[artinfo] Sunday January 12th: mini OptoSonic Tea festival @ Silent Barn | Brooklyn

[Ursula Scherrer]

Sunday, January 12, 2014
6 pm

mini OptoSonic Tea festival

Live sets by:

 ⁃	Private Language (Melissa F. Clarke and Nat Roe)
 ⁃	Barry Weisblat (35mm slide projection) with Marica Bassett (electronics)
 ⁃	Erik Z with Brian Chase (drums)
 ⁃	Katherine Liberovskaya (live visuals) and Erin Sexton (tactile electronics)
 ⁃	Ursula Scherrer (live visuals) with Bruce Andrews (performance poetry) and Shelley Hirsch (voice/improvised text)	
 ⁃	Jeff Donaldson with Philip White (electronics)

Respondent/moderator:
	
 ⁃	Victoria Keddie and Scott Kiernan of E.S.P. TV


$ 10 - 15 suggested


Silent Barn
603 Bushwick Ave.
Brooklyn NY 11206
http://www.silentbarn.org/


OptoSonic Tea is a regular series of meetings, started in 2006, 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:

Private Language appropriates, collages and processes radio signals
using digital and analog means, as well as exploiting sonic qualities
inherent to the playback device.Visually, kaleidoscopic geometrical
solids frame diaristic encounters with culture as surreal, uncanny and
sometimes alienating.
Melissa F. Clarke  recently was an artist in residence at the Simon’s Center for
Art and Geometry at SUNY Stonybrook, and has performed at spaces such as  
319 Scholes, NY, Eyebeam, NY, Issue Project  Room, NY, with the Queens
Museum, NY, the Electronic Music Foundation, and the International Biennial
of Contemporary Art ULA-2010, Venezuela. She is a graduate of NYU’s ITP
program with a 2 year Tisch Fellowship. 
Nat Roe has used his weekly late-night radio program with WFMU since 2008
as a platform for sound-collages that explore a nuanced relationship with
popular culture. Nat co-directs Silent Barn, a preeminent underground
performance space in Brooklyn which seeks to collapse distinctions between
public and private behavior. He has performed in spaces such as Eyebeam, NY,
Roulette Intermedia, NY, The Filmmaker’s Cooperative, NY, and has been
interviewed in publications such as Frieze Magazine, The Village Voice, The
New York Times and L Magazine. Melissa F. Clarke  is an interdisciplinary
artist whose work employs data and generative self-programmed compositional
environments. 

Barry Weisblat was born in Brooklyn in 1975 and remains one of the unsung
heroes of deep and investigative Sound. Thought. Beyond a long-running
commitment to participating in the underground's underground of
improvisation and a dynamic sense of musical conversation, Weisblat has
extended his reach and pool of knowledge beyond rubbing the surface of the
black box of sound to designing and implementing his own systems.
Translating light into sound, sound into action, action into thought, and
thought into light, Weisblat's ceaseless curiosity and simultaneous
obsessive desire to participate and join in dialogue has pushed his output
farther out than most people can see or conceive of. Some collaborations
include work with Michael Bernstein, Margarida Garcia, Andrew Lafkas, Toshio
Kajiwara, Matt Valentine, Theo Angell, Otomo Yoshide, Mattin, Tim Barnes,
Greg Pope, Toshi Nakamura, Sean     Meehan, Dion Workman.

Zaïmph is the solo project of ambient noise artist Marcia Bassett. Although
legendary for white-hot guitar and vocal brutality, Zaimph's recent
recordings and performances infuse cracked-raga song structures with dense
electronic and synthesizer drones to create soundscapes where a lurking
apocalypse is eclipsed by shimmering, meditative beauty.
As a co-founder of Philadelphia's shambolic psychonauts un and tectonic
drone pioneers Double Leopards, Bassett is deeply entwined with the American
noise underground, and has mapped regions still only dimly understood by
subsequent sonic travelers. From 2003-2008, Bassett joined Matthew Bower in
Hototogisu, where her mastery of cacophonous eardrum shred achieved
monolithic proportions. During the same period, she explored American
underground psychedelic folk-improv music with Steve Gunn and Pete Nolan in
GHQ, and with Tom Carter in Zaika. Zaïmph CDs, LPs and tapes have appeared
on independent labels such as Gift Tapes, Hospital Productions, W.M.O.r,
Utech Records, Gypsy Sphinx, Volcanic Tongue and No Fun records. Bassett has
released numerous Zaïmph recordings on her own Heavy Blossom imprint. In
2012, Bassett retired Heavy Blossom and started Yew, a label showcasing
Zaïmph and other aesthetically allied projects. In addition to her work with
Zaïmph, Bassett is a frequent collaborator with a wide spectrum of musicians
including Helen Espvall (Espers), Samara Lubelski, Margarida Garcia, Jenny
Graf (Metalux), Taylor Richardson (Infinity Window), and Barry Weisblat.

Brian Chase is a drummer and composer living in Brooklyn, NY. Growing up on Long Island, he started taking private music lessons at a young age, leading to a BM from the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio.  Brian is probably best known as a member of the group Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a band that has toured extensively throughout the world and has been nominated for three Grammys.  On the new music side, Brian is very active in the community largely based around John Zorn's club, The Stone.  In this setting, performance collaborations include those with Alan Licht, Chris Cochrane, Anthony Coleman, Jeremiah Cymerman, Thollem McDonas, David First, Jessica Pavone, and Robbie Lee, amongst more.  As a composer, Brian is deeply interested in the Just Intonation tuning theory and is influenced by the work of La Monte Young as introduced to him by Jon Catler.  In this light, the Drums and Drones  project emerged in which the principles of Just Intonation are applied to drums and percussion, as well as aesthetic approaches emphasizing the physiology of acoustics and practices of 'deep listening.'  The debut album of Drums & Drones was released in February of 2013 on Al Margolis' Pogus label and includes videos  by artists Ursula Scherrer and Erik Zajacesowski.  Some of Brian's additional recorded works include those with saxophonist Seth Misterka, vocalist Karlie Bruce, percussion group Man Forever, the North Sky cello ensemble, and minimalist punk rock band The Seconds.  Influential drum and percussion teachers are and have been Susie Ibarra, Greg Bandy, and Michael Rosen.  Away from the drums, Brian is a regular practitioner of Ashtanga yoga.

Katherine Liberovskaya is a video/media artist based in Montreal and New
York. Involved in experimental video since the 80s, she has produced
numerous videos, video installations and performances shown at various
events and venues around the world. Since 2001 her work predominantly
focuses on collaborations with composers and sound artists notably in live
video+sound performance where her live visuals seek to create improvisatory
"music" for the eyes. Frequent collaborators include Phill Niblock, Al
Margolis/If,Bwana, Zanana, Kristin Norderval, Hitoshi Kojo, David Watson,
David First and o.blaat (Keiko Uenishi). Recent projects have involved:
Shelley Hirsch, Chantal Dumas, Leslie Ross, Richard Garet, Dorit Chrysler
and Emilie Mouchous. Concurrently she curates and organizes various
moving-image related events and series, notably the Screen Compositions
evenings at Experimental Intermedia, NYC, since 2005 and, with Ursula
Scherrer, the OptoSonic Tea series at Diapason, NYC, since 2006.
www.liberovskaya.net

Montreal-based artist  Erin Sexton  explores matter, energy, space, and time
through sound, performance, installation, and video. With analog
electronics, electromagnetic fields, and pseudo-scientific improvisation she
creates direct links between lived experience and the processes of nature,
drawing us through immediacy into contact with the micro-macro cosmos.
http://erinsexton.com

The poetic quality of Ursula Scherrer's work reminds one of moving
paintings, drawing the viewer into the images, leaving the viewer with their
own stories. She transforms spaces and landscapes into serene, abstract
portraits of rhythm, color and light - inner landscapes in the outside world
where the images have less to do with what we see then with the feeling they
leave behind. Scherrer is a Swiss artist living in New York City. Her
aesthetic training began with dance, transitioned to choreography and
expanded to photography, video, text and mixed media.
http://www.ursulascherrer.com

Shelley Hirsch is an award winning, critically acclaimed vocalist, composer, and storyteller whose mostly solo compositions, staged multimedia works, improvisations, radio plays, installations and collaborations have been produced and presented in concert halls, clubs, festivals, theaters, museums, galleries and on radio, film and television on 5 continents.
She can be heard on dozens of CD's including the most recent releases - "Where Were You Then?":songs and stories composed w/ Simon Ho on Tzadik and 3 improv cds recorded live in concert: "Berlin Brooklyn" w/ turntable  player Joke Lanz on Rossbin; "Duets 10 Years After" w /guitarist Uchihashi Kazuhisa on Innocent Records; and the just released "Walking and StumblingThrough Your Sleep" w/ Hans Koch,Martin Schuetz,  Fredy Studer on Intakt.
Hirsch recently presented "TohuWaBoHu" as a 5.1 Surround Sound Choral work at
Minoritan Chapel for The Donau Festival in Krems Austria for "Alga", Ursula Scherrer's beautiful installation of seaweed and driftwood.
The recording was commissioned by and adapted/ expanded for Kunstradio in  Vienna, and as an 8 channel piece for Harvestworks Electronic Arts Festivalin NYC.
Hirsch will spend the month of February as an artist in residence at The Montalvo Art Center in Saratoga California where she is working on an outdoor choral installation and she will perform in duo with Fred Frith in Oakland at Duende.

Bruce Andrews is an experimental poet, literary theorist, music/sound designer for Sally Silvers & Dancers, and just-retired from 38 years as a left-wing political science professor.
Most recent of a dozen big books is last year’s You Can’t Have Everything... Where Would You Put It!, followed by a chapbook, Yessified (Sally’s Edit) to celebrate last year’s Andrews Symposium & its expanded online archive.

Jeff Donaldson is a NYC-based artist and designer originally from Corpus Christi, Texas. Donaldson pioneered the practice of preparing video hardware to intentionally short circuit (notendo, 2001). He has exhibited and performed internationally including at Museum of the Moving Image; Museu de Arte Moderna Rio De Janeiro; The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, UK; Leap, Berlin; White Box; 319 Scholes; Art in General, Eyebeam; Chip Music Festival; vertexList; PLANETART, Amsterdam; and iMAL, Brussels among many others.

The music of composer, performer and improviser Philip White is known for its ecstatic intensity and expressive sonic palette. Working with an array of homemade electronics at the intersection of noise, jazz and contemporary concert music, White exploits the tension between rigorous, closed electronic systems and the urgency of human compulsion.
An active collaborator, Philip performs regularly with R WE WHO R WE (with composer Ted Hearne), Colonic Youth (with James Ilgenfritz, Dan Blake and Kevin Shea), thenumber46 (with Suzanne Thorpe), Taylor Levine, Chris Pitsiokos and dancer/choreographer Nora Chipamuire

Philip has been an artist in residence at Electronic Music Foundation, Harvestworks, High Concept Labs and the Rensing Center and received grants from New Music USA, the Jerome Foundation. He has lectured at Wesleyan University, University of Chicago, University of South Carolina and the College of Charleston. He received his BA in Music from the College of Charleston and an MFA in Electronic and Recorded Media from Mills College.  www.prwhite.net


E.S.P. TV - Scott Kiernan and Victoria Keddie - is an organization dedicated
to promoting the performing and media based arts. It is a multi faceted
organization that acts as a live studio broadcast, a program on public
access television, and a theatrical performance. All events are taped live
with a crew of cameramen, sound engineer, and video mixing team using analog
broadcast media. Tapings of E.S.P. TV are in front of an audience with live
green-screening, signal manipulation and video mixing. The show is then
edited and produced for Manhattan Neighborhood Network public television
(MNN), to be aired every Tuesday night at 10PM. After airing, the episodes
are posted online at www.esptvnyc.com for later viewing. Our core mission is
to preserve public broadcast, as well as showcase the ongoing use and
ability of analog media in a digitally run world.
Victoria Keddie is a multi disciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She
works in varying media involving audio / visual signal generation, magnetic
field recording, and broadcast. Keddie has programmed events
internationally, with a focus on experimental sound, live cinema, and
transmission based arts. She is the co-director of E.S.P. TV, a nomadic
organization that    curates analog-based    live broadcast events and
exhibitions, as well as a series on MNN cable access.    She is the founder
of Optics O:O, an archival film program that investigates hybrid filmmaking
techniques with early video and software systems. She co founded the media
based INDEX festival in 2011. She is a founding member of the film based
collective, Optipus. As an archivist, she focuses on preserving analog
experimental sound and radio collections. She has exhibited and performed at
such venues as, New Museum, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Museum of
Arts and Design, The Kitchen, Canada Gallery (New York City), Museum of
Moving Image (Queens), Microscope Gallery, Spectacle (Brooklyn), Liminal
Space (Oakland), Silent Barn (Brooklyn), Pallas Projects (Dublin),    General
Public, (Berlin). She holds a BFA from University of the Arts with a Senior
MobilityFellowship at California College of Arts, and an MA in Museum
Studies from NYU, with a concentration on Ephemeral Media collections.
Scott Kiernan is an artist and curator who lives and works in New York City.
He was a founder and director of Louis V E.S.P., a not-for-profit gallery
and performance space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (2010-2012) and
co-founder/director of E.S.P. TV, a nomadic curatorial platform for
performance/video which takes the form of a live television show.He has
exhibited work internationally in venues such as New Museum, Museum of Arts
and Design, Storefront for Art and Architecture, NurtureArt, PS122 , Mixed
Greens (NYC), Southern Exposure and Baer Ridgway Projects (San Francisco)
Centro Internazionale Per L’Arte Contemporanea (Rome), KT&G Sangsangmadang
(Seoul) and the Third Guangzhou Tiennial (China) amongst others. Scott
received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2007.  



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


PS: Please accept my apologies if you've landed on this mailing list by error and let me so know I can remove you promptly. 


Ursula Scherrer
uscherrer at verizon.net
www.ursulascherrer.com