It might be hard to believe, but yes, Slipping Control at Audio Visual Arts is Ben Vida's first solo exhibition in New York.
Apropos, the four pieces that make up Vida's Slipping Control--the video, book, object and poster--were all derived from the same source material, the text piece Tztztztzt Î í í....
Composed to act as a score, a sound piece and as raw data for electronic control source, Tztztztzt Î í í.... became the intrinsic element that tied all of these works together.
Here's Vida's score (and some audio from said score), courtesy of Shelter Press.
Vida explains his process thusly:
"I was interested in the rhythm of speaking, interested in using the voice to create rhythmic patterns that would inevitably break out of time and become asymmetrical and awkward. I wanted to create one set of control sources (the text), run them through a bunch of different systems (the video, the book, the record, etc.) and see how the original source material morphed and changed as it manifested in these different modalities. The process of developing each unique work involved setting of control paths for the text to be processed though. In terms of this path, the first step after writing the text was to find the primary filter of interpretation and translation that would start this process of slipping control--and this is where Tyondai and Sara come in."
Ben Vida at AVA from Audio Visual Arts on Vimeo.
Vida goes on to chart out several possible path configurations for Slipping Control--on display at Justin Luke's Audio Visual Arts through Sunday, May 19.
A control path may look something like this:
Text > Performer/Vocalist > Voiced Recording > Electronic Analysis > Reconfigured
Text > Audio Synthesis > LP Record
Or maybe like this:
Text > Performer/Vocalist > Video/Audio Recording > Electronic Analysis > Audio Synthesis > Video Editing > Color Synthesis > Video Installation
Or this:
Text > Performer/Vocalist > Video/Audio Recording > Electronic Analysis > Audio Synthesis > Video Editing > Color Synthesis > Video Installation > Color Field Panel Display
Or more simply:
Text > Poster
Classicalite has a private walk-through scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, with Luke, at Audio Visual Arts. Long-time supporters of Ben Vida's extraordinary, multi-faceted work, we'll report back from AVA, well, ASAP.
Until then, here's Vida's official CV...
Ben Vida is a New York-based artist and composer. In 2011, Vida was Composer-in-Residence at New York's Diapason Space and at EMS Studios in Stockholm. He was also awarded a Swedish Arts Committee Travel Grant, an ISSUE Project Room Emerging Artists Commission and the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona "Composing with Process" Exclusive Works Commission. Last year, he premiered a new composition for fixed electronics and small ensemble, commissioned by the ACM/Palomar Ensemble in Chicago. This year, he presented his sound piece hy.morf.eld at the Artist's Institute, performed a new work for electronics at The Kitchen and helped debut Tyondia Braxton's composition Hive at the Guggenheim. He is currently an Artist-in-Residence at two New York venues--Clocktower and ISSUE Project Room. He has released over twenty records on such labels as PAN, ALKU, Thrill Jockey, Drag City, Amish, Bottrop-Boy, Hapna and Kranky. As both a solo artist and in collaboration, Vida has presented his work in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, South Korea and Japan.
