Activating the Medium Festival. This innovative showcase for sound art celebrates its tenth season, on Friday and Saturday, January 26 & 27, 2007, at 7pm, this year in conjunction with the Exploratorium's new Listen: Making Sense of Sound collection.
The Festival's theme centers on the shifting boundary between the natural and the artificial. Featured performances will include Bay-Area artist Keith Evans' debut of a multimedia portrait of Marin County's Mount Tamalpais, evocative sonic landscapes from Australia's Camilla Hannan, Sweden's B.J. Nilsen (a.k.a. Hazard), whose work explores the effects of natural sounds on perception of time and space, as well as sonic offerings from Olivia Block, Steve Roden, Matt Shoemaker, Tarab, and Aaron Ximm. Detailed information about all of the performers can be found on 23five's website, online at www.23five.org The performances are free with same-day museum admission, but reservations are recommended. For advance ticket reservations, please call (415) 561-0308.
About 23five: 23five is a nonprofit sound arts organization dedicated to the development and increased awareness of sound works in the public arena, and to the support and education of artists working with and discussing the medium of sound. Since 1998, 23five has produced the Activating the Medium Festival in places such as Cuesta Community College in San Luis Obispo, Mills College, the San Francisco Art Institute, and SFMOMA.
About the Artists: Olivia Block is a contemporary composer and sound artist who combines field recordings, scored segments for acoustic instruments, and electronically generated sound. Her recorded work seeks to introduce and ultimately reconcile nature with artifice in the realms of music and sound. Block has released a handful of CDs, performed live in festivals and tours throughout the US, Europe and Japan, and created installations for galleries and museums.
Keith Evans is a Bay Area multimedia artist working with sound, film, and video focusing upon the continuums of perception and the ephemeral, often drawing attention to our connection to the earth itself. For the 2007 Activating The Medium festival, Evans will debut an aggregate portrait of Mount Tamalpais through sound, drawn graphics, video, and film.
For Australian sound artist Camilla Hannan, sound is a potent psychological tool that alters mood and perception. Through her radical reinterpretations of field recordings of abandoned spaces, factories, and other industrial sites, she collects remnants from those cold environments and transforms them into paradoxically romantic landscapes of textures and drones.
BJ Nilsen lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. Influenced by the early pioneers of tape manipulation, he released his first recordings at the age of 15. In 1996, Nilsen adopted the moniker Hazard, recording for the seminal UK experimental labels Touch and Ash International. His work focuses upon the sound of nature and its effect on humans; and through an electronic abstraction of field recordings, Nilsen manipulates the perception of time and space as experienced through sound.
Steve Roden is a Los-Angeles-based artist whose work includes painting, drawing, sculpture, film/video, and sound. In his sound works, Roden abstracts and activates his source materials such as objects, architectural spaces, and field recordings through humble electronics. The performances are generally quiet and reflective, directing the activity of listening towards the creation of a kind of audio architectural space, or "possible landscape."
Seattle's Matt Shoemaker describes his work as an obsessive interest in the artifice of sound. Through his research into natural and electronic phenomena, Shoemaker constructs imagined landscapes of grotesquely exaggerated details that conversely tumble into encrypted drones. The German sound art label Trente Oiseaux has published two of Shoemaker's recordings to international acclaim.
Tarab (a.k.a. Eamon Sprod) has been working on the fringes of the Melbourne sound world for the last eight years, exploring the interplay of field recordings and improvisations with found objects. He has performed at Liquid Architecture, What is Music?, Melbourne Improvisation Festival, and Variable Resistance, and has collaborated with artists including Ernie Althoff, Rod Cooper, and Joel Stern. Eamon also works with video and installation.
Aaron Ximm is a San-Francisco-based field recordist and sound artist. He is best known for his composition, installation, and performance work as Quiet American, much of which can be found at www.quietamerican.org From 2001 to 2005, Aaron curated and hosted the Field Effects concert series, which, like his own work, sought to showcase the quiet, fragile, and lovely side of sound art, particularly that working with found sound and field recordings. Along with his wife Bronwyn, Aaron produces the occasionally popular One Minute Vacation podcast.
By www.exploratorium.edu
Posted December 26th, 2006 by ruzik_tuzik
