I just came across this five minute video shot by Ghostband artist Jon Davis on his mobile phone of my duet project Ostracon performing at the Kitty Cat Klub in Minneapolis on July 17, 2010. I’ve been enjoying a lot of these lofi videos that Jon puts up on YouTube, and it reminds me of a quote I read recently from David Byrne in the liner notes for My Life in the Bush of Ghosts: “…we came to realize that high fidelity was a vastly over-rated convention that noboby had bothered to question…”. I can’t agree more, except that today, thankfully, it is being questioned more than ever.
I just finished collaborating on a grant funded project titled Words to Dead Lips at Intermedia Arts last month. I did live electronic music and sound design, as well as build sound objects that the dancers used in the piece. The collaboration began with choreographer Pramila Vasudevan and visual artist Matt Wells with whom I joined to expand the project in December, 2009. Here’s more documentation including project notes, photos and press:
As I’ve mentioned in some previous articles, I have been working on a multi-media dance collaboration, Words to Dead Lips, with Annichia Arts since last December that has finally come to a close. We staged three performances at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis this weekend to a mostly full house. My part in the collaborative effort was to produce the music, and I was given an open mandate to do so. As is my preference, I opted to perform the work to the dance and projected imagery, rather than submit pre-recorded material. Although I adhered to an agreed framework for the soundscape, the improvisational nature of this approach made every performance unique.
Another component to the sonic environment was the noise shield. This device, that I built into saucer sleds, was used by the dancers to synthesize sounds using body contacts and a light dependent resistor. Here’s a five minute excerpt of audio from the closing night’s performance.
I’m pleased to share with ACB readers the track donation that we made for the In / Out Festival Kickstarter project. The track is titled Entropy Procedure by Ostracon and features myself on the GMS interfaced with Ableton Live, and Graham O’Brien on drums. It was delightfully engineered and mixed by Adam Krinsky, and mastered by the amazing Tom Garneau who, if you read his discography you will find, recorded and mixed Too Legit to Quit by MC Hammer (an unrelated but awesome bit of data for you).
We will be performing similar work to this at the In / Out Festival this weekend on Saturday, September 18, 2010 at 9:30pm at the Tank Theater in Manhattan. Please checkout the entire festival starting on Friday afternoon with free workshops and finishing with the Saturday evening performances. The evening performances are only $15 per night, or $25 for both nights with a total of nine performances. This is unlike any music I have produced in the past, so comments are encouraged.
