The Bleeding Edge: 11/21/2016

As might be guessed, this will be a quiet week. In fact the BayImproviser Calendar lists only one event taking place within the San Francisco city limits. The good news, however, is that this is a stone that really should not be left unturned.

Gray Area Art And Technology will continue the PERPETUAL MOTION series presented in partnership with the San Francisco Cinematheque. This program should be of particular interest, since it combines innovative approaches to the projection of animated images with real-time performance of music, primarily on electronic devices. For those of my generation, this may be a bit like a trip in a time machine back to the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue in 1966 Manhattan, when engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer collaborated with artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman to produce 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering. (Participants in this series included John Cage, David Tudor, and Lucinda Childs, as well as Rauschenberg himself.) The title of this new program is Birth / Death / Resurrection, and it will consist of three sets.

The first is entitled “Toward the Death of Cinema.” Created by the Oakland-based duo of Malic Amalya and Nathan Hill, it is basically a real-time duet for 16mm projector and synthesizer, in which the projection process contributes to the spontaneity as much as does the sound synthesis. This will be followed by three short works by Australian Sally Goulding, “Ghosts—Loud + Strong,” “Light at the End of the Tunnel,” and “Spirit Intercourse,” all of which are based on analog media, hand-processed audio waveforms, and improvised electronics. The program will then conclude with the West Coast premiere of “After Psycho Shower,” a deconstruction of one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most memorable scenes created for 16mm projection by Seoul-based Hangjun Lee working with electronic musician Jérôme Noetinger.

This show will begin at 8 p.m. tomorrow (Tuesday, November 22). The Gray Area Art And Technology Theater is located in the Mission at 2665 Mission Street. Admission is $20 at the door. Tickets purchased in advance are only $10 or $15 on the day of the show. A cash bar will be available for those aged 21 or older. Ticketfly has created an event page for advance purchase of tickets.