{R} A K E
November 9, 2006
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This month, {R}ake is at Diapason Gallery. We'll work within Diapason's 'presentation-and-discussion' format, where the artists perform then talk with the audience about their approach, technology, or whatever comes up.
We're pleased to bring back {R}ake alumni mixed with newcomers -- And keeping with {R}ake's mission, the night features some performers who have never collaborated before.
Set 1 - Benton-C Bainbridge - Video {+}{–}
Naphtali Waterman Bainbridge reprise their recent 'MoFoPro' sessions with 'MoFoLite', a compact version of the audiovisual syncronous reciprocal rescan system debuted at this year's Bent Fest. (basically, Benton-C is sick of moving the 100 pound MoFoPro TV). Nonetheless, this MoFo trio will dazzle and bewilder with their dexterous tweaking of a hodgepodge system of acoustic, electronic, digital and optical gear.
Benton-C Bainbridge
Naphtali Waterman Bainbridge reprise their recent 'MoFoPro' sessions with 'MoFoLite', a compact version of the audiovisual syncronous reciprocal rescan system debuted at this year's Bent Fest. (basically, Benton-C is sick of moving the 100 pound MoFoPro TV). Nonetheless, this MoFo trio will dazzle and bewilder with their dexterous tweaking of a hodgepodge system of acoustic, electronic, digital and optical gear.
Alex is a founding member of the Plus Minus Ensemble, based in Brussels and London, specializing in avant-garde and experimental music. Alex has worked with musicians such as Richard Barrett, Keith Rowe, Axel Dorner, Tristan Honsinger, Ned Rothenberg, Robert Ashley and Michael Finissy. He has performed as guest musician with numerous ensembles, including Trio Event (Berlin), Champs d'Action-Antwerp, Q-O2-Brussels, and Black Jackets Company-Brussels. As a curator he has organized events at Les Bains:Connective in Brussels and at the OT301 in Amsterdam. His project with the Bach Cello Suites has toured in Switzerland, Italy, Holland, and will be presented in the Opera of Monaco in December. Alex has a trio with Ned Rothenberg and Gerry Hemingway, and is presently living in Brooklyn, NY.
Dafna Naphtali
Working with their own custom-written software, Anton Marini and Adam Kendall will perform dual-channel video manipulated in real-time, integrating their improvisations on a collaborative level with Vortex. Marini and Kendall will incorporate security-camera images retrieved through a high-frequency scanner (images collected before and, if possible, during the performance), live cameras, and personal libraries of footage.
Anton Marini Adam Kendall
Vortex -- Satoshi Takeishi (percussion and electronics) and Shoko Nagai (pianos, keyboards and electronics) -- perform improvisational electro-acoustic music. They develop and explore their ideas over the course of set, creating environments ranging from ambient textures to melodic passages to intense sonic abstractions. Satoshi and Shoko are two of {R}ake's curators.
Vortex
Charles Cohen (analog Buchla Music Easel) and Geoff Gersh (electric guitar) have been improvising together since 1993. They create pieces that weave in and out of rhythmic textures and ambient grooves. Charles is singularly interested in live performance and improvisation. His instrument is the Buchla Music Easel, an extremely rare integrated analog performance instrument obtained from synth pioneer Don Buchla in 1976. Geoff explores the sonic boundaries of the electric guitar with and with out the aide of electronic devices and found objects.
Charles Cohen
September 13, 2006
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September features two sets of {R}ake new-comers playing together for the first time, with a third set by {R}ake's curators. Electronicist Michael Schumacher and trombonist Chris McIntyre perform with laptop-based video-artist VJ Sputnik. Marlon Barrios-Solano brings his live camera and video-software to work with Miguel Frasconi, who plays an assortment of electronically-processed glass instruments. {R}ake's curators Vortex and Adam Kendall perform their integrated, improvisational a/v, based on processed keyboards and percussion and custom video-software.
Set 1 - Adam Kendall - Video {+}{–}
Set 1 - Vortex (Satoshi Takeishi and Shoko Nagai) - Music {+}{–}
Vortex -- Satoshi Takeishi (percussion and electronics) and Shoko Nagai (pianos, keyboards and electronics) -- perform improvisational electro-acoustic music. They develop and explore their ideas over the course of set, creating environments ranging from ambient textures to melodic passages to intense sonic abstractions. Satoshi and Shoko are two of {R}ake's curators.
http://home.earthlink.net/~takeishi/
Christopher McIntyre leads a multi-faceted career in the contemporary arts as a performer, composer, and independent curator. He's heard on trombone and synthesizer in a variety of settings, both acoustic and live-electronic, most often incorporating improvisation within notation. Current projects include leading TILT Brass Band, 7X7 Trombone Band, and electro-improv group LOTET, and collaborative efforts including composer/performer ensemble Ne(x)tworks and a duo project with Michael J. Schumacher.
Michael Schumacher; Chris McIntyre
VJ Sputnik is the alter ego of Doron Altaratz, a Photographer, New Media Artist and Visual Jockey. Sputnik creates exceptional artworks by digitally manipulating video in real time. In his work, Sputnik is exploring the 'third image' -- That is, the new image that has been created in time by the mix and dissolve of two or more layers of visual sources. This new image comes into existence only at that particular moment in time and can not be repeated. For {R}ake, he will attempt to create a dreamlike composition of layered video streams; visuals existing on the borders in between Expressionism and Surrealism; a mysterious flow of glowing pixels from the sub consciousness of our collective digital space.
http://www.vjsputnik.com
Marlon Barrios Solano, inspired by his experiences in dance and interactive design, creates image environments that are actualized with his movements fusing a synthetic organicity with an abstractionist minimalism of retro-futuristic poetic. He has performed real-time visuals in the US and Europe. Currently, he mainly perform with laptop musician Walter Froetscher aka Shiftic, and has collaborated with Dennis Del Zotto, improvisational vocalist Shelley Hirsch and electronic musicians Ivo Bol and Stefan Prins (Amsterdam). He teaches interactive multimedia at Harvestworks (NYC) and for the Masters in New Media and Performance program at Long Island University (Brooklyn).
http://unstablelandscape.blogspot.com
Miguel Frasconi will present music from his GALAPAGOS GAMELAN series. These solo improvisations explore the sonic world of Frasconi's unique collection of glass and 'de-evolved' musical instruments, with the music drawing on structures and forms ranging from Indonesian court music to Fluxus performance art. Frasconi's glass instruments have been described as 'a beautiful menagerie of pealing contraptions' (Time Out NY) while his music has been called 'lyrical and stormy' (New York Times). Through the years, he has worked extensively with John Cage, James Tenney, Jon Hassell, and presently performs with Morton Subotnick, Gamelan Son of Lion, and the composers collective Ne(x)tworks. Over these next few months he will be artist in residence at Harvestworks.
http://www.myspace.com/miguelfrasconi
July 19, 2006
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{R}ake is a performance series of alternative and collaborative electro-acoustic music and video. Performances range from pure improvisation to more structured pieces, with video-artists and musicians integrating their mediums in exploratory ways.
For May, (R)ake returns to Monkey Town. It's a great place -- Multiple, big video screens, a good sound-system, and futon couches. They have really good food, and dinner will be served during the performance.
The May show features a/v sets with artists working together for the first time. The musicians will incorporate acoustic keyboards, percussion and string instruments with digital and analog electronics; The video-artists will work with abstract and representational laptop- and live-camera-based video, ranging from subtly shifting ambiences to angular, responsive techniques.
Set 1 - Richard Garet - Video {+}{–}
Richard Garet is a sound artist, a video artist, and a painter. He explores the communicational, affective, and the sensory aspects of the various mediums he utilizes, their constant intrusion on our senses, and how they affect our perception. Even though his work suits the standard gallery environment, many of his other activities as an artist explore the various practices of experimental sound and video performance. All of these forms are different explorations of the ways in which his work exposes the visitors to visual and physical acoustic sensory perception. He currently lives and work in Queens, New York.
http://www.ruccas.org/index.php?Richard%20Garet
The recent work of New York City based sound organizer WvS is comprised of highly abstract and dense sound-layers, noise-oriented organic sonic textures, as well as pitch and modulation glissando driven soundscapes. WvS studied computer music, classical composition and music theory in Europe and the US. He attended the 'Darmstadt Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik' and many European Computer Music conferences, lectured at IDEA, was Artist in Residence at Harvestworks/PASS (NYC), performed at Roulette (NYC), the Knitting Factory (NYC), and the Generator Sound Gallery (NYC) amongst other places. Having previously composed works for orchestra, chamber ensemble & solo instrument music and conceptualized/realized computer controlled interactive performances, WvS currently focuses on entirely computer-generated sound structures without the use of electro-acoustical samples or 'field-recordings'.
http://iwvs.am
Please check back for performer details.
Set 2 - Andrea Parkins / Matthew Ostrowsksi - Music {+}{–}
Set 3 - Josh Goldberg - Video {+}{–}
Set 3 - Hans Tammen - Music {+}{–}
The ENDANGERED GUITAR is a journey through the land of unending sonic operations and an infinite index of metals. A mix of formal awareness and improvisation produces rapid-fire juxtapositions of radically contrastive and fascinating sounds. Like yanked out tape measures violently squished against the strings to turn out tortured noise scrapings and bizarre textures; but also spektral processing to create quiet pulses and gentle atmospheres.
It takes off from two or more contrasting moods or states of being - tense, but quiet microscopic sound detail or complex and visceral blasts of energy. Small but controlled variations are introduced persistently, some take on a new musical life on their own, others die out at a very early stage of their existence. The random drift moves the piece slowly into new directions, investigating complex stages of tranquility and agitation.
http://www.tammen.org
May 10, 2006
{+}{–}
{R}ake is a performance series of alternative and collaborative electro-acoustic music and video. Performances range from pure improvisation to more structured pieces, with video-artists and musicians integrating their mediums in exploratory ways.
For May, (R)ake returns to Monkey Town. It's a great place -- Multiple, big video screens, a good sound-system, and futon couches. They have really good food, and dinner will be served during the performance.
The May show features a/v sets with artists working together for the first time. The musicians will incorporate acoustic keyboards, percussion and string instruments with digital and analog electronics; The video-artists will work with abstract and representational laptop- and live-camera-based video, ranging from subtly shifting ambiences to angular, responsive techniques.
Set 1 - Giles Hendrix - Video {+}{–}
Giles Hendrix produces and mixes media for the internet, live performances, and multimedia installations. Giles can regularly be found mixing video in New York City for the most popular DJs and artists in the world including Akufen, Paul Van Dyk, Armin Van Buren, Bob Mould & Miss Kittin. His work varies between abstraction, text, infographics, and organic imagery. On this evening Giles will focus on abstract forms, using symmetrical elements to highlight the unique multi-screen set-up of Monkeytown.
http://www.gesture.org
Kato Hideki is a bassist/improviser/composer. Tonight he will perform solo bass, using his own prime numbertuning system and morse encoded haiku. His current projects includes Green Zone featuring Otomo Yoshihide &Uemura Masahiro; Death Ambient with Ikue Mori & Fred Frith; and Tremolo of Joy with Dougie Bowne, Marco Cappelliand Briggan Krauss.
http://www.katohideki.com/
Shimpei Takeda is a video-artist and photographer. For tonight's {R}ake, he will work with a live-camera, glass and water to creat new, unrecognizable landscapes out of recognizable objects.
http://www.shimpeitakeda.com
Set 3 - Larry Seven - Music {+}{–}
Larry Seven likes to set up situations where he has almost no control overwhat happens, so he can be entertained along with the audience. For tonight's show, he plans on using a multistring instrument with transducers attached while he moves around the space.
Set 3 - Vade - Video {+}{–}
March 2, 2006
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For this show, we're part of Issue Project Room's month-long festival exploring soloists and duos. We're also very pleased to receive sponsorship via the Experimental Television Center's Presentation Funds.
{R}ake is a performance series of alternative and collaborative electro-acoustic music and video. Running since August 2004 in New York City, {R}ake focuses on video artists and musicians who integrate their mediums in exploratory ways. Performances range from pure improvisation to more structured pieces.
For this show, {R}ake is part of Issue Project Room's festival exploring soloists and duos. {R}ake alumni and newcomers will present an evening of live audio-video duos working in a variety of methods -- Improvisation based on a planned visual concepts (Angie Eng / David Weinstein); Straight-up a/v improvisation (Bradford Reed / Adam Kendall); Improvisation based on the unique results of live mixed-visual-media (Janene Higgins / Aki Onda); Site-relative work based on Issue Project Room's unique location on the Gowanus Canal (Ursula Scherrer / Brian Moran).
Set 1 - Angie Eng / David Weinstein - {+}{–}
Set 2 - Adam Kendall / Bradford Reed - {+}{–}
Set 3 - Ursula Scherrer / Brian Moran - {+}{–}
Set 4 - Janene Higgins / Aki Onda - {+}{–}
January 25, 2006
{+}{–}We are pleased to be part of Monkey Town's Video Week. Monkey Town is a great place -- 4 big video screens, a good sound-system, and futon couches. They have really good food, and dinner will be served during the performance. The a/v performance series {R}ake returns after a short hiatus. After a year-long run at its previous home M Shanghai Den in Williamsburg, {R}ake is moving between other New York City a/v spaces. Its next show is at Monkey Town, one of the City's preeminent audio/visual venues.
{R}ake focuses on electro-acoustic musicians and live video artists who integrate their mediums in exploratory and collaborative ways. {R}ake has called on some of its past performers to generate a night fitting the unique space and ambience of Monkey Town, creating music and multi-channel video appropriate to both performance and dining in-the-round.
The evening features a/v improvisations ranging from the sublime to the darkly absurd, investigations of sonic textures and melodies intersecting with representational and abstract video, and interpretations of John Cage. Means of production include acoustic instruments, laptop computers, live cameras, software and a table full of odd and found objects.
Set 1 - Aaron Halley/Patrick McCarthy/Sean Smith - Music {+}{–}
Pulling from acoustic instruments, recorded media, analog electronics and laptops, Halley/McCarthy/Smith will use John Cage's 'Address' (1978) as a modular fractal template. The basic structure entails that any two of Cage's pieces are played simultanesously along with a non-Cage piece. The trio will expand this structure linearly to have three movements, two based on 'Address' and a third unrelated. The logic then expands to three metamodules, each consisting of a module.
Set 1 - Berkoy - Video {+}{–}
For this episode of {R}ake, Berkoy provides journey through worlds alluring and foul, with hairy figures and beings to meet along the way. All sites original.
http://www.berkoy.com
Andy Graydon is a film and video maker and sound artist based in New York City. His work focuses on the problems and potentials in the interaction of sound and image. Taking the form of videos, live video mixes, sound works, music and movement performances, and installations, this work explores the boundary zones between performance and exhibition, liveness and mediation, presence and deferral. Recent media performances include shows at Participant Inc gallery, Galeria Galou, The Dumbo Arts Festival, The Tank, The Lehman College gallery and Tonic. He is currently the visiting artist at the Center for Computer Music, Brooklyn College.
For January's Rake performance Andy will be working with textural elements from painting and super8 film, adding reprocessing and feedback effects in performance.
http://www.andygraydon.net
Based in Philadelphia, Charles Cohen, has been composing and performing electronic music since 1971. He specializes in collaborative, cross disciplinary projects with theater, dance, music, and media artists, and is singularly interested in live performance and improvisation. His instrument is the Buchla Music Easel, an extremely rare integrated analog performance instrument obtained from synth pioneer Don Buchla in 1976.
In regards to his work, he states, 'Atmosphere, landscape, and traveling, are what my sounds are about. Collaboration and exploration are what my process is about. The simple intent is sharing my favorite pastime with others.'
http://www.voicenet.com/~ccohen
Vortex -- Satoshi Takeishi (percussion and electronics) and Shoko Nagai (pianos, keyboards and electronics) -- perform improvisational electro-acoustic music. They develop and explore their ideas over the course of set, creating environments ranging from ambient textures to melodic passages to intense sonic abstractions. Satoshi and Shoko are two of {R}ake's curators.
http://home.earthlink.net/~takeishi/
Adam Kendall is a Brooklyn-based video artist. Starting with original footage, he uses custom software to find and create organic abstractions from representational images. In performance, his process is real-time improvisation and interaction with the other artists on stage, emphasizing the development and exploration of forms and motifs. He is one of the co-curators of {R}ake.
http://www.hellbender.org