The New York Electronic Arts Festival Performance Events – May 31 to June 9, 2007
3LD Art and Technology Center — 80 Greenwich Street @ Rector
NIME concerts at Frederick Loewe Theater — 35 W. 4th Street
All events start at 8:00 p.m unless otherwise noted
“Composers playing videos, video artists composing sounds, robots performing music”
Announcing the New York Electronic Arts Festival (NYEAF), a month-long series of exhibitions, concerts, workshops, and the New Interfaces for Music Expression (NIME) conference celebrating cutting edge work being done at the intersection between art and technology. The NYFAE Performance Events present a wide range of works that expand conventional notions of music, featuring musicians who use electronics to integrate sound with video, light, and robotics.
Performances:
Robosonic Eclectic: Live Music by Robots and Humans — May 31, June 1, and June 2
A concert series consisting entirely of works commissioned for LEMUR’s musical robots. The series will feature live pieces by Composer/performers Morton Subotnick, George Lewis, John Flansburgh and John Linnell (They Might Be Giants); and J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus); along with pieces for solo robots by Luke DuBois and other composers to be announced.
Sensors and Gestures — Sunday, June 3
North American premier of the SSS trio (Atau Tanaka, Cecile Babiole, and Laurent Dailleau) performing visual music with sensors and gestures, along with the audio-visual electronic trio Fair Use (Luke DuBois, Matthew Ostrowsky, and Zach Layton) and a new video work by American composer, saxophonist, and flutist Henry Threadgill. Presented by Harvestworks.
Electronics and Virtuosity — Monday, June 4
Interactive electronic music by virtuoso performers/composers Lori Freedman, Mari Kimura, Kinan Azmeh, Michael Atherton, and Garth Paine. Presented by the Electronic Music Foundation.
Crackle, Noise & Light — Tuesday, June 5
Electronic sound and video with Anne Wellmer, NoiseFold (David Stout and Cory Metcalf), and Elise Baldwin. Presented by Harvestworks.
NIME @ New York University’s Frederick Loewe Theater — June 7, 8, and 9, 7-9 pm.
A series of performances featuring selected works by conference participants. The June 7 concert will highlight works commissioned for pianist Kathleen Supové and violinist Todd Reyolds.
About the Artists:
Active in the Bay Area experimental music scene, Elise Baldwin focuses on collaborative music ventures and solo intermedia performance, appearing recently at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Edgetone Music Festival, the Brutal Sound FX Festival, E.S.P. Media Lounge, CalArts CEAIT Festival and the National Queer Arts Festival. She has received numerous awards, including a Harvestworks Artist in Residency in 2006, the Frogs Peak Award for Experimental Music in 2004, and a Howard Scripps Award.
Luke DuBois is a composer, performer, video artist, and programmer living in New York City. He holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University and teaches interactive sound and video performance at Columbia’s Computer Music Center and at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. He is a co-author of Jitter, a software suite developed by Cycling’74 for real-time manipulation of matrix data. His music is available on Caipirinha/Sire, Cycling’74, and Cantaloupe music, and his artwork is represented by bitforms gallery in New York City.
Lori Freedman is known internationally as one of Canada’s most provocative and creative performers. Her work includes contemporary, improvised and electroacoustic music, and frequent collaborations with dance, theatre, and visual artists. Over thirty composers have written solo bass clarinet music for her and her work has been recorded on 24 commercial CDs. Her debut CD, HUSKLESS!, won her the nomination of a Prairie Music Award, 2000 for the “Most Outstanding Classical Recording,” and her second solo album, À un moment donné was nominated for “Best Recording of Musique Actuelle” by the Prix d’ Opus, 2003.
Violinist Mari Kimura picks up the tradition of the virtuoso performer/composer and carries it straight into the future. She has performed as a soloist with the Tokyo Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, and other major orchestras. Highly acclaimed as an improviser, Ms. Kimura has toured and recorded many leading musicians in this field. As a composer, her recent commissions include Violin Concerto for violin and interactive computer system with orchestra, Kivika for dance , Arboleda for viola and electronics (Merkin Hall in New York, 2001), Descarga Interactive, and GuitarBotana, a piece with GuitarBot (LEMUR), commissioned by Harvestworks. Since 1998, Ms. Kimura has been teaching a graduate class in Computer Music Performance at The Juilliard School.
Zach Layton is a New York based composer and artist interested in biofeedback techniques, psychoacoustics, perception and generative algorithms. His work investigates complex relationships created through the interaction of simple core elements like sinewaves or kinetic visual patterns. His interest in biofeedback led him into the research of music produced by human brainwaves, subsequently building a homemade Electroencephalagrah (EEG), which he sometimes uses in performance.
MacArthur Fellow George Lewis is currently Edwin H. Case Professor of Music at Columbia, having previously taught at UC San Diego,Mills College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Simon Fraser University’s Contemporary Arts Summer Institute. A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis studied composition with Muhal Richard Abrams at the AACM School of Music, and trombone with Dean Hey. An active composer, improvisor, performer, and computer/installation artist, Lewis has explored electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, text-sound works, and notated forms.
Cory Metcalf is a moving image and sound artist who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work explores the intersection of human performance, real-time media systems and responsive installation environments. His interests range from the field of bio-mimicry to the practices of aerial theater, extended vocal techniques and instrumental noise-music performance. Currently Cory is working with real-time 3D simulation and complex data feed-back programs to model synthetic-ecologies based on genetic and behavioral processes found in living systems.
A New York City native, Matthew Ostrowski is a composer, performer, and installation artist working primarily with electronics and sound. He studied music at the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, and the Institute of Sonology in The Hague. He has shared the stage with everyone from John Zorn and David Behrman to a trio of Elvis impersonators.
Garth Paine is a freelance composer, sound designer and installation artist. He has been commissioned extensively in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Germany, producing original compositions and sound designs for over thirty film, theatre, dance, and installation works in the last ten years.
Todd Reynolds, composer, conductor, arranger, and violinist, is a longtime member of Bang On A Can, Steve Reich and Musicians and Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project . His commitment to genre-bending and technology-driven innovation in music has produced innumerable collaborations with artists that regularly cross musical and disciplinary boundaries, regularly placing him in venues from clubs to concert halls around the world. He is a founder of Ethel, a critically acclaimed amplified string quartet
David Stout is an interactive video-sound artist and one of the worlds leading laptop performers exploring real-time cross-synthesis of sound and image. He is the recipient of the Harvestworks Interactive Technology Award and the Sun Micro Systems Award for Academic Excellence (2004) and a nominee for the both the WTN World Technology Award (2003) and the International Media Art Prize (2004). His work in interactive media includes electro-acoustic scores for stage and screen, live cinema, video-dance, data-base narrative, noise performance and telematic video events that emphasize multi-screen projection as an extension of performer, audience and environment. David currently lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
S.S.S, a trio comprised of Cecile Babiole, Laurent Dailleau, and Atau Tanaka, performs visual music with sensors and gestures. Together they create a unique world of sound and sight, a laptop performance that goes beyond the machine with the intensity of bodies in movement. Going beyond media: music that is more than a soundtrack, images going further than video wallpaper. A three-way conversation modulating sonic and luminous pulse and flow.
Known as a grandfather of electronic music, Morton Subotnick is one of the pioneers in the development of electronic music and an innovator in works involving instruments and other media, including interactive computer music systems. In addition, Subotnick has written for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, theater and multimedia productions. Currently, Subotnick holds the Mel Powell Chair in Music at the California Institute of the Arts. He tours extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe as a lecturer and composer/performer.
Kathleen Supové is one of America’s most acclaimed and versatile contemporary music pianists. She regularly presents a series of solo concerts entitled The Exploding Piano, a multimedia experience that employs theatrical elements, vocal rants, performance art, staging, electronics, and collaboration with artists from other disciplines. Kathleen has appeared with The Lincoln Center Festival, The Philip Glass Ensemble, Bang On a Can Marathon, Music at the Anthology, The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Composers’ Collaborative, Inc., among many others. Besides being a soloist, Ms. Supové performs with the Patrick Grant Group, Kitchen House Blend, Exploding Music, Dr. Nerve, and twisted tutu.
Combining a knack for infectious melodies with a quirky, bizarre sense of humor and a vaguely avant-garde aesthetic borrowed from the New York post-punk underground, They Might Be Giants became one of the most unlikely alternative success stories of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Musically, the duo of John Flansburgh and John Linnell borrowed from everywhere, but their freewheeling eclecticism was enhanced by their arcane, geeky sense of humor. They celebrated their 20th anniversary in summer 2002 with the release of their first children’s album, No!. Early in 2005, Here Come the ABCs and its accompanying DVD were the band’s first releases for Disney Sound.
Composer, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader HENRY THREADGILL has been a seminal figure in the vanguard of contemporary instrumental music since the early 1970s. He has created a body of music that includes more than 150 recorded works that, while firmly rooted in America’s Great Black Music tradition, often integrate forms and instruments historically associated with chamber or orchestral music.
The inscrutable J.G. Thirlwell was dropped on this planet some time ago to bestow sonic majesty, chaos, violence & beauty and cunning linguistics on an unsuspecting earth. A Brooklyn-based Australian ex-pat, Thirlwell has used many names for his many visions: Foetus (and its many name variations), Steroid Maximus, Clint Ruin, Wiseblood, DJ OTEFSU, Manorexia and Baby Zizanie. His multitude of influential recordings under the name FOETUS and variations thereof, has amassed a rabid world-wide cult following. More recently JG has also branched out into audio installations, DJ-ing, opera, cartoon music, and has been commission for Bang On A Can and the Kronos Quartet.
Anne Wellmer is a composer, performer, singer, and sound artist. She studied electronic music at the Institute of Sonology in The Hague and composition with Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton at Wesleyan University in Middletown CT/USA. Her works include sonic environments for performances, sound installations, live music for dance and theater, radio art, music theater pieces, network projects, and improvisation with electronics. Anne Wellmer lives and works in The Hague and in Berlin.
“Harvestworks brings together innovative practitioners from all branches of the digital arts and makes them available to artists, curators, and collectors.”
About NYEAF: The New York Electronic Art Festival is produced by Harvestworks, the New York University Music Technology Program and LEMUR: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, with support from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, the Columbia University Computer Music Center, Roulette, the Electronic Music Foundation, 3LD Art and Technology Center, Eyebeam, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Institute of Electronic Art. Additional support is from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, mediaThe foundation, the Experimental TV Center Presentation Program, Tekserve and NewMark RE. NYEAF is a Harvetworks 30th Anniversary Event.
About Harvestworks: Harvestworks is a nonprofit Digital Media Arts Center that provides resources for artists to learn digital tools and exhibit experimental work created with digital technologies. www.harvestworks.org
About LEMUR: LEMUR is a Brooklyn-based group of artists and technologists developing robotic musical instruments. Founded in 2000 by musician and engineer Eric Singer, LEMUR creates exotic, sculptural musical instruments which integrate robotic technology. LEMUR’s philosophy is to build robots that are instruments as opposed to robots that play existing instruments. LEMUR is supported in part by generous grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Greenwall Foundation, the Jerome Foundation and Arts International. LEMUR is sponsored by Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center. http://lemurbots.org/
About EMF: The Electronic Music Foundation fosters exploration and understanding of the creative potential and cultural benefits in the symbiosis of music, sound, technology, and science. This is done by presenting and commissioning innovative work, supporting research, providing historical resources, and formulating avenues for worldwide community and communication between artists and the public, thereby encouraging the development and exchange of new ideas throughout the world. www.emf.org
About 3LD Art and Technology Center: Founded in 1994 by a group of artists working at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, 3-Legged Dog has become one of the leading experimental arts groups in New York. Since its inception 3-Legged Dog has performed and exhibited at the Kitchen, the Ontological, PS 122, La Mama, and the Signature Theatre. Our mission is to explore the new narrative possibilities created by digital technology and to provide an environment for artists to create new tools and modes of expression. 3LD specializes in large-scale experimental multi-media theatrical production. As we built our new 3LD Art & Technology Center, the company also worked at 3-Legged Dog Tribeca, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Swing Spaces, and The Venice Biennale (Arsenale). The company has mounted 16 full productions and numerous large-scale interactive installation works. We are currently working on Losing Something, a new multi-media experimental theater work written and directed by 3-Legged Dog founder Kevin Cunningham, using new full-stage 3-Dimensional HD video projection technology. As we continue to produce multiple new works each year in our studios, we are also branching out to Europe and Australia through our new international producing consortium. http://3ldnyc.org