“Issue Artist In Residence” (Used 3 times)

Back in February, Prince Rama emerged from a haze of smoke and mylar mirrors to assume the guise of The Now Age, a pseudo-utopian cult eager to lead their followers through a transformative series of rituals and initiations. Having reincarnated ISSUE's loft space as a cosmic aerobic center, glittering and psychedelic, the Larson sisters woke the sleeping audience with generous sprinkles of perfume and chakra water to lead them through an 8-hour marathon of body- and mind-altering exorcise/exercise routines -- part Jane Fonda, part Jodorowsky. Below, view some highlights from the exhausting rituals that left me cleansed of demons and self-identity (and unable to walk the next day).

This Thursday (September 8), Prince Rama will return as The Now Age to guide us through the next cycle of transformation, taking the form of a free-for-all, 4-hour jam session. With the aid of roughly 400 pounds of soil, ISSUE will again metamorphose into a sacred space -- removed from time and space and yet inextricably connected to the present moment -- for housing advanced rituals in which the audience and their shamanic leaders engage in utopian musical creation as "a poetic reenactment and microcosmic creation of an ideal democratic society." All participants are encouraged to please bring along their instrument of choice. Read more about the free event and RSVP here.

To ready your mind and body for the next stage of the journey, Prince Rama have shared their new single "Rest In Peace," off their forthcoming LP Trust Now (dropping on Paw Tracks on October 4). If you find yourself in need of more preparation, you can revisit their fantastic in-studio from Brian Turner's show here.

Fall 2010 Artist-in-Residence Richard Garet gives his last performance at ISSUE—also, coincidentally, the last ISSUE-sponsored performance of 2011—this Friday at 8:30 pm (FREE | RSVP). Garet is multidisciplinary in that his processes and interests often draw lines between the visual (moving image, photography, or painting) and the auditory (electronic manipulation, or unpredictable analog processes), and that he invests conceptual and technical energy in both realms to great success.

Still from Garet's Rupture: Material Landscape

This latest work, Rupture: Material Landscape, consists of a single video channel created from treated and processed 16mm film. The film was subjected to bleaching and hand-treating, and played back changing its speed and frame rate. In a similar process, the sonic material was recorded onto cassette tapes, which were then subjected to magnetic interference, tape feedback, and erasure. Collaborator Bonnie Jones will be improvising speech while projecting subtitles generated by speech-recognition software on a layer over Garet's own projection. Throughout all of this, programmer and sound artist Wolfgang Gil will be spreading the sound around the in-house 15-channel hanging speaker system using Max/MSP and his custom-made program Roctor.

For now, enjoy this audio excerpt from Garet's first Artist-in-Residence performance back in October, from a series called Light Fields. The entire piece (Light Fields 1, 2, & 3) will be out on a DVD box set in the coming year, so check Garet's site for information as that develops. Although it will eventually be released as a fixed (and edited) work, this particular audio sample was entirely performed live, using the setup in the photo above. The photo also shows the hanging speakers that are a fixture of Friday evening's performance. Hope to see you there.

ISSUE Artist-in-Residence Richard Garet has shared a couple of newer tracks: “Gil’s Symphonic Aura” and “Huskies.” Next Saturday (11/20: FREE | RSVP), he’ll take the phrase “immersive environment” to an extreme level, filling the room with fog and pointing flashing projectors at the floor. This composition, AREAL, is a brand-new piece, and the second of three concerts that Garet’s presenting through the last three months of 2010.

Richard Garet talked on tape with musician Daniel Neumann recently about his artistic and compositional practices. “I’d say, I know maybe fifty percent what things are going to sound like…the performance becomes me trying to keep things stable,” he said, while sitting in his Astoria garden. Just judging from this short video (and from his recent performance), it would seem like Garet’s fixated on sensory overload, and on noise-related processes. But there’s a particular tactile nature to his work, so much so that he sees his performance as more a matter of exploration than of molding material to his own ideas. Even while composing fixed media, he says, “if I force my logic and my ideas on the work, it becomes boring to me.”

“Gil’s Symphonic Aura,” like the track “In The Open” which I wrote about a month ago, seems to incorporate a level of that live-performance unpredictability into the fixed recording. Both of these tracks couple field recordings with electronic sounds—they deal with the outside, physical world as an unpredictable system. There is a feeling of “listening in”—not just via microphones recording rain falling on a tin roof, but listening in on invisible, electronic signals as well, such as when Garet connects a 9-volt battery to an electric guitar string—and this listening, veiling its source by existing as a fixed recording, blends and confuses the worlds of electronic and acoustic sound. Even at their noisiest parts, I like to listen to these two tracks at a much lower volume than I listen to most music; they sound best when they exist as part of the ambient world.