Join Eyebeam Storefront and ((audience)) for a unique book launch, performance and discussion celebrating the publication of Earth Sound Earth Signal (UC Press 2013) by Douglas Kahn, Professor at the National Institute for Experimental Arts, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales and author of Noise Water Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts. The book explores aelectrosonic and natural electromagnetic sounds from the nineteenth century to the present, centered around the work of composer Alvin Lucier.

A panel of artists and scientists including Brian Dewan, David First, Annea Lockwood, Paul D. Miller, and others will respond to the book and pose questions to the author, Douglas Kahn. The panel will be introduced by Galen Joseph-Hunter, Executive Director of Wave Farm.

Following the discussion, Eyebeam alumnus Daniel Neumann  (CT-SWaM) will present a multi-channel audio performance “Tectonics of Absence” by Suzanne Thorpe and Tristan Shepard.

This event will be recorded for a future broadcast on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM, a creative community radio station based in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS:

Brian Dewan is a multi-media artist, who produces music, audio-visual performances, decorative painting, furniture, poetry, filmstrips, illustrations, and musical instruments. He has released three albums of songs and performed extensively in clubs and concert halls as a solo artist and as a member of various ensembles. He is the son of Edmond Dewan, who is the subject of a chapter of Earth Sound Earth Signal. He lives in Catskill, New York.

David First is a musician and composer who performs with Notekillers, a psychedelic punk band; The Western Enisphere, a micro-rhythm and drone ensemble; and the trio Matter Waves. First’s music has been performed and installed widely both internationally and abroad at venues such as The Kitchen, Merkin Hall, The Stone, Bang On A Can, The Knitting Factory, and CBGB’s in the United States and at Institut Unzeit (Berlin), De Ijsbreker (Amsterdam), ZwischenTone Festival (Köln) and the Uppsala Konstmuseum (Uppsala) in Europe. First has received many grants, commissions and awards including the prestigious Grant to Artists from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts.

Galen Joseph-Hunter has served as Executive Director of Wave Farm since 2002. Wave Farm is a New York-based nonprofit arts organization cultivating Transmission Arts, creative practices with the airwaves. In 2004, she transitioned from her position of Assistant Director to Consultant at the New York-based video art organization Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), where she continues to be engaged in special projects. Over the past fifteen years, Joseph-Hunter has organized and curated numerous exhibitions and events internationally. She is the author of the book Transmission Arts: Artists and Airwaves (PAJ Publications: 2011,) as well as “Transmission Arts: the air that surrounds us” (PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, September 2009: MIT Press).

Annea Lockwood is a pioneer in the fields of electronic music and sound art who, since the early 1960s, has composed, recorded and performed dozens of works both alone and in collaboration with poets, choreographers, and ensembles, as well as visual and sound artists. Much of her music has been recorded, on the Lovely, XI, Mutable, Pogus, EM Records, Rattle Records, Soundz Fine, Harmonia Mundi and Ambitus labels. She was recently commissioned to compose works for the Bang on a Can for the All-Stars; SEM Ensemble; and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Lockwood is a recipient of the 2007 Henry Cowell Award and is an Emerita Professor at Vassar College.

Paul D. Miller is a conceptual artist, writer, and musician working in NYC. His artwork has appeared in a wide variety of contexts including the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture (year 2000); the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and a host of other museums and galleries. Miller is most well known under the moniker of his “constructed persona” as DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid. Under that guise, Miller has performed extensively throughout the US, Europe and Australasia. He has collaborated with a wide variety of eminent musicians and composers such as Iannis Xenakis, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Butch Morris, Kool Keith a.k.a. Doctor Octagon, Killa Priest from Wu-Tang Clan, Yoko Ono and Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth.

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS:

Tristan Shepherd is a composer, improviser and turntablist from Dearborn, MI currently based in Brooklyn, NY. His work includes installation pieces for multichannel audio, appearances as an improviser in group ensembles and compositions for solo turntable. Using a combination of modified records and custom dubplates as source material, his compositions consist of a sonic counterpoint and bricolage that hinge on the decontextualization and reanimation of the musical gestures ‘frozen’ on the records. Most recently, he curated “Incidental Music”, an exhibition of site specific installations and performances at the Fragmental Museum’s project space: a 4 story, 50,000 sq. ft. former zipper factory. Tristan has performed at Roulette Intermedium, Harvestworks, The Emily Harvey Foundation, MoMA PS1, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Suzanne Thorpe is an electroacoustic flutist, composer, and educator. Her compositions are site-specific works that tend to employ multi-channel systems, psychoacoustic phenomena, and aural harmonics. As an improviser, Thorpe has performed nationally and internationally with artists such as Chris Brown, Annette Krebs, Pauline Oliveros, and Gino Robair, among others.

Thorpe has been featured at local, national, and international experimental music and art venues and is a founding member of the critically acclaimed alternative rock group Mercury Rev, with whom she earned numerous critical accolades and a gold record. Thorpe has appeared in over 20 recordings on labels such as Sony, V2, Beggars Banquet, and Geffen, and most recently on J Mascis’ solo record Several Shades of Why and Pauline Oliveros’ Primordial Lift. Thorpe holds an M.F.A. in Electronic Music and Media from Mills College and currently teaches at Marymount Manhattan College and Parsons School of Design, where she focuses on digital audio workstations, field recording, sound theory, and the art of listening.