An evening of real-time cartographic improvisations using projected, manipulated digital maps by Eric Theise, directed and accompanied by genre-trampling oboist Kyle Bruckmann. Expect a visual wash of street grids, land masses, bodies of water, and curiosities from the built environment. Saturated colors and subtle tints. Sounds symphonic and screeching. The flicker film as wayfinding device. Orphaned information and untethered symbology. Crowdsourced data with Swiss precision, and glitches a kilometer wide. OpenStreetMap as light show. This will be the first performance of A Synesthete's Atlas on the West Coast.
Eric Theise is a San Francisco-based artist and geospatial software developer. Through video and real time performance he reinvigorates the perceptual inquiries of structural filmmakers, experimental animators, op artists, and the light and space movement as new possibilities in the realm of digital cartography. A Synesthete's Atlas was first performed with cellist Helena Espvall in Lisbon, followed by collaborations with Ken Field, Ned Rothenberg, and Darien Baiza & Jim Ryan in East Coast venues. A new collaboration with Carl Stone will debut at Santa Cruz's Indexical in mid-September. Theise's 16mm films have screened across the United States, Canada, and France; he’s held residencies at Hangar (Lisbon), Signal Culture, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and he's received grants from the Interbay Cinema Society and Bay Area Video Coalition.
Oboist Kyle Bruckmann tramples genre boundaries in widely ranging work as a composer/performer, educator and New Music specialist. His creative output – extending from conservatory-trained foundations into gray areas encompassing free jazz, post-punk rock, and the noise underground – can be heard on more than 100 recordings. Current ensemble affiliations include Splinter Reeds, SFCMP, Eco Ensemble, Quinteto Latino, and the Stockton Symphony; significant projects he has led or collaboratively founded include Degradient, EKG, Lozenge, and Wrack. He is Assistant Professor of Practice in Oboe and Contemporary Music at University of the Pacific.
