Phantom Power, June 13th 2010, Yerba Buena Gardens

Phantom Power

a FREE concert in Yerba Buena Gardens

3rd and Mission Streets, San Francisco

Sunday evening June 6th, 7pm promptly

BRING your BOOMBOX!

update: hear Aaron and Jeremiah discuss Phantom Power and BASE on KUSF (mp3 link) thanks to host Jacob Heule!

Curated by Bay Area Sound Ecology featuring works and talks by Bernie Krause, Andrea Williams, Jeremiah Moore

Bay Area Sound Ecology (BASE) is proud to announce Phantom Power, a free site-specific concert superimposing potential and vanished soundscapes over the existing urban soundscape at Yerba Beuna Gardens, in the heart of downtown San Francisco. Amidst the myriad contemporary sonic identifiers present in the garden today, the audience is invited to experience a phantom image of other soundscapes which were lost to history, which never came to be, or which may yet come to pass. BASE co-chairs Aaron Ximm and Jeremiah Moore curate a selection of artists to create a concert envisioned as a transient intervention, reminding listeners that the familiar soundscape of the places we inhabit, like sound itself, is ephemeral and contingent. Composers will present short works that introduce a subtle layer of sound to the existing environment, evoking how the site sounded years ago, or how it might someday sound. Yerba Beuna Gardens has many layers of history to explore, and for its unique situation amid the cultural institutions and life of the city.

A moment of focused listening will be set aside, to consciously reflect on the soundscape as it currently exist. Artists will then introduce their work and discuss their vision. A Q&A session will convene after the event to discuss the project’s contrasting visions.

Some of the compositions will be heard ‘in motion,’ two of the composers are choreographing movement in the space. A third piece will be ‘conducted’ with different voices being raised and lowered to a specific effect. Featuring the work of: Andrea Williams – presenting the premiere of Garden TOOR Bernie Krause – participate in mixing the Soundscapes of California Jeremiah Moore – presenting the premiere of Cycles

Please visit http://www.basoundecology.org on or after June 7 to download the concert tracks.

Festival Organizers – Project Soundwave: http://www.projectsoundwave.com/2010/june13/

Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=124667687560609

Note: This is a low-environmental impact event using a crowd-sourced sound cloud. Attendees are asked to bring ipods, CD players, small portable speakers, boomboxes (we will have a limited supply as well). The compositions would be distributed to audience-participants beforehand via the internet (link to downloadable mp3s available in June), and at the event on CDs.

The Artists

Aaron Ximm is a San-Francisco-based field recordist and sound artist. He is best known for his composition, installation, and performance work under the name Quiet American. From 2001 to 2005, Aaron curated and hosted the Field Effects concert series, which, like his own work, sought to showcase the quiet, fragile, and lovely side of sound art, particularly working with found sound and field recordings. In 2009, Aaron was an artist in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito. He has performed at numerous musical festivals and symposiums, including the San Francisco Tape Music Festival and the Embertide for Binaural Audio Art Symposium in the United Kingdom.

Jeremiah Moore is an artist and sound designer based in San Francisco. He has produced works exploring human perceptions of time, examining the interface of humans, nature and technology, engaging the beauty in the everyday, and transforming commercial culture into meaningless bliss. He is currently mixing and designing sound for documentary films, interactive works, radio and exhibits at his independent post-production sound studio. His work can be heard at Prehistoric Journey at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and at the Detention Barracks at the Angel Island Immigration Station Museum. He lives in the Mission District with his partner and two children who, like him, never sleep.

Andrea Williams is a sound artist and composer currently living in San Francisco. She utilizes site-specific elements and perceptual cues to reveal the unseen connections between people and their environment. Her compositions make use of field recordings, instruments, computer technologies and the sound of the performance space itself. She has led soundwalks in New York and San Francisco, and has shown and performed both solo and with the Glass Bees and SleepWalks at galleries and alternative spaces, most recently the Diapason Gallery, NPR, Fountain Miami Art Fair, and the Mamori sound artist residency in the Amazon rainforest. Andrea is a founding member of the New York Society for Acoustic Ecology, currently a member of BASE in San Francisco, and is attending Mills College for her MFA in Electronic Music. http://www.nyacousticecology.org/

In the late 1960s, Bernie Krause began his ground-breaking life work in bioacoustics and the recording of environments throughout the world, much of which has been accomplished with techniques and technologies for recording, analyzing, and presenting habitat-and species-specific sounds that Krause has developed on his own. His album, In a Wild Sanctuary (WB, 1970), earned a place in history as being the first recording to use environmental sounds as both a central component of orchestration and as a statement about the environment. Under the company name Wild Sanctuary, Inc., Krause continues to share his compelling field experiences through his musical albums and dramatic sound installations in public spaces such as museums, zoos, and aquaria. Krause holds a Ph. D. with an Internship in bio-acoustics from Union Institute, Cincinnati. http://www.wildsanctuary.com/

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