21 - 24 October 2009
Show starts 8pm each night
Free Artist Chats at 7pm each night
Negative Landscapes: free symposium on 24 October 2009, 2:30pm
Scotiabank Dance Centre
677 Davie Street
Tickets $20 regular, $15 students/seniors each night; available at Zulu Records (1972 West 4th Avenue), Scratch Records (726 Richards Street), through Tickets Tonight (www.ticketstonight.ca; 604.684.2787; surcharges apply) and at the door.
Passes for all four nights $60 and $40, available only through Vancouver New Music (604.633.0861) and at the door.
[festival Flash schedule/sound and video samples]
[Download Copyright, left, right, left: Being in Step with Economics and Technology by Jean Hébert]
Wednesday 21 October 2009
Festival opening featuring
Andrew O’Connor - Toronto
Four semi-ancient reel-to-reel tape machines play a series of large analog “tape loops” of different durations. A celebration of one of Canada’s longest running audio art programs, Frequent Mutilations, which aired original hour-long audio art compositions every Saturday for close to 25 years on University of Waterloo’s CKMS FM. The tape loops weave together different sounds and textures to create a slowly evolving composition. Much like the show, there’s no telling what will happen.
Frequent Mutilations will also be presented as an installation for each evening of the festival.
http://www.frequent-mutilations.com/
Opening reception 8:30 - 9pm.
Jackson 2bears - Victoria
Jackson 2bears’ works focus on the aesthetics of Indigenous identity in contemporary times, exploring alternative ways to engage with the question of Native spirituality in our modern, technological society. 2bears’ artworks typically take the form of new media/ interactive installations or multimedia performances where he works primarily with video and audio media as a means to reflect on issues of racism, colonialism, discrimination, Indigenous subjectivity and Native stereotypes. His performance work is primarily inspired by electronic music and DJ/VJ culture, using the form of the remix as a tool for cultural critique. Often emerging as a playful take on popular Native stereotypes, these Live Cinema/Scratch Video remixes function as mixed-media interventions against extirpative and discriminatory representations of First Nations culture.
http://jackson2bears.net/
John Oswald - Toronto
Plunderphonics pioneer John Oswald’s work has been called “brilliant”, “fascinating” and “hilarious” by the likes of David Toop, Kyle Gann and Atom Egoyan. In his 1985 essay titled “Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative”, Oswald coined the term that would define the emerging sample-based approach to sound art. A recent Governor General Award Media Arts Laureate, Ars Electronica Digital Musics and Untitled Arts Award winner, as well as the fourth inductee into the CBC Alternative Walk of Fame, Oswald has also been nominated to third place in a list of the most internationally influential Canadian musicians, tied with Celine Dion. Oswald will present among other works a live score of Dab, his infamous remix of Michael Jackson’s Bad.
"Plunderphonics is as mesmerizing and synapse-frying a piece of aural vandalism as has ever been committed." - Byron Coley, Spin
http://www.plunderphonics.com
Thursday 22 October 2009
Eric the Red– Vancouver
Eric the Red (Eric Hedekar) uses both digital and analog DJ extended techniques in conjunction with 100% free-as-in-speech software to create a shifting mass of sound. Materials range from recognizable samples, to synthesized sound, to found noise sources. The goal of this sound mass is not to dwell on its creation tools, but rather to move through time and space; reflecting that sound is a process of movement.
DJ Tapes (aka Aja Rose Bond) - Vancouver
DJ Tapes’ source materials range from original and dubbed cassettes including everything from pop music, noise, ambient field recordings and "books on tape" to her own original compositions. She is inspired by an endless fascination with the tactile, analog nature of cassettes, the visceral, mechanical experience of handling them, and the intrinsic value of the mixtape as art object.
Chris Cutler - UK
Co-founder of The Ottawa Music Company - a 22-piece Rock composer’s orchestra, and ex-member of Henry Cow, Chris Cutler has cultivated a percussion style that is entirely his own. Cultler takes a self-described “top-down rather than bottom-up approach” to music, and has developed a one-of-a-kind set-up that integrates a wired drum-kit with an array of contact mics, effects units and small electronic devices. Years of sound exploration have led him to master a percussion style that delivers a unique hybridization of the acoustic and electric “in which many of the techniques and attributes associated with the acoustic version are preserved but massively extended”.
“Chris Cutler.has to be one of the finest, most inventive drummers this country has ever produced” - BBC
http://www.ccutler.com
People Like Us (aka Vicki Bennett) - UK
For 18 years Vicki Bennett has been working with A/V multimedia under the name People Like Us. The output has consisted of 20 album releases, numerous singles, live sets (both solo and collaborations), remixes, a DVD, and over 150 radio shows. The art of People Like Us centres on the appropriating or sampling of works that exist with a previous context. This "raw" footage is sometimes recognisable with its own history and connotations, and sometimes obscure, abstract or concrete sounds. The golden rule is always to recontextualise the source's sound or meaning, the aim being to take this footage on a journey, where along the way it meets other material, all collaborating on a platform that could never happen in real life, creating a unique atmosphere. People Like Us will present the world premiere of a brand new live set titled "Genre Collage".
http://www.peoplelikeus.org
Friday 23 October 2009
Sonarchy - Vancouver
Sonarchy is a sonic collage project featuring Jesse Gentes (record player), Destanne Lundquist (tapes, radio) and Ron Sakolsky (CD players). Sonarchy performances are rooted in the Surrealist concept and critical analysis of "miserabilism" (defined as the idea that misery is the only possible reality) and a Dadaist sense of the absurd.
http://www.myspace.com/sonarchyofsound
Holzkopf (aka Jake Hardy) - Vancouver
A mashup of jungle, hip-hop, eardrum bursting feedback and a healthy does of psychedelia, Holzkopf uses broken machinery and homemade synthesizers to churn out this hellish cacophony as much influenced by beats, cuts and scratches as by total noise.
http://holzkopf666.googlepages.com/
Scanner - UK
Innovative London-based artist Scanner is at the forefront of new music. Sampled by Bjork and Aphex Twin, admired by Stockhausen, he’s a frequent-flyer whose works have taken him across the globe and back again. As well as producing compositions and audio CDs, his diverse body of work includes soundtracks for films, performances, radio, and site-specific intermedia installations. His live shows twist and turn, sculpting a sound that twists state-of-the-art-technology in gloriously unconventional ways. Fresh from releasing his new album, Rockets, Unto the Edges of Edges, his performance will slip from warm abstraction to flaring beats and fluttering electro rhythms and melancholic minimalism.
http://www.scannerdot.com
David Shea - US/Australia
Working with combinations of samplers and live musicians, David Shea’s music centres on the possibilities of electronic and acoustic traditions. Focusing on the interconnections between styles, histories and mediums, Shea creates pieces containing multiple layerings of compositional methods, electronic and acoustic orchestrations. Having cut his teeth in the late 80s and early 90s, playing frequently with John Zorn and others in New York’s free-improv scene, Shea developed a body of his own work involving samplers, live ensembles and combinations of Asian influences, film music, musique concrete, exotica, hip hop and early techno, visual sources, and collaged sampled archives. These works were collages that searched for interconnections between pre-existing traditions, states of consciousness, and a type of “theater of references and memory”. Shea’s work has evolved to focus on combining traditional folk music with electronic and experimental traditions in ensemble formations and solo works.
http://www.dshea.net
Saturday 24 October 2009
Mark Hosler (Negativland)
Adventures in Illegal Art: Creative Media Resistance and Negativland - US
Adventures in Illegal Art is a 90-minute film and storytelling presentation by Mark Hosler, founding member of Negativland, followed by a Q and A. No lawyers were harmed in the making of this event! Pranks, media hoaxes, media literacy, the art of collage, creative activism in a media saturated multi-national world, file sharing, intellectual property issues, evolving notions of art and ownership and law in a digital age, artistic and funny critiques of mass media and culture, so-called “culture jamming” (a term coined by Negativland way back in 1984).... even if you've never heard of Negativland, if you are interested in any of these issues you’re sure to find this funny and inspiring presentation worth your time and attention.
http://www.negativland.com
Uri Caine - US
Caine’s work is marked by a desire to re-contextualize and re-approach musical genres, and often, to introduce—or reintroduce—improvisation where it is not ordinarily found, as in his many so-called “remixes” of classical composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Mahler. Caine will perform with Ben Perowsky (percussion) and Giorgio Magnanensi (electronics).
“Downtown isn't just a zip code and Uri Caine isn't just a piano player. Caine is a brilliant improviser that combines his subtle, but evident knowledge of classical music with his tremendous improvisational creativity.” – Fred Jung, jazzweekly.com
http://www.uricaine.com
Free panel discussion– Negative Landscapes
Saturday, 24 October 2009, 2:30pm
Scotiabank Dance Centre, 677 Davie Street
A discussion about copyright/copyleft, intellectual property rights and art with Peter Hatch, Doug Horne, Mark Hosler, Martha Ransand Aja Rose Bond; moderated by Kate Milberry.
Season media sponsor
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