We have a big show at the Fabrica Gallery in Brighton showing a 3 screen installation version of Brilliant Noise taking up one whole side of the Gallery.
There will also be our Animate / Channel 4 commission short film Magnetic Movie which is to be aired on Channel Four sometime over the next few weeks. And finally the full length version of Do You Think Science... where we interviewed scientists at the NASA Space Sciences Lab UCB about the unknowable in their lives and work.
The Longest Night. On the evening of the winter solstice, 21st December, we are organising a live event with Goodiepal, Scotch Egg, Antenna Farm and ourselves. There will also be a group jam to our Brilliant Noise installation , a live image performace by us and our Sonic Inc software. Only £3, tickets in advance from Fabrica.
The show will move onto the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol next year and then the SightSonic festival in York.
"Essential viewing if you have any interest in the converging worlds of audio and visual digital art."Kultureflash
"A jam packed DVD from one of the audio-visual world’s most intriguing acts - a must see."Boomkat
"Versatile but always coherent in style and visual options Semiconductor are definitively placed in our personal hall of fame of digital cinematic artists."Neural.it
"Space physicists and avant garde artists like Semiconductor both explore their respective spaces, and on this DVD there’s room for those two worlds to intersect." Popmatters
"There's plenty of seriousness here but Semiconductor never lose touch with their animators funny bones", "My favorite is The Sound of Microclimates, filmed in Paris for a surround sound installation. This is animation as ambiguity - is this cloud really hovering over the building? Why is there an iceberg in the municipal pond? Semiconductor's surly electronic soundtrack suggests a sci-fi distortion of the everyday city, till at dusk the glowing lights of the traffic detach themselves and flock like birds. In a moment of great beauty they swarm across Paris to nestle between skyscrapers, jiggling as if crammed into a discotheque for off duty tail-lights." Clive Bell, The Wire
"Becoming an audio-visual palette-cleanser for the bastion of commercial music seems an odd fate for the work of the first artists-in-residence at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratory (Berkeley, CA), but it’s symptomatic of Semiconductor’s continual expansion and ability to transcend confines posed by genre." Liam Arnold Skinny
Included on the DVD are the films:
1. Brilliant Noise
2. The Sound Of Microclimates
3. múm – ‘Green Grass Of Tunnel’
4. Inaudible Cities
5. Strata
6. QT? – ‘qqq’
7. Mini Epochs
8. Sonic Inc. (extracts)
9. Digital Anthrax
10. Earthquake Films
11. Do You Think Science…
12. All The Time In The World
13. Double Adaptor – ‘200 Nanowebbers’
Natural and Unnatural Philosophy
Science, architecture, photography, geology, sculpture, food, travelling, computers, lofi+hifi, technology history, nature, unnatural, contradictions, geography, politics, philosophy, cinema, film, movies, video art, experimenting, fiction, faction, astro / quantum physics, music…and not liking things.
We make art about what we don't know!
Semiconductor is the alias of Brighton-based duo Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, who since 1999 have been making stunning, cutting-edge digital artworks in the form of sound-films, music videos and live animation. Guided by their obsessive interests in landscape, architecture, geology, geography, chaos / systems theory and artificial intelligence, they explore many varied processes of digital animation and the potential of the computer to unite sound and image. What they reveal in the process is a physical world in flux - cities in motion; shifting landscapes and systems in chaos. Central to these works is the role of sound, which becomes synonymous with the image as it creates, controls and deciphers it. Finely crafted digital work is combined with analogue processes that tailor the randomness and errors within computer systems as a co-conspirator. This DVD offers a comprehensive overview of their work over the past five years, featuring 3 music videos (including those for múm and QT?), 4 live cinema pieces, and 6 short films.
Highly original and immensely creative, Semiconductor approach each project from a fresh angle, always looking to extend themselves and to break new ground. They have exhibited their work in gallery installations, at festivals and in live / club environments. They have been awarded numerous fellowships, prizes and residencies, notably as recent artists in residence at the NASA Space sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, California, the results of which can be seen on 2 films here – ‘Do You Think Science’ – which takes the form of filmed interviews with NASA scientists, and ‘Brilliant Noise’ – an incredible film pieced together from actual footage of the sun’s surface. The latter film includes the option to select from a variety of specially commissioned soundtracks from The Twilight Sad, Max Richter, Our Brother The Native, Antenna Farm, Robert Hampson, Gaeaudjiparl, Christian Vogel, Iris Garrelfs, Ensemble, Thomas Dimuzio, Disinformation and Semiconductor themselves.
Around 2000 Semiconductor started to develop their own audiences through a series of events they curated called E.M.I. (Electro Magnetic Interference), where they brought together electronic musicians and visual artists to collaborate on image and sound based projects, creating a unique platform at this time. In 2001 they released a debut Art DVD, ‘Hi-Fi Rise', a compilation of work by themselves and others that comprised one of the first ever independently produced DVD-Videos/ROMs. They then went on to develop a broad range of audiences by working at the intersection of music and art and through opportunities such as a series of Warp records commissions for their ‘Nesh’ club nights in London; Sound Film performances at international festivals (e.g., Avanto Festival Helsinki, Transmediale Berlin, Images Festival Toronto); international gallery installations (e.g., Venice Biennial, Prague Contemporary Arts Festival, and at the ICA in London); and also through music videos for the likes of Aco, DAT Politics, and FatCat artists, múm and QT? Increasingly recognised as vital and cutting edge practitioners, they have most recently been awarded numerous fellowships, awards and residencies.
FatCat’s involvement with Semiconductor began several years back when the label first moved to Brighton. Already fans of their work, we set them to work on videos for QT? and múm (both included here). Their video for QT?’s 53-second long blipvert, ‘qqq’ was a brilliant, viral burst of animation which MTV used as an ident; whilst their stunning animation for múm‘s ‘Green Grass Of Tunnel’ earned them widespread acclaim and a great deal of exposure across international TV and the web. Since then, Semiconductor have taken part in a number of FatCat festival events, and have remained close.
For ‘200 Nanowebbers', Semiconductor have created a molecular web that is generated by Double Adaptor's live soundtrack. Using custom-made scripting, the melodies and rhythms spawn a nano scale environment that shifts and contorts to the audio resonance. Layers of energetic hand drawn animations, play over the simplest of vector shapes that form atomic scale associations. As the landscape flickers into existence by the light of trapped electron particles, substructures begin to take shape and resemble crystalline substances.
Svarte Greiner (Deaf Center/Miasmah/Type) explores deep into a dark, mysterious and disturbing universe. Drawing inspiration from artists such as Earth, Volcano the Bear, David Darling & Deathprod, the music is draped in Lynchian mysticism and horror film cinematics. "The music of Svarte Greiner is practically perfect. It's like that sound in our heads we've been imagining for ages but had never actually heard." - Type Records.
The Sight Below (Rafael Anton Irisarri/Miasmah/Immune) draws as much on modern genre progenitors like Brian Eno, Robin Guthrie and My Bloody Valentine as it does from the more historic traditions in neo-classicism from Erik Satie and Olivier Messiaen. His album Glider has appeared on Thom Yorke's radar in making the Radiohead's lynchpin's top ten playlist.
His debut album Navigare soon to feature on the Miasmah label, Simon Scott (former Slowdive) is set to be a household name in conceptual music. Simon is the former Slowdive drummer, co-producer of Televise, producer of Seavault, and owner of KESH Recordings label.
Benjamin Franklin House 36 Craven Street London WC2N 5NF
Following
on from their sell out shows at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, The Red
Velvet Curtain Cult shall inhabit and haunt the Benjamin Franklin House
with site specific art, performance, film, oddities and happenings from
13 artists. Set in a Georgian house where layers of history unravel
from behind panelled walls and deep-set fireplaces whisper ashes of
deeds past, the artists will engage with and draw inspiration from the
history of the space, including its most famous inhabitant Benjamin
Franklin, he of keys and kites….
Expect spinning tops, glass
armonicas, trepanning games, story telling, ceremonial mythologies,
muffled whisperings, cyclical wanderings, all serenaded by the sound of
a haunting electric cello…
Curated by Lili Spain and Sarah Grainger-Jones
www.benjaminfranklinhouse.org
Email info@redvelvetcutaincult.com Please see www.redvelvetcurtaincult.com for details of artists and past events
The perfect state doesn’t exist. Let’s create it. Iperuramio is the planet that the FREeSHOUT!? festival wants to image with the help of as many creative minds as possible. This is the reason why proposals have been requested, to ask everyone to take on the role of creators of a new nation or state and to testimony its existence with their own art. The form to participate at the competition is available on the site www.freeshout.it. The best project will award a prize of 1000 euros
Machinefabriek is amongst the finest experimental/electronic artists of today. His ultra-prolific back catalogue showcases his ability to perfect classical ambience, organic drone soundscapes, electronic minimalism and cathartic noise. He is hailed as one of the most interesting new experimental musicians by the Wire magazine.
Xela is the shady, underworld atmospheres and improv horrors of John Twells, owner of Type Records. "Xela has always been able to pre-empt the shifting tides of electronic music and deliver a statement that's definitively of its time” (Boomkat).
His debut album Navigare soon to feature on the Miasmah label, Simon Scott is set to be a household name in conceptual music. Simon is the former Slowdive drummer, co-producer of Televise, producer of Seavault, and owner of KESH Recordings label.
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