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February 24, 2024 |
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On Saturday, February 24, Andrei and I (Phase Shift Collective) created an interactive video installation at a pop-up event
hosted by
Anna Oxygen
in a disused retail space at a dying mall in Ithaca, NY.
At the event, Anna performed an experimental run-through of
The Shapes We Leave Behind, a strange livestream performance in which she greenscreens
herself, wearing various sculptural costumes created by
collaborator
Fawn Krieger, into a surreal video-game-esque landscape filled with glitchy
3D scanned statues of herself, while also singing and performing
electronic music.
The night ended with a dance party to 80s disco music, with
people dancing inside the video feedback loop of our
installation.
Anna was able to briefly take over this former storefront space
in a mostly empty shopping mall, inserting herself and her
artwork into an appropriately liminal venue during a sabbatical
from her professorship. Thanks to Anna for inviting us to be a
part of this unusual show.
February 16, 2024 |
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On Friday February 16, I performed a collaborative audiovisual
set with
Matthew Ryals
at
The Avalon Lounge
in Catskill, NY. Matthew and I have collaborated before, so when
I found out that he would be performing in the area, I eagerly
joined the bill. Combining modular video synthesis and camera
feedback, I was able to incorporate control voltage signal's
from Matthew's audio synths, introducing synesthetic interaction
between the sound and video.
Other performers included
The Early
from Philadelphia, and
Friends Meeting, ambient duo project of Ben Seretan and M. Geddes Gengras. It
was a lovely evening of dreamy experimental sound. At the end,
The Early and Friends Meeting joined together for a rather epic
jam. The show was also broadcast live on
Wave Farm's WGXC.
January 26, 2024 |
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On January 26, I presented and discussed some excerpts of my
audiovisual artworks at an event called Sound at
Luck Dragon, in Delhi, NY.
Sound is a monthly event at Luck Dragon, in which two
artists or musicians present and talk about their work, followed
by a period of group discussion. In this way, artists and sonic
practitioners are brought into conversation with both each
other, and the local community. The other presenter for this
edition was Sam Tellman, who talked about his research and
design journey toward creating
https://www.sottoinstruments.com/
that's more lightweight and user-serviceable.
Luck Dragon is an art supply shop that also hosts community
events. It was cool to visit this space because the people who
run it also have an open-source audio hardware company, a
pottery studio, various artist spaces, and a private occult
library in the same building. Delhi is about an hour west of
where I'm currently based, so I'm hoping to spend more time
there in the coming months. Thanks to
Brian
for inviting me.
🌐 Visit Luck Dragon's website:
luckdragon.space
December 31, 2023 |
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I've never done this sort of post before, but so much has
happened this year that I feel a need to take one last look over
my shoulder before 2023 is over. This year, I made twice the
average number of posts in the "news" section of my
website, because this year has been full of activities. Here are
some of them:
-
Made myself a new artist website (this very place you're
visiting now!) with hand-coded HTML and CSS; it took a long
time but it was very fun and I learned a lot
-
Helped start
Polyphase Portal, a cooperatively-run online educational space with our own
self-hosted infrastructure (running open-source software for
our website, video classrooms, chat, and wiki)
-
Attended my third vipassana meditation retreat, and finished
a seven month, 200-hour yoga teacher training, which not
only prepared me to teach others but also helped me evolve
my own yoga practice
-
Left my corporate software development job of the last 5
years, and managed to scrape by for 8 months thus far
without a "day job"
-
Side note: despite being part of a mass media conglomerate,
my team there was small and scrappy, and we did some cool
stuff together. Hats off to the great folks I worked with.
-
Left Brooklyn, where I've lived off and on for much of my
adult life, and wrapped up
Phase Space, which was run out of the basement of our apartment there
-
Bought a 1988 Chevy van with
Andrei
and spent 5 months traveling across the US together
-
Did 3 audiovisual performances and 2 artist residencies
-
Co-led 12 in-person video art workshops and demonstrations
across the country
-
Camped in many national parks and other public lands,
experienced many different biomes and landscapes; learned to
identify a bunch of new plants
-
Returned to Catskill Mountains of upstate NY, where I grew
up and then left 12 years ago, with a new appreciation for
its vibrant forests
-
Started — and am still starting — a small business:
Moon Ark Studio
(with 4 clients so far and counting)
This year has been alternately fun, exciting, hectic,
exhausting, and immensely fulfilling in a way I have not quite
experienced before. And the way things are going, it seems there
will be many more adventures in store in the coming year. Thanks
for following along, and I wish you a happy old year, in the
last moments before a new one begins.
November 20, 2023 |
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November 20th was the release of Elmet Brae, a
community compilation of soundscapes/ambient/noise/drone from
Merveilles Town
members and friends. It includes an ambient piece I recorded
while traveling in the national forests of the northwestern US,
titled
Artemisia Grove.
The online community of Merveilles Town has been a calm,
creative haven for me on the internet, and a place of mutual
inspiration and encouragement, since I joined the mastodon
server in 2022. It has been lovely to listen to everyone's
musical contributions to this compilation and appreciate the
town's unique personality and atmosphere.
Shout outs to
Orllewin
for organizing the project,
Bad Diode
for mastering,
Rostiger
for the visual artwork, and to all the sonic artists and
musicians who contributed.
🌐 Find out more:
orllewin.github.io/elmet_brae/EB01
💿 Download FLAC:
orllewin.itch.io/elmet-brae-eb01-the-land
🔈 Listen on Bandcamp:
beldamrecords.bandcamp.com/album/elmet-brae-the-land
