[spectre] Networked Music Review Commission: ['til death do us a part] by Tobias c. van Veen

[Turbulence]

Networked Music Review Commission: ['til death do us a part]
by Tobias c. van Veen (aka saibotuk)
http://turbulence.org/works/earos/
Live Performance at "Programmable Media II: Networked Music" symposium in
New York tomorrow!
http://tinyurl.com/yuk2rf
Not in New York? Join us in Second Life!
http://tinyurl.com/3auf7z

Dead media unwinds time from its spools. Two electromagnetic machines
capture the unfolding of an era in which memory encodes the loving caress of
electron imprinted tape. Time out of joint falls in & out of tape sync; more
inhuman than human loops the frequency.

"I wanted my human experience with machinic love to have the intensity of a
hands-on relationship."

Thus, van Veen turned to reel-to-reel (RTR) tape machines and Konstantin
Raudive's experiments with blank media in which he attempted to record the
'voices of the dead'. (Little did van Veen know that John Hudak was
exploring similar terrain in "Voices from the Paradise Network".)

"This led to a series of investigations of the sonic realm arising between
two networked R2R machines, a simple mixer and a DSP processor (to add
spatialization and stereo channel manipulation to sometimes mono signals).
These investigations revealed a performative realm, a space to improvise and
to develop a capacity to 'play' the machines, or rather tweak & twiddle
their hard knobs into spasms of ecstasy, cries of joy &, at times, moans of
despair. The machines sang to me & each other, & I was drawn into the
deadzone..."

['til death do us a part] is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing
Arts, Inc., for Networked_Music_Review. It was made possible with funding
from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State
Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

Tobias c. van Veen is a renegade theorist and pirate, techno-turntablist and
writer. Since 1993 he has directed conceptual and sound-art events, online
interventions and radio broadcasts, working with STEIM, the New Forms
Festival, the Banff Centre, Eyebeam, the Video-In, MUTEK, MDCN.ca, the
Vancouver New Music Society and Hexagram. His work has appeared in CTheory,
EBR, Bad Subjects, Leonardo, Locus Suspectus, FUSE (contributing editor),
e/i, the Wire, HorizonZero and through Autonomedia, among others. He has
sonic and mix releases on No Type's BricoLodge and the and/OAR labels. From
1993-2000 he was Direktor of the sonic performance Collective
[shrumtribe.com] in Vancouver. He is co-founder of technoWest.org with Dave
Bodrug, controltochaos.ca with DJ FISHEAD and thisistheonlyart.com with
artist ssiess. From 2002-2007 Director of UpgradeMTL [upgrademtl.org] and
Concept Engineer at the Society for Arts and Technology [SAT.qc.ca]. Tobias
is doctoral candidate in Philosophy & Communication Studies at McGill
University.

For more Networked_Music_Review Commissions please visit
http://turbulence.org/networked_music_review/tags/nmr_commission

Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director
New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org
New York: 917.548.7780 . Boston: 617.522.3856
Turbulence: http://turbulence.org
Networked_Performance Blog: http://turbulence.org/blog
Networked_Music_Review: http://turbulence.org/networked_music_review
Upgrade! Boston: http://turbulence.org/upgrade 
New American Radio: http://somewhere.org