(sub)mersion at the Exploratorium

MEDIATE & SF Weekly present an immersive surround sound and cinema event featuring Pamela Z, IN/S and Paul Clipson featuring Ashley Bellouin

In partnership with the Exploratorium’s Cinema Arts program, Soundwave drops audiences into a special surround sound and cinema event that immerses into the qualities of water.  Duo IN/S’ ‘Condition of Form’ features multi-channel audio recordings with hydrophones and a 16mm multi-projection filmed on commercial fishing boats out at sea that examine the life and realities on, under and around water. Their piece exposes the adverse impacts on our oceans today, from radiation in the Pacific Ocean to global warming trends altering our fisheries. Film artist Paul Clipson with sound artist Ashley Bellouin present a detailed study of the reflective, associative and rhythmic qualities of water, through an interaction of surfaces, reflections, patterns and structures found in water; and, sound pioneer in live digital looping Pamela Z presents ACQUA, a suite of short works for voice, electronics, and video, incorporating live and sampled watery sounds and images, manipulated in real time with gesture activated MIDI controllers and defused in the space – immersing and submerging viewers in an extremely wet room.

Exploratorium’s Cinema Arts program presented every 3rd Thursday with Off the Screen. More info here

Note: (sub)mersion tickets include evening admission to the Museum from 6:00 pm-10:30pm. Arrive early or hang late after the show to experience the Exploratorium at night, featuring cocktails around the museum.

Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist who makes solo works combining a wide range of vocal techniques with electronic processing, samples, gesture activated MIDI controllers, and video. She has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. Her work has been presented at venues and exhibitions including Bang on a Can (NY), the Japan Interlink Festival, Other Minds (SF), the Venice Biennale, and the Dakar Biennale. She has created installation works and has composed scores for dance, film, and new music chamber ensembles. Her numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Creative Capital Fund, the CalArts Alpert Award, The MAP Fund, the ASCAP Award, an Ars Electronica honorable mention, the NEA/JUSFC Fellowship, and a Djerrassi Resident Artist Program residency.

IN/S is a sonic project, by artists John Davis and Collin McKelvey, that utilizes field recordings taken from both natural and man-made environments. Processed and unprocessed recordings are transferred directly to magnetic tape for use with looping systems and various playback apparatus that serves as the primary instruments for musical expression. The multi-channel tape sources are utilized for both live performance and studio recording projects as a way to maximize the units interest in audio spatial effects and multi-channel PA systems. The artifacts and signal degradations inherent to the analogue tape medium provide a measure of chance and unpredictability that reinforces both artists’ interest in improvisation and unconventional approaches to musical composition.

Paul Clipson is a San Francisco-based filmmaker who often collaborates with sound artists and musicians on films, live performances, and installations. His work has been exhibited and performed both nationally and internationally at such festivals as the New York Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. His Super 8 and 16mm films aim to bring to light subconscious visual preoccupations that reveal themselves while working in a stream of consciousness manner, combining densely layered, in-camera edited studies of figurative and abstract environments, in a process that encourages unplanned-for results, responding to and conversing with the temporal qualities of musical composition and live performance.

Ashley Bellouin’s work explores the merging of sound art, electro-acoustic composition, and instrument building. She focuses on the studies of sonology, psychoacoustics, and the interaction between sound and architecture. Her compositions emphasize and exploit the sonic potential contained within a single musical gesture, regularly using electronics to develop latent qualities. Spatialization, beat frequencies, auditory illusions, and microtonal tunings are frequent compositional tools. Ashley holds an MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College, where she was awarded the Frog Peak Collective Experimental Music Award. She has presented her work at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Soundwave ((5)) Festival, the 26th Annual SEAMUS National Conference, the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, UC Santa Cruz, and Stanford University, among other venues. She has additionally been awarded a YBCAway grant from Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and has held residencies at the Paul Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency Center, the UC Berkeley Center for New Media, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Ashley resides in Oakland, CA, and works for Dave Smith Instruments in San Francisco.