Nick James presents a new work accompanied by Alec Sturgis and Frank Meadows taking inspiration from “dirt, gauze, plastic,” a 47 minute video piece by Graham Schaafsma, an industrial designer currently based in South Carolina. Functioning as an alternative soundtrack to the piece, the composition takes the formal methodology and edit culture of the video and co-composes it’s audio. Schaafsma’s work, already an edited and prepared collection of captured filmic “sparks,” is handled as a sound source that is extended and accelerated in broad overlays, a technique that exaggerates the video’s method of selection and mutation. The original edits evolve within this elongated space, compressed by the new audio’s divergent methods and variant capture. Alec performs through a set of aggregated instruments — variably using preparations of both electric and midi guitars to produce a field of granular variations and performative copies of Schaafsma’s sonic source. Frank performs amplified double bass.
Frank Meadows presents an all-new site specific work utilizing sonic sources from “dirt, gauze, plastic” as well as captured sound native to 14 W Martin St. and 106 Turner St. in Raleigh, to explore the drama of both spaces as both creative incubators and daily lived environments.
Alec Sturgis performs a set of computer compositions designed through accretion of field and session recordings that have been re-constituted and re-collected through regular performance and archival. Using midi guitar and granular synthesis, Alec produces sets of texturally dynamic arhythmic grooves and spectral exposes that play between distorted musical tropes and environmental fictions.
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Nick James Scavo is a New York-based artist, musician, writer, critic and organizer for The Actual School, a collective of workers and set of options for organizing work located in NYC. He works in various solo and collaborative projects under The Actual School network. His compositions are primarily released as digital or multimedia works, with recent work including The Hawk, Drago, Airbnb Sutras, Cherry Blood MP3 (with Tashi Dorji), and the upcoming Vampyroteuthia with Xander Seren, as well as disparate works under guises such as “Fang” and “Board.” He has performed at Hopscotch Music Festival, presented work at the New Museum commissioned by Rhizome, and premieres new compositions monthly in residency with NTS Radio. He also contributes regular essays to music website Tiny Mix Tapes and has done institutional work with New York arts organizations ISSUE Project Room, Artists Space, and Blank Forms, as well as the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and Apothecary performance space in Asheville, North Carolina.
Frank Meadows is a North Carolina-based sound artist, bassist, composer, improvisor and arts organizer. He has collaborated widely as an instrumentalist and improviser, has released recordings through The Actual School, Cairn Desk, Cabin Floor Esoterica, Blue Tapes, and Friends Records. In 2014 and 15, he was a performance fellow at the Nief Norf Summer Festival contemporary solo and chamber works for Double Bass. He presented multimedia sound works at Black Mountain College Museum’s {Re}Happening (2013-14) and a the 4th International Conference on Ecomusics and Ecomusicology. He has done institutional work in Asheville NC on behalf of the American Musicological Society, Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, and Apothecary space as well as for Raleigh’s Hopscotch Music Festival (2014-16) and Durham’s Moogfest. He is currently a primary organizer and talent buyer for Kings and Neptunes.
Alec is an Asheville, NC based artist and organizer for the Media Arts Project and is a founder of Cairn Desk — a front for radical pragmatic praxis in music composition and theoretical work. In addition to his work as an organizer, Alec has presented audio-sculptural installation works in collaboration with Cairn Desk co-founder David Grubba and industrial designer Graham Schaafsma for the Black Mountain College Interlude Festival in Asheville, NC in Spring of 2016 and most recently, featured work as a part of artist Nora Khan’s California Imaginaries show in Cambridge, MA.
