VATICA DAHLIA: RITES

VATICA DAHLIA : RITES // San Francisco, CA // January 14th 2014 from Vatica Dahlia on Vimeo.

Vatica Dahlia - Rites 
Opening August 30th, 7-11pm. Doors 7:00pm | Performances 7:30pm [SOLD OUT] & 9:30pm

"Ritual is the primary method of programming the human organism."

- Sam Webster

Much like creating a piece of software, a ritual is crafted procedurally and when compiled correctly, there are results based upon what constituted the contents of the procedure. Vatica Dahlia's Rites is a custom time-based system designed to port, compress, and obfuscate the Knowledge that has been handed down throughout the ages by the mages, sages, shamans, and initiates. Structured into ten distinct Chapters, each element utilizes a combination of networked performance, spatial sound, projection-mapped architecture, fashion, and ceremonial magic as a vehicle for transmutation and transmission. 

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Vatica Dahlia is artist, environmental systems designer, and a Magister of Ceremony. His work focuses largely on the various uses of ritual in reprogramming the human psyche. Vatica Dahlia's performances utilize signal processing, immersive media, Hermetic techne, and algorithmic design principles as a means of probing low-level aspects of the human constitution.

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Project Team:
Cullen Miller - Project Lead, Audio
Gabriel Dunne - Sculpture Design, Fabrication, Projection
Stephanie Sherriff - Production, Fabrication, Installation, Secret Weapon
Lara Grant - Fashion Design
Ryan Alexander - Table Design

Special thanks to:
Barry Threw
Mary Franck
Keith Pasko
Daniel Screen

David Linton

David Linton: Cortical Degausser 
OPENING ON: FRIDAY, January 11TH 7:00 - 11:00PM. 
ON VIEW THRU January 27TH, 2013.

First installed at the conclusion of a 2011 Residency at the Clocktower Gallery, Cortical Degausser is a site-specific Intermedia installation in which visitors experience pulsating harmonic bands of colored light “Flicker” and synchronous sound “Drone” ( both generated from a fundamental frequency range of 10-15 Hz ) delivered via video signal that is in turn mediated by parabolic diffusion screens. The immersive relational environment thus established stimulates neurological mechanisms within each viewer’s own visual cortex triggering the spontaneous display of self animating geometric patterns which appear to hover in space in front of the subject’s field of vision with eyes either open or closed.

David Linton (born Newburgh NY 1956) is a Time based multiple media artist traveling the vectors of sound, subculture, and signal flow. He has been active in the downtown NYC experimental arts community for 30 years. Originally a percussionist, David has created sound, music, and something in between, for many collaborative dance, theater, & performance settings since his arrival in NY at the end of 1970's. By the later 80's - after a good deal of percussion work along side other musicians: Lee Ranaldo, Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, Elliott Sharp among others - he was equally known for his live wired solo electro-acoustic drumkit performances as well as his soundscore productions. His 1986 solo Lp "Orchesography" was an unlikely collusion of street beats, early sampling tek, and theatrical post modernism. By the early 90's he had retired from performing in the live electro-acoustic vein to concentrate on the vocabulary of entirely electronic music and the resultant paradigm shift in performance priorities that this new 'compressed' format suggested. Throughout the 90's Linton became a dedicated advocate for the expansion and appreciation of realtime performance in electronic media through the design and/or production of event/environments such as 'SoundLab' (1996) and eventually 'UnityGain' (1997-present). From 2001 Linton's fascination with instantaneous collaborative audio visual communication among select units of electronic sound and visual artists assumed the form of a live experimental television Manhattan cable/webcast project - UGTV - Unitygain Television (2001-2004) - for which he was producer/director - and occasional performer. In 2004 David embarked upon his present course with the launch of his solo audio-visual project: the Bicameral Research Sound & Projection System. With his "Bicameral Research Sound & Projection System" (2004) Linton aims to make vibrational wave induced perceptual energy states manifest by deploying interconnected measures of electric sound & pulsing light in live action with hand manipulated objects in physical (live camera) space. He employs an integrated recursive audio & video feedback system of his own perversely simple design modulated by freehand intervention to deliver vigorous eye, ear, and - sometimes - body shaking realtime audio visual performances from which a kind of retro-tech animist ritual "medicine show" emerges where subject and object blur. Thematically David likes to consider that within the 20th Century 60 Hz alternating electrical current gradually came to function as a primary subliminal Prana in the mass bio-energetic body/culture of human life in North America...

Algorithmic Unconscious

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Sprawl: Sougwen, David Last and Margaret Schedel

Opening: Friday, September 23rd 2011 7-10pm. On view until October 2nd, 2011.

Sprawl is an open edition of live drawing installations hosted at Devotion Gallery which aims to create a momentary graphical map of an intersection between creative improvisation and substructure. Edition one features Sougwen, David Last and Margaret Schedel. Using chalk for its approachable immediacy, Sougwen and David Last improvise an expanding thicket of abstract organic forms, reminiscent of bits of plants, animals, smoke, nerve clusters or rivers seen from the air. Noting the paradox that a limiting structure can provide the most open sense of creative freedom, a faint structure based upon projections of computer-randomized forms is applied to the wall before the performance. The artist's role within this system is to react to the moment, through both visual creative urge and sound inspiration; while using the landscape of pre-defined random activation as a method of sparking inner dialogue. The human mind, being a pattern recognition machine, pulls relationships and structures out of chaos, and the line-sprawl expands like ivy across the walls and ceiling of the space.

 

The performance takes place within an audio environment composed of two elements; an abstract electronic re-interpretation of the sounds of the chalk line strokes themselves, and a 'carrier environment' in the form of abstract and ambient musical sounds. Live abstract/ambient music performances and artist-curated mixes are mixed with the processed feeds from contact-microphones. The sounds not only create the environment the performance is contained in, but another point of inspiration for the artists' crystalization of form.

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Morgan Packard: Dihedral Product

Generative crowd sourced sculpture with music performances.

Construction begins August 6th. Public invited to participate. See below for list of performances.
Opening Friday, August 12th, 2011. 7-10pm. Generative audio by Morgan Packard. On view until August 14th.

Sol LeWitt knew that artists of many diverse types use simple forms to their own ends. Musician and multimedia artist, Morgan Packard believes that simple rules, when allowed to unfold, create the splendor of the world. In Euclidean geometry the simplest non-curved flat shape is the triangle, and the simplest non-curved three-dimensional shape is four triangles connected by their edges—the tetrahedron. In this crowd-sourced artwork the public is invited to create tetrahedrons from recycled office paper and a few pieces of tape while musicians perform. Under Morgan’s direction the participants will attach the vertices of the tetrahedrons to create a constantly expanding sculpture, filling the gallery with a geometric wonderland intersected by sonic vibrations.

PERFORMANCES:

Saturday, August 6th: Sculpture construction from 2PM to 9PM. Live ambient performance by RJ Valeo from 7PM to 9PM

Sunday, August 7th: Sculpture construction from 2PM to 9PM. Live Ambient set by David Last from 5PM to 7PM

Monday August 8th: Sculpture construction and sound from 7PM to 9PM. Live ultra-subliminal techno by Scott Vizioli

Tuesday August 9th: Sculpture construction and sound from 7PM to 9PM. Live organic electronic sounds by Ezekiel Honig

Wednesday August 10th: Sculpture construction and sound from 7PM to 9PM. Sound design by Brandon Wolcott (recorded)

Thursday August 11th: Sculpture construction and sound from 7PM to 9PM. Sound design by Kenneth Kirschner (recorded)

Friday August 12: Opening for completed work from 7PM to 10PM. Generative audio by Morgan Packard 

ARTIST BIO: 

Morgan Packard is a musician, computer programmer and multimedia artist. As a musician he has travelled and performed in lots of interesting places, with highlights including Montreal’s Mutek festival, Serbia’s Dis-Patch, and Brooklyn’s own Bunker party. With Interval, a company he runs with visualist Joshue Ott, he creates mesmerizing iPhone/iPad software, including Thicket, a pioneering audiovisual featured by Apple in their