From September 18 to September 20, 2005 Julien Ottavi and Dion Workman will implement the next stage in their ongoing collaboration. Since 2003 Ottavi and Workman have been developing a collaborative practice that explicitly engages with the social context of experimental music; dissolving boundaries between performance and installation, concert hall and studio space (or, the inside and outside of ‘musical’ spaces), improvisation and composition, ‘pieces’ of music and ‘sound worlds’ of indeterminate duration. Their collaborative practice constitutes a pure research of sonic intervention into socio-architectonics.

Spati0silo will consist of a single long duration performance/installation utilizing a 16 channel sound system designed and built by Stephan Moore. Capturing sound from the grounds of Issue Project Room, inside the silo that constitutes the performance space and further inside their computers, Ottavi and Workman will construct a 36 hour long piece that explores the aesthetic and technological possibilities of complex sonic spatialization.

The complexity of the projects technological and sonic/spatial aspects will be mirrored in the level of engagement of the artists with their audience. The relatively long duration of the performance allows for an on-going conversation where audience responses can inform the ‘piece’ allowing for a social feedback loop that contributes to the evolution of the work. This conversation may operate on the various levels of aesthetic, technological or socio-political considerations.

Julien Ottavi is a Nantes (France) based sound artist. He is a founding member of Formanex (performing 20th Century graphic scores by Cornelius Cardew, John Cage, Christian Wolff, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown among others) and regurlarly collaborates with Dion Workman, Kasper T. Toeplitz, Pizmo, Ralf Wehowsky, Keith Rowe, Brandon Labelle and Sophie Gosselin. Recent solo works by Ottavi include Nervure Magnetique (Sigma Editions) and For Degradable Music: the CDR I will Never Release (W.M.O/R). Ottavi is also the founder of the experimental music organization APO33.

Dion Workman, a native of New Zealand now based in New York, is a composer and improviser of experimental computer music. For over a decade Workman has been articulating a unique sonic vision exploring the extreme edges of musicality, “sound art” and the audible world. In 2003 Workman was awarded the Max Brand Prize for innovation in electronic and electro-acoustic music by the Austrian Cultural Forum for his composition ‘Ching’ (Antiopic, 2003). In 2004 Workman founded TMP a research collective of sound artists and theorists investigating the relationship between sound and psycho-geography. TMP research projects involve the manipulation of sound in public spaces and the creation of vastly spatialized sonic pieces where “composition” becomes the act of moving through space.