The Lab

The Lab is a nonprofit experimental art and performance space located in the Mission District of San Francisco.

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Night Rounds

8:00pm Doors / 8:30pm Performance
$15 General / Free for members
Reserve seats: member login or guest registration
 

An evening of live film and music performances featuring eight Bay Area visual artists and musicians whose work ranges from experiments with light and film to algorithmic music composition. These energetic collaborations bring a dynamic array of sound and image to The Lab and feature Danny Paul Grody (music) + Bill Basquin (film), Steve Dye (film) + GDSS (music), John Davis (music/film) + Laurie Varga (music/film), Jorge Bachmann (ruidobello) (music) + Anna Geyer (film).  

John Davis - Expanding the relationship between moving image and sound through live performance and studio-based projects, John's work elicits sensory response through familiar and unexpected uses of traditional media. Often incorporating live performance and collaboration, John alternates as musician and filmmaker, encouraging improvisation, spontaneity and chance to guide the work.

John has performed and exhibited his work in the US and internationally, most recently at the Mono No Aware Festival, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The San Francisco Cinematheque, The Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Antimatter Media Art Festival, Festival Images Contre Nature, The Optica Festival, Instants Vidéo Numériques et Poétiques, The Milan Film Festival, The Swedenborg Film Festival, The Alchemy Film And Moving Image Festival, Transmediale, Impakt and Videoex. http://www.noiseforlight.com

Jorge Bachmann – [ruidobello] is the project of San Francisco based Sound Artist Jorge Bachmann. He has been involved in San Francisco's experimental music/dance scene since the early 2000. Working across a wide range of explorations, Bachmann's work is eclectic, going from subtle "Musique Concrète" Soundscapes to analog modular synth minimalism.

Since the early 1980's he has been exploring the strange, unique and microscopic sounds of everyday life, collecting field recordings and creating immersive soundscapes. Blurring the boundaries between wilderness sound environments and man-made sounds. He has composed music for MOBU Dance troupe and is actively collaborating with Christine Bonansea Dance Company. [ruidobello] has performed and exhibited in North America, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and South America. In 2009 he performed his audio-visual piece, "Coleoptera", at the 10th Francisco Electronic Music Festival. In recent years he has performed and improvised with the likes of Alessandro Cortini, Pamela Z, Bryan Day, Michael Gendreau, Mason Jones, David Graves, Danishta Rivero, Markus Hawkings, Yuko Matsuyama, Kevin Corcoran and Takahiro Kawaguchi. At present he is also part of "Collision Stories", "audre" and “Faults” and his last solo album "Mare Island" is on Baltimore's VauxFlores Industrial label - vauxflores.com/vf-industrial/mare-island/. Soundcloud - soundcloud.com/ruidobello/, soundcloud.com/collision-stories/

Laurie Varga – Lori Varga is a local analog film & Light projection artist; native to the Bay Area. Utilizing forgotten / near obsolete technology into optically challenging psychedelic light shows & multi-projector visual displays- as a favorite form of expression. Lori has been making 16mm multi projector film collage since 1995. She has produced over 18 short collage essay films, 10 experimental videos, & varied 16mm visual collages w/ electronic soundtracks. From 1999 till 2011, she projected analog/background films & hand- painted film loops for many well-known psychedelic rock/avant-garde bands throughout central Texas & the Midwest.

Her work has been shown @ The Cinematexas Film Festival, Craig Baldwin’s Other Cinema, Salvage Vanguard Theater, Shapeshifter’s Cinema, Filmhuis Cavia Film Fest Amsterdam , Gray Area Theater, BAMPFA Museum & at over 20 nightclubs all over CA. & Texas.  Usually she works solo, with a large, expansive table of analog gear … (35mm slide projectors/ timers/16mm film projectors/ overheads/ retro laser lights)- currently she is branching out to incorporate digital projection units & 4 camera systems into her live setups. Alongside working with found film footage & vintage, educational imagery she also creates music using tape recorders, offbeat & satire – like samples, various awkward, circuit -bent sound modules & 1950’s reel to reels.

Steve Dye – Steven Dye is a Sound Artist, Filmmaker and Musician.  His artwork takes a variety of forms including expanded cinema performance, film installation, solo and collaborative musical composition, self-made musical instruments, field recordings, and live scores for film and performance.  A common thread throughout all of his projects is the reuse or re-contextualization of materials and an enthusiasm for the phenomenon of sound, light and perception.  He received a degree in Film, Video and Performance from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1990.  He is a founding member of the experimental film performance group Wet Gate. He has exhibited his work and lectured at venues and film festivals throughout North America, Europe and Australia. He has taught numerous instrument building and filmmaking workshops throughout the Bay Area.  dyemark.net/

GDSS is a collaborative project by Gabriel Dunne and Stephanie Sherriff, which often incorporates experimental processes to develop improvisational audio compositions. GDSS’s compositions are developed using a range of instruments such as guitar, cello, ukulele, synthesizers, field recordings, piezos, pedals, loopers, and voice. Their work often carries a haunting and cinematic constitution, resulting in sonic terranes and aural journeys.

Gabriel Dunne is an audiovisual artist and SF native who creates material and temporal structures, spaces and experiences as sculpture, installation, and/or performance. His process explores the visual, audible, and physical, drawing influence from natural systems, sensory patterns, structures and rhythms of the perceivable and unperceivable universe. His utilization and experimentation with a range of mediums leverages his fluency and integration of digital and analog media with custom made software and tools. He has performed and shown his work nationally and in internationally at venues including Barcelona Festival Sonar, Interferenze Italia, India Art Faire, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Denver Biennale, and the permanent collection of NYMoMA. gabrieldunne.com


Stephanie Sherriff is an interdisciplinary sculptor and performer currently residing in the Bay Area. Her artwork is experiential in nature and consists of time-based installations and audio/visual performances that are often living, changing, and sometimes dying. In her process she observes, collects, deconstructs, and recomposes plants, light, sound, video, and scents in order to create abstracted, ephemeral forms and sensory experiences. She received her BA in Studio Art from San Francisco State University in 2014 and has been actively performing and exhibiting work in the Bay Area since 2008. Stephanie was recently accepted into Stanford’s MFA program for Fall 2017, where she plans to continue her research with light, water, and electrical phenomenon. ssherriff.com


Danny Paul Grody Danny Paul Grody is a solo musician and  founding member of San Francisco based bands Tarentel, The Drift, and Moholy-Nagy. He is a self taught guitarist, and the melodies at the core of Danny’s songwriting bring to mind his love of West African kora, Takoma style fingerpicking and all things minimal, repetitive & hypnotic.
 
His first solo album Fountain was released in 2010 on Root Strata followed up by In Search Of Light on Students Of Decay in 2011. He’s contributed tracks to the Three Lobed 2012 record store day LP Eight Trails, One Path as well as to Vol. 5 of the Tompkins Square guitar soli series, Imaginational Anthem. 2013 saw the release of his third solo album, Between Two Worlds on the wonderful Three Lobed Recordings. His latest album Furniture Music is a self-released collection of early acoustic works spanning back to 2007.

In addition to his solo and collaborative work, Danny also composes music for film.  He recently finished original scores for the documentary films Off Label, written and directed by Donal Mosher and Michael Palmieri, and Entry Denied, written by Matchu Latorre. His compositions are also featured on the award-winning soundtrack to the documentary film October Country, also directed by Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher.  The film has shown at  documentary festivals around the globe and has garnered several honors, juried prizes, and awards along the way including “Best Musical Score” at the renowned Cinema Eye Honors in NYC!  It was also an Independent Spirit Awards nominee for “Best Documentary of 2009”, winner of Silverdocs “US Grand Jury Prize”, winner Montreal R.I.D.M. “Editing Prize”, and the “Best First Feature” at DOCLISBOA.

Anna Geyer – is an award-winning experimental filmmaker and writer. Her films have screened in many festivals internationally. A fascination with non-traditional methods of both production and presentation is apparent in her work. Cameraless, non-representational work has been the emphasis of much of her recent effort, although she frequently describes her work as “experimental with a narrative bent”. Live three- or four-projector loop sets, often performed in collaboration with local musicians, combine the technology of the past and present and include abstract imagery, with live action work and degraded digital imagery as well. She teaches cinema classes at both City College of San Francisco and Solano Community College.

Bill Basquin –  Bill Basquin works in partnership with others. His practice takes as its root his relationship with those around him and the changes that can occur in meaningful partnership over extended periods of time and with careful observation and interaction.

His work in landfills, former wolf habitats affected by cattle and hunting interests and the gardens of California provides him with subtle and rhizomatic insights that are not necessarily legible to visitors who might see themselves as distant or unbiased observers. He stresses locality: making for small audiences and with specific vocabulary that depend on the readings of a network of human and non-human alliances. The interventions he makes as an individual - sculptures, films and writing - are magnified and altered by the continuing actions of the communities that he monitors.

He has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, New York; Documenta in Kassel, Germany; and the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. He lives and works in San Francisco, California. BillBasquin.info
 

Earlier Event: October 4
Steven Warwick