Sounding the Body was founded by James Eck Rippie alongside Lisa Cameron, Rick Reed, R. Lee Dockery, Colin Andrew Sheffield, Sonya Gonzales, Alex Keller, and Sean O'Neill. Formed during the pandemic to find a space where friends/collaborators could explore sound and art during the intensity of the world’s unraveling events. Sounding the Body is an improvisational ensemble with an array of aesthetic backgrounds acting as catharsis and genesis, exploring the new groundless landscape to cultivate something with familiarity and openness, seeking for what can exist within the new narrative.
Artists:
James Eck Rippie is a musician and visual artist originally from Nashville, TN and currently residing in Austin, TX. His work utilizes samples manipulated by turntables and electronics, and often explores the psychological impressions that juxtaposition and abstraction procure. Rippie has worked extensively as a sound engineer in the film industry, which has partially set the tone for his artistic work, creating aurally dynamic pieces with a focus on finding a path to within the subconscious narrative, creating what one reviewer noted as "a soundtrack to curiosity". The composer works in a solo & collaborative capacity and has recorded extensively in a project with Colin Andrew Sheffield. He has also performed with eriKm (France), Paulo Raposa (Portugal), Simon Whetham (UK), amongst others. James Eck Rippie has presented his work with numerous performances sound installations. And has collaborated extensively with art organizations curating events within experimental music community. Rippie's recorded works have appeared on recording imprints such as Elevator Bath (U.S.) Cronica (Portugal), SIRR (Portugal).
See more at: www.jameseckrippie.com
Rick Reed, b. 1957, is a self-taught experimental composer living in Austin, TX He plays mainly analog synthesizers with various effect pedals and continues his childhood fascination with radio signals, tape loops, and the repurposing of found-sound musical pieces. Reed is a pioneer in contemporary minimalist electronic aesthetic and has collaborated extensively with AMM’s Keith Rowe and experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, and has appeared on the Elevator Bath, Beta-lactam Ring, and Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! label.
See more at: https://richardkreed.bandcamp.com
Lisa Cameron (aka Venison Whirled) is from Austin, TX. Using amplified/acoustic percussion and strings, she locates resonant frequencies in space to create oscillating overtones, which are then employed as sound sources for live improvisation. In 2013, for the New Media Art and Sound Summit,in Austin, Texas, she composed and directed "Canopy Of Sound", involving 12 suspended cymbal players in an outdoor dynamic context. This led her to form Ommmg, an ongoing acoustic percussion group with ritualistic overtones. She has improvised live with Jandek, Mani Neumier, Eugene Chadbourne, Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten, Faust, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Claire Rousay, Alex Cunningham, Damon Smith, Raquel Bell, Tom Carter, Nathan Bowles, Fritz Welch, Sharkiface, Sandy Ewen, Thor Harris, Leslie Keffer, Jonathan Horne, Steve McKay, Rat Bastard, Raub Roy, and others. She also plays drums with various rock bands ST37, Suspirians, percussion with Future Blondes, and Three Day Stubble, and played guitar in The Devil Bat and Devil Bat's Daughter. Cameron has also appeared on Daniel Johnston, Roky Erickson, and Glass Eye records.
See more at: https://lisacameronsisterskullrekkids.bandcamp.com/
Sean O’Neill is an artist working with sound, light, and electronic media. He explores various strategies of engaging with both the visible light spectrum and the audible frequency range to examine the ways in which perception shapes the dynamics of spatiality. His work often incorporates elements of field recordings, found objects, FM radio, and embedded electronics. O’Neill’s most recent releases are in collaboration with Alex Keller, and available on Elevator Bath, Mimeomeme, and Loma Editions.
Alex Keller is an audio artist, sound designer, curator and teacher based in Austin, TX. His work in the media of performance, installation, and recorded release reflects his interests in architecture, language, abstraction and music. He is an active audio production professional, has taught classes in media production at the Art Institute of Austin, Shoreline College, and the Art Institute of Seattle, has won awards for his creative work from the Austin Critics Table, Austin Chronicle, the City of Seattle, Puget Sound Transit, and Jack Straw Productions. He speaks regularly at academic, commercial and fan events about his creative and commercial work, and holds regular workshops on creative and technical methods. In 2018 he was the keynote speaker at the University of Texas’ Digital Field Methods Institute conference. Alex received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995 and an MLA from St. Edward’s University in 2005. He is a founding member of Phonography Austin and the Mimeomeme collective, serves on the boards of several arts organizations, and hosted Commercial Suicide, Texas’ longest-running experimental music program, for eleven years.
See more at: https://alexkeller.net
Sonya Gonzales is a sound artist from Austin, TX who holds degrees in English & Media Arts. Recently, she graduated from Goldsmiths University (London, UK) with a masters in Music – Sonic Arts. She is currently the Managing Director of local non-profit, Church of the Friendly Ghost (Austin, TX) for the 2020 year. Her latest work centers around ideas on improvisation and collage through various forms of media (video, radio, projections), utilizing different technologies. Fascinated with self-organization and assemblage, she uses sound to research interactions within generative systems mainly through Max MSP, Ableton and sensors. She has created installations for the New Media & Art Sound Summit (Austin, TX) and multiple Dadageek showcases (Austin, TX). Her recent sound installation project, “Inter[per]ception” was shortlisted for the Music Hackspace Residency Program at Somerset House Studios (2018, London, UK) and she was a presenting artist at UNESCO SXSW Media Arts Exhibition (2019, Austin, TX) with her latest project, “Mary || Marie.” Her most recent work was a composition for a 32-channel, immersive project titled “Prakriti,” that was held during Fusebox Festival with the Rolling Ryot sound group.
See more at: https://sonyamgonzales.com
R. Lee Dockery is a musician and composer working out of Austin, TX. His primary focus is the recording and manipulation of field recordings, objects, and unconventional sound sources. He has released albums for such labels as No Kings, Somatic, and Astral Spirits.
See more at: https://rleedockery.bandcamp.com
Colin Andrew Sheffield was born in El Paso in 1976 and lived in various cities in Texas prior to 2004, when he relocated to the Seattle area. In 2012 he moved back to Texas and currently makes Austin his home. He is a self-taught drummer, playing in various collaborative situations in his home state before eventually making a total transition to electronic music. After initially working with exclusively digital sources, in recent years, Sheffield has refined his approach and now focuses on the strict re-contextualization of other commercially available recordings. His aim is to distill the essential qualities of these works and to then utilize that essence for new recordings. Usually only very brief sections of the original works are selected. These raw components are then contracted, expanded, layered, and/or otherwise processed until something new is forged. The resultant music is an atmospheric soundscape, gradually shifting and unfolding, offering subtle nuance and quiet restraint. His recordings often seem to have much in common with ambient electronic music, though are equally akin to "plunderphonic" audio collage. In 1998 Sheffield founded the Elevator Bath recording label which has continually issued experimental works from a variety of artists from the United States and abroad. Sheffield has released a number of solo recordings since 1998, including 2005's First Thus, his debut long-player, as well as 2009's Signatures (via the Invisible Birds label), 2010's Slowly (on the Mystery Sea label of Belgium), 2012's Time Will Tell (on the Quiet World label of the UK), 2017's Endsheets (on the Sinneslöschen label), and 2018's Repair Me Now (on Jason Lescalleet's Glistening Examples label). Sheffield will release an LP on the Auf Abwegen label in 2021.
See more at: www.elevatorbath.com
Watch this presentation online - Tuesday 5/11/2021 via https://www.twitch.tv/experimental_sound_studio