“Beyond Form” is a three-part,
audio-visual installation
and performance series
featuring
Julien Bayle’s “FRGMENTS”
and Kim Alpert’s
“Scan Lines.”
(Chicago — 17 July 2018) On July 27, 28, and 29 Elastic Arts will present a series of intentional duality featuring Julien Bayle’s FRGMENTS [USA PREMIER] with Kim Alpert’s Scan Lines [PREMIER].
This series is an experiment of live audio-visual immersive installation and performance presented in three ways. Every performance will be unique and after each showing, audience members will be encouraged to anonymously share their reaction.
The first two events are evening performances of each piece in opposite order. The third day will exhibit the work side-by-side at Silent Funny.
The artists will host a moderated talk on Sunday to discuss the intention of the work together and participate in a discussion with viewers.
This series is made possible with the generous support of the mediaThe Foundation. For tickets and additional information, click here.
FRGMENTS BY JULIEN BAYLE
FRGMENTS combines audio-visual live performance with an autonomous installation showing the permanent disruption of a continuous sound & visual flow.
FRGMENTS is a real-time programmed system that displays pre-shot video footage and then, assembles the clips again, sorts them, and cuts them time-wise, scrambling the playing order and space to create unexpected time loops and collages.
It runs a specific generative narration which changes based on context – the installation version is autonomous, but the live performance version is more controlled. The system generates sound, including parts that were partially written using rules and algorithms specific to the project. Each one plays with metric, bars, time, and loop concepts.
FRGMENTS is inspired by the cut-up concept/technique, created by Brion Gysin and deeply applied, especially, by William S. Burroughs, but also by Tristan Tzara and his folding techniques. Since the 20s Dadaists have used decontextualization & recycled work to create new pieces, sometimes new texts as Burroughs did, but also new paintings, as Ellsworth Kelly did.
FRGMENTS displays human video portraits without any specific facial expression, all shot under the same conditions, systematically and almost-scientifically in the same posture, the same framing, rotating, or static. This footage serves raw matter and FRGMENTS proposes a complete time-wise and space-wise recomposition of the video sequence. Each time, the show creates a new experience that is permanently and constantly generated and regenerated.
FRGMENTS intensively involves senses by exploring perception itself. By using very intense sensory involvement, FRGMENTS tries to show the artist’s obstinacy in trying to understand who the other is and what it can feel.
Julien Bayle is a multidisciplinary and independent artist based in France and working at the juncture of sound & visual. He merges visual art, music composition, physical approach of sound art and data visualization by creating advanced programmed installations and audio/visual live performances.He tries to address the question of disrupted continuum, interferences and representation of concepts by using physics of sound and error/artifact magnification.
His work is based on both experimentations and programming, using concepts of time expansion & contraction as main guidelines. His interests for all microsound and granular synthesis expand his work and open a new way of including field recording and previously designed sound into his own practices.
He seeks to depict a world saturated by meaningless informations , societies complexity through a positive-nihilist kind of deconstruction of processes, structures and results.
He performed his audio-visual live performances in international festivals like ELEKTRA in Canada, or sound:frame in Austria and exhibited his work in galleries in Europe. He’s also a art teacher and he provides advanced technical courses about the place of technology in new media creation, invited by different art schools in Europe. He initiates the first Ableton Certified Center in south of France in the prestigious sound research lab Laboratoire de Mécanique et Acoustique in Marseille.
SCAN LINES BY KIM ALPERT
Scan Lines is a multimedia performance moving through three structured improvisational states. Incorporating dance and sound with video synthesis and feedback, the audience experiences states of energy transference from the performers to each other as well as from camera through analog processing and synthesis. This work is presented to create larger dialog about the root of consciousness and unexplainable universal phenomenon surrounding near death experiences.
Scan Lines is inspired by the entheogenic meditations performed over several years by creator Kim Alpert. This meditation practice is part of Kim’s process to best understand death and its surrounding issues by sitting as the witness of momentary totality. With her established visual language of electronics and video art, combined with signal searching from a young age, the representations are often offered to her through analog video symbology. She seeks to recreate the feeling of these experiences for audiences to provide a window into the clarity and peace this practice have given her. To find a calming uncertainty, like that of watching a string untangle, Scan Lines, like these mediations themselves, has the fluidity to change in each incarnation revealing new information as it unfolds.
Kim Alpert, Video Synthesis
Paul Giallorenzo, Keyboard & Electronics Anton Hatwitch, Upright Bass
Jasmine Mendoza, Movement
Cristal Sabbagh, Movement
Kim Alpert
With a background in fine art, music, and carpentry Kim brings an attention to detail and diverse style to both her visual installation, sculpture, and performance work. Her work began in motion graphics and experimental video evolving into elaborate installations and video sculpture integrating video feedback and synthesis along with digital processing and triggering.
Kim holds a degree in Digital Art & Design from Full Sail University and was inducted into their Hall of Fame in 2013. She has displayed her original works at places like SOFA Expo, The Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago and Facets Cinematheque. She recently designed an interactive gesture room to visualize and create sound as part of the permanent collection at the National Music Center in Canada. Kim is currently a resident at the Chicago Art Department and performs live visuals with the Instigation Orchestra and Mike Reed’s Flesh and Bone.
Paul Giallorenzo
Originally from Long Island, NY, Paul Giallorenzo is a Chicago-based improviser, composer, producer, and sound designer using piano, synthesizer, keyboards, and electronics in a diverse range of contexts with a wide array of Chicago and international musicians in improvised, avant-jazz, experimental, and electro/acoustic music and sound, regularly performing locally and throughout North America and Europe. His work can be found on the Chicago-based Delmark Records and Austin-based Astral Spirits labels, as well as various other imprints including Leo Records (UK), Not Two Records (Poland), and 482 Music (NY). Paul is also a presenter, organizer, and co-founder of the music venue/art gallery Elastic Arts, producing hundreds of creative music concerts and art events in Chicago since 2001.
Anton Hatwich
Bassist, improvisor and composer Anton Hatwich has made his home in Chicago since late 2002. He has performed, recorded, and toured the world with many of the leading lights of the city’s fertile improvised music, free jazz, and indie rock communities, including Keefe Jackson, Josh Berman, Frank Rosaly, Nick Mazzarella, Ryley Walker, Leroy Bach, Mars Williams, Jason Stein, Avreeayl Ra, and Fred Lonberg-Holm. Hatwich also performs regularly in both New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, maintaining ties with artists such as Aram Shelton, Jaimie Branch, Kyle Bruckmann, Ben Goldberg, Joshua Smith, and Hamir Atwal. He has appeared at many of the world’s top music festivals, including the Chicago Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Pitchfork Music Fest, Solid Sound, Pop Montreal, Green Man (Wales), End of the Road (Wales), Into the Great Wide Open (Netherlands), Le Guess Who (Netherlands) Ring Ring (Serbia), and many others. Since 2015, Anton has been a member of the Instigation Orchestra, which is a collaborative group of Chicago and New Orleans musicians organized by guitarist Steve Marquette, and connected to the larger Instigation Festival.
Jasmine Mendoza
Jasmine Mendoza is an interdisciplinary movement and performance artist who finds it important to deeply listen to the body. Jasmine is interested in developing work that’s driven by sensation and groove. Her process for creating is inspired by improvisational techniques, small gestural movement, delicacy, text, exploring soft and thick textures, effort, quick vs slow movement, and stillness. Aside from dance making, Jasmine is a lighting designer and production stage manager who works closely with artist of all mediums assisting with the production of performances at Links Hall and Constellation.
Cristal Sabbagh
Cristal Sabbagh is an art educator at Adlai E. Stevenson High School, a fine artist, and interdisciplinary movement artist. Her work is motivated by a multitude of areas such as: film, culture, history, death/rebirth, hip-hop, butoh and improvised sound. In Cristal’s performances her goal is to organically transform her body, & display authentic emotion. Butoh has allowed her to connect to memories, her ancestors, and to her spirit. In essence she’s expanded her consciousness and she’ll continue to bring forth more offerings to her audience. Cristal is part of Marie Casimir’s Djasporas dance collective, which performed at the Instigation Festivals in Chicago and New Orleans, the Instigation Orchestra. She is also currently in a dance collective with Wannapa P Eubanks, called Body Strata, which develops works alongside Renee Baker’s Chicago Modern Orchestra Project. Cristal has studied with many butoh masters: Daisuke Yoshimoto, Katsura Kan, Kayo Mikami, Natsu Nakajima, Koh Morobushi, Tadashi Endo, Yumiko Yoshioka, The Tamanos, Ken Mai, and Diego Pinon.
