BR-Laser – Modular Synthesizer and Laser
MSHR (Brenna Murphy and Birch Cooper) – Analog Synthesizers, Lights
YATTA – Voice, Electronics
Flashing lights will be used during tonight’s performance
Following Suzanne Ciani’s triumphant concert last fall, Roulette welcomes back Austrian Cultural Forum New York’s Moving Sounds Festival, an annual international festival of music, visual media and aesthetic dialogue that features emerging and pioneering artists focused on electronically generated music, engaging improvisation, and cutting edge technology. This year’s festival is co-curated by Austrian electronic arts center Ars Electronica and Brooklyn-based nonprofit technology studio Eyebeam. The opening night of the festival, taking place on Sunday, features audiovisual experimentalists BR-Laser, MSHR, and Yatta.
BR-Laser is an engineer, visual sound artist and cofounder of Kunstverein NewJörg Vienna. He is a regular guest at international experimental music festivals, music fairs and soldering workshops. Performance highlights include: Ars Electonica (Linz), Superbooth (Berlin), Modular Days (Barcelona), and Machines in Music (New York).
MSHR is the art collective of Birch Cooper and Brenna Murphy. They build and explore systems to reveal pathways toward ecstatic sensory experience and work at the intersection of digital sculpture, analog circuitry and ceremonial performance. The physical projects revolve around analog light-audio feedback systems built from macro-arrangements of our sculptural synthesizers. On the virtual side, they weave computer generated portraits of inter-dimensional entities and psychedelic realms. These physical and virtual pursuits inform each other deeply, unfolding a hyper-shape that houses both.
YATTA is a Houston-born interdisciplinary artist, digipoet, and musician currently based in Brooklyn. Using incantations born of loop pedal drones, folk acoustics, and ecstatic beats, they alchemize and creolize jazz vocals with Krio cries to create music to lie down in.
The Austrian Cultural Forum New York is the main cultural embassy of the Republic of Austria in New York and the United States. Christine Moser, director of the ACFNY, is dedicated to showcase Austrian art, music, film, theater, and literature, presenting “as much from our cultural past as necessary and as much contemporary art as possible”. With its architectural landmark building in Midtown Manhattan, located just around the corner of MoMA, the ACFNY’s facilities include a multi-level gallery space, a theater, and its own library. Hosting more than 100 events annually, the ACFNY thus becomes one of the most important, if not the most important place to encounter Austrian art, culture and tradition for an American audience.
