Visual and sound artist Bruce Tovsky presents a new work entitled "Methe." Bruce creates live video and sound improvisations, often in collaborations with other artists and musicians. He studied with Fluxus greats Bob Watts, Geoff Hendricks and Daniel Goode, and showed his video work across the USA, Europe and Japan. His most recent project was the samsh LOWLAND show at a secret New York location, exploring the subsonic potential of a monster club sound system with a premier group of improvisers.
With his "Bicameral Research Sound & Projection System" (2004) David Linton aims to make vibrational wave induced perceptual energy states manifest by deploying interconnected measures of electric sound & pulsing light in live action with hand manipulated objects in physical (live camera) space. He employs an integrated recursive analog audio-video feedback system of his own perversely simple design modulated by freehand intervention to deliver vigorous eye, ear, and - sometimes - body-shaking realtime audio visual performances from which a kind of retro-tech animist ritual "medicine show" emerges where subject and object blur.
Bruce Tovsky – Methe
The Anacreontea, Fragment 38 (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric II) (C5th B.C.) :
"Let us be merry and drink wine and sing of Dionysos . . . thanks to him Methe (goddess of Intoxication) was brought forth, the Kharis (the three graces: goddesses of grace, beauty, adornment, mirth, festivity, dance and song) were born, Lupa (the spirit of Pain) takes rest and Ania (the spirit of Grief) goes to sleep."
a solo live video/sound meditation on the word intoxication and all of its implications.
Bruce Tovsky | lap steel, theremin, prepared mandolin, mbira, induction mics, laptop
Visual/sound artist Bruce Tovsky began painting at the age of 7 and started playing with tape recorders at the age of 10. Ever since then he has been putting sounds and pictures together. After earning an MFA degree in Multimedia from Rutgers University in 1979, where he studied with Fluxus greats like Bob Watts, Geoff Hendricks and Daniel Goode, he began showing his video work across the USA, Europe and Japan. The late 70’s to mid 80’s also saw him involved in the downtown NYC film and music scene, where he produced records, made videos, and did live sound for Liquid Liquid, Model Citizens, Del Byzanteens and Dog Eat Dog among many others; did sound design, mixing and editing with many of the underground filmmakers of the day, including Beth and Scott B, Richard Kern and Eric Mitchell; and ran a recording studio in Chelsea where he produced work for a diverse list of labels, including Tommy Boy, Foetus, Bernie Worrell, Sleeping Bag and artists and Lydia Lunch among others. His video work led him into a highly successful career as an award-winning commercial video designer/editor, where he cut music videos for Live, PiL, Big Audio Dynamite, Blind Melon and countless others, and commercials for Pepsi, Amex, PBS, Nick, Sony/Columbia Records and many, many more. In the 90's he also collaborated with several downtown choreographers, scoring works for Muna Tseng, Charles Dennis, Cydney Wilkes and many more. The turn of the century saw him creating live video and sound improvisations - often in collaboration with artists such as John Hudak, Zach Layton, Shimpei Takeda and Richard Garet - in spaces around NYC, including Diapason, Experimental Intermedia, Issue Project Room, Fotofono, and his own studio space 106BLDG30 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Part of a sweeping reappraisal of the 80’s downtown NYC scene, he recently produced two major music reissue projects: Liquid Liquid's definitive box set on Domino in the UK and Dog Eat Dog's first ever record release on Claremont 56, also UK. A massive Liquid Liquid DVD release is now nearing release. His most recent project was the smash L O W L A N D show at a secret NYC location that explored the subsonic potential of a monster club sound system with a premiere group of NYC sonic improvisors.
David Linton – "Hindsight Raga on 60 Hz"
All of David Linton's time-based multiple media work of the last 30 years has it's roots in the late "electric" phase of the second half of the 20th century as it anticipated and thereby prepared the transition to the "electronic" present which we now inhabit. This is not to say that he advocates nostalgia... but that he chooses to continue to pursue understanding the elusive miracles of this formative transitional period in mass human communication and technology through the perspective of his own lived experience - by now ever so slightly enhanced by the wisdom of hindsight - above all else. In itself nothing of this would distinguish Linton from any of his generational peers... however, what does distinguish Linton's work from that practiced by much of his own age group is his dogged self conscious insistence upon making these formative concerns anachronistically manifest upon the culturally defined problems of the temporal situational/relational reality in which we now must all operate when we venture into the increasingly conflicted territories of a contemporary production praxis that has been swallowing it's own historical tail (in spite of itself?) for almost as long as Linton and his peers have been making work. Rock on boys and girls! But... those who can't repeat history are condemned to remember it... ( we once heard a native american performance artist say)
With his "Bicameral Research Sound & Projection System" (2004) Linton aims to make vibrational wave induced perceptual energy states manifest by deploying interconnected measures of electric sound & pulsing light in live action with hand manipulated objects in physical (live camera) space. He employs an integrated recursive analog audio-video feedback system of his own perversely simple design modulated by freehand intervention to deliver vigorous eye, ear, and - sometimes - body-shaking realtime audio visual performances from which a kind of retro-tech animist ritual "medicine show" emerges where subject and object blur. Thematically, David likes to consider that within the 20th Century, 60 Hz alternating electrical current gradually came to function as a primary subliminal Prana in the mass bio-energetic body/culture of human life in North America, and that this synchronizing 60 hz pulsation was the carrier/breath of all realtime electric media regardless of its content.
Tonight's program we will call "Hindsight Raga on 60 Hz" and dedicate to the here and now. Performers include David First on guitar, Alex Waterman on cello, and Kato Hideki on bass.