Matmos
The Re-Dematerialization of the Art Object
Date 2/12/07
Affiliation Musicians and Sound Artists, San Francisco
Abstract
Special Anniversary Party: Monday, Feb 12, talk: 7:30-9:00,
* Party: 9-midnight. Featuring music from Tycho, Eats Tapes, Ripley, and Kid Kameleon.
* Location: Hearst Mining Building, UC Berkeley (*)
Capacity limited to 200.
ATC Lectures are free and open to the public
In her 1973 anthology "Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972" art historian Lucy Lippard charted a radical drift in art-making away from the material construction of objects and towards the conceptual dissemination of ideas. In our own work as Matmos we have attempted to re-consider this tradition, and in particular, to reverse its direction of flow: we start from a concept and move towards an engagement with objects selected or dictated by a conceptual allegiance, in the process creating a hybrid construction halfway between conceptual origin and pop music outcome. As our title indicates, the conditions through which music is realized have recently entered a second phase of "dematerialization": through the widespread adoption of "soft synths" and acoustic modelling on the production end, and the widespread practice of filesharing and downloading on the reception end, music is entering a seemingly re-dematerialized cultural moment, in which objects become optional. We'd like to talk about the limits, risks, and possibilities of this moment. As is our tendency, this will likely commence as a formal presentation and entropically dissolve into a far looser and more inclusive chat.
Bio
Matmos is M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel, aided and abetted by many others. In their recordings and live performances over the last nine years, Matmos have used the sounds of: amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the pages of bibles turning, a bowed five string banjo, slowed down whistles and kisses, water hitting copper plates, the runout groove of a vinyl record, a $5.00 electric guitar, liposuction surgery, cameras and VCRs, chin implant surgery, contact microphones on human hair, violins, rat cages, tanks of helium, violas, human skulls, cellos, peck horns, tubas, cards shuffling, field recordings of conversations in hot tubs, frequency response tests for defective hearing aids, a steel guitar recorded in a sewer, electrical interference generated by laser eye surgery, whoopee cushions and balloons, latex fetish clothing, rhinestones on a dinner plate, Polish trains, insects, ukelele, aspirin tablets hitting a drum kit from across the room, dogs barking, people reading aloud, life support systems and inflatable blankets, records chosen by the roll of dice, an acupuncture point detector conducting electrical current through human skin, rock salt crunching underfoot, solid gold coins spinning on bars of solid silver, the sound of a frozen stream thawing in the sun, a five gallon bucket of oatmeal.
-- As of 2/12/07