2017
WHO: Katherine Bauer works primarily with 16mm film and its material potential for sculpture, photography and installation. Much of her work involves mythologies, folklores, and narratives. Her work has previously exhibited at Participant Inc., NY; Shoot the Lobster, Dusseldorf, Germany; Place Gallery, Portland, Oregon; and Immanence Gallery, Paris, France among others. Bauer was awarded a 2012-13 Cité Internationale des Arts Paris Residency and was a recipient of a Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Foundation Fellowship (2012-13). Bauer holds a BA in film and electronic arts from Bard College and a MFA from NYU Steinhardt (2013). Bauer was born in Houston, Texas and currently lives and works in New York. Bauer is represented by Microscope Gallery, New York.
PROJECT: Moon interferences have been detected through sounds that were resonating from within the quarry causing the workers there to engage in increasingly irrational behavior, like the persistent eating of calcium carbonate. What this ephemeral data seems to be communicating is increasing Moon activity, indicating the Moon is returning to the Earth. Rocks at certain sites in the Hudson Valley, particularly in various quarries, were vibrating in accordance with the Moon, calling her back home. Rocks that were uncovered from the quarry that carried with them particular moon crystals were interlaced with analog video signals and sent back into the ethers. All the extraction of the materials from the earth changed the various metalenergetic pulls and they are starting to affect the ways that the planets, in particular our moon orbits earth, now the moon is getting closer and will soon crash back into earth resetting life as we know it.
TECHNICAL: There are instruments on Unit 11 that were used to record and analyze and reproject back out into space this phenomenon in hopes to better understand the moons position. The Unit 11 van provided Bauer with analog equipment to help collect data about sites that were resonating with Moon Return energies and interacting with key astrological points. With the Unit 11 van she was able to also involve analogue tape and thus magnetic dimensions to the chemical-crystals signals she was manipulating. Recordings with the Unit 11 van were made around quarries, particularly near one site in where Native American stories told of a "Spook Rock." These recordings were combined with mappings of specific rock specimens were projected into the Astral during Basilica Sound Scape 2017, with ESP TV's Scott Kiernan and Victoria Keddie, as well as Rose Kallal audio signal Moon calls. There will be a VHS tape produced for the public to view these excavated and encapsulated vibrational rock and landscapes coming soon in 2018.
Katherine Bauer/ Unit 11 live performance featuring Rose Kallal on modular sound, as part of 24 Hour Drone, Basilica Hudson, April 29, 2017. E.S.P. TV Episode forthcoming.
2016
WHO: Ed Bear is an American performing artist and engineer. His work with robotics, sound, video, transmission and collective improvisation investigates the questionable calibration of perception. As an educator and designer committed to an open source world, he researches and practices material reuse and as a civil responsibility. He has toured extensively in North America and Europe as a performer and teacher, working with organizations such as The Mattress Factory, The Montreal Pop Festival, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute.
PROJECT: For his residency, Ed Bear will install a new iteration of the radioOrgan, a hand-crafted modular FM transmission system built from obsolete electronics, in E.S.P. TV's Unit 11 mobile studio. Marginally legal as a “part 15” test device, the radioOrgan is 8 individual low power radio stations which can work in tandem to desperately fight for the attention of single radio receivers, completely occupy radio bands [e.g. 88 – 108 Mhz], and create non-compliant transmissions unavailable using commercial hardware covering a 15 – 100 meter radius. A prototype will be used to present a temporary installation inside Unit 11 on May 1st teasing historic durational works (e.g. Musique D'ameublement, Organ2/ASLAP, Longplayer, Cross and Tudor's Reunion) with the almost transhuman material half-life of disposable electronics and a few nice, old boomboxes. In the following month, a new, sturdier, and easier-to-use radioOrgan will be fabricated and installed, and compositions and recordings which integrate Unit 11's existing AV gear will develop.
This work is part of a larger program to leverage a small technical accident to distribute thousands of low-cost FM transmitters, explicitly damned by a Bernaysian unnatural philosophy, to artists, teachers, activists, and students. Continued development of the radioOrgan feature set enhances an existing base of workshops which will continue to enact the aforementioned while increasing general technical literacy and civic awareness of the multitude of unique socio-ecological challenges and opportunities posed by everyday electronics.
Technical: The current prototype has 8 FM transmitters, 8 discrete analog inputs and 16 oscillator voices. Control is via a USB-MIDI master, physical buttons, and internal programming by a technician (i.e. it can play back composed sequences without external input). Each transmitter can transmit between 70 and 120 MHz, covering every commercial radio band internationally and several VHF analog television channels. As each individual transmitter can change it's transmitting station on the order of 1000 times per second, the radioOrgan can effectively, completely saturate any commercial radio bandwidth with signal. Work on the installation in Unit 11 [sic] will add 8-16 LFO outputs, CV control for all 8 transmitting stations, preprogrammed sequences, and tones, and a patch bay break out for all input and output signals. Four radio receivers and a small BW CRT will be mounted and accessible via the patch bay.
Please see E.S.P. TV Episode #100 for the Live taping of Ed Bear / Unit 11 at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn NY, July 16, 2016
In partnership with Clocktower Productions and Franklin Furnace Archive
Produced by Scott Kiernan and Victoria Keddie
Cameras: Matt Bonner, Greg Thomas, Julia Biasi, Lee Lichtsinn