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/////////////Five Audio Artworks from the [R][R][F] SoundLab, 2004:
1)"The perverse possibility of living in the memory of somebody dead (I)" and
"The perverse possibility of living in the memory of somebody dead (II)",
by Max Haiven
2) "The Tower", by Annabelle Chvostek and Anna Friz
3) "superimposition", by Carrie Gates
4) "Smile of Sardonicus", by Jon Vaughn
5) "Quadrant Cross", by tobias c. van Veen










/////////////PROJECT DETAILS:

edition01.Canada

Curator

Sound-Art from Canada but not from anywhere in particular
curated by tobias c. van Veen
http://www.quadrantcrossing.org/blog

///Curatorial Statement
Vast expanse often leads to bouts of topographical uncertainty: where and how does a sense of coherence, or even incoherence, form in a characteristic Western experience that is typically and all that much more sharply divided between the metropolis and our othered sense of nature? Predominantly products of urban environments, Canadian artists are perhaps particularily attenuated to the historical, progammatic violence that constructs the nation-state. It is only by denying First Nations people entitlement and by deploying a fixed notion of property that Canada enforces its territory and established its governance. These memories of topography are coursed with violence, and are to be found echoing, as traces and tactics, through sound recordings, manipulations and sonic rearticulations that consider a vast region of topics but always retain the grit and dust, the violence, that forms the struggles of power over the topos.

///Bio
[tobias c. van Veen] is a renegade theorist & pirate, techno-turntablist & writer (Montréal). He is Concept Engineer at SAT [sat.qc.ca] and Project Leader of Sonic Scene in the Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN). Since 1993 he has internationally curated over fifty independent conceptual and sound-art events, working with STEIM, Mutek, the New Forms Festival, the Banff Centre, the Video-In, Upgrade!, the Vancouver New Music Society and Hexagram. His work has appeared in CTheory, EBR, Bad Subjects, Leonardo, FUSE (contributing editor), e/i (columnist), Capital (columnist), Discorder (columnist), the Wire, HorizonZero and through Autonomedia, among others. His writing has been translated into Spanish, Lithuanian and French and his art disseminated through Rhizome.org, Javamuseum.org, Kunstradio, Burn.fm, CiTR, No Type’s BricoLodge and the and/OAR labels. From 1993-2000 he was Direktor of the sonic performance Collective on the West Coast (shrumtribe.com) and co-founder of technoWest.org and thisistheonlyart.com. Tobias is Ph.D candidate in Philosophy & Communication at McGill, Montreal and New School, NYC. He mixes a mean absynthe martini. His blog resides at: http://www.quadrantcrossing.org/blog


/////////////Artists

[1]
Anna Friz and Annabelle Chvostek
The Tower (excerpt from “The Automated Prayer Machine”)


///Bios:
Anna Friz is a sound and radio artist who divides her time between Montreal and Toronto. Since 1998 she has predominantly created self-reflexive radio for
broadcast, installation or performance, where radio is the source, subject, and medium of the work. From the childhood fiction of "the little people in the radio" to documentary remixes of live political events, she creates dynamic, atmospheric works equally able to reflect upon public media culture or to reveal
interior landscapes. Anna has broadcast and performed across Canada, and in the US, Mexico, and across Europe. She is working on a Ph.D in the joint Communications and Culture programme at York/Ryerson universities, Toronto, and is a free103point9 transmission artist.

Annabelle Chvostek is a Montreal-based composer, videographer, singer and multi-instrumentalist. Her audio creations range from abstract electroacoustics and sample-rich grooves to contemporary folk songs. She has created multi-media performances and soundscores for dance in New York City, Montreal and Toronto; and has made award-winning short videos that have aired at festivals like Chicago’s Geoconference and Vancouver’s Edgewise Electrolit Videopoem Festival.

Together Anna and Annabelle toured the audio-visual performance piece “The Automated Prayer Machine” in winter 2004 to the Digitales festival, Brussels, and Transmediale, Berlin; and to independent venues in Rotterdam, Hamburg, Vienna and Bratislava. They will
be taking the Prayer Machine to Quito Ecuador this winter.

///Description:
The radio serves as a harbinger of bad news, i.e. political upheaval, corporate collapse or take-over, wars abroad, wars at home, hateful official speeches; not to mention the overly sensationalized accounts of people dying in crashes, bombings and fires, wives murdered by spouses, dogs run over, etc. Violent death and violent speech spill incessantly out of the receiver. We in the West can experience the worst of world events remotely, and the listener response to this aural bombardment is not one of action so much as depression, fear, and political apathy.

The Tower is an excerpt from The Automated Prayer Machine, a live multi-media performance that incorporates video and low-watt FM broadcast with soundscapes and music created live using electronic and traditional instruments. The Tower reflects on the violence of daily news that encourages long-term memory loss and righteous ignorance with regard to political and social realities.





[2] Carrie Gates
superimposition


///Bio:
Carrie Gates is an interdisciplinary artist who works primarily with audio, video, radio, print materials, and situations. Since 1996, she has hosted the experimental electronic music programme “Deep Nocturnal Trance Missions” on the Saskatoon Community Radio station, CFCR 90.5FM. During that time, Gates has also earned a reputation as a staple in the electronic arts community by organizing events, facilitating performance art, designing public relations materials, and DJing regularly. Her long term obsession with vinyl records has led her to the Vinyl Interventions project, along with artists Esther Bourdages (Montreal, QC) and Marinko Jareb (St. Catherines, ON), where workshops, presentations, and concerts about the practices of experimental turntablism and the use of vinyl records as sculptural materials are presented to the public. Upcoming activities include the launch of a net.label, BricoLodge , designed and co-curated with artist Jon Vaughn (Saskatoon, SK). Recent events include Phantom Power (Saskatoon, SK). Since 2002, Gates has been a Member of the Board of Directors of the artist-run centre, Paved Art + New Media , and was recently appointed Chairperson. She is currently employed as the Curatorial Assistant at the Kenderdine Art Gallery at the University of Saskatchewan, and is entering her fourth year of studies towards her Art History Degree.

///Description:
Violence can be perceived as a certain measure of the difference within a juxtaposition, interruption, or pressing together‚ of contrasting elements. For example, the phrase rude awakening‚ describes a violent coming-to-terms with the contrast of one vein of thought being interrupted by another way of seeing. The violence inherent in the gap between the activities of the mind and the constant bombardment of the senses by the everyday is always in a state of flux, as foci of thought are constantly interrupted and informed by physicality. These measures of difference are realms of interest that often form our memories of events, and when considered as part of the unique experience of each person‚s life trajectory, these memories make a strong contribution to an unfixed notion of identity and the internal constructs of individual realities. August 2004.

Carrie Gates wishes to thank Jon Vaughn, Abraxus, and tobias c. van Veen for their support on this project.





[3] max haiven
1. The perverse possibility of living in the memory of someone dead (I)
2. The perverse possibility of living in the memory of someone dead (I)


///Bio:
max haiven works at becoming an artist/activist/academic with an eye to teasing the distinction between the three. Currently residing in Hamilton, Ontario, he has experimented with many media, collectives and disciplines. Currently, he is pursuing his M.A. in Globalization at McMaster University. His research interests include the impact of internet file-sharing, artists’ collectives and cooperatives, critical media studies, gender and sexuality, and social movements. His recent artistic practices engage audio and video, experimenting with things like banality, techno, feedback, horror and style. There is a special place in his heart for the subtle nuances and glitches of digital technology and he enjoys finding new ways to work with old machines and obsolete software. He has presented at several festivals around Canada and his work appears on various compilations. In 2003, NoType.com released max haiven and Jon Vaughn’s collaborative work “Front” on compact disk and the two have been showcasing it across Canada over the past year. max is digitally at home with Montreal based net.label NoType.com and its upcoming sub-label ‘Bricolodge.

///Description:
The Perverse Possibility of Living in the Memory of Someone Dead parts I and II address themes of memory, identity and violence by using some stuff including the radio and the piano. We are so caught up in the memories we wish our predecessors had. I am thinking of the tragedy that has befallen colonial-settler states like Canada. So many folks build such elaborate fantasies, perverse jungle-gyms in the image of anachronistic memories: grim offerings to ghosts of ostensibly simpler times. The land and its inhabitants and their lives are violently flattened to make way for a plane of commercialized sensations of a depressurized past. These two pieces are inspired, perhaps, by living in Halifax where a text is being fabricated to please American tourists, armies of whom are deployed from gargantuan cruise ships throughout the summer months. Their desires expressed through their dollars, shape a civic memory and identity erased from which is the violence on which this city is founded and which it still contains - an act of erasure which is itself a violence. But this is an easy target. These visitors’ profound lust for lost authenticity betrays some pretty disturbing stuff.





[4] tobias c. van Veen
quadrant.cross
http://www.quadrantcrossing.org/

///Bio: (See above).

///Description:
Drifting across water and what disturbs is the incommensurable distance between your body and the seafloor. Your ears are walking through the experience but to finish its moments you are stuck at the point of calling departure. How to hear, wonder, to turn your ear. Is what I am hearing now composed for me? quadrant.cross composed July-August 2002 in British Columbia. Manipulation of field recordings in burial memory.





[5] Jon Vaughn
Smile of Sardonicus [parts 1+2+3]


///Bio:
Jon Vaughn is a audio & visual artist, DJ, art historian, events coordinator, programmer & curator currently based in Saskatoon, Saskachewan. In May of 2004 Vaughn performed at & co-curated the electronic audio & video festival entitled Phantom Power, in North Bay, Ontario (http://www.kennedygallery.org)that/ featured artists Kero, Tomas Jirku, Max Haiven, tobias c. van Veen, Carrie Gates, Marinko Jareb aka dj <>, the Thinkbox Collective, Magali Babin & Dermot Wilson. This festival was an informal sequal to the event Digidome (http://www.digidome.ca/) held in Saskatoon, Saskachewan. In October of 2003, Vaughn released a CD with the Montreal-based label and collective, No Type. The disc was released in conjuction with a live performance at the No Type-curated Pre-rien sub-series of the Rien-a-Voir festival. The CD is entitled Front‚ and is the result of an intense three-year collaboration with Halifax-based writer/essayist/theorist, activist & audio & visual artist, Max Haiven. Front is undoubtably Vaughn’s and Haiven’s most experimental, challenging, complex and enjoyable work to date. However there is rumoured that is only the beginning of something much more terrifying to come….

In Vaughn’s past, he is has been an active instrumental improviser, painter, poet, short story writer, aspiring ufologist, no-budget horror video-maker, and even singer-songwriter. As of 2004, he now focuses on finishing a Bachelor’s in Art History from the University of Saskatchewan, practicing experimental, electroacoustic, and electronic audio composition, DJ’ing, drawing, amateur photography, the occasional improvisation usually utilizing the no-input mixing board and/or computer, enjoying tender moments with his partner, watching weird movies, collecting objects from everyday life as ‘readymade’ art pieces for future exhibitions, planning more video work about monsters and gross silly stuff & playing zombies & monsters for other people’s video or film projects, composing soundtracks for film and video artists, curating and programming for virtual and actual audio projects, emailing, reading, attempting “performance art” & dancing in the club or wherever and whenever he feels a groove move his ass.

///Description:

“Smile of Sardonicus [parts 1+2+3]” is inspired by William Castle’s 1961 film “Mr. Sardonicus” which is based on Ray Russell’s short story “Sardonicus” written in the same year. It is the story of a man who to driven to dig the grave of his dead father in search of a winning lottery ticket. When the man gazes upon his father’s corpse, the overwhelming shock of seeing the flesh of the face rot and peel back revealing a hideous toothy skeletal grin freezes his own face into a mirror image including the sketched out smile‚ as it were rendering his visual appearance terrifying, perhaps almost as terrifying as that of his father’s corpse. He renames himself Mr. Sardonicus after the Latin term “risus sardonicus” which literally means “sardonic grin” and is the term used to describe a condition of distorted grinning expression caused by involuntary prolonged contraction of the facial muscles, especially as a result of tetanus. Mr. Sardonicus cashes in on the winning ticket, creates a mask somewhat ideally representing his former appearance and buys a big ass castle to mope around in & torture his fellow room-mates; his wife, who married him purely for financial gain - and his cyclops hunchback assistant, Krull, who seems eternally indebted to the Sard.

Throughout the film Mr. Sardonicus tries exhausting methods of therapy and treatment to bring zero results. My composition goes through various modes all with diverse rhythms and tempos, that search continuously for a resolution, a continuity, a smooth space or a fields of parallelisms but fail and instead exist only to engage in their processes and that instead of resolving or closing or coming together, bleed into the next process of therapy, treatment
or exercise.

Mr. Sardonicus’ condition appears to be psychosomatic as the story unfolds, but the Sard’s denial of this only offers him a bountiful reservoir of pain and madness. He is a diligent soldier at war against his self, the self that is aware of its own tiresome and difficult droning existence as well as its own inevitable fate that haunts it. He embodies the ghoul, the graverobber, who gazes into the face of death and is cursed to wear the mark that exhibits the memory and is the writing on the flesh that details his own inflictions of violence towards the self and its mortal fate.










/////////////BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

[R][R][F]2004--->XP
[Remembering-Repressing-Forgetting]
global networking project by Agricola de Cologne
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004
as part of
Biennale of Electronic Art in Perth/Australia
www.beap.org
7 September - 17 November 2004.
.
SoundLab Channel is that place within the global networking project
where collective memory can manifest itself in non-visual art works as
soundart in its various forms.
.
SoundLab Channel includes soundart works in three categories
a) curatorial contributions
b) curated individual artists
c) program consisting of existing soundart programs from different Internet
radia stations around the globe
.
The first version of SoundLab Channel - Biennale of Electronic Art/Perth -edition -
includes
a) curatorial contributions by
1. Tobias Van Veen (Montreal/Canada) curating following artists
Anna Friz and Annabelle Chvostek, Carrie Gates, max haiven, tobias c. van Veen, Jon Vaughn

2. John Kannenberg (Chicago/USA) curating following artists
Glen Bach, Thanis Chrysakis, Goh Lee Kwang, Neil Jendon, John Kanneberg, David Mckenzie, Malte Steiner

3. Juan Antonio Lleo (Madrid/Spain) curating following artists
Alfonso Garcia de la Torre, Juan Carlos Carrazon, Pierre Elie Mamou, Juan Manuel Ruiz, Juan Antonio Lleo

4. Zoe Drayton (Auckland/New Zealand) curating following artists
Antony Milton, Joyoti Wylie, Adam Willets, Audible3, Tim Coster

5. Eva Sjuve (Bergen/Norway) curating following artists in BEK_International
Janek Schaefer, Miha Ciglar, Antti Sakari-Saario, Pierre Proske, Kristin
Norderval

b) individual artists curated by Melody Parker-Carter (based on an open call
in Internet)
Marcello Mercado , Andrea Polli, Colin Black, Ivan Bachev, Lynne Williams,
Adam Overton , TACTICAL20, Robert Ciesla, Kirsten Reese, Le Tuan Hung , Ros Bandt, Wolfgang Menzel, nick barker & r. jacobs , David McCallum, John Plenge, Wittwulf Y Malik , Remigio Coco, Judson Wright, NOTUS, Ludovic Guerry, ruediger schloemer, Pawel Janicki, Natalia Ludmila, Abinadi Meza , Caroline de Lannoy, Toni Mestrovic, Kenji Siratori, Goh Lee Kwang, Darko Fritz, Alison Chung-Yan, Leif Inge, Juergen Winderl

c) the first soundart feature includes
"Radio and Sound Art from Australia" as it was found and extracted from the Archives of Kunstradio/Vienna (Austria) including Chris Mann , Chris Mann & Jim Pugliesi, Ion Pearce, Andrew Yencken, Ros Bandt, Elwyn Dennis, Machine for Making Sense (Amanda Stewart, Jim Denley, Rik Rue and Stevie Wishart), Russell Stapleton, David Chesworth/Sonia Leber










/////////////SoundLab Channel is a New Media art environment
created by Agricola de Cologne for
ConcertHall www.le-musee-divisioniste.org/concerthall
and [R][R][F]2004--->XP www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004
and is part of
[NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||cologne
contact --> concerthall@le-musee-divisioniste.org










/////////////FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE VISIT:

http://soundlab.newmediafest.org/blog/
http://soundlab.newmediafest.org/blog/?page_id=4
http://soundlab.newmediafest.org
http://www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/

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