Two evenings of lectures and performances by artists Eric Singer, Luis Recoder, and Sandra Gibson. Events are free and open to the public. Seating is limited and first-come first-served.
Hosted by the STUDIO For Creative Inquiry (in conjunction with Melissa Ragona’s seminar on Media Performance)
In this mini-series, internationally renowned artists across the fields of Robotics, Experimental Film, and Computer Programming, will present work that highlights how new technologies have transformed the way we think about live performance. By examining the use of media (analog and digital) across the areas of sound/music, performance art, programming, and installation, the performers in this series will explore how technology has changed the conventions of performative artistic practice.
How have ideas about virtual, parallel worlds changed the way artists think about the “performing body?” If technology once acted as a prosthetic device, increasing an artist’s sensual and perceptual world, what happens to the role and impact of an artist’s work in the seemingly inert realms of programming or the increasingly autonomous areas of Robotic Intelligence?
DAY 1
Wed, February 17 at 6:30-9:30 pm Eric Singer will present/perform
Eric Singer, renowned for his work with LEMUR — a group of artists and technologists who created an orchestra of robotic musical instruments (that most recently accompanied Pat Metheny’s new album) — will present an artist’s lecture presentation (~45-60 minutes), plus a small concert or short demonstration of some of his robotic musical instruments, including the premier of his new Guitarbot.
Eric Singer is a Brooklyn-based musician, artist, engineer and programmer with 20 years of arts and multimedia programming, engineering and performance experience. He holds a BS in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon; a Diploma in Music Synthesis (Magna Cum Laude) from Berklee College of Music; and an MS in Computer Science from New York University. He has performed and lectured throughout the world with electronic musical instruments, as well as touring and recording with many bands on tenor, alto, and baritone saxes. He is a founding member of the Brooklyn-based arts collaborative The Madagascar Institute, and he has contributed to many of the group’s spectacular projects in addition to reaching the semi-finals with the MI-originating team “The Brooklyn Benders” on The Learning Channel’s ‘Junkyard Wars’ television show. He is also the founder of LEMUR (League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots), a group of artists and technologists creating robotic musical instruments. In addition to directing LEMUR, he currently works as an independent Arts Engineer and Consultant.
DAY 2
Wed, March 3 @ 6:30-9:30 pm Luis Recoder and Sandra Gibson will present/perform
Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder will lecture on their extensive media-based performance work as well as present a performance for multiple 16mm projectors with live audio. In this collaborative film performance, they will employ simple mechanical means to hypnotically elaborate ends: 16mm loops, spray bottles, colored gels, unfocused lenses and hand-shadows will combine, through rehearsed recipes, into slowly mutating light-sculptures: morphing color-fields, angel-white auras, fusing penumbrae, pulsing vertical lines.
Gibson and Recoder have shown their collaborative film installations and performances at film festivals, museums, galleries, and alternative venues since 2001. They have exhibited their work at the Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), The Kitchen (NYC), Robert Beck Memorial Cinema (NYC), Mighty Robot (Brooklyn, NY), Hallwalls Contemporary Arts (Buffalo, NY), Images Festival (Toronto, Canada),
PDX (Portland, OR), Berks Filmmakers (Reading, PA), Pittsburgh Filmmakers (PA), Janalyn Hanson White Gallery (Cedar Rapids, IA), Collectif Jeune Cinema (Paris, France), International Film Festival Rotterdam (The Netherlands), Hartware Medien Kunst Verein (Dortmund, Germany), La Casa Encendida (Madrid, Spain), Museo do Chiado - National Museum of Contemporary Art (Lisbon, Portugal), Dundee
Contemporary Arts (Dundee, Scotland), Youkobo Art Space (Tokyo, Japan), Image Forum Festival (Yokohama & Kanazawa, Japan).
