From June – September the M&T Second Friday experience at the Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State will overflow into The Front Yard, the world’s first permanent, environmentally-responsive, 24/7/365, outdoor audio and image gallery. The Front Yard Party series features live music, special performances and premiers of sound and image works by an accomplished and diverse range of Western New York media artists. Bring your lawn chair, your blanket; in case of rain, events will move inside.
The Front Yard activities for this Friday, June 13 include:
Live Music by Aircraft and Bearhunter – 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Aircraft is a four-piece Psychedelic Surf-Pop band from Buffalo, NY. Their 2013 debut, “Sonic Boom,” was met with enthusiastic reviews and prompted a two-week promotional tour throughout the northeast. Emphasizing thoughtful song-writing and energetic live performances, Aircraft defines their sound by simultaneously respecting and transcending their musical influences. Their songs are built on charismatic lead vocals supported by lush harmonies, melodic guitar work, and a powerfully attuned rhythm section. With an active touring schedule and new album in the works, Aircraft is committed to building their audience one show at a time.
BEARHUNTER began with David Calos, Mike Calos and Robert Pusateri in the Fall of 2006. The trio began writing music that extracts the most appealing elements of rock history without being over indicative. BEARHUNTER songs to date evoke a sense of looming madness fueled with love, coffee, nicotine and adrenochrome. Their debut album released in September 2008 is the culmination of their experiences together and apart over this time. The sophomore follow up "Still Life Terrarium" was released in May 2010, building on their sound as a tight three piece with intricate compositions. Their third album "Call It A Red" has taken the band in a slightly different direction with more concise songwriting. It was recorded analog tape to tape with Matt Smith at Hi/Lo and was released in June 2013 on Harvest Sum Recordings.
Premier: The Lake Series by Phil Hastings at Dusk
The Lake Series is an ongoing collection of films broadly exploring individual struggles and triumphs as defined within social constructs. These works are open-ended meditations, designed for the viewer to project and reflect on their own experiences. Each of the films’ themes and titles are derived from a human trait or quality that is discovered during the filming of the imagery. The works are inspired by a number of personal experiences including my current proximity to Lake Erie and the first-hand witnessing of both the boundless joy and utter destruction that can come from water. The use of extreme slow motion is critical to the experience of the work. This deliberate temporal manipulation allows the viewer to disengage from normal time and provides an avenue for deeper contemplation. Expectations of cause and effect are challenged, forcing the viewer to re-evaluate his or her relationship to the imagery and possible meanings. Water can be intimate or expansive, life giving or life destroying. It is eternal, ephemeral, and in a constant state of change, and therefore a perfect element to address the vicissitudes of life. - Phil Hastings 2014
Phil Hastings is an artist and filmmaker whose work has been exhibited internationally. He is a 2012 NYFA Film/Video Fellow and was an invited artist in the 18th Biennale of Sydney where his film Steadfast was screened at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. His personal films include animation, experimental and narrative modes of working and draw on his background in sculpture, and often have a connection to the sciences. His video documentation of the sexual cannibalism and reproduction practices of praying mantis has been licensed for the National Geographic television show Animal Taboos and the New Scientist Magazine. He is a former director of the Big Muddy Film Festival and received his MFA in cinema from Southern Illinois University and his BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design. He currently teaches experimental film and video in the Department of Visual Arts and New Media at SUNY Fredonia.
M& T Second Friday, July 11 from 5:30 to 7:30
Live Music by Crows and Jays and Folkfaces
Crows & Jays is an Indie Folk/Rock quartet. Classic Americana merges with Indie-Rock as three-part harmonies emphasize the lyrics in original songs. Formed in fall of 2012 and they have already made headway in the music scene, opening for national touring act: The Whigs just three months after forming. They have worked with After Dark Productions and have headlined major Buffalo venues including Waiting Room and 9th Ward as well as many other locals venues throughout Western New York. Their debut EP 'Play for the Trees' was released in February 2013 - an EP focused on conservation and traditions. While their full-length album 'Indian Falls' is harmony-driven in both verse and chorus and focuses on more personal experiences of the band.
The Folkfaces are a Buffalo-based band with a plethora of musical tastes and interests. Folkface music is a blend of blues, ragtime, bluegrass, folk (obviously), jazz, punk, rockabilly, and more. Tyler is the youngster of the group and brings a mighty guitar pickin punch to the group in addition to writing the group's topical originals. His distinct style of picking is full of youthful energy and precision. Richie plays a mean harmonica and is always looking to improve and expand his technique. We have two new(ish) members Dan Borodzik is a local songwriter reminiscent of Bob Dylan or Neil Young recruited for his impressive dobro slide guitar technique as well as song writing talents. Dan Schwach is a high energy percussionest blending grooves from blues, jazz, and jugband rhythms with full kit or just a washboard.
Performance: Phillip Stearn , Resonance+Luminance at Dusk
A live performance exploring the expressive capacity of the most basic elements of electronic media: light and sound. Phillip Stearns will perform a custom built audio-visual system created by wiring fluorescent lamps, audio production equipment, and a selection of optical and electromagnetic sensors into complex feedback loops. From the familiar hum of electric light, Stearns will craft an intensely choreographed journey through the otherwise invisible landscape of electromagnetic phenomenon hidden within everyday objects.
Warning: The performance will feature sections of stroboscopic visuals.
M&T Second Friday, August 8
Live Music: A Tribute to Sun Ra by Unusually Different from 5:30 to 7:30
Unusually Different Ensemble is a six member Woodwind/Brasswinds group, performing on BBb Contra-Bass Clarinet, Eb Contra-Bass Clarinet, Bass Saxophone, Bassoon, Bass Flute and Tuba. The band’s musical performances included all genders of music, Jazz, Blues and Classical with a unique sound and composes their own music as well as including Sun Ra , Duke Ellington and modern day composers.
Squeaky Wheel’s Silent Sound at Dusk
Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Arts Center presents the Silent/Sound Film Festival, co-hosted by the Burchfield Penney Art Center. This free annual event invites a local sound artist to create and perform a live soundtrack for a classic silent film. The Vores, one of Buffalo’s first post-punk bands, will provide their sonic interpretation of a suite of silent experimental films produced by Ralph Steiner, Fernand Leger, and Man Ray.
About the Films
Mechanical Principles (1930, Ralph Steiner, 9 minutes) Ralph Steiner (February 8, 1899 – July 13, 1986) was an American photographer, pioneer documentarian and a key figure among avant-garde filmmakers in the 1930s. Mechanical Principles is a poetic evocation of geometry captured in the abstract patterns generated by the motion of gears and machinery.
Le Ballett Mécanique (1923-24, Fernand Leger & Dudley Murphy, 19 minutes) Ballet Mécanique is a pulsing, kaleidoscopic film conceived, written, and co-directed by the French artist Fernand Léger (February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955) in collaboration with the American filmmaker Dudley Murphy (July 10, 1897 – February 22, 1968), with cinematographic input from Man Ray. After fighting at the front in World War I and spending the year of 1917 in a hospital after being gassed, Fernand Léger exclusively concerned himself with the dazzling effects of mechanical technology. The objects photographed by Dudley Murphy are transformed by the camera and by the editing rhythms and juxtapositions.
L'Etoile de Mer (1928, Man Ray, 16 minutes) Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky, August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American modernist artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. L'Étoile de Mer (English: The Starfish) is a 1928 film based on a script by Robert Desnos and depicts a couple acting through scenes that are shot out of focus, distorted through glass, or reflected by mirrors.
The Vores are an avant-garage band who first stalked the stages of Buffalo during the late 1970s. The band is made up of original members Biff Henrich on guitar and vocals and Gary Nickard on bass and vocals, who are also visual artists and provide much of the songwriting, along with keyboardist, vocalist, and songwriter Cathy Carfagna, Scott Ryan on guitar and vocals, and Patrick Heyden on drums. Past members have included, David Kulik, David Meinzer, and David A. Moore. The tense dissonance of their music incorporates elements of punk, funk, pop, no wave, and industrial music. During their initial active period only a handful of studio recordings were ever made, even fewer were released to the public.
M&T Second Friday, September 12
Electronic Poetry Center at dusk
EPC@20: Second Decade Celebration
Thurs. Sept. 11-Friday 12, 2014
The Burchfield Penney celebrates 20 years of the Electronic Poetry Center with two days of events in The Front Yard at the Center. The event features Loss Pequeño Glazier, EPC Director/Founder, Charles Bernstein, EPC Editor, with key performances by luminaries associated with the EPC, crossing language, visual, performance media, and critical studies including cris cheek, Tammy McGovern, Laura Shackelford, and many others. The "EPC@20: Second Decade Celebration" will also feature a special panel on "Legacies of the EPC", a scholarly panel addressing the impact of the EPC on literary history, its relation to archiving, digital media preservation, language media dissemination, and how the EPC's original conceptualization of digital space set a model for other digital projects, including digital sound, media archaeology, and intensive scholarly events in digital media analysis. This panel will feature foundational and leading speakers in the field as well as relative newcomers engaged in visionary new projects. The EPC is the longest-running digital literature and culture project in existence and is a tribute to the UB, the ongoing prescience of the Dept. of Media Study, the enthusiasm of the artist-activist Buffalo arts community, and to Buffalo's continuing gyroscopic arts-charged location on the international media cultural map.