Lampo and the Graham Foundation are pleased to welcome Ben Vida, who will screen a new video work and premiere a four-channel electronics piece created especially for the event. In Tztztztzt Î Í Í…Vida presents the video realization of his long form sound poem of the same title, voiced by Sara Magenheimer, Tyondai Braxton, and Vida himself. Combining images of the vocalists’ performance with synthesized translations of these vocalizations, Vida explores the relationships between video and audio inputs and outputs. By doing so, his work aims to recalibrate the viewer’s senses, drawing attention to the processes by which we receive and decode information, and as Vida writes, “the brain’s ability to create order out of multi-sensory distortions.”

Vida will also perform Damaged Particulates, a new composition for fixed and live electronics presented in four-channel-expanded stereo. Organized into eleven short movements, Damaged Particulates derives its compositional strategy from the concept of “Particulate Systems Construction,” emphasizing the morphology and spatialization of single and dual-voiced sonic particulates. Although minimal in elements, Vida’s composition is at once sonically dense, grossly visceral, and disjunctively rhythmic. Here, sound objects take on an almost physical presence within the performance space, allowing spatialization to become a compositional material and discordant sonic composites to complicate traditional compositional logic.

Ben Vida (b. 1974, Dubuque, Iowa) is an artist, improviser, composer, and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. He has been active in the international experimental music scene for the past seventeen years with a long list of collaborations, bands, and releases to his credit. He is the co-founder of the group Town and Country and has worked as a solo artist, releasing records under his own name and the moniker Bird Show on labels including PAN, Alku, Thrill Jockey, Drag City, Amish, Bottrop-Boy, Hapna, and Kranky. Vida has presented his work in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, South Korea, and Japan. Recent activities include performances at the Kitchen in New York with David Behrman, the debut of the Tyondai Braxton/Ben Vida Duo at the Sacrum Profamun festival in Krakow, a solo performance at Electrónica en Abril festival in Madrid, and the publication of his long form sound poem Tztztztzt Î Í Í ... by Shelter Press. Vida’s first solo exhibition, Slipping Control, opened at Audio Visual Arts in New York this past spring. He is currently an Artist in Residency at ISSUE Project Room and at the Clocktower in New York.

This performance is presented in partnership with Lampo. Founded in 1997, Lampo is a non-profit organization for experimental music, sound art, and intermedia projects. Visit www.lampo.org.