Friday, November 17th at 8pm, AvanTokyo in partnership with ISSUE Project Room is pleased to present a solo performance by legendary Fluxist artist Yasunao Tone at Brooklyn Music School in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Tone has a long and storied performance history with ISSUE, including performing with Tony Conrad and Talibam! as part of ISSUE’s 10th Anniversary series in 2013, and most recently premiering AI Deviation at ISSUE in 2016. The evening also features a duo presentation by experimental musicians Marcia Bassett & Bob Bellerue, working in improvised processes. Their live performances explore sonic states while incorporating guitar and piano soundboard in a blissful fury of feedback and resonance, as well as electronics and synths that explode into gnarled walls of sound.
Well known as an active member of the Fluxus movement since 1962, Yasunao Tone’s expansive practice eschews standard notions of media and embraces contradiction. His most recent sets, harsh and scrupulous digital noise generated by his own modifications to the MP3 encoding system, have been called, “chaotic and highly charged, cerebral in its conceptual intent but with a bracing sense of urgency” (Wall Street Journal). In 2016, at ISSUE’s 22 Boerum Pl. theater, Tone debuted AI Deviation in collaboration with Prof. Tony Myatt, University of Surrey UK, and a team of researchers including Mark Fell and Dr. Paul Modler. A series of performances using Tone’s MP3 Deviation software were captured in a laboratory, then used to train Kohoen Neural Networks to develop artificial intelligences that simulated several of his performance approaches. The AIs were integrated in a software framework and computer performance system that extracted attributes from the audio they generated to “listen” to the output and make performance actions as if they were virtual Tone performers. Five versions of Tone AI exist in the performance software, each of which exhibits certain responses modeled on those previously adopted. In performance Tone deviated and controlled AI versions of himself along with the mechanisms that each AI uses to hear and respond to the audio they generate, interacting live with AI versions of himself as performer. In the performance at Brooklyn Music School, Tone will present the latest modification of his AI Deviation.
AvanTokyo looks beyond anime and idols, probing Japan’s ‘live houses’ and experimental venues, where creators push new forms of expression unreached by mainstream media. Offering Japanese artists performance and residency opportunities in New York, AvanTokyo facilitates cultural interactions between Japan and the United States.
AvanTokyoはアニメやアイドルに留まらず日本のライブハウスや実験的なベニューを探索し、クリエイターの主流メディアでは到達できない新しい表現をサポートしています。日本のアーティストにニューヨークでのパフォーマンスやレジデンスプログラムの機会を提供し、日米間の文化交流を促進しています。