A Cable Plays, Chris Surgue, US and Damian Stewart, NZ/PT


A Cable Plays is an audio-visual performance where two players appear to be engaged in a strange game or ritual. As they take turns pinning bits of yarn across their arcane game board, an augmented video of their play-space reveals a world coming to life between the patterns.

The work was inspired by hidden rules between people, in the underlying mathematics of games, and the patterns and behaviors that can emerge from simple rule sets. In this performed narrative, the rules invented by the performers influence the eventual outcome of the audio and visual components. The piece opens with simple abstract organic shapes that resemble cells or nuclei. These evolve into more complex forms and feedback. The rising complexity in both the visuals and audio eventually climaxes at which point the players have no choice but to destroy their creation and leave their mystical world in ruin.

Date/Time: 20.06/21.30
Location: Estúdio Bomba Suicida, Rua dos Caetanos, 26 [Bairro Alto]

Link

http://csugrue.com/

http://www.frey.co.nz

Credits

Chris Sugrue & Damian Stewart

About the Creator

Chris Sugrue is an artist, designer and programmer living in New York City. A graduate from Parsons School of Design, Surgue has worked in print, web and interaction design. She has been involved in several educational projects with the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Surgue’s investigations into art and technology have lead to unusual media art projects involving data visualizations, mobile phones, and video tracking, she has worked and held residencies at Ars Electronica FutureLab, Futurelab, Austria and Eyebeam, New York. She is the recent receipt of the Share Prize 2008.

Damian Stewart, aka Frey, is a semi-nomadic musician, sound artist, new media installation artist, and a skilled and talented multi-lingual software engineer. Originally from New Zealand, he is currently based in Europe. Taking a collaborative approach wherever possible, in his work Damian explores the creation of senses of space through live music performance and installations of controlled sound and light, working with open source software, sound, sensors, and DIY electronics, and analogue and digital technology to create playful and magical experiences. He has performed internationally alongside artists including Biosphere and Deadbeat, has been artist-in-residence with the Modulate collective in the UK and at the Home residency with André Gonçalves in Portugal, and has collaborated on projects in New Zealand, Spain, Portugal, the UK, and the Netherlands. Damian is a member of the N.I.P. collective - New Interfaces for Performance and bases much of his work on ideas of performance in the broadest sense of the word.

Over the last few years, Chris and Damian, have been working together co-developing new and mixed media projects.