heartsleeves: LoVid & Ka Baird

Wednesday, October 30th at 8pm, ISSUE Project Room in partnership with Eyebeam presents heartsleeves, a multifaceted, generative, and participatory web3 project by LoVid, drawing on their decades-long work in experimental media, video performance, and installation. Using the heartsleeves software, the artists will create a multichannel video installation for the audience to engage with at ISSUE’s 22 Boerum Pl. limited-capacity theater. The event will feature a “portrait” of sound artist & composer Ka Baird who will interact with the installation live. A conversation on the intersection between analog and digital art making, and the history of mediated portraiture will follow the presentation moderated by creative polymath and professor of electronic art at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Kelly Heaton.

LoVid (the artist duo comprised of Tali Hinkis & Kyle Lapidus), has been presenting dynamic performance and installation work with ISSUE since the mid-2000s. heartsleeves leverages contemporary technology and web3 to merge creators and participants, using cutting edge digital art techniques for creation, engagement, and distribution. It delves into generative abstraction and interactivity, incorporating the human figure and resonating with ideals of a future rooted in community and humanity. This project highlights the dynamic tension between anonymity and identity in mediated spaces, providing critical commentary on social expression. 

To find out more about the heartsleeves project, please visit: https://tonic.xyz/series/heartsleeves/

Ka Baird is a performer, composer and sound designer based in New York City. They are known for their live performances which include extended voice and microphone techniques combined with electronics and psychoacoustic interplay of flutes and other woodwinds. They create a present tense sound with a vigorous, ritualistic delivery that seeks extreme release through physical exertion and psychic extension. They work with many other musicians and artists, both in structured compositions and in their dedicated practice of improvisation. They are one of the founding members of Spires That In The Sunset Rise founded in Chicago in 2001. Their debut solo album "Sapropelic Pycnic" was released through independent Chicago label Drag City in 2017. Their latest recordings "Respires" (2019) and “Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos” (2024) were released through Brooklyn based imprint RVNG Intl. Recent national and international engagements have included performances at Unsound Festival (Krakow), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), MoMA PS1 (NYC), ISSUE Project Room (NYC), The Kitchen (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), TUSK Festival (Newcastle, UK), Incubate (Tilburg, Netherlands), KRAAK (Brussels, Belgium), Le Guess Who (Utrecht, Netherlands), and the Festival Of Endless Gratitude (Copenhagen,DK). They have done residencies at Sonoscopia (Porto), Inkonst (Malmo), Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago), and Pioneer Works (Brooklyn). They were a 2020 recipient of the Foundation of Contemporary Art's Emergency Grant as well as a Jerome Foundation Artist-in-Residence at Roulette Intermedium in 2019.

LoVid is a NY-based interdisciplinary artist duo working collaboratively since 2001. LoVid’s practice focuses on aspects of contemporary society where technology seeps into human culture and perception. Throughout their interdisciplinary projects over two decades, LoVid has maintained their signature visual and sonic aesthetic of color, pattern, and texture density, with disruption and noise. LoVid’s work captures an intermixed world layered with virtual and physical, materials and simulations, connection and isolation. LoVid’s process includes home-made analog synthesizers, hand-cranked code, and tangible materials; their videos, textile works, performances, net-art, installations, and NFTs have been exhibited worldwide for over two decades. LoVid’s work has been presented internationally at venues including: Museum of Moving Image (NY), Standard Vision X Vellum LA, Wave Hill, Brookfield Arts, RYAN LEE Gallery, Art Blocks Curated, Postmasters Gallery, bitforms Gallery, Honor Fraser Gallery, Tonic.xyz, Expanded.Art, Art Dubai, New Discretions, And/Or Gallery, Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, Anthology Film Archives, MoMA, PS1, Issue Project Room, The Science Gallery Dublin, The Jewish Museum, The Kitchen, Daejeon Museum, Smack Mellon, Netherland Media Art Institute, New Museum, and ICA London. LoVid’s projects have received grants and awards from organizations including: Guild Hall, The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, NY Hall of Science, Graham Foundation, UC Santa Barbara, Signal Culture, Cue Art Foundation, Eyebeam, Harvestworks, Wave Farm, Rhizome, Franklin Furnace, Turbulence.org, New York Foundation for the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Center, Experimental TV Center, NY State Council of the Arts, and Greenwall Foundation. LoVid’s videos are distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) and their work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum, The Museum of Moving Image, The Parrish Museum, Thoma Foundation, Watermill Center, Butler Institute of American Art, Heckscher Museum, NFT Museum of Digital Art, and many private collections.