On 2/14/11, Joey and I performed at the Enormous Room as part of Beat Research, a Monday night series based on the class at MassArt. It was a pretty awesome show with Puppy performing his heavy glitch dubstep and a chill hip hop set by Greene Macheene. The crowd got pretty into the music during our set, which is always a great feeling, and DJ Flack spun some great beats afterwards. Some pics from the show,
Joey and I, picture taken by Matt
Puppy
Flack in the back booth.
On Wednesday, March 16 I will be performing electronic music at Sprout’s March spaghetti dinner (event info). Each month Sprout has a spaghetti dinner with a theme, organized/curated by Shaunalynn Duffy and John Bell. People come, have dinner and talk, then watch performances or talks centered around the theme. This time the theme is ‘Mechanical Ballets’:
The term “Mechanical Ballet” was invented in the avant-garde world of Europe in the 1920s, and was applied to films and performances of machines, of people, and of people with machines. We want to re-visit this subject in our hybrid cyber-mechanical age.
How do we invite machines to perform?
How do machines invite us to perform?
Are we part machine already?Our March 16 sprout spaghetti dinner will include ::
+ machine dances by Veronica Barron
+ a screening of Fernand Léger’s 1924 film Ballet Mécanique
+ electronic music by Kawandeep Virdee and Joey Asal
+ a power tool symphony
+ mechanical ballets presented by John Bell’s Performance Workshop students at MIT: Emily Tow, Catherine McMahon, and Sohin Hwang[from facebook invite]
So there will be some incredible performances! At the end of the evening I’ll play some electronic music, and we’ll transition into a dance party. I’ve been to many spaghetti dinners at Sprout in the past, and it is an honor to be able to perform at one.
Joey and I will be performing our music tomorrow at the Enormous Room, as part of Beat Research. We’ve composed this music in the last couple weeks, its more dance structured than our previous work, and much more sample heavy as well- but of course still with that energetic joyful vibe. Should be a good recipe for an exciting show. Swing by and hi-five! Bring your Valentine’s date, bring your friends, its totally free. Celebrate that ecstatic love with collective dance.
Doors at 9pm, Joey and I will begin the beats at 10pm (sharp!).
Joey Asal and I have been given a pretty wide time slot to curate music for the Spirited magazine release party this Sunday. The theme for this issue is cloak and dagger. Like the last opening a few months ago, Joey and Amanda have created a sweet installation for the magazine, you can walk around and through. At the same time people who are featured in the issue will be there, bringing the pages to life.
Hey all, wanted to let you know of a closing reception tonight in the Fort Point area downtown. Art, photography, fashion and film from the new boston fashion+art culture magazine Spirited will be exhibited as well as the recent assemblage installation by artist Joey Asal and electronic composition by Kawandeep Virdee.
Lets get together for a night of music, meeting, and visceral sonic electronic experiences. We want to create a space for people playing with drum machines, synthesizers, digital formats, mixing, and everything inbetween to share their work and engage the community. Something incredible is bubbling within electronic music–> the potential to engage a group to create an incredible collective experience. Musicians are creating uplifting music that you can’t help but get excited about.
[from musica elettronica viva]
We are making the first steps now toward an actively revolutionary music, a music which will not be an instrument of ruling-class “culture”… but rather a force in the hands of the people, a special language belonging to everybody. When this happens, the “concert” will come to resemble other liberated forms such as the party or the day off.
WHIRL is a multimedia event to quench our desire for beautiful works of art in any medium and ecstatic electronic experiences produced by local artists. Its something we can do together. Contactwhichlight(take this out) at gmail(and this) dot com if you have any questions or would like to help out. thanks <3!
Past WHIRLing
at FIGMENT June 4-5, 2011
Collaboration with Dorkbot Boston
6-9 pm Tuesday, May 17th 2011, at Middlesex Lounge in Central Square, FREE
April 22nd at the Lilypad in Inman Square.
Tentative artists and performers:
INTERACTIVE ART by Russell McClellan, Ben Lacker, Eric Rosenbaum, Jay Silver, Paul Feitzinger, Michael Dewberry, Will Whelan
LIVE ELECTRO PERFORMANCES by PC//MM, Ming Ming
PL: Rut Roh
DJs: Sleepyhead, Pajaritos
Performances by Pancake, Crista Galli, and plastic color// math magic on Saturday, September the 11th at the Lilypad in Inman Square after the art installation and opening by Bill Imbrogna.
A live set from the evening
Latest tracks by Crista Galli
HEXAGON was a collaborative performance piece which sought to use the ideas of non-hierarchies, interactivity, and emergence to create and perform music.
We want to create the experience a music performance as a non-hierarchy. Performances now create the image of a DJ or Rock-god, elevated on a stage, with the focus of an entire room upon them. We will invert this, placing the audience at the center, and surrounding them with musicians on the same level. It will be a fluid environment, the audience is free to move around the space, and look upon the musicians as well as each other.
In designing the performance space we imagine a system where the performers respond in music to each other as well as the audience, and is for the most part fixed. The sound spreads dependent on the location of the musician, so the experience of an audience member changes as they move through the space. There will be no chairs to allow them to move around freely. For these performances acoustic guitars will be used, but the future performances can potentially include voice, or local amplifiers.
The music is made inspired from the dynamics of cellular automata. For each update there is a simple rule that determines the output given the input of the neighboring states. To abstract this concept and apply it to the performance of multiple musicians, we create simple scripts, a concept from improvisational acting. Scripts include playing only one one note with random rhythms, playing one note with the same rhythm, playing any note with the same rhythm, sliding upward in rhythm, etc. In the rehearsals the performers sit in a circle facing the center, to easily see one another, and scripts are listed. The scripts are performed once or a few times, and reflections are written to consider what the effects are in terms of the degree to which the script promotes musician interaction, how fluid it feels, and any other emotions it brings up. These scripts are metaphorically equivalent to the cellular automata update rules, in that the musicians would use the other musicians as input and the rule to determine what to play. The reflections written are a record of the emergent properties of the scripts carried out by each of the musicians.
For the first performances we will use acoustic guitars because they are portable and do not require speakers. A composition will be made from considering the reflections from the scripts and this will be performed live. Since the music is generative, no two performances will be the same, but all of the patterns will be fixed.
The performances were carried out in Spring 2009 at Milepost 5 and Coffee Break.
A talk I gave at the December 2009 Research Club brunch at Tribute Gallery on applying ideas of complexity to creative projects. Applications of complex systems ideas in the projects HEXAGON and PDX I Love You are described in the presentation. The talks were limited to five minutes each, and a transcript is included below.
Brunch #1 / Lecture #3 / Kawandeep Virdee Talks About Complexity from Research Club on Vimeo.
Imagine the city covered in hearts on Valentine’s Day. So many people love this city, and here is a way to express that love. On Valentine’s Day, anyone walking alone in the city may see a heart poking out from a corner, and perhaps a smile will creep on their lips. A heart that is not commercial, a heart placed not for a single person, but for anyone who walks by. We want to give a medium for people, to encourage them to freely express their affection through this simple symbol, and re-conceive the purpose of Valentine’s Day, as not a huge commercial endeavor, but a chance to just show anyone- maybe even a city- you love them.
This was a collaborative project organized with Jason Edward Davis in Portland, OR. We organized a booth in the Love show to spread the idea and materials, and on the night of February 13th, 2009 we placed hearts around the city with dozens of Portlanders. The following are the notes preceding the project, and documentation of its progress.
Concepts
Ephemeral art is essential in this project because the intention does not involve littering or graffiti. Creating hearts that are biodegradable, or will come out in the rain is essential. Possible mediums include chalk, newspaper, construction paper, powder, and natural materials like sticks, dirt, or stones.
While exploring East Berlin, one can’t help but notice the wealth of street art. Its all around, and after wandering a few days in that city I felt the dialogue the artists had with the city dwellers. Walking in the city, daydreaming, thinking about different things, and these artists’ works would penetrate my thoughts. The street art is for the public, and its free to view. Its a similar dialogue and notion of art free for all that PDX I Love you seeks.
The intention is to cover as much of the city as possible with hearts. This is a large scale project, and in order to meet that scale we take into account the concepts of networks and how information and action flows through them. In order to scale to the size of the city, the execution is from the bottom up. We offer simple guidelines, without any core structure, to allow groups to grow organically. There is the option to meet at the love show, or to message us to find groups. With groups forming anywhere, and without reinforcing certain locations, it becomes possible to have hearts emerge all around the city without having a single individual put each one up.
Documentation
The messages sent out and development of the project was maintained on pdxiloveyou.blogspot.com
Soon after spreading the word of the project began, the curator of the Portland Love Show, Ben Pink, welcomed PDX I Love you into the show. We set up a booth there where we spread the message and also materials to heart the city.
On Valentine’s Day and for weeks after it was fun to look out for hearts and hear about hearts that were seen around town. For the most part the project was incredibly fulfilling because of its general uplifting outlook and giving nature. People became inspired about the idea, and we were excited by enthusiastic responses.
