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lgOpre (luh - GOP - ruh) is an audiovisual installation of multichannel sound and projected digital animation created with real-time software that links vintage grid pattern algorithms with vinyl record lock-groove samples. The software behind lgOpre, written by the artist, uses customized abstract image generation routines (c.1970), appropriated color schemes, and self-similar number patterns to create an animation that is also a visual controller for a modular digital sound studio. Each of the 34 grid pattern building blocks used for lgOpre is mapped to its own set of processed and unmodified lock-groove samples. The color of the underlying grid is used to select which sound will play as the basic grids from each animation frame are visually highlighted in turn for a determinate duration before advancing to the next frame. Aleatoric color scheme variants introduce a degree of chance to the sound-image mapping.
Compositionally, lgOpre first introduces each visual building block as a full-screen matrix using black and white, grayscale or a few saturated colors to create monochromes or relatively simple patterns accompanied by solo sound samples. The screen splits in half horizontally, then vertically, producing four quadrants with increasing pattern complexity. New color schemes and faster sequencing within a single animation frame trigger the look of blocky color video games or visualized computer core dumps and densely layered multichannel sound.
Locked grooves and the title of Galbraith's 2002 video Open Research which juxtaposed animated black and white 'big bit' grids with human-sized inflatable sculpture from the late-1960s helped give lgOpre its name: locked groove Open research.

About the Artist David Galbraith is a composer, performer and media artist who lives and works in New York. Galbraith explores the couplings between art, music, technology and the body through his sound installations, video works, custom software and performances using self-built analog electronics. In 2005 Galbraith's Composition 2005 No. 1: Two Straight Lines Displaced, Nudged and Gently Spun was shown at Diapason and will be included in a forthcoming DVD archive of works exhibited at Diapason.
In 2006 Galbraith received a Finishing Funds grant from the Experimental Television Center/NYSCA for lgOpre, his custom software for sound and image. Galbraith enhanced lgOpre in 2007 to support analog synthesizers at STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam. His compositions and performances have been presented at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Tonic, The Stone, Art in General, and free103point9, among other New York venues. Selected solo and group international performances include Erase & Reset: International Night Of Experimental & Electronic Music at Staatsbank Berlin; Garage Festival, Stralsund, Germany; and Musica Pro Nova, Bremen, Germany. Galbraith also performs with the analog synthesis collective Analogos at Diapason.
Galbraith's visual work has been included in museum exhibitions at P.S.1/MoMA (New York), The New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York), and KW Institute of Contemporary Art (Berlin).
Galbraith holds an M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts (1996) and a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1988). Galbraith also participated in the studio program of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 1996-97.
www.soundsokay.com/djg.html

Saturdays
May 10, 17, 24 & 31
2 - 8 pm

Free

Seth Cluett

doleros (audio tourism at ringing rocks)

In rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania, just west of the Delaware River, there is a park with a rather peculiar feature.
The Ringing Rocks Park is a mile long boulder field containing the largest Diabase (dolerite) deposit in North America. Diabase is the igneous rock equivalent of volcanic basalt, has a high concentration of iron, and, what's more, the rocks ring when you hit them. Families from all over the country come to the park on weekends, sporting hammers and hunting the field for rocks that ring like bells. As an audio-tourist landmark, the Ringing Rocks park is quite special. Other sites of audio-tourism usually fall into the category of attractions, specifically acoustic or simply musically curious - the Echo Canyon in Utah, the Ear of Dionysus Cave in Syracusa, Siciliy, or the "stalac-pipe" organ in the Luray Cavern, Virginia. Ringing Rocks, however, is a site for sound-making activity, a place for people to take joy in the exploration of the sonic qualities of geologic detritus. Wandering among the boulders, visitors often seek out 'the best' rocks, comparing the sound and quality of individual 'ringings' and sharing their discoveries with one another.
Dolerite was the first name given to the formations before Diabase came in to common usage. Dolerite is from doleros from the Greek meaning 'deceptive.' The root of the Greek doleros is related to the adjectives 'wiley,' 'cunning,' or 'clever.'

Seth Cluett (born 1976, Troy, New York) is a composer and visual artist whose work includes photography, drawing, video, sound installation, concert music, performance, and theoretical writing. His pieces are an exploration of the role of sound in everyday life. Operating at the boundary between the auditory and the other senses, his work engages sound's unique property to be at once both collectively shared and distinctly personal.
Many of his pieces investigate the acoustic signature of specific geographies where sound is experienced as an activity (audio tourism) or as a geologic process. His work has been shown/performed at the 10th Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Palais de Tokyo Museum, ThŽatre sur le PavŽ, and GRM in Paris; the ICA, Mobius Artist Space, MassArt/nonpod in Boston; WPS1/MoMA, Issue Project Room, The Kitchen, Diapason, Engine 27, Tonic, and The Knitting Factory in New York; the Betty Rymer Gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago, Elastic Arts, Heaven, Artemisia, and Deadtech Galleries in Chicago; as well as the Deep Listening Space in Kingston, NY amongst others. Seth's work is documented on Errant Bodies Press, Sedimental, Crank Satori, BoxMedia, and Wavelet Records. He has published articles for The Open Space Magazine, Leonardo Music Journal, 306090, Earshot, and the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
For more information see http://www.onelonelypixel.org

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