signs and symbols

New Sound Works & Experiments

Thursday, September 6, 2018
7:00 - 9:00pm

Friday, September 7, 2018
7:00 - 9:00pm

In the forward-looking spirit of the artists & allies summer exhibition and performance series, signs and symbols presents two evenings of New Sound Works & Experiments, showcasing a group of artists working with sound as medium and listening as a method of practice. Sound Art is a slippery term and sound artists find themselves at home in museums, jazz clubs, and noisy underground loft shows. There is within this fluid hybridity an opportunity to re-open old art historical debates such as representation vs. abstraction, or interrogate the fixity of a work that clearly was born of improvisatory practices. And, just as with other performance practices, sound art can disrupt the expectations of gallery goers, forcing a sensory experience, one without objects yet filling the space entirely. The two-day sound art series is organized by artist Mike Clemow.

mike clemow is a conceptual sound artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His practice is focused around the idea of listening as a creative act and explores the positions of listening and being listened to and what it means to know-with-the-ear. He makes installations, interventions and performances using field recordings, photographs, and objects, placing the artist, or the audience in some relationship with the act of listening, often specific to a particular site or sites.

Mike graduated from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU in 2009. His work has been shown at Exit Art, Spectrum NYC, Dixon Place, AC Institute, Radiator Gallery, The Center for Book Arts, Howl! Happening, and Mana Contemporary. He has performed in Art in Odd Places 2008, DUMBO Art Festival 2009, Festival MOD (Guadalajara, MX) 2012, River to River Festival 2015, and Movement Research Festival 2017. He was awarded the Sonic Mmabolela sound art residency in Limpopo, South Africa in 2013 and 2015; BSMT Residency at Mana Contemporary 2016-2017; LABVERDE 2017; and LMCC Workspace Residency 2017-2018.

jenn grossman is an experimental musician/sound installation/experiential media artist living and working in NYC. Lingering somewhere between philosophical, psychological, and artistic approaches to exploring sound and light, she is interested in ways that they heighten emotional, social, and sensory awareness, cause materials to transcend themselves, and engage us in active modes of perception from the art gallery to the street. Coming from a sculptural, multimedia arts & music background, sound art has been an intuitive discovery for her, propelling her current focus on time-based media: light installations, multichannel sound environments, vocal explorations, acoustic-architectural interventions, and collaborative composing and sound designing for film and movement artists. She has installed and participated in various performances in venues such as Harvestworks, Open Source Gallery, Reverse Gallery, and the New York Transit Museum, for festivals such as the Deep Listening Conference’s Cistern Dream session, OPENSIGNAL, the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival, and the Gallatin Arts Festival, and in transitory spaces like the Central Park tunnels, garbage cans, and stairwells.

gregory kramer is a multidisciplinary artist working with sound and space. Taking inspiration from his archaeological curiosity of abandoned places and his interest in mythology, he searches for ghosts among the ruins and seeks to unearth evidence of forgotten histories through sound. His sound work uses field recordings, found materials, electronics, instruments and radio transmissions. His work was featured in the Sonom International Sound Art Festival, Mexico, and broadcast on BBC Radio 6’s Freakier Zone, Scotland’s Radiophrenia, Wave Farm Radio’s Short Waves, Long Distances, Norway’s Borealis Experimental Music Festival, France’s WebSYN Radio and Italy’s Helicotrema Festival. He performed “Vampire State Building” an 8-channel soundwork for RFG’s Sonic Arts program and composed for a dance piece performed at the Setia Darma Museum of Masks and Puppetry in Bali. He has done residency/workshops in Norway and South Africa and has album releases on Impulsive Habitat, International Winners and SONM Sound Archive of Experimental Music and Sound Art.

cecilia lopez is a composer, musician and installation artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work explores the boundaries between composition and improvisation, as well as the resonance properties of diverse materials through the creation of non-conventional sound devices and systems. She holds and M.F.A from Bard College and an M.A. in composition from Wesleyan University. Her work has been performed at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Festival Internacional Tsonami de Buenos Aires, Floating Points Festival at Issue Project Room (New York), Ostrava Days Festival (Czech Republic), MATA Festival (New York), Experimental Intermedia (New York) Kunsternes Hus (Oslo) and Contemporary Art Center (Vilnius). She was a Civitella Ranieri fellow in 2015. Collaborations include projects with Carmen Baliero, Carrie Schneider and Lars Laumann among others.

freddie wyss is an artist and musician based in Brooklyn, NY. His work focuses on the inability of communication to visualize reality. Through mixed instrumentation, effects, and modulation, his ambient/plunderphonics project, warm canopy, finds sound in a space walking the knife edge between a misplaced hello and that smile that flew over your shoulder. Spinning long form noise assemblages through found sound, studio production, and an improvisational reaction to timbre, warm canopy stares into an abyss and gently tosses a coin in, hoping for the best.
Freddie has performed throughout NYC, including the John Doe Gallery and several Radio Free Gowanus events. He recently finished production on the full-length warm canopy album "Incongruous Mass", due out early fall 2018, and is currently producing soundscapes for a puppetry exhibit at The Haunted Mill Residency in Wassaic, NY. He is also a member of the band Cup, who recently finished a US tour.