Monday, April 21, 2008

Bent Festival 2008


Bent 2008: New York

April 24 to 26

- Overview

Tickets

Each concert is $10.
A Festival Pass to all events is available for $25.
Buy tickets online: Smarttix

Location

87 Lafayette St (map)
New York, NY, 10013

Installations

Installations are permanently on display during festival hours.
Matt Durant (Toronto)
Phil Stearns (Los Angeles)
Ed Bear (NYC)
Dr. Bleep (Austin)
Steak (Austria)

Schedule

Concert 1 -
Thu, Apr 24, 6:00 PM
(DCTV) - $10
7:00

7:45

8:30
Steak (Austria)

9:15
Joo Youn Paek (Korea)

10:00
Phil Stearns (Los Angeles)

10:45
Dr. Bleep (Austin)

Concert 2 -
Fri, Apr 25, 7:00 PM
(DCTV) - $10
7:00
Carlos Antenna (Toronto)

7:45
Fran.x (France)

8:30

9:15

10:00
EraSer (Italy)

10:45
Emilie Mouchous (Montreal)
Erin Sexton (Montreal)

11:30
Dr. Rek (Japan)



Workshops -
Sat, Apr 26, 11:00 AM
(DCTV) -
11:00
Intro Workshop with
Free with your own toy! Or keyboard toys available for $10.
In the Madnoodler's introduction to circuit bending course, participants will learn the basics of circuit bending. Organizational skills and soldering will be demonstrated. Other skills to be developed include pin pointing bends and taking an ordinary keyboard and making it into an opto theremin. Using variations of the "starmate" style keyboard, participants will be urged to explore with photo-resistors and alligator clips to find unique possibilities. After the fun of exploring these versatile keyboards, participants will stabilize and optimize their creation by heat shrinking the connections.

1:00
Sensors - op-amps, comparators, and digitally controlled switches with
Phil Stearns (Los Angeles)
Buy Tickets Here
FOR EXPERIENCED ELECTRONIC TINKERERS an understanding of the electronics basics is a must though they will be rehashed briefly We will cover some basic types of analog sensors and look at how to interface them with circuit bending projects. The hands-on component will guide you through building a circuit that will allow sound and/or light to control bends.

1:00
Battery Powered Noise Generator with
Jessica Rylan (Boston)
Buy Tickets Here
Maybe you're interested in EVP (electronic voice phenomena) and want a good source of white noise. Maybe you're a nervous wreck and need something to drown the world out. Or maybe you feel the need to dance in from of a giant amp that's blasting harsh noise every once in a while! If so, then this is the workshop for you. We'll build a simple noise generator using a handful of resistors, capacitors, and transistors. We'll also talk about the fundamentals of electric circuits, physical and mathematical approaches to noise, and historical perspectives on the electronics industry.

3:00
Hands-On Digital Sampler Design and Analysis for Circuitbending Applications
Todd Bailey (Chicago)
Optional sampler kit available -- (Limited edition designed just for this class!) This class focuses on the fundamental architectures of the digital sampler -- how they work and what happens (technically) when you circuitbend them. I figured the best way to do this would be to design a sampler explicitly for this. In doing so I've tried to design a sampler which lends itself to circuitbending. As many of you know, older toys and instruments often lend themselves better to circuitbending than modern consumer products. The (one sentence) reason for this is the architecture of the circuits -- older chips couldn't do as much as new one can, so they needed more per toy, which essentially presents more "entry points" into the circuit. The sampler I've made (let's call her "Where's The Party At") explicitly brings as many functions out of the central microcontroller as possible -- clocks, addressing, data lines, and analog components are all exposed. This allows a couple things: 1.) It makes the function of the sampler more transparent, and easier for someone learning electronics to understand. 2.) It allows tinkering, as it exposes as many important circuit functions as possible. I'm going to spend the majority of the class talking about how audio gets from a microphone into a sampler and back out, referring to the Where's The Party At as a reference design. We'll look at the schematics, source code, printed circuit board layout, and examine the waveforms of a functioning sampler with an oscilloscope. The goal is to expose the nature of the digital sampler, why it makes the sounds it does, and why circuitbending can make it sound so freaked out. Bring a notebook! (ps -- you can check out the details of the WTPA as I get them done at http://www.narrat1ve.com/)

3:00
Intro to Video Bending with
Ed Bear (NYC)
Buy Tickets Here
The disappearing vocabulary of analog video is at once the signature of the 20th century and a powerful tool for recording, performance, and learning. A basic understanding of the video signal turns any television into an oscilloscope and all electronics into potential audio-visual instruments. The best way to learn is doing, and that is the focus of this class. Techniques of filtering and manipulating NTSC video signals will be demonstrated on working instruments frankensteined from old equipment. All Ages.

Concert 3 -
Sat, Apr 26, 7:00 PM
(DCTV) - $10



7:00

7:45

8:30
F4RM (Mexico)

9:15

10:00
alias pail (NYC)
10:45

11:30
Spunkytoofers (Backcountry Ozarks)

12:15
Burnkit 2600 (Connecticut)

Monday, February 25, 2008

Darmstadt at Galapagos

Gunung Sari

DARMSTADT "CLASSICS OF THE AVANT GARDE" PRESENTS

Gunung Sari

FEBRURARY 27, 7pm at GALAPAGOS ARTS SPACE

Gunung Sari, from the ancient Javanese for “Mountain Essence,” is the Brooklyn-based performance ensemble of Nick Lesley, Stanley Ruiz, and Michael Dotolo. While taking inspiration from Gamelan and other percussion-based folk musics of Southeast Asia (such as Kulintang), their instrumentation is anything but traditional. Circuit-bent electronics, homemade analog synthesizers, remnants of wood and metal are their main tools, in addition to the laptop, which is used both for image and sound processing.

Modeling their performances after the ritual forms played by Balinese “Sekaha” ensembles, from which their name is derived, the band has situated themselves in between New York’s improvisational noise and artified new media communities. Past shows include the annual Bent festival, La Superette at Eyebeam, free103point9’s “Noise!” festival at the Ontological Hysteric Theater, Issue Project Room, Monkey Town, in addition to rock venues in Brooklyn and beyond.

“As a band, we are interested in the similarities and differences regarding the physicality of manipulated circuits and more traditional instruments such as percussion, and using these opposing means in interplay of the intentional and interference. Gunung Sari is interested in topics like collaborative performance, multimedia events, spatial treatment of sound, and the raw power of noise.”—Gunung Sari

Their CD “That Wanderest Unseen” is available at Neck and Tongue music.

www.neckandtongue.com/gunungsari.htm
For more information and band history:

http://www.myspace.com/gunungsari

Hosts Nick Hallett and Zach Layton DJ “classics of the avant-garde” before and after the live set: Bülent Arel, Robert Ashley, Meredith Monk, Harry Partch, Toru Takemitsu etc.

DARMSTADT “CLASSSICS OF THE AVANT GARDE” presents
GUNUNG SARI
Wednesday, February 27, 7:00 pm
Galapagos Art Space
70 N 6th Street (between Wythe and Kent), Brooklyn
L to Bedford
$5 admission

Scrapcycle snaps







Friday, October 05, 2007

Scrapcycle @ Silent Barn


SCRAPCYCLE is an all-homemade-instruments show, an experiment in the extension of a found-material's (re)use-value to exchange-value, an attempt to foster the local found-material exchange community, and a forum for art and music created from found-materials.


ADMISSION IS A FOUND MATERIAL FOR BARTER (e.g. packing peanuts, pink foam, old books, a beat-up rug, telephone parts).

(..but if you forget your found-material, you can pay 6 bucks instead.)


the next scrapcycle is at SILENT BARN on friday october 5..


with

LOUD OBJECTS
SEASONAL AFFECT (KYLE LAPIDUS)
CASPER ELECTRONICS (PETE EDWARDS)
GUNUNG SARI
TOM VANDERWALL



and site-specific installations by

KYLE LAPIDUS - 100000 / it's your birthday (kyle's birthday = paper-roll-kazoos)
ED BEAR - remehavs (repurposed electro-mechanical energy harvesting audio-visual synthesizer)
JACOB BOYSEN - chandelabra
MARIE EVELYN - barter k-core and Ps & Qs



and

THE PRIZE FOR AWESOME-EST FOUND-MATERIAL/SCRAP-MATERIAL is




a wallet made from plastic grocery bags and styrofoam padding and thread.


so you won't be bummed, please don't just pick up a cigarette butt and a crushed pepsi bottle on your way over (unless you make an elaborate plastic castle with it beforehand), cause then the doorguy won't let you in.

he'll say 'too bad' and you'll miss the rad and be sad.

don't be sad, bring packing peanuts.


there will be stuff and other stuff for making stuff out of stuff and you can decorate the silent barn while you listen to the clickety-clackety.

upstairs = bands

downstairs = make stuff / decorate

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Sonic Circuits Festival - Washington DC


Hey everyone!

We will be performing at the Sonic Circuits Festival in DC next weekend.

Saturday, September 15 at The Warehouse
1017 7th St NW, Washington, DC 20001
Metro: Mount Vernon Sq/Convention Center
directions
Show time: 8:00pm
Tickets: $12.00
Baseline
Esther Venrooy
Oier Etxeberria
Hal McGee
Gunung Sari
Zan Hoffman
Ironing
Constant Mauk
am salad
Musica Ex Machina festival presentation


Link to Warehouse (Washington's Downtown Arts Complex).

See ya!!!

ARK Show - Boston


We played last Saturday at the Ark Show in Boston. It's a video performance night, and we played with two other acts - Qfwfq and Sven Konig.

Qfwfq is an amazing duo! Jackson Pollock meets Merzbow in a Star Wars set. That's how I would describe them - but of course there's more to them than that! One has to experience their performance. Short but sweet set (and noisy!).

We played a good set, with live video feedback. Lofi-ish but cool enough.

Thanks to Andrew for putting us on the bill!

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Gunung Sari @ Bent 2007 NY

Performance at Eyebeam, the atelier for Art and Technology. April 26, 2007.