Spark Festival: Headphones Concert

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Originating in Europe in response to noise regulations placed on live music venues headphone festivals emerged as an alternative performance environment for electronic musicians. Particularly suited for electronic music and laptop based performances, the headphone festival concept spread throughout Europe with the launch of the international Le Placard Festival in 2002. The expanding Placard Festival takes place each year as a traveling concert and web-streaming event. The headphone festival concept is slowly emerging in the United States with recent festivals in San Francisco and the Rochester Art Center, MN.

The Headphone Festival at Spark features regional musicians selected by multi-media artists and performers Viv Corringham and Scott Stulen. Experienced entirely through headphones, musicians will perform original compositions comprised of field recordings, samples, live sound improvisation, and analog instruments output through a web of headphone jacks. Video clips will accompany many of the performances. The headphone festival merges the collective concert experience with the intimate listening environment of your own living room.

*Please bring your own headphones to hear the performances.

Viv Corringham is a British vocalist and sound artist, based in Minnesota and London, who has worked internationally since the early 1980s. She is a 2006 McKnight Composer Fellow through the American Composers Forum. Articles about her have appeared in Organised Sound (UK), Musicworks (Canada), and For Those Who Have Ears (Ireland). Recent works appeared in the Rochester Art Center - Minnesota, Soundworks Festival - Ireland, Strange Strolls Festival - Australia, Women’s Electro-acoustic Listening Room - Cal State University, Midsummer Festival- Ireland, Colourscape Music Festival, UK, Drift Festival - Scotland, Placard Headphone Festival - London, 6000 Chairs Festival - London, Hearing Place - Australia, and The Sound Art Museum, Rome.

Scott Stulen is a Rochester, Minnesota based multimedia, installation, sound and video artist whose work explores personal and collective memory, pop culture, and the "cabin culture" aesthetic of the Midwest. Stulen exhibits throughout the country including recent exhibitions and performances at the Rochester Art Center – Minnesota, Franklin Art Works - Minnesota, Art Shanty Projects and the South Bend Regional Museum of Art – Indiana. Stulen is the Curator of Education at the Rochester Art Center and curates the Art Center’s Headphone Festival, Artrock!, and Audio gallery events.
For more information visit www.scottstulen.com

Also performing:

Jared Stulen is a Minneapolis based songwriter, musician, and sound engineer.

Archive (Mike Hallenbeck) – Minneapolis

2007 2 21 Headphones Concert

2007 2 21 Headphones Concert

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