[spectre] OptoSonic Tea @ Diapason NYC - Friday, May 18th, 8:30pm

[Katherine Liberovskaya]

Diapason, gallery for sound and intermedia presents...

Friday, May 18 
8:30pm 

OptoSonic Tea @ Diapason

Live sets by: 
- Kurt Hentschlager (visuals and sound)
- Shimpei Takeda (visuals) & Bruce Tovsky (sound)

Invited artist: 
- Carl Skelton 

Suggested donation:
$ 7 


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



About the artists: 

New York-based Austrian artist Kurt Hentschlager creates audiovisual
compositions in which audio and video actuate one another. The immersive
nature of his work reflects on the metaphor of the sublime.
Trained as fine artist, in 1983 he began as a sculptor, building surreal
machine objects, followed by works with video, computer animation and sound.
Between 1992 and 2003 he worked collaboratively as a part of the duo
Granular-Synthesis. Employing large scale projected images and drone like
sound environments, his multi channel performances and installations
triggered the viewer on both physical and emotional levels, overwhelming the
audience with sensory information.
His more recent solo work is more poetic and further researches the nature
of human perception and the accelerated impact of new technologies on
individual consciousness.
Hentschlager is a recipient of numerous prizes and large-scale commissions.
He has represented Austria at the 2001 Venice Biennial and has shown his
work internationally for two decades.   Selected presentations include the
Milllenium Museum, Beijing, Staedelijk Museum Amsterdam, In the Anchorage -
Creative Time, Inc., New York,  MAC - Musee d`Art Contemporain Montreal, MAK
- Museum of Applied Arts Vienna, National Museum for Contemporary Art Seoul,
Ars Electronica Festival Linz, ICC Inter-Communication-Center Tokyo,
Fondation Beyeler  Basel, Palacio de Bella Artes, Mexico City.
His recent solo performance ³FEED² premiered at the 2005 Venice Theatre
Biennial and is currently touring and the procedural installation ³KARMA /
cell² was commissioned in 2006 by Le Fresnois, Studio National des Arts
Contemporains, France.

Shimpei Takeda (b.1982), is an artist working with photography, video, and
improvisational performance. Originally from Japan, Takeda currently lives
and works in New York City. Primarily self-taught, Takeda began shooting
pictures at the age of 18. Later on, he expanded his unique vision and
sensitivity to the other mediums . He experiments with the aesthetic,
optical and poetic possibilities between abstraction and concreteness.
His work has been presented at the Essl Collection of Contemporary Art,
Austin Museum of Art, Weisman Art Museum, Schenectady Museum & Suits-bueche
Planetarium, and throughout New York City venues including: Issue Project
Room, the Tank, and Experimental Intermedia.

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.

Carl Skelton has been working professionally as an artist and designer, with
a particular focus on the cultural aspects of Communications technologies
new and old, since well before receiving his MVA in Canada in 1986. Skelton
was an active member of Toronto's cultural community until 1998, when he
moved to New York City. In his spare time, he is the founding director of
the Integrated Digital Media Institute in the department of Humanities and
Social Sciences at Polytechnic University, Brooklyn. The IDMI offers
Bachelor and Master of Science programs, a more or less annual conference
series (Hyperpolis), and conducts interdisciplinary research and
media-making projects. In particular, the IDMI supports new approaches to
media-making through close collaboration between artists, critical
theorists, and engineers.



Diapason
1026 6th Avenue, 2S
New York NY 10018
(212) 719-4393
http://www.diapasongallery.org

Avenue of the Americas between 38th and 39th Streets,
two blocks south of Bryant Park.
Subways: 1, 2, 3, 9, B, D, F, Q, N, R, W to Times Square/42nd Street