Artists
Tim Hecker is a Canadian-based musician and sound artist, born in Vancouver. Since 1996, he has produced a range of audio works for Kranky, Alien8, Mille Plateaux, Room40, Force Inc, Staalplaat, and Fat Cat. His works have been described as “structured ambient”, “tectonic color plates” and “cathedral electronic music”. More to the point, he has focused on exploring the intersection of noise, dissonance and melody, fostering an approach to songcraft which is both physical and emotive. The New York Times has described his work as “foreboding, abstract pieces in which static and sub-bass rumbles open up around slow moving notes and chords, like fissures in the earth waiting to swallow them whole”. His Harmony in Ultraviolet received critical acclaim, including being recognized by Pitchfork as a top recording of 2006. Radio Amor was also recognized as a key recording of 2003 by Wire magazine. His work has also included commissions for contemporary dance, sound-art installations, as well as various writings. He currently resides in Montreal.
“British artist Mark Fell explores the relationships between geometry, color, and waveform. His works have been shown around the world as performances, installations, and in print. For the past decade Fell has been one of the leading innovators in the fields of experimental electronic music and sound art. Combining interests in experimental music, contemporary art, computer technology, and philosophy, his work has been performed and exhibited internationally to wide critical acclaim. Fell is one half of electronic music duo SND.” – artisphere.com
“Andrew Raffo Dewar (b. Rosario, Argentina) is a composer, improviser, and ethnomusicologist. A multifaceted musician, writer, teacher, he has become an influential figure in the Alabama free improv scene over the past couple of years. A woodwind instrumentalist who has studied under some of the biggest names in 20th century music- including Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Bill Dixon, and Alvin Lucier- Andrew is in the midst of adding a new chapter to the vibrant history of progressive arts in his adopted hometown of Tuscaloosa through his activities as an improviser, composer, and educator at the University of Alabama. A key player in the 2010 The Improvisor Festival- as well as New Music circles across the nation- he has quickly made a name for himself as an indispensable advocate for the sonic arts in Alabama and beyond. Andrew has received grants for his work from Arts International, Meet The Composer, and the Getty Foundation, and has had pieces presented everywhere from New York to Indonesia and Japan.” – the-improvisor.com
“Simon Whetham has been capturing and composing almost primarily with field recordings since taking part in a research trip to Iceland in 2005. Since then he has been gaining a steadily increasing profile: exhibiting in Iceland; recording in the Amazon Rainforest of Brazil; performing at a large number of festivals and events, both nationally and internationally, notably Experimental Intermedia in New York and Madeiradig 2010; having work accepted for release by Crónica, And/OAR, Dragon’s Eye, SiRiDisc, Con-V, Trente Oiseaux, 1000fussler, Mystery Sea, Entr’acte, Install, Lens and Gruenrekorder; commissioned by Creative Labs to build a surround sound installation to demonstrate their equipment and software; commissioned by painter Kathryn Thomas to compose a surround soundtrack to accompany her ‘Lightyears’ series of exhibitions; producing radio works for Resonance FM, Overlap.org and Kunst Radio Austria; and invited to participate in two residencies at the Art Container in Tallinn, Estonia, the second to compose new work, collaborate with other artists using sound and run deep listening, field recording and compostion workshops.” – cronicaelectronica.org
“Grady Gerbracht is an artist whose work focuses on the ordering systems of everyday life. Inspired by personal observations and life experiences; Gerbracht’s projects employ art, architecture, sound and social dynamics to render these systems temporarily visible. He is Assistant Professor of Art at Stony Brook University, and serves on the Board of Directors of Fundacao Lomba Alta which administers PROJETO LOMBA ALTA, an international artists residency in the south of Brazil. His projects have been published and exhibited in the US, Canada, Brazil, Asia, and across Europe and the nordic countries. He has organized exhibitions such as Back and Forth, Global Priority, and Civic Performance that have traveled internationally. Ongoing research includes Sonic Architectures, a series of live events wherein the artist and collaborators perform the post-industrial built environment using only their bodies. Sound compositions derived from such performances combined with ambient site recordings are later re-inserted into the original context as installations for the Site & Sound series. Gerbracht and his collaborators were awarded a Danish Arts Council Grant for 2006 – 2007.” – artandculture.com
Shelley Parker is a London based sound artist and DJ working with sound/music/image. Her debut was at the inspired club night Nerd with Seb Patane where artists including Wolfgang Tillmans would come and play Dj sets. As a progression from this night, she was invited to join the Haywire agency alongside Andrew Weatherall and Radioactive Man and began to DJ internationally in venues such as Fabric, Moog, and Bloc Weekend. She also performed DJ sets as part of Cybersonica at Tate Britain and the Kinetica Museum. Her sound installation work includes Consumme at the pop up store Man-Made (CT Editions, Frieze), Cast at the Cast Courts (Cold War Modern exhibition, Victoria & Ablert Museum) and a debut live set of minimalist beats and field recordings at the Dela Warr Pavilion in 2009. She recently contributed a sound installation as a part of the Hayward touring exhibition a Nod to Cage hosted in April 2011 at the De Warr pavilion featuring work by Yoko Ono, Charles Atlas and Felix Thorn..
Paul Purgas trained as an architect before graduating from Royal College of Art in 2004. He has since developed curatorial projects for Tate Britain, Spike Island, Arnolfini, 2001 Venice Biennale, Bold Tendencies and the Craft Council of England. His curatorial projects explore the converging relationships between visual art, architecture, and experimental sonic and media practice. In 2005 he founded Emptyset with Multiverse boss James Ginzburg, which has released two albums to date and recently presented their debut live show alongside Mika Vainio as part of Mutek 2011′s Industrial Evolutions showcase.
John Dombroski is a sound, media, and installation artist working to activate situational and self awareness by arranging and sculpting found sound. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he grew up in North Yorkshire, United Kingdom, and lived the Washington D.C. area. Graduating from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in 2011 with a focus in Kinetic Imaging and Sculpture, his work has included video, performance, collaborations in contemporary dance, and site-specific sound-art installation. He continues to explore sound and field recording as means of subtle communication relative to the physical, social, and historic context of space. He lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.
Eli Keszler is a composer/multi instrumentalist based in New England. He primarily uses percussion to create his sound, which balances droning harmonics created from bowed percussion with intense and fast free rhythm. In addition to his solo releases and performances, he has performed, recorded or collaborated with a number of artists such as Jandek, Roscoe Mitchell, Greg Kelley (nmperign), Geoff Mullen, T Model Ford, pianist Ran Blake, Steve Pyne (Redhorse), and legend of Jamaican music Lyn Taitt. He has recently completed an lp which was released by Geoff Mullen’s Rare Youth Label. Eli Keszler, along with Ashley Paul are artists in residence at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn NY for the spring. During this period, performances are scheduled in collaboration with Phill Niblock, Loren Connors, Aki Onda, Bryan Eubanks, Charles Cohen among others.
Berglind María Tómasdóttir is an Icelandic flutist based in California where she is currently pursuing her DMA in contemporary music performance after receiving a Fulbright Scholarship and a Thor Thors Grant from the American-Scandinavian Foundation. While her studies began at Reykjavik College of Music, she graduated with a postgraduate degree from Royal Danish Academy of Music in 2001. Performances have included festivals, such as, Nordic Music Days, Reykjavík Arts Festival, the Bang on a Can Marathon in San Francisco, Dark Music Days and Skálholt Summer Concerts. She is also the founder and the artistic director of ensemble, Njúton. Berglind María can furthermore be heard as a soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Vladimir Ashkenazy, in Thorkell Sigurbjörnsson’s flute concerto, “Columbine”, available on Octavia Records.
Dacoda Montana is a musician and artist based in Shreveport, LA. His performance based down-tuned avant-distortion group ‘John Calvin’ is a experiential multi-media methodology investigating the transformative nature of analog technologies. He has toured nationally performing and exhibiting his experimental films and melancholic dirge-concrete´ compositions.
The Occidentalists are bricolage artists and musicians Allison Dickson West and Jordan West. Collaborating together over the last several years they have created site-specific installations that revolve around motifs of togetherness and psychedelia.
Coppice (Noé Cuéllar & Joseph Kramer) is a Chicago-based duet of bellows and electronics, often including modified/custom instruments. Since its formation in 2009 they have produced original compositions for stage, fixed media, and performed installation settings, recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), The Flea Theater (New York), Spark Festival (Minneapolis), and internationally.
Lawrence English is a media artist, composer and curator based in Australia. Working across an eclectic array of aesthetic investigation, English’s work prompts questions of field, perception and memory. he utilizes a variety of media including live performances, audio visual environments, found sound/vision to create his work that typifies his interest in creating experiential transformations of space and ask audiences to become aware of that which exists at the edge of perception. English’s work over the past decade, both in performative and gallery settings, has earned him a strong reputation as one of the unique voices producing sound artworks from within Australia. he has presented concerts and installed pieces for numerous festivals including Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), Observatori (Spain), Outro_Rio (Brazil), Unsound (Poland) and AltMusic (New Zealand) amongst others. he also curates the burgeoning Room40 imprint, the Someone Good label and organizes numerous events and festivals throughout Oceania. – lastfm
Marinos Koutsomichalis is a sound artist and composer from Athens, Greece. Active internationally in both academic and non academic milieus, MK has been composing and performing exploratory sound/visual art since the mid ’00s using a variety of mediums – computers, programming languages, acoustic instruments / ensembles, analogue electronics, loudspeakers, domestic appliances, environmental sounds or photography amongst others. he is mainly interested in how sonic/visual phenomena manifest in the space-time-consciousness complex and how he can create aesthetically intriguing artworks based on such manifestation as mediums themselves. His works is non-representational, aiming at fulfilling the stimulation of space and that which lies within. He has released several solo albums that were met with enthusiasm by critics, in labels such as British Entr’ acte or his own agxivatein. he has exhibited works internationally. He has collaborated with Francisco Lopez, Z’EV, Greg Haines, the Red Note Ensemble, N. Kyriazopolous and other. he is an active member of the the Contemporary Music Research Centre (CMRC – founded by I.Xenakis) and is currently undertaking a PhD in the Music Research Centre, University of York under Dr. Tony Myatt. He also lectures Computer Programming for Music/Sound Applications and Sound Synthesis at the Technological Educational Institute of Crete.
Signal to Noise is the collaborative artistic venture of Oliver Wilshen and Niall Quinn, two Brighton based Audio-Visual artists. StN have been developing interactive artworks together since 2009, and have exhibited work both nationally and internationally over the past two years. This has included exhibitions in London, Seattle, USA and Munich, Germany. Our work has also recently been included in ‘A Touch of Code: Interactive Installations & Experiences’ by Robert Klanten, published by Gestalten in 2011.
Their cross-disciplinary approach encompasses elements of visual and sonic arts combined with interaction design. This has lead to work being primarily centered around creating interactive sound installations. Their current practice continues to investigate the creative potential that obsolete media technologies have to offer, currently focusing on the magnetic audiotape format.
DESIRE OBTAIN CHERISH is a Los Angeles based musician, composer, artist, and designer who, under a variety of aliases, has produced countless scores and compositions for commercials and film. Since the inception of his LA based production facility 10 years ago he has released dozens of records and over 50 CDs. DOC is an unrelenting artist whose barrage of studio output, from fine art, street art, performance and music represents a contemporary defiance to the traditional idea of an artist.
Thanos Chrysakis’ output consists of composition, performance, and installation. He was born in Athens in 1971, residing for the last twelve years in the UK. His work has appeared on various independent labels, and events in several countries. He composes for electronics, acoustic instruments and environmental sounds, focusing on the structural and aesthetic capacity of sonic matter. His work was amongst the selected works at the International Competition de Musique et d’Art Sonore Electroacoustiques de Bourges 2005, in the category œuvre d’art sonore électroacoustique, while received an honorary mention in 2006 at the 7th International Electroacoustic Competition Musica Viva in Lisbon. In addition to his compositional activities he has recorded/performed with Dario Bernal-Villegas, Wade Matthews, Oli Mayne, James O’Sullivan, Jerry Wigens, Zsolt Sőrés, Sebastian Lexer, Phillip Somervell, among others. He has taught classes on the nature of sound at the University of Westminster and on composition at Goldsmiths College. He completed a PhD in composition in 2010 at Goldsmiths, University of London while since 2007 he operates the record-label Aural Terrains focusing in electronic and improvised music.
Formed in early 2005, Oscillatorial Binnage are London-based multimedia electroacoustic sound artists with a neo-primitivistic approach, comprised of Toby Clarkson, Chris Weaver, Fari Bradley and Dan Wilson. They work with new instruments, video projection, biofeedback, just intonation, acoustic devices and destabilised equipment responsive to touch. The London Musician Collective’s Ed Baxter writes “Oscillatorial Binnage is the ground-breaking experimental combo of Fari Bradley (“Women Take Back the Noise;” London Mela’s “Obscura”), Toby Clarkson (“Show Flat”), Chris Weaver (Resonance Radio Orchestra, “Free Lab Radio”) and Dan Wilson (Meadow House; winner of the Arts Foundation Award for electro-acoustic composition).
Denise Ritter is a sound artist and composer from Saarbrucken, Germany. She has won numerous awards for her installation and electro-acoustic works, most notably the Sound Art Award Deutsch in 2010. She is a board member of the executive committee of the Association of Electro-Acoustic Music Deutsch.
Guillame Chappez is a French composer and sound artist trained in free-jazz and improv active in media and sound design. His works and compositions have been in various exhibitions across France, Brussels, Madrid, Moscow including Nuit Blanche in Paris,the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
Mike Hallenbeck is a composer and sound designer active in stage, screen,
installation, and performance media. He collects sounds both hither and
yon, brings them home to play with each other, and helps them decide what
to be when they grow up. His work often engages in interdisciplinary
dialogue: notions of sonically complementing the presentation of visual
media, maximizing the audio impact of site-specific work, and exploring the
influence of a space on the presentation of a soundscape.
Federico De Biase (born 1982) lives and works in Rome, Italy. In 2009 he graduated in “CInema Tv and New Media” at university of Rome. He is continuing a research project at the Department of Electronic Music at theConservatory of L’Aquila and collaborating with Michelangelo Lupone at CRM (Centro Ricerche Musicali). His main interests are composition and improvisation for both acoustic instruments and electronic media
Otto Electro was recently formed, with tby Oscar Accorsi and Mauro Casappa. They are both electronic musicians. They recently collaborated on the sound installation “Art in the Time of Correggio” – Province of Parma. Recently they have focused on liver performance of sound and visual media.
Mateuz Wysocki is a Polish sound artist who currently resides in Paris. He started the project “Porcje Rosołowe” in 2009. Lech Nienartowicz. They use multifunction software and signal processing chains to investigate tonal degradation, narrative destruction and improvisation.