A Synesthete’s Atlas: Cartographic Improvisations Between Eric Theise, Jim Ryan, and Darien Baiza / Tangent Universes
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Rhizome DC
Real-time cartographic improvisations using projected, manipulated digital maps by Eric Theise in collaboration with Darien Baiza, drums, and Jim Ryan, winds and small percussion. A visual wash of street grids, land masses, water bodies, and curiosities from built and natural environments. Driving beats. Orphaned labels and free-floating symbology. Auditory roundabouts and redirections. Saturated colors and the subtlest of tints. Sounds symphonic and screeching. Jittery zooms, pans, and traversals. Glitches in crowdsourced data.
This performance will last approximately 50 minutes and will occasionally introduce strobing effects that may affect photosensitive viewers.
Opening set by Tangent Universes.
Backstory
Since its Lisbon premiere in April 2022, Eric Theise has performed A Synesthete's Atlas in collaboration with local musical improvisors in dozens of East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, and Rocky Mountain cities. He combines visual strategies from experimental film & animation, the Light and Space movement, 1960's light shows, and visual poetry with open source software and open data to create digital maps that behave in ways never anticipated by their developers. Theise's performances have been described as anti-cinema, post-cinema, and pre-cinema, as well as truly radical cartography.
Theise's East Coast tour will begin in Portland, Maine, and continue south and west, intersecting with the North American Cartographic Information Society's annual meeting in Pittsburgh and the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial in Baltimore. Just prior to his Rhizome DC appearance, which will reunite him with Jim Ryan and Darien Baiza, he'll perform in a benefit for Philadelphia's Fire Museum Presents.
He takes great pleasure in performing for an audience made up of cartographers plus enthusiasts of expanded cinema, avant garde music, and experimental typography.
Bios
Eric Theise is a San Francisco-based artist and geospatial software developer. Through video and realtime performance tools he reinvigorates the perceptual inquiries of structural filmmakers, experimental animators, the Light and Space movement, and 60's light shows, occasionally injecting letterform experiments inspired by visual poetry, as new possibilities in the realm of digital cartography. Theise's earlier 16mm experimental films have screened across the United States and Canada, and in France, and he’s performed as a vocalist with the Cornelius Cardew and Long Tone Choirs in various San Francisco Bay Area locations.
Jim Ryan is a jazz inspired, free-form multi-instrumentalist who has performed for several decades in Paris, France, the San Francisco Bay free improv scene, and currently in the Washington D.C. Area. He plays winds, brass, and small percussion.
Darien Baiza is an exploratory multi-percussionist who is currently residing in the Baltimore area.
Tangent Universes – Using field recordings, modular synths, a DIY Lyra-8, and guitar drones, Carolyn (Zaldivar) Snow (she/her) creates immersive compositions from her Mid-Atlantic context exploring collective memory in science and nature. Carolyn is a recent addition to the Mystery Circles label performing as Tangent Universes. Her sound installation Brittle Geometries/ Delicate Feedbacks will be included in the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Sound Scene Festival Summer 2023.