Turntables, Tech and Sound Art at CEAIT Festival March 4-5

The CalArts Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology (CEAIT) two-day festival begins tonight at REDCAT with an eclectic lineup of performers and sound artists that cross and blend genres. Co-curated by Mark Trayle and Ulrich Krieger, both faculty members of The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts, the festival promises to bring music from “abstract reveries to flat-out sonic raucousness” to the listening audience.

On the bill tonight (March 4):

• John Wiese, founding member of the concrète grindcore band Sissy Spacek, opens the festival with sound compositions. (Watch the video posted above for a sample.)
• Peruvian-born, Brooklyn resident Maria Chavez. The avant-turntablist Maria Chavez creates electroacoustic sound pieces using new and broken needles on vinyl.
• Marcus Schmickler performs two newly revised works of surround-sound computer music derived from astrophysical data.

Friday’s program includes:

• Better Than Future (CalArts alumni Casey Anderson,  Scott Cazan and Elisabeth McMullin), an LA-based digital media ensemble that tests the conceptions of sound as art;
• Multimedia performance by visual and sound artist Steve Roden that’s based on time spent in Marfa, Texas; and
• Bloody Claws, sound artist Carla Bozulich, formerly with the Geraldine Fibbers, Scarnella and Evangelista closes the festival. She’ll appear alongside a very special guest.

Listen to “Blue Eyes Cryin in the Rain” from The Red-Headed Stranger, the Willie Nelson concept album reimagined in its entirety by Bozulich in 2003:

Blueeyes