Sound in the Frying Pan

Electronic Music Foundation presents

Sound In The Frying Pan

Pier 66 Maritime, Hudson River Park
West Side Highway at 26th Street
New York City

Opening night
Friday, May 15, 7pm
$15/$10 students, seniors, EMF Subscribers
Admission includes one free drink

During the weekend
Saturday, May 16, 12pm - 9pm
Sunday, May 17, 12pm - 9pm
Admission free

Sound in the Frying Pan is an installation of five site-specific compositions by emerging sound artists aboard the lightship Frying Pan. Jessica Feldman, Ben Owen, Melissa Clark, Shimpei Takeda, Suzanne Thorpe, Philip White, Bart Bridger Woodstrup, and Richard Garet will expand our aural senses as they evoke sonic spectres and create alternative realities throughout the multiple levels of the historic vessel.


The Frying Pan at its mooring


A few words about the Frying Pan

According to its history at fryingpan.com, the Frying Pan was built in 1929 as a lightship, 133 feet in length with a 30 foot beam. From 1930 to 1965, it was stationed at the Frying Pan Shoals, 30 miles offshore from Cape Fear, North Carolina. It was subsequently docked at Southport, North Carolina, then in Chesapeake Bay, and after being abandoned for ten years, it sank, possibly due to a broken pipe. It was underwater for three years, then raised by a salvage company and purchased by its current owners. "After tons of silt and shells were removed from the hull, the ship was outfitted with a new engine and in 1989 was sailed to her current home, Manhattan's Westside. While the outside of the ship has been restored to her original appearance, the inside retains the barnacle-encrusted, sunken-ship motif that acknowledges her storied past."

For more information on the Frying Pan, see fryingpan.com. The Frying Pan is now moored at Pier 66 Maritime in Hudson River Park at 26th Street on the West Side Highway.


↓ Program

PROGRAM

Sirens..........................................................................................................................Jessica Feldman

Underfoot................................................................................Melissa Clark, Ben Owen, Shimpei Takeda

Gathering Lore...................................................................................................Bart Bridger Woodstrup

Inner-Outer.....................................................................................................................Richard Garet

Balancing Act..............................................................................................Suzanne Thorpe, Philip White



fryingpan


ABOUT THE ARTISTS



Jessica Feldman
Jessica Feldman is an interdisciplinary sound-artist whose recent works tend toward interactivity in extremely public or private spaces. Her pieces have been presented internationally, and her work has received awards from the LMCC, the Max Kade Foundation, the Bronx River Art Center, Meet the Composer, and the Experimental Television Center.



Melissa F. Clarke
Melissa F. Clarke is a New York-based multi-media artist. Her work has been exhibited at places such as the Queens Museum, the Art Gallery at Bullova Center, and Issue Project Room. Clarke co-produced, art directed, and designed two feature length films. She has also produced videos and sound pieces for collaborations and commissions.



Ben Owen
Ben Owen is a cross-media artist interested in relationships between spatial aspects of sound fields and the projection and reflection of light. He has presented work at The Kitchen, free103point9 Wave Farm, Millennium Film Workshop, the White Box Gallery, 106BLDG30, Tonic, Engine 27, 6 & B Community Garden, Issue Project Room, Diapason, and The Tank.



Shimpei Takeda
Shimpei Takeda works with photography, video, and improvisational performance. His work has been presented at the Essl Collection of Contemporary Art, Austin Museum of Art, Weisman Art Museum, Schenectady Museum & Suits-bueche Planetarium, and at New York City venues including Issue Project Room, The Tank, and Experimental Intermedia.



Bart Bridger Woodstrup
Bart Bridger Woodstrup's work investigates the relationship between environmental issues and new technology. His goal is to understand and manipulate the aesthetics, semiotics, and narratives of time-based media. His research takes the form of interactive audio/video performance, multimedia installation and networked experience.




Richard Garet
Richard Garet is a sound artist, video artist and painter. He explores the phenomena found and produced in aural and visual time-based media, in nature's processes, and in human beings' relationship with artificial and natural environments. His work has been shown in New York, London, Barcelona, Sydney, and Puerto Rico.



Suzanne Thorpe
Suzanne Thorpe, musician, composer, sound artist, enjoys working within the peripheral consciousness, exposing coexisting perspectives and concurrent realities. She has performed with Chris Brown, Pauline Oliveros, Annette Krebs, Ulrich Krieger, Gino Robair, David Dove, the Wounded Knees, J Mascis, Mercury Rev and others.



Philip White
Philip White is a media artist and electricist, exploring pyschoacoustic phenomena with feedback and light. He has toured nationally and had works shown throughout the US and Germany, including performances / installations at The Stone (NYC), Sonic Circuits (DC), Redux New Media Festival (Charleston, SC) and Gallerie Neurotitan (Berlin).

ABOUT THE INSTALLATIONS

Sirens by Jessica Feldman is an installation that plays with the contradiction between the original function of the lightship and the natural seduction of sound. Projecting audio from the elephant ears of the Frying Pan lures listeners to their fate, as did the Sirens in the Odyssey, but it is in direct opposition to the original function of the lightship which was to warn sailors away.

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Underfoot, a collaboration by Melissa Clarke, Ben Owen and Shimpei Takeda, explores the aesthetic, poetic, and metaphorical possibilities in the conveyance of physical dynamics through audio-visual means. In this instance, the trio creates a composition using projections, sounds, and reflective materials based on geographical data derived from the contours of the Hudson River bottom.

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Bart Bridger Woodstrup's Gathering Lore is a weather station that translates current climate conditions into sound.

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Richard Garet's Inner-Outer is a video projection of light reflections on water accompanied by a sonic construction of underwater recordings conveyed through several channels of audio. Garet focuses on sound and light as an audiovisual environment that exposes visitors to a sensorial, perceptive, and subjective encounter.

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In Balancing Act, Suzanne Thorpe and Philip White use the list of the ship and the location of the listener to create and control a flow of sound.