The Lab

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

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FUJI||||||||||TA + Normal

  • The Lab 2948 16th St San Francisco, CA, 94103 (map)

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Doors 8pm / Show 8:30pm
$23 advance / $25 door
Advance prices include ticketing fees. Request your member DICE Code here.

FUJI||||||||||TA is a sound artist living in Japan. His unique practice utilizes various natural phenomena that respond to his interest in wanting to hear unheard sounds and unknown sounds. Instead of playing a composed piece of music, he aims to go as far as possible towards his own unknown state of being, with an emphasis on observing the sound closely.

In 2009 Fujita hand fabricated a pipe organ that has only 11 pipes and no keyboard. Fujita conceived and built it using his imagination, without any prior or specialized knowledge. The air pump (called “FUIGO”) which is kept moving by the left hand when playing, and is based on associations with an ancient blacksmith. This unique instrument is too delicate in its nature to be played properly without a great deal of experimentation and trial and error. Fujita has spent a long time inventing ways to play it and experimenting with ways to utilise this instrument in sound systems.

Normal is Fred Frith and Sudhu Tewari, playing manually & electronically manipulated home-made instruments. Not really instruments in the sense of beautifully crafted art objects requiring Extended Techniques, so much as de-constructions and re- constructions using the simplest of means, and requiring only minimal exertion to produce sound. Fred's "planks of wood with strings" were almost all built in the early 1980s, when for a period of several years he abandoned the guitar as his primary vehicle for improvising. The birth of this duo in 2001 marked the first time he had performed with them in many years. The fact that he is doing so again is the responsibility of Sudhu, a tinkerer of genius who plunders garages and junkshops and the street outside for the sources of his sound world, turning the smallest spring into a potential orchestra. In 202o Sudhu and Fred were invited to present their work in a virtual exhibition at the Center for New Music in San Francisco. This gave rise to a number of new creations including the Portable Street Piano, the Post Hole Tone Music Box, the No Strings Guitar, and the Super Strut Bandsaw Bass. The first Normal CD—Moving Parts—was released on the Foc’s’le label in May 2023.

Earlier Event: May 9
Claire Rousay + Maria BC
Later Event: May 16
Avant-barb(ie)