Strange Electronics

Event Info

Date	01.11.16
Format	Performance
Medium	Digital Art Media Art Music
Admission	Suggested Donation $7

Involved

Event artist

Cracked Ray Tube Bleep Labs Artificial Earth Machine Rgb.vga.volt De Rastra

Lineup

CRACKED RAY TUBE (Kyle Evans & James Connolly)

BLEEP LABS (John-Mike Reed)

ARTIFICIAL EARTH MACHINE (Benjamin Crowley)

RGB.VGA.VOLT (James Connolly)

de/RASTRA (Kyle Evans)

A collection of realtime audio and video performances exploring approaches to coding, building, bending, breaking, and the exploitation of strange, dirty and DIY electronics.

// CRACKED RAY TUBE

Cracked Ray Tube is a collaborative realtime project by James Connolly and Kyle Evans that breaks and disrupts the interfaces of analog televisions and computer monitors through hybridized analog and digital systems to produce flashing, screeching, wobbulating, self-generated electronic noise and video.

// BLEEP LABS

Bleep Labs designs and manufactures noisy objects in Austin, TX. Product design by Dr. Bleep aka John-Mike Reed.

// ARTIFICIAL EARTH MACHINE

"AEM" is Austin solo electronic artist Benjamin Crowley. Creating ambient textures, synth melodies and dense drum patterns with use of only hardware synth, samplers & drum machines. With additional live vocal harmonies, everything is triggered, in vein of traditional elements of a live band and high importance in performance.

AEM samples from an extensive home library of the peculiar side of VHS & cassette, and use them as reference for the fascination of granular audio & visual pastimes.

// RGB.VGA.VOLT (James Connolly)

RGB.VGA.VOLT is an audio/video synthesizer that enables realtime exploration of the rich materiality concealed beneath the consumer interfaces of cathode ray tube computer monitors. By hacking and improperly rewiring the cables of these obsolete devices to short their video signals, their black-boxed analog infrastructure is liberated and driven by digitally synthesized high-frequency complex waveforms, audio playback, and feedback loops that fully exploit their latent visual spectrum. Inspired by early video tools such as the Sandin Image Processor and the Paik-Abe Synthesizer as well as contemporary programming and error-based approaches to sound and moving image, RGB.VGA.VOLT revives an analog aesthetic that has acquired a renewed power and potency in the present era of digital immateriality.

// de/RASTRA (Kyle Evans)

The de/Rastra oscillographic synthesizer is a real-time audio/video instrument and computer-interfacing device that allows a performer to generate visualizations intrinsic to cathode ray tube technology while simultaneously creating the acoustic analog of the displayed imagery. By way of building, bending and mutilating, de/Rastra shows the effects of altering the anatomical makeup of a CRT television, revealing the hidden potentials of the technology through the repurposing and restructuring of its own ability. Through hacking and exploiting the capabilities intrinsic to all CRT devices, the technology becomes repurposed as a performative interface, breaking down the device’s ‘consumption only’ nature. The performer is given control over the technology by removing it from the intended application and forcing it into an active state through a combination of physical and mental effort.