Sitting at the intersection of the psychedelic and the avant-garde, Pataphysics is a new audiovisual concert series dedicated to showcasing live ambient, experimental, drone, and downtempo music and visuals. Sink deeper into a comfy intimate environment with immaculate sound and fully lose yourself in otherworldly sonic and visual explorations.
Artists:
Kenneth Kirschner
Ezekiel Honig
Joshue Ott (Superdraw)
Todd Polenberg
7:30 Doors open
8-8:30 PM Art Viewing
8:30 PM: Concert begins
To celebrate the launch of this new series we are opening Annelid, a light-based algorithmic artwork by Pataphysics co-founder Todd Polenberg.
Admission: $15
This is a shoes-off event, get cozy.
The music of Kenneth Kirschner is situated at the intersection of contemporary classical composition and experimental electronic music. His work is characterized by a close integration of acoustic and electronic sound sources; a strong focus on harmony, pattern, and long-form development; and experimentation with techniques such as chance procedures, indeterminacy, and microtonality within a digital context. An advocate of open source music, he releases all of his work freely online through his website, kennethkirschner.com, which represents a complete archive of all his published music from the 1980s to present; his work has also been released by record labels such as Greyfade, Sub Rosa, 12k, Line, Leerraum, and/OAR, and Room40. Kirschner was a 2015 artist in residence at Eyebeam, a 2016 artist in residence in Times Square, and a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Music/Sound. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Ezekiel Honig's emotively warm electronic-acoustic music nestles into a comfortable, shared space between melodic event-driven ambient, muted techno, textural downtempo, and slowmotion house. Using these genres as reference points from which to stray, Honig utilizes everyday objects and spaces amidst processed instruments, tethering to our physical universe while eschewing any concerns of figurative reality. Plastic, metal, wood, and air coalesce with Rhodes, guitar, horns, and piano, creating a sound of contrast and contradiction, pairing inviting, fuzzy chords with clunky and dirty mishaps. Honig finds this sense of balance - of past and future, acoustic and digital, abstraction and concrete immediacy - by grounding himself in the idea that a sound can be a representation of infinite stories, emotions, possibilities, and simultaneously be just a sound to be used in a work of audio.
In the live setting, Honig takes an improvisational approach, combining loops and elements from various songs with on-the-fly arrangements, editing and effects. Viewing recorded material as a constantly shifting body of work leaves space for serendipitous moments and leads to each set being an individualized rework, referencing and reprocessing itself as well as the song forms from which the parts emerged. As a result of this flexibility to tailor sets to the environment, his performances have been known to take the form of location-centered, rhythmic near-ambient, deep after-hours techno, or heartbeat-driven installation.
Joshue Ott is a New York-based performer and software designer. Ott is the creator of superDraw, an instrument for live cinematic audiovisual improvisations with which he has performed at venues ranging from Mutek to Carnegie Hall. He also creates apps, including the popular Thicket, 3draw, snowDrift, Pitch Painter with Morton Subotnick, and the Variant series.
Todd Polenberg is an award-winning artist, engineer, and electronic musician who works with light and sound to create sublime otherworldly experiences. His work has been shown at Ars Electronica, Science Gallery Dublin, Mysteryland, Burning Man and featured in Forbes and Forward magazines.
Questions? Please reach out at delightfactoryNYC@gmail.com.
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