2010

Thirteenth Annual Festival of Sound Art : Ice

Activating The Medium XIII : Ice : Chapter One
April 16, 2010
G*Park
Joshua Churchill (t/r)
Adam Sonderberg
Panel / Lecture hosted by Cheryl Leonard
The Lab, San Francisco
co-presented by Swissnex
www.thelab.org :: www.swissnexsanfrancisco.org

Activating The Medium XIII : Ice : Chapter Two
April 17, 2010
Cheryl Leonard
Pedestrial Deposit
Jesse Burson
Rale
The Lab, San Francisco
www.thelab.org

Activating The Medium XIII : Ice : Chapter Three
April 16 - 23, 2010
G* Park video installations : Soylent Green, Daphnia Magna, & 3 Small Clips
Swissnex
www.swissnexsanfrancisco.org

23five Incorporated, in collaboration with Swissnex and The Lab, present the thirteenth annual Activating The Medium festival, with two nights of performances from local and international sound artists. Each year, 23five curates Activating The Medium around a specific theme that seeks to underscore the connectivity between artists working with various methods and materials. Previously, Activating The Medium has explored sound ecology, audio mimesis, and the relationship between sound and architecture. For the 2010 festival, 23five presents a theme of ice -- the physical, geographic, metaphoric, and mythological attributes to ice as manifested through sound.

Cheryl E. Leonard is a composer, performer, and instrument-builder whose work investigates sounds, structures and objects from the natural world. In 2009, Leonard traveled to Palmer Station, Antarctica and gathered recordings and natural materials to create music with. For Activating The Medium, she will present a set of Antarctic compositions exploring elements of the region's environments and ecosystems. Leonard's works will be performed live by a small ensemble playing amplified ice, stones, shells and penguin bones.

A member of the Swiss Aktionist collective Schimpfluch-Gruppe, G*Park (aka Marc Zeier) has quietly produced an oblique catalogue of recordings and performances dating back to the early '80s. His strategies of sound production involve abstruse studies in musique concrete, clinical electronics, prepared piano, and manipulated field recordings. In his debut performance in California, G*Park will render his composition through the sound of frozen lakes and ice caves, various hydrophone recordings, and the audio from what Zeier qualifies as "microscopic creatures."

The music of Jon Borges and Shannon Kennedy of Pedestrian Deposit could best be described as highly composed, focused and dynamic, experimental music that draws on their widely varying music talents. From Borges's interest in such areas as electronics, tape loops, field recording, and synths, to Shannon's use of classical instruments, contact mics and manipulated metal objects, the duo combine elements of musique concrete, ambient, drone, classical and harsh noise.

Joshua Churchill (also known as t/r) is a San Francisco based cross-disciplinary artist whose site-specific sound and light work takes the form of both installation and performance, very often blurring the line between the two. Utilizing resonant frequency drones, field recordings, induced feedback, and reactive lighting, Churchill’s dynamic works compel one to become critically aware of their surroundings by exploring the aesthetic, emotive, and structural qualities of the environments in which they are situated.

Adam Sonderberg is a composer working predominantly with concrète-based composition, operating for many years out of Chicago in the projects Haptic and The Dropp Ensemble. For Activating The Medium, Sonderberg proposes a composition for real and imagined ice. He states, "Having recently moved to the Bay Area from Chicago, my only contact with ice has been in the domestic sphere – more specifically in our freezer. This contrasts sharply with the profusion of snow and ice on the ground during a typical Chicago winter. I find this contrast quite jarring and will seek to assemble an aural environment that will hopefully mitigate my disquiet."

Jesse Burson is a sound artist and illustrator intent on coaxing large environments out of minute details while blurring the lines between natural and man-made elements. He has collaborated with a number of Bay Area musicians over the years including Big City Orchestra, fellow festival performer Cheryl Leonard, Thomas Carnacki, and the inn. aff. (orchext.) big band. Jesse’s first solo performance visits the memory of the yuki-onna, the snow woman of Japanese folklore.

In 2006, William Hutson began recording and performing as Rale, whose analog modular synth noise compositions have one foot planted in the avant-garde and one in the scum infested tape underground. He has released music on Monorail Tresspassing, Arbor Records, Peasant Magik, and Ekhein and has an LP forthcoming on San Francisco's Isounderscore label. At Activating the Medium, Rale will perform an edit of a new work in progress titled Lovely Limb of the House, one movement of which takes inspiration from the sound of ice cubes in a cocktail glass.