2003

The Sixth Annual Activating the Medium Festival:
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, February 7, 8 and 9
Mills College, Oakland, February 10
Cuesta Community College, San Luis Obispo, February 15
Cuesta Community College Exhibition, San Luis Obispo, February 5-22

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) joins 23five Incorporated to present the Sixth Annual Activating the Medium Festival 2003. This year's festival presents performances, installations and panel discussions from internationally recognized sound artists exploring the expansive dialogue between sound and architecture.

In any presentation of sound art, the physical properties of sound and its occupation of time and space declare one
of the most challenging elements that separates the medium of sound from other art forms. This condition has
inspired a basis from which sound artists realize, generate and structure experience—where the fundamentals of
acoustics and the interconnection between sound and architecture become the principle dialogue.

The Sixth Annual Activating the Medium Festival presents performances, installations and discussions by sound
artists exploring areas within the expansive dialogue of sound and architecture. From spatial-acoustic concerts to
site-specific installations, the festival aims to not only present compelling works of sound art, but to stimulate a
greater awareness of architecture and its relevance to our experience of sound.

Friday, February 7
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Phyllis Wattis Theater
Live Performance:
Leif Elggren
Infrasound 10: Randy Yau and Scott Arford
Brandon LaBelle
Michael Gendreau

Saturday, February 8
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Phyllis Wattis Theater
Live Performance:
Carl Michael von Hausswolff & Leif Elggren
Achim Wollscheid
Panel Discussion:
Leif Elggren, Michael Gendreau, Christina Kubisch, Scott Arford, Jim Haynes and Achim Wollscheid
Moderated by Brandon LaBelle

February 7 - 9
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Schwab Room
Installation:
Christina Kubisch Diapason (2002)

Monday, February 10
Mills College, CCM Ensemble Room
Artist Lecture:
Christina Kubisch

Saturday, February 15
Cuesta Community College, Interact Theater
Live Performance:
Michael Gendreau
Bret Parker and Jennifer Parker
Infrasound 11: Scott Arford and Randy H.Y. Yau

February 5-22
Cuesta Community College Exhibition Gallery
Iinstallation
Achim Wollscheid Square (2002)

Curated by Randy H.Y. Yau and David Prochaska

LEIF ELGGREN is a Swedish visual and recording artist currently working in Stockholm. Elggren's work exists somewhere between the poles of power and impotence. New works are being constantly and single-mindedly added like modules to what in fact is a larger system. Although Leif Elggren is one of the most important contemporary artists in Sweden, he remains comparatively unknown to a wider audience. Over the years, he has collaborated with artists such as Thomas Liljenberg, Kent Tankred, CM von Hausswolff and Erik Pauser. His work has been shown at biennials in Venice and Johannesburg, and his music has been released throughout Europe.

CARL MICHAEL VON HAUSSWOLFF is a Swedish composer currently working in Stockholm. His work involves studies of electricity, frequency, and intonation within the framework of a challenging conceptual ideology of sound. Much of his sound art incorporates the use of a tape recorder as the main instrument. Hausswolff's audiovisual installations have been shown at biennials in Istanbul and Johannesburg, and his music has been performed throughout Europe and North America.
Infrasound is a spatial-acoustic concert series performed by Randy Yau and Scott Arford. This series explores the ability of sound to measure the capacity of architecture. The principal mission is to activate both body and space through the translation of sound into vibration. In doing so, the artists create conditions in which audience members will develop new modes of perceiving and experiencing their own bodies and space around them.

In ACHIM WOLLSCHEID's work the art object is reduced to a systematic response to a given situation: lights react to passers-by, sound banks play back in response to voices and ambient noise, lights dim randomly, objects and rooms resonate against the drumming of small hammers. Through applying these systems of interaction and response, the art object as a singular body disappears in order to reveal the broader, delicate interplay of multiple bodies within social space.

One of sound art's female pioneers in the 1970's, CHRISTINA KUBISCH 's work fluctuates between sound installations, performance, and spatial configurations in which she experiments with light and objects. Her most recent work incorporates the technical components of sound as aesthetic elements.

MICHAEL GENDREAU is a sound artist most widely recognized for his work with Crawling With Tarts, a musical collaboration in which sound operas combine surface noise, institutional records, and offset transcription discs. As an acoustic engineer for Colin Gordon & Associates, he also specializes in environmental noise studies using computer models. Gendreau focuses and creates reports on interior noise and vibration control, structural dynamic testing, as well as vibration design criteria and interpretation of local noise regulations.

BRANDON LABELLE is both a sound artist and a writer, currently working out of Los Angeles. His work with sound installation and performance aims to draw attention to the phenomenal dynamics of sound as it is found within spaces and objects, public events and interactions, language and the body. Through a performative interaction with found-sound, built electronics and contact microphones, specific architectural environments become "live instruments." LaBelle's work has been featured in "Bitstreams" at the Whitney Museum, and at the 9th International Symposium of Electronic Arts in Liverpool and Manchester.