then?":songs and stories composed w/ Simon Ho on Tzadik and 3 improv cds recorded live in concert: "Berlin Brooklyn" w/ turntable player Joke Lanz on Rossbin; "Duets 10 Years After" w /guitarist Uchihashi Kazuhisa on Innocent Records; and the just released "Walking and StumblingThrough Your Sleep" w/ Hans Koch,Martin Schuetz, Fredy Studer on Intakt. Hirsch recently presented "TohuWaBoHu" as a 5.1 Surround Sound Choral work at Minoritan Chapel for The Donau Festival in Krems Austria for "Alga", Ursula Scherrer's beautiful installation of seaweed and driftwood. The recording was commissioned by and adapted/ expanded for Kunstradio in Vienna, and as an 8 channel piece for Harvestworks Electronic Arts Festivalin NYC. Hirsch will spend the month of February as an artist in residence at The Montalvo Art Center in Saratoga California where she is working on an outdoor choral installation and she will perform in duo with Fred Frith in Oakland at Duende. Bruce Andrews is an experimental poet, literary theorist, music/sound designer for Sally Silvers & Dancers, and just-retired from 38 years as a left-wing political science professor. Most recent of a dozen big books is last year¹s You Can¹t Have Everything... Where Would You Put It!, followed by a chapbook, Yessified (Sally¹s Edit) to celebrate last year¹s Andrews Symposium & its expanded online archive. Jeff Donaldson is a NYC-based artist and designer originally from Corpus Christi, Texas. Donaldson pioneered the practice of preparing video hardware to intentionally short circuit (notendo, 2001). He has exhibited and performed internationally including at Museum of the Moving Image; Museu de Arte Moderna Rio De Janeiro; The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, UK; Leap, Berlin; White Box; 319 Scholes; Art in General, Eyebeam; Chip Music Festival; vertexList; PLANETART, Amsterdam; and iMAL, Brussels among many others. The music of composer, performer and improviser Philip White is known for its ecstatic intensity and expressive sonic palette. Working with an array of homemade electronics at the intersection of noise, jazz and contemporary concert music, White exploits the tension between rigorous, closed electronic systems and the urgency of human compulsion. An active collaborator, Philip performs regularly with R WE WHO R WE (with composer Ted Hearne), Colonic Youth (with James Ilgenfritz, Dan Blake and Kevin Shea), thenumber46 (with Suzanne Thorpe), Taylor Levine, Chris Pitsiokos and dancer/choreographer Nora Chipamuire. Philip has been an artist in residence at Electronic Music Foundation, Harvestworks, High Concept Labs and the Rensing Center and received grants from New Music USA, the Jerome Foundation. He has lectured at Wesleyan University, University of Chicago, University of South Carolina and the College of Charleston. He received his BA in Music from the College of Charleston and an MFA in Electronic and Recorded Media from Mills College. www.prwhite.net <http://www.prwhite.net> E.S.P. TV - Scott Kiernan and Victoria Keddie - is an organization dedicated to promoting the performing and media based arts. It is a multi faceted organization that acts as a live studio broadcast, a program on public access television, and a theatrical performance. All events are taped live with a crew of cameramen, sound engineer, and video mixing team using analog broadcast media. Tapings of E.S.P. TV are in front of an audience with live green-screening, signal manipulation and video mixing. The show is then edited and produced for Manhattan Neighborhood Network public television (MNN), to be aired every Tuesday night at 10PM. After airing, the episodes are posted online at www.esptvnyc.com <http://www.esptvnyc.com> for later viewing. Our core mission is to preserve public broadcast, as well as showcase the ongoing use and ability of analog media in a digitally run world. Victoria Keddie is a multi disciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She works in varying media involving audio / visual signal generation, magnetic field recording, and broadcast. Keddie has programmed events internationally, with a focus on experimental sound, live cinema, and transmission based arts. She is the co-director of E.S.P. TV, a nomadic organization that curates analog-based live broadcast events and exhibitions, as well as a series on MNN cable access. She is the founder of Optics O:O, an archival film program that investigates hybrid filmmaking techniques with early video and software systems. She co founded the media based INDEX festival in 2011. She is a founding member of the film based collective, Optipus. As an archivist, she focuses on preserving analog experimental sound and radio collections. She has exhibited and performed at such venues as, New Museum, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Museum of Arts and Design, The Kitchen, Canada Gallery (New York City), Museum of Moving Image (Queens), Microscope Gallery, Spectacle (Brooklyn), Liminal Space (Oakland), Silent Barn (Brooklyn), Pallas Projects (Dublin), General Public, (Berlin). She holds a BFA from University of the Arts with a Senior MobilityFellowship at California College of Arts, and an MA in Museum Studies from NYU, with a concentration on Ephemeral Media collections. Scott Kiernan is an artist and curator who lives and works in New York City. He was a founder and director of Louis V E.S.P., a not-for-profit gallery and performance space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (2010-2012) and co-founder/director of E.S.P. TV, a nomadic curatorial platform for performance/video which takes the form of a live television show.He has exhibited work internationally in venues such as New Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, Storefront for Art and Architecture, NurtureArt, PS122 , Mixed Greens (NYC), Southern Exposure and Baer Ridgway Projects (San Francisco) Centro Internazionale Per L¹Arte Contemporanea (Rome), KT&G Sangsangmadang (Seoul) and the Third Guangzhou Tiennial (China) amongst others. Scott received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2007. for more information about OptoSonic Tea please visit: http://www.diapasongallery.org/optosonic.html ______________________________________________ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://post.in-mind.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre
