Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, in association with ISSUE Project Room and the Electronic Music Foundation, is pleased to announce two upcoming performances of HPSCHD-- the legendary Gesamtkunstwerk by John Cage and Lejaren Hiller.

HPSCHD is a mass media orgy, considered by many as the wildest, largest, and loudest musical composition of the 20th century, its very nature inextricable from the tumult of the year it premiered, 1969. Eyebeam presents this spectacle on May 3rd and 4th, as part of the 2013 Darmstadt Essential Repertoire series. This new production features composer Joel Chadabe, who has directed performances of HPSCHD throughout the world, as artistic advisor. Keyboardist Neely Bruce, who performed at the 1969 premiere, plays in the harpsichord ensemble. Artist Bradley Eros directs the interpretation of the visual score, and curates projections from an extensive body of film and video artists.

Performances take place at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center on Friday, May 3 from 5pm to 10pm and on Saturday, May 4 from 1pm until 6pm. The audience is invited to arrive and leave at any time during the performance and refreshments are available.

About HPSCHD
A collaboration between Cage and the electronic composer Lejaren Hiller, HPSCHD is known for being Cage’s first and most significant foray into utilizing the computer to execute the chance operations of the I-Ching. The inspiration for the piece came from a commission for harpsichord, an instrument disliked by Cage. Starting with material from Mozart’s Dice Game, Cage and Hiller plucked from virtuosic repertory by Beethoven, Gottschalk, and Busoni (among others). Hiller’s programs in the FORTRAN computer language, named ICHING, DICEGAME, and HPSCHD reshaped this material for the scores. Hiller also produced multiple tapes of microtonal electronic sounds to be played simultaneously with the harpsichords. The event premiered in May of 1969 at the University of Illinois’s Assembly Hall, within a visual environment of hundreds of projected images and films, many supplied by NASA. Thousands came to experience the event. In retrospect, HPSCHD can be described as Cage’s prescient response to Marshall McCluhan, Happenings, the moon landing, the history of Western Classical music, hippy utopianism, Buckminster Fuller, and perhaps even a prediction of the computer age and its effects on human consciousness. Presented on the heels of the Cage centenary, Darmstadt’s presentation of HPSCHD offers a 21st century audience the opportunity to reflect on how this totality of ideas has transformed in the 44 years since its inception.

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Eyebeam supports and promotes dynamic and risk-taking work at the intersection of art and technology. Eyebeam provides residencies and fellowships for interdisciplinary artists, hackers, curators, and technologists who are addressing the issues and concerns of our time. As host to a diverse weekly output of exhibitions, panels, workshops, performances and events, Eyebeam seeks to provide an environment for dialogue and collaboration, as well as a fertile context for discovery among its artists and the general public.

Joel Chadabe is an internationally recognized pioneer in the development of interactive music systems. He has concertized worldwide since 1969. His book 'Electric Sound' is the first comprehensive overview of the history of electronic music. His articles have appeared in Leonardo, Computer Music Journal, Contemporary Music Review, Perspectives of New Music, Melos, Musique en Jeu, and other journals, and anthologized in books by MIT Press, Routledge, and other publishers. His music is recorded on EMF Media, Deep Listening, CDCM, Lovely Music, and other labels. He has received awards from NEA, NYSCA, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Fulbright Commission, and other organizations. He is founder of Intelligent Arts, an electronic publishing company, adjunct faculty at NYU, and president of Electronic Music Foundation.

Bradley Eros works in myriad media: experimental film, video, collage, photography, performance, sound, text, contracted and expanded cinema & installation. His work has been exhibited at Whitney Biennial & The American Century, MoMA, Performa09, The New York, London & Rotterdam Film Festivals, The Kitchen, and Microscope Gallery. He has worked for many years with the New York Filmmakers’ Cooperative, Anthology Film Archives & co-directed the Roberta Beck Mercurial Cinema. Also a maverick curator, composer, designer & investigator, Eros’s practice encompasses ephemeral cinema, mediamystics, subterranean science, erotic psyche, cinema povera, poetic accidents and musique plastique.

Darmstadt “Classics of the Avant Garde” is the music series led by composers Nick Hallett and Zach Layton since 2004, a program of ISSUE Project Room. Essential Repertoire serves to present dynamic interpretations of rarely performed masterpieces from the canon of experimental music.

Founded in 2003, ISSUE Project Room is a pioneering nonprofit performance center, presenting projects by more than 200 interdisciplinary artists each year that expand the boundaries of artistic practice and stimulate critical dialogue in the broader community. By facilitating the commission and premiere of more than 25 innovative new works each year, ISSUE performs an essential research and development function that stimulates a constant influx of ideas into the local, national, and international creative landscape.

This project is made possible in part with support from mediaThe foundation inc. and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts' Electronic Media and Film Presentation Funds grant program, administered by The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes.

Celebrating more than five years of thug life, pop culture, and R&D, the renegade art organization known as the Free Art & Technology Lab, or F.A.T. Lab, is going GOLD. F.A.T. GOLD, that is. From April 1–20 Eyebeam Art & Technology Center will present the acclaimed work of F.A.T. Lab. Organized by Lindsay Howard, Eyebeam Curatorial Fellow, the exhibition invites the public to experience and engage with the collective’s groundbreaking projects. Please RSVP on our Facebook Event Page.

Hello friends! It's been quite a busy month here at Eyebeam. We've had exhibitions by Enrique Radigales and Lawrence Malstaf, RGB+D and Open(Art) image hacking workshops, a performance by Robert Whitman, and a fresh new batch of Fellows and Residents! Stay tuned for updates on their projects via email and online through Twitter and Facebook. 

Tomorrow, Eyebeam hosts a panel on learning from mistakes in artistic and social collaboration (details below), and then we gear up for F.A.T. GOLD: Five Years of Free Art & Technology. Curated by Eyebeam Fellow Lindsay Howard, and on view April 1-20, F.A.T. GOLD celebrates the international group of artists, hackers, engineers, musicians, and graffiti writers who comprise F.A.T. Lab. The exhibition will feature significant works from 2007 to the present, as well as a week-long residency in which collaborators will produce new projects and engage with the public through a series of panels and performances. For a full list of events, please check our schedule. 

Eyebeam is also pleased to announce its upcoming collaboration with ISSUE Project Room and the Electronic Music Foundation, which will bring John Cage's audio-visual masterpiece HPSCHD to life for two nights, right here in Chelsea. 

Thank you for your support, and we look forward to seeing you soon!

Meredith Niemczyk, Communications Director
212.937.6580 x232
meredith AT eyebeam DOT org

Meredith is Eyebeam’s official Cheer Captain and Communications Director. She approaches her work at Eyebeam with equal parts pleasure and wonder as the organization continues to redefines the fields of art and technology. Meredith comes to Eyebeam with a background in new media arts, with past positions held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Rhizome at the New Museum, and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery.

Meredith has a BA in Art History from Yale University and a Certificate from Sotheby’s Institute of Art. When not busy tweeting, posting, and writing about Eyebeam, you will probably find her daydreaming about bluebird days in Jackson Hole, WY.