Art Events in Manila and Beyond

Location: Green Papaya Art Projects – 41 T. Gener St. corner Kamuning Rd., Quezon City, Philippines

Cubao Shoe Expo "Cubao X" – Gen. Romulo St., Araneta Center, Cubao Quezon City, Philippines

After the WASAK year-ender, Fete de la Wasaque, (the festival that brought us 2-nights of wall shaking acoustic-meets-digital assault stirring acts), SABAW Media Art Kitchen opens this year with a very unique 1-hour "digital fireworks" display of live video art, live electronic music and live radio transmissions!

SABAW is pleased to welcome California-based composer, pianist, electronic musician, instrument-builder, CHRIS BROWN, who creates music for acoustic instruments with interactive electronics, for computer networks, and for improvising ensembles. He will be performing his Transmissions series in collaboration with media artist Tengal and the electronic sound-video performance collective, The Gangan Ensemble.

The "Transmissions" series is an audience interactive, live electronic music performance series about the transmission of culture through the information media of sound and radio. It redefines the relationship of performers and audience to the radio medium, opening audio spaces to unheard voices in diverse communities by emphasizing the ability of both to create both the content and the means of production of radio communication. For this performance, radios in automobiles are primarily going to be used since it provides a more familiar experience and is easily accessible today.

Using the outdoor parking space of Cubao X, Chris Brown and The Gangan Ensemble produce live electronic music, while video artist Tad Ermitano performs live video manipulation alongside the electro-magnetic sound tapestry. We are also pleased to feature the video works of California-based visual artist, Johanna Poethig. The live music is mixed into a stereo channel, which is sent to a low-power FM radio transmitter, assigned to a unique frequency where people in the performance space can tune in.

The audience is encouraged to bring their own cars and park them along the parking strip of Cubao X and turn up their radios to create an expansive sound tapestry. Apart from car radios, they are also encouraged to bring portable radio receivers, especially battery powered boom-boxes, mobile phone radios, and to tune in to the transmission channels while moving around the performance space. The audience is thus made a creative partner in the performance of the music, and the event becomes an interaction between the musicians, audience, and the sounds presented in the transmissions.

Think: Drive-in cinema. The audience can watch the live video projection and performers by either sitting inside or staying outside their cars while listening to the music coming from their car stereos.

According to Brown, "personal radios are electronic musical instruments that we all know how to play: we adjust their loudness and tone-quality to our taste and we move them around in our environments to accompany us in our lives."

ALSO: Before the concert performance in Cubao X on JANUARY 10, there will be two-nights of OPEN STUDIO SESSIONS with Chris Brown and the Gangan Ensemble at Green Papaya Art Projects on JANUARY 8 and 9. The OPEN STUDIO SESSIONS invites the public to be part of the creative process as the methods of the performance of composition and electronic music and the radio transmissions shall be discussed, and where they can also interact with the artists. This will benefit people who are particularly interested in various issues in composition, improvisation, and performing electronic music in general.

THIS IS A FREE EVENT. REMEMBER TO BRING YOUR CARS AND PORTABLE FM RADIOS! THE MORE RADIOS THE BETTER AND BIGGER THE SOUND TAPESTRY!

These events are presented by SABAW Media Art Kitchen in cooperation with Green Papaya Art Projects, Mogwai Cinema Club, and Cubao Shoe Expo.

BIOGRAPHIES:

Chris Brown, composer, pianist, and electronic musician, creates music for acoustic instruments with interactive electronics, for computer networks, and for improvising ensembles. Recent recordings of his music include "Boundary Layer", a 3-CD box set of new and old computer network music by The Hub, on Tzadik, "Cutter Heads ", duets with Fred Frith on Intakt, "Talking Drum", binaural recordings of interactive installations interleaved with environmental soundscapes on Sonore; and "Lava", for brass percussion and electronics on Tzadik. He is also known for his recorded performances of music by Henry Cowell, Luc Ferrari, Jose Maceda, David Rosenboom, Larry Ochs, Wadada Leo Smith, and John Zorn. He has also performed and recorded extensively with The Hub, Anthony Braxton, Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith, Rova Saxophon Quartet, Ikue Mori, Alvin Curran, William Winant, Glenn Spearman Double Trio, among others. In 2005 he created TeleSon, a composition for two ReacTable instruments performed in a joint concert between Ars Electronic in Linz, Austria and the International Computer Music Conference in Barcelona, Spain. He teaches electronic music and composition at Mills College in Oakland, where he is Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music (CCM).

Tengal is a Manila-based interdisciplinary media artist, composer-musician, and filmmaker working with various mediums. He curates and organizes, as well as participates in various media art shows in the Philippines and abroad. His work puts the focus on direct experience, risk-taking and personal interaction between artists and audience, and emphasizes the situational potential of live performance, the interplay of various media – sound and image, in particular – and candid exchange between sub-cultural and academic initiatives. He founded SABAW Media Art Kitchen – a not-for-profit, artist-run initiative and network platform for all kinds of information and communication carried via modern electronic media focused specially in the region of South East Asia.

The Gangan Ensemble is loosely composed of improvisers on both sound and video. Having a mixture of electronic and acoustic musicians, live video performance artists or VJs also participate. The ensemble has had various permutations involving a variety of artists and musicians from the Philippines, Singapore, USA, Germany, Australia, UK, Slovenia, Malaysia, and Indonesia since 2007. The ensemble is flexible, having been composed from fifteen people down to three people; and has performed in various countries in South East Asia, notably in NCCA's Sinemusikalye in Manila and in the Cellsbutton Media Art Festival in Indonesia. It was founded by composer-improviser Tengal with video artist Tad Ermitano.

Caliph 8 is a beat smith, graffiti bomber and soothsayer. A lynch-pin of various groups and ensembles, he's probably the most sought after sound manipulator in the Philippines. His output extends to more than just sniffing aerosol paint and flexing wrists with fat markers–he also creates visuals and projects them while manipulating audio and creates sound collage.

Malek Lopez is a Berkeley-trained virtuoso who is the principal composer for the band Drip, and half of the abrasive electronica duo Rubber Inc, who are responsible for establishing electronica in Manila. He is also a well-noted film composer.

Inconnu ictu a.k.a Roger Llagas Lopez is a post-musician, experimental composer-improviser, multi-instrumentalist, visual art enthusiast who resides in the shoe capital of the Philippines. As a sound constructor he explores his interest by using obsolete electronic gadgets, pedal fx boxes, defective rhythm consoles, found objects, d.i.y microphones and circuit-bent electronics.

Blums Borres guitarist and media artist who experiments with sound, video, and animation. Formerly a technical director at Toei Animation Philippines, he has a BA in Multimedia Design from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. His work has been featured at the Australian Center Moving Images (ACMI), and in cinemas and television in Japan.

Lirio Salvador is a multi-media experimental artist and is probably the most influential and astonishing homemade circuit-benders and instrument builders in the country. He established the E.X.I.S.T. sound art collective back in 2002. He creates his assemblage of musical instruments using day to day materials that are found in his present environment, including bicycle gears, drain cleaning springs and stainless steel tubes.

Tad Ermitano is a media artist, writer and filmmaker. As far as the media art goes, he is interested in algorithmic/procedural editing and composition, new uses for the moving image and have been lately drifting into elementary robotics. His work "Quartet" was exhibited in the recently concluded International Symposium for Electronic Arts (ISEA) in Singapore.

Johanna Poethig is a visual, public and performance artist who has exhibited internationally and has been actively creating public art works, murals, paintings, sculpture and multimedia installations for over 20 years. She has worked in collaboration with other artists, architects, urban planners, design teams, arts commissions, specific communities and cultural groups. Poethig's public art works intervene in the urban landscape, in neighborhoods, on freeways, in parks, hospitals, schools, homeless shelters, cultural centers, advertising venues and public buildings. She has received numerous commissions and awards for this work. Her paintings, sculpture and installations reflect her interest in satire, symbol, human nature, society and our consumerist culture. She has produced and participated in performance events that mix feminism, global politics, costume, props, cabaret, experimental music and video.