Richard Garet performing in the 14th Annual Activating the Medium Festival at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. April 7, 2011. Presented by 23five Incorporated and SFMOMA. Video recorded by Randy Yau.
Richard Garet
Live at Activating the Medium, SFMOMA
April 7, 2011: Phyllis Wattis Theather 7PM
Presented by 23five Incorporated
About the Performance:
Artist: Richard Garet
Title: Light, Motion, and Radio Disturbances
Duration: 35’ approximately
Image: Video playback
Audio: Live audio
Garet's performance will focus on surfaces, gestures, differences, and distances among material and its phenomenology, to activate and amplify expressive sonic manifestations of electromagnetic waves utilizing radio technology. Richard Garet's grey-noise constructions surface from radio interference, moving image sonification, and electromagnetic disturbances.
The material for this piece emerges from the radio arena while utilizing AM/FM and SW radios as a fabric source. The sonic field will be established by utilizing the real time feeds from the radios to activate a series of piezos, sound exciters, motors, and modified speakers, to resonate objects, filter its frequency range, and mask its origin. Additionally, a series of extended techniques will be applied to disrupt the radio signals and establish an electromagnetic field for further disturbance and audio feedback of the source material. Photoresistors, connected to the sonic system, and flickering image projections will be utilized to interrupt the sound further, once the intensity of the emitted colored-and-flickering light, from the imagery, touches the photoresistors.
The work varies from subtle sonic movements to more abrupt and physical noises. Additionally, the malleability of the material introduces pitch, timber, and a variety of textures. Tonality and harmony may emerge in the work as a result of utilizing noises or objects that naturally contain or produce such sonic characteristics. In this situation musical-indeterminacy will manifest as a byproduct of manipulating the material and establishing morphing rythms of sound, sonification of moving image, and a poly-layered sonic environment.
Approach to radio:
I view radio as a medium, which represents a mass media voice and a powerful tool for communication. I see it as a permanent stream of collective consciousness and unconsciousness with intermittent access. I think of radio as a constant-present phenomenon that through its intermittency and its functional mechanics of listening touches humans’ attention to radio-transmission on a focused and out of focus form of connection. Therefore, it contributes not only to our focused target for information or entertainment but it also contributes organically to our local landscape of background noise.
As a medium I am interested in the subversive abstraction of radio contributing to the vast pool of background noise, anti-radio approaches, and in inverting radio functionality from positive to negative space. My objective is to focus on the aesthetics found in inverting the function of radio as a device for information and entertainment, and emphasizing its blurriness, out of focus syntony, and unconscious effect by deliberately activating the background-noise arena and the possibilities of audio phenomena.Richard Garet performing in the 14th Annual Activating the Medium Festival at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. April 7, 2011. Presented by 23five Incorporated and SFMOMA. Photos by Randy Yau.
Richard Garet performing in the 14th Annual Activating the Medium Festival at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. April 7, 2011. Presented by 23five Incorporated and SFMOMA. Photos by Randy Yau.
Richard Garet performing in the 14th Annual Activating the Medium Festival at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. April 7, 2011. Presented by 23five Incorporated and SFMOMA. Photos by Randy Yau.
Richard Garet performing in the 14th Annual Activating the Medium Festival at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. April 7, 2011. Presented by 23five Incorporated and SFMOMA. Photos by Randy Yau.
Richard Garet performing in the 14th Annual Activating the Medium Festival at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. April 7, 2011. Presented by 23five Incorporated and SFMOMA. Photos by Randy Yau.
Richard Garet performing in the 14th Annual Activating the Medium Festival at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. April 7, 2011. Presented by 23five Incorporated and SFMOMA. Photos by Randy Yau.
Richard Garet performing in the 14th Annual Activating the Medium Festival at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. April 7, 2011. Presented by 23five Incorporated and SFMOMA. Photos by Randy Yau.
Richard Garet performing in the 14th Annual Activating the Medium Festival at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. April 7, 2011. Presented by 23five Incorporated and SFMOMA.
Richard Garet performing in the 14th Annual Activating the Medium Festival at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. April 7, 2011. Presented by 23five Incorporated and SFMOMA.
