Art Jarvinen

"Physical poetry" is a term that I appropriated from the French poet, actor, and theatre theorist Antonin Artaud. He uses it in his essay Metaphysics and the Mise en Scene to describe his vision of a poetry beyond (though possibly including) language, realized on the stage.

My Physical Poetry is mostly concerned with images, not literal meaning, composed much the same way I would compose music. It may be considered, certainly, a kind of "performance art". But when I was making these pieces, I felt it necessary to call them by some other name, to differentiate them from other performance art that was being done at the time (the early to mid 1980s). Especially in Los Angeles, performance art has tended to be overtly autobiographical and often political, issue-based and socially conscious. My physical poems are much more abstract, evocative, and meant to be quite freely interpreted by the audience, not ÒunderstoodÓ any more than a musical composition might be.

Arthur Jarvinen (b.1956) is a familiar figure in the contemporary music community, having been a featured composer and performer on prominent concerts, festivals and broadcasts internationally for well over two decades. He was a founding and longtime member of the acclaimed California E.A.R. Unit and has led several of his own bands and ensembles of various kinds. His musical activities both as composer and performer range from contemporary chamber and experimental music to songwriting, surf music, electronics, improvisation and multimedia, and his creative output includes visual art, word works, and experimental theater.

Baghdad Batteries
The music of The Baghdad Batteries is a fascinating combination of rich sonorities, complex textures and engaging structures, the result of the intersection and interaction of low and high technologies. Arthur Jarvinen's work has always been decidedly low-tech, and he remains committed to that path. His role in this project is largely that of signal provider, drawing on the relatively simple resources of Indian sruti box, Geiger counter, hand-made shortwave radios, percussive implements, and spoken word. Lewis Keller's expertise, on the other hand, extends to laptop performance, Max/MSP, robotics, circuit bending, and sound detection. These resources, subjected to the compositional and improvisational sensibilities of Jarvinen and Keller make for a one-of-a-kind audio entertainment experience. The so-called "Baghdad Batteries" for which the group is named are ancient artifacts discovered in Iraq in 1936 that are undoubtedly primitive galvanic cells, but whose practical application remains a mystery.

Cooper Baker
Cooper Baker is a composer and sound artist whose work explores the science and technology of sound. His pieces have been presented at the Los Angeles Bent Festival, the Spark Festival in Minnesota, the REDCAT theatre in Los Angeles, California Institue of the Arts, and at several California Universities. Cooper was a recent faculty member at California Institute of the Arts, where he also received his MFA and BFA degrees in experimental composition and music technology respectively. While attending CalArts, he studied computer music, programming, and electronics with Morton Subotnick, Mark Trayle, Barry Schrader, and Tom Erbe.

smgsap

With a hand and ear in a variety of artistic genres, shea M gauer and scott A peterson spend their minimal free time searching, capturing, processing, manipulating, producing, engineering, and designing sounds for all applications. Their main sonic output is the ongoing experimental project smgsap, which presents an even blend of electronic and analogue textures, using a variety of sources from field recordings, drones, musical and non-musical sounds as well as manipulated live audio and instruments. They have performed in and created sound and video installations for numerous setting over the course of their almost 10 years of working together.

In addition to performing and recording as smgsap, they also host a monthly experimental multimedia series called "3rd Thurs" under the name Parabolic Productions. The series takes place in Long Beach at {open}, a bookstore/gallery/performance space that shea co-owns.

They are also both members of FLOOD, the Long Beach based artist group that is responsible for producing the annual SoundWalk event.
smgsap.org

Lara Bank
Lara Bank is an artist, professor, and gallery director working within the Los Angeles area. She produces primarily neo-conceptualist artwork in a variety of mediums. She situates her work into the category of place artwork (self-termed). Place artwork is art that creates and defines a spatial location to be occupied by the artwork, statements, and thoughts of others. Other projects operate as installation (painting, interactive, sculptural) and video art. Bank received an MFA in Studio Art from Cal Arts in 1998 and an MFA in Painting from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1996. She is the current director and founder of Sea and Space Explorations, a place artwork that operates as a gallery. She teaches Drawing, Three-Dimensional Design (sculpture), Two -Dimensional Design, and a portfolio development class at Otis College of Art & Design, Pierce College, and Moorpark College. Her work has been shown and collected within the following venues: Weingard Gallery at Occidental College, LA; Another Year In LA, LA; Monte Vista Projects, LA; Aurora Picture Show, TX; Hangar 1018, LA; Machine Gallery, LA; Foundation For Art Resources, LA;Crazy Space Gallery, Santa Monica; White Box Gallery, Marina Del Rey; ISEA2004 Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts, Helsinki, Stockholm, and Tallinn; Bodybuilder & Sportsman Gallery, Chicago; LA Municipal Art Gallery, LA; Barnsdall Art Park, LA; Fancyland, CA;Andrewshire Gallery, LA, Rhizome.org; Centro Nacional de Artes (National Center for the Arts) San Salvador, El Salvador; LA Freewaves, LA; Side Street Projects, LA; Huntington Beach Art Center, CA; Viridian Artist Inc., NYC; Bromfield Gallery Boston, MA.

Clay Chaplin
Clay Chaplin is a composer, improviser, programmer, and video artist from Los Angeles. He has worked on many projects throughout the US, Europe, and Japan involving experimental music, interactive systems, video, improvisation, and custom electronics. Clay has given workshops on computer music and digital media for various universities and electronic arts groups in California and has been composer-in-residence at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College and at STEIM in Amsterdam. He is currently the Technical Director for the Computer Music and Experimental Media Studios at The California Institute of the Arts and a member of the music school's composition faculty. Clay's latest CD is available on Artifact Recordings.

Aaron Drake
Aaron Drake is a composer, curator and performer living in Los Angeles. His education quickly runs as such: Bachelor of Music from San Francisco State University (Josh Levine, Ronald Caltabiano and Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez), music exchange to the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Trossingen Germany (Norbert Fröhlich and Mark Randall-Osborn at the Schloss Solitude), Master of Arts from the California Institute of the Arts (Mark Trayle, Michael Pisaro and David Rosenboom).

Lewis Keller
Lewis Keller is a sound artist based in Los Angeles. He is interested in the perception of time, timbre and space and exploring how technology fits into and fights against life. Lewis builds instruments from found objects, electronics and computer code. He also composes and performs for and with people, computers and spaces.