Saturday, March 22, 2003
6 PM - Midnight
Elusive Convergence
a sound installation by
Ellen Band and David Lee Myers
Combining their respective interests in feedback systems and real world sounds, David Lee Myers and Ellen Band have created Elusive Convergence, a sound installation which presents the listener/participant with an unbalanced system wherein feedback is the unpredictable yet crucial element. The feedback system will remain in a passive state unless jarred out of its stasis by two potential stimulus sources. These are prerecorded real world sounds projected into the space at random intervals, and live microphone input, either of which incite the feedback system into temporary arousal. It is left to the observer to discover their possible place in the scheme.
Myers and Band created Elusive Convergence as an additional context for their ongoing collaborative efforts in improvised sound composition. Their live performances also focus on the interplay between Band's real world 'sound captures' and Myers' ethereal feedback tones - the paths of each weaving, crossing, diverging, and converging with the other.
Press quote: "... her 'sound art' ... is celestial in its implications and down to earth in its reverence for everyday noises." Kyle Gann, Village Voice
Ellen Band creates sound and music pieces for performance and concert settings, installation, sculpture, and tape. Deeply inspired by the infinitely complex textures, rhythms, and colours within the so-called ordinary sounds of everyday life, and having a strong background in both the 20th Century experimental music and sound art traditions, she crafts sound works which transform familiar sounds into new contexts and forms for listening to, perceiving, and experiencing sound.
Since the mid '70s, she has constructed sound works for performance which include, instrumentation, projections, video, and live performance. In addition to her solo work, she has collaborated with sound artist Ed Osborn, percussionist Brian Johnson, dancer and choreographer Susan Osberg, visual artist Leila Daw, and performance artist Nancy Adams. Her compositions and intermedia pieces have been performed by percussionists Tom Goldstein and Brian Johnson, bassoonist Janet Underhill, and violinist Adele Armin. She has recently formed a performance duo with David Lee Myers. Their performances blend sonic environments and specialized electronic circuitry.
Her work has been presented at venues such as: PetSounds Series, Stadtgarten, Cologne, Germany; Experimental Intermedia, NYC; Lotus Music and Dance, NYC; The Music Gallery, Toronto; Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT; Mills College Center for Contemporary Music, Oakland, CA; Mex, Dortmund, Germany; Schwarzenberg'schen Meierie, Austria; NonSequitur Foundation, Albuquerque, NM; Sound Symposium 2000, St. John's, Nfld., Canada; SubTropics Festival of Experimental Music, Miami, FL; Mobius and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA.
Her first solo CD, 90% Post Consumer Sound, was released in 2001 on XI, the label of Experimental Intermedia, NYC. It has received worldwide airplay and numerous reviews in publications such as: WIRE (London, England); Playboy Magazine; Musicworks: The Canadian Journal of Sound Exploration; and IL Manifesto, Italy. In the fall of 2002, WDR in Cologne and Frankfurt produced radio shows on her work including interviews.
She is currently working on a commission from The Institute of Contemporary Art/Vita Brevis program, Boston. The work is a public art sound installation titled Portals Of Prayer. It is scheduled to open in the fall, 2003. In 1997 she was awarded an American Composers Forum Commission. Her sound sculpture, Portrait of Ruth Klein, is part of a large exhibit entitled Women Whose Lives Span the Century. Her sound installation Acoustic Mirage, was featured at SoundCulture'96 in the Bay Area and was installed February '99 at Studio Five Beekman in New York City, and Sound Symposium 2000, St. John's, Nfld., Canada.
A native of Toronto, Canada, she was fortunate to attend York University in the early to mid '70s during a period when both Toronto and York University had a thriving new music scene. After receiving a BA in Philosophy at York, she entered the music department and studied new music with Pauline Oliveros and David Rosenboom and south Indian classical vocal technique with Jon B. Higgins. In 1977 she moved to San Diego to resume studies with Oliveros. While in San Diego, 1977-1985, she worked and performed with composer David Dunn, poet Jerome Rothenberg, and performed in the Big Jewish Band, a performance art klezmer band. Most notable of these performances was the bandÕs collaboration with painter Robert Kushner and the performance at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City in 1981. In 1985 she moved to Boston where she received an M.Ed. from Tufts University in '88. During the summer of '91 she worked with composer James Tenney on specific compositions.
She has taught sound art at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (2002, 1994-1997). In 1996, she was a resident artist at Mills College, Center for Contemporary Music. In 1994, she founded Audible Visions, a performance space for new music and sound art at Brickbottom Artists Building in Somerville, MA.
As a new music educator, beginning in 1974, she pioneered Ôsonic artsÕ and interdisciplinary music curriculum preschool through high school. Since the late '80s she has trained teachers in the applications for this curriculum in school through the graduate school at Wheelock College, the Berklee College of Music, and numerous workshops in the Boston area. Her articles on sound art curriculum are distributed through the Oliveros Foundations 'Deep Listening Publications.
David Lee Myers is a sound and visual artist living in New York City. He has produced music based on feedback principles since 1987, using his unique "feedback machines". As Arcane Device, and more recently under his own name, Myers has had two dozen recordings released by Generator, ReR, Silent, RRRecords, Staalplaat, and many other international labels. Project collaborators have included Asmus Tietchens (Germany), Thomas Dimuzio (USA), and Vidna Obmana (Belgium). All have resulted in recent CD releases. Using his portable feedback apparatus, Myers continues to perform in the U.S. and Europe.
Artist's statement:
For fifteen years I have been developing specialized circuitry and electronic systems for the production of my signature "Feedback Music", whose original sounds claim unique sources. The outputs of electronic devices - particularly those intended to create a modification of some kind to an audio signal, such as time delaysÑare fed, via custom-built mixers, to their own inputs. In this way, these devices never receive signals from the "outside world", and instead feed on a diet of their own product. A whole new function of these devices appears, bearing little relation to their intended purposes. The way I envision it, the devices are provided the opportunity to "sing their own songs"; the resulting sounds represent nothing other than the free circulation of electrons within. In effect, these sounds come from nothing, and more than one observer has proclaimed them to arise "from the ether". And unlike the output of synthesizers or samplers, these voices never exactly repeat themselves nor can they be completely controlled. As performer, I constantly struggle to form and direct them toward an aesthetically satisfying end. Many times I succeed, occasionally I do not, but it is a new game every time.
