Serving the San Francisco Bay Area New Music Community

                    
Eric Theise
Vocalizer. Visual artist. Map jockey.
Eric Theise is a San Francisco-based artist and geospatial/web software engineer. He's made 16mm experimental films which have been exhibited across the United States, Canada, and France; worked with alternative photographic processes such as pinhole, photogravure, and cyanotype; and on his own – or as a member of the Cornelius Cardew and Long Tone Choirs – he's performed at the Asian Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Center for New Music, The Chapel and the Chapel of the Chimes, Finnish Kaleva Hall, Luggage Store Gallery, Meridian Gallery, Mills College, Temescal Art Center, the Tower at Oliver Ranch, and the Western Bunkers at Mare Island.

He's presently focused on combining strategies from experimental film & animation, color theory, the Light and Space movement, and concrete poetry with open data and open source software to create digital maps that behave in ways never intended by the original developers. Some of these maps find their way into single channel video works, some are projected and manipulated in real time as part of collaborative performances with improvising musicians under the umbrella of A Synesthete's Atlas.
Upcoming Events:

Friday, July 11 2025 8:00 PM
2727 [2727 California St Berkeley, CA 94703]
Sonic Cartographies is Klank.ist’s performance series designed to foster bi-monthly gatherings and collaborative encounters with Bay Area-based musicians and artists. The series offers a platform for local performers to engage with, interpret, and respond to sonic and visual works shared by Klank.ist members across Berlin, Istanbul, Strasbourg, Graz, Yalova, and the San Francisco Bay Area — forming an ongoing, evolving dialogue across geographies.  More...
Sunday, August 3 2025 3:00 PM
The Tiger Garage, a private studio in south Berkeley [south Berkeley, near Ashby BART]
Pleasant Coolness in the Heat/Solace in the Midst of Woe:
Sarah Grace Graves, voice. Eric Theise, video and electronics, Nancy Beckman, Shakuhachi, Tom Bickley, recorder and electronics
Composer - performer Sarah Grace Graves joins performance cartographer and musician Eric Theise, and musicians Nancy Beckman and Tom Bickley for an afternoon of composed and improvised performance with sound and video.

Seating is limited. To reserve a spot, email Tom Bickley tbickley@gmail.com  More...
Videos

Excerpted from a 45 minute improvisation between Eric Theise, manipulating digital maps, and Helena Espvall, performing on cello with electronics. The performance took place on 21 April 2022 at Hangar: Centro de Investigação Artística in the Graça district of Lisboa, Portugal.

In this sequence the scene is anchored at René Levasseur Island, the world's second largest lake island, located 464 miles/746 km northeast of Montréal. The impact of a meteor 214 million years ago is responsible for its geological form but it only became an island as a result of human intervention; a reservoir was created by flood-merging two extant, crescent-shaped lakes in 1970. First Nations peoples and environmentalists are working to protect old-growth boreal forests from logging at this "eye of Québec".

Krys Bobrowski: sliding speaker; Eric Theise: map manipulations. Excerpt of the 40 minute improvisation that took place on 13 November 2022 at Mosswood Sound Series, Oakland, CA. Thanks to Matt Ingalls of sfSound for presenting experimental sound, weekly, in this warm and welcoming venue throughout 2022. Thanks, too, to Conrad and Willis Meyers for the loan of the digital projector.