2017 Phoenix Experimental Arts Festival

Saturday, February 11, 2017, 7:30pm-10:30pm, Free Admission

Center for the Performing Arts, Paradise Valley Community College

18401 N. 32nd Street, Phoenix, AZ 85032

The 2017 Phoenix Experimental Arts Festival will feature six world premiere performances of inter-media and interdisciplinary works of art, all of which are based on and/or inspired by the “Visions of the Future” posters series from NASA/JPL.

This year’s festival is focused on STEAM (Science, Techonology, Engineering, Arts, Math), and how the various disciplines in the fine and performing arts interact with and are inspired by topics and ideas from STEAM disciplines. In addition to the performances by some very talented musicians and artists, students from Paradise Valley Community College’s Astronomy program will create supporting documentation and videos to provide additional information about the six posters chosen for performance on the festival.


Casey Farina

Audio/visual Performance/ Video projection and Stereo audio

Poster: HD 40307g

Bio: Casey Farina is a Phoenix-based artist who creates digital media experiences from iterative-electronic processes. This work often combines Farina’s expertise in digital media, animation, music composition, and improvisation. Casey's animated graphic scores have been described as "imaginative" and "progressive" by colleagues and are frequently performed throughout the U.S. Uncertain.Indeterminate.Unknown, Farina’s dissertation work, examines contemporary ideas in cosmology via a digital media performance system. Farina’s installation, project CONDOR, showcased electronic music played by a fleet of miniature robotic airships and was funded by a grant from the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts (CIRA) at Northwestern University. Casey was awarded to residency at the Atlantic Center for the Artsto study with iconoclast Mark Applebaum and has presented work at the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), the International Society of Improvising Musicians, the Percussive Arts Society (PAS) conference, and the Spark Festival of electronic music and art. He is currently teaching in the Digital Media Arts program at Glendale Community College and has studied with J.B. Smith, Steve Syverud, Chris Mercer, and Glenn Hackbarth.


Artist: Team Solo Patch 

Future Soul Music/Live Music Performance

Poster: PSO J318.5-22

Bio: Team Solo Patch is a high energy three piece funk band that formed in 2015. Crafting the sound of jazz through modern Dance, House, and Synthwave lenses. A small group, they strive to get the most bang out of your buck by live looping and extensive live computer editing. They are scheduling to relase their first full length album in Early 2017


painless guillotines 

Dark Ambient Electro-Acoustic/Live Music with Electronics

Poster: Europa

Bio: painless guillotines is an electro-acoustic duo that seeks to blend the artist’s diverse backgrounds into a single coherent dark ambient soundscape. By blending techniques often associated with Heavy Metal and other techniques more closely related to the Avant-Garde  painless guillotines creates a Massive Sound with the intended purpose of Massive Effect. painless guillotines accomplishes this dark soundscape world by utilizing guitars, clarinets, EWIs, pedals, Ableton Live, and a heavy dose of improvisation. We invite you to enjoy painless guillotines as we find our way through the dark. The light, however, may never come...


Karl Schindler (performer), Jeremy Muller (composer)

Audio-visual work with audience participation/grand piano

This piece centers around a simple piano solo with a visualization projected on a screen in the background. Additionally, audience members can use their personal phones, tablets, etc. to visit a website designed specifically for this piece to add musical elements from their mobile devices. This will create a texture that extends the piano part and immerse the audience in the sound.

Poster: The Grand Tour


DATURA

Multimedia performance with audio/electronics/dance/computer generated visuals

Poster: Jupiter

Bio: DATURA was formed in 2013 by John D. Mitchell, Tony Obr, and Joe Willie Smith
to develop a multidisciplinary approach to improvisational performance and, at the same time,
 explore the boundaries and cross overs in the use of digital and analog media and processes in live performance settings.


[[[personablack]]]

Electro-Acoustic, Doom, Noise/live percussion with electronics/video projection

Poster: Titan

Bio: [[[personablack]]] is a multimedia artist who focuses on simple materials


About the poster series via jpl.nasa.gov:

"Imagination is our window into the future. At NASA/JPL we strive to be bold in advancing the edge of possibility so that someday, with the help of new generations of innovators and explorers, these visions of the future can become a reality. As you look through these images of imaginative travel destinations, remember that you can be an architect of the future.

A creative team of visual strategists at JPL, known as "The Studio," created the poster series, which is titled "Visions of the Future." Nine artists, designers, and illustrators were involved in designing the 14 posters, which are the result of many brainstorming sessions with JPL scientists, engineers, and expert communicators. Each poster went through a number of concepts and revisions, and each was made better with feedback from the JPL experts."