Short interview with composer, software designer and author Curtis Roads. Looks briefly into granular synthesis, composition in garden design and the Hammond organ….. not entirely sure how the ‘IDM’ link directly equates though?

For a thorough overview of the varieties of particle synthesis, Roads’ book Microsound is where you should go.

Also, some other Roads related books of interest here.

Thanks to Rory at Vice/VBS and Yutaka for the heads up

Sunday 15th March 2009, 1pm
Ikon Eastside
Fazeley Studios, 183 Fazeley Street
Digbeth
Birmingham B5 5SE
£3/ free with a Flatpack 09 festival pass

A Film and Video event curated by Cyrk at Birmingham’s Ikon Eastside gallery.
The programme includes:

Mark fell - Attack on Silence (chapter 1)
Dir: Mark fell, UK, 2008, 2:08mins

Attack on Silence is the work of Mark Fell, one half of Sheffield computer music duo snd. Minimalist, yet extremely powerful, Fell draws parallels between Tibetan singing bowls, sacred geometry, digital technology and psychophysiology.

Otomo Yoshihide - Plucks
Video : Masoko Tanaka, Tim Digulla, Michelle Silva, JP/US, 2.48mins

Cageian Turntable deconstruction from the Japanese experimental music catalyst. Taken from Asphodel records Multiple Otomo dvd.

Saturnus
Dir: Ludo Mich, Belgium, 1971, 2.30mins

A debauched hallucinogenic fisheye orgy from the Belgian Fluxus artist.
This excerpt (very) loosely reenacts a scene from George Bataille’s Myth of the Eye.

Multi D:2d (excerpt)
Dir: Ludo Mich, Belgium 1982, 8 mins

A contrast to Saturnus, this later work from Mich subtly creates a soft focus synaesthesic backdrop for the electroacoustic improvisations of The Joyous Cosmology.

AVVA - Couchette
(Billy Roisz / Toshimaru Nakamura), Austria / Japan, 2006, 6.18mins

AVVA stands for ‘Audio Video / Video Audio’, referring to the working method of the duo. Nakamura produces the music using the internal feedback from his no-input mixing desk, Roisz uses that as the basis for her optical moving patterns, and Nakamura has a TV monitor showing Roisz’ output, so the whole process is circular and created in real time. Couchette appears on the Erstwhile DVD Gdansk Queen.

Curtis Roads - Half-life (Part 1)
Visuals: Brian O’Reilly, USA, 1999, 4mins

California composer and pioneer of pulsar and granular synthesis, Curtis Roads and San Francisco artist Brian O’Reilly collaborate on this short exploration of the possibilities for a visual music.

Pan Sonic - Toisto (Control Grid)
Visuals: Edward Quist, Finland/US, 2008 2mins /chapter 3 5.30-7.50

A chapter from the audio-visual album Kuvaputki (Cathode Ray Tube), Toisto combines Quist’s cathode ray visions with Finnish post-technoheads Pan Sonic’s uncompromising electronic sound world.

Capitalism: Slavery
Dir: Ken Jacobs, USA, 2006, 3mins

In Capitalism: Slavery, Jacobs uses a Victorian stereograph (a double-photograph) of slaves picking cotton under the watchful eye of a white overseer as the source for this wrenching silent work. Through digital manipulation, Jacobs creates a haunting illusion of depth and movement. It is as if he has “entered” the image and reactivated this historical moment; he moves among the figures and isolates individuals, creating a stuttering, pulsing effect that suggests motion even as it animates stasis.

Oren Ambarchi and Martin Ng - Vigilance (excerpt)
Visuals: Tina Frank, Australia/Austria/US, 2006, 10 mins

Guitar Improvisor Ambarchi and avant turntablist Ng combine their shared passion for the harmonic sound phenomenology which happens when the decay of a tone is extended far past its natural resolution. Mego label designer Tina Frank provides the visual element. Her dimensional grid-like graphics react to the audio content, slowly becoming increasingly colourful, complex and agitated as the sound shreds and warps time/space.

Survival Research Laboratories - The pleasures of Uninhibited excess
Dir: Jon Reiss, US, 1989, 15 mins

Footage documenting SRL’s notorious ‘exhibition’ at the San francisco MoMa. As far as SRL’s work is actually fairly restrained, despite the nosebleeds, ear protection and Police investigation which accompanied it.
SRL shows are essentially performance art installations acted out by machines rather than people, which make Robot Wars look like Wall-E. The interactions between the machines are usually noisy, violent, and destructive. A frequent tag-line on SRL literature is “Producing the most dangerous shows on Earth”. A side effect of the group’s activities is frequent interactions with governmental and legal authorities.

The Hyrcynium Wood
Dir: Ben Rivers, UK, 2005 , 3mins, 16mm on Mini DV

‘The title is from an out of date thesaurus and means “mystery”, which is exactly what this film remains to me.’ (Ben Rivers)

Robin Fox - Backscatter (excerpt)
Visuals/Sound: Robin Fox, Australia, 2005, 4.30 mins

Backscatter is the debut solo release from Australian electronic artist Robin Fox. The works were composed for the cathode ray oscilloscope in such a way that the electricity used to generate sound is also used to excite a single light photon across a phosphorous screen, creating geometric structures that scorch themselves onto the retina and before morphing into architectural visions so quickly that you can never fully comprehend them. The results of this one-to-one audio-visual relationship are often surprising yet make sense on some deeply synaesthetic level.

Starlight 1
Visuals: Tina Frank, Austria, 2003, 3 mins

A second fim by Tina Frank, this time soundtracked by Mego records boss Peter Rehberg aka Pita.

Black and White Trypps No. 4
Ben Russell, USA, 2008, 10 mins, 16mm

The 4th part in a series of naturally derived psychedelia.
Using a 35mm strip of motion picture slug featuring the recently deceased American comedian Richard Pryor, this extended Rorschach assault on the eyes moves out of a flickering chaos created by incompatible film gauges into a punchline involving historically incompatible racial stereotypes.
www.dimeshow.com

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Live set ‘grapheme form’ by Lee Gamble

Grapheme is a form of synesthesia in which an individual’s perception of numbers and letters are associated with the experience of colors. ‘Grapheme Form’ is created using formant-based digital synthesis of vowels and their consequent deconstruction > reconstruction into new forms. Grapheme Form provides ambiguous and distinct views of perceptive notions of experience which are inescapably tied into linguistically related thought processes.

www.ikon-gallery.co.uk
www.flatpackfestival.org