perfect timing. while i am away @ the banff centre, the video installation when the gods came down to earth goes live sept 3. there is more information on the installation, created by filmmaker srinivas krishna, here.
it promises to be quite a startling and impressive installation. audio will play every 1/2 hour from around 8 am to 11pm.
specifically for the audio portion, thanks are in order to john gzowski, who will do the final soundcheck for me. also of course a big thank you to krishna for asking me to do it in the first place.
the installation is presented by the royal ontario museum’s institute for contemporary culture and the toronto international film festival’s future projections program.
just received word that skin will be programmed at cineworks’ group exhibition who will give up their distinctions? in vancouver in september 2008. at the moment we are trying to figure out what form the work will take, but it looks likely that it will be a looping projection with the audio track on headphones, which is my ideal format.
update: the sound will be piped into the space. skin will be looped and presented with another video by clint enns, prepare to qualify. latest info is that this exhibition will be part of SWARM 2008, a festival of artist run centres in vancouver. the festival and screenings will be september 5 and/or 6.
i have been selected for inclusion in the SAVAC group exhibition @ harbourfront centre, august 8-10. a new audio installation, shruti, using binaural recordings of the tanpura, field recordings from kolkata, and sound from the harbourfront site itself, will be created for this event, part of the south asia calling festival @ harbourfront.
the exhibition is free and will feature some great art from artists tackling the theme of “re-generation”.
i am at the unbelieveable sound symposium here in st john’s newfoundland. they brought me here to install my sound piece kolkata garden. we found a beautiful place near the “fluvarium”, in a clearing in a protected park. it was really perfect.
i am meeting all sorts of interesting artists from a variety of disciplines. check the website for some of them. if you ever have a chance to get out here, do it!!!
i’m at the deepwireless festival of radio art this weekend, as part of the performing quartet of myself, chantal dumas, andreas kahre, and kathleen kajioka. on tap are workshops and performances and live 12 speaker disseminations of radio pieces. i am particularly excited to see/hear tetsuo kogawa’s keynote speech and performance tomorrow morning. this festival is getting bigger and bigger, and the work of nadene and darren is really making this festival a major event in audio/radio art here in north america (and, dare i say it, internationally).
update sunday: attended tetsuo kogawa‘s lecture and performance at 9am this morning. i am completely blown away. it is rare that such a level of theoretical grounding and articulation accompanies such masterful artistic execution. or at least its rare that we get a glimpse of both sides. kudos to naisa (see link above) for a) programming kogawa san and b) creating a context for both of these sides of this amazing artist.
in other news, some media for my piece @ deepwireless can be found below.
just back from a hectic 20 hours in montreal, where the lippok | sinha duo performed as part of the canadian tenori on launch, presented by yamaha and mutek.
it was a really tremendous evening, with the amazing montreal crowd living up to all expectations of being some of the best audiences anywhere. montreal’s pheek opened the evening with an abstract set, very different from the techno he is known for. i am robot and proud gave a tremendous performance, with his particular brand of warm/cool whimsical music. the whimsical tip continued with nathan michel, who played a lot of his set in 15/16 time.
robert lippok and i then hit the stage. an added bonus was the live visuals provided by toshio iwai, the inventor of the tenori on, who asked (if you please) if it was ok to generate visuals connected to my percussion instruments when robert and i did a soundcheck earlier in the day. those of you familiar with our first concert would have been quite surprised at the energy and intensity of this set, ending with a huge “krautrock” (in robert’s words) free for all. we were surprised ourselves—the soundcheck was completely different than the actual performance. the visuals were another incredible and inspiring factor in the performance. robert and i are actively looking for more opportunities for this duo project. keep your eyes peeled.
toshio iwai gave a presentation on the development of the tenori, starting his talk with an homage to canadian experiemental filmmaker norman mclaren, who did a lot of work with sound and visuals in the 70’s. he was happy to mention him in canada, and gave props to our great national film board. he took us through his own work and explorations with sound and light, starting off with his favourite little music box and treating us to some really jawdropping clips of his earlier installations, as well as photos and clips of the tenori on in development and on the production line. yu nishibori, the engineer working with toshio, also joined him onstage, taking us through the design process and demonstrating the rather sophisticated interface—similar to much great music, the interaction of discrete simple elements results in the possibility of very complex music.
the night was closed off by sutekh, in a very intense noise based set, and the very friendly and genial pole, who rocked the house with his dub based sound.
props to the mutek crew for organizing such an amazing event. they made everything so smooth that it was easy to just show up and play. hooray for mutek! last but certainly not least, thanks to yamaha, yu nishibori and toshio iwai for agreeing with robert to bring me in the first place.
more photos soon @ my myspace page but for now here’s a teaser. (update: there are pix on flickr here)
i had a very nice gig at the great and funky goldkante, home of the homewreckers and other ruhrgebeit funkiness. had about 50 people i think. tried out projections for the first time, which seemed to work quite well.
i’d like to thank tobias koth, the other tobias, sebastian, and johannes for helping me out with setting up the gig, and also andreas for writing a very excellent press release (in german!) for coolibri and taking some pictures. the pix below are by jutta brendemuehl. go to my myspace page for a musical sample of the night.
it’s good to get back to drumming again. march 6 will see me in prince albert, saskatchewan, with dene singer/songwriter leela gilday….i hope we’re not playing outside. playing music with leela is great—not only is she a great singer and super person, the rest of her band is about the best bunch of people anywhere. and laying down grooves with my strange hand percussion/drum kit elements hybrid percussion setup is always fun. after all the blips, beeps, clicks and cuts of the new media work i have been doing its good to connect with the groove.
i also just talked to marc nadjiwan, who is working on a new CD. i played on his last one, also doing the hybrid kit thing, and this one is really a step forward in his sound.
next week sees me being video guy. the SAVAC MONITOR 4 festival is feb 20, and the bird project is feb 23rd. i am looking forward to not having to carry 50 drums around. but then again there is the small matter of the projector. oh well.
(incidentally, its not just video week. my piece is being played on feb 22 @ madrid abierto. see the previous post).
i also just received notice from the nice folks there that my piece will be closing the festival, on feb 22 @ 1900h, madrid time on 93.2 FM. also of course on the interweb at
http://www.me.es (click on “Radio 3” and then on “Escuchar Radio 3”).
