[spectre] Special NYC OptoSonic Tea event: Sunday December 9th 4pm - Issue Project Room

[Katherine Liberovskaya]

Special OptoSonic Tea event:
Benefit for Issue Project Room

Sunday December 9th
4 PM

Featuring:
Zarah Cabañas (live visuals) + Paul Amitai (live sound)
Chika IIjima (live visuals) + bubblyfish (live sound)
Marie-Helene Parant (live visuals) + Jim Bell (live sound) (Montreal,
Canada)
David Linton (live visuals + sound)
Katherine Liberovskaya/Peter Shapiro (live visuals) + Hitoshi Kojo (live
sound) (Japan/CH)
Ursula Scherrer (live visuals) + Kato Hideki (live sound)

Invited artist/respondent-moderator:
Bruce Tovsky

$ 15

Issue Project Room
The (OA) Can Factory
232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11215
http://www.issueprojectroom.org
http://www.diapasongallery.org/optosonic.html


OptoSonic Tea is a new regular series of meetings dedicated to the
convergence of live visuals with live sound which focuses on the visual
component. These presentation-and-discussion meetings aim to explore
different forms of live visuals (live video, live film, live slide
projection and their variations and combinations) and the different ways
they can come into interaction with live audio. Each evening features two
different live visual artists or groups of artists who each perform a set
with the live sound artists of their choice. The presentations are followed
by an informal discussion about the artists' practices over a cup of green
tea. A third artist, from  previous generations of visualists or related
fields, is invited specifically to participate in this discussion so as to
create a dialogue between current and past practices and provide different
perspectives on the present and the future.

Organized by Katherine Liberovskaya and Ursula Scherrer



Zarah Cabañas, aka Lady Firefly, is a Brooklyn-based video artist/VJ who
explores the vital, sensual, and transient qualities of details.  She has
performed her self-dubbed "electrorganic" videoworks throughout the
eclectic, beautiful, and unique spaces/events of NYC - recently at the
American Museum of Natural History, and residencies at Knitting Factory, and
Chashama.  Zarah has also participated in festivals in Russia, Spain,
Australia, Canada, and U.S.  She is co-founder of artist collective Amateur,
core member of audiovisual group Silence Corporation, and video editor at
Blue Man Group.  http://www.fireflylab.com

Paul Amitai is a musician and media artist who performs electronic and
improvised music in clubs and art spaces around the U.S. His installation
work has been exhibited at venues such as Scope New York, Art Chicago, Soap
Factory (Minneapolis), and Exchange Square (Manchester, UK). Amitai is
currently the exhibition and public program coordinator at Eyebeam.
http://www.paul-amitai.com

Chika
CHiKA is a live computer visuals artist working within New York's expanded
cinema community and VJ scene. Her videos implement geometric minimalist
patterns and original graphics in unique, repetitive combinations.
She has performed at the Museum of Modern Art, Hammer Museum, Mutek, Decibel
Festival, The Mapping Festival, the Bushwick Art Project and more.
www.imagima.com

bubblyfish
http://www.bubblyfish.com/
A sound artist, composer, and audio engineer, Haeyoung Kim explores the
territory of sounds in electronic music. Currently, under the name
Bubblyfish, she has been creating 8-bit and experimental sound works.
Haeyoung has collaborated with many respected sound and visual artists such
as Malcolm McLaren, the founder of Sex Pistols, Hans Jochim Rodelius, and
the Brussels based media art group, Lab [au].  Her work has been presented
in art venues, clubs, festivals, and galleries internationally including The
American Museum of the Moving Image, Pompidou Center, Kunsthalle Wien,
MUTEK, LABoral, Lincoln Center Walter Reed Theater, and The New Museum.

Marie-Hélène Parant is a Quebec-born multidisciplinary artist who has been
involved with experimental video and technology since the late eighties. Her
art practice is characterized by an interest for the hybridization of
artistic genres; collaborations in music, dance and performances as well as
installations. She is working with "Sketch-In", a live and interactive video
setup she is developping that forms an animated visual fresco activated by
the body presence and sound. She has shown her video installation and
performance work at different international venues such as InTheMix in
Toronto, Club Transmediale Berlin, VidéoFormes and Traverse Vidéo in France,
Société des Arts Technologiques, ChampLibre, Videographe, ISEA, Artist Space
Gallery NY, Experimental Intermedia NY and Festival d'Art Vidéo in Morocco.
Marie-Helene is also founding member and coordinator of SHARE Montreal that
hosts free, open jams for audio, visual, dance and new media artists and
supports experimentation with interactive arts.
http://www.marieheleneparant.com

Jim Bell is an audio professional and new media artist based in Montreal. He
has worked as a sound recordist and in post-production for various short and
feature length films. Currently studying Fine Arts at Concordia University,
he has exhibited and performed in Australia, Italy, United States and
Canada. He has also given workshops in audio field recording at universities
and artist centres in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. His work explores
correlations between natural and constructed worlds, obsolescence and
novelty, control and communication.
http://www.voxish.net/words/

David Linton
Perhaps to spite a persisting relative obscurity unknown to many of his
peers David Linton has remained an active and influential (one could say at
times "leading") figure within the experimental music, performance, dance,
theater, and multimedia subcultures he has inhabited since his arrival in
NYC at the tail end of the 1970's.
His design, production & performance work in music, sound, and multi-media
has traversed a cultural map spanning new wave, no wave, post punk, noise,
post minimalism, post modernism, industrial (the genre), improvisation (the
genre), digital electronica,  'DJ  culture', ' VJ cluture', analog
revivalism,  neo psychedelia,  & finally - he hopes - post-'ism'-ism.
With his Bicameral Research Sound & Projection System Linton aims to make
vibrational wave induced perceptual energy states manifest by deploying
interconnected measures of electric sound & light in live action with hand
manipulated objects in physical (live camera) space. He employs an
integrated recursive audio & video feedback system of his own perversely
simple design modulated by freehand intervention to deliver vigorous eye,
ear, and - sometimes - body shaking realtime audio visual performances from
which a kind of retro-tech animistic ritual  "medicine show"  emerges where
subject and object blur.
David is very pleased to announce that he will relocate to Paris for an
artistic residency in the early months of '08 at RESIDENCES INTERNATIONALES
AUX RECOLLETS.  Early '08 should also see the first ever release of his 1982
downtown art/noise band INTERFERENCE by Brooklyn's The Social Registry
label.
Those curious or interested may keep track of what he is up to via:
http://bicameral.multiply.com/

Katherine Liberovskaya is an artist, based in Montreal and New York City,
whose practice has mainly revolved around different forms of experimental
video since the late eighties. Her works (single-channel videos, video
installations, video performances, intermedia works and sound pieces) have
been presented at a wide variety of artistic venues and events around the
world. As of recent years her work mainly focuses on diverse collaborations
with new music composers and sound artists, notably Phill Niblock, Al
Margolis/If,Bwana, Hitoshi Kojo, Zanana, David Watson, Jim Bell, Margarida
Garcia, o.blaat, murmer, André Gonçalves, Anthony Coleman, Giuseppe Ielasi,
Alessandro Bosetti, Audrey Chen, Marina Rosenfeld, Anne Wellmer...
Concurrently she has been involved in the programming/organization of
multiple media art events both in Montreal (Share MTL, Espace Vidéographe,
Studio XXŠ) and NY (Experimental Intermedia Screen Compositions 2005, 2006,
2007, as well as the OptoSonic Tea live visuals-audio series at Diapason).

Peter Shapiro is a video maker from New York City, involved in the dance of
life, with camera in hand since the 1970's. His work deals with catching
glimpses and moments, documenting nature, environments, people and behavior,
as well as allowing creatures to be comfortable enough to reveal an intimate
part of themselves to the camera. He has performed and collaborated with a
multitude of artists, in venues, clubs, galleries, underground parties,
museums and the United Nations, in New York City, and around the world.

Hitoshi Kojo has worked in various artistic disciplines such as music,
painting, installation and performance. With his sound works he uses
so-called "experimental" methods such as field recording, sight-specific
recording, and performances with found objects, however his poetic manner
of composing these elements conveys a classical and intimate feeling.
Since the late 1990's, his recordings have been released under his real name
 as well as 'spiracle', which began as a collaborative project (Kojo now use
s this pseudonym for his solo drone music recordings). In 2000, he founded
ŒOctpia¹ and has released 9 titles under this label. A new title will be r
eleased by the American label ŒAlluvial Recordings¹ later this year.
Since moving from his native Japan to Switzerland in 2004, Kojo¹s activitie
s have expanded throughout Europe, and he has collaborated with numerous sou
nd and video artists. He is currently focusing on projects with the multimed
ia sound action unit 'Kodama' (with Michael Northam), and the experimental f
olk duo 'Jüppala Kääpio' (with Carole Zweifel).
Further information can be found at: www.octpia.com

Ursula Scherrer is a video artist and photographer living in New York City.
Her work has been shown in festivals, museums and galleries internationally.
She has worked with composers/musicians such as Michelle Nagai, Michael J.
Schumacher, Tetsu Inoue, Monya Pletsch and Brian Moran as well as with the
choreographer Liz Gerring. She is part of the international artist group
BIWAK and organizes
together with Katherine Liberovskaya OptoSonic Tea at Diapason, a series
dedicated to the convergence of live visuals with live sounds. Scherrer was
born in Switzerland and came to New York in 1988.
http://www.ursulascherrer.com

Kato Hideki (Kato:family name; Hideki:given) is a Japanese-born
composer/bassist/multi-instrumentalist. He is the co-founder of Death
Ambient with Ikue Mori & Fred Frith. His most recent projects are: Green
Zone with Otomo Yoshihide & Uemura Masahiro; OMNI wtih Nakamura Toshimaru &
Akiyama Tetsuji; and composition Tremolo of Joy for his quartet with Charles
Burnham, Briggan Krauss & Calvin Weston. Besides his own projects, Kato
collaborates with Nicolas Collins and James Fei. He is also a member of
analog synthesizer collective, Analogos.
http://www.katohideki.com/

Bruce Tovsky is a visual/sound artist based in in Brooklyn, New York.
After earning his MFA degree in Multimedia from Rutgers University in 1979,
Tovsky began showing his video work across the USA, as well as Europe and
Japan. His early 80's video/sound work INVADED was included in the Whitney
Museum exhibition "Video/Music: New Correlations" and toured exten
extensively in the USA as part of a Beard's Fund exhibition of new video
art. INVADED was also shown at the 1984 World's Fair and is in the
collections of The Kitchen and the New York Public Library Donnell Film
Center. During the 90's Tovsky focused on collaborations with
choreographers, scoring works for Muna Tseng, Charles Dennis and
Bessie-winning choreographer Cydney Wilkes, among others. His dance scores
have been presented at Lincoln Center, Joyce Theater, DTW, PS122 and The
Kitchen. For the past several years he has been creating live video and
sound improvisations, often in collaboration with artists such as John
Hudak, David Linton, Kim Cascone and Michael Schumacher in a variety of
spaces around New York City, including Diapason, Experimental Intermedia,
Issue Project Room, Tonic, and his own installation space 106BLDG30 at the
Brooklyn Navy Yard. In the summer of 2003 he performed the video/sound
collaboration FOR THE TIME BEING with John Hudak at Roulette's "Festival of
Mixology" at The Performing Garage. The audio portion of this performance
was released in Octo October 2004 on the Swiss label CUT, and was reviewed
in the February 2005 issue of The Wire. His video/sound piece ETHER
premiered at 106BLDG30 in June 2005, and played in international festivals
from Sao Paulo to Seoul to Paris. The audio from ETHER was featured in
"Tracking The Lincolnshire Poacher," a BBC4 radio documentary on shortwave
numbers stations. Tovsky was artist-in-residence at Diapason gallery during
October 2006, where he presented his latest work UNDERPASS, a 50 minute
silent video piece accompanied by some of New York City's most accomplished
improvisors, including Kato Hideki, o.blaat, Bryan Eubanks, Richard Garet
and Matthew Ostrowski. UNDERPASS will be touring the EU during spring 2007.