Reviewing

Alessandro Bosetti, Mask/Mirror

Frieder Weiss

Frieder Weiss
December 10 at Harvestworks
Frieder Weiss, creator of the interactive media environment in Chunky Move’s Mortal Engine, shown at BAM on Dec 10-12 talked about his participation in and observations of the “dance tech” genre over the last 15 years.

Cyberfest 2009
November 20 – 29 in St. Petersburgh, Russia
Harvestworks participated in an Cyberfest 2009, an International festival of cybernetic art in St. Petersburg, Russia. Harvestworks staff members Hans Tammen and Carol Parkinson gave workshops, lectures and performances throughout the festival. This engagement is supported by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through US Artists International in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Play With Fire Festival
November 7 – 15 at various locations
With Kristin Trethewey, Harvestworks co-produced this festival celebrating the breadth and depth of video possibilities through art.

New York Electronic Art Festival
September 29 – October 28 at various locations
Harvestworks produced the 2nd New York Electronic Art Festival in partnership with arts>World Financial Center, Roulette and New York University. Events took place at numerious locations throughout New York City. Complete details at www.nyeaf.org

Esacpe video screening
Harvestworks hosted a screening of Escape, a selection of fifteen experimental video works by eighteen artists curated by J.J. Kegan McFadden from the collection of Video Pool Media Arts Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba

Ichiigai: audio art from Karlsruhe, Germany
August 25 at Harvestworks
Harvestworks hosted Ichiigai the German experimental audio-art collective which has been exploring a fusion of sound, music, video and art since 2004. Ichiigai is also an artist-run label based in and supported by the State University for Arts and Design (HFG) and the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany.

World X Diagnostics Public Launch
August 15 at Harvestworks
Harvestworks hosted the public launch of World X Diagnostics, a new multi-media work by 2009 Artists-In-Residence Megan Michalak and Stephanie Rothenberg

Harvestworks Inside 2009
May 14 – 16 at Roulette
Produced in partnership with RouletteÊŒs Mixology Festival, the 2009 Harvestworks Inside performance series presented “Gestures and Responsive Media”, three concert programs focusing on modern experiments in performance technology. The featured artists were Pamela Z, Elliott Sharp, Zach Layton, Sha Xin Wei & Clarinda Mac Low, Bill Hsu & James Fei, and Sawako.

Ableton Max for Live Introduction
April 30 at Harvestworks
One of the three new initiatives announced with Ableton’s Live8/Suite 8 is Max for Live. At a meeting of the New York Ableton User Group
Jeremy Bernstein introduced Ableton’s new Live8/Suite 8 Max for Live and demonstrated some of its capabilities.

Lillian Ball / Steve Bull
April 20 at Harvestworks
Multi-media artists Lillian Ball, and Steve Bull gave presentations about recent works. Ms. Ball discussed her recent interactive multi-screen video installation Go Doñana, a project that explores diverse perspectives on the wetland/dune ecosystems found in Andalucia’s Doñana National and Natural Parks. Mr. Bull demonstrated his recent video/MAX/Jitter/cellphone-SMS interactive installation Target.

Data As A Creative Visual Medium
April 17 at Harvestworks
Harvestworks presented a special panel discussion that explored the idea of using data as source, material, and inspiration for visual artists. Moderated by Jeff Thompson, the four participating artists were Louisa Armbrust, Tali Hinkis, Siebren Versteeg and Ben Rubin. They discussed questions about possible trajectories and problems arising from working with data.

New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival
April 2 – 4 at various locations
Composers, performers, and media artists from around the globe came together for three days of experimental sound art and multimedia at the first New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, April 2-4 at the CUNY Graduate Center, Galapagos Arts Space, The Tank, and Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center.

Shana Moulton / Jessica Ann Peavy
March 30 at Harvestworks
2008 Harvestworks Artists-In-Residence Shana Moulton and Jessica Ann Peavy each presented the results of their recent residency. Moulton performed a section from her new live interactive video work that contunues her Whispering Pines series, while Peavy showed her completed three-chennel video work Rituals of Consumption: Leviticus rowed the boat ashore.

Miguel Frasconi & Dan Joseph
March 16 at Harvestworks
New York-based sound artists Miguel Frasconi (2006 Artist-In-Residence), and Dan Joseph performed a set of improvised elecroacoustic soundscapes falling somewhere between a chamber music concert and a sound installation. Frasconi played processed glass instruments and electronics with Joseph on hammer dulcimer and laptop.

Elliott Sharp’s Binibon
March 9 at Harvestworks
Harvestworks hosted a special reading and fundraiser for Elliott Sharp ‘s new music-theater work Binibon to be presented at The Kitchen this May. Sharp performed on guitar, saxophone, and computer and the author Jack Womack read from the text.

Tobaron Waxman: Block of Ice + 1/60
March 3 – 6 at Harvestworks
Harvestworks presented Block of Ice + 1/60, a new multimedia performance installation exploring issues of labor and water ecology by 2007 VanLier Fellow, Tobaron Waxman.

Joseph Delappe / Sawako
February 23 at Harvestworks
2008 Harvestworks Artists-In-Residence, Joseph DeLappe and Sawako. DeLappe discussed their recently completed residency projects. Delappe’s untitled work-in-progress utilizes an interactive system that facilitates performative reenactments by “walking” famous routes of protest and pilgrimage through diverse data co-mingled from Flickr, YouTube and live in-studio cameras. Sawako presented her 5.1 surround-sound journey A Breath in the Cities, about two megalopolises, New York City and Tokyo.

William Cusick, An Instrument for the Measure of Absence
February 13 at Harvestworks
2008 Artist In Residence William Cusick presented his work An Instrument For The Measure Of Absence, a new interactive video and audio installation. The work is based on the upcoming production of Americana Kamikaze, a new hybrid theater/cinema performance by the experimental theater company Temporary Distortion, premiering at Performance Space 122 in November 2009.

Harvestworks & The Field’s New Membership Partnership Open House
February 2 at Harvestworks
The Field and Harvestworks held an open house to promote their new membership exchange which provides discounts to one another’s members. Representatives from each organization gave presentations and answered questions about their activities.

Alessandro Bosetti, Mask/Mirror
January 26 at Harvestworks
Italian composer and sound artist Allesandro Bosetti performed Mask/Mirror (M/M) is a sampler-based software tool written created using Max/MSP that processes recordings of spoken language in real time.

Frieder Weiss

Frieder Weiss, creator of the interactive media environment in Chunky Move’s Mortal Engine, shown at BAM on Dec 10-12 talked about his participation in and observations of the “dance tech” genre over the last 15 years.

Megan Michalak

Collaborators Stephanie Rothenberg and Megan Michalak will discuss their recent multi-media work World X Diagnostics. Using custom designed software and sound sculptures, public data measuring gross national well-being is collected from participating users and translated into real-time sound frequencies through programmed algorithms.

Stephanie Rothenberg

Stephanie Rothenberg’s interdisciplinary art draws from digital
culture, science and economics to explore symbiotic relationships between human
designed systems and biological ecosystems. Moving between real and virtual spaces,
she engages a variety of media platforms that include interactive installation,
drawing, sculpture, video and performance. She has exhibited internationally in
venues and festivals including MassMOCA (US), Sundance Film Festival (US), House of
Electronic Arts / HeK (CH), LABoral (ES), Transmediale (DE), and ZKM Center for Art
& Media (DE). She has received awards from Harpo Foundation, NYSCA and Creative
Capital among others and has participated in numerous residencies including Lower
Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace/LMCC and Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in
NYC, Santa Fe Art Institute, and ZK/U in Berlin. Her work is in the collection of
the Whitney Museum of American Art and has been widely reviewed including Artforum,
Artnet, The Brooklyn Rail and Hyperallergic. She is Professor in the Department of
Art at University at Buffalo SUNY where she co-directs the Platform Social Design
Lab, an interdisciplinary design studio collaborating with local social justice
organizations.

Pamela Z

Pamela Z is a San Francisco-based composer/performer and media artist
who works primarily with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and
video. A pioneer of live digital looping techniques, she creates solo works
combining experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects,
text, digital processing, and wireless MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate
sound with physical gestures. In addition to her solo work, she has been
commissioned to compose scores for dance, theatre, film, and new music chamber
ensembles including Kronos Quartet and the Bang on a Can Allstars. Her large-scale
multi-media works have been presented at venues including Theater Artaud and ODC in
San Francisco, and The Kitchen in New York, and her media works have been presented
in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum (NY), the Diözesanmuseum (Cologne), and the
Krannert Art Museum (IL). Her multi-media opera Wunderkabinet – inspired by the
Museum of Jurassic Technology (co-composed with Matthew Brubeck) has been presented
at The LAB Gallery (San Francisco), REDCAT (Disney Hall, Los Angeles), and Open Ears
Festival, Toronto. Pamela Z has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and
Japan. She has performed in numerous festivals including Bang on a Can at Lincoln
Center (New York), Interlink (Japan), Other Minds (San Francisco), La Biennale di
Venezia (Italy), and Pina Bausch Tanztheater Festival (Wuppertal, Germany). She is
the recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke
Artist Impact Award, the Creative Capital Fund, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts,
The MAP Fund, the ASCAP Music Award, an Ars Electronica honorable mention, and the
NEA and Japan/US Friendship Commission Fellowship. She holds a music degree from the
University of Colorado at Boulder. For more information visit www.pamelaz.com

Elliott Sharp

Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and
performer. A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New
York City for over 30 years, Elliott Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings
ranging from orchestral music to blues, jazz, noise, no wave rock, and techno music.
He leads the projects Carbon and Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics, and Terraplane and has
pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to
musical composition and interaction.

Zach Layton

Zach Layton is a New York based composer and artist interested in
biofeedback techniques, psychoacoustics, perception and generative algorithms.
Zach’s work has been performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and has been
exhibited at the International Congress for Performance Art in Berlin, Neue Berliner
Initiative, and many other venues in New York and Europe. He also is the curator of
Brooklyn’s monthly experimental music series “darmstadt: classics of the avant
garde” which features leading composers and improvisers from around New York City.
Zach has received grants from the Netherlands America Foundation and the Jerome
Foundation and is a student at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Sha Xin Wei

The featured artists were Pamela Z, Elliott Sharp, Zach Layton, Sha Xin Wei & Clarinda Mac Low, Bill Hsu & James Fei, and Sawako.

Clarinda Mac Low

The featured artists were Pamela Z, Elliott Sharp, Zach Layton, Sha Xin Wei & Clarinda Mac Low, Bill Hsu & James Fei, and Sawako.

Bill Hsu

The featured artists were Pamela Z, Elliott Sharp, Zach Layton, Sha Xin
Wei & Clarinda Mac Low, Bill Hsu & James Fei, and Sawako.

James Fei

James Fei will perform new solo compositions for live electronics controlled by unusual analog interfaces. Also, a work by Chris Jordan from SHARE, the community for portable performers, for the Lemur Multitouch Control Surface.

Sawako

2008 Harvestworks Artists-In-Residence, Joseph DeLappe and Sawako discussed their recently completed residency projects. Sawako presented her 5.1 surround-sound journey A Breath in the Cities, about two megalopolises, New York City and Tokyo.

Lillian Ball

Lillian Ball is an ecological artist and pro-activist working on
wetland issues with a multidisciplinary background in anthropology, ethnographic
film, and sculpture. She has exhibited and lectured internationally: Kathmandu’s
Taragaon Museum; Seville Bienniale; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid. Awards include: New
York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowships; Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship;
and a NEA Grant. Ongoing WATERWASHÂź public project series combines storm water
remediation, wetland habitat restoration, and land preservation via educational
outreach. Completed projects were accomplished with public funding through
non/profit groups along the Bronx River and Mattituck Inlet. Recent work in Lumbini,
Nepal approaches a crane sanctuary endangered by development at the World Heritage
site of Buddha’s birthplace with these same locally based concepts. Ball’s
documentary, “Sanctuary”, depicts an inspiring effort led by Venerable Metteyya to
preserve native flora and fauna in Lumbini, protecting the Sarus cranes that have
been there since Buddha’s time. Creative work with stakeholders on conservation
initiatives benefits wildlife, the affected community and visitors alike.

Steve Bull

On Governors Island visitors with their smart phone, iPad and Android
tablets take a self guided augmented reality tour of scenes of the War of 1812.
Flaneurs will discover the USRC cutter ACTIVE chase down the smuggler FAIR AMERICAN
on the Hudson River, highly inflated bank notes floating over the parade ground, and
an American sailor, a tar, shouldering his duffle bag at the ferry landing. This
self guided ARt tour is available on your mobile device at all hours every day until
September 2nd.

Louisa Armbrust

Blue Swimmer is the latest piece from Louisa Armbrust that uses games
and sports to examine ideas about play and creativity. Armbrust uses games and
sports as a helpful matrix for thinking about the creativity involved in trying to
follow a rule. The installation is located in THE NEW YORK ELECTRONIC ART FESTIVAL
Building 10b, part of Wave(form)s – an Exhibition of Electronic Art on Governors
Island. Blue Swimmer by Louisa Armbrust is an interactive video installation that
uses video and sound to bring to life stop-motion photographs from a 1950’s
competitive swimming manual. Using Max/MSP and Jitter, the installation reanimates
these beautiful but outdated images, creating an immersive environment where the
viewer influences but does not control events. The original images upon which Blue
Swimmer is based were created with the photographic technologies of their time to
attempt to convey, as comprehensively as possible, the rules for performing a
butterfly stroke or a competition dive. These images exquisitely demonstrate the
distance between lived experience and the carefully orchestrated representation of
experience, aligning them poetically with the task of exploring the gap between the
rule and its resulting action. Supported by the Jerome Foundation through the
Harvestworks Artist In Residence Program. Programmed by Gene Kogan, with help from
Kyle Kaplan.

Tali Hinkis

LoVid is an interdisciplinary artist duo composed of Tali Hinkis and
Kyle Lapidus. Their work includes live video installations, sculptures, digital
prints, patchworks, media projects, performances, and video recordings. They combine
many opposing elements in our work, contrasting hard electronics with soft
patchworks, analog and digital, or handmade and machine produced objects. This
multidirectional approach is also reflected in the content of their work: romantic
and aggressive, wireless and wire-full. They are interested in the ways in which the
human body and mind observe, process, and respond to both natural and technological
environments, and in the preservation of data, signals, and memory.

Siebren Versteeg

Harvestworks presented a special panel discussion that explored the idea of using data as source, material, and inspiration for visual artists. Moderated by Jeff Thompson, the four participating artists were Louisa Armbrust, Tali Hinkis, Siebren Versteeg and Ben Rubin.

Ben Rubin

Harvestworks presented a special panel discussion that explored the idea of using data as source, material, and inspiration for visual artists. Moderated by Jeff Thompson, the four participating artists were Louisa Armbrust, Tali Hinkis, Siebren Versteeg and Ben Rubin.

Shana Moulton

Shana Moulton creates oblique and evocative narratives in her video and
performance works. Her video work has been screened and exhibited internationally,
including at Art in General, New York; Migros Museum, Zurich; and Rencontres
internationales Paris/Berlin, Paris. Moulton’s performances have been presented at
venues including The Kitchen, New York and PERFORMA 09, New York. The Van Lier
Residency supported Ms. Moulton’s evening-length music theater piece, entitled
Whispering Pines 10. The work involves the use of interactive controllers,
electroacoustic instrumentation, and multi-channel projection.

Jessica Ann Peavy

Jessica Ann Peavy was born in Columbus, Ohio and now currently lives
and works in New York City. She received her BFA from Tisch School of the Arts at
New York University and completed an MFA in photography, video, and related media at
the School of Visual Arts. Peavy recently received residencies at Smack Mellon and
Harvestworks and grants from Franklin Furnace and the New York State Council of the
Arts.

Dan Joseph

Dan Joseph is a free-lance composer, curator and writer based in New
York City. He began his career as a drummer in the vibrant punk scene of his native
Washington, DC. During the late 1980s, he was active in the experimental tape music
underground, producing ambient-industrial works for independent labels in the U.S.
and abroad. He spent the ‘90s in California where he studied at CalArts and Mills
College. His principal teachers include Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran and Mel
Powell. Equally influential were his studies with Terry Riley during several
workshops in California and Colorado. A New York resident since 2001, Dan’s work has
been presented at Merkin Concert Hall (NYC), Diapason Gallery for Sound (NYC),
Roulette (NYC), Issue Project Room (NYC) The Kitchen (NYC) Yerba Buena Center for
the Arts (CA), Human Resources (CA), Harrison House (CA) and other venues. He has
received commissions from several ensembles and performers, including Gamelan Son of
Lion, the sfSoundGroup, baritone Thomas Buckner, and clarinetist Matt Ingalls. Dan
has held residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural
Council and Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center. As an artist who embraces the
musical multiplicity of our time, Dan works simultaneously in a variety of media and
contexts, including instrumental chamber music, free improvisation, and various
forms of electronica and sound art. Since the late 1990s, the hammer dulcimer has
been the primary vehicle for his music. As a performer he is active with his own
chamber ensemble, The Dan Joseph Ensemble, as well as in various improvisational
collaborations and as an occasional soloist. He has collaborated with a variety of
creative artists including Miya Masaoka, Pamela Z, Loren Dempster, JD Parran, India
Cooke, Andrea Williams, William Winant and Miguel Frasconi and John Ingle. As
curator and presenter, he has organized over 100 concerts as an independent producer
and as a member of organizations such as Harvestworks, Mutable Music (producers of
the acclaimed Interpretations series) and the San Francisco Electronic Music
Festival. He currently produces the monthly music and sound series Musical Ecologies
at The Old Stone House in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and is a co-producer of the Music
for Contemplation series in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His writings on various music
related topics have appeared in Musicworks Magazine (Toronto), The Brooklyn Rail,
NewMusicBox.org and other outlets.

Tobaron Waxman

Harvestworks presented Block of Ice + 1/60, a new multimedia
performance installation exploring issues of labor and water ecology by 2007 VanLier
Fellow, Tobaron Waxman.

Joseph Delappe

2008 Harvestworks Artists-In-Residence, Joseph DeLappe and Sawako
discussed their recently completed residency projects. Delappe’s untitled
work-in-progress utilizes an interactive system that facilitates performative
reenactments by “walking” famous routes of protest and pilgrimage through diverse
data co-mingled from Flickr, YouTube and live in-studio cameras.

William Cusick

2008 Artist In Residence William Cusick presented his work An
Instrument For The Measure Of Absence, a new interactive video and audio
installation. The work is based on the upcoming production of Americana Kamikaze, a
new hybrid theater/cinema performance by the experimental theater company Temporary
Distortion, premiering at Performance Space 122 in November 2009.

Alessandro Bosetti

Italian composer and sound artist Alessandro Bosetti performed Mask/Mirror (M/M) is a sampler-based software tool written created using Max/MSP that processes recordings of spoken language in real time.