Kieran Daly is an American composer and guitarist with a concentration in experimental monophonic music. His work focuses on a primarily performance-based, first-principles approach using iterative processes, microtuning and sliding, and pulse salience as formal determinants. Some of his prolific output has been presented by Cafe OTO, CHIMEFest, Default Den Haag, Hibari Music, Infant Tree, Issue Project Room, Madacy Jazz, Museum of Modern Art, Poetry Project, Pilar Brussels, Pioneer Works, Pitchfork, Segue Foundation, Triple Canopy, and Wire Magazine. Since 2015, he has soundtracked several features and shorts by Canadian filmmaker Isiah Medina.
https://sites.google.com/site/qwoned
"Christopher Riggs doesn’t just play the electric guitar. They deconstruct it. They strip it down to its most fundamental elements. Forget scales, arpeggios, and even standard tunings—keys and harmonies are myths, anyway. Riggs eschews these things entirely, instead dragging their guitar to the brink and inviting us to hear the results." - Chicago Reader
Gordon Fung (b. 1988, San Francisco, CA; lives in Chicago, IL) is a transdisciplinary artist-curator who works with large-scale curatorial/collaborative practices, experimental audiovisual performances, new media installations, noise music, experimental film/video, media archaeology, participatory works, and happenings. His works highlight unconventional executions like equipment misapplication, lo-fi presentations, and glitches. Such aesthetics confront the viewers’ understanding, perspective, and point of view on reality through a more philosophical and esoteric investigation.
Expanding the traditional caretaking role of the curator, he applies stewardship to artworks, artists, history, culture, and the community at large to ensure constructive dialogue between them. Recognizing the cultural significance of media and technology, his curations bring equilibrium to art scenes where media arts are underrepresented. Serving as a mediator and facilitator, he builds a heteroglossic bridge to foster a more supportive environment that elevates both institutions and independent DIY scenes.
Inspired by the unique Chicago video/media arts lineage and collectivity in Fluxus, Gordon forms and directs the experimental time-based arts collective //sense to showcase large-scale experimental community theater performances, exhibitions, and screenings. Counteracting the marginalization of experimental time-based arts, he curates and fosters a collaborative common ground for sound, video, performance, and media artists to create gesamtkunstwerk through synergy. By democratizing media tools, he empowers and mobilizes the community to rectify media injustice imposed by corporations.
As a firm believer in collectivism, his large-scale curation cultivates two maxims: “making good communities better” and “finding arts in all things.” Referencing Fluxus and happenings, he creates brave spaces for participants to unleash their imagination in artmaking through deskilling and unlearning.
Honing media’s ability to extend human bodies and expand consciousness, Gordon creates immersive audiovisual environments for audiences to contemplate. As a “break-maker,” his deliberate misuse of electronic equipment and software regain consumers’ agency through artistic means. Through media archeology, he strives to unearth the concealed potentials of obsolete audiovisual equipment and to revive them to artistic life. He performs with a wide range of gears: synthesizers (audio and video), mixers, camcorders, webcams, test signal generators, time base correctors, video projections, experimental films, CRT TVs, and Max/MSP/Jitter.
As an experimental audiovisual performer, he has presented in major locations in Chicago and California including Comfort Station, Elastic Arts, Experimental Sound Studio, Links Hall, MacLean Ballroom, No Nation Art Lab, Non Plus Ultra (Los Angeles), NOT NOT, Tritriangle, the Red Museum, Mosswood Chapel, Cali Pink, Cafe Mustache, Asian Improv aRts Midwest, Lot 49, DADS (Digital Arts Demo Space), and beyond.
His video, film, and installation works have been shown in Angels Gate Cultural Center (Los Angeles), daybreak (Taiwan), Gene Siskel Film Center, Isabelle Percy West Gallery (Oakland), Mac Fine Arts Gallery (Oakland), Parallel Space (Hong Kong), PLAYsPACE Gallery (San Francisco), Ohklahomo (Chicago), Re–Fest (Virtual), Root Division (San Francisco), UMA Gallery Oakland, Wonder Valley Experimental, Santa Ana Noise Festival, not.gli.tc/H (Chicago), Norcal Noisefest (Sacramento), SAIC Galleries (Chicago), Elastic Arts (Chicago), etc.
As an award-winning but runaway contemporary music composer, his compositions have been performed in Canada, China, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, and the US.
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Kim Nucci is an Chicago/Oakland-based media artist, composer, improviser, and technologist. They perform on electronics, synthesizer, and saxophones. In their studio practice, they create interactive installations using architectural intervention, light, projection, microcontrollers, temporary sculpture and painting. Nucci's research interests explore the pedestrian cybernetic body, critically examining our relationship with technology/our instruments. Their solo performance practice is invested in ritualism and trance states in improvisation. They hold an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media, and MA in Music Composition from Mills College, and BA from Bennington College. They studied with Milford Graves, Roscoe Mitchell, Zeena Parkins, James Fei, Maggi Payne, Fred Frith, Shinichi Iova-Koga, Allen Shawn, Liz Deschenes, and Nick Brooke. They have taught classes at California Jazz Conservatory, and workshops at Oberlin College, Carleton College, ACRE Residency, ESS, Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines (CCAM Chicago), Tritriangle, and Women’s Audio Mission. Previously, they headed ACRE Residency's Sound and AV departments. As Technical Director of Driven Arts Collective (a dance/theatre and media arts performance collective), they compose music and create interactive media for dance/theatre productions. As an Organizer at CCAM, Kim co-produces and leads events, workshops and residencies centering art, technology and its surrounding theories.
Kim Nucci has performed at SFMOMA, Gray Area, Elastic Arts, CCRMA (Stanford), ODC Theatre, Center for New Music (C4NM), Counterpulse, Dub Club at The Echoplex, BabyCastles, Compound Yellow, and many DIY spaces across California and the US. They have been an artist in residence at Dresher Ensemble’s DEAR Residency, ACRE, Zero1, and Counterpulse. They have made music for/with gabby fluke-mogul, Nava Dunkelman, Sholeh Asgary, Nevin Aladağ’s sculptures, Phillip Greenlief, Marissa Dietz (Sucker Crush), Driven Arts Collective, Alex Cohen, Jordan Glenn, MurderMurder, Mitch Stahlmann, Anastasia Clarke, Madam Data, Brendan Glasson, Rocco Córdova, John McCowen, Sage City Symphony, Gamelan Encinal, Daniel Schmidt, and others. As a sound engineer and theater technician have worked with Jason Moran, Magic Magic Orchestra, Tauba Auerbach/ Glasser, Himali Signh Soin, Spellling, Allen Moore, Keioui Keijaun Thomas, Risa Jaroslow, Honey Mahogany, the Money Witch, and others.
