The Avant_MUTEK: Chicago series kicks off with a FREE CONCERT at the Chicago Cultural Center’s PRESTON BRADLEY HALL, featuring the US premieres of two brand-new audiovisual works by respected Montreal artists GEMMIFORM FEATURING THE BANJO CONSORTIUM, and sound artist THIERRY GAUTHIER’s NORD/SUD project.

GEMMIFORM FEATURING THE BANJO CONSORTIUM

• Gemmiform @ MUTEK 2010
• Stephen Beaupré Mutek Feature

Initiated by Stephen Beaupré, Gemmiform is a coalescence of his electronic music, the acoustic improvisations of The Banjo Consortium (guitar, flute, accordion, mandolin), and the work of visual artists Nancy Belzile (experimental animation film), Patrick Bernatchez (drawing), and David Fafard (digital imaging, video, VJ live performances). The muted and underlying dimensions of the lived experience is the main theme of this presentation drawing from subjects of timeless relevancy—genesis, growth, metamorphosis and decay, desire, joy and loss, mythos and the natural world, of which the image of a bud, the gemmiform, is a perfect synthesis. The basis for the visuals is an alluring imagery that stems from low tech production re-articulated and supplemented with digital effects. The music uses organic elements of acoustic instruments, field and vocal recordings, before combining them with synthesized methods in order to emphazise the life within the final work. Exploring the relation of the electronic devices with the figurative, the organic, and the narrative, this presentation is organic and fragile, contemplative and emotional, yet still critical—a sensuality, a marrow, a gritty merging.

THIERRY GAUTHIER

• www.thierrygauthier.com

Handy on guitar, keys and machines – the soft and hard ones, multi-disciplinary artist Thierry Gauthier is also well versed in the visual – from digital photography, film and video, to painting. His deep and accomplished resume includes composition and music production for films, videos, television series, documentaries, multimedia, theatre and installation. He’s also a mastering engineer as proficient in punk rock as traditional electroacoustics, or granular synthesis. Gauthier is currently at work on a series of audio-visual, non-narrative, abstract animations derived from acoustic and electronic sound sources, and photographic and synthetically produced imagery. There is a new language to be discovered in these sensorial minglings and Gauthier is as concerned with the effects and expressive possibilities of synergetic art, as with its movement, light and intensity.

Thierry will be presenting his brand-new project, entitled Nord/Sud – a figurative audiovisual composition that represents nature and the survival instinct with anxiety, tension and nostalgia. The work evolves from microscopic to macroscopic and follow the links of the food chain. The images were taken during winter in Costa Rica, Mexico and Quebec, and the music is made from field recordings, prepared piano, bowed cymbals and synthesis.

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

• Facebook Event

• Resident Advisor

For the full-listing of Avant_MUTEK 2011 events, go to http://www.mutek.org/calendar

This event was made possible by the Chicago Cultural Center. www.chicagoculturalcenter.org