Moment Sound [showcase] - Moment Sound is a Chicago-based collective of musicians specializing in live electronic music of all types and genres. In addition to performing constantly, its core members - Garo, Lokua and Slava organize and promote music and art events throughout the city. Their home-base is the Moment series which takes place every first Sunday of the month at Rodan.

*Peter Kirn* [live A/V] - Create Digital Music/Motion
Peter Kirn is a classically-trained musician and composer gone digital. As an experimental electronic musician, keyboardist, visualist, and media artist, he’s a regular fixture at New York’s Warper Party and NY club venues. His work also extends from composing for Baroque instruments and voice to custom computer vision software and digitally-synthesized music. The Boston Globe describes his music and visuals as “poetic” and “delicate.” He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the popular websites createdigitalmusic.com and createdigitalmotion.com, which explore bleeding-edge creative tech in our growing “nerdster” culture. He is currently researching new environments for live digital music and visuals as he completes a PhD in music composition at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Peter is based in lower Manhattan.

*Alexander Bassett* [live] - (special vocal set) - FakeBeat
Catch this special and rare live performance of Alexander’s musical creations. A celebration of the work accomplished in this great city before he moves to New York… As a musician and producer Alexander stubbornly insists on keeping things fresh by ignoring genres and cutting to heart of what is new and interesting. He employs this mindset in any artistic medium he is working with be it event production, studio recording, songwriting, video, graphic design, or performing live. In Alexander’s eyes all branches of the arts are limbs growing on the same tree. The creative energy used to make a painting is the same as that used to compose a piece of music. Last October, Bassett produced a very well attended underground Halloween celebration, The Deep. The event had a strong multimedia focus featuring original video projections, and a state of the art sound system. He also has provided work for the DJ community by establishing, booking and promoting several successful residencies including Emergency Broadcast @ Betty’s Blue Star, Secret Stash @ Uptown Lounge, and Modern Love @ Liars Club. At the start of 2008 Bassett, with the help of Mike Dextro, PROTMAN, and jRick launched Fakebeat.com, a music culture blog focusing on interviews with influential local musicians, and worldwide talent including, Zebo, Alexander Robtnick, Glitch Mob, Ghostland Observatory, Hilary Rawk, Ulysses, Marvel Kind, and Chris Frantz of Talking Heads/Tom Tom Club. Many more projects are underway as Bassett prepares to relocate himself to Brooklyn to further establish himself as a national presence. Be on the lookout for Bassett’s solo production debut, “Never Enough” scheduled for late summer release. The challenge is always apparent, and Alexander always welcomes the hard work, because… well… the excitement never stops.

*Release* [live] - Release Enterprises
Everyone goes thru trials and tribulations in life which separates themselves from others. Those same individuals find their own form of release–thru the arts, poetry, sports, work, and musical expression in order to survive and remain positive. For Release, the beats are his first love and has been his savior
throughout all the chaos, which is why he calls himself, Release.

*Lokua* [live] - Moment Sound
Lokua is part of a collective called Moment Sound. He plays live quite regularly either solo or together w/ Slava as Pheromone.

*Radius* [live] - TSLOS / Consumers Label
South Chicago/South Shore Native, All Chi-City Representative Producing music since 2001…A Music fanatic forever! Openminded and Progressive at all times.

*Uncle Garo* [live] - Moment Sound
Garo writes these songs on drum machines and then plays them live at a show. Sometimes he makes/plays Hip-Hop, sometimes House, sometimes Jungle, sometimes Ambient - Garo likes making music from all genres of the music spectrum.

*Glen Stephani* [vj] - Populution Works
Stephani uses the mechanical filter of technology as a lens through which to create his vivid organic imagery. Stephani seeks out the unintended parameters in all artifices, hardware and applications and manipulates them accordingly. He believes these “hidden g-spots” or glitches reveal the true spirit of the machine and are a symbolic mirror to the resistance within us all. Do what’s unintended of you and discover a realm beyond your intended function.

*Nikki Magdalena* [readings] - Inspire and Evolve
Nikki Hari Magdalena is a mystic, intuitive healer, soul-seer, ancient soul. Several years ago, she embarked on a “pilgrimage of the heart;” guiding her to the West Coast, through the jungles of Central America, and eventually to a master teacher in Quebec. While taking a pause in Chicago, she offers “Healing Wisdom” sessions, which encompass a broad spectrum of modalities and intuitive gifts. They are meant to help one receive clarity and healing on the path, while awakening the “Inner Guru.” Don’t miss
this rare chance to kin-ect with this nomadic one!

.: Re:vivifying Residents ::
Derby* [dj] - Chilluminati / Touch Samadhi / Psymbolic–sounds
In his life as a traveler, Derby came upon the sounds of psychedelica in Europe. Settling soon thereafter in Chicago, he became a resource that pulled those with similar musical tastes together. Derby has since proven to positively affect the Midwest Psy/Goa music scene by being a driving force behind Touch Samadhi, a founding member of The Chilluminati and an essential programmer within the Psymbolic–sounds label. You can expect to hear a skillful set of funky melodic soundscaping electronica.

*Zac Franzoni* [live painting]
Live Painting Sessions by Zac Franzoni who was trained by an elite group of time-travellling artists sent to usher in The New Renaissance. Bring your energy, passion, love of art and collaborative mind to Re:vivify and join Zac for a live painting journeyescape.

*Butterfly Social Club* meets weekly on Wednesdays. :: 722 W. Grand Ave. Chicago, IL 60610
Grand blue line stop

There will be a fundraiser on Saturday night, 6 pm to midnight, at Castle Clinton in Battery Park ($10 donation). Everyone is invited!

FIGMENT is a celebration of creative culture from June 27-29, 2008 on Governors Island in New York Harbor. It provides an open forum for artists, helps build a creative community, and fosters participatory and public art. A broad spectrum of arts are represented, including sculpture, performance, music, installation, dance, costuming and activities. Figment is free and open to the public. Everyone can participate — with whatever inspires them! There will be almost every conceivable option. Come, engage, build, paint, sing, experience, think, wonder, listen, create, dance, wander: In short, the public can participate in a vast array of imaginative experiences that over 200 artists of FIGMENT have conceived — or bring their own games, costumes, activities, or small works of art.

FIGMENT has moved art from the pedestal onto the front lawn for everyone to enjoy, with over 200 artists to celebrate creative culture and non-commercial art with the public.

• Among the projects planned for this event are:

Starlight on the Island—A series of solar panel powered, spherical steel sculptures that will absorb sunlight to light the island at night.

• The Art of Skateboarding, an art installation and talk with homemade ramps constructed of recycled materials.

• “Circus Sideshow”, an interactive art installation and performance

• The Rose Petal Pool, children of all ages can interact with this rich sensory experience (multi-media sound installation)

• Maroguzcaju Theater Puppet Show, “Silencio, Silencio!,” about finding happiness in life’s details

• “Planetary Dance,” participatory rhythmic circular dance

And many many other events and performances, including a lecture schedule which includes discussions on Interactive and Participatory Art.

FIGMENT 2008 will also offer a range of offerings by video and film artists sharing both their personal and collective expressions—often influenced by Governors Island— including the documentation of the construction of an elaborate reclaimed wood sculpture and one NY native’s 1979 marriage in the island’s Trinity Church.

Other FIGMENT art installations will incorporate such innovative materials and resources as telescopes, a teepee, 2,000 silver colored flags, and a pair of five-foot tall wooden lips! The majority of sculptures and art pieces are touchable and climbable—resulting in much art that is interactive and child-friendly.

The work of both emerging and established choreographers will be featured as part of the many dance performances taking place throughout the 3-day event. Similarly, FIGMENT 2008 will have a range of performance art offerings, including such original and unusual unions as the merging of creative writing with art and improvisational drama exercises with therapeutic movement, sound, and role-play. In addition, visitors to the island can participate in the creation of pop-trash poetry done karaoke style, Ukrainian body painting, private readings at the “Poetry Brothel,” and the “intrepid” use of cameras to record various urban explorations.

The musical offerings of FIGMENT 2008 are extensive, as well as exceptional in their variety and innovation. They range from boogie and classic rock to futuristic Brooklyn hip-hop to the “healing” sounds of electric keyboards to traditional bawdy German songs about murder, madness and mayhem—to the accompaniment of an organ grinder! Many of the performances are also representative of the collaborative spirit of multiple disciplines working together: a sound installation incorporating restaurant kitchen recordings, live electric flute accompanied by modern dancers, a mix of acoustic and electronic dance music resulting from remixes of Rwandan mass and folktronica.

Finally, humor permeates many of the offerings, as probably best represented by the Celtic vocalist who will be singing her heartfelt songs about love, loss and indigestion.

For more information on the highly interactive and collaborative art exhibits, performances, music and dance events, and workshops encompassing all media, go to http://figmentnyc.org/2008/participate.html or contact Rosemary Siciliano :: rosemary [at] FIGMENTnyc.org :: 207.332.9008

Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center is delighted to announce a very special performance on Friday June 20th at 8:00 PM. The diverse program will feature new and in-progress works by Harvestworks interns Alia Ormut-Fleishmen, Ben Lacker, John McGill, Kariyana Rich and Erik DeLuca featuring Daniel Blake and friends.

Alia Ormut-Fleishman’s work explores real-time 3d graphics, reactive to Audio. Ben Lacker’s piece Breakers focuses on granular sampling of acoustic drums. John McGill will present an experimental, improvisatory guitar and electronics work. Kariyana Rich will perform a rendition of The Carpenters Superstar and Erik DeLuca will present a new improvisatory, audio-visual work in-progress featuring Daniel Blake on saxophone.

David Tagg - Waist Deep Seas of Milk (review) New York musician, David Tagg, has seen The Future of Modern Guitar. And this sonic seer’s astral projections are sumptuously spread across the ambient expanses of Waist Deep Seas of Milk, though all trace of twang, pluck and strum is dissolved in FX haze and spun out in endless echo returns. Review by Alan Lockett.

Favourite Places (review) Everyone has a favourite place, whether cosy internal retreat or cherished patch of Great Outdoors. Forest, bathtub, museum and alley find common cause on this audio-document from Audiobulb, compiling ten pieces representing selected artists’ Favourite Places. Captured field recordings blend with musical treatments to make mementos enfolding inspiring source within inspired composition. Review by Alan Lockett.

Hectic Tenuous - Chic Nerve (review) Starting with flanged, panned scratching (ala fingernails, not decks), this solo CDR from The Caution Curves laptop lady Rebecca Mills, is an eleven track melange of textures, echoes, drones, processed field recordings and even the occasional bit of singing! Review by Mark Francombe.

La Ciutat Ets Tu - Tomasz Krakowiak (review) La Ciutat Et Tu surrounds the listener with evolving percussive transformations in timbre. The compositions have a circular unwinding quality, never abrasive and utterly hypnotic. Tomasz Krakowiak is a Polish-born percussionist now living in Toronto, Canada. Having collaborated with the likes of Kaffe Matthews, John Oswald, Phil Minton, Otomo Yoshihide, Gert-Jan Prins among other. Review by Derek Morton.

Love City by Dsic (review) Dsic, also known as Greg Godwin, is a Bristol-based noise artist that employs a wide range of influences and sound sources. Love City and the miniDsic EP, both released through Lf Records, weave their way through noise, drone, glitch, ambient and microsound. Review by Alex Young.

Nelson Foltz and Tom Lynn - Still Life (series) (review) The internally themed Rothko-esque cover art of the Still Life series could stand as a semiotic of Nelson Foltz and Tom Lynn’s sound, with its slow-shifting tones that spread across a spartan canvas - ostensibly static swathes that reveal micro-variativity on deeper insertion. Review by Alan Lockett.

Of Memory & Dreams - Bill Thompson (review) There is a trajectory that many improvised electro acoustic performances reach, which although unique in every given context, often manage to take you to a zen like point where you become one with the signal and phase in and out of listening to the development of structure or dynamic of the work. Review by Roger Mills.

Three Rooms - Steve Peters (review) Sound artist Steve Peters’ recent CD, Three Rooms documents three of his site-specific installations. The three pieces succeed without reference to the installations for which the pieces were originally composed, capturing the quiet reflection of the original locations. Review by Caleb Deupree.

Variations VII is the most recent installment in the Mobius Artists Group’s exploration of John Cage’s eight compositions, titled Variations. Beginning in 1996 with Variations I, in a version for two voices performed by David Miller and Larry Johnson, MAG members and guest artists have studied and performed this series in chronological order. This multiyear project was initiated and is coordinated by David Miller, but each of the projects is essentially collaborative in nature. Working through these radically open-ended compositions, among the most indeterminate of all Cage’s works, has provided the collaborators with an action-research form of insight into one key aspect of Cage’s development.

More important, however, the Mobius realizations of the Variations are aimed at unearthing the potential that these classic “avant-garde” works of the mid-twentieth century have for audiences and artists of our own time. This is especially true for the later works in the series, as they are rarely performed. The first Mobius Artists Group performance of Variations VII, given in March 2007, was the first realization of this work since its original performances in 1966, when it was presented by Experiments in Art and Technology as part of Nine Evenings: Theatre and Engineering.

The Mobius collaborators’ experience in preparing the 2007 performance laid the groundwork for the more fully developed version to be presented this April, including the addition of new team members Alisia Waller and Joshua Jade. The final work in the series, Variations VIII, is projected for performance in 2008-09.

BACKGROUND ON JOHN CAGE’S VARIATIONS VII: In 1966, John Cage and a set of prominent collaborators, including Billy Klüver of Bell Laboratories and David Tudor, presented Variations VII, as part of the series 9 Evenings: Art and Engineering. Performed at the immense New York City Armory under the auspices of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), Variations VII was an experiment in making audible the inaudible and transforming the results via live electronic sound processing. By the “inaudible” was meant sounds from the world beyond the Armory space (for example, a restaurant kitchen, the zoo), sounds available in the space itself but generally inaccessible (sounds of the body), and sounds produced by the transformation of non-aural data (particularly via a Geiger counter).

The team of composers working with Cage and Klüver used the metaphor of “fishing” to create a rich and dense soundscape, originating entirely with real-time sources unintended for performance. The Mobius team is developing a 21st-century presentation of Variations VII which, while taking into account what was done in 1966, aims at something different from a reproduction of the original. The sonic “fishing” activities will use a variety of means, from Web-scanning to processes which use no electronic technology. The group will also be fishing in another dimension, with real-time development of projected visual imagery using found material. Finally, the fishing will take place in a set of simultaneous, widening circles, from the performance space itself, to the surrounding neighborhood, remote physical spaces, and the global Web. See Variations VII: FishNet.

About Mobius: Mobius, founded by Marilyn Arsem in 1977, is known for incorporating a wide range of the visual, performing, and media arts into innovative live performance, video, installation and intermedia works. Mobius has produced hundreds of original works that have attained critical acclaim in Boston, nationally and internationally. Works created at Mobius have been presented throughout the North and South America, Europe and Asia.

Mobius has long been committed to creating artist exchange projects bringing artists from different geographic regions to work together. The international exchange projects with artists from Macedonia, Croatia, Poland, and Taiwan have focused on site-specific and publicly-sited work. Mobius has presented work involving thousands of artists over its 30-year history and is recognized as one of the seminal alternative, artist-run organizations in the U.S.

Mobius, Inc is funded by the Tanne Foundation; the Nonsequitur Foundation; the Boston Redevelopment Authority; the LEF Foundation; the Boston Cultural Council, a program of the Mayor’s office on Arts, Tourism, & Special Events; the Foundation for Contemporary Arts; the Oedipus Foundation; and generous private support.

On Saturday 26 April and Sunday 27 April 2008, the Veenfabriek and the Art History Department of Leiden University organise the Symposium On Sound. This symposium is a gathering of scientists, performers and artists, who will focus on the issue of mutual influence between art and science, more specifically with regard to sound. The exhibition On the Sensations of Sound, which is organised in cooperation with Museum De Lakenhal in Scheltema, will be opened during the symposium.

COOPERATION VEENFABRIEK & LEIDEN UNIVERSITY: Since 15 April 2006, the Veenfabriek and the Art History Department of Leiden University have been in charge of the unique, joint Scholar on Stage project. This project investigates the mutual exchange and confrontation between arts and science, applied to sound. The first Scholar on Stage is technique philosopher John Heymans. Heymans carries out interdisciplinary research into the influence of Helmholt´s standard work Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen (1863) in the development of early-electronic and contemporary music. His doctoral research will result in a thesis which will be finalised at the end of 2008, and in the reconstruction and installation of the Siren Orchestra. In addition, Heymans is the main force behind the Symposium on Sound. The symposium includes an expert meeting for invitees only, during which Heymans will discuss the contents of his research with a group of international experts, as well as a public programme.

Symposium On Sound: Two international keynote speakers have been invited; the Canadian art historian Jonathan Sterne, who published The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (2003), among other works, and the American composer David Behrman. Both speakers will, emphatically from their own disciplines, discuss how the development of the art of sound, in the broadest sense of the word, is influenced, on the one hand, by the arts and, on the other hand, by science, and how this can be stimulated.

On Saturday 26 April, the programme also features a concertante lecture by the British composer Aleks Kolkowski who reconstructs instruments and machines from the pioneer days of recording and reproducing music. In addition, Sing Song — an ensemble that was established to make live ‘musique concrète’ — visual artist / actor Benjamin Verdonck and musician/composer Paul Koek will perform together.

On Sunday 27 April the Siren Orchestra will be launched officially, and the exhibition On the Sensations of Sound will be opened. This exhibition presents works by contemporary artists Carsten Nicolai (Germany), Suchan Kinoshita (the Netherlands/Japan), James Beckett (UK, Zimbabwe), John van Oostrum, Jochem van Tol and Der Wexel. The evening programme consists of a public interview / debate with the American composer and performer Laurie Anderson, who will comment on the theme of Symposium on Sound.

Siren Orchestra: As a result of the findings of Scholar on Stage John Heymans, the Veenfabriek sponsored the reconstruction of a number of musical instruments. These instruments go back to the work of the 19th-century physicist Hermann von Helmholtz: the sirens of the Dutch physicist H.A. Naber, and the intonarumori, the noise intoners, of the futurist Luigi Russolo. What originally seemed to involve a philosophical investigation into the effect of Helmholtz’s On the Sensations of Tone on early-electronic music was actually realised with this orchestra.

During the Symposium on Sound, the complete orchestra, consisting of twelve sirens and six intonarumori, will perform for the very first time. Leading composers have been invited to compose works for this unique orchestra. The Siren Orchestra will perform new works by David Behrman (USA), John Butcher (UK), Yannis Kyriakides (NL, UK, CY), Paul Koek and Martijn Padding (NL), introduced by the composers themselves.

On the Sensations of Sound consists of sound objects and sound installations by contemporary artists Carsten Nicolai (GER), Suchan Kinoshita (NL/JPN), James Beckett (UK, Zim), John van Oostrum, Jochem van Tol and Der Wexel. These artists use sound as their basic material. Through sound they change or intensify the perception of space, of material or objects. Much of their work has a scientific or investigative angle. James Beckett, John van Oostrum and Der Wexel will compose new works, especially for On the Sensations of Sound.

British essayist and composer David Toop will open the exhibition on Sunday 27 April 2008 at 4:00 p.m. Toop published Ocean of Sound (1995) and Haunted Weather (2004), among other works, and also presented the exhibition Sonic Boom: the art of sound, in the Hayward Gallery in London in 2000. [via Mediateletipos]

April 9, 2008; 7 pm :: The Fenway Center, 77 St. Stephen Street, Boston :: Free :: Contact a.rishi [at] neu.edu for more information.

THURSDAY MARCH 27:

“Living Cinema” is the creation of Quebecois filmmaker Pierre Hébert and San Francisco composer Bob Ostertag. This innovative project brings the creation of cinema out of the movie and recording studios and on to the stage. Ostertag has created custom software that allows the two artists to actually perform an animated movie with soundtrack, live on stage. They will perform their newest work Special Forces, which premiered last May in Beirut and San Francisco. Like their earlier works, it incorporates events from the world news; in this case, it begins with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

“Sonodendron” is a fully immersive work that explores the sonic potentials of cello and electronics on both the microscopic and macroscopic scale. With a 5.1 Surround Sound score by Mem1 (Laura Thomas-Merino, cello & M. Cera, electronics) and video by media artist Liora Belford, Sonodendron is a visceral tour through the bowels and ephemera of the cello.

FRIDAY MARCH 28:

“Messages” is a collaboration between Tres Warren of Psychic Ills and visual artist Taketo Shimada. Their sound falls somewhere between drone, raga, techno and psychedelia - mashing guitar, homemade tanpura, voice, percussion, turntables and everything else they can get their hands on. About their first EP from The Social Registry, Dusted magazine proclaimed: “This is some heavy, humid drone, pregnant with 4am electricity and, in the end, thick fuzzy beats. A beautiful surprise, engaging even in its abstract tendencies.”

Messages’ apprearance at Roulette will be a continutation of their recent live sets, the ‘Brain Damage On Broadway’ show at the Emily Harvey Foundation and their appearance at the ‘Evas Arche Und Der Feminist’ party at Gavin Brown’s Passerby. Expect an evening of hypnosis, experimentaion and improvised psychedelia.

Jeff Perkins (Single Wing Turquoise Bird, who provided light shows to Velvet Underground, Grateful Dead and Dr. John to name a few) provides his minimal psychedelic light show with four slide projectors and motorized fly wheels.

Violinist and composer Rebecca Cherry will present a new multi-media Surround-Sound installation exploring the relationship between sound and imagery. Juxtaposing original sound samples of stringed instruments employing extended techniques with video footage from popular music videos, the work seeks to generate new and unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated materials. Audience members will have the opportunity to interact with the installation through a computer interface provided by the artist.

SATURDAY MARCH 29:

A collaboration between guitarist Vernon Reid and multi-instrumentalist Leon Gruenbaum, gReid and Ruen is a kaleidoscopic conglomeration of field hollers, space sounds and general mayhem. Exploring instrumental groove-based futuristic improvisations, this is a rare opportunity to hear these virtuoso musicians in their most experimental mode. Yuko Sueta will be providing visuals via video projection.

Performing under his IDM/electronica moniker Plasticity, New York-based composer Robert Madler will perform a set of electronic works that explore experimental beats, static drones, loops, polyrhythms and noise. A 2006 Harvestworks Artist In Residence, Madler’s music has been featured at many universities in the US, including the SEAMUS festival, as well as in Canada, Mexicao, Spain and France.

BIOGRAPHIES:

Bob Ostertag is a composer, performer, historian, instrument builder, journalist, activist and kayak instructor. He has performed at music, film, and multi-media festivals around the globe and his collaborators include the Kronos Quartet, John Zorn, Mike Patton, Anthony Braxton, Lynn Breedlove, and Justin Bond. He is currently Professor of Technocultural Studies and Music at the University of California at Davis.

Pierre Hébert, born in 1944 in Montreal, is a self-taugt filmmaker strongly influenced by animation film makers Norman McLaren and Len Lye. He worked for The National Film Board of Canada from 1965 until the end of 1999 and has since pursued a career as an independent artist and filmmaker. Since 1983, he has taken part in live performances with musicians such as Jean Derome, Robert M. Lepage and René Lussier, Fred Frith and Bob Ostertag.

Mem1 is an electroacoustic duo that seamlessly blends the sounds of cello (Laura Thomas-Merino) and electronics (M. Cera) to create a subtle evolution of textures that moves beyond melody, lyricism, and traditional structural confines, resulting in an organically revealed narrative.

Laura Thomas-Merino is a professional cellist originally from Los Angeles, currently residing in Providence, RI. An active orchestral and chamber musician, she has performed in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Peru, and Italy with such artists as Pamela Z, the Robin Cox Ensemble, the group OXO as part of the Sonic Boom Festival in Vancouver, with the Providence String Quartet.

M. Cera is a media artist who is interested in exploring audio/visual control systems that are intuitive as well as experimental in nature. He is a member of the experimental media art group Redux, and the electroacoustic duo Mem1 alongside cellist Laura Thomas-Merino.

Liora Belford is a Tel-Aviv based video artist and a filmmaker. Her works have been featured at numerous worldwide festivals and art exhibitions including Art Film Festival (Slovakia), Tel-Aviv Museum of Art (Israel), Vancouver Film Festival (Canada), Washington Jewish Film Festival (USA), and many others.

Taketo Shimada is a visual artist and musician from Tokyo. He has lived and worked in NYC since the mid 80s. Taketo paints everyday and makes the most of instruments and sound systems for his music. He has worked with a variety of figures such as Henry Flynt, Alison Knowles and Rammellzee to name a few.

Tres Warren is an artist and musician living and working in New York City. He’s involved in various music collaborations including Messages and has performed as part of Damo Suzuki’s Network, in addition to recording and touring internationally with his band Psychic Ills.

Jeff Perkins is a visual artist and filmmaker. While serving in the U.S. Air Force stationed in Tokyo, he met Yoko Ono and her husband Anthony Cox. Through them he was exposed to the works of Cage, Duchamp, LaMonte Young and others and began participating in events, performances and concerts. He a co-founder of ‘Single Wing Turquoise Bird’, a multimedia group doing light shows for Velvet Underground, Grateful Dead and Dr. John to name a few. Jeff currently exhibits at the Emily Harvey Gallery and is now finishing up his new film ‘The Painter Sam Francis’.

Violinist Rebecca Cherry is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory and has performed in the Baltimore, Annapolis and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras, the London and Bergen Philharmonic, and with pop music performers including Jay-Z, Kanye West, Stevie Wonder, and more.

Best known as the founder and primary songwriter of the hard rock/heavy metal band Living Colour, guitarist Vernon Reid was named #66 on Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. Reid first came to prominence in the 1980s in the band of drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. While he is perhaps best known for his work with Living Colour, Reid has had an active solo career that includes collaborations with Bill T. Jones, Salif Keita and James “Blood” Ulmer; performances with the Roots, Mick Jagger, Rollins Band, Spearhead, Public Enemy, Mariah Carey, and Tracey Chapman; and various original scores for film and television.

Leon Gruenbaum has been a vital force in the New York music scene for the last 20 years. After early classical training on piano and woodwinds, Mr. Gruenbaum developed an interest in jazz, funk and avant-garde music. Mr. Gruenbaum conceived of the world’s first relativistic music keyboard, a patented MIDI controller called the Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheeepeeeee. He has recorded and performed internationally with this instrument with guitarist Vernon Reid, and demonstrated it last year at the academic conference “NIME” (New Interfaces for Musical Expression).

Yuko Sueta is an interactive video artist who presents landscapes to live music. She creates sensual textures and stories into visuals by using chaotic mixtures of manipulated 16mm films and digital images. Her work has been performed live with rock, experimental, electro musicians such as Ifwhen, Apollo Heights, Costanza, Kayo Dot and played all around U.S, Europe and Japan.

Robert Madler is a composer and performer who has focused on experimental media since 1998, specializing in electroacoustic composition (both stereo diffusion and octophonic), compositions utilizing multiple video projections, and programming in Max/MSP and Reaktor.

_____________

The Special Prize consists of a project realization grant to the amount of 8.000 Euro with which the prize winners realize their submitted proposal either at the ZKM | Institute for Music and Acoustics in Karlsruhe or at the SWR-EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO in Freiburg.

An international jury will decide about the awarding of the 2nd Giga-Hertz-Award for electronic music. The members of the jury 2008 besides the heads of the two involved studios – Ludger Brümmer (Head of ZKM | Institute for Music and Acoustics Karlsruhe) and Detlef Heusinger (Head of Experimentalstudio for acoustic art, Freiburg) – are: François Bayle, pioneer of electroacoustic and acousmatic music who developed the famous Acousmonium; and Jonathan Harvey, one of the most skilled, and imaginative composers of our time who in 2007 was awarded the first Giga-Hertz-Grand Prize in recognition of his lifework; Armin Köhler, editor-in-chief for New Music at the SWR broadcasting corporation and responsible for the Donaueschingen Music Festival;
and Peter Weibel, CEO of the ZKM Karlsruhe, former artistic director of the Ars Electronica in Linz, and professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

The Giga-Hertz-Award is in memory of the world-famous physicist Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894), who taught at the Karlsruhe technical university at the end of the nineteenth century; it was there that he discovered electromagnetic waves.

To apply and for further information go here.

Slought Foundation and Soundfield NFP are pleased to announce an evening of new and experimental music featuring Rome-based ensemble Ossatura and Philadelphia-based Ensemble Noamnesia. Ossatura features Elio Martusciello (electronics), Fabrizio Spera (percussion and electronics), and Luca Venitucci (accordion and electronics). They will realize graphic scores by Anthony Braxton, Franco Evangelisti, and others, in collaboration with Ensemble Noamnesia.

Improvisation represents the backbone of the music played by Ossatura. The practice of improvising is integrated by discussion, research and critical analysis, all of which contribute to the elaboration of structures, information and organizational modes. Their music is marked by a sequence of sound blocks and diversified interlocking timbres and shapes, where detailed textural work alternates with rhythmic accelerations and highly dense sound events. Standard instrumental techniques are explored, together with heterodox practices such as manipulation, treatment, electrification and amplification of various objects, assuming noise as a structural element. Their improvisational work develops through electro acoustical elaboration in real time and the use of tapes, which both expand and define the space where sound is manipulated. Ossatura tends towards a combination of non-musical languages through a creative process where music is but one of the components in a complex and extended project.

Elio Martusciello is a self-taught musician and composer and teaches electronic music and electro acoustics at the Conservatory of Cagliari, Italy.

Fabrizio Spera has actively contributed as a percussionist to the contemporary and improvised music scene since the late eighties. His current projects and groups involve “Ossatura”, “Trio” with John Butcher and John Edwards, “RARA ensemble,” and a trio with Alberto Braida and Lisle Ellis.

Luca Venitucci attended musical studies at the scuola popolare di musica in Roma and studied composition with Boris Porena. In the late eighties he began to participate in the activities of the improvised music scene in Italy and Europe, and during the next decade performed with musicians including Mike Cooper, Peter Kowald, Otomo Yoshihide, Thomas Lehn, Axel Dorner and others. From 1996 to 2002 he has been part of zeitkratzer ensemble, with whom he performed and recorded contemporary music scores by Cage, Glass, Stockhausen, La Monte Young and James Tenney. He has undertaken original projects and collaborations with several experimental musicians and composers such as Christian Marclay, Butch Morris, Francisco Lopez, Keith Rowe, Phil Niblock, Lee Renaldo, and Nicolas Collins.