[ tuesday night acadia series r.i.p. ]
Acadia Theater, Minneapolis, MN
Tuesday December 18th, 2007

The final installment of the Tuesday night improvised music series at the Acadia Cafe, some ancestor of which has been going on since back in the twentieth century. Acadia decided to move across town, and their new setup wouldn't fit the series, so that was that... a sad fact, but nice to know we made it happen while we did. I'm sure it'll be back in some form.

Brown Rainbow finished off the evening, preceded by a trio of Bryce Beverlin II (percussion), Charles Gillett (Danelectro pedals with guitar), and myself (laptop). Here's an mp3 of the opening set by Bryce and Charles and me.

[ holiday house @ home ]
site-specific dance performance byBody Cartography
Holiday House, Minneapolis, MN
September 14th- 23rd, 2007

I was basically just a tech schmoe for this show, but I contributed a bit of sound to an installation in the basement and shot a tiny bit of footage for the final outdoor projection as well. The piece took place in and around the house occupied (when they're not out globe-trottin') by Body Cartography's Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad. Performance spaces included the front and back yards, deck, kitchen, bedroom, two spaces in the basement, and the alley behind the house. Choreography and improvisations utilized surveillance cameras, a wireless mic, live sampling and manipulation of performed sounds, and the final very cool projection of footage on garages in the alley, which the dancers interacted with.

[ club underground ]
Minneapolis, MN
July 25th, 2007

I opened the evening, backed with video footage from "Night of the Lepus". This performance was memorable for the unveiling of my remix of John Cougar Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane", which I really must polish up and release someday.

Later I sat in with the headlining Brown Rainbow (which kind of goes without saying because everyone in Brown Rainbow is sitting in). Our mission that evening was to manipulate and accompany a rendition of The Outfield's "Your Love" provided by Chicago's Legion of Rock Stars. More info on the Brown Rainbow performance, including an mp3 of the show, is available on theBrown Rainbow web site. Thanks to Amy for taking the pictures you see above!

[ headphone festival + mashup concert ]
Rochester Art Center
Rochester, MN
Saturday, August 4, 2007

The Second Annual Headphone Festival at the Rochester Art Center featured a dozen musicians, performers, and video artists curated by Viv Corringham and Scott Stulen. Experienced entirely through headphones, musicians performed original compositions comprised of field recordings, samples, live sound improvisation, and analog instruments output through a web of headphone jacks. Many performers collaborated with a video artist (a still of footage is included above; sorry there's no artist credit, but I'm not sure who did it! Get in touch and I'll add a credit if you like.)

My set was conprised of mostly binaural field recordings made specifically for this event, montaged live.

Promo info on the show, including a snazzy full-color PDF

L to R: Curator Theresa Downing, Shawn Decker, Flavor Flav, Abinadi Meza
Photo: Christian Schoening

[ art dialogue: sound in art, art in sound ]
Tuesday June 19, 2007
Minnesota Musuem of American Art
Kellogg Boulevard at Market Street, St. Paul
7 pm on the patio - free

Not a performance per se, but a discussion between artists featured in the "Sound In Art, Art In Sound" exhibition at MMAA: myself, Shawn Decker, and Abinadi Meza. Exhibition curator Theresa Downing moderated a conversation on the challenges of working with sound as an art medium and today's trends in art and sound technology. A sound art cage match, really.

See my 2007 installations page for more info on this exhibition.

[ something else ]
Sunday March 4th
10pm to 2am, WLUW 88.7 Chicago
Stream the show online from wluw.org

While I'm in Chicago this weekend I'll be appearing on "Something Else", a weekly experimental music radio program produced by Philip von Zweck on WLUW 88.7 fm. I'll be performing with John Kannenberg; word has it that we'll each be playing solo as well doing a collaborative set. Tune in if you're in town, or listen online from the web site.

I used samples from my piece in the Geo Phono Box exhibition at Around the Coyote Gallery (check my 2007 installations page for details on Geo Phono Box).

[ headphone festival @ spark ]
February 21st, 2007
The second headphone festival in Minnesota, curated by Viv Corringham and Scott Stulen. Part of the University of Minnesota's 2007 Spark Festival. Performers included Bunk Data, Viv Corringham, Jared Stulen, Scott Stulen, and myself.

I contributed a preview of my upcoming installation "The Premises", audio documents of the south Minneapolis house I'm currently moving out of-- everything from mice in the walls to the house across the street on fire. (See my 2007 installations page for details on this work, which will be "on view" in Chicago at Around the Coyote Gallery from March 2 - March 28, 2007.)

Anyway, this was a really enjoyable performance. It's an interesting social-yet-cloistered kind of thing. Looks there'll be another one in Rochester this summer.

[ sustain ii ]
drone improvisation
Tuesday February 6th, 2007
Part of the Tuesday Night Series at the Acadia Theater, Minneapolis

The sequel to last year's "Sustain"-- another uninterrupted drone improvisation throughout an entire night of the Improvised Music at Acadia Series. Instrumentation included voice, bell, sax, bass clarinet, ukelele (2 of them in fact), bass, guitar feedback, keyboards, and assorted electronics.

Featured performers included Bryce Beverlin II, Bunk Data, Jaron Childs, Viv Corringham, Jon Davis, Casey Deming, James Gaynor, Charles Gillett, Ben Glaros, Tim Glenn, Mike Hallenbeck, Cordell Klier, Patrick Lien, Paul Metzger, Samuel Morrison, Nathan Phillips, Edward Schneider, and Patrick Voller.

Here's an mp3 exceprt of the show, recorded by Charles Gillett.

[ s h u f f l e t r o n i c s ]
Monday February 5, 2007
Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis
+
Tuesday February 13th, 2007
Acadia Theater, Minneapolis

Not a performance per se on the 5th, but a presentation of recent work as part of the Institute for New Media Studies' Emerging Digerati series at the University of Minnesota.

I demonstrated in-progress compositions using randomized playback to create multi-layered soundscapes concerned with perception and memory. Source material was derived from interviews with people on their feelings about about sound, answering machine messages, and old family recordings. The work is presented via simultaneous playback of several mp3 players, each in "shuffle" mode. Each player's random playlist constitutes a layer of the resulting soundscape, assembling a different composition each time.

The following Tuesday at Acadia was more of a concert setting, and I had some of the kinks worked out for a much smoother performance by then. I presented a Shuffletronics remix of my Silent Night release, another iteration of the interview mix, and a "compulsory quintet" using samples of previous improvised sets by Bryce Beverlin II, Jaron Childs, Charles Gillett, Nathan Phillips, and Davu Seru (thanks for letting me use your stuff, guys). Went quite well I thought. I'll be putting together proper recordings of some Shuffletronics sessions soon for release-- stay tuned.

[ the control group @ acadia ] Tuesday January 23rd, 2007
Acadia Theater, Minneapolis

2007's first outing from the Control Group, an ongoing trio project consisting of myself, Cordell Klier, and Nathan Larson.

Download a recording of the performance here, at Mr. Larson's Dark Winter empire.