Irene Moon as featured artist: First Person, Fourth Wall by People Like Us

Hallwalls Artist in Residence (HARP)

FEATURED

Posted on July 9, 2020 by Vicki

Vicki Bennett (PeopleLikeUs) is Hallwalls Artist in Residence (HARP) at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, NY from 2019-2020. 

For Vicki's First Person, Fourth Wall project Irene Moon, along with other artists, were invited to contribute an audio-visual interpretation around the theme.  Of course, Irene gave a lecture about insects in a piece titled Part of the Class. This was happening anyway as she was teaching entomology online around that time. 

Image from "Part of the Class" by Irene Moon

First Person, Fourth Wall by People Like Us (Vicki Bennett)

This multi-tiered project features an onsite new film and 6 channel audio collage work in the Hallwalls gallery, a virtual film retrospective, and a series of online micro-commissions programmed by the artist, where collaborators across the field of visual, audio and textual art respond to the subjects of first-person / the fourth wall. The retrospective screening features archive and new content from Vicki Bennett’s 30 years of creating work under the name People Like Us. To coincide with the exhibition will be a new second edition of her artist’s book The Fundamental Questions, all made possible in part with a major grant to HARP (Hallwalls Artists-in-Residence Project) from the Multidisciplinary program of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a federal agency, with additional support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Visual Art Program of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), M&T Bank, and Erie County.

The commissions and elements from the onsite exhibition will be archived at WFMU.org, alongside visual elements on the accompanying web pages, which will be linked to with QR codes in the accompanying gallery brochure.

Featured artists:
Dina Kelberman, Buttress O’Kneel, Mark Hurst, Scott Williams, Irene Moon, Jasmin Basco, Matmos, id m theft able, Sheila B, Ergo Phizmiz, Yon Visell, Porest, David Shea, Carlo Patrão, Tim Maloney, Gwilly Edmondez, Wobbly, People Like Us, Peter Jaeger, Ranjit Bhatnagar, Adriene Lily, Micah Moses, Andrew Sharpley, Andie Brown, John Kilduff (Let’s Paint TV) and Hearty White.

Irene Moon on twitch: Monday June 1

Irene Moon and the Begonia Society live via https://www.twitch.tv/begonia_society Join Irene Moon for a streaming performance at the @iDigBio 4th annual Digitial Data Conference Monday, June 1, 6:20 - 6:50 EDT.

Audiosphere Exhibition at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

Image of Audiosphere. Sound Experimentation 1980-2020

Audiosphere

organized and exhibited at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, curated by Francisco López 

Sound Experimentation 1980-2020

Although the opening is delayed, I am very excited to be invited to participate in an exhibition at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía curated by Francisco López. The exhibition includes works by 810 artists from 80 countries of the six continents and is focused on "highlighting the need and relevance of a social history –not again a mere chronology– of experimental audio."

Audiosphere. By way of a selection of hundreds of sound works, Audiosphere. Sound Experimentation 1980-2020 looks to cover an historical and cultural void in terms of the recognition, exhibition and analysis of a key part of the recent changes that have taken place in the artistic conception of sound.

By way of a selection of hundreds of sound works, Audiosphere. Sound Experimentation 1980-2020 looks to cover an historical and cultural void in terms of the recognition, exhibition and analysis of a key part of the recent changes that have taken place in the artistic conception of sound creation.

Conceived from a social perspective, and with the aim of revealing and providing context to reflect upon and discuss the techno-cultural changes that have occurred since the 1980s, the exhibition will present the work of a broad number of experimental sound artists, hailing from all over the world, the majority unknown to the contemporary art spectator. 

The show will revolve around seven sections, each one addressing different social, technological, historical and cultural processes: genealogies, networks, mega accessibility, cyborgisation, aesthetogenesis, recombination and rights. Although such processes have been generated collectively and today are widespread, they have not been sufficiently identified, acknowledged or analysed artistically. 

Audiosphere thus seeks to constitute a non-conceptual, large-scale contemporary art exhibition with no images or objects, underpinned solely by sound works and an exhibition design that facilitates experiential, profound and prolonged listening.

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With the sponsorship of:

Media Arts and Entomology

Notes from Nature article about Scientifically Speaking with Irene Moon was published in promotion of the upcoming WeDigBio museum curation events.  This is a reposting of that original article.

Irene Moon and NFN

The University of California Santa Barbara Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration Director has an alter ego. She goes by the name Irene Moon, and she came into being decades ago when Katja Seltmann first started creating science-inspired performance art. Some of the performances are artier, but many of them are specifically created to Perform Science!

This intersection of science and art opens up interesting ways to communicate about natural history collections and science in popular culture. Seltmann and her partner, Yon Visell, have a weekly radio show called “Unknown Territories”, a hour-long cultural arts program on the UCSB campus radio station, KCSB 91.9fm. The show airs on Monday 9-1000am PT and streams online at kcsb.org.

Several of her recordings of science inspired radio shows are available online. You can listen to interviews with researchers about various topics including rust, evolution and field recordings through the Let’s Talk Scienceseries. Recent shows are archived through the Internet Archive and found on the Unknown Territories website. Just like with the collection data she puts online, all of these recordings are all released under Creative Common licenses for reuse, or put into the Public Domain.

Natural history collections work has inspired much of the music, and Irene has several pieces for radio that are specifically about natural history collections. “Curator Bill” is a fictional character that appears throughout the radio pieces, and the audio introduction to Bill.

So next time you need perk up a boring lecture for that intro bio class, think about singing songs in a gold jacket, or create music about the topic. She has performed absurd Scientifically Speaking with Irene Moon musical lectures where collections are highlighted as the character of one of her personal heroes, EO Wilson. “Most of the lectures are done in late night musical venues, rock clubs, and raves. The information is factual, inspired by research, and people do learn when they least expect it.”

Find out more at begoniasociety.org

Check out some of her performances at the links below.

My Queen and I

Sneaky Little Sneak

EO Wilson Song

Meditation on Odonata

LOVID Visiting Artists Residency

LoVid Visiting Artists Residency with UCSB RE Touch Lab, Media Arts and Technology and the Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration, 2019.

 Lovid is the art duo of Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus. LoVid explores translation and decay of natural, electrical, and biological systems. Since 2001, LoVid produces works that combine hand-made and machine produced craft, DIY electro-engineering, textile, video, and noise. www.lovid.org

At the Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration  LoVid researched ecological processes and restorative practices. Images and data collected from their time here are resulting in many outcomes, including textile works depicting images of restored wetlands.

Scientifically Speaking with Irene Moon

Unknown Territories radio now on Monday from 9-10am

#UnknownTerritoriesRadio is on every Monday from 9-10am Pacific Time for discussion about current and new science with experimental music. Found only on @KCSB -FM 91.9 in Santa Barbara and at https://t.co/7TGaQ2Rmha pic.twitter.com/ifuwPitZsf

— Irene Moon (@irene_moon) November 26, 2018