New York Electronic Arts Festival and the New Interfaces for Musical Expression Conference

The New York Electronic Arts festival is a month-long series of concerts, panels,
workshops, and presentations centered on the cutting edge work being done at the
intersection of art and technology. Featuring artists from Trimpin to They Might Be Giants,
the festival concerts promise to draw a huge audience with a wide spectrum of music
lovers. At the center of the NYEAF is the seventh annual conference on New Interfaces for
Musical Expression (NIME), an international event (previously held at IRCAM in Paris) that
brings together the leading musical technologists from around the world. The theme of
NIME 2007 is "Music and Robotics". Robotics is a large and growing field, and one with a
wide popular appeal. Most major contemporary technological events feature robots in a
very visible way, including this past year's Wired Nextfest and SIGGRAPH, and fields
ranging from sports to gaming to household maintenance have all seen the emergence of
robots. NIME 2007 promises to be an incredible draw, as it will combine people's
fascination with cutting-edge robotic technology with virtuosic musical performance--feats
of musical athleticism beyond the capacity of even the most amazing human performer.

Sandin Exhibition

Evening Performance on Wednesday June 6th

Produced by the Institute for Electronic Arts @ Alfred University

Roulette will host an exhibition of video synthesizers from the Sandin Image processor to current computer-based systems presented by The Institute for Electronic Art in cooperation with the School of Art and Design at Alfred University .   Visitors will be able to manipulate images and sounds using a hand built Sandine Image Processor, Wobbulator, and Jitter inteactive system. On Wednesday evening June 6 th there will be solo and duo concerts by Stephen Vitiello, Andrew Deutsch, Sawako Kato (from Tokyo) Tammy Bracket and Peer Bode (via cellphone from China).

The Institute for Electronic Arts is a high technological research studio facility within the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, NY. The IEA encourages and supports projects that involve interactive multi-media systems, experimental sonic/video production, digital imaging, and publications. The IEA is committed to developing cultural interactions spurred by technological experimentation and artistic investigations.

About the Performers:

Stephen Vitiello is a sound and media artist. Originally from New York, he is now based in Richmond, Virginia.   Vitiello's CD releases include Scratchy Monsters, Laughing Ghosts (New Albion Records), Buffalo Bass Delay (Hallwalls), Scanner/Vitiello (Audiosphere/Sub Rosa), Bright and Dusty Things (New Albion Records), Scratchy Marimba (Sulphur UK/Sulfur USA), Light of Falling Cars (JDK Productions) and Uitti/Vitiello (JDK Productions). Stephen's website: www.stephenvitiello.com

Andrew Deutsch (b.1968) is a sound, video and graphic artist who lives in Hornell, NY and teaches Sound & Video Art in the Division of Expanded Media at Alfred University. He received his BFA in Video Art and Printmaking from Alfred University in 1990 and his MFA in Integrated Electronic Art from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1994. He is a member of the Institute for Electronic Art at Alfred University and the Pauline Oliveros Foundation Board of Advisors and is a former member of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation Board of Directors (1999 - 2001). Andrew's website: www.infoblvd.net/andrewandjen/index.htm

Sawako Kato is a Tokyo/NYC-based timeline based artist and sound sculptor who creates the digital nostalgic world using technologies. Once through the processor named Sawako, elements in everyday life float in space vividly with a digital yet organic texture. Her unique sonic world has been called "post romantic sound" by Boston's Weekly Dig. For these 5 years, Sawako did more than 80 live performances in Japan, USA, Paris and London, and last year her 2nd album "hum" was released from NY based minimal label, 12k. Sawako's website: www.troncolon.com

Tammy Renée Brackett received a BA in fine arts from Alfred University in Alfred, N.Y. in 2003 and an MFA in Electronic Integrated Art from the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in 2006. Critiques of the impact of scientific "breakthroughs" on identity formation inform Brackett's work. Using new and traditional artistic media, she explores the factors that contribute to the invention of new identities and the overlapping fluid structures behind them. Brackett's recent work uses scientific data, such as the Map of the Human Genome, brainwave biofeedback, and DNA frequencies, as elements in her musical compositions and surround-sound installations. Brackett has exhibited in Japan, Croatia, Hungary, and the United States. She has been awarded the 2005 College Art Association Professional Development Fellowship for Visual Artists, funded by the NEA, and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in Expanded Media at Alfred University's School of Art and Design.

Peer Bode is a nationally and internationally exhibiting artist with media works in museum collections world-wide. He is also an active educator and studio advocate and facilitator of independent electronic media. He is associated with the renowned American Alfred and Owego schools of new media imaging. He is Professor of Video Arts at the School of Art and Design and Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA), NYSCC at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. His work is produced at the IEA, Alfred NY; the Experimental Television Center, Owego, NY and Pep Studios, Hornell and Rochester, NY.

About the Sandin

The Dan Sandin Image Processor, or "IP," is an analog video processor with video signals sent through processing modules that route to an output color encoder. The IP's most unique attribute is its non-commercial philosophy, emphasizing a public access to processing methods and the machines that assist in generating the images. The IP was Sandin's electronic expression for a culture that would "learn to use High-Tech machines for personal, aesthetic, religious, intuitive, comprehensive, and exploratory growth." This educational goal was supplemented with a "distribution religion" that enabled video artists, and not-for-profit groups, to "roll-your-own" video synthesizer for only the cost of parts and the sweat and labor it took to build it. It was the "Heathkit" of video art tools, with a full building plan spelled out, including electronic schematics and mechanical assembly information. Tips on soldering, procuring electronic parts and Printed Circuit boards, were also included in the documentation, increasing the chances of successfully building a working version of the video synthesizer.

Program subject to change.

Severiano Martinez and Mario Diaz de León

Journeys through imaginary landscapes, utilizing speech and song, electric guitar, synthesizer washes, and electronics all through multi-channel diffusion. This is the last show of a tour in support of their new album, “Still Point” (Shinkoyo).

Mario Diaz de Leon (b.1979) lives in New York City, where he composes chamber music for instruments and electronics, presents solo performances, collaborates with Jay King in the audiovisual duo King/Diaz de Leon.  His collaborative and solo work has been featured in performances and exhibitions at Roulette, The Museum of Biblical Art (NYC), PS1 Contemporary Art Center, MUSAC (León, Spain), Merkin Concert Hall, Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), The Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis), The Stone, Rose Studio at Lincoln Center, and Oberlin Conservatory.  He is a recipient of the 2005 Meet the Composer / Van Lier Fellowship and a winner of ICE's 21st Century Young Composers Project.

Severiano Martinez (b.1979) is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, filmmaker, and author, currently living in Oakland, CA.  From 2000-2003 he attended the Oberlin Conservatory’s Technology in Music and Related Arts Program. While in school, Martinez co-founded the Shinkoyo Arts Collective and released his first album, Clocks and Psandas. From 2004-05 he toured North America with Skeletons, and recently completed his third US tour with Sejayno.  Severiano has premiered works and performed at Labor Gras (Berlin), PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Roulette, Tonic (NYC), REDCAT (Los Angeles), Oberlin Conservatory, Peabody Conservatory, The Empty Bottle (Chicago), The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh) and at South by Southwest (Austin). 

Jacob Burckhardt - THE SURFACE

FILM QUA FILM - SOUND AS SOUND

The evening will feature a screening of a new movie, THE SURFACE, a poetic meditation, of water, wind, snow, and trees, featuring a short epic of love found and lost (starring Royston Scott), a work that will likely be forever in progress, entirely shot on black and white 16mm film. (and projected as film - not video!).

sputtering airplane circles the sky
blanket of snow covers the earth
monochrome world
but magic, yes magic, is still possible!

The sound track will be mixed live - not in sync - and will feature rarely-heard recordings contributed by such musicians as Philadelphia pianist, Norman Fontleroy, pianist Neal Kirkwood, Marc Ribot, Alvin Curran, three members of Project Zlust (a six-piece band from Macedonia), and more.

Jacob Burckhardt has worked at a variety of day jobs - blueberry picker, steel mill laborer, fuller brush man, truck driver, taxi driver, camera repairman, art photographer - all the while making underground films. He specializes in sound production and has done sound recording and mixing for projects ranging from an Italian RAI-TV feature production in North Africa to the American porn industry.

Burckhardt directed and produced two features which screened at various international festivals and were distributed on video: IT DON'T PAY TO BE AN HONEST CITIZEN (1984) with William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Vincent D'Onofrio, and LANDLORD BLUES (1986).

In 1990 Burckhardt, Royston Scott and Ms. Mahogany Plywood made THE FRANKIE LYMONS NEPHEW STORY. In 2002 they continued their collaboration with FREEDOM HO, OR HARRIET TUBMAN'S TALE (2002). LOUIS THE FOURTEENTH STREET (2004) is the latest installment in the continuing series, "Black Moments in Great History." Two more productions are in the works.

Amit Pitaru

Amit Pitaru is a musician and installation artist that utilizes traditional elements as well as software and electronics in his work. When performing on his software instruments, Amit utilizes simple and familiar gestures in order to introduce the audience to his unconventional compositions; in one
piece he may visibly use a pen to simultaneously notate and produce his sounds, and in another he'll play a custom-made Playstation game to progress through a scripted composition.

His work has been performed and exhibited in such places as the Paris Pompidou Center, Sundance Festival, Seoul metropolitan museum, ICC museum in Tokyo, and the NYC subway system.

For his show at roulette, Amit will perform on audio-visual instruments from the past ten years, as well as screen collaborative videos of work made with fellow artist James Paterson. Following the performance, the audience will be invited to experiment with the instruments on stage.

Stefan Tcherepnin

Stefan Tcherepnin is a composer/artist who has spent much of his life writing and playing music, both as a solo artist and collaborator.  Tcherepnin currently focuses on creating live electronic soundscapes out of material derived from and generated by analog electronic synthesizers, acoustic stringed instruments, and percussion…as well as the occasional archaic digital technology. His work, Transient Apparel, examines moment by moment, indefinable, and temporary occupants of the miniature spaces that holistically comprise all musical experience, by enlarging, opening up, eventually obliterating, and ultimately observing the natural reformation of these tiny, holographic places.

Zeljko McMullen

Sadjeljko + MV Carbon, Mario Diaz de Leon, and Justin Craun

"We are like to be serene meditational yoga in a park.
Somewhere, but also maybe that park is in the middle of an air raid.
Five sounds collide to create imaginary architecture."

Zeljko McMullen and Doron Sadja have been presenting their collaborative works as 'Sadjeljko' for the last 2 years. For this performance, they are joining with sound artist/filmmaker MV Carbon (of Metalux, Violet Raid), composer Mario Diaz de Leon, and painter/improviser Justin Craun - with whom they have recently toured the U.S.

Zach Layton

Dense layers of low frequency oscillations, intersecting with synchronized abstract visualizations. Live interactions between electric guitar and laptop and a new work for multiple voices, winds, percussion and electronics by Ray Sweeten (synthesizer) and Bruce Tovsky (laptop) with
text written and narrated by Vito Acconci.

Zach Layton is a new york based composer and artist interested in biofeedback techniques, psychoacoustics, perception and generative algorithms. His work investigates complex relationships created through the interaction of simple core elements like sinewaves or kinetic visual patterns. His interest in biofeedback led him into the research of music produced by human brainwaves, subsequently building a homemade Electroencephalagrah (EEG), which he sometimes uses in performance.

Zach's work has been performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and has performed experimental electronic music and exhibited at the International Congress for Performance Art in Berlin, Neue Berliner Initiative, Bushwick Arts Project, St. Mark's Ontological Hysterical Theater, Dumbo Arts Festival, New York Digital Salon, Monkeytown and many other venues in New York and Europe. He also is the curator of Brooklyn's monthly experimental music series "darmstadt: classics of the avant garde" which features leading composers and improvisers from around New York City and has been reviewed several times in the New York Times. Zach has received grants from the Netherlands America Foundation and the Jerome Foundation and is a student at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.

LoVid

Kyle Lapidus & Tali Hinkis

LoVid explores signal and memory through media crossing interdisciplinary projects. At Roulette the duo composed of Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus will perform with their homemade audio/video synthesizers Sync Armonica and Coat of Embrace. These sculptural instruments materialize
LoVid's signature wireful interactions with technology while generating enveloping and mesmerizing audio/video environments. The synthesizers were developed during a residency at Eyebeam in 2005 with additional support from Experimental TV Center's Finishing Funds supported in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a public agency, and by mediaThe foundation.

LoVid (Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus) overwhelms the senses with new media in their performances, videos, objects, and installations. LoVid has toured the US and Europe extensively performing, exhibiting, and lecturing at The Neuberger Museum, The Butler Institute of American Art , Evolution Festival (UK), The Kitchen, RISD, Mass Art, Kansas City Art Institute, University of Wisconsin, Futuresonic Festival (UK), The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Ocularis, The Happy Lion, and Institute of Contemporary Art London among many others. LoVid has been artist in residence at Eyebeam, Harvestworks, iEAR, Alfred University, and Stevens Institute of
Technology, has received grants and awards from Experimental TV Center, NYSCA, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and Greenwall Foundation, and is a free103Point9 transmission artist. LoVid has recently received a commission for new web-based project from Turbulence.org.

Francisco Lopez

Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of the underground experimental music scene. Over the last twenty five years he has developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and iconoclastic, based on a profound listening of the world. Destroying boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments, shifting with passion from the limits of perception to the most dreadful abyss of sonic power, proposing a blind, profound and transcendental listening, freed from the imperatives of knowledge and open to sensory and spiritual expansion. He has realized hundreds of concerts, projects with field recordings, and sound installations in 50 countries of the five continents. His extended catalog of sound pieces (with live and studio collaborations with over 100 international artists) has been released by more than 140 record labels worldwide, and he has been awarded twice with honorary mentions at the competition of Ars Electronica Festival.

An intense immersive sonic experience in the dark, with a surround multi-channel system and blindfolds provided for the audience. Virtual worlds of sound created out of a myriad original sources collected all over the world -from the rainforests of South America to the boiler rooms of New York's buildings- and mutated and evolved during years of studio work through the master compositional skills of López's universe.