Jon Satrom’s Prepared Desktop leverages the digital defaults and mundane functions of the computer. Scripts, presets, and glitches collide as he tickles the edges of his OS. Though Satrom has been performing iterations and variations on his Prepared Desktop, this is the world premiere of 4HRSMN.
Jon Satrom — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google
Boombayé aka Ali Santana delivers the heat with hard knocking beats and synchronized projections in his debut solo performance. The Brooklyn native rhythmically collages original images and found footage with glitchy loops and abstract Hip Hop instrumentals to create a gritty and compelling experience that he dubs Boom Bap Cinema. Mustapha Abdul-Rahiim and Leo Gibbs, Santana’s partners in the BKLYN!ZULU project, will also perform.
Ali Santana — Computer, Sampler, Visuals, FX
BKLYN!ZUZU:
Leo Gibbs — Vocals, FX
Mustapha Ar — FX, Samples
Pieces Performed:
HIGH ALERT
WILDIN
HEARTBEAT
CRUSHNTACOS
FUCCITUP
ALRIGHT
DOOWOP
SAYWHEN ( feat. BKLYN!ZULU)
STRANFE
JUMPIN
GOODBYE
VOG
DANCEHALL
DANK
LOVEYOU
DRUM MEDITATION
$50 Festival Pass! See all four nights for $50
Jon Satrom is a kludge artist, a glitch aficionado, and a creative problem creator who problematizes technological structures, interfaces, and conventions. Satrom performs realtime audio/video noise and new-media (often w/ XTAL FSCK, I ♥ PRESETS, and Magic Missile), develops artware (in partnership w/ Pox), and brings folks together in meatspace by co-programming critical, educational, and experimental situations w/ dirty new-media && glitch comrades (including D.R.E.A.M., Netizen, GLI.TC/H, and r4wb1t5!). He has performed, workshopped, and lectured world-wide (STEIM, Amsterdam; musicacoustica, Beijing; transmediale, Berlin; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Centro Multimedia, Mexico City; Ende Tymes, New York City; SXSW Interactive, Austin). His works have been experienced and featured within white-cubes, (65GRAND, Chicago; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder; MU Eindhoven; Parsons, Paris; Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul; and SUDLAB, Naples), glowing-rectangles (Chicago Underground Film Festival, Chicago, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, CROSSROADS Film Festival; San Francisco) and dead-trees (GLI.TC/HREADE[R0R]; Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking; Interface Cultures: Artistic Aspects of Interaction; Mobile Digital Art: Using iPads and iPhones as Creative Tools; and The Art and Science of Interface and Interaction Design).
“Jon Satrom is incredibly bad at using his laptop. Jon Satrom doesn’t need to know how to use the fucking Adobe Creative Suite. Jon Satrom makes us slightly ashamed at how little we do with the ridiculous amount of power that we have. Jon Satrom sometimes smiles as he invokes the demon other from the Operating system.”
—ChannelTwo (Furtherfield)“It was very fast, very witty and very funny but it was also everything you hope will never start happening to your own computer. I felt like the performance was slapping me in the face with my worst ‘user experiences’ nightmares.” —Regine Debatty (We Make Money Not Art)
Satrom’s art is a subtle critique and parody of the day-to-day struggle the user experiences when trying to make their computer work for them. The Sisyphean comic-tragedy of attempts at working to control technology can lead to a realization that in the end, it’s all futile because a new function, software variation or re-design will be created to confuse, commoditize, and add complexity to the process of getting simple tasks done. —Alessandro Imperato, PhD. (NMC Media-N)
Ali Santana is a multi-media artist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NYC. He creates moving images and audio compositions that explore rhythm, identity, community, nature, abstraction, and displacement. Ali works as a director, editor, and motion designer and has collaborated with organizations including MTV, HBO, and the Museum of Modern Art. He is a member of the media performance collective BKLYN!ZULU.
BKLYN!ZULU is a Brooklyn based performing arts collective specializing in audio/video installations, concert visuals, experimental films and other large scale multi-sensory experiences.
Presented as part of Mixology Festival 2019: Signaling – artists whose work in sound and media contains embedded truths, both heartening and startling. Active for over 25 years, Roulette’s Mixology Festival celebrates new and unusual uses of technology in music and the media arts. Primarily a snapshot of current activity, the festival strives to reflect both the history and trends of innovation that impact the Zeitgeist. Curated by David Weinstein.
If there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames. — Antonin Artaud
Deep has to do with complexities, boundaries or edges beyond ordinary or habitual understanding. A deep thinker defies stereotypical knowing and it may take either a long time or never to understand her. —Pauline Oliveros
