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Harvestworks is pleased to present the Spring 2008 performance series “Harvestworks Inside,” with three exceptional programs featuring Harvestworks affiliated artists past and present. Showcasing the diversity of works produced in our production studios and through our Artist In Residence programs, “Harvestworks Inside” offers an outstanding sampling of the rich creative activity that has characterized Harvestworks’ Digital Media Arts programs since 1977.

THURSDAY MARCH 27:
 
“Living Cinema” is the creation of Quebecois filmmaker Pierre Hébert and San Francisco composer Bob Ostertag. This innovative project brings the creation of cinema out of the movie and recording studios and on to the stage. Ostertag has created custom software that allows the two artists to actually perform an animated movie with soundtrack, live on stage. They will perform their newest work Special Forces, which premiered last May in Beirut and San Francisco. Like their earlier works, it incorporates events from the world news; in this case, it begins with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

Sonodendron is a fully immersive work that explores the sonic potentials of cello and electronics on both the microscopic and macroscopic scale. With a 5.1 Surround Sound score by Mem1 (Laura Thomas-Merino, cello & M. Cera, electronics) and video by media artist Liora Belford, Sonodendron is a visceral tour through the bowels and ephemera of the cello.

FRIDAY MARCH 28:

Messages is a collaboration between Tres Warren of Psychic Ills and visual artist Taketo Shimada. Their sound falls somewhere between drone, raga, techno and psychedelia - mashing guitar, homemade tanpura, voice, percussion, turntables and everything else they can get their hands on. About their first EP from The Social Registry, Dusted magazine proclaimed: "This is some heavy, humid drone, pregnant with 4am electricity and, in the end, thick fuzzy beats. A beautiful surprise, engaging even in its abstract tendencies.”

 

Messages' apprearance at Roulette will be a continutation of their recent live sets, the 'Brain Damage On Broadway' show at the Emily Harvey Foundation and their appearance at the 'Evas Arche Und Der Feminist' party at Gavin Brown's Passerby. Expect an evening of hypnosis, experimentaion and improvised psychedelia.

Jeff Perkins (Single Wing Turquoise Bird, who provided light shows to Velvet Underground, Grateful Dead and Dr. John to name a few) provides his minimal psychedelic light show with four slide projectors and motorized fly wheels.

 

Violinist and composer Rebecca Cherry will present a new multi-media Surround-Sound installation exploring the relationship between sound and imagery. Juxtaposing original sound samples of stringed instruments employing extended techniques with video footage from popular music videos, the work seeks to generate new and unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated materials. Audience members will have the opportunity to interact with the installation through a computer interface provided by the artist.

SATURDAY MARCH 29:

A collaboration between guitarist Vernon Reid and multi-instrumentalist Leon Gruenbaum, gReid and Ruen is a kaleidoscopic conglomeration of field hollers, space sounds and general mayhem. Exploring instrumental groove-based futuristic improvisations, tonight is a rare opportunity to hear these virtuoso musicians in their most experimental mode. Yuko Sueta will be providing visuals via video projection.

Performing under his IDM/electronica moniker Plasticity, New York-based composer Robert Madler will perform a set of electronic works that explore experimental beats, static drones, loops, polyrhythms and noise. A 2006 Harvestworks Artist In Residence, Madler’s music has been featured at many universities in the US, including the SEAMUS festival, as well as in Canada, Mexicao, Spain and France.


BIOGRAPHIES:

Bob Ostertag is a composer, performer, historian, instrument builder, journalist, activist and kayak instructor. He has performed at music, film, and multi-media festivals around the globe and his collaborators include the Kronos Quartet, John Zorn, Mike Patton, Anthony Braxton, Lynn Breedlove, and Justin Bond. He is currently Professor of Technocultural Studies and Music at the University of California at Davis.

Pierre Hébert, born in 1944 in Montreal, is a self-taugt filmmaker strongly influenced by animation film makers Norman McLaren and Len Lye. He worked for The National Film Board of Canada from 1965 until the end of 1999 and has since pursued a career as an independent artist and filmmaker. Since 1983, he has taken part in live performances with musicians such as Jean Derome, Robert M. Lepage and René Lussier, Fred Frith and Bob Ostertag.

Mem1 is an electroacoustic duo that seamlessly blends the sounds of cello (Laura Thomas-Merino) and electronics (M. Cera) to create a subtle evolution of textures that moves beyond melody, lyricism, and traditional structural confines, resulting in an organically revealed narrative.

Laura Thomas-Merino is a professional cellist originally from Los Angeles, currently residing in Providence, RI.  An active orchestral and chamber musician, she has performed in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Peru, and Italy with such artists as Pamela Z, the Robin Cox Ensemble, the group OXO as part of the Sonic Boom Festival in Vancouver, with the Providence String Quartet.

M. Cera is a media artist who is interested in exploring audio/visual control systems that are intuitive as well as experimental in nature. He is a member of the experimental media art group Redux, and the electroacoustic duo Mem1 alongside cellist Laura Thomas-Merino.

Liora Belford is a Tel-Aviv based video artist and a filmmaker. Her works have been featured at numerous worldwide festivals and art exhibitions including Art Film Festival (Slovakia), Tel-Aviv Museum of Art (Israel), Vancouver Film Festival (Canada), Washington Jewish Film Festival (USA), and many others.

Taketo Shimada is a visual artist and musician from Tokyo. He has lived and worked in NYC since the mid 80s. Taketo paints everyday and makes the most of instruments and sound systems for his music. He has worked with a variety of figures such as Henry Flynt, Alison Knowles and Rammellzee to name a few.

Tres Warren is an artist and musician living and working in New York City.  He’s involved in various music collaborations including Messages and has performed as part of Damo Suzuki’s Network, in addition to recording and touring internationally with his band Psychic Ills.

 

Jeff Perkins is a visual artist and filmmaker. While serving in the U.S. Air Force stationed in Tokyo, he met Yoko Ono and her husband Anthony Cox. Through them he was exposed to the works of Cage, Duchamp, LaMonte Young and others and began participating in events, performances and concerts. He a co-founder of 'Single Wing Turquoise Bird', a multimedia group doing light shows for Velvet Underground, Grateful Dead and Dr. John to name a few. Jeff currently exhibits at the Emily Harvey Gallery and is now finishing up his new film 'The Painter Sam Francis'.
 

Violinist Rebecca Cherry is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory and has performed in the Baltimore, Annapolis and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras, the London and Bergen Philharmonic, and with pop music performers including Jay-Z, Kanye West, Stevie Wonder, and more.

 

Best known as the founder and primary songwriter of the hard rock/heavy metal band Living Colour, guitarist Vernon Reid was named #66 on Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. Reid first came to prominence in the 1980s in the band of drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. While he is perhaps best known for his work with Living Colour, Reid has had an active solo career that includes collaborations with Bill T. Jones, Salif Keita and James "Blood" Ulmer; performances with the Roots, Mick Jagger, Rollins Band, Spearhead, Public Enemy, Mariah Carey, and Tracey Chapman; and various original scores for film and television. 

Leon Gruenbaum has been a vital force in the New York music scene for the last 20 years. After early classical training on piano and woodwinds, Mr. Gruenbaum developed an interest in jazz, funk and avant-garde music. Mr. Gruenbaum conceived of the world's first relativistic music keyboard, a patented MIDI controller called the Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheeepeeeee. He has recorded and performed internationally with this instrument with guitarist Vernon Reid, and demonstrated it last year at the academic conference "NIME" (New Interfaces for Musical Expression).

Yuko Sueta is an interactive video artist who presents landscapes to live music. She creates sensual textures and stories into visuals by using chaotic mixtures of manipulated 16mm films and digital images.  Her work has been performed live with rock, experimental, electro musicians  such as Ifwhen, Apollo Heights, Costanza, Kayo Dot and played all around U.S, Europe and Japan.

 

Robert Madler is a composer and performer who has focused on experimental media since 1998, specializing in electroacoustic composition (both stereo diffusion and octophonic), compositions utilizing multiple video projections, and programming in Max/MSP and Reaktor.

About Harvestworks
Harvestworks is a nonprofit Digital Media Arts Center that provides resources for artists to learn digital tools and exhibit experimental work created with digital technologies.  Our programs are made possible with funds from New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Materials for the Arts, the Mary Flagler Cary Trust, the Jerome Foundation, mediaThe foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Art, The New York State Music Fund, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, The Argosy Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation, The NY Community Trust, The Andy Warhol Foundation and the Friends of Harvestworks.