Francisco López



Lopez listeners

New York City premiere

Francisco Lopez:
Buildings [New York]

Part 2 from Trilogy of the Americas

Friday, October 10, 8pm
Judson Church
55 Washington Square South
$15 / $10 students, seniors, EMF Subscribers

Francisco López, biologist, environmental activist, sound artist, is known for his powerful treatments of environmental sounds that emphasize and focus on the unique qualities of the place in which the sounds originate. In New York, he asked, "What are the soundmarks of New York City?" His answer was that the soundmarks of New York are in the interiors of buildings. Consequently, the sounds of Buildings [New York] come from the windy, man-made landscape of machine rooms, elevator shafts, and heating systems of the city's office and residential buildings. In this performance, with members of the audience voluntarily blindfolded, López positioned the harsh, raw, pulsating elements of the towering tunnels of New York into a lyrical and powerful fabric of sounds.

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Francisco López
Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the important figures in the field of sound art and experimental music.  He has performed at venues such as PS1 Contemporary Art Center (New York), Museum of Modern Art (Paris), International Film Festival (Rotterdam), Festival des Arts (Brussels), Darwin Fringe (Darwin, Australia), and Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires. His sound art has been published by more than 170 recording companies and he has received the honorific mention of the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz) on three occasions.

ABOUT THE MUSIC

Francisco López is known for his virtual worlds of sound created from myriad original sources collected all over the world, from rainforests and deserts, factories and buildings, from multiple locations in the five continents.


Excerpt from Buildings [New York]


Buildings [New York], from his monumental Trilogy for the Americas, is a rich excursion into a virtual world of sound originating from multiple locations throughout New York City, mutated and evolved during years of compositional work, based on windy, man-made landscape of machine rooms, elevator shafts, and heating systems of the city's office and residential buildings. López positions these breathing, raw, pulsating man-made elements in layers, suggesting an industrial nature, a kind of new wilderness.

In the concert, the room is dark, blindfolds are provided for the audience, and the sounds project from a multi-channel system around the room.


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