Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art 2006
February 22 - 26, 2006: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.
Featured Artist: Scanner/Robin Rimbaud
Scanner - British artist Robin Rimbaud traverses the experimental terrain between sound, space, image and form, creating absorbing, multi-layered sound pieces that twist technology in unconventional ways. From his early controversial work using found mobile phone conversations, through to his focus on trawling the hidden noise of the modern metropolis as the symbol of the place where hidden meanings and missed contacts emerge, his restless explorations of the experimental terrain have won him international admiration from amongst others, Bjork, Aphex Twin and Stockhausen.
Scanner is committed to working with cutting edge practitioners and has collaborated with artists from every imaginable genre: musicians Bryan Ferry, Radiohead and Laurie Anderson, The Royal Ballet and Merce Cunningham and Random Dance companies, composers Michael Nyman and Luc Ferrari, and artists Mike Kelley, Derek Jarman and Douglas Gordon. Since 1991 he has been intensely active in sound art, producing concerts, compositions, installations and recordings, the albums Mass Observation (1994), Delivery (1997), and The Garden is Full of Metal (1998) hailed by critics as innovative and inspirational works of contemporary electronic music.
In 2004 his Sound Surface work was the first ever Tate Modern sound-art commission and he recently produced Europa 25, a newly commissioned National Anthem for Europe. He is currently Artist-in-Residence for BBC Wales in 2005. He has performed and created works in many of the world’s most prestigious spaces including SFMOMA USA, Hayward Gallery London, Pompidou Centre Paris, Kunsthalle Vienna, Bolshoi Theatre Moscow, Tate Modern London and the Royal Opera House London. His work has been presented throughout the United States, Asia, Australia and Europe.
Visit Scanners's website: http://www.scannerdot.com
At Spark 2006, Scanner will give a scholarly lecture on his work, be interviewed and demo his process as part of the "Making Music" series, and will participate in a live Internet performance with DJ members of free103point9.org, a Transmission Arts group based in New York. In the performance, several free103point9 DJs will create music in New York and send it over the Internet to Minneapolis, where Scanner will mix the multiple feeds into a single live musical stream.
free103point9 is a non-profit media arts organization focused on establishing and cultivating Transmission Arts. This genre includes experimental practices in radio art, video art, light sculpture, and installation and performance utilizing the wireless spectrum. free103point9 activities support and promote artists exploring transmission mediums for creative expression. free103point9 programs include a public performance and exhibition series, an online radio station and distribution label, an education initiative, and an artist residency program and study center.Founded in 1997 as a microcasting artist collective, free103point9's goals during the formative years were focused on the microradio movement fight's for public access to the airwaves. free103's mobile operations made airtime available to community voices, local bands, and most significantly to a group of under-served artists shaping conceptual works specifically for radio transmission.
Visit the free103point9.org website at http://www.free103point9.org/