Haptic Drift | March 4, 2023

Theaterlab Presents

Haptic Drift: An Evening of Aural Experiment

By Testu Collective

Featuring Thessia Machado, Jenn Grossman, Keiko Uenishi, and AC Diamond

March 4, 2023

Doors at 6pm; Sound installations 6-7pm; Sound performances start at 7pm

Commissioned by Theaterlab, Testu Collective [Dan Tesene & Serena Stucke] present Haptic Drift, a series of intermedia performances focused on multi-modal perception and exploration of the senses. Each event of this bi-monthly series will focus on artists working within one field, creating works that cross the spectrum of sound, visual, and movement. The first evening, curated with Jenn Grossman/WISE will introduce sound artists Thessia Machado, Keiko Uenishi, and AC Diamond working with sound objects, sculptures, installations to create an evening of uncharted aural/physical experiences moving throughout the entire Theaterlab’s space which will be activated by live embodied electronic music performances.

Haptic Drift is part of Theaterlab’s Spring Season 2023 Rules Of Engagement, which will present a group of work that explores the many forms of relationship between artists and audiences in the post-pandemic world.

Tickets: $15 – Buy HERE

COVID-19 safety: Boosters and KN95 masks are required to enter the venue. Masks will be also available at the door. The safety of our audience and artist is a priority. Thank you for helping us keep Theaterlab a safe space for everyone.If you have any questions about our COVID-19 policy, please email us at theaterlab36@gmail.com.

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Meet the Artists

Testu Collective is an NYC-based intermedia art group founded by Dan Tesene and Serena Stucke. Testu creates experimental videos, concept soundtracks, audiovisual experiences, and performance art installations. Testu has produced site-specific installations and curated works for Triskelion Arts (Brooklyn), Wallplay On Canal (NYC), Flux Factory (Governors Island), Sound Pedro (Los Angeles), Chashama (Brooklyn), CTM Festival(online), Ars Electronica(NYC), Ace Hotel(NYC), The Shed(NYC), Pleamar Festival(Buenos Aires). Most recently, Testu released their first audiovisual EP ‘Influence of the Electric Field’ and created music videos for Clarice Jensen’s latest album ‘Esthesis’.
@testucollective | testucollective.com

Thessia Machado is a visual/sound artist, instrument builder and performer whose work plumbs the materiality of sound and its effect on our shifting perceptions of space. She creates circumstances in which to mine the matter of her pieces for their innate physical properties and the sonic and visual relationships that can arise from their interactions. Electronics are usually implicated.

Machado’s sculptures, drawings and sound installations have been exhibited in the US and Europe, most recently at the Sounds Now Festival in Athens, Greece and Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria.

Thessia’s piece is a monochord with auto-bow + emf and infrared auscultation

Jenn Grossman is a sound/experiential media artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She’s concerned with the psycho-spatial, surreal, affective, and transcendent potentials of sensory media. Her work has taken the form of sound sculpture, audiovisual installation, experimental performance, sound collage, light/video events, public interventions, ambient music, and spatial audio works. She’s held residencies at I-Park Foundation, Harvestworks, presented at festivals, museums and conferences such as the Black Mountain College Museum, the Museum of the Moving Image and the New York Transit Museum, the Megapolis Audio Festival, the Global Composition Conference, the Women In/Women on Sound Symposium, along with unconventional public locations. She curates under WISE: Women Innovating Sound Experience, supporting women-identified/non-binary artists working with experimental sound and technology.

Jenn’s piece Pipes: Channeling is a series of sound sculptures/objects made from industrial materials: duct pipes and acrylic tubing, woofers/transducers, and amplifiers, both performative and installation-based. They act as conduits that shape, resonate, and amplify sound, both giving a voice to the found/mundane objects and physically extending a sonic experience to the listener.

Keiko Uenishi is a sound art-i-vist, socio/environ composer, and a core member of SHARE.nyc since 2001.Uenishi is known for her works formed through experiments in restructuring and analyzing one’s relationship through aural memory/perceptions in sociological, cultural, and/or psychological contexts. She has been working on a research project towards a doctoral degree at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Her project, entitled Partitions: Dividers, Connectors, Gray-zones, Neighbours in Aural Space, is an exploration of a “para-sphere” where auditory stimuli sneak over other perceptions, while de-stabilizing relationships, memories, space recognitions, and time.

Keiko’s piece CDL is an experiential/phenomenological sound-performance/installation/method for redefining a space utilizing audio-feedback. Aesthetic aspects (e.g. the material used for walls, ceiling, floors, columns, furniture, people) serve as influential components. CDL also surfaces layers of “rooms” inside the “room.” Any hollow-shaped elements (e.g. air-ducts, glasses, bottles, tubes, pipes, bottles, cups, and other oddly-shaped objects that are hollow with at least one open end…) inside of the whole physical room, would emerge as smaller “rooms.” The temporary structure as a whole, becomes my instrument (that functions as the feedback chamber) for CDL. Continuing my efforts to learn through spaces/places, I will maneuver with objects I discovered in/out of the Theatrelab .The act will be guided by the ears (of mine + of yours).

Visitors are also requested to bring (any) hollow-shaped object(s) that they would allow me to perform with.

Recently performing as AC Diamond, composer Anastasia Clarke gives live embodied electronic music performances that consider the role of the musician as a healer, activator, and sonifier of the unheard and unseen. They use creative music technology such as custom-built controllers, instruments, and performing systems, as well as compositional approaches informed by intuitive work, to spin narrative fragments into ineffable new shapes and stories.

AC’s Shard-Speakers are created from the remains of broken crystal singing bowls. With tactile transducers affixed to their grainy, convex exteriors, they function as a multichannel audio playback system with distinctive timbral qualities, which can be cast variably as a sound installation, or as an instrument for use in live electroacoustic performance.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Theaterlab’s programming is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

Please note we will be require masks, in compliance with our COVID policy. Thank you for respecting our policy to keep our artists and audiences safe.