A VJ Extravaganza featuring heavyweight acts EBN and Hexstatic is scheduled as the final event of Resfest 2004‘s first outing of their new touring programme, in NYC (9-12 September, Tribeca Performing Arts Center). The live event takes place Sunday, 12 September, 10PM at Canal Room (285 W Broadway).
EBN (Emergency Broadcast Network), seminal influences of the international VJ scene, recently reformed with a new secret weapon, the Video Baby Grand Piano, combining monitors, surround sound, video RAIDs and video scratching decks, as the centrepiece to their new live performances. Greg Deocampo and Gardner Post first gave the mutant VJ machine an outing as part of the Gigantic Art Space exhibition, Tactical Action, in NYC, April, 2004. Get ready to dance to Gulf War 1 all over again…
- Further information:
- Greg Deocampo
- Resfest
- Guerrilla News Network: EBN – The Lost Tapes
Greg Deocampo (EBN)on the Video Baby Grand Piano:
“Gardner and I have been working with video to make what we think of as a new kind of visual art– dynamic, improvisatory, musical. We’ve never really come up with a good new word that is to video what music is to sound, but that’s what we’ve been going for… expressing, evangelizing, and enabling that idea has been a goal of our work in art and technology, for ourselves and as members of a larger community.Video needs to be linked to a musical interface so that it can be performed instrumentally, reactively, interactively…As these reactions and interactions become subtle and fine, suddenly video can be made and played expressively…virtuosically…
With the goal of developing a kind of visual instrumentalism, attraction to the physical form of the piano became inevitable. It’s an incredibly evolved user interface. Two hundred years ago, it was also extremely high tech– think about what is involved in manufacturing and suspending the bass strings of a 19th century grand piano. Piano’s were made to express the mastery of the furniture maker as much as that of the musician– indeed, they were the first home entertainment systems and essential fine furniture. We wanted to invoke those cultural and sculptural qualities in our own work.
[Source: MVWire]
