Jeffrey Alan Scudder

(Photo from a performance in Malibu, California (June 2018) 📼 Watch video here)

Radical Digital Painting groups and presents several ideas and artifacts related to contemporary painting and contextualizes its connection to historical processes and digital technology. It is inspired by and is a continuation of Radical Computer Music.

Through demonstrative, interactive performance lectures, American artist and educator Jeffrey Alan Scudder presents homegrown software inventions and new theories about painting and picture making.

He has performed more than 60 times since 2016 across the US and Europe, mostly in art schools for students, and often with collaborators Goodiepal, Casey REAS, Julia Yerger, and Artur Erman.

A Google search for “digital painting” today mostly brings up Photoshop tutorials related to translating age old representational painting techniques to computational media, but the topic of digital painting has much more to offer fine arts in terms of poetry and theory.

Painting software today has largely developed out of a need for traditional artists to keep up pace of work in large scale mass media production pipelines, like those of video games and movies. Few systems have been developed to explore the spontaneity and spirituality present in modernism and contemporary art and further develop the language of painting in general.

Jeffrey has created several programs that highlight abstract expressivity, play, and improvisation over production quality and technical control.

In addition to software demos, new theoretical models of image resolution, computer literacy, and picture making are illustrated, described, and connected to the history of abstraction in drawing and painting. New ways of approaching drawing are also presented.

He presently spends all his time traveling, performing, and continuing to develop his software and media performances.

From Summer through Winter of 2018 he was traveling and lecturing with the Danish composer Goodiepal and his band GP&PLS throughout Europe. Jeffrey’s work Ten Minute Painting is now a part of the International Goodiepal Collection at the SMK Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, Denmark.

🔊Listen to a podcast from LA, published by The Art Word in January 2019 on Radical Digital Painting.

📼Watch an hour long webinar on Radical Digital Painting, given to the Digital Painting class at UniArts Helsinki.

🔊Listen to another podcast published by Are.na in September 2018 on Radical Digital Painting between both Jeffrey & the GP&PLS band members.

Jóhann Eiríksson and Hallvarður Ásgeirsson

Jóhann Eiríksson and Hallvarður Ásgeirsson meet at the crossing of industrial and electro acoustic music. They will perform a piece combining the feedback instrument Varðiphone with modular synthesizers.

Jóhann Eiriksson has been active in the Icelandic music scene for decades. He is a founding member of electronic / post industrial groups Gjöll with writer / vocalist Sigurður Harðarsson , and Reptilicus with Guðmundur Ingi Markússon. And has also released solo projects under his own name (or variants thereof). As well as being an influential musician, he has worked with a diverse group of artists as a producer. http://johanneiriksson.com/

Hallvarður Ásgeirsson is a composer and guitarist working with the metamorphosis of live instruments. He uses a custom built Varðiphone, working with feedback and using a modular pickup enabling isolated processing of each string. He has written music for the films The Disadvantages of Time Travel and the Moment by Richard Ramchurm and the dance pieces Scape of Grace, Blýkufl and Predator by Saga Sigurðardóttir. He has released several albums on his own label Andrými and on Paradigms Recordings. http://hallvardurasgeirsson.com

Kaðlín Sara Ólafsdóttir

Kaðlín Sara Ólafsdóttir is a sound artist currently studying at the Institute of Sonology
in The Hague. Mostly she works with tape and cassettes, exploring the possibilities of
low-quality sound and obsolete materials. Kaðlín makes sound installations and live
performances using modified cassette players and old cassettes, exposing the fragile
materiality of the cassette and the recorded stories that it holds.

Kaðlín will perform a piece called læti, for a hacked cassette player, live electronics and voice.

Hákon Bragason

The piece is based on the display of a three dimensional tomographic image of a four dimensional box (hypercube) onto a two dimensional screen.  Visitors can view this three dimensional shape from all angles using an interactive control panel.  An accompanying sound world is created by the 3D shape’s viewing angle.

In his work, Hákon Bragason deals with our experience of the surroundings and how it is controlled by various sensations, equipment etc.  He normally uses media such as electronic appliances, digital technology and sounds that are presented together in interactive installations.

Kurt Uenala

Kurt Uenala is a swiss electronic musician now based in Reykjavik after many years in New York City. He has composed and worked on numerous acclaimed music recordings such as Depeche Mode, Moby and The Kills during his time abroad.
He first made his name in 2003, debuting on the essential compilation The Sound Of Young New York. His song “Die Sleeping” was an early classic of dreamy, club-ready synth wave, and it caught the attention of fans and artists around the world. It eventually landed him a gig recording with Depeche Mode singer Dave Gahan, not to mention a long list of major acts such as Moby and The Kills.
The collaboration with Dave from Depeche Mode was especially fruitful—it wasn’t long before Kurt began writing original songs for the band. His love for vintage synthesizers, dark electronic music, and exploring unusual chord structures was a natural fit. The more Kurt worked with Dave and Depeche Mode, the more time he spent at the Manhattan recording studio. He soon started writing his own shadowy, melancholic songs, filling them with angular beats and moody atmospheres that would become his debut album “Cryosleep”.

Inspired by retro sci-fi films, electronic innovators and new wave, Kurt released his debut album under the artist name Null + Void. The album puts his extensive production experience into a wide variety of songs. Vocal performances by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Big Pink, Light Asylum and Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan bring their resonant humanity into the music’s austere beauty and cold dynamism. There are mighty rhythmic tracks too: the single “Asphalt Kiss” is built on Detroit electro’s mechanical bounce and has a sinister glint in its eyes.

Currently, his research interests are creating music for the non-hearing population and laser installations. At the concert for Raflost, Kurt will play new compositions and test out ideas.

Website: www.kurtuenala.com

Halldór Eldjárn

(photo by Sigga Ella)

Halldór Eldjárn is an Icelandic electronic musician. His music is a collision of the technological and the organic electronic worlds. Synthscapes, fast rhythms and unusal sounds, together forming a vibrant atmosphere of what the future might sound like. Halldór started writing his own music with the electro-pop band Sykur which has been active since 2008, releasing two albums and traveled the world. When Halldór began studying computer science he had the idea for his solo project. Experimenting with building robotic instruments including a self-playing harp and a few drum robots that can be controlled by a computer, and to make autonomous compositions using algorithms. Halldór has collaborated with Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds and worked on his latest release, creating a generative program for two self playing pianos that Ólafur uses on the album, and onstage when touring. Halldór’s first debut album, Poco Apollo, will be released in 2019 on Mengi Records, and is based on a series of short musical pieces composed from image data from NASA’s moon landing missions (link: https://pocoapollo.hdor.is)

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/h-dor
Facebook: https://facebook.com/hdoreldjarn
Instagram: https://instagram.com/halldorel
Twitter: https://twitter.com/halldorel
Website: https://hdor.is

Halldór’s appearance at Raflost in Mengi will feature a snapshot of what he’s currently working at, but at the moment he is making music with obsolete home computers from the 80’s and seeking inspiration in recycling old technology.

angela rawlings

(photo by John Rogers)

Excerpted from a rawlings’ collection of performance scores entitled Sound of Mull, “Intime” documents in-situ performances conducted on North Atlantic foreshores from 2016 to 2019 as sites of especial geochronological interest given climate change and naming the Anthropocene. “Intime” includes performance on the shoreline facing Herøya Industripark, Norway with a view towards an INEOS shale gas ship emblazoned with “Shale Gas for Chemicals.” “Intime” also includes performance of Laureen Burlat knitting plastic bags harvested from the shoreline of Loch Long. The video features UK nuclear submarine movement, counter-clockwise wind currents over the North Atlantic, footage from the Accelerator Mass Spectrometre and Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, and birds circulating near Ólafsvík during a winter storm.

angela rawlings is a Canadian-Icelandic interdisciplinary artist whose books include Wide slumber for lepidopterists (Coach House Books, 2006), Gibber (online, 2012), o w n (CUE BOOKS, 2015), si tu (MaMa Multimedijalni Institut, 2017), and Sound of Mull (Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, 2019). Her book Wide slumber was adapted to music theatre by Valgeir Sigurðsson and VaVaVoom (2014). Her libretti include Bodiless (for composer Gabrielle Herbst, 2014) and Longitude (for Davíð Brynjar Franzson, 2014). rawlings’ Áfall / Trauma was shortlisted for the Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Playwrights (2013). She is one-half of the performance duo Völva with Maja Jantar and one-half of the new music duo Moss Moss Not Moss with Rebecca Bruton. rawlings is the recipient of a Chalmers Arts Fellowship (2009-10) and held the position of Queensland Poet-in-Residence (2012). rawlings loves in Iceland. More: www.arawlings.is

Schedule 2019***

Thursday 23rd of May

MENGI – Óðinsgata 2

17:00 RAFLOST Festival Opening *

  • Students from the Iceland University of the Arts present works from the Raflosti workshop

21:00 Concert – Electronic Music **

Friday 24th of May

MENGI – Óðinsgata 2

21:00-22:00  Radical Digital Painting ** 

Saturday 25th of May

MENGI – Óðinsgata 2

13:00-16:00 Open Workshop with Jeffrey Alan Scudder *

21:00 RAFLOST Grand Finale **

23:00-01:00 Afterparty * (t.b.a.)

 

* free admission

** 2000 ISK admission for individual events in Mengi

*** festival pass = 3500 ISK