Ryan Ross Smith. Juried Artist
SAE
SAE
Artist Statement
With Way of Schesa we have moved away from the high-energy, Algorave style of previous works. The new experience favors an audiovisual experience that invites a more meditative, AlgoChill type of engagement. Obi Wan Codenobi (Lawson) and The Wookie (Smith) set out on a new adventure across the galaxy, settling into an interstitial span of hyperspace travel while cruising the uncharted territories near the Chiss Ascendancy. The Tsiraki is poured and an AlgoChill set starts to come over the speakers. A surprise for sure, as the first and only known previous AlgoChill had been years ago. Codenobi and Wookie unwind into these fleeting moments between epic battles and endless negotiations. In a sense this new AlgoChill performance is speculative of what one might experience traveling amongst millions of stars, using the force to bend and shape them, and sonically bringing their formations and constellations to life with patterns and wisps of smoke, coaxing signal from noise. Could this be how the ozyly-esehembo (sky-walkers) envisioned hyperspace routes without navigation computers?
About the artists
Shawn Lawson is an artist and researcher creating the computational sublime. He performs under the pseudonym Obi-Wan Codenobi where he live-codes real-time computer graphics with his open source software, The Force and The Dark Side. Lawson’s other work explores the computational sublime through a range of technology: stereoscopy, camera vision, touch screens, game controllers, hand-held devices, random number generators; and output formats: print, sculpture, mobile apps, instruction sets, animation, and interactive.
Ryan Ross Smith is a composer, performer, sound designer, engineer and educator currently based in New York. Smith has performed throughout the US, Europe and UK, including performances at MoMA and PS1 [NYC] and Le Centre Pompidou [Paris, FR], has had his music performed throughout North America, Iceland, Denmark, Australia and the UK, has presented his work and research at conferences including NIME, ISEA, ICLI, ICLC, SMF, ACMC and TENOR, and has lectured at various colleges and universities. Smith is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at the State University of New York at Oneonta.
Credits: Shawn Lawson and Ryan Ross Smith