What happens when Boston’s top visual artist of 2009 hooks up with a coterie of cutting edge audio/visual theorists, filmmakers, musicians and performers from across the globe for a one-day symposium at MassArt?
They poison cats. But in the quiet moments, between skinning and re-animating, participants at the Dead Video / Live Video Festival will probe the merger of art and technology with experimental performances, film screenings and a windows-to-the-walls afterparty.
Boston’s preeminent scholar of mixology, DJ Flack, will also take the stage to showcase his sound spewing “guiboard,” which is a hell of a lot cooler than a gui-tar (E-string not intuitive).
Who: Peter “Zebbler” Berdovsky / Boston Cyberarts 2009
What: Dead Video / Live Video Festival
Where: Pozen Performance Center, Massachusetts College of Art
When: Saturday, May 2, 3 p.m.-midnight
Cost: $5 Admission (free for Massart students and Cyberpass holders)
Peter Berdovsky is, by the way, now one of two artists to have his work detonated by a state police bomb squad.
Robot Crunk Juice (Zebbler vs Mochipet) from Zebbler on Vimeo.
Live Video Finalists (performing live at the festival):
Psylab
Psylab’s members are dedicated to producing an authentic live Electronic Dance Music (EDM) experience by improvising solely with live instrumentation, without the use of sequencers, loops or arpeggiators. Psylab is a unifying force that holds appeal to both EDM purists and live band enthusiasts through its authentic sound and improvisational format. Hailing from Boston, Massachusetts, Psylab emerged from the Northeast underground in the spring of 2005. The group has performed at events coast-to-coast, ranging from renegade psytrance parties to major national festivals.
DJ Flack
Antony Flackett — AKA DJ Flack will be performing an interactive animation piece where sounds and images are simultaneously triggered from his own “guiboard” instrument.
Antony is a Boston based sound/video/multimedia artist who teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and who performs and releases music under the name DJ Flack. He co-runs the weekly Beat Research night Mondays at the Enormous Room in Central Square Cambridge that features electronic music acts from all over the world. Check out his videos, music and interactive work at his website www.djflack.com
qfwfq duo
[/caption]Composer and sound artist Andrea Pensado teamed up with digital artist Greg Kowalski in Krakow, Poland, in 1997 to form Qfwfq duo. The duo’s main concern has been live sound-image interaction and the use of movement to articulate complex sounds and digital visual material. Their work is highly performatic and often involves the use of sensors and/or motion tracking devices. They moved to the US after having lived 5 years in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Man Made Square
This performance piece is a collaboration between three artists:
Brian Budak (live video) is a Boston-based video and multimedia artist whos work is influenced by the effects of new technology and thought that has come in our accelerating age of communication.
Daniel C. Kenney (live sound) comes from the early days of radio and tape manipulation; exploring different ways to get from beginning to end, drenched in fuzzed-out chatter while wearing the crown of chance present vibrations involve improvised beats accompanied by stringed-sigils.
Lucy Stack (dancer and choreographer) has performed and choreographed for various productions in New Haven, CT and Boston, and studied on scholarship at the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio in New York City.
Rachel Bishop
Recent transplant from Tampa, FL to Boston, Rachel Bishop’s video and performance art is known for its intimate and surreal qualities. Her dance performances are an unusual blend of underground, contemporary, and world dance styles. Art is her life, dance her passion, and video her way of documenting the life of her emotions and the beauty of sights and sounds streaming through our consciousness. She is also a painter, printmaker, and poet.
Walter Wright with Apocalypso Trio
One of the first video animators, Walter Wright worked at Computer Image Corp in the early 70′s, & later at Dolphin Productions, he operated a Scanimate. While at Dolphin, Ed Emshwiller and him worked on Thermogenisis and Scapemates together, and he also made several tapes on his own. His tapes were shown regularly at the Kitchen, where he was an assistant director. In 1973-76, as artist-in-residence at the Experimental Television Center, NY, he pioneered video performance touring public access centers, colleges and galleries with the Paik/Abe video synthesizer.
Wright has developed his own performance video system, the Video Shredder, and uses it to mesmerize audiences wherever and whenever he can. He’s getting quite good at it.
Short Video Finalists (to be screened at the festival):
Allison Holt —> Experiment 2
Andrea Wollensak —> Weir Farm
Beeple (Mike Winkelmann) —> Simple Extraction
Bloody Beetroots —> WARP
CacheFlowe/Movax —> Scaffolding – Rebuild
Dennis Miller —> White Noise
Dr. T (Emile Tobenfeld) —> Orange in Silver Morning
Eric Rasmussen —> Infinite Range
Bob Weisz/Ray Tintori—> Chairlift – Evident Utencil
Play the Magic —> Building Music
Subluxation —> Relocation of Significant Structural Damage
Liz Thomas —> Let Us Praise Famous Men: Abraham Lincoln
Mary Hamill —> RegardRegard
Meg Mitchell —> Making Waves
Nancy Herman —> Scriabin Prelude
Qian Li —> Astonish
Qian Li —> Epilogue
Richard Lainhart —> One Year
Sawako —> Flirting 07121601
Shawn Faherty/Nine Inch Nails —> Ghosts 8