XUPSTAR // DOUG VAN NORT

11.06.2014

XUPSTAR is a collaborative platform for music and performance art based in New York City and co-founded by artist Patrick Monte and composer/bassist Brian Questa. XUPSTAR has developed work in several media centered around ideas of endur- ance, constraint, and attention span. XUPSTAR’s composition process uses non-stop long-form improvisation as a generative source of musical material that undergoes digital restructuring and recombination for multi-channel sound works, film scores, and installations.

In June 2014, XUPSTAR’s multi-channel electroacous- tic music composition “CIRCULAR SMELLS” will premiere at C60 Collaboratorium in Berlin during the presentation of USAP (Urban Solar Audio Plant), a 12-channel, solar powered, WI-FI controlled sound installation for urban spaces.

A performative lecture at Liebig12 (during a 10 days residency) will illustrate this piece and their general artistic approach, moderated by Edwin Cotton, american singer and friend based in Hamburg.

Patrick Monte is an interdisciplinary artist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer born and raised in Queens, NY. His previous work spans a range of media including photography, video, installation, sound, and performance and has explored issues including the impacts of technology on subjectivity, social disconnectedness, and obsolescence.

Brian Questa is a New York native avant-garde bassist and composer. more under: www.xupstar.com

DOUG VAN NORT  is an experimental musician and sound artist/researcher whose work is dedicated to the creation of immersive and visceral sonic experiences, and to fostering personal and collective creative expression through composition, free improvisation and generally electro-acoustic means of production. His instruments are self-made and idiosyncratic systems that explore a sculptural approach working with sound, and improvisation in partnership with machine processes. His source materials include any and all sounds discovered through attentive listening to the world.

Recent projects have spanned telematic music compositions, transforming an elevator into an electroacoustic sculpture, interactive textiles, creating + performing with machine listening+improvising systems, interactive music composition for a dance piece based on muscle sound, and performing sonified data streams from NASA’s Kepler mission. The unifying thread in this work is that it begins from the experience of listening, and a fascination with the complex and embodied nature of listening in environments that are immersed in sound. more under: http://dvntsea.weebly.com/