This a 28 min piece of electronic music created from custom created computer viruses which have been reworked and reprocessed
Bio:
Since 1986 Joseph Nechvatal has worked with ubiquitous electronic visual information, computers and computer-robotics. His computer-robotic assisted paintings and computer software animations are shown regularly in galleries and museums throughout the world. From 1991-1993 he worked as artist-in-resident at the Louis Pasteur Atelier and the Saline Royale / Ledoux Foundation's computer lab in Arbois, France on The Computer Virus Project: an experiment with computer viruses as a creative stratagem. In 2002 he extended that artistic research into the field of viral artificial life through his collaboration with the programmer Stéphane Sikora.
Nechvatal's digital paintings conjure up an enigmatic world of almost dreadful depth a depth that signals the dynamic critical intricacy of a contemporary practice engaged in the fragile wedding of image production and image resistance. His computer-robotic assisted paintings are made up of an oddly excessive concoction of ambiguous sexual body parts (morphed from both sexes) and expressions of political ire; thereby exploring the theme of allegory which addresses the global influence of the viral form. Moreover, Nechvatal’s art evokes a process of self-sampling and psychic self-mixing that apes, yet critiques, the ideological compositional devices engaged in by mainstream media, which it uses to create seemingly “objective” continuous permutations of representational meaning. But Nechvatal also brings a subversive reading to computational media by presenting an artistic hyper-self-consciousness that articulates contemporary concerns regarding safety, truth, identity and objectivity.
Joseph Nechvatal earned his Ph.D. in the philosophy of art and new technology at The Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts (CAiiA) University of Wales College, Newport, UK. Dr. Nechvatal presently teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City (SVA) and at Stevens Institute of Technology.
Press Release:
JOSEPH NECHVATAL
viral symphOny
LABEL: IEA
Post-conceptual digital artist and theoretician Joseph Nechvatal pushes his experimental investigations into the blending of computational virtual spaces and the corporeal world into the sonic register. Realtime "field recordings" of the audio manifestations of his custom created computer viruses have been reworked and reprocessed by Andrew Deutsch and Matthew Underwood, resulting in the sonic landscape of the ‘viral symph0ny’. With resonances of Yasunao Tone, Fluxus, Oval, and Merzbow, this 28-minute composition is supplemented by a further 50 minutes of audio, comprising the original raw data field recordings.
- Steven Mygind Pedersen
Institute for Electronic Arts,
School of Art & Design,
NYSCC @ Alfred University,
2 Pine St, Alfred, NY 14802
viral symphOny
Joseph Nechvatal : original concept viral structures
Mathew Underwood : nano, micro, meso and macro structures
Andrew Deutsch : meso and macro structures
Stephane Sikora : C++ programming
Produced at The Institute for Electronic Arts
Steven Mygind Pedersen : IEA project technician
Joseph Nechvatal : visual artwork
(c) Joseph Nechvatal 2007
Joseph Nechvatal
www.nechvatal.net
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The viral symphOny CD is available for purchase from www.forcedexposure.com (write Jimmy Johnson at fe@forcedexposure.com) and at The Pauline Oliveros Foundation http://www.deeplistening.org (write Al Margolis at pogal@pogus.com)
