Neuroplanets is an audio project which explores the aesthetics of information on sound. Initially, I worked in commissioned tracks from other artists, by transmitting on them sound analysis results from extremely rare sonic phenomena in other planets. After that, I manipulated these tracks by applying on them numerical/quantitative data and statistical elements from Neurosciences research in serious diseases. My aim was to ‘visualize’ on sound the diseases characteristics and impact on human nature.

The analysis of sounds includes methods enabling the permanent extraction or automatic structuring of diverse sorts of information given off by the signal, such as the fundamental frequency or the spectral evolution determining the pitch and timbre of a perceived sound. The methods used are based on signal processing, statistical analysis, information theory, machine learning and recognition techniques, but also on knowledge of auditory perception and acoustic system sound production.

Contemporary Neurosciences suggest the existence of fundamental algorithms by which all sensory transduction is translated into an intrinsic, brain-specific code. One of Neuroplanets main goals was to directly stimulate these codes within the human audible range. More here >>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujKbmkAIIv0

This presentation addresses central technical and aesthetic aspects related to the programming and performance of live electronic music. Its contents reflect the experiences made by the Endphase project’s years of activity, and shares this information with a public as specialized as necessary. Concrete and detailed examples will be given about Endphase 17, to be presented on the 14th of May at the Lange Nacht der elektronischen Musik of the Mehrklang Festival, Freiburg.

The Endphase project is an initiative of the composers Alberto C. Bernal, Johannes Kreidler and João Miguel Pais. It intends to surpass the traditional musical conceptions (not only the aesthetic aspects, but also the stylistic and the technical, when such boundaries are separable) and to create an environment in which several ideas, concepts and approaches can be realized.

The project was initiated in the beginning of 2004, with a first performance in June of that year at the Music Academy in Freiburg (Germany). Since then performances have been mounted in a number of countries (Germany, Hungary, Netherlands) and different contexts (solo or partial concerts), including specialized new music festivals such as Darmstadt and university refectory performances. Laptops are used for sound production and processing (occasionally in conjunction with external sound sources), and several types of peripherals (MIDI, joystick, foot pedal, contact microphones) for controlling.

Each Endphase is built up in a flexible way during the working phase, in which several models, ideas and processes are discussed by the three members and rehearsed individually and in group rehearsals. The concert execution is the last stage of the project, the Final Stage (Endphase), where the previously realised materials will be played in public. Thus, the result is not an improvisation in the manner of a discourse built upon patterns of action and reaction, but rather a conceptually-defined composition, which only assumes its final form in real time through the improvisation.

After each Endphase an “endpoint” is reached: an individual performance will not become a repertoire piece or be performed again. Wherever it has been possible, the performances have been documented, leaving only the ideas, concepts and working techniques, which can be reused in a subsequent Endphase. Because of the nature of the project, each Endphase is not only a single and unrepeatable piece, but also part of a work-in-progress, positioned in time.

From February 2009, the Spanish sound artist and Ars Electronica collaborator Enrique Tomás joined Endphase.

blink (hc gilje 2009) from hc gilje on Vimeo.

The digital network, where we all spend ever more of our time, is a vast infrastructure of generality. It deploys a system which is standardised, formally defined, highly structured, and internally consistent. If I send you an email, I do it trusting that the interlinked systems of hard- and software, the protocols for data encoding and transmission, the network switches and servers, will all hold together so that the email you receive is the same as the one I sent. Perhaps I’m in Australia, and you are in Norway: we could say that the network generalises our two points in space - for the network, they are the same. As I draft my email it exists as a pattern of voltages and magnetic flux inside my computer. To transmit that pattern effectively, the digital network must erase or resist any local errors or inconsistencies that it might encounter along the way, so that it does not matter if the pattern travels by optical fibre or copper, or in radio waves, or if a boat anchor cut through a cable near Indonesia. It does not matter that your computer is made of different atoms to mine. Those are specificities - local, material events and instances. Digital culture, and networked space, absorbs specificities, compensates for them, rectifies them into generality. Wireless broadband and mobile computing make us into human nodes, bathing in shared connective protocols.

The aesthetics of digital media flow from a related generality, where sound and image are encoded as fields of data. If a pixel is a number, an image is a grid of pixels, video a stream of images, and each of these numbers can take any value at all, then formally, an aesthetics of digital video is only a matter of finding the right values - fishing around in a space containing all possible digital video. If digital media creates this generalised space, anything at all, the media arts are faced with unavoidable questions: not only what to make - which values to choose, but how to choose them, and why?

242.pilots live in bruxelles (2002) from hc gilje on Vimeo.

HC Gilje’s work arises from a moment when the anything-at-all of digital video was just opening up, thanks to a combination of new real-time tools, cheap computing power, and some key interdisciplinary influences. Drawing on experimental sound and music, improvisation and performance became important solutions; working live in a specific situation, artists would gather, process, generate, and recombine material. In work from the late 1990s and early 2000s, from Gilje and his collaborators in 242.pilots, as well as video ensembles such as Granular Synthesis and Skot, the result is abstract and intense, a flow of layered digital texture. In performance it saturates the body and senses; big screens, big speakers. Instead of the narrative transport of cinema, which takes us somewhere else, this work creates - and is created in - an intensified sense of presence, what Gilje calls an “extended now”. This methodology is vital; it focuses the open-ended generality of digital media in to a point: on this, rather than anything-at-all.

This moment relies on a circuit, a close coupling between artist and media; data flows become experienced events - sounds and images - which in turn inform new data flows, and so on. Audience and performers share a digital-material situation. The specificity of digital media comes forward; for of course these media are always specific, always local, always embodied; but that specificity is usually suppressed by the functional logic of generality. At the same time though, the processes underway here depend on exactly that generality, on the machine’s ability to rapidly transform data and shift it between instantiations - from the voltages in video memory to the patterns of projected light.

In nodio (2005-) Gilje creates a system of networked audiovisual nodes that process and share image material. Each node generates sound derived from its image, in a process of automatic translation. On one hand this translation is another demonstration of the abstract pliability of the digital - its ability to transform anything into anything (generality); on the other, its tight audiovisual correpondences generate sparks of material intensity - real events, rather than digital effects (specificity). With these distributed nodes Gilje deploys audiovisual materials in space, creating flows and juxtapositions that function as dynamic sculpture. Of course the formal model of nodio echoes our most ubiquitous generalising paradigm: the network. Once again, the artist applies this digital tendency for generalisation in order to cultivate instances of specificity - the texture and sensation of the here and now.

drifter (hc gilje 2006) from hc gilje on Vimeo.

From drifter (2006) (above) to dense (2006) and shift (2008) (below), Gilje’s audiovisual nodes map out a developing exploration of specificity. drifter deploys standard computer hardware, formed into sculptural modules; in passing material between nodes Gilje begins to break the frame of the screen, creating an implicit inter-space. In dense, the hardware moves out of the sculptural field, and the screen is further deconstructed. Instead of the frontal configuration of the cinema / computer, these suspended fabric strips are illuminated from both sides with a video “weave”. The familiar architecture of the screen as a blank (general-purpose) substrate containing or supporting image content, is reconfigured here; the specific materialities of screen and content overlap. Even more so in shift, where the nodes are now wooden boxes, illuminated with precisely controlled video projections. As in earlier nodio works sound and image are directly related. Here Gilje extends this fusion to the sculptural objects; each node is also its own speaker-box, so that the digital articulation of sound and image is realised, and grounded materially, in the nodes themselves.

shift v1, prototype (hc gilje 2008) from hc gilje on Vimeo.

These works drive towards a spatial materialisation of audiovisuals: dynamic constellations of AV intensity, fields for what Gilje calls “audiovisual powerchords”. The projectors, speakers and networks of the nodio works present one means to this end, deploying existing media technologies. Again we find an interplay of generality and specificity, as Gilje adapts generalising systems - projectors, computers, networks - to realise materialised instances. The Wind-up Birds (2008) (below) represent another angle of approach; Gilje sets video aside, and creates materialised, local, sculpturally autonomous nodes from electronic and mechanical materials. In these robotic woodpeckers digital media and sculptural embodiment are further enmeshed. The birds communicate using digital radio, and their behaviour is programmed in a custom chip; but their sound is simply percussion - a mechanical switch, tapping on a specially constructed wooden slit-drum. Again this is specificity over generality: a loudspeaker is an acoustic shape-shifter, a technology which promises any sound, in the same way that the screen promises any image. By contrast the Birds produce only one sound, their sound, a specific conjunction of solenoid, timber and vibrating air.

wind-up birds (hc gilje 2008) from hc gilje on Vimeo.

The Birds will run for a month on their own batteries, strapped to trees, calling to each other and any other creatures nearby. These nodes are unplugged: they begin to come away from the technological support system of mains power and the shelter of the gallery or studio, and move out into the world. As in the artist’s other work the engineering here is inseparable from the artistic agenda; the Birds are in that sense a realisation of Gilje’s spatial and formal aims, an autonomous constellation of intensities. But they also literally expand from there; where the nodio works explore the composition of spaces within a network of intensities, the Birds move outwards, creating points of intensity in the wild, and evoking a spatial alertness - a way of being in and listening to the world - that extends beyond the well-marked edges of an artwork. The Birds are more like an experimental intervention, a digital-material overlay in a complex field of the living and non-living.

Similarly the Soundpockets works (both 2007) make small sonic interventions in urban spaces, pursuing local intensification and juxtaposition through directional soundbeams and micro-scale radio transmissions. Once again we find this interplay of the general - the anything-at-all of the digital - and the specific, the here and now. The “extremely local radio stations” of Soundpockets 2 form a sort of folded juxtaposition of three layers: globalised network infrastructures and protocols, the traced or mediated locations of field recordings, and the specific time and place of the transmissions. Just as Soundpockets 1 uses exotic soundbeam acoustics to perturb urban spaces, Soundpockets 2 shows how we can draw in technological infrastructures in order to reconfigure the real environment, creating flows and distributions that form intense moments of difference and specificity.

In this reading Gilje’s work is partly critical. Pursuing specificity, and an intensified, material experience of the here and now, it pushes against the generalising tendencies of digital media. By the functional logic of the network, each node is formally identical, and must be effectively insulated from its environment. Ubiquitous computing promises us “everyware” - total connectivity, the complete interpenetration of the network and our lived environment [2]. But if the network is a generalising force, if it erases differences between places, what will life in “everyware” be like? Gilje’s work suggests a utopian alternative: networks that are always local in time and space; nodes of right here, right now. Gilje’s work strives for what Hans Gumbrecht calls “presence”; a way of knowing the world that is characterised by intense moments of encounter or revelation - aesthetic experiences that place us in the world, and of it, rather than observing from the intellectual distance of interpretation.

The beauty of Gilje’s work though is that it not only suggests this prospect, but demonstrates it, makes it happen; and in that sense the work is constructive, rather than critical. In emphasising the specificity of media technologies, Gilje’s work shows us a different way to frame those technologies; as always material, always in the world with us - a view I have called transmateriality. As Matthew Kirschenbaum writes, “computers … are material machines dedicated to propagating a behavioral illusion, or call it a working model, of immateriality.” Gilje shows us both sides of this statement, the functional illusion - generality - and its material foundation - specificity. It shows us a way to reframe the network, too; as always local, always specific; a tangle of real flows and propagating patterns; and endless possible ways of reconnecting the world with itself. Finally Gilje shows us one crucial role for the artist, in this context: seeking out configurations that intensify, rather than dilute, our sense of being in the world.

Paweł Janicki (1974) is an independent media artist and producer working in the field of media art, microsound aesthetics and algorithmic composition, is a creator of audiovisual interactive systems, installations and performances. He creates and continuously develops software tools and interfaces. Special place in his activity takes developing software according to his own projects – and broadly – creating his own media either sabotaging already existing solutions.

Among his realizations there are time-line based and interactive soundtracks commissioned for radio, television, interactive media, visual works (like a fractal for dimensional animation and and a number of title sequences and motion graphics); interactive works that are uneasy to classify, consisting of improvised sound, live programming, communication protocols, hacking. Janicki’s musical projects have been presented in several publications showing the achievements of European experimental and electro-acoustic music scene, in addition he has worked in cooperation with many artists, as well as the IT industry and educational institutions, including the media faculties of the leading Polish art schools, like the Intermedia Faculty of The Art Academy in Poznań.

Janicki is associated with the WRO Art Center, where he currently directs the WRO Laboratory. His activities there are focused primarily on web applications, audio and sensory systems. Among the projects developed and realized at the WRO Laboratory under his direction, it is worth to mention the Interactive Playground exhibition, which was awarded by Poland’s biggest daily paper Gazeta Wyborcza. He was also co-founder and longtime member of the well-known, collective Gameboyzz Orchestra Project exploring lo-fi aesthetic.

His musical net-performance Ping Melody was awarded by the Tokyo University Haramachida in 2004 the “netarts.org” Grand Prize, and gained a nomination for the Viper Festival in Basel. These and other projects by Paweł Janicki were presented at many prestigious festivals and events devoted to contemporary art, including the Ars Electronica, the Transmediale, the Centre Pompidou and the International Media Art Biennale WRO in Wrocław.

The Society of Algorithm lists his net performances among the events crucial to the development of this genre of art.

The latest of edition of Vague Terrain is dedicated to celebrating the tenth anniversary of the .microsound community. Guest curated by the American composer Kim Cascone, the issue provides a range of commentary and context on “sub-atomic” musical aesthetics and a window into this globally distributed community of electronic musicians. In Cascone’s own words .microsound is a fertile middle ground between “the ivory tower of sterile academia” and “the seizure-inducing din of the dance club”. For those unacquainted with this zone of musical production, this collection of work provides a perfect introduction.

Featuring text & video contributions by Ben Neill, Charles Turner, Dextro, Joanna Demers, Pere Villez, Thanos Chrysakis, Thomas Bey William Bailey and William L. Ashline.

Feature audio contributions from Mike Rooke, Lubrication, Ronnie Cramer, [ruidobello], Richard Lainhart, sound art, TomDjll, Brett Ian Balogh, Scant Intone, Yota Morimoto, Jorge Castro, Joaquin Gutierrez Hadid, Francesco Rosati, Asferico, Water Falls, Yann Novak, John Hanes, Epoch_Collapse, Jhenner Gayap Benadrilled, Skjølbrot, Markus Jones, Jon Hawken, Adern X Fades 4:38, Julien Ottavi, Vanessa Rossetto, Kim Cascone, Larnie Fox, eddie135, Di.J Crisis, shg, Cheryl E. Leonard, Noe Cuellar, Gary R. Weisberg, Osvaldo Cibils, Kotra, Gintas K, John Kannenberg, Ricky Pannowitz, ocp, TheSAD, Margaret Schedel, Pereshaped, so/on, Eric Miller, Nux Vomica, v4w.enko, UmanoidSomeday, Epoch Collapse, Umanoid and Noe Cuellar.

Born in Krakow, Poland, in 1958, Zbigniew Karkowski is one of the most significant artists working in the field of experimental and contemporary music. For the first time in Berlin, he will give a workshop for sound artists, musicians or composers who are interested in his approach to composition and live performance on both the technical and formal level. This workshop gives the participants an opportunity to gain insight into the working methods of one of the most challenging composers / performers of electronic music today.

Karkowski will teach the participants about his aesthetic and conceptual approaches towards composition through an in depth analysis of some of his own pieces as well as exploring the compositional concepts that are inherent to the design of his Max and Super Collider patches. Along these lines aesthetic approaches towards the use of sound textures, timbres and the technical aspects of sound production will also be covered and finally he will share his experiences and ideological beliefs about live performance and composition.

Karkowski studied composition at the State College of Music in Gothenburg, Sweden, aesthetics of modern music at the University of Gothenburg’s Department of Musicology, and computer music at the Chalmers University of Technology. After the completion of his studies in Sweden, he has studied
sonology for a year at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Den Haag, Netherlands. During

These years, he attended many summer composition master courses (Centre Acanthes in France) where he studied with Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis, Olivier Messiaen, and Georges Aperghis.

He has produced numerous works in the fields of both acoustic and electronic music and has written 3 pieces for large orchestra, an opera and several chamber music works. Karkowski was also a founding member of the electroacoustic music performance trio

Sensorband (with Atau Tanaka and Edwin van der Heide) and collaborated
with artists like Francisco Lopez, Blixa Bargeld, Merzbow, Pita, Hafler trio,…

Based in Tokyo, Karkowski has a large collection of releases and regularly presents his work all over the world.

active, aethetics, aggregators, authenticity, authorship, BEN FRY, BEN RUBIN, BURAK ARIKAN, collaborative, communication, data, data mining, digital traces, distributed, DIY, EDUARDO NAVAS, everyday life, flow, GOLAN LEVIN, identity, improvisation, Internet, JANET CARDIFF, JASON FREEMAN, JODI.ORG, JONATHAN HARRIS, latency, lifelogging, lifetracing, MANIK, mapping, MARK AMERIKA, MARK HANSEN, MARTIN WATTENBERG, MAX NEUHAUS, Mechanical Turk, mediation, memory, music, narrative, NastyNets, NATHANIEL STERN, net art, network, NICK KNOUF, nonlinear, OLIVER LARIC, participation, performative, persistance, PETER TRAUB, platform, postmodernism, presentational, privacy, prosumer, prosurfer, ranking, realism, reality, real-time, relational, remix, representation, research, RYBN, SCARLET ELECTRIC, SCOTT KILDALL, SCOTT RETTBERG, search engine, self, self-exposure, SHIFTSPACE.ORG, social networks, software, sousveillance, STEVE LAMBERT, storage, surveillance, tactical media, telepresence, THE HUB, THEY RULE, TrackMeNot, transmission, TV, user-generated, visualization, web 2.0, webcam, widget, Wikipedia Art, YES MEN.

Please register and then Read | Write:

The Immediated Now: Network Culture and the Poetics of Reality
Kazys Varnelis

Lifetracing: The Traces of a Networked Life
Anne Helmond

Storage in Collaborative Networked Art
Jason Freeman

Data Undermining: The Work of Networked Art in an Age of Imperceptibility
Anna Munster

Art in the Age of Dataflow: Narrative, Authorship, and Indeterminacy
Patrick Lichty

BACKGROUND

Networked proposes that a history or critique of interactive and/or participatory art must itself be interactive and/or participatory; that the technologies used to create a work suggest new forms a “book” might take.

In 2008, Turbulence.org and its project partners — NewMediaFix, Telic Arts Exchange, and Freewaves – issued an international, open call for chapter proposals. We invited contributions that critically and creatively rethink how networked art is categorized, analyzed, legitimized — and by whom — as norms of authority, trust, authenticity and legitimacy evolve.

Our international committee consisted of: Steve Dietz (Northern Lights, MN) :: Martha Gabriel (net artist, Brazil) :: Geert Lovink (Institute for Network Cultures, The Netherlands) :: Nick Montfort (Massachusetts Institute for Technology, MA) :: Anne Bray (LA Freewaves, LA) :: Sean Dockray (Telic Arts Exchange, LA) :: Jo-Anne Green (NRPA, MA) :: Eduardo Navas (newmediaFIX) :: Helen Thorington (NRPA, NY)

Built by Matthew Belanger (our hero!), http://networkedbook.org is powered by WordPress, CommentPress and BuddyPress.

Networked was made possible with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts (United States). Thank you.

We are deeply grateful to Eduardo Navas for his commitment to both this project and past collaborations with Turbulence.org.

Jo-Anne Green and Helen Thorington
jo at turbulence dot org
newradio at turbulence dot org

More reviews on furtherfield.org or follow them on Twitter.

Tone and Temperament is a group-exhibition that considers the temporal and expandable material of sound. Curated by Sophie Landres and in collaboration with the eight participating artists, this exhibition concentrates on sound as a condition for personal, social, political and metaphysical experience. In addition to the permanent fixtures in the gallery, performances will be scheduled to occur throughout the duration of the exhibition.

Tone and Temperament was conceived as an opportunity to explore literal and conceptual ideas of harmony versus discordance and innocence versus criminality that subsist within the framework of conflicting social norms and art historical precedents. The exhibition was regarded as a conduit for inconclusive experiments in redistricting discursive boundaries and expanding aesthetic properties. Despite sound’s reflexive predilection for interference, the participants created pieces either in response to the exhibition site or with the ambition that their work could co-exist within spatial proximity, without jeopardizing individual content. Though many of the pieces violate prevailing notions of harmony and composition, the refusal to abide is a victimless crime, motivated by a congenial faith in plurality. Allowing sound to flow without bleeding or hemorrhaging, we hope to maintain numerous elements in a constellate connection, free to generate their own alliance of possible meanings.

Chris Bors complicates the act of listening by juxtaposing pop-psychology relaxation techniques with a pop-cultural response to trauma. Jennie C. Jones stretches notes and manipulates tones to reconfigure musical history and exhume emotional content. In a sculpture that references both the harmony of the spheres and the politics of knowledge, Zach Layton uses looping phase structures to create an internally conflicting “chamber music” of the self. Audio recordings and corresponding images by Terry Nauheim describe imagined and site-specific geographies and measure the physical form of sounds against their content, examining how memory and objects are equally subject to decay. Exploring the theory of electronic voice phenomena Daniel Perlin recreates Thomas Edison’s lost schemata to build a telephone that can speak with the dead. Through the visualization and sonification of Arctic data and electromagnetic lightening transmissions, Andrea Polli and Joe Gilmore express the fragility and interconnectedness of the global ecosystem. Mike Skinner enlists the viewer’s body in acts of compositional terrorism, working with mirrors and parabolic reverberating sine waves to demonstrate how the occupation of space can be an oppositional force.

About the Curator:

Sophie Landres is an independent curator and arts writer. She was the 2007 guest curator for the Catskill Art Society (Livingston Manor, NY), was chosen for the CUE Art Foundation Young Art Critic Program in 2008 and was recently the Director of Mireille Mosler Ltd. (both New York City). Landres holds an MA in Art Criticism and Writing from the School of Visual Arts (New York City) and a BA in Political Science from the University of Iowa (Iowa City, IA). Prior to enrollment in graduate school, she was the Director of Naked Duck Gallery and facilitated various art projects throughout her tenure, such as designing the set for Dance and Process at The Kitchen and founding an after-school gallery guide program for third grade students (all New York City). She has curated exhibitions at: 3rd Ward and Supreme Trading and Art in General (both New York City) and Catskill Art Society Gallery (Livingston Manor, NY). Her writing has been published in Modern Painters, HE magazine, Degree Critical, the Performa07 Biennial catalogue, MAKE and the New York Foundation for the Arts NYFA Current magazine. She currently serves on Art in General’s Education Advisory Panel and is a contributing arts editor to MAKE[/i[.

About the Artists:

>Chris Bors, [i] Tranquility, 2009 — In this work the artist reads the lyrics from Slayer’s Reign in Bloodwidely considered the best thrash metal album of all time, over appropriated relaxation music downloaded from an online health and wellness store. Bors is a New York-based artist whose work has been exhibited at PS1 MoMA, White Columns, Envoy Gallery, Sixtyseven (Thierry Goldberg Projects), Heist Gallery and Ten in One Gallery (all New York City), Casino Luxembourg (Luxembourg) and the Videoex Festival (Zurich). Reviews and publications include, The New York Times, Time Out New York, Vogue Italia, K48 and zingmagazine.

Jennie C. Jones, MEMOREX: Authenticity, Technology, Blackness and Jouissance, 2009 — Jones’ practice is both a comment on and a continuation of the conceptual ideology of jazz, an honoring of the deep radical legacy of its experimentation, of hybrid modernist forms, wit and the concept of riff. She attempts a merger of art history and black history within the realm of the abstract languages they construct. Consequently, Jones’ work occupies a unique space in that it aims to examine the cultural intersections of music, theory, art and “gadgetry” at its core her practice also a search for neo-modernism. These notions are manifested through multi-disciplinary pieces that incorporate sound, sculpture, works on paper and site based projects.

Jones attended the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, where she received her Masters of Fine Art. Prior to that she attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a fellowship student, receiving a Bachelors of Fine Art. Over the past decade she has participated in numerous artist residencies and fellowship programs including: The Liguria Study Center for the Arts & Humanities Fellow (Genoa); Cite Internationale des Arts (Paris); The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Residency at the World Trade Center (New York City); and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Skowhegan, ME). Her Artists Space (New York City) project “Simply Because You’re Near Me” was reviewed by Holland Cotter in The New York Times (February 10, 2006). In 2007 she had her first solo exhibition, Recomposing (Berlin) and participated in the group show Black Light/White Noise: Sound and Light in Contemporary Art at the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston. Her upcoming exhibition opens at the Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta this June. In 2008 she was a fellow at the Red, Bird, Blue Rockefeller Foundation’s Study Center in Bellagio, Italy, as well as a visiting artist at The American Academy in Rome. She is a 2008 Creative Capital Grant Recipient and the recipient of a William H. Johnson Award. She has works in the prestigious Deutsche Bank collection and in the collection of the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

Zach Layton, Chamber Music, 2009 — Layton is a composer, curator, guitarist and video artist based in Brooklyn with an interest in biofeedback, generative algorithms, experimental music and improvisation. His work investigates complex relationships and topologies created through the interaction of simple core elements like sine waves, minimal surfaces and kinetic visual patterns.

Layton’s work has been performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and he has performed and exhibited at The Kitchen, Roulette, Joe’s Pub, Diapason, Issue Project Room, Eyebeam, Bushwick Arts Project, St. Mark’s Ontological Theater, DUMBO Arts Festival, New York Digital Salon, Miguel Abreu Gallery, Participant Inc., Monkeytown, Sculpture Center, Harvestworks Mixology Festival (all New York City), Art Forum Electronic Art Festival (Berlin and New York), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco) and many other international venues. He has worked and collaborated with Luke Dubois, Vito Acconci, Jonas Mekas, Joshua White, Tony Conrad, Bradley Eros, Andy Graydon, Nick Hallett, Matthew Ostrowski, Christine Bard, Alex Waterman, Michael Evans, Patrick Hambrect, Angie Eng, Adam Kendall, Chika Ijima, Tristan Perich and Ray Sweeten among many other artists, filmmakers, curators, musicians and friends. Layton is also founder of Brooklyn’s monthly experimental music series, “Darmstadt: Classics of the Avant-Garde” co-Curated with Nick Hallett, a co-Curator and Producer of the PS1 Warmup music series and is the Managing and Technical Director of Issue Project Room. He has received grants from the Netherlands America Foundation, Turbulence, Experimental Television Center and the Jerome Foundation. Layton is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory and the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where he is also currently an Adjunct Professor.

Terry Nauheim, Propagation Seems Good Here Tonight, 2009 / Rotation (in Four Movements), 2005-2006 — In Propagation Seems Good Here Tonight, animated drawings correspond with shortwave radio transmissions recorded in the AC gallery spaces. Imagery alters between illumination and dimness as if to sift through an atmosphere of random noise in the universe. This unpredictable environment, among its degrees of murk and clarity, propagates waves that bend, stretch, open, close, pack together and break apart. Rotation (in Four Movements) is a multi-channel audio/single channel video installation built from recorded and processed sound fragments of hand-cast record negatives and their corresponding recorded drawings.

Nauheim explores sound and visual relationships through digital media, drawing and installation. She has exhibited her artwork at the Bronx Museum of the Arts; the Contemporary Museum (Baltimore); Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts (Wilmington); the Drawing Room (London); Musee d’Art Contemporain (Lyon); and the Sculpture Center (Long Island City). Her work has been included in festivals including the acclaimed New York, New Sounds Festival; New York Electronic Art Festival; Artscape (Baltimore); and Biennale Musique en Scene (Lyon). She was recently distinguished as an Artist-in-Residence in Sound Art at Harvestworks (New York City, 2005); a participant in the Bronx Museum of the Arts “Artist in the Marketplace” program (2003); and a recipient of the Maryland State Arts Council Individual New Genre Artist award (2002). Her work has been featured in publications including those from Rhizome, art@radio and in Link: Science/Technology/Innovation in the Arts and Nomads Audiophile. In addition to producing her work, Ms. Nauheim teaches Computer Arts as a faculty member at New York Institute of Technology. She sits on the Board of Directors of NYC ACM Siggraph and was chair of 2008 NYC Metropolitan Area College Computer Animation Festival (MetroCAF). Terry Nauheim received her MFA in mixed media/digital arts at the University of Maryland and BFA in painting at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri where she received a William Fett Drawing Award. She has also managed museum projects at the Contemporary Museum and the Walters Art Museum (both Baltimore).

Daniel Perlin, Telephone to speak with the dead, 2009 — From 1922 until his death in 1931, Thomas Alva Edison worked on a telephone designed to speak with the dead. Upon Edison’s death, the plans as well as the phone he had designed disappeared. Searches were held both at Menlo Park as well as at his parent’s home in Ohio. It is thought his assistants hid or protected the work as it has never been found. After research, finally, in 2009, his patent application schematics were discovered and the phone has been rebuilt. When properly used, it has been proven to speak with voices from beyond.

Perlin is an artist and sound designer based in New York City. He works across media creating sound, video, objects and installations. His work has been shown at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Chelsea Art Museum, Guggenheim Film, Postmaster’s Gallery, D’Amelio Terras (all New York City), TN Probe (Tokyo), Yautepec Gallery (Mexico City), Temporary Contemporary Gallery (London) and the Centre Pompidou (Paris). Recently, he has collaborated with Natalie Jermijenko on the installation For the Birds for the 2006 Whitney Biennial, Rem Koolhaas and Sanford Kwinter on the installation of Mutations and with Vito Acconci on the public sound installation Viraphone (Madrid). He has also been the sound designer for such films as Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy, Errol Morris’ Fog Of War and Phil Morrison’s Junebug. In 2006 he completed a residency as studio artist at the Whitney Independent Study program.

Andrea Polli and Joe Gilmore, N., 2007 — Polli is a digital media artist living in New Mexico. Her work addresses issues related to science and technology in contemporary society. She is interested in global systems, the real time interconnectivity of these systems and the effect of these systems on individuals. N. is a collaborative sound and visual installation by Andrea Polli (USA) and Joe Gilmore (UK) with scientific collaborator Dr. Patrick Market (USA) which takes weather monitoring data gathered from research stations in the Arctic to build an audio-visual representation of the altering climate and conditions at the North Pole.

Polli’s work with science, technology and media has been presented widely in over 100 presentations, exhibitions and performances internationally. Moreover Polli’s work has been recognized by numerous grants, residencies and awards including UNESCO. Her work has been reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Art in America, Art News and NY Arts among others. She has published two book chapters, several audio CDs, DVDs and many papers in print including those found in MIT Press and Cambridge University Press journals.

Gilmore is a UK based artist and designer and the co-creator of rand()%, a generative net.radio station. rand()% is entirely automated, where every program transmitted is composed in realtime by computer. His work has been presented throughout Europe including the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz, Austria).

Mike Skinner, Bullets, 2009 — Using analog staccato blasts and reflective surfaces Skinner utilizes the psychology of localization to exploit the ordinary sound source/sound receiver relationship. His bullets of sound can appear to generate from ordinary household materials such as mirrors and doors.

Utilized in this work, Holosonic Research Labs, Inc. develops and manufactures the Audio Spotlight directional sound system which creates focused beams of sound by using a narrow beam of ultrasound as a “virtual” sound source. While ultrasound is outside the range of human hearing, this technique causes the air itself to change the ultrasound’s “shape” as it travels, leading to the creation of clear sound that can be directed to a precise location.

Skinner is a sound artist, record producer and drummer. Production credits include those for Scott Matthew, Kevin Devine, Vito Acconci, War Slut, The New Humans, Onelinedrawing among others. He has worked as a producer for Performa’s Commission series since their first biennial in 2005 and in 2007 was the Director of Multimedia Installations at the Park Avenue Armory extension of the Whitney Biennial (both New York City) where he produced works by Marina Rosenfeld, Kembra Phaler and many others. Sound design and composition credits for artists/dancers include, Ugo Rondinone, James Drake, Glen Fogel, Helena Fredriksson, Jeremy Wade and Olof Persson. In 2006 Skinner was awarded a Jerome Foundation compositional grant which culminated in an hour-long performance of his 8_Track_Attack series at Roulette (New York City).

About AC [Institute Direct Chapel]: AC’s mission is to advance the understanding of art through investigation, research and education. It is a lab and forum for experimentation and critical discussion. We support and develop projects that explore a performative exchange across visual, verbal and experiential disciplines. We encourage critical writing that challenges conventional expectations of meaning and objectivity as well as the boundaries between the rational and subjective. Art Currents is a non-profit 501(c)3.

Novi_sad’s artistic output displays a high level of technical ability, as well as a sensitivity to the nuances of location. The strength of his soundscapes works in the same elaborateness for the whole creation process, starting from a basis of very strong conceptualism, the intense examination of field recordings over the actual composition work, to the point of performing back the result onto location. Every sound that occurs is treated with a sculptural integrity and his sonic power operates on a level in which the audience participates as transcendental listeners. His approach is similar to the ‘cinema pour l’oreille’ (cinema for the ear) and in turn would like to ‘donner à voir’ (lead to seeing) by means of sound. Being immersed in his sonic environment offers an absolutely visceral experience. His music has been described as ‘transcendent departure from the sense of space’, ‘emotional charge noise texturing’, ‘haunting streams of consciousness on the edge of clinical abduction’, ‘thunderous deep ambient drones’ and ’soundtrack for a dream or a nightmare’.

Some of Novi_sad’s projects are primarily focused in architectural acoustics and the relationship between architecture and sound, when his latest project Sirens is based on various methods of audio analysis in extremely unique recordings. In this project, he explores the aesthetics of information on sound by using quantitative and numerical data from major stockmarket crashes in history. Novi_sad’s albums found plenty of receptive ears, receiving glowing reviews in music media around the world. His audio works have been available from Sedimental [U.S], Touch [U.K], and another one will be released by Staalplaat [NL] in the ‘Mort Aux Vaches’ series. He has performed his work live in cinemas, industrial spaces, theatres, churches, museums, galleries, squats, and in festivals like Ultrahung [Budapest, Hungary], Observatori [Valencia, Spain], Field recordings festival [Berlin, Germany], Full-Pull, [Malmö, Sweden].

Novi_sad has worked and collaborated with: Francisco López, Richard Chartier, CM von Hausswolff, Jacob Kirkegaard, Carsten Stabenow, Helge Sten [Deathprod, Supersilent], Beckie Foon [A Silver Mt Zion, Set fire to flames], Scott Konzelmann [Chop Shop] a.o. Thanasis Kaproulias is published by Touch Music [U.K], the most singular independent music label of its time. More from his bio here.

CALENDAR

May 28, 2009 | MUTEK Festival, Montréal, QC, Canada
www.mutek.org

June 10, 2009 | Suoni per il Popolo Festival, Montréal, QC, Canada
Je Me Souviens 2.4 Hommage à / Tribute to alcides lanza, curated by Eric Mattsson
[Hope to see some of you there. Memory is concrete and some hearts are true…]
www.suoniperilpopolo.org

June 12, 2009 | Non Event, Boston, MA, U.S.A
www.nonevent.org

June 16, 2009 | Diapason Gallery, New York, NY, U.S.A
www.diapasongallery.org

June 17, 2009 | Monkey Town, New York, NY, U.S.A
www.monkeytownhq.com

June 21, 2009 | Pyramid Atlantic Center, Washington, DC, U.S.A
www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org, www.myspace.com/soniccircuits

June 23, 2009 | Empty Bottle, Chicago, IL, U.S.A
www.emptybottle.com

June 25, 2009 | The Chapel, Seattle, WA, U.S.A
www.waywardmusic.blogspot.com

June 29, 2009 | Someday Lounge, Portland, OR, U.S.A
www.somedaylounge.com

June 30, 2009 | Red Cat / CalArts, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A
www.redcat.org, www.calarts.com

July 2, 2009 | tba, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A

July 4, 2009 | The Pines, Montréal, QC, Canada
www.thepinesrecording.com