skyvat [dot] net

OptoSonic Tea, Friday May 30

Friday May 30
9 pm

OptoSonic Tea

Live sets by:

- Pamela Z (video and audio)
- Daniel Vatsky and Chris Jordan (video) and John Cohrs (audio)

Invited respondent/moderator:

- Miya Masaoka

Suggested donation:
$ 7

Experimental Intermedia
224 Centre Street at Grand, Third Floor, NY 10013
212 431 5127, 212 431 6430

OptoSonic Tea is a 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

About the artists:

Pamela Z is a San Francisco-based composer/performer and audio artist who works primarily with voice, live electronic processing, and sampling technology. She creates solo works combining operatic bel canto and experimental extended vocal techniques with found percussion objects, spoken word, digital processing, and a MIDI controller called The BodySynthª (which allows her to manipulate sound with physical gestures.) In addition to her solo work, she has composed and recorded scores for dance, theatre, film, and new music chamber ensembles. Her large-scale multi-media works have been presented at Theater Artaud and ODC in SanFrancisco and at The Kitchen in New York, and her audio works have been presented in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York and the Dišzesanmuseum in Cologne. Her multi-media opera Wunderkabinet based on the Museum of Jurassic Technology (created in collaboration with Matthew Brubeck and Christina McPhee) has been presented at The LAB Gallery (San Francisco) in 2005 and at REDCAT (Disney Hall, Los Angeles) in 2006. Pamela Z has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. She has performed in numerous festivals including Bang on a Can at Lincoln Center in New York, the Interlink Festival in Japan, the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, Pina Bausch Tanztheater Festival in Wuppertal, Germany, and La Biennale di Venezia in Italy. She is the recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Creative Capital Fund, the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts, the ASCAP Music Award, and the NEA and Japan/US Friendship Commission Fellowship. She holds a music degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
For more information visit www.pamelaz.com

Daniel Vatsky is a Brooklyn-based intermedia artist and VJ since 2001. He has created video for multimedia artist Laurie Anderson, comedian Chris Rock, documentary filmmaker Ric Burns, and serves as the visual coordinator of The Psychasthenia Society, a multimedia theater group combining realtime video with live music and storytelling. Recent works include “The Last Friday”, an interactive video game about the Critical Mass bicycle rides in New York City. His current project - which will be used in this performance - is a high-definition video mixer built in software.
www.skyvat.net

Chris Jordan explores the medium of light, movement, and time through the use of technology. His installations have appeared at the Moma, the New Museum, the Whitney, the Museum of Natural History, Times Square, numerous galleries and clubs; and the incidental spaces inbetween. The common elements that define Chris’ work include explorations into memory, photography, film, interactivity, and of course, projections. By examining the political and social implications technology has on us through a diversity of media, his work questions and challenges the viewer to redefine traditional perceptions of audience and performer. In addition Chris teaches interactive design at Baruch College and NYU; and organizes T-Minus, G33kXmas, rooftop movies, and visualist salons in New York City.
www.seej.net/create/
www.seej.net/g33kxmas/
www.t-minus.org

Jon Cohrs (splnlss.com) is an artist/recording engineer who runs Spleenless Mastering in Brooklyn, New York. He used to perform with the now defunct Portland band, Orange and Allred and now plays in a duo with Australian composer Rae Howel, called Rabbits without Spleens. Their upcoming record will be out later this fall. For more info go to rabbitswithoutspleens.com

Miya Masaoka resides in New York City and is a classically trained musician, composer and sound/installation artist. She has created works for solo koto, laser interfaces, explosive powders, model trains, laptop and video. She has also made works for sculpture installations and notated scores for ensembles, chamber orchestra and mixed choirs. She has been a guest with the Berkeley Symphony, Bang on a Can, So Percussion Ensemble, Pharoah Sanders and the Toshiko Akiyoshi Big Band.
Her work has been performed throughout the world including the Venice Biennale 2004, the Miller Theater, NYC, Merkin Hall, V2 (Rotterdam), Ircam, (Paris), KunstRadio (Vienna), Radio Breman (Germany), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Le Centrale (Canada), and festivals including DEAF (Ireland), Victoriaville (British Columbia), London Musicians’ Collective’s Festival of Experimental Music (England), Other Minds Festival and Redcat Theater (USA), and she has toured to India six times with violinist virtuoso Dr. L. Subramaniam.
Commissions include Engine 27/Harvestworks, Gerbode Foundation, Wattis Fellowship, British Broadcasting Co. (BBC), Asian Art Foundation, Alonzo King and Lines Ballet, Kathleen Supove. Other ensembles performing her work include Volti, Ensemble of the Piedmont Choirs, San Francisco Choral Society and Rova Saxophone Quartet.
She has been awarded the prestigious Alpert Arts Award, the ASCAP and The New Langton Arts Award, NEA and Meet the Composer. Residencies include Other Minds, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, Western Front (Vancouver), Jacob’s Pillow and STEIM (the Netherlands), Other Minds Residency, and the Asian Cultural Council Japan Fellowship and Bang on a Can People’s Commissioning Grant.
She has collaborated and worked with many leading artists including Pauline Oliveros, Steve Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Fred Frith, Christian Wolff, Henry Brandt, Andrew Cyrille, Reggie Workman and Vijay Iyer.
Sound installations (group exhibits) include Center for Art and Visual Culture (University of Maryland), Lincoln Center Out of Doors (Homemade Instrument Day), the Kitchen (Charles Morrow’s Cube), 2006 Winter Olympics (Torino, Italy), The Kitchen; Graphic Notation in Contemporary Music (2007). She is currently on faculty of the Bard College Milton Avery School of the Arts MFA Program in Music/Sound (since 2003).

for more information about OptoSonic Tea please visit:
http://www.diapasongallery.org/optosonic.html

VJ-U interview broadcast

VJ-U is an educational program that introduces students to the art of live video performance. One of their projects is an ongoing series at Operator11 a very cool live streaming video site that deserves your attention (or at least curiosity).

Anyway, Dan Winckler and Marlon Barrios Solano (with a little supervision from Benton C. Bainbridge) were kind enough to invite me over to Eyebeam for a taping of one of their shows. The results are archived here - if you want to hear us prattle on about live-cinema, collaborative structures, and firewire interfaces, among other topics.

part 1
part 2

Thanks Dan W. and Marlon for the pointed questions. It was a fun afternoon.

“The Last Friday”

Click to view the documentation.

My primary project for my second semester at Polytechnic Univeristy’s IDMI, “The Last Friday” is an agit-prop video game dealing with issues of free speech and the right to assemble in public space. You assume the role of an NYPD scooter policeman who must compete with fellow officers to ticket and arrest cyclists participating in New York City’s Critical Mass bicycle rides. Your virtual scooter is controlled via real-world positioning, thereby transforming any suitable open area into a gaming space and turning rolling chairs, rollerblades, razor scooters, tricycles, bicycles, etc. into game controllers. The game playfully envisions the police mentality that lies behind the disturbingly extreme and unsuccessful efforts to thwart Critical Mass. It also calls attention to the NYPDs newly established parade regulations, which pose a serious threat to American civil liberties.

Click to view the documentation.

Updates, Updates

Share Global in Berlin was amazing. Here on the streets of New York, it’s so easy to think your world doesn’t extend beyond the city’s borders. I always saw Share as a special event, but also as a small, intimate space that didn’t have a huge impact beyond a small circle. Berlin showed me otherwise. The response to our events was beyond all expectations, as were the efforts of CTM in putting it all together. It’s extremely encourgaing to see how the idea of Share is inspiring people to get involved all over the world.

Up next - Psychasthnia - in Houston, Texas. The Aurora Picture Show hosts us for 2 nights this weekend. I hear the venue is teriffic, and idealy suited for our show, so please come if you’re in the area.

“Man and Angel”

Not everyone in the U.S. has heard of “Neon Genesis Evangelion“, but if it were up to me everyone would. Probably the most thematically sophisticated anime ever made, it transcends any genre you can apply to it, and qualifies as a great work of art. Fueled by some chance readings in a recent philosphy class, I spent a few weeks last fall analyzing some themes in the show by using the writings of Saint Augustine. The result has been posted on Google Video - mainly because I’m just over-length to qualify for YouTube. 12 hours of animated insanity boiled down to a 12 minute encapsulation. I hope it turns some new people on to the series, or sparks some reflection and conversation in those that already have.

Though the sequence has been altered, all of the dialogue and images are from the original show. The music is also from the program, though mostly lifted from a soundtrack CD rather than the actual mixed tracks from the DVDs.

Check it out - and enjoy.

See “Children of Men”

I don’t want to just ride over on the back of this critical darling, but this film is pretty amazing. Damn full realization of the kind of “end of the world” scenario that most of us might imagine (I know I do), and with a level of mise-en-scene mastery that makes you totally buy it. It’s the real deal - don’t wait for video.

I’ll be in Berlin this time next week for Shareglobal at Club Transmediale. Come by, check it out, or collaborate if you are in the area. CTM is huge and we won’t be sleeping much.

2nd weekend in February, Psychasthenia Society will be in Houston, Texas for Aurora Picture Show’s ongoing series of expanded cinema events.

Psychasthenia Supercollider and Warhol

This coming Thursday, September 7, The Psychasthenia Society will appear at Monkey Town in Williamsburg. This could be our ideal venue. In fact, the place could have been designed with us in mind: four movie screens, surround sound, relaxed atmosphere, intimate setting, comfortable seating, and great food and drink served to the audience while we stretch out the stories and multimedia improvisations. . If you need further persuasion, just check out this recent review of MT in the Village Voice.

The new Psychasthenia material we developed over the summer will be in the program, and we’re bringing back “Mike’s Fate,” the closer from our theatrical show “The Nanolove Report.” We go on at 7:30 and repeat the show at 10:00. Also: this could be your last chance to catch Brunelle, Vatsky, and Mad EP performing together in New York City — Mr. EP moves to the U.K. in November. So if you haven’t seen The Psychasthenia Society for a while, or if you’re curious about us but never made it to one of our programs, this indeed is the one to catch.

Be sure to check out http://www.monkeytownhq.com for Monkey Town’s menu and details about their fine establishment, including reservation instructions. Showtime info below — see you on Thursday.

*****
The Psychasthenia Society
Jon Brunelle, Daniel Vatsky, and Mad EP
at Monkey Town

Thursday >> September 7 >> 7:30 & 10 pm
Monkey Town
58 North 3rd Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
(between Wythe & Kent - L train to Bedford Avenue)

Admission: $5, dinner charged separately (optional)
Reservations recommended
Information: 718.384.1369
Map and directions: http://tinyurl.com/fq2nr

Details at www.psychasthenia.com and www.monkeytownhq.com

****

IN ADDITION. I was able to check out the Labor day screening of “Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film”, where my animation work is featured heavily (over 600 of them). Happy to say, it really holds up on the big screen! For all it’s length, the film moves briskly and the (full) house was engaged all the way through. Plays through 9/14 FREE OF CHARGE at the Film Forum in NYC. Check it out if you can.

Psychasthenia - June 2nd

This Friday:
The Psychasthenia Society
at Collective: Unconscious
with guest artists Aerostatic

Friday >> June 2 >> 10 pm
Collective: Unconscious
279 Church Street, Tribeca, Manhattan
(near Canal Street train stops)
Admission: $5
Information: 212.254.5277
Map and directions: http://tinyurl.com/qqpg9
More about us: http://www.psychasthenia.com

The Psychasthenia Society returns to Collective: Unconscious on June 2, with Daniel Vatsky’s video mixes backed by music from Mad EP and guests Aerostatic. New stories, too, with ’50s detectives and galactic explorers taking on the MTA. This show will be a club-style event — generous music/video presentations from the artists and a beer & wine bar powered by The Tank. So stop by and have a glass or two while the fine music, great video, and twisted storytelling massage your synapses. See you then.


Bushwick Art Project

This is happening - BAP fundraiser check out below - the flyer is pretty dope, no?

Little shouts out - Eyewash is having it’s 2nd Monkeytown event on March 31 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I’m not playing but I’m going. We just did a fun show at Monkeytown a couple weeks ago - and the place is fast becoming the centerpoint for all things live and visual here in NYC.

Also follow this to Solana Larsen’s site - she blogged a show of mine but then I had to track her down over a vital question having to do with a childhood spent somewhere in the Creatceous Period. We all might re-enter it if you attend BAP.

Pure Mixed

So how was the Friday show? Pretty good, I think. A great crowd came out for this one, we got some new laughs where we hadn’t noticed them before.

This Thursday brings Psychasthenia back to it’s brithplace in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We’ll be showing a sub-section of our show (Jobless from Mars, for the devoted) but retooled and expanded to leverage Monkeytown’s overwhelming 4-screen format. Should be a fun one for us, and when I’m done I get to kick back and enjoy Andy and Chika work while I enjoy some lasagna.

Jealous? You needn’t be, because you are invited!

Pure Mixed at Monkeytown