N.K.

GIL KUNO Radiologic performance
Due to this decade of the iPod, some have started to become calloused to the existence of radio frequency. Each city has its own unique set of radio stations, each emitting original audio content into the airwaves. This can be considered one of the city’s signature sounds - morphing, undulating, and shifting at any given moment.

Gil Kuno’s Radiologic is about taming this multi layered beast by sculpting the individual audio streams into a palatable 2 channel mix. He will use 8 radios simultaneously to tune into the local radio stations, and manipulate them in real time with various effects and mixing techniques. The result is a living soundscape; each unique to the location and time frame.

GIL KUNO’s work is often reminiscent of the organic and social processes that surround us; yet they exceed the familiarity we often associate them with.Flung and displaced from context, natural activity is stretched into metaphorical absurdity with a sense of whimsical play.

From breathing intestines, to masturbating installations, oversized antfarms, silent DJ events, and one string guitar orchestras, Gil Kuno constantly subverts our engagement with the perceptions of reality

Through careful social conditioning, the mind is guided to think within certain patterns. Gil tries to redirect the flow of the mind outside of the set patterns we are taught by society to construct. In his work, he attempts to displace natural activity from its context, revealing an otherwise hidden level of metaphorical absurdity within the ordinary patterns present before our eyes.

The goal of sublimating everyday perception underlies many of the projects he has exhibited or performed. He aims to push people away from paradigmatic thinking through various themes and methodologies – aleatoric systems (chance operations,) exaggerated perception, derailed reality and re-envisioning experiences common within everyday life.

Gil received his MFA at UCLA in 2010. He has achieved recognition from Ars Electronica, Japan Media Arts Festival, Canon Digital Creators Contest, Timothy Leary (Leary.com), among others.

His recent work, “Six String Sonics, The” ranked second place in a public survey held by the Japanese Government for “Top 100 Japanese Media Art Works”. This resulted in an exhibit at Japan’s largest contemporary art museum, The National Art Center, Tokyo. In the summer of 2012, Gil debuted the performance in the U.S. at the Fringe Festival NYC.

http://www.unsound.com/

“LES AMES AMPLIFIEES” (AMPLIFIED SOULS)
A LIVE SOUND PERFORMANCE BY GILLES AUBRY

After its spectacular debut at the Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival (LUFF) in october 2012 and further successful presentations at Sonic Protest in Geneva and House for electronic arts in Basel, the performance “Les Ames Amplifiees” by Gilles Aubry is now available for international booking.

In his performance, Aubry improvises on a quad sound system with recordings documenting a neo-pentecostal spiritual seance recorded in 2011 in Kinshasa (DRC). During collective praying sessions and speaking-in-tongues, the church members oppose evil spirits causing various existential problems. The sound, powerful and over-distorted, attests both on their supernatural powers and their capacity for soul amplification… By extension, the performance also questions the devotion of noise music fans, addressing existing cultural boundaries between taste, faith and perception.

The performance is part of a series of works resulting from an artistic field research by Aubry in Kinshasa in 2011 for the Global Prayers project (globalprayers.info). The series also includes “Rain of Fire”, a film without pictures which documents the function of powerful sound amplification systems as an element contributing to the creation of new ‘urban religious identities’. In an essayistic manner, the movie reflects the author’s presence and practice in a post-colonial context. In that sense, it offers an interesting complement to the live performance and should ideally be presented as part of the same program.

Gilles Aubry is a Swiss musician and sound artist living in Berlin since 2002. Based on an auditory approach of the real, his practice is informed by researches on cultural and historical aspects of sound production and reception. Combining ethnography, critical discourse and formal experiments, his sonic images (phonographies) of more or less identified situations stand as an attempt to challenge problematic aspects of visual representation. Aubry is a member of noise band MONNO and has released several CDs under his own name.

More info & video excerpts under:
http://www.earpolitics.net/les_ames_amplifiees_2013

Lynn Book, Tomomi Adachi, Dafna Naphtali
vest: voice/electronics/sound//text

A first time trio performance by three formidable musicians working with voice, electronics, sound, and text in various and overlapping ways. Expect outrageous adventures into vocal sound and sound manipulation, expect unexpected forays into inner dialogues and expect intense interaction.

bios

Lynn Book has a 25 year history of interdisciplinary artistic practice that traverses boundaries between performance art, dance, theater, writing and new music forms. Critics from the New York Times, Village Voice and Chicago Tribune have called her work “bold”, “inspired” and “unlike anything anyone else is doing“. Her diverse works have received citations, fellowships, and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, Franklin Furnace, Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation funding for the production of a radio drama based upon her performance theater piece, “Gorgeous Fever.” Book’s recent large scale work “RE:garding Next”, is a collaborative culture project launched in spring 2007 at the SouthEastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC and involves numerous collaborators, most notably, Austrian composer and extended pianist Katharina Klement.

ADACHI Tomomi (family name is ADACHI), born in Kanazawa, Japan in 1972, is performer, composer, sound poet, installation artist, occasional theater director. He studied philosophy and aesthetics at Waseda University in Tokyo. He has played improvised music with voice, live electronics and self-made instruments. He had composed works for his own group “Adachi Tomomi Royal Chorus” which is a punk-style choir. He has performed contemporary music: vocal, live-electronics or performance works by John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Christian Wolff, Tom Johnson, Dieter Schnebel, TAKAHASHI Yuji, YUASA Joji and Fluxus including world premiere and Japan premiere as Cage’s “Variations VII,” “Europera 5,” and “Waterwalk”. He is the only performer of sound poetry in Japan and has performed Kurt Schwitters’ “Ursonate” for the first time in Japan. He has made several sound installations and original instruments (e.g.”Tomomin”, his hand made electric instrument is familiar with many musicians). In the field of theater music, he has collaborated with some experimental theaters and dancers. He also has organized many concerts which picks up experimental music, sound art, collaboration work and inter-disciplinary performance in Japan and Germany, include concerts with Chris Mann, Trevor Wishart, Nicolas Collins and STEIM in Japan. He founded “Ensemble for Experimental Music and Theater” with his students in Tokyo in 2011, the group is working for pieces by Fluxus and recent conceptual composers.

Dafna Naphtali is a sound-artist/ improviser/composer from an eclectic musical background. As a singer/guitarist/electronic-musician she performs and composes using her Max/MSP programming for sound processing of voice and other instruments. She has collaborated / performed with many experimental musicians and video artists over the past 20 years, such as Ras Moshe, Hans Tammen, Shelley Hirsch, Eric Singer, Kathleen Supové, Lukas Ligeti, David First, Joshua Fried, Darius Jones, Alexander Waterman and as well as video artists (Benton-C Bainbridge, Lenore Malen and others) and with choreographer Daria Fain. Dafna’s work has been supported by American Composers Forum, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Franklin Furnace, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Harvestworks and other organizations.

She’s co-led the digital chamber punk ensemble, What is it Like to be a Bat? with Kitty Brazelton since 1997 (more music in the works!) and a founder of Magic Names vocal ensemble (performing Stockhausen’s Stimmung). This past busy Spring she premiered Adam Kendall’s Toy’s Opera for voice, video and servo-controlled train set, performed Spanish Civil war songs with Shelley Hirsch and Barbez. Dafna is currently mixing several pieces for a CD of her compositions.