THE ELECTRIC ARTS ALLIANCE OF ATLANTA
presents
Meet The Artist v.1.1
Oliver Smith
Selected film and video work: 1999-2002
&
Robert Cheatham
a survey of his installation and sculpture work
and
the performance of 'Harpazo' for saxophones and electronics
Monday, October 21, 2002, 8 pm
EYEDRUM, ATLANTA , GA
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Oliver Smith
Selected Work: 1999-2002
Included in this selection are works using both original and found footage. Common to all of them is the exclusion of dialog or narration. Instead sound is used to shape an emotional response to the images. The avoidance of language-based storytelling allows the presentation of cinematic events in a more abstract and primal manner.
Title: Fractured Gaze (re-edited); Date: 1999Format: Super 8,; Length: 2'9"
Stop motion animation shot on film and rephotographed in video. Theme centers on the male gaze as an act of ownership. Soundtrack constructed using audio from an online porno clip and electronic signals.
Title: Places of Absence (excerpt); Date: 1999
Format: VHS,; Length: 5'15"
Video of various sites in the business and industrial districts around Atlanta on a winter afternoon. Monochrome static camera shots contain a minimum of movement. Minimalist soundtrack emphasizes the isolated quality of the imagery.
Title: Scenes from a Scene (two excerpts); Date: 2000
Format: Found Footage,; Length: 9'7"
Two scenes from Michael Redford's Nineteen-eighty-four. Images manipulated and distorted on the computer.; First soundtrack uses a circular theme to build on the idea of sexual obsession. Second soundtrack exploits drones and distortion to create a fear climate.
Title: Particle Chamber (re-edited); Date: 2000
Format: 16mm,; Length: 2'28"
The use of film without photography. Hand painted blank 16mm stock. Originally shown in its full length (25 min.) to a live soundtrack that changed with each showing. Based on an interest in subatomic particles.
Title: The Restless Eye (two excerpts); Date: 2001
Format: Found Footage,; Length: 4'29"
First excerpt shot off screen of an unknown television program. Heavily cropped, edited and color manipulated to create a more abstract narrative. Second excerpt taken from Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. Maximum use of contrast emphasizes the vividness of a brutal beating scene.
Title: The Meaning of Dreams; Date: 2001
Format: Found Footage,; Length: 1'20"
Taken from a early Edison film. The surreal quality of the original clip seemed dreamlike and mysterious. Looping sound mimics the circular movement of the Maypole dance as the scene repeats and dissolves.
Title: Ritual of Memory Date: 2002
Format: Super 8, Length: 3'37"
Stop motion animation. Memory as an obsessive/compulsive act. Soundtrack is a Ravel piece slowed to 20% of its original speed transforming a dance movement into a mournful dirge.
Title: The Illness Narratives Date: 2002
Format: 16mm (found footage), Length: 3'45"
Manipulated 16mm educational film meant to reassure a child's first trip to the hospital. Many scenes were terrifying and mimicked my own recent surgery. The enhanced color is over saturated and unreal. Soundtrack employs ironic use of children's music, mechanical voices and drones to establish a mood of resignation to the larger forces of the medical industry.
Title: Air Show Collection: c.1963 Date: 2002
Format: Super 8 (found footage), Length: 4'30"
Edited from several found super 8 home movies. Seeks to create a fearful atmosphere that builds on the machine fear and anticipation of crashes underlying the attraction of air shows. Drones, high pitched frequencies and heavily reverbed crowd sounds accompanyimages of airplanes that appear to be in trouble.
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Oliver Smith is self-taught in the areas of filmmaking and sound design. The focus of his MFA was painting and printmaking. He teaches part-time at GSU and exhibits at the Modern Primitive gallery in Atlanta.
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Robert Cheatham
Robert Cheatham will present a brief preview of the highlights of his past decade's work in sculpture and installation. (For more information please see: http://www.pd.org/~zeug/rrcvita.html)
The second part of the presentation will be a sonic event called 'Harpazo.' This is part of an ongoing series of installations and performances dealing with the persistence of the religious, the question of counter-normal realities (i.e. the para-normal), and the possibilities of technology in a confusion of 'normalities.'
This evening's presentation of 'Harpazo' is a series of dialogues and non-dialogues between the 'natural' breath of the saxophone (soprano, alto, tenor) and the 'holdings' (samples) and modifications of the electronic apparatus. The piece is a series of overlapping and/or contiguous modules governed by the electronics as much as the instrument. The performance relation between the modules is improvisational. The text is from E.K. Huysman's "Against Nature."
Harpazo (rapture)
The King's Two Bodies
"For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ will rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up [Gk: harpazo] together with them in [the] clouds, to meet the Lord in [the] air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."
1 Thessalonians 4:16,17
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Robert Cheatham has been active on the Atlanta alternative arts scene since 1984. He is one of the founders of Public Domain, Inc, a non-profit devoted to explorations in art, technology, community, and theory. He is also the editor of PERFORATIONS, an online journal devoted to theory, art, and experimental writing. He is also a member of the dynamic art collective known asEYEDRUM. His most recent artistic work has been in installation art and performing with the sonic explorations of KONX. In the eighties he performed extensively in the industrial/noise band TINNITUS, releasing many cassettes on the fort!/da? label.
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The Electric Arts Alliance of Atlanta (EAAA)
The EAAA is a forum dedicated to the transmission of ideas, music and visual art that utilize electronic means and methods to create and manipulate sound and light. The EAAA presents an opportunity for artists to present their current work in the domain of audio and visual experimentation, while also serving as a place for artists of all disciplines to meet and exchange ideas, with the hope that such contact will stimulate further creation, collaboration, and exploration. The EAAA meets every third Monday of the month at Atlanta's Eyedrum art and music gallery and is open to proposals for performance, presentation, and discussion that highlight individual and collaborative involvement in the electric arts of Atlanta.
Website ----- http://www.theEAAA.org
Info ---------- EAAA@earthlink.net
List-Serv ---- Electric_Arts_Alliance-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Special thanks to Eyedrum for hosting this monthly event. Eyedrum is a non-profit art and music gallery that needs your support to survive. If you'd like to make a donation or volunteer, please talk to one of the Eyedrum staff members or visit their website at http://www.eyedrum.org
UPCOMING EAAA EVENTS (all at Eyedrum unless otherwise noted):
The Atlanta Electric Arts Festival 2002
• Tuesday, November 5, 2002, 10 pm - The EAAA on Live@WREK 91.1 FM
Ben Davis & Adam Overton, Blake Williams, Kevin Wills & James Parker
• Monday, November 11, 2002, 9 pm - The 10-High (The Old Dark Horse)
Submarine Records Showcase: Larvae, Magicicada, J. Smiley
• Monday, November 18, 2002, 9 pm - TigerBeat6@Eyedrum:
Cex, Stars as Eyes, Numbers
• Monday, November 25, 2002, 8 pm - The EAAA Annual Survey
• Thursday, December 5, 2002, 8 pm - 2 Intermedia performances
featuring intermedia artist Maria Blondeel (Belgium)
and new media duo DropBox (Florida)
And:
• Monday, December 16, 2002 - Marshall Avett
• January 18-February 21, 2003 - Exhibition: L'Objet Sonore
• Monday, January 20, 2003 - L'Objet Sonore Artists Talk
• Monday, February 17, 2003 - Ouie Dire - Sound art ensemble from France