May 22nd, 2015
Home Radiation
Live set by Anna Friz, Jeff Kolar and Eric Leonardson, from the Defibrillator Gallery, Chicago IL May 15, 2015.
May 15th, 2015
Home Radiation in Chicago
Jeff Kolar, Eric Leonardson and I are playing Friday May 15, 2015 in Chicago, at the Defibrillator Gallery
1463 West Chicago Ave, Chicago IL 60642 19:00
Two of my favourite people to play with and collaborate with! Here’s what we’re up to:
Home Radiation
Performing with radiophonic instruments, unique homemade electronics, micro-watt transmitters, and re-purposed objects, Anna Friz, Jeff Kolar and Eric Leonardson create intimate atmospheres traversing acoustic and electrode-magnetic space. Together their work can be characterized as a mindful collaboration with vibrational surfaces and unstable circuits; and with subtle treatments of potentially noisy, often lo-fi materials from which highly detailed landscapes emerge. Though all three artists have worked with one another in various constellations in Chicago and internationally, this concert is their premiere outing as a trio.
In addition to Eric’s Springboard instrument, Jeff’s panoply of open circuit micro-transmitters, and my little table full of feedback oddities, I’ll be bringing along an old friend to make some noise:
September 30th, 2013
A little documentation from Megapolis 2013
Anna Friz + Eric Leonardson @ MEGAPOLIS Audio Festival from MEGAPOLIS Festival on Vimeo.
Eric Leonardson and I played a concert at Union Docs, Brooklyn, in April 2013, in advance of the Megapolis Festival in NYC. The festival folk have just cut together some footage with our talkback session after the concert, check it out! Eric played the Springboard, his self-constructed instrument, and I played various electronics and free reed instruments. The sound system included a two-channel radio array of about 100 radios suspended around the space.
April 5th, 2013
Voyage to the MEGAPOLIS
Heading out east next week to install/talk/perform as the pre-fest-warm-up for MEGAPOLIS, the fabulous audio art and radio event which takes place periodically in the glorious Turnpike Entity… er… NYC-Bos-Wash sprawl. This year hosted by the New School.
Eric Leonardson and I will be performing together inside one of my multi-channel radio rigs, using springboard, cottage-made instruments, free reeds and free radio.
Saturday April 13, 7:30pm at Union Docs, 322 Union Ave, Brooklyn NY.
July 10th, 2011
Heavy breathing at the Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago
I’m hanging my multi-channel radio installation Respire at the Experimental Sound Studio (ESS) in Chicago this week, with the opening reception coming up on Friday July 15, 6PM-9PM. My good friend and partner in sonic crime Eric Leonardson will be joining me to play at the opening, where we’ll each improvise with the radio world of the installation. Respire will stay up until August 7, and will continue to change as I meddle with the transmitter configurations, composition, and interference potential. ESS has kindly let me use their Audible Gallery as a project space for the duration of the show, so I can continue my research into multi-channel radio systems. Gallery hours are Saturdays and Sundays from 1-5PM, or by appointment during the week. You can email me here as well and see when I’ll be in the gallery if you want to hang out and move antennas.
Here’s a short description of the piece:
Respire is an intimate experience of radio transmission, featuring a multi-channel array of suspended radio receivers and micro-watt transmitters. Sounds of breathing and other bodily exclamations typically absent from regular radio programming seep up through the welter of signals, as the receivers play and emit their own oscillating frequencies. This milieu of harmonic interference and uneasy nighttime respirations reveals the invisible contours of the radio landscape that surrounds us. Other sounds are created from instruments that echo human breath (harmonica) or the detuned radio landscape (theremin).
UPDATE:
The space is very intimate–a little sun-dappled box 6m x 6m. For the opening I blacked out the windows and lit the radios with small LED lights, but later on during the installation, I removed the blacks and lights to return the installation to “daytime mode”. New to the array this time around were the chirps and sounds of satellites, which were remarkably insectoid. Much like the similarity between human breath and static, the satellites-as-insects or frogs are striking for the way electro-magnetic and organic phenomena can sound so similar.
Eric Leonardson took a picture during the install: that’s me on a ladder, hanging radios once more…..
This work supported by a post-doctoral fellowship from Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture Québec.
January 8th, 2010
And it’s winter time again….
When not mucking around in the snow with a microphone, I’m toiling away deep in the Nice Little Static Laboratories (possibly in my work pajamas, though rumours are unconfirmed) to produce some sounds for spring. Most pressing: dissertation chapters! And CD projects, including completing one with Eric Leonardson that we began about 2 years ago and which will include the complete suite Dancing Walls Stir the Prairies (band names also up for consideration, if y’all have good ideas), as well as putting the finishing touches on Short Horizon, which I hope to launch in March.
Meanwhile, here’s a little shot of the old antenna far above the house….. just because it’s pretty.
