serial consign

Last week I mentioned that I would be DJing at the launch event for FITC Toronto on Saturday April the 19th. FITC is a roving interactive and new media conference that hosts events in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Amsterdam, Winnipeg and Toronto, which serves as home base for the festival. FITC has been around for almost a decade and routinely features engaging rosters of speakers that include designers like Joshua Davis, Zachary Lieberman and Mario Klingemann discussing their work in Flash, Processing and in an increasingly broad range of platforms. Over the last few years as the idea of the "integrated audio visual performance" has propagated, more involved installation and performance type events have been featured in the FITC program. This year, DJ and production designer extraordinaire Tom Kuo will be using the launch event to premiere Superspace, an AV collaboration with VJ Markus Heckmann. [see previous post which mentions Markus's Wüstenarchitekten project].

The goal of Kuo and Heckmann's Superspace project is to increase the amount of interaction between DJ and VJ. Given that live video sometimes gets relegated to wallpaper status, I'm curious to see the methodology the pair have developed for this project. I'm quite familiar with the work of both these artists and am looking forward to seeing what they've cooked up. Over the past several years, Tom has done a lot for Toronto nightlife and raised the bar for production design and live video (most notably with his involvement in the Peter Mettler live cinema event at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006). I'm excited to see how these high standards will translate into a project explicitly bent on building bridges between VJ and DJ culture.

The FITC kickoff party will take place at the Burroughes Building at 639 Queen Street West this coming Saturday from 9pm to 2am. If you're on on the prowl for some stimulation next weekend, look no further. I'll definitely make a point of checking out their setup and following up with a post in the near future. Taking place earlier that evening, Pixel Gallery will be hosting a free talk by Evan Roth of the Graffiti Research Lab at 6pm at their Kensington Market location.

After hosting a collaboration between Robert Henke and Peter Mettler this past May [see previous post], Pusher is back next Friday with an event showcasing Cologne's Thomas Brinkmann. There have been a number of interesting shows in Toronto this fall but this performance by Brinkmann promises to be something special. While Brinkmann delivered a standout performance at Mutek 2006, he hasn't played Toronto since 2000. Since then, Brinkmann has expanded his practice in several directions ranging from his sample-driven reconstruction of funk and soul with his soul center project to his 2005 Lucky Hands album, which creates a middle ground between his earlier "female series" on Max Ernst and a contemporary pop minimalism.

Another artist sharing the spotlight at Pusher is Markus Heckmann. Markus is a developer at Toronto's Derivative where he works on Touch, a tangible interface for mixing video. Markus will be presenting his Wüstenarchitekten live video project which explores the spatial qualities of music. Markus describes his working methodology:

Working live on a procedural basis the visuals tend to develop structure, patterns and aesthetics in close relationship to the music. Where music is ethereal and architecture is fixed, real time interaction with graphics give us the possibility to ever changing experimental forms, shapes and ultimately spaces.

I've seen Markus perform several times and I really enjoy his layered, geometric abstractions. Markus cites former instructor MX-Zehn and Sven Gareis as key influences on his work.

Pusher will also feature a live performance by Daniel Lui, DJ sets by Tom Kuo, Fatima Camara and Shamus Coghlan and the return of the Wabi crew. The event will take place at the Reverb at Queen St. W. and Bathurst - if you're in Toronto check the event out.