SOUND DEPT KONTEXT 2

ANDREA PARKINS / New York
“FAULTY (BROKEN ORBIT)” / Soundinstallation
objects, feedback, drones

Die New Yorker Künstlerin, Komponistin und Elektro-Musikerin Andrea Parkins präsentiert ihre SoundInstallation „Faulty (Broken Orbit)“ – eine eindringliche Audio-Arbeit aus mikrophonierten Flächen und verstärkten Alltagsgegenständen, in Bewegung gesetzt und geschichtet mit elektronischem Feedback – Dinge drohen auseinanderzufallen, heikle Zustände werden deutlich.

Eröffnung: Mi 25.8.2010, 20 Uhr
Ausstellung: 25.8.-1.9.2010
Freitag – Sonntag 17-19 Uhr
Finissage und Konzert: Mi 1.9.2010 Uhr
live performance: Andrea Parkins (objects, electronic, el. Acc.), solo
and with Nelly Boyd (Hamburg)

SOUND DEPT KONTEXT 2
Idee und Konzept von Jens Röhm

Sound Dept Kontext 2 ist die Fortsetzung einer Reihe von Soundlectures 
und Performances, eine Schnittmenge aus den Bereichen autonome Musik, 
sogenannte Klangkunst, Soundinstallationen, Theorie und Formen 
künstlerischer Forschung und Intervention. 
Sound als Begriff einer Wechselwirkung von hörendem Körper und 
umgebender Welt, als materielles Phänomen und als individueller Erfahrungsspeicher.

“FAULTY (BROKEN ORBIT)”
8-Kanal-SoundInstallation by Andrea Parkins

Faulty (broken orbit) is an immersive audio work exploring mic’ed surfaces and amplified quotidian objects — collected, invented, imagined or implied –  activated into movement and then layered against a shifting, slowly settling field of electronic feedback and live-processed instruments.  The work is built via elaborate and precarious systems in the manner of inventor Rube Goldberg’s circuitous machines, which Parkins claims as inspiration for her customized sound processing software as well as her sonic architecture: emphasizing idiosyncrasy and awkwardness, movement from fracture to stillness, tenuous states and the threat of things falling apart  First commissioned by and exhibited as a a site-based 10-channel work at Diapason gallery for sound in New York City as part of the 2007 New York Electronic Art Festival,  Faulty (broken orbit) has been specially reconfigured to 8 channels for Frise’s exhibition space.

Duration: 59:50   

All sound by Andrea Parkins (ASCAP).
(amplified objects/surfaces, electric accordion, effects, live processing.)

Recorded and mixed in 2007 by Andrea Parkins/Paul Geluso at Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, New York City. 
Remixed for Frise at Harvestworks in 2010 by Parkins and Geluso.

ANDREA PARKINS
born Pittsburgh USA
lives and works in New York City
 
Andrea Parkins is a sound and installation artist, composer, and electro-instrumentalist who engages with interactive electronics as a process, and explores strategies that relate to Fluxus’ ordered, yet ephemeral activities.  An integral participant of the New York  experimental music and sound art community, and beyond –  she is especially known for her uniquely gestural and textural approach on her electronically-processed accordion and inventive use of customized live sound processing. Her laptop electronics and Fender-amped accordion create a sonic field of lush harmonics, noisy concretized disruption, and soaring electronic feedback.

Parkins’ work has been presented in New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art (“Bitstreams”), The Kitchen (“New Sound/New York”), Diapason, Roulette and Experimental Intermedia (curated by composer/filmmaker Phill Niblock); and at international contemporary music and sound festivals/venues including Sonic Circuits in the US, the 1st International Sound Art festival in Mexico City, Unsound in Poland and NEXT in Bratislava. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Rutgers University where she studied with artist/activist Martha Rosler, and she studied cinema in Boston with Phil Solomon and Ricky Leacock. Her audio/visual performances and installations incorporate multi-channel sound diffusion, amplified objects that are found or made, video and photography.

Parkins appears worldwide as an electroacoustic solo performer and in wide-ranging formations with musical innovators such as Otomo Yoshihide, David Watson, John Butcher, Miya Masaoka, and Lê Quan Ninh, among many others, and across genre with artists including avant-jazz saxophonist Ellery Eskelin and Wilco guitarist Nels Cline.  In addition to creating audio installations, she composes solo and ensemble instrumental works, and scores for dance and film.

In 2010, Parkins has been touring in support of her new CD on Important Records, FAULTY (BROKEN ORBIT)  and this autumn she will perform in NYC as part of the Christian Marclay festival at the Whitney Museum. Other projects include ongoing touring with acclaimed Portuguese choreographer Vera Mantero, who commissioned Parkins’ sound design and live score for We Are Going to Miss Everything We Don’t Need: the work premiered at the international contemporary dance festival, MontpellierDanse, in 2009.
 
On an ongoing basis, Parkins develops and performs her primary project, a series of interactive audio/visual works inspired by Rube Goldberg’s circuitous machines.  Andrea Parkins’ work has received support from American Composers Forum, New York State Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center in NYC, and the Frei und Hanseastadt Hamburg Kulturbehoerde in Germany.

www.myspace.com/andreaparkins

NELLY BOYD

Nelly Boyd is a composers’ collective and performing ensemble, founded in 2004 in Hamburg, Germany. Its members come from different backgrounds such as sound art, classical composition, live-electronics, electroacoustic music, rock and free improvisation.

www.nellyboyd.org