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

This sonic and visual feast features an amplified string quartet, electric drill and motors, alternative film production processes, film projection, and clouds of looming shadows. Specially conceived for the Turbine Hall by vanguard American musician / composer, filmmaker, video artist and writer, Tony Conrad.

Known for his groundbreaking film The Flicker, his involvement in the Theatre of Eternal Music and the evolution of the Velvet Underground, and collaborations with a host of luminaries including Jack Smith, Mike Kelley and Henry Flynt, Conrad remains a radical figure who challenges cultural conventions.

From the 13th-15th of June, this special weekend at Tate Modern also features screenings of Conrad’s extraordinary film and video work:

Friday 13 June 7pm :: Tony Conrad: Flicker and Process Films

Saturday 14 June 7pm :: Tony Takes on Video: Who’s Watching Who?

Sunday 15 June 3pm ::Tony Conrad in Conversation + DreaMinimalist

Visit http://www.tate.org.uk for full details and to book, or telephone 020 7887 8888.

Performance, Turbine Hall, free, booking recommended :: Screenings and Discussion, Starr Auditorium :: Curated by Stuart Comer, Alice Koegel and Mark Webber.

This event is part of UBS Openings: Saturday Live, a series of bi-monthly performance events celebrating contemporary cultural practice at Tate Modern

A performance including live chamber ensemble, electroacoustic soundscape and projected video, Psychodrama is a multiple re-scoring of the shower sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Psycho.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYcp1_onRdo

Psychodrama: 13 Variations is funded in part by the Composer Assistance Program of the American Music Center and is made possible in part with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

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

Sponsored by Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center and the Art & Technology Program at Stevens Institute of Technology, founded in 1966 by engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer, and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, to provide artists with access to new technology and to promote collaborations between artists and engineers.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

2:00 * Exhibition opening *E.A.T. Revisited: Documents and Works* (through April 28). Included is an installation of photographic documentation entitled The Story of E.A.T.: Experiments in Art and Technology, 1960*2001 by Billy Klüver; a selection of classic works: Floats by Robert Breer and Silver Clouds by Andy Warhol; and an installation of new works, *Transduced Objects,* created in a workshop inspired by David Tudor*s *Rainforest,* taught by John Driscoll and Phil Edelstein to artists and students from both Stevens Institute and Harvestworks.

3:00 * Panel Art and Technology, Historical and Current Perspectives with panelists Robert Whitman, Julie Martin, John Driscoll, Steve Bull, Scot Gresham-Lancaster and Anne Swartz (Savannah College of Art and Design), moderated by Julie Harrison (Stevens Institute of Technology).

5:30 * Performance Cellphonia: Tempo Variable (Cellphonia: Changeable Weather by Steve Bull and Scot Gresham-Lancaster, with Phil Edelstein, Hans Tammen, and Brooks Williams * a surround sound memorial concert for John Cage and David Tudor in which live performance, cellphone calls, transduced objects, and synthetic voices are mixed by the musicians and the neural synthesis ETANN, or electronically trainable analog neural net, developed by Forrest Warthman and Scot Gresham-Lancaster for David Tudor.

6:15 * Reception to meet the artists, panelists, and organizers

Sunday, April 6, 2008 (suggested donation $5, free to students and seniors)
1:00 * Film Screening *9 Evenings: Theater & Engineering* include Robert Rauschenberg*s Open Score; John Cage*s Variations VII; Öyvind Fahlström*s Kisses Sweeter than Wine and a work-in-progress on David Tudor*s Bandoneon!. Producer Julie Martin and director Barbro Schultz Lundestam, will be present to introduce the films and answer questions.

For more information, contact:
Carol Parkinson (Harvestworks) 212-431-1130
Julie Harrison (Stevens Institute) 201-216-8583

Jérôme Noetinger :: Un Temps 1 :: 4′55″

Since 1987 different concepts have been carried out and performed in festivals, galleries, cinemas and contemporary art spaces, in France, Europe, Canada, USA. Since 1995 they have developed collaborations with other groups or artists like Nachtluft (Switzerland), Kinobits (France), Loophole Cinema (England), Le Cube (France), la Flibuste (France), Voice Crack (Switzerland). Read more >>

Metamkine will perform at Liquid Architecture, Australia’s premier sound-arts festival. “Liquid Architecture is a sense specific festival, as opposed to art form specific. Occurring annually since 2000, Liquid Architecture celebrates the diverse methods of sound making and sound theory. It is our belief that listening is a vital activity, and one that is often overlooked within the dominance of visual media in our environment.” The fesitival takes place in 3 cities, Sydney (June 28-30), Brisbane (July 6-7), and Melbourne (July 11-14).

Distributed Memory, originally presented at the Getty Center, features commissioned pieces supported in part by Montalvo Arts Center, pairs filmmakers and composers in the creation of collaborative real-time cinematic works from the recomposition of found and new materials. This evening is the second in a two-part series curated by Julie Lazar. In Rotary Wobble and Horizontal Boundaries, Pat O’Neill’s formalized contemplations of urban and natural environments are merged with electronic musician Carl Stone’s live digital scores. Janie Geiser and Tom Recchion’s fusion of live performance, re-photography and collage animation, Magnetic Sleep, reinterprets the formal melodramatic traditions of Man Ray and Maya Deren. (Steve Polta)

Sonic Acts XII will be held between 21 and 24 February 2008 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The twelfth edition is devoted to The Cinematic Experience and incorporates an international conference, a wide range of concerts and performances, an exhibition and a diverse programme of films.

The programme will focus on the rich history of the cinematic experience, from magic lanterns, colour organs and zootropes to experience machines and immersive environments. Sonic Acts will also peer into the future. Will cinema distance itself from narrative in the near future? What is the prospect for celluloid? And what role will sensory deprivation play in future cinema?

Below some highlights of the programme:

Conference

The three-day conference will provide a comprehensive overview of the cinematic experience. International experts from the fields of film, visual arts, music, science, literature and art history will reflect on historic developments, the current situation and near-future developments, from the perspective of their respective specialities.

Speakers include Jeffrey Shaw (Australian artist, founding director of the ZKM Institute for Visual Media Karlsruhe and founding director of the UNSW iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research), Douglas Kahn (lecturer at UC Davis and author of Noise, Water, Meat on the history of sonic arts); Erkki Huhtamo (media archaeologist, writer, curator and lecturer at UCLA); Arjen Mulder (writer, translator, media theorist and biologist, author of several publications on media arts and the relationship between technical media, physical experiences and faith, including Understanding Media Theory); Timothy Druckrey (lecturer, curator and author, editor of Ars Electronica: Facing the Future, and author of Culture on the Brink); Mika Taanila (filmmaker and lecturer on video at the Helsinki Academy of Arts, whose films are media-archaeological research into the development of technology as part of our society).

Live Performances

The sound collective The Drone People, formed especially for this event, will present a preview of their project 24 Hour Drone People. The entire piece will be performed just after Sonic Acts at the Stockholm New Music Festival. Inspired by drone gods such as LaMonte Young and Tony Conrad, iDEAL record-label boss Joachim Nordwall has curated an event that will celebrate time, tradition, the future and the past, while simultaneously challenging them all. The Drone People are: CM von Hausswolff, Hildur Ingveldardóttir Gudnadóttir, Stephen O’Malley, BJ Nilsen, Joachim Nordwall, Mika Vainio and C.Spencer Yeh.

Ulf Langheinrich’s new audiovisual performance Drift will be presented for the first time in the Netherlands. A stream of abstract, picturesquely deep and dense images and sounds – transparent and fine in resolution and detail – evolve from a realistic image. A process of multiple metamorphoses in several parallel spaces and time layers constantly transforms their consistency, viscosity and transparency.

In collaboration with GRM (Groupe Recherches Musicales, the French research institute for contemporary music), Sonic Acts will showcase the Acousmonium in the Netherlands for the first time. The Acousmonium, an installation of 80 loudspeakers differing in size and shape, positioned at various heights and distances from each other, create a unique soundscape and features works and performances by Eliane Radigue, Christian Fennesz, Michel Chion, Ivo Malec, Bernard Parmegiani, François Bayle and Daniel Teruggi.

Lifton’s computer interactive environments were exhibited throughout the UK and Europe, and were used in electronic music performances. He was also a member of the experimental music group Naked Software during this period. In 1976, Lifton collaborated with Richard Lowenberg, Jim Wiseman, and Tom Zahuranec on the feature film The Secret Life of Plants. One sequence documented Lifton’s Green Music (which had previously been exhibited at Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1975). According to Lowenberg, Christopher Bird, co-author of the book, The Secret Life of Plants offered his help and his basement lab facilities. Ultimately, the film only included a very small section of Green Music, which has been described as follows:

Over the course of four days in June 1976, while open to the public, six large plants in the center of the glass Plant Conservatory in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, produced an audible, live digital music score, based on bio-electric sensing of their responses to light, temperature, movement and other physio-environmental factors (using gold needle electrodes at the base of the stem and root). Amid the ‘tropical garden’ stood a five foot high rack of audio and digital processing systems, including the just purchased, Altair 8800, which John was constantly (re)programming in Machine Language.

From 1974 to 1977 Lifton taught graduate students at the Royal College of Art in London, in both the departments of Environmental Media and Design Research. He moved to Telluride, Colorado in 1977 where he currently lives and works. He co-directed Other Minds with Charles Amirkhanian from 1988 to 1991. Lifton is a founder of the Telluride Institute and is currently developing the Center for the Future in Slavonice, Czech Republic.

Both Green Music and The Secret Life of Plants were part of Psychobotany: Revolutionary Breakthroughs in Human/Plant Communication, an exhibition at Machine Project, LA (2007). Read this prescient interview - Composing in the information age - by Chris Meyer, Whole Earth Review, Fall, 1992. [Thanks to Paul Brown]

Related projects: Akousmaflore and Pieces for Plants.

Zarah Cabañas (live visuals) + Paul Amitai (live sound); Chika IIjima (live visuals) + bubblyfish (live sound); Marie-Helene Parant (live visuals) + Jim Bell (live sound) (Montreal,Canada); David Linton (live visuals + sound); Katherine Liberovskaya / Peter Shapiro; (live visuals) + Hitoshi Kojo (live sound) (Japan/CH); Ursula Scherrer (live visuals) + Kato Hideki (live sound)

Invited artist/respondent-moderator: Bruce Tovsky

OptoSonic Tea is a new regular series of meetings 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

For more information: http://www.diapasongallery.org/optosonic.html.