Roden, Steve

Proximities

Label: Line Country: USA

"Proximities was recorded in 2010 during my time as the artist-in-residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. I began by recording a performance of a series of tones played on an old battery powered Paia Oz, that were determined by the letters A-G as found in a text by minimalist sculptor Donald Judd. I recorded the tone sequence several times during sunrise, amidst 50 of Judd's stainless steel sculptures in an old army barracks that has been converted into a museum. The performances were recorded with an H4 digital recorder, my iPhone and also a cheap Sony micro-cassette recorder.

During several of the performances these small devices were emitting the sounds of previous performances from their tiny speakers. At times I also hummed. All of the processing in the recordings was generated by the extremely resonant physical space. The occasional popping sound, which can be heard at the end, are the sounds of Judd's sculpture expanding while the sunrise changed the temperature within the space."-Steve Roden

"Steve Roden is a visual and sound artist from los angeles. his work includes painting, drawing, sculpture, film/video, sound installation, and performance.

Roden's working process uses various forms of specific notation (words, musical scores, maps, etc.) and translates them through self invented systems into scores; which then influence the process of painting, drawing, sculpture, and sound composition. These scores, rigid in terms of their parameters and rules, are also full of holes for intuitive decisions and left turns. The process allows Roden's inspirational sources to become a kind of formal skeleton that the abstract finished works are built upon.

In his sound works, singular source materials such as objects, architectural spaces, and field recordings, are abstracted through humble electronic processes to create new audio spaces, or 'possible landscapes'. The soundworks present themselves with an aesthetic Roden describes as "lowercase" - sound concerned with subtlety and the quiet activity of listening.

Roden received a BFA from Otis Art Institute in 1982, and an MFA from Art Center College of Design in 1989. From 1979-82, he was the lead singer of the Los Angeles punk band Seditionaries. He has been exhibiting his visual and sound works since the mid 1980′s, and has had numerous exhibitions internationally, including: Susanne Vielmetter LA and Berlin Projects, Studio La Citta Gallery (Verona, Italy), the Mercosur Biennial Porto Alegre (Brazil), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), MCASD (San Diego), UCLA Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Museum of Contemporary Art EMST (Athens), and the Singuhr-Horgalerie in Parochial (Berlin). Performances include: the Serpentine Gallery (London), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Gallery, the DCA (Dundee, Scotland), Redcat Theater (Los Angeles).

Roden has also released over 20 cds of audio works on labels worldwide under his own name, as well as in be tween noise."-Line