From: Joel S Bachar (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Mar 06 2007 - 21:52:19 PST
Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)
ARTPIX
Microcinema International
announce the pre-release of
OPEN SCORE by ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering
AVAILABLE NOW - RETAIL - EDUCATIONAL
The first in a 10 DVD set of films on a legendary series of theater, dance,
music and
performances at the New York 69th Regiment Armory in 1966 by 10 New York
artists: Robert
Rauschenberg, John Cage, David Tudor, Yvonne Rainer, Deborah Hay, Robert
Whitman, Steve Paxton, Alex Hay, Lucinda
Childs and Öyvind Fahlström.
Pre-release copies are available ONLY at:
http://www.microcinemadvd.com <http://www.microcinemadvd.com/>
General release: May 29, 2007
----------------------------------------
In 1966 10 New York artists worked with 30 engineers and scientists from the
world
renowned Bell Telephone Laboratories to create groundbreaking performances
that incorporated new technology. Video projection, wireless sound
transmission, and Doppler sonar - technologies that are commonplace today -
had never been seen in the art of the 60's. The 9
Evenings DVD Series is an important documentation of the collaborations
between the artists and engineers that produced
innovative works using these emerging technologies. These performances still
resonate today, as forerunners of the close
and rapidly-evolving relationship between artists and technology.
The DVDs - one on each artist’s performance – will be released sequentially
over the next two years with the initial publication of the series:
Robert Rauschenberg - Open Score, available as a pre-release now on the
Microcinemadvd.com website and with general release May 29, 2007, followed
by the second in the series: John Cage - Variations VII, available in
Summer 2007.
Each DVD will be PAL and NTSC system compatible.
9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering is recognized as a major artistic event of
the 1960s. The
Performances represented the culmination of a period of extraordinary
creative energy in art, dance and
music in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and they also pointed to the
future, as artists began
to use new technology in their work. 9 Evenings was organized by Robert
Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver, then a research
scientist at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was held at
the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City from
October 13-23, 1966. As Billy Klüver has written:
"9 Evenings was unique in the incredible richness and imagination of the
performances. The Armory
space allowed the artists to work on an unprecedented scale, and their
involvement with technology and collaborations with the engineers
added a dimension of unfamiliarity and challenge. They responded with major
works."
9 Evenings was the first large-scale collaboration between artists and
engineers and scientists. The two groups worked together for 10 months to
develop technical equipment and systems that were used as an integral part
of the artists? performances. Their collaboration produced many "firsts" in
the
use of new technology for the theater, both with specially-designed systems
and equipment and with innovative use of existing equipment.
Closed-circuit television and television projection was used on stage for
the first time; a fiber-optics camera picked up objects in a performer's
pocket; an infrared television camera captured action in total darkness; a
Doppler sonar device translated movement into sound; and portable wireless
FM
transmitters and amplifiers transmitted speech and body sounds to Armory
loudspeakers.
Using archival film footage and original sound recordings, the 9 Evenings
films reconstruct each artist's performance as fully as possible;
they also contain new interviews with artists, engineers and performers to
illuminate the artistic, technical and historical aspects of the works.
Performances are by nature ephemeral events; this DVD series assures that
the 9 Evenings will not be lost but will be available to new generations of
dance and theater students as well as art scholars, artists and the general
public who will have a concrete representation of what 9 Evenings looked
like and how it came to play such an important role in American 20th century
art.
The films on 9 Evenings are produced for E.A.T. by Julie Martin and
directed by Barbro Schultz Lundestam. They are funded in part by
generous gifts from Robert Rauschenberg and the Robert Rauschenberg
Foundation as well as with support from the Daniel Langlois Foundation for
Art Science and Technology.
The 10 disc DVD series, 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, is co-produced
by E.A.T. and ARTPIX and will be distributed worldwide by Microcinema
International.
www.microcinemadvd.com <http://www.microcinemadvd.com/>
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.