See photos from our event on 11.05.11

LEAF in Schools & Streets | LSS TRACKS Project Kiosk
Through a grant from the Dan Lucas Memorial Fund, LEAF in Schools & Streets (LSS) partnered with teaching artist David Hamilton and his crew, Summit Jaffe and Jeremy Ferguson.

Five sessions of musical creation with the crew and students at Stephens-Lee Recreation Center culminated with the recording of new tracks. These tracks have become the foundation to layer new ideas. The layering project took place at an event on October 15 at Green’s Mini-Mart on Depot Street in Asheville which gave community members the opportunity to lay their own tracks and add to this collaboration.

Much inspiration for this project has been fueled by the rich musical history in the Asheville area. Influences include Bob Moog, Stephen’s Lee High School, Innersouls Band and the Livingston and Depot Street districts. Specifically the history of Stephen’s Lee High came to life as students of the 21st century created music in the same location of the school that was once a source of pride for the African American community of Asheville and beyond.

Audience members at TED x Katuah will experience an intriguing musical interaction, combining technology and sound. Built from musical tracks created with voices, beats, and words of different communities around the Asheville area, LSS Tracks project is bridging the gap between cultures and communities of Asheville while using the physics of sound, technology interfacing, and creativity. A mobile kiosk will provide the opportunity to manipulate the layers of each track while simultaneously viewing it on a screen. Attendees will have a unique experience as they mix their own musical version of our story while meeting students and community members who have created the tracks. The kiosk will sit on a table at its station and take up a rectangular space no more than eight feet by eight feet.

                                      ~Rumi

It’s a very fortunate time to be a musician. We can make music on everything from traditional instruments; analog and digital synths; computers, vocoders and other vocal processors.  In Chris Stack’s performance, he weaves all this together and explores the connections and technologies that make it possible.

BIO:

Chris Stack has been actively involved in an extremely wide array of electronic music; analog and digital technology; ethnomusicology and multimedia for over thirty years.  Spurred by an elementary school exposure to the Moog synthesizers of Walter Carlos’ Switched On Bach he developed a lifelong love of the intersection of art and science.

Shortly after receiving an Electrical Engineering Technology degree at Spartanburg Technical College he embarked on a career as a printed circuit board designer at Computer Dynamics in Greenville, SC.  While there he worked on a variety of high-level projects including designing the PCBs for a computer controlling experiments on a space shuttle flight and one of the first flat-panel display desktop computers. The fact that his initials were designed into the circuit board that made the space shuttle trip makes his appearance at PARI a bit of an aerospace homecoming.

During this time, he also met Bob Moog at a UNCA lecture and was soon doing PCB design projects for Moog’s company Big Briar.

A ten-year stint as production manager, engineering manager and marketing manager at CATV electronics manufacturer dB-tronics exposed him to fiber-optic technology and high-frequency analog electronics and was followed by a three-year run as marketing manager for Moog Music, unfortunately after the death of Bob Moog.

After leaving Moog in January of 2011 he launched his electronic music production blog and YouTube channel at experimentalsynth.com and continues to inhabit the intersection of art and technology as multimedia coordinator at Jonas Gerard Fine Art.

He also has for many years played oud (Arabic lute), flute, melodica and other instruments (including occasionally iPad) while accompanying the belly dancers at Jerusalem Garden restaurant and other venues in Asheville.

His performance at TEDxKatuah distills all this into a unique musical soundscape created by analog and digital electronics combined with traditional instruments and voice.

She attended Appalachian State University to study Fine Arts and since graduating has worked with several public arts organizations, always with the goal of using art to create positive change. Her work experiences include 3 years with Arts for Life as a Teaching Fellow, creating and implementing art lessons specific to the needs of children battling chronic and terminal illness. Another pivotal experience was one year spent working on The Fundred Dollar Bill Project, an effort to educate children through a fun and simple art project that teaches how to stay safe from environmental lead exposure. In both of these roles, Suzanne was able to use art as a tool in communicating about the serious issues of health and environment, while minimizing fears and empowering individuals.

Drawing on the first hand knowledge of how art can be used as a transformative educational tool, Suzanne began the development of PopAtomic Studios in late 2008. PopAtomic Studios is now carefully cultivating positive attention surrounding the reemerging Nuclear Energy Industry, using art as a spring board for new public dialogues about responsible energy creation. She is focused on making designs and public artwork that challenge commonly held fears and misconceptions about nuclear energy from a fun and positive artistic perspective. The goal is to inspire everyday citizens to learn about and actively support a clean energy future.

Hobbs currently resides in Greenville, SC with her husband.

I am a self-taught artist with a scientific background. My tools are not brushes and paint, but camera and microscope.

Opportunity led me into science as a first career. I received my BA in Botany from Duke University, where my favorite course was Plant Anatomy, the study of plant cells and structures under the microscope. After receiving my PhD in Genetics from Florida State University, I indulged my curiosity and pursued my search for beauty by studying meiotic chromosome behavior under the microscope. During the last 19 years of that career I was a Research Scientist at Yale University School of Medicine. Throughout my career I photographed plant parts through the microscope. (These photographs are called micrographs). I regularly participate in the Nikon “Small World” competitions (an international contest for microscopy) and have received several awards.

While searching for a way to combine a micro image with a more recognizable view of a plant, I attended a presentation by Andre Gallant, a Canadian photographer. He was creating “slide sandwiches” that consisted of a “subject” slide” and a “texture” slide. It was an “Ah Ha” moment for me when I realized that here was a way of combining my two types of images. This led to the creation of the series I call “Botanical Chords”, some of which will be shown here.

As a Scientist I always considered microscopy an under recognized art form. Now that I am retired I am working to raise awareness of and appreciation for the beauty that lies just below the resolution of our own eyesight.

David Sieg has managed to coax useful computer animation from some of the slowest computers in the world. The oldest of them, a machine called Scanimate was built entirely of analog circuitry! For almost a decade, if you saw computer animation on television, it probably was generated by one of the eight Scanimates that were ever built. Sieg owns and maintains the only surviving Scanimate.Interestingly enough, Scanimate can easily do things that can’t be duplicated by today’s digital technology. Sieg produced “The Dream Machine”, a documentary about Scanimate, its history, the people and companies who used it, including many of the famous animations it produced. He raises questions about how quickly we trash our older technology, and what we lose along the way. And he makes the case for preserving and maintaining the few remaining machines that can playback obsolete media formats before we lose our past forever.

More info at scanimate.com.

Ran camera, loaded tape, shot newsfilm, and repaired transmitters at WKPT-TV in high school. Chief Engineer at the University of Mississippi Center for Media Services while graduating. Chief Engineer at Image West in Hollywood, where they had 2 Scanimates. Director of R&D at Omnibus, built facilities at Paramount Studios in Hollywood and in NYC. Partner at International Graphics Consultants, Burbank CA Owner of ZFx in Kingsport, Tennessee Started first Internet Service Provider in Eastern Tennessee, tricon.net Moved to Asheville, NC, currently consulting with a variety of clients.

More info at davesieg.com ]]> http://tedxkatuah.com/?feed=rss2&p=323 0 http://tedxkatuah.com/?p=293 http://tedxkatuah.com/?p=293#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:40:02 +0000 xKatuahAdmin http://tedxkatuah.com/?p=293 Watch this space!  More speakers, performers, and activities will be announced soon!

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2001, Danny moved to Charlotte where he began working as a computer programmer before moving to Chicago in 2005 where he continued his career in programming and music production.  In 2009, Danny moved back to Asheville, NC where he continues his work today, making notable musical appearances at venues around the Asheville area including The Orange Peel, LAB, BoBo Gallery and a forthcoming appearance at the Moog Factory later this year.

When asked about his thoughts on his career path and its similarities to the music he writes: “I think I’ve always been drawn to writing electronic music because it marries itself so closely to programming. There are so many parallels between music and programming, and those patterns that I stumble upon while making electronic songs are the same patterns I stumble upon while writing code. It’s a very pleasing symmetry, and getting better at one makes me better at the other, I think.”

Danny has prepared some of his own music and video to accompany his presentation at TEDx Katuah. He plans to take the audience on a visual journey in to the mechanics of electronic music in a way that’s informative, entertaining, and inspirational.