Recombinant Media Labs, TVOD, & STRRR TV present
Crisis Data Transfer
Join us for a preeminent three-evening weekend with Francisco López, Barbara Ellison, Olivia Block, Daniel Menche, Michael Gendreau, and Kevin Drumm, alongside a special duo performance by Victoria Shen and Aaron Dilloway, as well as a late night after-party with Pharmakon.
Recombinant Media Labs, TVOD, & STRRR TV present:
CRISIS DATA TRANSFER
Event Location: Gray Area, 2665 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110
View our FAQ page for more info, or contact us at [email protected] with any accommodation requests.
Seated program
All ages
SCHEDULE
Dive into the transfixing aural domain of VirtuAural Electro-Mechanics by Francisco López and Barbara Ellison’s cyber immersion AV on Friday October 6, 2023.
The surround sound encirclements of Olivia Block, Kevin Drumm, and Daniel Menche set the stage for duo performance from Victoria Shen + Aaron Dilloway and Pharmakon’s ballistic bestial onslaught for Saturday October 7, 2023.
And join us for the Recombinant Pre-Party Evening on Thursday October 5, 2023.
Thursday October 5
•DORKBOT / Recombinant Artist Talks - 7PM
With Francisco Lopez, Olivia Block, and Michael Gendreau
•BLEVIN BLECTUM - 10PM
•ILLUSION OF SAFETY & THOMAS DIMUZIO Duo - 11PM
** MSHR: Mesh Manifold at The LAB - 8PM
Friday October 6
8:00PM Doors
•Michael Gendreau - 8:30PM
•Barbara Ellison - 9PM
•Aaron Dilloway - 10PM
•Francisco López - 11PM
Saturday October 7
8:00PM Doors
•Daniel Menche - 8:30PM
•Victoria Shen + Aaron Dilloway - 9:15PM
•Olivia Block - 10:15PM
•Kevin Drumm - 11PM
**TVOD after-party w/ Pharmakon at Counterpulse - Late
Recombinant Pre-Party Evening
October 5, 2023
Pre-Party tickets require separate reservation.
GET TICKETS
DORKBOT / Recombinant Artist Talks - 7PM
With Francisco Lopez, Olivia Block, and Michael Gendreau.
BLEVIN BLECTUM - 10PM
Blevin Blectum (aka Bevin Kelley) develops sonic sci-fi fantasy in its most decadent technicolor forms, fueling the journey of OMNII - her latest solo adventure, released by Deathbomb Arc records OMNII is the soundtrack to a lost space opera, falling perfectly within the gaps between Barbarella, The Beast in Space, and Planet of the Vampires. For live performances of OMNII Blevin creates an extended, expanded version-variant, spinnings-out of omnii-materials, including unreleased segments of the spatial ambient / psychedelic field-. Blevin is half of the classic early-noughties-era San Francisco Bay Area duo Blectum From Blechdom (with Kristin Erickson-Galvin aka Kevin Blechdom). BFB recently returned from deep space hibernation, touring Europe with their 2022 album 'Deep Bone’.
ILLUSION OF SAFETY & THOMAS DIMUZIO Duo - 11PM
ILLUSION OF SAFETY
Since 1983, Daniel Burke and his many conspirators under the Illusion Of Safety banner have over the course of 40+ full length releases traversed most every facet of the avant sound plane, from early industrial pop deconstruction to blindingly minimal sound art to densely surreal found-sound collage, each unique approach bending and reconstituting the expectations and possibilities of each realm, creating uneasy music that is dense and dystopian and yet also beautiful. Performing over 300 live concerts throughout Europe and the states included No Fun 2008, the Wroclaw Industrial Music Festival 2009, Sonic Circuits in 2010, and In collaboration with Shen Wei Dance Arts in 2011 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. Outside of IOS Burke has collaborated with Jim O’Rourke, Jon Mueller, Randy Greif, Darin Gray, Z’EV, Cheer-Accident, Thomas Dimuzio, Kevin Drumm, Bill Horist, and others.
THOMAS DIMUZIO
Thomas Dimuzio stands as a beacon in the experimental music realm from the heart of San Francisco. Pioneering since the late 1980s, he's blurred the lines between sampling, synthesis, and live looping, crafting mesmerizing sonic experiences from the most unexpected sources. With recognition from entities as esteemed as the BBC, Dimuzio's works have resonated worldwide, being featured on numerous labels, not least of all his very own, Gench. As a champion of collaboration, he's created a diverse tapestry of sounds alongside many celebrated artists, leading to a vast catalog of both studio and live recordings. Beyond composition, Dimuzio is also a sought-after mastering engineer, having lent his expertise to over a thousand records at his Gench Studios, and has made significant contributions in sound design. Recently, he's delved deep into the world of Buchla modular systems, orchestrating concerts where machinery pulsates with life. With a plethora of ongoing projects and upcoming releases, Dimuzio's imprint on the experimental music landscape remains both indelible and dynamic.
** MSHR: Mesh Manifold at The LAB
October 5, 2023 - 8PM
Elevate your Recombinant Pre-Party experience with Mesh Manifold at THE LAB. A live sound-sculpture composition by the duo MSHR, this performance consists of a multitude of devices in a complex and unruly feedback system of sound and light.
Get tickets for MSHR: Mesh Manifold at The LAB here. Admission to this event is not included in the Pre-Party Ticket or Festival Pass and must be purchased separately.
Michael Gendreau - 8:30PM
Michael Gendreau will be using mechanical feedback from the Gray Area's natural structural and acoustical resonant frequencies to create a unique and personalized experience for each individual in the audience. Making real-time decisions based on the audience's physical and constitutional character, Michael Gendreau will personalize the sound and vibration experience, for an event that is not just about the performer, but also about the building and its occupants, creating in an open and dynamic performance.
Barbara Ellison - 9PM
Live sound performance with projection
Known for her explorations of ghostly presence and substance in a plethora of sonic realms, artist and composer Barbara Ellison’s work delves into the sonic intricacies of objects, manipulated instruments, voice avatars and sound environments from the Arctic to the Amazonian rainforest.
- ‘Inherent in all music –and perhaps in all sound- sonic phantoms lurk and stalk with the promise of mystery and elevation. We just need to conjure them’ [from the liner notes of the ‘Sonic Phantoms’ double album]
Aaron Dilloway - 10PM
Live sound performance
Aaron Dilloway’s myriad projects, from The Beast People to (pre-Spykes) Wolf Eyes, have always reflected his fascination with the trickster, that folkloric rogue and saboteur of law and order.
Aaron Dilloway works in esoteric mediums, subjecting old eight-track tapes to rudimentary and painstaking Exacto knife sampling. Sick of touring, Dilloway eventually left the seminal Wolf Eyes group and spent time in Nepal and resurfaced in Oberlin, Ohio. Since then he's issued a constant stream of extraordinary experimental music on his Hanson Records label and developed a fervent following.
Dilloway relentlessly upends and disrupts listener expectation, and in particular the either/or logic governing it. One of his customized weapons of choice is the tape loop. By constructing sporadic repetition-based music riddled with distinctive imperfections where multiplied spazzoid melodies spew forth unevenly before spilling into vats of howls. groans, and a glorious machine modulated exhilaration!
When the dichotomy between predictability and randomness are pushed to the brink of collapse a new kind of strange synchronicity seems to emerge above the fray. They sound like they could be threaded but its impossible to say one way or the other as if your senses are betraying you. Such sonic ambiguities pull one into the whirlpool between objective and subjective frequency entanglements where Dilloway swims the spectrum.
Aaron Dilloway Live @ Amplified Humans Festival here.
Francisco López – ‘VirtuAural Electro-Mechanics’ - 11PM
Live immersive performance in the dark with evolved sonic virtual machines
Internationally acclaimed for the intensity, richness and astonishing audio detail of his live immersive surround performances in the dark, sound artist and composer Francisco López has created yet another magnum sonic tour de force in his new ‘VirtuAural Electro-Mechanics’. A creation developed from a myriad of original sound recordings of mechanical machines, electro-mechanical systems and industrial environments gathered over the past 25 years all over the world; from food factories to “white rooms”, from 18th-century automata to computers, from wood and wires to magnetism, from the microscopic to the monumental. Resulting from a massive process of evolution, recombination and spatialization of these materials; merging the “real” with the rise of a new breed of inexistent, magnified, dramatically hyper-real machines; this gargantuan multi-layered creature is all about an extraordinary ontological sonic experience of VirtuAurality in the dark that will put you at the core of The archetypal machine.
- ‘Draw[ing] the ear from one fascination to the next [...] everything in his sonic frame gleams with pristinely arranged dramatic purpose’ [The New York Times]
- ‘A sonic beast [...], a paradox to confound physicists and philosophers alike’
[Dutch East India, USA]
- ‘After listening to this man Lopez I don't know what's going on in the world anymore’
[The Sound Projector, UK]
Daniel Menche - 8:30PM
Daniel Menche is an iconic experimental musician from Portland, Oregon. His extensive history of recording and performance spans three decades and counting. Menche's sonic abstractions manifest through intense noise, immersive drones, dense ambiance, poly-rhythmic percussion, turbulent nature field recordings, abused acoustic instruments and many other sources. His music is adventurous in execution as well as presentation, creating an absolute, abstract sonic world.
His compositions reveal the stately grandeur of an astute minimalism amplified. Both intense and serene pieces offer a wide spectrum of emotion. At times, a Menche composition can be a cathartic experience of obliterated sonic particles; at others, a heavy mantle can descend upon his rough tones to offer a darkly immersive introspection.
Watch ACEDIA by Daniel Menche here.
Victoria Shen + Aaron Dilloway - 9:30PM
Live Duo Performance
Victoria Shen (evicshen) travels a mobile tightrope walk between control, chance, danger & self invented acousmatic/analog instruments. Together with Dilloway they move the exploded Richter scale to an altered real time dimension.
Watch EVICSHEN EU TOUR 2023 - LIVE IN ITALY here.
Olivia Block -10:15PM
Olivia Block is a media artist and composer. For 25 years Block has created experimental music for recordings, concerts, site-specific multi-speaker installations, sound design, and scores for orchestra and chamber groups. Her compositions include electronic textures, field recordings, amplified objects and orchestral instruments. She performs using synthesizers, piano, organ, microphones, amplified objects and many other sound-making materials. Her recordings are published on Another Timbre, Erstwhile, Glistening Examples, NNA Tapes, Room40, Sedimental, and Touch, among other labels. Her latest album Innocent Passage in the Territorial Sea was chosen by Alessandro Cortini (Nine Inch Nails) and 4AD for inclusion in their 2021 "Best of" lists. Block tours internationally and resides in Chicago, IL.
Kevin Drumm - 11PM
Experience the Sheer Hellish Miasma sound of Kevin Drumm’s Full Frequency Face Melt
where his live typhoonic excursions chart the topography of boundless oscillations that ceaselessly crescendo to near paralyzing effect, dematerializing all the pent-up tensions into a bountiful state of savagely induced bardo buoyancy.
Drumm’s devastating real time psychoacoustic performances encapsulate a kind of maximized minimalism that isn’t so far from the sonance of Maryanne Amacher, Glen Branca, Swans or Sunn O))) in terms of impact , yet its a distinctive timbre territory all of its own not often frequented by others in the ‘noise' affected underground that Kevin has influenced so intensely.
Gorgeously abstract yet conceptually brilliant, this is exhilarating and explosive ambient overdrive music at its finest - making for a fearful admiration for anyone remotely interested in emotionally charged avant grade experimentation on a sonically majestic scale .
**TVOD after-party w/ Pharmakon - Late
Join us for the TVOD late-night after-party with Pharmakon at Counterpulse, 80 Turk St, San Francisco, on October 7. The party kicks off right after the Gray Area Theater performances conclude, for attendees to continue the night's festivities.
Get tickets for the TVOD after-party with Pharmakon here. Admission to the afterparty is included in Crisis Data Transfer 2-Day Festival Pass.
Artists
Partners
Recombinant Media Labs
The Recombinant Media Labs organization was founded to research the qualities and artistic potential of Spatial Cinema. It does so by means of Experiential Engineering; exploring processes that propagate the aesthetic and technological boundaries of panoramic AV exhibition. RML acts as producer and presenter of hybrid artworks and performance archiving based on spatial media synthesis; intermodal works using image, light, sound and other disseminated media in three-dimensional space. The CineChamber is RML's curated, nomadic platform under the artistic trajectory of founder & Director Naut Humon plus a superhuman crew.
STRRR
STRRR is the future of horizon-expanding television. Where superstars and brilliant newcomers hailing from the world of music, art, design, film, and fashion present their favorite clips and films through the nearly unlimited archives of the Internet. Each meticulously crafted episode presents a self-portrait of the selector, which allows us new insight into their life and work.
T.V.O.D.
T.V.O.D. is a techno-adjacent collective of artists dedicated to combating commodified experiences in electronic music. They organize shows, raves, dance parties and performances, mix them up in a cauldron to see what unexpected results spring forth.
