['til death do us a part]

April 10, 2008

Type: discussion

<img src='http://transition.turbulence.org/networked_music_review/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/logo_300.jpg' alt='logo_300.jpg' />

Networked Music Review Commission:
<a href="http://turbulence.org/works/earos/">['til death do us a part]</a>
by Tobias c. van Veen (aka saibotuk)
[b][color=#FF0000]Live Performance in New York Tomorrow![/color][/b]
Part of <a href="http://csis.pace.edu/digitalgallery/ProgrammableMedia/2008.html">[color=#FF0000][b]Programmable Media II: Networked Music Symposium[/b][/color]</a>
Not in New York? Join us in <a href="http://slurl.com/secondlife/Emerson%20Island/193/12/36/?img=http%3A//institute.emerson.edu/vma/faculty/john_craig_freeman/imaging_place/imaging-placeSL/emerson/slurl.jpg&title=Bill%20Bordy%20Theatre%20and%20Auditorium,%20Emerson%20Island&msg=Bill%20Bordy%20Theatre%20and%20Auditorium">Second Life</a>.

Dead media unwinds time from its spools. Two electromagnetic machines capture the unfolding of an era in which memory encodes the loving caress of electron imprinted tape. Time out of joint falls in & out of tape sync; more inhuman than human loops the frequency.

“I wanted my human experience with machinic love to have the intensity of a hands-on relationship.”

Thus, van Veen turned to reel-to-reel (RTR) tape machines and Konstantin Raudive’s experiments with blank media in which he attempted to record the 'voices of the dead'. (Little did van Veen know that John Hudak was exploring similar terrain in <a href="http://turbulence.org/works/paradise">Voices from the Paradise Network</a>.)

"This led to a series of investigations of the sonic realm arising between two networked R2R machines, a simple mixer and a DSP processor (to add spatialization and stereo channel manipulation to sometimes mono signals). These investigations revealed a performative realm, a space to improvise and to develop a capacity to 'play' the machines, or rather tweak & twiddle their hard knobs into spasms of ecstasy, cries of joy &, at times, moans of despair. The machines sang to me & each other, & I was drawn into the deadzone…"

['til death do us a part] is a 2007 commission of <a href="http://new-radio.org">New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.</a>, for <a href="http://turbulence.org/networked_music_review/">Networked Music Review</a>. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

<a href="http://www.quadrantcrossing.org/blog">Tobias c. van Veen</a> is a renegade theorist and pirate, techno-turntablist and writer. Since 1993 he has directed conceptual and sound-art events, online interventions and radio broadcasts, working with STEIM, the New Forms Festival, the Banff Centre, Eyebeam, the Video-In, MUTEK, MDCN.ca, the Vancouver New Music Society and Hexagram. His work has appeared in CTheory, EBR, Bad Subjects, Leonardo, Locus Suspectus, FUSE (contributing editor), e/i, the Wire, HorizonZero and through Autonomedia, among others. He has sonic and mix releases on No Type's BricoLodge and the and/OAR labels. From 1993-2000 he was Direktor of the sonic performance Collective [shrumtribe.com] in Vancouver. He is co-founder of technoWest.org with Dave Bodrug, controltochaos.ca with DJ FISHEAD and thisistheonlyart.com with artist ssiess. From 2002-2007 Director of UpgradeMTL [upgrademtl.org] and Concept Engineer at the Society for Arts and Technology [SAT.qc.ca]. Tobias is doctoral candidate in Philosophy & Communication Studies at McGill University.