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Mar 02

Alison O’Daniel – Room Tone

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An Art in General New Commission presented in collaboration with Knockdown Center. “Room Tone” refers to the moment on a film set when crew and actors pause in order for the sound mixer and boom operator to record room tone, the subtle location-specific sound present in every space. Weaving narrative between film segments and object-making, O’Daniel will create a layered and immersive installation. Based on collaborations with three contemporary composers, Steve Roden, Christine Sun Kim, and Ethan Frederick Greene, O’Daniel builds a visual, aural, and haptic vocabulary through varying levels of access to information such as color, sound, and storyline.

O’Daniel’s engagement with different mediums is a type of call-and-response, building upon and transforming the specific language of one onto another. Experimental and documentary film collapse and coincide with sculpture and installation, in a collaborative process that highlights the inevitable loss or re-creation of information as it passes through various channels. The presentation purposefully disables audience members’ normative perception of events and materials in order to present new modes of listening and seeing. Emphasizing subjects’ relationship to silence or unavailable sonic elements, Room Tone draws on O’Daniel’s own experience as a hard-of-hearing artist. The project’s form of exploded storytelling results in a performative arc that is less reliant on traditional script structure and more on physical choreography and collaboration. The audience is guided through narrative holes, unknowns, and missing parts in order to engage in a process of deep listening that aims to extend far beyond the aural realm.

Click here for the full press release and to learn more about Art in General.

Performance: The Deaf Club featuring Future Punx,
Wall, and ASL storytellers. Thursday, April 28, 7:30-11pm

Oct 23

Contemporary Temporary Sound Sessions

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Lectures: Presentations: Workshops: Experiments: Studies: Concerts: Exchanges: 

Under the guidance of Daniel Neumann, CT-SWaM founder and accomplished sound engineer, this 3 day workshop is catered to sound artists, noise producers, composers of electronic and electro-acoustic music, as well as experimental musicians and sound designers, interested in deepening their practice and exploring spatialization as a creative element.

The workshop will give a historical overview on the subject with some technical background and explored aesthetics and techniques for spatialization. One objective is to practice listening as a phenomenological activity: the listener immersed in inner spaces / distance and continuity / sound as intersubjective space.

For more information on attending the workshop click here.

The workshop itself is now closed to the public but participants and guest performers will present work at Knockdown Center on the following days:

Sat, Nov 14
4p-6p: performances by participants
6p-8p: Pedro Lopes (Berlin), lecture and performance

Sun, Nov 15
2p-6p: performances by participants

Tue, Nov 17, $7 suggested donation

Kamron Saniee
Michael Hammond
Gus Callahan
Matthew Gantt
&
Gabe Raines

7pm Gabe Raines will present “Sun Castle – Room of a Thousand Doors – Door Two”. His sound project describes various spaces inside an imaginary castle. The spaces can be together into a functional audio map of the cavernous circular room.

8:30pm Jenn Grossman: multi-channel pieces

9pm Woody Sullender’s “Variations on Furniture Music” is a series of multi-channel electronic music performances utilizing arrangements of modular cardboard forms outfitted with audio transducers. His work encompass a variety of media including music, sculpture, performance, theater, installation, architecture, origami, and even sonic weaponry. Among other activities, he is founding co-editor (will Bill Dietz) of the sonic arts publication Ear | Wave | Event (earwaveevent.org).

All performances are open to the public.

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Follow the activities:
Blog: https://ctswam.wordpress.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CT_SWaM
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ctswam

Oct 09

Herman Kolgen and Nicolas Bernier

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As part of Quebec Digital, New York (October 22 – 25), Elektra and FuturePerfect co-present two audiovisual masters from Montreal — Herman Kolgen and Nicolas Bernier. Kolgen performs his acclaimed Dust, an audiovisual masterpiece inspired by Man Ray’s photograph “Elevage de Poussiere.” Concerned with giving form to what the eye cannot capture, Kolgen creates a spectacular world from mere dust particles, revealing their fibrous networks, deep structures and hypnotic complexities. At the threshold between the invisible and the visible, Dust becomes intoxicating and the video surface a veritable accumulation of x-rays. Simultaneously emotional and conceptual, audiences will never see or hear dust again in the same way.

Nicolas Bernier’s Frequencies (synthetic variations) is a part of an ongoing process that draws upon basic generative systems. Performed in real-time, this is Bernier’s first laptop performance, a dialogue between sound, light and material. Frequencies consists of pre-written sequences of synthetic sounds with light synchronized within small acrylic structures; a digital work visually translated into physical elements. With incredible precision and minimal means, Bernier creates a mesmerizing work where audiences can either hear the light or see the sound.

 Click here for more info.

Apr 10

SOUNDC O R R I D O R S

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SOUNDCORRIDORS is a series of sound events exploring non-traditional interactions between sound and space. Set in architecturally and acoustically unique spaces, the series invites sound artists and composers to generate new work to activate the peculiarities of each performance environment. At the heart of SOUNDCORRIDORS is a multi-channel sound system, meticulously placed to turn the entirety of the 25,000 sq ft Knockdown Center into a singular instrument. A day long event, the audience was invited to wander freely, choosing their own sonic and spatial narrative.

 

FEATURING:
Ashcan Orchestra
Leila Bordreuil
Sabisha Freidberg
Richard Garet
Alfredo Marin
Miya Masaoka
Doron Sadja
Tristan Shepherd

Organized by Doron Sadja and Tristan Shepherd

Apr 10

D.O.M.E.

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From Globular Cluster presented an otherworldly installation and performance featuring 2 monumental inflatable dome sculptures with interactive video projection, optics and sound.  Ambient musicians provided an immersive sound environment of tones and textures.

Performances by:

Javier Lopez Williams, Sarah Reynolds, Snykhunt, Jake Adams, Robert L. Pepper, Yuko Pepe and Kurt Freye

This event was made possible in part by a grant from the Queens Council on the Arts.

Apr 10

LOXM

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Knockdown hosted the inaugural Ladies of Experimental Music… a festival  of noise, Dada hijinks and vampire robots, oh my!

Performances by:
Metalux
Fat Worm of Error
Vinka Varna
Snaykhunt + RAFT
Trabajo
Maria Chavez
Jeanann Dara + David First
DJ Maria Minerva

Apr 10

Assemble X

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Organized by Pat Noeker

The 10th installment of the ongoing sound and performance series ASSEMBLE found itself at the Knockdown Center on May 11, 2013 when 16 superb performers randomly positioned throughout Knockdown simultaneously played long sustained notes of A and E. The list of performers is as follows:

Alexandra Drewchin JR., Bonnie Baxter, James Corrigan, Jeanann Dara, David First, Kate Henderson, Laura Ortman, Michael Durek, Camilla Ha, Daniel Schlett, Sto Len, Ted McGrath, Jason Poranski, Sadaf H., Adam Holquist, and Charles Shriner.

Live visuals will be performed throughout by Matthew Caron, Peter Shapiro, Eric Drasin, Reid Bingham, Sofy Yuditskaya and Matt Romain of of Fast Food Music Video.

The first set started at 8:30 and the second at 10. In between Ash Can Orchestra performed with The Amazing Amy, a contortionist.

Mar 06

Ende Tymes V

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ENDE TYMES V was the fifth-annual celebration of NOISE, EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC, and VIDEO ART.

Hosted by KNOCKDOWN CENTER, SILENT BARN, and OUTPOST ARTISTS RESOURCES, Ende Tymes V presented more than 60 artists over the course of 5 nights. A densely packed lineup featured a wide variety of street-level experimental music and noise art: harsh noise, avant-garde, drone, modular synthesis, and our personal favorite “unclassifiable.”

Knockdown hosted the opening night performances, featuring large scale installations, a multi-channel sound system, and workshops by the likes of:

Bob Bellerue & Wanda Gala, Sputnik Trio, Julia Santoli, Timeghost, Lary7, Marcia Bassett & Samara Lubelski, Z‘EV, Greg Fox, POSTCOMMODITY and Daniel Neumann.

Suggested donation at the door.

The installations will remain on view Saturday the 16th and Sunday the 17th from 2-6pm.

Mar 02

Piano Vectors

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Piano Vectors
for 6 pianos: a world premiere by John King

Laura Barger
Taka Kigawa
Joseph Kubera
Jenny Lin
Tania Tachkova
Ning Yu

A major work of 80 minutes in duration for our 30,000 square foot main exhibition space, Piano Vectors for 6 pianos filled Knockdown with rich textures of sound. Each solo pianist was seated at a piano at a chance-determined location. This composition was begun with a system of organizing time, and this system in turn generated all subsequent musical and spatial elements. Imagine the 6 pianists traveling through space and time, each at their own rate, speeding up or stretching time in chance-determined and improvised ways. Piano Vectors explores and summarizes King’s ideas on the organization of time and space as the primary focus of sound.

Feb 20

Auditorium

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AUDITORIUM was an extended evening of site-specific electronic and electroacoustic performances organized by artists/curators Lea Bertucci and Tristan Shepherd. The focal point for this event was a custom 10-channel sound system installed throughout the 50,000 square feet of Knockdown Center. This system acted as the point of departure for multichannel works by innovative sound-based artists Nate Wooley, Sabisha Friedberg,Marina Rosenfeld, Woody Sullender, and Phil Niblock. Bertucci and Shepherd commissioned new works from the seven composers, instrumentalists and audio artists to develop works uniquely suited to the site. The project culminated in a day-long event in which the selected artists presented their projects on site in a roving auditory experience.

For the 2015 iteration of this event, now in its third year, the event drew on a roster of artists whose work represents diverse perspectives, some as instrumentalists, others who come from a sculptural/installation based sound practice and still others whose work centers more on composition.

Curated by Joe Ahearn, presented by Clocktower Productions

This event is made possible, in part, by the Queens Council an the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
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