apexart :: Disquiet Junto


SPECULATIVE SOUND PERFORMANCE WITH DISQUIET JUNTO

"Here, there was the continuous purring of a machine at work, the customers shovelled in, heaped in front of the displays and dazzled by the goods, before being hurled against the cash desks."
-Émile Zola

In conjunction with the exhibition As Real As It Gets, organized by Rob Walker.


Tuesday, November 27: 6:30 pm

An exercise in sonic branding, this event asks musicians from the Disquiet Junto collective to create pieces that interrogate the atmosphere and sounds of a department store as described in an Émile Zola novel.

Featuring:
Arcka (Shawn Kelly)
Brian Biggs
Ethan Hein
Kenneth Kirschner
Tom Moody
Joon Oluchi Lee
Roddy Schrock

 
Musicians affiliated with the online Disquiet Junto collective, organized by Marc Weidenbaum, will gather to perform speculative sound works that employ as source material documentary audio from retail establishments. These musicians will present imagined soundscapes inspired by Émile Zola's characterization of the department store, in his novel The Ladies' Paradise, as "a machine working at high pressure." They'll also discuss their creative and technological practices.

Marc Weidenbaum founded the website Disquiet.com in 1996 at the intersection of sound, art, and technology. He has written for Nature, the website of The Atlantic, Boing Boing, NewMusicBox.org, and numerous other publications. He's teaching a fall 2012 class on sound at San Francisco's Academy of Art. He's commissioned and curated sound/music projects that have featured original works by Kate Carr, Marcus Fischer, Marielle Jakobsons, John Kannenberg, Tom Moody, Steve Roden, Scanner, Roddy Shrock, Robert Thomas, and Stephen Vitiello, among others. He's currently writing a book about Aphex Twin's 1994 album Selected Ambient Works Volume II for the 33 1/3 series. He lives in San Francisco.  
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Arcka is a producer, studio and live engineer raised in New Jersey and currently based out of Philadelphia. Getting a head start at a young age, Arcka has worked steadily to build a place for himself within the world of hip-hop and soul. His first beat tape was made on cassette at age 12. Since then, he has continued on the path to becoming an MPC virtuoso. Studying under the techniques of hip-hop heavyweights such as RZA, Pete Rock, the late J Dilla and Madlib, he has set out to explore a new sound using the instrument.  
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Brian Biggs is a Philadelphia-based writer and illustrator with a synthesizer problem. Growing up in the 80s, he was obsessed with cheesy synth-pop and new wave bands, which eventually led to several years of programming beats and sounds with software like Reason and Reaktor. In 2009, Brian ran across an article in a magazine about modular synths, and in 2010 began learning the guitar. This combination has opened up a whole new world of audio and sound exploration, happily away from the computer for the most part. Brian documents these sonic adventures in his website, DanceRobotDance.com; and information about his writing and illustration can be found at MrBiggs.com.  
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Ethan Hein is a graduate student in Music Technology at NYU. For his masters thesis, he is designing software for beginner musicians using the hip-hop/dance paradigm. He also works as a recording engineer, producer and music teacher.
 
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The music of composer Kenneth Kirschner (b. 1970) exists at the intersections of acoustic instrumentation and digital technology, and of avant-garde classical composition and contemporary electronic music. Kirschner's work is known for its intricately intersecting patterns, complex long-form development, strong focus on harmony, and experimentation with techniques such as chance procedures, indeterminacy, and microtonality. He releases his music online through his website (kennethkirschner.com), which represents a complete and freely accessible archive of his published compositions dating back to the 1980s. Kirschner's work has also been released by record labels such as Sub Rosa, 12k, Line, Sirr, Leerraum, and/OAR, and Room40.  
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Joon Oluchi Lee is a text and body-maker. He is the author of The Joy of the Castrated Boy, lipstickeater.blogspot.com, and . He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley and is a professor at Rhode Island School of Design, where he teaches courses on prose-making, performance theory, and gender studies. Lee lives in Brooklyn with his handbags and partner Roddy.

Roddy Schrock creates sound objects rooted in embodiment and the visceral impulse to communicate. He has lived and worked in Tokyo, the Netherlands, Northern California. He now lives in Brooklyn with his partner, and muse, Joon. He studied at Mills College and the Royal Conservatory of the Hague.
 
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New York-based musician Tom Moody been uploading tracks made with home computers and various gear to his blog at http://www.tommoody.us since 2004. He has posted over 600 songs. His earliest music was made with the Macintosh SE computer but he works primarily on a PC now. He has collaborated with Earcon (on the CD "Scratch Ambulance"), Travis Hallenbeck, and others. He is interviewed in the documentary film "8-Bit" but he considers his music to be "on the periphery of that scene due to extra bits."   video not available
     
 
     



Please join us.
All events are free and open to the public.

apexart's exhibitions and and public programs are supported in part by the Affirmation Arts Fund, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Edith C. Blum Foundation, Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, The Greenwich Collection Ltd., Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, and with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts.

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