SFCA [ISAW+SUBTROPICS] IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ARTCENTER/SOUTH FLORIDA PRESENTS:
Subtropics Marathon and summer programs leading to the SEP 13 inauguration of Gustavo Matamoros’ Audiotheque 2.0
A 2017 Knight Arts Challenge Project
FEATURING WORKS AND PERFORMANCES BY 40 ARTISTS:
ROBERT ASHLEY | CREATIVE DESTRUCTION (TIM ARCHAMBOULT & CYJO) | EDWARD BOBB | FEDERICO BONACOSSA | LAZARO GODOY | CARLES SANTOS | STUART KING | CUDDLER (OMAR ANGULO, ED MATUS & TONY LUGO) | DIMITRY CHAMY | CARLOS DOMINGUEZ | DREAMY SUN | JOHN DRISCOLL | JORGE GOMEZ ABRANTE | JOSE HERNANDEZ SANCHEZ | THE INERTIALS | FREDDY JOUWAYED | jAMJAM STRAWBERRY | DAVID DEAN MENDOZA | MODULAR SYNTH ENSEMBLE | MOKIBABY | EMILY MILGRIM | GINO ROBAIR | JUDY ROBERTSON | JULIO ROLOFF | BARRON SHERER | FRANK “RAT BASTARD” FALESTRA | RICHARD VERGEZ | ALBA TRIANA | RENE BARGE | RUSSELL FREHLING | SONIC PUPPETRY ENSEMBLE
PRE-INAUGURAL PROGRAMS
SYMPOSIUM
RUSSELL FREHLING, GUSTAVO MATAMOROS,
ALBA TRIANA, RENE BARGE & EDWARD BOBB:
SOUND ART/SOUTH BEACH
SAT JUN 9 2018 7PM
The pre-inaugural events for Audiotheque 2.0 will be high-lighted by “SOUND ART/SOUTH BEACH,” a panel discussion on the history of sound art and experimental music in South Beach with sound art composers Russell Frehling, Gustavo Matamoros, Alba Triana, Rene Barge, and Edward Bobb. The panel discussion and the residency of Russell Frehling, a Miami Beach native, are being funded, in part, by the SFCA’s 2017-2018 City of Miami Beach Cultural Affairs grant. Frehling has studied with Pauline Oliveros and Morton Feldman, and has, among other projects, developed a series of underwater sound fences for dolphins, in conjunction with Greenpeace in Japan.
The SOUND ART/SOUTH BEACH panel discussion is being co-presented with Tom Austin’s multi-platform project “South Beach Century: How South Beach and the Arts Built Modern Miami,” a 2015 South Florida Knight Arts Challenge winner and the recipient of a 2017-2018 City of Miami Beach Cultural Affairs grant. The “South Beach Century” book which incorporates chapters on every artistic discipline in Miami Beach, including sound art will be published by SUBTROPICS EDITIONS: the initiative makes extensive use of the vast SUBTROPICS ARCHIVE of recordings, documenting experimental music in South Florida since 1975.
2018 SUBTROPICS MARATHON
SAT JUN 16, 2018 5PM-UNTIL IT’S OVER
This event is our annual evening-length marathon of music by mostly Miami-based experimental musicians, sound artists and filmmakers. Come and go as you please over the course of the night.
Gino Robair is Artist-in-residence at Audiotheque and a veteran of recordings with Tom Waits, John Zorn, and Nina Hagen.He will open the Subtropics Marathon and lead the Modular Synthesizer Ensemble in Improvisations (2018). This 50-minute performance explores the use of strategies, concepts, and hand cues (conduction) based on Gino’s own work, as well as the work of John Zorn, Butch Morris, ROVA Sax Quartet, Anthony Braxton and Frank Zappa.
The Creative Destruction™ (Tim Archambault and CYJO): Since the Since the beginning of the Korean War on June 25th, 1950 the U.S. Army Far East Command and Republic of South Korea began radio broadcasts across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) which roughly borders the 38th parallel as a psychological deterrent to the North Korean forces. In response the North Korean government implemented their own propaganda broadcasts across the DMZ towards South Korea & American forces. These broadcasts continued intermittently until May 1st, 2018 to date. Constructive/Destructive Interference consists of directional ultrasonic speakers playing propaganda music from the north and south of the installation. This principle of constructive / destructive interference is utilized in this work as a physical and psychological representation of the countering political forces on the Korean peninsula.
Robert Ashley’s The Bank (Victimless Crime) from Perfect Lives, an opera for television, has a plot described by him in the following synopsis: Raoul de Noget (No-zhay), a singer, and his friend, Buddy, “The World’s Greatest Piano Player,” have come to a small town in the Midwest to entertain at The Perfect Lives Lounge. For some reason, unexplained, they have fallen in with two people from the town, Isolde (“nearing 30 and not yet spoken for”) and her brother, “D,” just out of high school and known as “The Captain of the Football Team” (his parents call him Donnie), to commit the perfect crime, a metaphor for something philosophical: in this case, to remove a sizable amount of money from The Bank for one day (one day only) and “let the whole world know that it was missing.”
José Ignacio Hernández Sánchez brings us his 2011 computer tape piece titled Busker (7’39”) composed of bits and pieces of the same sampled musical materials are presented in different formats, establishing a new musical context different from that of the original sources.
jamJam Strawberry, performs Our Soft Selves (2018) presented by THE INERTIALS as an ‘immersive’ multi-media performance, featuring Subtropics’ international, dropbox darlings, jamJam Strawberry, in only their third-time-ever, live performance since being founded by Sony Mao (Parts unknown) and Sawako Kato (Tokyo) and premiered at Subtropics in 2005. The current lineup includes Sony Mao, art operative from the Beta Bodega Coalition, whose work has appeared on the iconic Frankfurt record labels Mille Plateaux and Ritornell; Beijing sound artist Dreamy Sun; and Emile Milgrim, one-half of Archival Feedback. Also on the lineup are Dimitry Chamy; Freddy Jouwayed; Mokibaby; Rat Bastard; Sony Mao. Purchase the old-school, House of Wax-style, designer 3-D glasses available to enhance the optical environment created by The Inertials & company.
Carles Santos performs Toca Tico Toca Tá in this video screening that honors visionary composer from Cataluña who passed away December 4, 2017 before his Subtropics 25 appearance in 2020.
Cuddler perform DS-Comm (2018), a live improvisation. Artist Omar Angulo manipulates collected shortwave satellite data transmissions, field recordings and induction coil microphone recordings, and Ed Matus uses frequency generators, live sample manipulation and percussive textures. The two create a free-flowing atmospheric piece while visual artist Tony Lugo uses a video feedback program he created designed to destroy video in real time.
Federico Bonacossa’s EL-EVATAE for trombone and electronics is the latest in a series of works for solo instrument and live electronics I have been working on for several years now. This particular piece explores the expressive potential of alternative tunings and glissandi, both of which are very idiomatic to the instrument. The electronics feature live additive synthesis and pitch-shifting, two of my favorite effects. EL-EVATAE features Steven Eckert, trombone – Federico Bonacossa, electronics.
Frank “rat bastard” Falestra’s Acoustic Driven Electronics (2018) uses solenoid and contact mic acoustic properties that will control electronic pulses and tones.
Carlos Dominguez’s Reruns (2018) is a piece that combines homemade synth circuits with an audiovisual feedback process to produce sequences of square wave pulses. His influences include post-prime-time television and channel switches. This year’s Subtropics Marathon marks the live-audience premiere for Reruns. It may exhibit bright flashing lights.
David Dean Mendoza is performing two pieces, Ektara (2017) for ektara and electronics, and New Piece (2018) for morin khuur and electronics. Composed at a summer workshop at CCRMA and premiered at Stanford University, Ektara is a one-string instrument from India and I will be using Pure Data for sonic manipulation as well as performing the instrument. New Piece features the Mongolian morin khuur, something I’ve been meaning to do for the past five years and this spring I am going to push myself to do it. I will most likely be using Pure Data for the live electronics part. This performance will be the premiere and I will be performing the piece.
Barron Sherer and Richard Vergez work in all manners of analog media manipulation. Their new expanded cinema missive Contact Babylonia/Contact Amazonia (2018) features dual-film projections, contact microphones and live soundscaping. Silent home movies from two continents/two decades are conflated, as are projector mechanics rhythms with probing and exploring mic placement. This is a Subtropics Marathon world premiere.
Jorge Gomez Abrante offers Cut Piece 2018, a score in open instrumentation concerned with harmony and difference of repetition, in particular, with all-interval tetrachords and their rare trait called the complement union property. The form is the looping chord progression of all-interval tetrachords. With each repetition the chords change intonation/duration/timbre.
Stuart King performs Acoustic (2018) for trumpet, double bass and pedals.
Judy Robertson’s Cross-walk (2016), is a short-animated video which circumscribes and deconstructs the sights, sounds, and imaginative underpinnings of a busy street intersection. A pedestrian’s dream is brought to life through the traditional 20th-century cel-animation technique of frame-by-frame hand-illustration.
Julio Roloff offers his piece Halley 86, a solo electronic music piece on tape.
SONIC PUPPETRY PERFORMANCE
JOHN DRISCOLL: SONIC PUPPETRY
SUN JUL 22, 2018 6PM
John Driscoll, who has received commissions from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, among other accomplishments, is known for his work as puppeteer and creator of unique musical instruments. This performance uses small instruments that generate sound using sound above our hearing translated into the audible region. These instruments use various methods of creating small amounts of movement including the use of springs, motors, solenoids, and other mechanical means. Tonight, Driscoll will direct the sonic puppetry ensemble in performance.
INAUGURAL OPENING EVENT
AUDIOTHEQUE 2.0
GUSTAVO MATAMOROS: FOUR AUDIBLE EXPERIENCES OF MOVEMENT OF SOUND IN SPACE
THU SEP 13, 2018 7PM
This will be the first sound piece created for Audiotheque 2.0
GUSTAVO MATAMOROS: ABOUT AUDIOTHEQUE 2.0
In December 2017, SFCA [isaw+subtropics] received a Knight Arts Challenge matching grant to produce AUDIOTHEQUE 2.0. This is a great honor for us, and I’m proud that Knight Foundation chose to support our project as a catalyst for the advancement of experimental music and sound art in our community.
Audiotheque 2.0, the only sound art lab/gallery in South Florida, will feature a 32-channel sound system, a new order of sound art installation environment I created; with visual design by Miami installation artist Freddy Jouwayed. The summer programs listed in this publication pave the way for the September 2018 debut of Audiotheque 2.0.
The new multi-channel sound system at Audiotheque 2.0 is organized around four set configurations that can be used independently or together to exhibit new works of spatialized sound that offer visitors different kinds of immersive listening experiences.
In sound art, spatialization refers to movement & localization of sound in space. The notion of “surround sound” is cinema’s interpretation of this experience.
For the inauguration of Audiotheque 2.0, we will premiere my sound installation Four Audible Experiences of Movement of Sound in Space, conceived to highlight the full capabilities of our state-of-the-art sound system.
The Knight Arts Challenge grant, along with direct support from ArtCenter/South Florida, a City of Miami Beach Cultural Affairs “Call for Ideas” grant, and funding from Miami Dade County and the State of Florida, all helped to fund this summer’s preview programs.
In the months ahead of its debut, I will create additional content for the system in collaboration with sound artists from Miami and abroad, and for the benefit of the general public and members of the arts community. The aim is to provide sound art experiences not available elsewhere in South Florida.
I would like to thank a dear friend, the veteran master artist Robert Thiele, who has graciously donated the use of one of his artworks for our Audiotheque 2.0/Subtropics Marathon poster.
VENUE
Audiotheque
ArtCenter/South Florida
924 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach
POSTER IMAGE:
Robert Thiele
GRAPHIC DESIGN:
Claudia Ariano
These AUDIOTHEQUE 2.0 programs are made possible by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and ArtCenter/South Florida, with additional support by Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; the City of Miami Beach Department of Tourism and Cultural Development, Office of Cultural Affairs, and the Miami Beach Mayor and City Commissioners; the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; and by the Blank Family Foundation.