Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure grant program has awarded VOLUME a $3,000 grant for Electronic Cinema, a series commissioning four Bay Area artists: Elise Baldwin, Lissom (Tana Sprague), myrmyr, and Kadet Kuhne to perform a live sound score for an existing experimental film or video by another Bay Area artist of their choice. Filmmakers include Paul Clipson, Vanessa Woods, Anthony Discenza, Maia Cybelle Carpenter, and SUE-C.

Curated by VOLUME and Kadet Kuhne, Electronic Cinema seeks to merge two artists communities, electronic sound and music composers, and filmmakers. Presented as a series of five performances and a limited edition DVD, this project will create new relationships and possibilities for expanding the experimental art community.

Performances will take place at ATA and Gray Foundation for the Arts in San Francisco, in addition to other venues to be announced. A limited-edition DVD of the five commissions will be produced, as well.

Vanessa Woods

Anthony Discenza

myrmyr

The DeYoung Museum is commissioning eight electronic sound and media artists to “plug into” permanent collection to create new collaborative performances. These commissions curated by VOLUME and inspired by art pieces chosen from the DeYoung’s collection, will be performed on Friday, September 10^th from 5:30 to 8:30. This event is presented in partnership with the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival.

Sol LeWitt "Bands of Color in Four Directions and in all Combinations"

Sol Lewitt Bands of Color in Four Directions and in all Combinations

Seth Horvitz and Nate Boyce will collaborate on a sound and visual performance in the Wilsey Court. They will use the system of sequential combinations set up by Lewitt contains fertile material for conversion into sound and moving images.

Andy Goldsworthy "Drawn Stone"

Andy Goldsworthy Drawn Stone
Loren Chasse will create a performance in the Koret Auditorium based on the Andy Goldsworthy installation Drawn Stone. He will use large rubbings or impressions of the installation at the entrance to the museum, which will be displayed lying flat on the stage. An edit of recordings made in the entranceway will be amplified through small speakers spread out along the edge of the paper. Chasse will perform sounds generated from the use of stones and the same instruments used in the recording. The audience will able to enter the stage as this work will be intimate.

David Wilson

The Gottardo F.P. Piazzoni Murals
Lucky Dragons will create an interactive musical and visual performance in the Piazzoni mural room in collaboration with David Wilson. They will use project live drawings and animations of drawings in process, along with videos created in the northern Californian hill landscape. The projections will respond to and expand on the aesthetic of the murals. The musical content would be tonal, dynamic, and rhythmic contours–landscape drones, produced by audience participation using interfaces custom-made for the performance.

Cornelia Parker Anti-Mass
Dave Aju will collaborate with San Francisco visual artist JD Beltran to produce an immersive sound and visual environment in the Wilsey Court entitled Anti-Master. Aju and Beltran will perform a work that acts as an aural complement to Parker’s piece. As the sculpture was constructed out of the remains of a burned down Alabama church, they will use acoustic Gospel and Southern Baptist Church recordings, digitally dissect and process them beyond recognition, then reassemble them into a structure unlike the original in form, but equally moving in depth and emotional content. Parker’s Anti-Mass is a brilliant example of how contemporary sculpture can connect with typically unrelated cultures by purposefully chosen source material, and elicit stronger feelings from the viewer with the respective narrative in mind.

Josiah McElheny Model for Total Reflective Abstraction
As this piece was designed to create numerous reflections of its surroundings, Kadet Kuhne’s soundscape will create a sonic representation of movement in the surrounding space. The sounds triggered are representative of how blown glass and mirrored objects to sound if they could actually emit sounds: tonal, bright and smooth with a slow attack and decay. Kuhne’s soundscape will give spectators an experience of seeing themselves and the surrounding artworks in the reflections, but also in hearing themselves in the space as if reflected off the sculpture itself.

Elise Baldwin

We are  pleased to announce that VOLUME has received a grant from Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure grant program to fund Electronic Cinema, a series of experimental electronic sound performances co-curated with artist Kadet Kuhne.

Electronic Cinema will commission San Francisco Bay Area artists: Elise Baldwin, Lissom (Tana Sprague) and Kadet Kuhne to perform a live sound score for an existing experimental film or video.

The long-standing practice of early Dadaist and Modernist film-making to contemporary practices of experimental film and video has been paralleled by an avant-garde and cutting-edge approach to music composition. The role of technology in developing these divergent art forms has been vital and inseparable from the aesthetic impact and meaning of the works. However integral sound has become to our interpretation of picture, there is still such a wide gap not only between the understanding of the impact sound has on image, but also between sound and visual artists in the performance-based arts arena and visual art world.

Electronic Cinema seeks to merge these two arts communities by pairing Bay Area film and video makers with Bay Area electronic sound and music composers, with an emphasis on experimentation in approach, tools and concept. As with experimental film, electronic musicians approach their medium with unconventional structures, pushing against conventional boundaries or definitions. This departure incorporates and celebrates unexpected ingredients and impressions, breaking open new forms not-yet-categorizable.

The electronic sound and music genre is often misconstrued as simply consisting of techno or dance music by artists unfamiliar with its complexity, and similarly, experimental films and video are often seen as eye candy or backdrop visuals, without conceptual direction or art historical reference. By encouraging collaborations across the film and video making and electronic composing disciplines, new relationships and possibilities for expanding the experimental art community as a whole will be realized. Adding to this artistic discovery is the exciting opportunity for these two communities who already co-exist to gain a deeper understanding of one another, and through public performance, gather in one space that will provide a rhizomatic blossoming of potential connections and future collaborations.

Electronic Cinema will initially be presented in San Francisco in the summer and fall, 2010. Performance schedule and venues will be announced shortly.

Support for Electronic Cinema is provided by Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure Grant Program.

Kadet Kuhne

Tana Sprague