Tonight my workshop peers and I will be performing our works-in-progress at Diapason Gallery, the results of our five weeks developing our ideas about video composition, notation and performance thereof.
The VCW Performance
Weds 4/28
8pm
$7 suggested donation
Diapason Gallery
882 3rd Avenue (map)
(bet. 32 & 33 Streets)
10th Floor
Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Info: 718.499.5070
Subway: D, N, R to 36th Street/4th Avenue
The VCW Performance is a show of live video pieces created as part of the Video Composition Workshop.
The Video Composition Workshop is dedicated to writing performative video pieces. It explores how artists approach their compositions and how they notate the scores from which the videoists perform.
This show presents the completed compositions, works-in-progress, and experiments of six videoists and musicians resulting from the first six-week salon. Pieces include video paired with acoustic instruments, analog electronics, and digital audio. The evening will end with the VCW composers discussing their various approaches. (We’re as wary as you are of endless artist discussions. We’ll stay focused and concise.)
Live video has made some great advances in the past years. Technological capabilities and popular awareness are making it more integral to contemporary performances. VCW is happy to present 6 approaches to working with video as a dynamic, performative art.
Compositions by:
Naval Cassidy (aka Jon Giles) (including performers Roland Brown, David Hainsworth and Jonathan Moniaci)
Jonny Farrow
Nisi Jacobs (including performer Michael Schumacher)
Adam Kendall (including performers Christof Knoche and Eileen Mack)
Phillip White
Dan Winckler
Next week I’m flying down to Austin, TX, for South by Southwest 2009 to play the Austin Museum of Digital Art’s Laptop Battle, a head-to-head competition for electronic musicians from all over Texas. I’ll be doing live visuals for part of the night, followed/preceded (not sure yet) by Video Jamz 2012, who are — I’m told — a somewhat absurdist VJ duo (Tom Blackburn and Chad Archer who like to abuse antique video hardware. There will also be a wide assortment of video art by other AMODA-curated artists to see, arrayed pleasingly about The Mohawk, a highly rated venue. It will be hot, hot, hot.
AMODA Laptop Battle The Mohawk, 912 Red River at 10th St
Friday, March 13th, 9pm-2am
$9 General Admission
$5 for AMODA Members, Free for SXSW badge holders
Update
AMODA posted more details about the show, which I thought I’d share. I’ve been listening to the laptop battle contestants’ tracks on their MySpaces — not done yet but I would already recommend The Mysterious H (chiptunes!) and Uber Dub by Blixaboy. Have a look/listen!
I voted. And I volunteered as a videographer for Video The Vote, going to polling stations in Brooklyn where voters had reported problems or obstruction. Pretty minor stuff: at my polling station and another nearby, they were requiring ID, which is not required in New York state; at another, a poll worker refused to take off her Republican campaign button. When I showed up and walked through, there were no buttons to be seen, so I drove all the way over there for nuttin. Drat.
And I picked up my girlfriend from the airport, who was down in North Carolina getting out the vote. Now she’s glued to television, radio, Twitter and NYTimes.com while I make dinner. Ah, domestic bliss. Later we might go by 3rd Ward‘s election party to agonize over the returns among like-minded Brooklynites.
My friend Don (a.k.a. No-Carrier) got sick and asked me to sub for him this Friday at Lit Lounge, playing with Nullsleep, Anamanaguchi and Cheap Dinosaurs. Feel better, Don! Here’s the show flyer and info.
Benton-C Bainbridge and Minou Maguna have been shooting interviews with Bill Etra for years and, for the past year and a half, have been assembling a documentary about his life and work. The “sampler cut” below highlights some of the more recent interview footage interspersed with some of Bill’s work over the years. If you don’t know of Bill, he is a pioneer in video engineering, design and performance, and one of the handful of people who can rightly be said to have been the first to do live visuals. This Wired article from 2000 gives a pretty good background.
I saw Flipped Chips at Galapagos tonight, a show of video art by contemporary artists and pioneers like Nam June Paik, Bill Etra and Matthew Schlanger. Works that stood out to me: Matthew Schlanger (beautiful synthesis, all built from oscillators); Karl Klomp, with music by toktek (simple distortion of a vid of a dog, triggered by audio, the results seemed so violent); Jon Satrom (nice sprite rip stuff with a sense of humor); Defanti/Sandin (really pretty and mesmerizing math psychedelia with a charming how-we-do-it video at the beginning); noteNdo / Johnny Beverley 1989! / Jeff, who I played with at the big chiptunes show back in October (excellent textures from hacking the NES). And there was a great Bit Shifter track with Jeff’s video. Speaking of which, Bit Shifter has a new album out and so does David Sugar!
Man I’m tired.
Anyway, to finish up — great stuff. It drove this home:
it’s all simple things added together. no magic.
minds are pattern recognition engines.
the best stuff is elusive and evocative.
Also, I had a fun idea for projections @ Galapagos that I’m going to bounce off of CJ. Now I can crash. Thank Jeebus. I’m still not recovered from the end of the semester pushzzzzzz….
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