OpenStudio: BOTCH STUDIES - a project presentation of a new sound-theatre work for two performers and electronics

A work in progress by Joe Diebes & Christina Campanella

Date: Monday July 19, 2010
Time: 16:00 hrs.

Venue: STEIM, Utrechtsedwarsstraat 134, Amsterdam
Entrance: Free

Over the course of two weeks Joe Diebes & Christina Campanella will be developing material and technologies for a new sound-theatre work called BOTCH. The work explores the behavioral difference between people and machines by asking: what’s in a mistake? A performer interacts with audio and video recordings according to the rules of a composed score.  She engages in vocal, movement, and drawing tasks that demand more speed than they can handle, inevitably leading to information loss, flubs, and missed notes.  The relation between machine exactitude and human error evolves (or devolves) over the course of the piece.  BOTCH will be presented at HERE Arts Center in New York City in 2012.

Joe will be using STEIM's LiSa software to research the possibilities of live sampling in this project. He will be capturing small snippets of the singer's voice and finding different ways to displace, layer, glitch, and manipulate it - to create a conversation between the singer and the machine. Also exploring unusual ways to control the electronics through movement. 

More info: http://www.joediebes.com/ and http://christinacampanella.tumblr.com/.

Joe Diebes creates works that converge around the categories of contemporary music, sound installation and visual art. From 1996-2003 he was an artist member as well as the musical force behind the hybrid arts group GAle GAtes et al. described by The New York Times as “an adventurous troupe with one foot in the world of postmodern art and the other in downtown performance.” Since then he has created sound installations, often with a substantial visual component, for art galleries, museums, and public spaces in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. He also continues to create sound driven performance environments employing the spatial dimensions of his installations. His work continues to question the relationships between technology, artmaking, and a contemporary culture under the sway of a digital worldview.

This project has received funding through a grant from the Netherland-America Foundation.