Monday October 23, 2023 | 8:00 pm | 10.00 and up
Cartographic Improvisations Between Eric Theise and Darien Baiza and Paul Neidhardt // Max Gong
Join us Monday October 23rd for some new faces to our venue, improvising in new ways.
Real-time cartographic improvisations using projected, manipulated digital maps by Eric Theise in collaboration with Darien Baiza, drums and High Zero’s own Paul Neidhardt, also on drums. A visual wash of street grids, land masses, water bodies, and curiosities from built and natural environments. Driving beats. Orphaned labels and free-floating symbology. Auditory roundabouts and redirections. Saturated colors and the subtlest of tints. Sounds symphonic and screeching. Jittery zooms, pans, and traversals. Glitches in crowdsourced data.
Opening is Max Gong. Inspired by The High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music, Max flatteringly formed The Peabody Improvisors Collective which has met every week since High Zero 24 in 2022! On this night he’ll be playing trumpet with Supercollider digital signal processing and synthesis tools. (editor’s note, I said “MAX msp” on the poster, mistakenly…woops)
We’ll start at our new usual time of 8:30, with doors opening at 8:00pm. Please bring cash if you possibly can, our ability to digitally accept money is limited to cards at the desk of the bookstore, which is very slow!
Here’s some more information about the players.
Eric Theise is a San Francisco-based artist and geospatial software developer. Through video and realtime performance tools he reinvigorates the perceptual inquiries of structural filmmakers, experimental animators, the Light and Space movement, and 60’s light shows, occasionally injecting letterform experiments inspired by visual poetry, as new possibilities in the realm of digital cartography.
Since its Lisbon premiere in April 2022, Theise has performed A Synesthete’s Atlas in collaboration with local musical improvisors in dozens of East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, and Rocky Mountain cities; it’s been described as anti-cinema, post-cinema, and pre-cinema, as well as truly radical cartography.
His earlier 16mm experimental films have screened across the United States and Canada, and in France, and he’s performed as a vocalist with the Cornelius Cardew and Long Tone Choirs in various San Francisco Bay Area locations.
Darien Baiza is an exploratory multi-percussionist who is currently residing in the Baltimore area.
Baltimore based percussionist Paul Neidhardt has been a member of High Zero and the Red Room Collective since 2004. Paul works locally as a drum instructor and dance accompanist. His performance work focuses on improvisation using extended techniques to create non-traditional drum sounds and textures. Paul currently plays in the percussion ensemble Umbilicus and hosts the monthly Volunteers Collective improvisation workshop at the Red Room.
Maxwell Gong is a Chinese American composer, improviser, and bandleader. Born in New Zealand, Max spent his early years traveling around the world, spending time in Sydney, ShenZhen, Beijing, Connecticut, Philadelphia and currently residing in Baltimore. His composition reflects his interests in movement and stasis, human imperfections and non-hierarchical collaboration. His works often engage with intensity and absurdity in electronic and acoustic environments. He is as comfortable throwing pencils at piano strings as he is convulsing violently behind faders and knobs. As an improviser, Max uses unconventional techniques to play the trumpet and designs his own electroacoustic instruments in SuperCollider. He is the founder and organizer of the Peabody Improvisers Collective, a student-led free improvisation ensemble that actively performs in Baltimore.
