One evening concert will happen at Paved on Friday, July 24th, the Z-Axis wrap-up weekend. The concert will feature performances of experimental sound art with live visual projections created in a dialogue between the performers. One of the performances will be by the participants in the audiovisual workshop series.
Workshop participants, Ryan Davidson / Red Smarteez, Freida Abtan / Erin Gee, Jeff Morton / Leeane Berger, Jake Hardy / kelleY boleN, Francis Theberge / VICTORTRONIC (TIND), and DJ Submit / VJ Mere
Participants who take three out of the four of the free Z-Axis A/V workshops (and participate in a few off-site jams) will be forming a group that will perform at the Z-Axis concert. Participants inclue: Stephanie Wilson (audio), Jairalee Jones (audio), Alex Acevedo (audio), Tim Jahnke (audio), and Dave Gambell (video).
This performance is a collaboration between a musician, Feral Children (Ryan Davidson) and puppeteers/media artists, Red Smarteez(Brenda Whiteman and Peter Stinson). The artists will collaborate on an audiovisual experience that combines original electronic music with visuals that use film, video, puppets, and presumptuous theatrical moments.
With Feral Children's beats and tonal colours as the base, the visual artists will construct moods, narratives and minor spectacles for the viewer to be enthralled, puzzled or simply amused. The music will enhance and complement the puppeteers but on occasion, the visuals may be a neutral background to allow the audio to shine. Spaces for creative play will be left open by both sides whether it is a guitar or vocal improvisation or the stumbling dance of a marionette.
Freida Abtan and Erin Gee are multidisciplinary artists that make up Pastry Tray: this July, the two will meet face to face for the first time in order to serve up some tasty sonic and visual delights. As Abtan (Montreal/Providence) and Gee (Regina) worked on their collaborative video project for the Z-Axis exhibition, a new recipe for something pleasing and sweet emerged. Pasty Tray promises to dish up fresh sounds and a creative performance resulting from online collaboration that has been ongoing since October 2008.
Freida Abtan (aka DARTH CUPCAKE) primarily works with samples of both musical and non-musical objects that she records herself and then manipulates, often beyond recognition, through techniques derived from musique concrète and through successive layers of digital signal processing. She uses structures reminiscent of popular music and more abstract compositional variants to sequence these sounds into melodic songs before incorporating her own treated voice. As well as having created visual shows for and performed with the internationally renowned group Nurse with Wound, Freida has presented her own sound and visual work at festivals across North America and Europe. Her first album "subtle movements" is available on United Dairies / Jnana Records.
Erin Gee (aka SPARKLEMUFFIN) draws inspiration from science fiction and mythology to create video, robotics, audio and performances that explore intimacy, liminality, and the emotional undercurrents of technological culture. Her work in audio exhibits a playful blend of both electronically altered and untreated sounds, subtle sonic texture, and a spatialized placement of sounds. Often working with voice and choral composition, she is currently researching voice as a paradoxical "other" that emanates from the "self". Gee has presented her work at Interaccess (Toronto), AKA Gallery (Saskatoon), FilmPop! International Music and Film Festival (Montreal), Neutral Ground Gallery (Regina) and EyeLevel Gallery (Halifax).
With equal parts sugar and salt, the complex tastes of Gee and Abtan hint that Pastry Tray will present a rich concoction of meticulous details, slow and subtle visual changes, mystery, enchantment, and dark delight.
Leeane Berger and Jeff Morton bring their A/V to new volumes and brighter heights, team-performing with the light and object materials from their installation composition Samenwerking Station: including circuit-bent electronics, video generators, new amplified immersive spaces, multiple projections.
kelleY boleN and Jake Hardy (aka holzkopf) are sporadic collaborators in the world of improvised audio and video. Jake's music varies from subtle wisps of ambiance to churning noise rhythms to broken beats. This style has recently been labelled "hermetic psychedelic breakcore." kelleY wants to move sound. She is prone to using home made stopmotion sequences and found footage which is mixed live to visually narrate what she hears. In this performance kelleY and Jake will be pairing wisps to sequences, footage to noise and maybe even some noisy wisps to rhythmic narration. Together, kelleY and Jake work together to create a theatrical experience that references science and science fiction while slipping into explosive and colourful audio slash video.
feat. the work of sebastien gravel + guillaume bourassa
In their most recent creation "trame00", controlled improvisations meet prepared interventions and mastered errors in a laboratory for real time experimentation. This is the use of errors as an art form.
*Unfortunately, Francis and Victor will not be in attendance for the Z-Axis concert.
Staples in the Saskatchewan music scene, Regina-based DJ Submit and VJ Mere LaRoque will close off the evening with some sweet edgy electronic beats and beautiful handcrafted digital video to amaze and amuse the Z-Axis audience, tempting us all to kick up our heels and dance in reckless abandon!