As a teen making his first super 8 films while studying piano, Benton-C Bainbridge doubted he would ever master keys if he had to wait a week to get his rehearsals back from the lab. Benton-C thus dived head first into realtime electronic cinema, launching a decades-long exploration into ways that audiovisuals can be played like a visual form of music. Along the way, Bainbridge has co-founded live media performance ensembles, co-composing works that were performed dozens of times. Bainbridge will relate his personal history of composing and scoring for A/V Performance, sharing his conclusions and looking forward to next steps for scoring visual media. Benton-C Bainbridge is a media artist based in The Bronx. Working with custom systems of his own design, Bainbridge creates immersive environments, interactive installations and video performances. Early influences like Expanded Cinema and Nam June Paik’s networked TV performances convinced him that motion pictures could be played, like a visual form of music. Working with other artists, he has composed, scored and performed many suites of a/v songs. He has collaborated with scores of artists around the world, co-founding the A/V Performance Ensembles 77 Hz, The Poool, NNeng, Lord Knows Compost and Stackable Thumb. Bainbridge has shown in venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, American Museum of the Moving Image, The Kitchen (NYC), EMPAC (Troy, NY), the American Museum of Natural History, SFMoMA (San Francisco), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.), Dallas Video Festival, Boston Cyberarts Festival, Mercat des les Flors (Barcelona), LUX2006 (Sevilla), Auditorium Parco della Musica (Roma), Sonic Light (Amsterdam), Wien Moderne (Vienna), Inventionen (Berlin), Teatro Colón CETC (Buenos Aires), CELCIT (Managua), International Horticultural Expo (Xi’an, China), Korean Festival (Seoul), Good Vibrations (Australia), and MTV Networks (global). Currently, Benton-C Bainbridge is salvaging obsolete video tech to make hi-touch media installations. Glowing Pictures (Benton-C Bainbridge and V Owen Bush) is launching the Dubspot Visual Program in early 2013.
