ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez is a media artist and interdisciplinary researcher from Brazil and the United States, where she was a Fulbright scholar in Art & Design and Media Studies. Her artistic practice started with Structural/Materialist image-making via cameraless animation for her experimental films to VJing as part of her performance art and installation pieces. Her most recent work intersects with art, science and technology, ranging from sonification of data in dendrochronology, videomicrography and creative coding for immersive interactive performative installations where the public is invited to integrate the assemblages. In 2011 she received the Vilém Flusser Theory Award Distinction at transmediale with the work Digital Anthropophagy and the Anthropophagic Re-Manifesto for the Digital Age. Currently, she conducts research in the field of phenomenology in digital culture at the Vilém Flusser Archive at Universität der Künste – Berlin, and at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin at the Institute for Cultural History and Theory.

Artist website: www.quietrevolution.me

Derek Holzer (1972) is an American instrument builder and sound artist based in Berlin DE, whose current interests include DIY analog electronics, the relationship between sound + space, media archaeology and the meeting points of electroacoustic, noise, improv and extreme music. He has performed live, taught workshops and created scores of unique instruments and installations since 2002 across Europe, North and South America, and New Zealand. In 2014 he received a working grant from the Foundation of Lower Saxony at the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art in Oldenburg, Germany.

Artist website: http://macumbista.net/

A video sampler from the performance at The Paseo festival in Taos, New Mexico, USA, 9/2015 coming soon. To the right, a video sampler of A•LIVE in Berlin 2012.

(v2015) A•LIVE is a cosmic aural-imagetic adventure.

An audiovisual performance with live videomicrography (Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez) and sound art with DIY electroacoustics (Derek Holzer)

A•LIVE is an excursion into live videomicrography where visual and aural elements share DNA, and the organic and synthetic merge. A potent and portable microscope undergoing some hacking serves as instrument to create video with organic substances that seem to devour each other in the process of encounter, an allusion to the theme of Anthroppophagy in the works of Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez. The sound apparatus of Derek Holzer is at times linked to the microscope to co-affect the organic particle movements.

The organic materials used in the live performance are collected in loco, resurfacing the geographic essence and material layers of the location. These materials are manipulated with reactive agents under the microscope.

For The Paseo outdoor media art festival in Taos, New Mexico/USA, the performance inspiration is of a hermeneutic nature – “as above, so below”: the alchemy of earthly organic matter generating a cosmic vision, creating a continuum with the wide open sky of New Mexico gracing our outdoor performance. And so it was, on September 25-26, 2015 with the full moon above the First Presbyterian Church, the site of the A•LIVE performance’s video projection on the adobe façade.

THE WORKSHOP COMPONENT OF A•LIVE // STEMarts@The Paseo Education Program

The STEMarts@ThePaseo youth program is a series of educational youth workshops that allow students to collaborate with the interdisciplinary Paseo artists exploring STEM (Science, technology, engineering, math) in their art. Students learn valuable STEM skills through creative expression and collaboration.For Paseo 2015 our goal is to bring a Paseo artist or project into every middle/high school in Taos. One teacher from each school will spearhead the project. Teacher and students will work with the artist up to one week prior and then perform/install their work live at the Paseo event along with their host artist. Check out our exciting line-up of STEMartists for 2015!For more information contact:Agnes Chavez learn@sube.com

Large prints (1,5 x 1,0m) were shown at Kunstraum t27 art space in Berlin in 2012/13.

WORKSHOP AT TAOS CHARTER SCHOOL, NEW MEXICO, USA. 23-25.9.2015

26 eigth-grade students of Science teacher Nathaniel Evans and Art teacher Katie Woodall participated at my three-day workshop “Exploring the Aesthetics of Videomicrography/The Art of Seeing”. The workshop activities started with a short lecture on still and motion image-making processes, the analogue and digital spectrum, perception and bias, an introduction to the use of microscopes, and moved onto organic sample collection at the school garden to be examined under the microscopes. It culminated with a videoart performance: each pair of students were given 3 minutes to compose a live performance with their microscopic slide projected on a large video screen at the school, set to a music piece of their choice. Five students were invited to participate at my opening evening performance at The Paseo Media Art Festival on 25.9.2016.

To the left and above, photos by Andrea Skeres. To the right and below, photos by Liz Burns. Videos being posted soon.

DEREK HOLZER’S STUDENTS AND THEIR MUSIC BOXES AT THEIR SOUND ART PERFORMANCE IN TAOS, NM, USA. 25.9.2016

Derek’s workshop was conducted over the course of one week with 6 students.

THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN CONDUCTED SLOWLY AND INDEPENDENTLY. Derek and I performed our first iteration of A•LIVE as an experiment at Lichtblick Kino, Berlin in September of 2012. Please see top of this page for a 5-minute video sampler.