Each year, 23five curates Activating The Medium around a specific theme that seeks to underscore the connectivity between artists working with various methods and materials. Previously, Activating The Medium has explored sound ecology, audio mimesis, and the relationship between sound and architecture. For the 2010 festival, 23five presents a theme of ice -- the physical, geographic, metaphoric, and mythological attributes to ice as manifested through sound. Featured performers this evening include Cheryl E. Leonard, Pedestrial Deposit, Jesse Burson, and Rale.
Cheryl E. Leonard is a composer, performer, and instrument-builder whose work investigates sounds, structures and objects from the natural world. In 2009, Leonard traveled to Palmer Station, Antarctica and gathered recordings and natural materials to create music with. For Activating The Medium, she will be presenting one of her Antarctic compositions exploring elements of the region's environments and ecosystems and will be performed live by a small ensemble playing amplified ice, stones, shells and penguin bones.
Jesse Burson is a sound artist and illustrator intent on coaxing large environments out of minute details while blurring the lines between natural and man-made elements. He has collaborated with a number of Bay Area musicians over the years including Big City Orchestra, fellow festival performer Cheryl Leonard, Thomas Carnacki, and the inn. aff. (orchext.) big band. Jesse’s first solo performance visits the memory of the yuki-onna, the snow woman of Japanese folklore.
In 2006, William Hutson began recording and performing as Rale, whose analog modular synth noise compositions have one foot planted in the avant-garde and one in the scum infested tape underground.. He has released music on Monorail Tresspassing, Arbor Records, Peasant Magik, and Ekhein and has an LP forthcoming on San Francisco's Isounderscore label. At Activating the Medium, Rale will perform an edit of a new work in progress titled Lovely Limb of the House, one movement of which takes inspiration from the sound of ice cubes in a cocktail glass.
The music of Jon Borges and Shannon Kennedy of Pedestrian Deposit could best be described as highly composed, focused and dynamic, experimental music that draws on their widely varying music talents. From Borges's interest in such areas as electronics, tape loops, field recording, and synths, to Shannon's use of classical instruments, contact mics and manipulated metal objects, the duo combine elements of musique concrete, ambient, drone, classical and harsh noise.
Cost: $10