[microsound] Thinkbox: Archive - Art Gallery Windsor

[sr_ thinkbox <sr_thinkbox@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

www.thinkbox.ca

Thinkbox is a project-based collective exploring material and technique to 
produce works that develop complex questions to simplified answers about 
art, technology, and the nature of multimedia creation. Thinkbox intersects 
with mass culture through a variety of initiatives ranging from gallery 
installations, performances, and the release of audio/video products. 
Archive brings together the latest sound and visual works by the six-member 
core of Thinkbox, which consists of Christopher Bissonnette, Mark Laliberte, 
Chris McNamara, Steve Roy, Rob Theakston and Bill Van Loo.

Selected works include Bissonnette?s Cathedral, an austere, meditative 
assemblage of sculpture and electronic sound compositions made from 
reverberation and resonance. Combining ingenuity and technology, Bissonnette 
transmits sounds through ordinary objects and surfaces, creating a 
sustained, or extended, sonic ambience from ?in-between? and background 
sounds.

By contrast, Laliberte?s work is intensely visual, an enveloping video 
environment which presents the audience with a parallel representation of 
the world. This DVD projection engages the visitor within an aerial view of 
a printed cartoon city, full of wandering aerial movements, occasional 
reminders of gravity, and a persistent soundtrack of droning voices. 
Laliberte describes his work as a scene ?whose content literally hangs in 
the air?.

Establishing Shots, a projection by Chris McNamara focuses on the opening 
visuals in any scene of a movie that convey a sense of time and place for 
characters (and by extension, viewers). The video work disrupts these 
fundamental cues, testing their function by introducing a series of 
fragmented narrative strands in the form of foreign-language voiceovers and 
subtitles. The voices and text might all represent different characters and 
points of view, but they also encourage viewers to read between the lines of 
a linear narrative and to find other poetic possibilities.

In his latest soundwork Rob Theakston explores other forms of information 
that help us make sense of the world. His compositions deal with metadata, 
its flexibility, and the notion of  information recycling. Theakston bases 
his compositions on metadata from an album database of over 700,000 records 
and translating them into sound, making new music out of ?allmusic.?

ISOLATE.CONNECT by Steve Roy pairs electronic soundscapes with photography 
and lightbox technology to continue in a minimalist tradition he has been 
exploring for over 6 years. The sound component features compositions 
involving Roy and a collaborator, who produce their own unique sound pallets 
(ISOLATE) which is also blended (CONNECT).

Bill Van Loo, a producer, musician, and sound artist, has made forays into 
the visual realm, though morphing and riffing on imagery in a manner akin to 
soundwork. Van Loo contributes recent photography (entitled Triptych) and a 
video creation, finding scenes and images that display some sort of beauty 
in the midst of, or in spite of, brokenness or decay.

Thinkbox:Archive will feature ongoing documentation in the form of a new CD 
release and a full-colour, scholarly catalogue produced in collaboration 
with the Thames Art Gallery in Chatham, Ontario. More information on 
Thinkbox and its initiatives can be accessed at www.thinkbox.ca

Please join us for the opening reception of the Thinkbox/Ken Gregory 
exhibitions on May 12 8-11 pm. The artists will be in attendance.

There will be a special Thinkbox performance at the Gallery on June 30 at 8 
pm.



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