PED (2001-2006) by Millie Chen, Andrew Johnson, Paul Vanouse, - PED is simultaneously a pseudo service bureau and an info/excer-tainment outlet from which viewer/participants may embark on free, talking-bicycle lecture tours. Each site-specific instance of PED provides many different thematic tours, each with a specific route to follow. Each bicycle is outfitted with a pedal-activated audio system. As the viewers pedal they hear the lecture, and when they stop the lecture ceases. Each ‘lecture’ is heard via small speakers mounted to the handlebars of each bicycle. Each tour begins and returns to the PED service bureau. Each route is marked with either temporary chalk-based paint or, alternatively, signage. Continue reading

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks will be published in October. In this new book by ‘one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century’ (NYT), Sacks subject is music: “our relationship with it, our facility for it, and what this most universal of passions says about us. In chapters examining savants and synaesthetics, depressives and musical dreamers, Sacks… locates the musical experience in the human brain. He shows that music is not simply about sound, but also movement, visualization, and silence. He follows the experiences of patients suddenly drawn to or suddenly divorced from music. And in so doing he shows, as only he can, both the extraordinary spectrum of human expression and the capacity of music to heal. Wise, compassionate and compellingly readable, Musicophilia promises, like all the best writing, to alter our conception of who we are and how we function, to lend a fascinating insight into the mysteries of the mind, and to show us what it is to be human.” (from Amazon’s review).

HOT! Festival at Dixon Place presents Nick Hallett and Mikael Karlsson :: July 19 at 8pm :: Dixon Place, 258 Bowery below Houston, 2nd Floor :: TIX: $10.

An evening of original electroacoustic compositions by composer Mikael Karlsson and his collaborator Rob Stephenson, alongside vocalist Nick Hallett’s interpretation of Meredith Monk’s 1972 song cycle for voice and glass, Our Lady of Late. Projections completed at the Experimental Television Center by Brock Monroe add a touch of synesthesia. The works will be woven together to create a fluid journey between expressions of old / new, original / interpreted, poetic / prelinguistic, visual / sonic, and organic / mediated. Contributions from percussionist Sara Marcus and cellist Jason Wingate complete the bill. Continue reading