July 15th, Oakland, CA
20th Century FORUM and Chapel of the Chimes present the third annual Garden of
Memory: A Columbarium Walk-Through Event at Chapel of the Chimes, a
labyrinthine Julia Morgan-designed columbarium and mausoleum with gardens,
fountains, and stained-glass skylights at 4499 Piedmont Ave., next to Mountain
View Cemetery, in Oakland on Wednesday, July 15 from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. The
program will feature simultaneous performances in different parts of the
building by Bay Area composers, musicians, and other performers presenting a
variety of acoustic and electronic music and video; the audience is free to
move throughout the buiding during the performances. Admission is $10, $8 for
students and seniors; no one will be turned away for lack of funds. For
information, call 20th Century FORUM at (415) 255-8225.
The artists, many of whom are well-known to Bay Area audiences, to be featured
at this event include composers Charles Amirkhanian, Carl Stone, Edmund
Campion, Scot Gresham-Lancaster, Belinda Reynolds, Dan Becker, Maggi Payne,
and Laetitia Sonami; pianist Sarah Cahill; composer/ xclarinetist Beth Custer;
glass instrument musician Miguel Frasconi; multi-instrumentalist Randy Porter;
koto player Miya Masaoka; video artist John Sanborn; Tibetan singer Te Chung;
saxophonist Dan Plonsey; Balkan ensemble Panacea; composer and vocalist Pamela
Z; Balkan singer Mantra Ben-Ya'akova; and pianists and electronic keyboardists
Chris Brown and Matthew Goodheart.
20th Century Forum is a nonprofit organization which provides opportunities
and information to composers and performers of new music throughout the Bay
Area. The Forum presents several concerts each year and also publishes Music
of Changes, a quarterly calendar of new-music concerts. 20th-Century Forum is
supported by grants from the California Arts Council and the generosity of its
members and donors.
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20th Century Forum
P.O. Box 194651 San Francisco, CA 94119-4651
(415) 255-8225
tcfsf@aol.com
************************************************
pamelaz@sirius.com
http://www.sirius.com/~pamelaz
540 Alabama Street, Studio 213, San Francisco, CA 94110, ph: 415.861.3277
(861-EARS), fax: 415.861.3257 (861-FAKS)
shipping address (for packages larger than a flat):
Pamela Z 2440 Sixteenth Street Box 171, San Francisco, CA 94103
June 23
FaultLines at the
24th Street Theatre (see May 19 listing for address and ticket info)
Michael Jon Fink - electric guitar
Marty Walker - bass clarinet
intensely focused improvisations for a pair of instruments not often
heard together, by a sensitive team of Los Angeles artists.
"I Am Sitting In A Room"
Alvin Lucier's masterful microscopic look at the phenomenon of natural
reverberation as revealed by the magic of recording. A milestone in experimental
music, not often heard live, will be realized by members of Project 423,
Kent Clelland (electronix) and Tanya 'Blood' Hinkel (danse).
24th Street Theatre
1117 W. 24th Street, Los Angeles
(off Hoover, just south of the 10)
(213) 667-0417
Tickets are $12 ($6 students and seniors)
FaultLines is a new concert series for contemporary music in Los Angeles
Arthur Jarvinen and Shaun Naidoo, artistic directors
PRESS RELEASE FROM THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA
CHAR DAVIES: EPHEMERE
PREMIERES AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA
from 26 June to 7 September 1998
OTTAWA, Canada * 12 June 1998 * The National Gallery is proud to
present the world premiere of Ephemere (1998), an interactive, fully
immersive virtual reality installation by the Canadian artist Char Davies.
Ephemere is a spatially-enveloping audio-visual environment based on
metaphorical elements of nature and landscape, flesh and bone, suggesting a
symbolic correspondence between body and earth. It will be on view in Video
Gallery B209.
Based in Montreal, Char Davies has achieved international
recognition for her work in virtual reality, fusing art and technology. She
was born in Toronto, and studied Liberal Arts from 1973 to 1975 at
Bennington College, Vermont. In 1978, she obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts
degree from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and she is now a
PhD candidate in Philosophy of Media Arts, University of Wales College,
Newport, Wales (CAiiA: Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts).
Trained as a painter and filmmaker, Char Davies became interested, as early
as 1985, in the potential of three-dimensional computer graphics for
furthering her artistic intentions.
A founding director of Softimage Inc., she was on its Board of
Directors from 1988 to 1994 and was Vice-President/Director of Visual
Research from 1988 to 1997. At Softimage, she developed the ground-breaking
exhibition Osmose (1995), which premiered at the Musee d*art contemporain de
Montreal, and has since toured to New York, London and Monterrey, Mexico.
Her earlier non-immersive works have also gained international recognition
through numerous exhibitions as well as prizes such as the Prix Ars
Electronica Distinction * Computer Graphics, Linz, Austria, 1993. Recently
she left Softimage to pursue her career independently.
As in all of Davies*s work, Ephemere is based on landscape as
metaphor, situating the participant in the midst of an enveloping ephemeral
world of imagery and sound. The virtual world*s appearance is linked to the
participant*s own behaviour. Interaction in Ephemere is based on the wearing
of a head-mounted display, and a vest which tracks breath and balance,
allowing the participant to float within the work by simply breathing: this
contemplative hands-free approach is highly unusual for VR. The central
experience of the work involves solitary immersion in a private chamber:
adjacent to this is a larger space where visitors can watch and listen to
the immersant*s journey as it takes place in real time, via a live
video/audio projection generated from the immersant*s point of view. They
can also watch a shadow silhouette of the immersant's body as he/she moves
in response to the work, a strategy which serves to emphasize the subjective
body*s role as experiential ground.
Ephemere was created with the assistance of John Harrison, custom
virtual reality software; Georges Mauro, computer graphics; Dorota
Blaszczak, sonic architecture & programming; Rick Bidlack, sound composition
& programming. The work was co-produced by Char Davies and Softimage Inc.
Due to the solitary nature of immersion in this work, a limited
number of participants can experience the work each day. The immersive
journeys of participants
can be viewed in real time, via projections in the installation at any time.
Reservations for immersion in the work can be made after 26 June
by calling 1- 613 991-6555
or by inquiring at the installation.
Through her art, Davies explores the unique potential of immersive
virtual space to change habitual ways of perceiving the world. For Davies,
the potential to make people more aware of their own embodied
*being-in-the-world* has many philosophical and environmental implications.
According to the artist, Ephemere is *concerned with the ephemerality of
being, in terms of our fragile, fleeting lifespans as mortal beings embedded
in a living, flowing world, among an unfathomable myriad of
comings-into-being, lingerings and passings-away, including our own.*
Ephemere, and its predecessor Osmose, are the fruits of many years
of research by Char Davies and her team into the artistic potential of
*virtual reality* using the SOFTIMAGE|3D modeling, animation and development
environment, and the Silicon Graphics (R) Onyx2 (TM) InfiniteReality (R)
visualization supercomputer, the most advanced real-time 3D computer
graphics technology available today. Char Davies* interest in the medium of
immersive virtual space is centred, in her words, *on its capacity as a
spatiotemporal arena, replete with paradox, wherein an artist*s mental
constructs of the world can be given virtual embodiment in three-dimensions
and be kinesthetically explored by participants through full-body immersion
and interaction, even while such constructs retain their ephemeral
immateriality*. Char Davies* work in immersive virtual reality is considered
worldwide to be among the most original to date.
A media preview will take place on Thursday 25 June from 2 to 4 pm
in Video Gallery B209. Jean Gagnon, Director of Programs, Fondation Daniel
Langlois, in Montreal, and former Curator of Media Arts, National Gallery of
Canada, has organized this exhibition. He will be available to answer
questions in the company of artist Char Davies and Janice Seline, Curator of
Media Arts, National Gallery of Canada.
This exhibition has received generous support from Immersense Inc.,
the Fondation Daniel Langlois/Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science,
and Technology, Softimage Inc. and Silicon Graphics Inc.
Opening Event
On Friday 26 June at 5 pm in the Lecture Hall, Char Davies will
present a lecture entitled Osmose and Ephemere: Landscape, Body, Earth and
Time in Immersive Virtual Space. This will be followed at 6 pm by a viewing
of the work in Video Gallery B209 and a reception in the Upper Rotunda.
Ursula Thiboutot, Chief, Communications, Tel (613) 990-3142,
uthibout@ngc.chin.gc.ca
Karen Lisa Oxorn, Communications Officer, Tel (613) 990-6835,
koxorn@ngc.chin.gc.ca
Fax (613) 990-9824
http://national.gallery.ca
