under
the Borderline Ballroom banner, I organised a special live radiophonic
simulcast from iconic Lyttelton venue The Wunderbar, via local
independent radio station Volcano Radio 88:5FM.
both
I and the artists were interviewed about the initiative by Sage Forest
for The Music Mix, a programme on Radio New Zealand, some mention of
which can possibly still be found here
A'sides for Betaville's Peter Kirk designed the event's wonderful oscillatory wave-themed poster.
----
the BORDERLINE BALLROOM
casts out live into the electromagnetic spectrum this month with a
focus on experimental radio, broadcast as art, and artists engaging with
the technology of radio.
Fusing
radio broadcast and live performance, the Borderline Ballroom #17
incorporates three live solo artists and the radio programmes Borderline
Radio and A'Sides for Betaville, in a live to air collaboration with
Lyttelton community broadcast station Volcano Radio 88:5FM, which has
been operating in the port town just outside Christchurch since February
2008, and whose transmission area is locally bounded by the crater rim.
The Borderline Ballroom #17 will be on-site at the Wunderbar in Lyttelton and simulcast live on the station's airwaves from 8pm.
Sunday 21 September 2008
the Wunderbar, Lyttelton
8:00pm - $5, doorsales only
the Wunderbar, Lyttelton
8:00pm - $5, doorsales only
with:
ADAM WILLETTS (Chch)
Adam
Willetts is a musician and artist whose practice shifts casually
between hi-tech and handcrafted as he explores relationships and
interfaces between people, technology and popular culture. His use of
DIY electronics, radio, computers and game controllers creates dynamic
and surprising live performances that carefully balance elements of
fragile beauty with violent eruptions of static, electromagnetic
interference and feedback.
Adam
has been performing and exhibiting throughout New Zealand and
internationally since the late 1990s featuring at numerous festivals and
exhibitions including Lines of Flight 2006 (Dunedin), TASIE 2006
(Beijing), S3D 2007 (Auckland), and Cloudland at ISEA 2008 (Singapore).
For September's Borderline Ballroom Adam will be performing new work for synthesizers and electrosmog.
MELA (Lytn)
Mela
is Helen Greenfield (Barnard's Star, the LEDs, Miss Mercury)'s
experimental audio/visual project which focuses on (revels in) the
medium specific properties of a variety of obsolete media, and within
which "layers of repeating melodies, gradually effected drones, and
suitably unrecognisable beats create an imperfect but mellifluous
musical microclimate."
For
this Borderline Ballroom performance Mela will be eschewing the easy
translation of digital imagery to debut her OHP-projected,
hand-coloured, hand-made slides, layering them in vibrant colour fields
which recall the exuberant, colour saturated direct-film paintings of
Len Lye, and also investigating the aesthetics of the constrained
gesture and broken things, saying "maybe Mela more closely resembles her
equipment at the moment... but who copies who?"
I-RORY (Chch)
I-Rory
is an eclectic multi-instrumentalist, "a... dilettante, percussionist
and improvising musician who plays the stereo." Last seen in a solo
capacity supporting Philip Jeck at the Borderline Ballroom #13, for
September's performance he is promising to celebrate the politer
pursuits of the season, to take listeners on "a sunday walk" and will be
contemplating a "pitch invasion" with semi-automatic percussion,
obstructed field recordings and attack, sustain, decay, feedback.
"Was
a delight to absorb self in the digi-soup of I-rory. Using crude
objects of both home-made and exotic qualities, I-rory evoked the sound
plethorae of Zoviet France." -Matt Middleton, April 2008
A'SIDES for BETAVILLE (Lytn)
a
radio show hosted by Peter Kirk every Sunday on Volcano Radio 88.5FM
from 10pm - 12am, A'sides is radio in the classic tradition of late
night experimental collage soundscape, a maverick creative broadcast
practice begun on US college radio in the late 1970s, with precursors in
earlier music/audio/collage works and sound experiments, whose prior
local manifestations include Rotate Your State (RDU, 1991-2003), as well
as various programs on the original Radio Lyttelton.
A'sides
rides the drift of the late night dial toward a poetics of the medium,
becoming a framework through which to listen in to listening, playing
with radio as-playback, making audible the sound of broadcast and its
sonic storage media. In its collaged craftings, found-cultural detritus
jams with precious artifacts of high culture, the mp3 speaks to the tape
loop and the gramophone, hand-manipulated op shop records of Russian
folk songs and sea shanties (the record as readymade... the medium as
the massage) bump tactilities and temporalities with recordings of
historic avant gardists speaking on the creative process, and live
streaming of internet radio art projects.
for
the Borderline Ballroom, A'sides promises as much de-mystification of
its process as it promises further inscrutability, staging live radio
art as event, while retaining its intimacy of late night listening for
those who understand that "the ears don't have eyelids"
----------------------
the
BORDERLINE BALLROOM is a Christchurch-based initiative aiming to
provide a regular live presence for performative audio experimentation
which supports local practitioners working on the peripheries of music
and sound, while offering a resource for national and international
performers touring the South Island.