Biography
Phillip Stearns (AKA Pixel Form) is a practitioner of sound and visual arts; music composer and performer; electronics sculptor and installation artist. He is a graduate of the California Institute of the Arts music composition department where he studied with David Rosenboom, Hans W. Koch, Michael Pisaro, Mark Trayle, Sarah Roberts, Tom Leeser, and Andy Kopra. Central to his practice are the use of custom electronics, hand-craft, hardware hacking techniques, media technologies, procedural processes, organic and natural gardening, and seed saving. He views technology as a site for exploring contemporary society, cultural tendencies, and the horizons of violence, politics, information, noise, control, proximity, parity, subversion, corruption, interconnectedness and interrelatedness. Pursuing organic and natural agricultural practices and ecological design are a way of addressing the harmful impacts of the widespread proliferation of modern technologies and mediating the damages resulting from their wanton consumption and disposal. Characteristic of his work is judicial use of materials, restraint, simplicity, a careful balance between conceptual depth and playfulness. He has presented, performed, lectured, exhibited, led workshops, and screened works at various festivals, conferences, residencies, museums and institutions around the US and Northern Europe including the Experimental TV Center, NIME, Filmer La Musique, STEIM, Darmstadt, Torrance Art Museum, Machine Project, Telic, Optica film festival, ISIM conference, GLAMFA exhibition, Spark festival, Bent festival, Soundwalk, Chaos Communications Camp, Cal Arts, SFSU, UCSD, UC Davis, and Mills College.
