Thursday 5 March 2020, 7pm
Please note that due to travel concerns Renick has unfortunately cancelled his European tour and is unable to perform at this event. You can read his words about it here.
Nearly ten years on since the first Algorave, worldwide instantiations of the event continue to connect an international community of audio-visual artists experimenting and playing with algorithmic tools. Algorave spans programming paradigms to celebrate the collaborative culture of open source and experimental sound while maintaining a strong root in dance music, making it a space naturally inclined to share, teach, and encourage self-learning. Algorave is many things and continues to evolve. Many parties, workshops, meet-ups, and festivals later, Algorave remains a lively crossing point for experimentation, but more importantly for fun.
Bringing this ethos to Cafe Oto, the evening will showcase work by audio and visual artists:
Deep Vain
Eye Measure
hellocatfood
Hortense
Jude Marcella
Mahalia Henry-Richards
Miri Kat
Seth De Silva
Yaxu
+777000
+ special DJ set from hmurd
Expect a relaxed atmosphere and quick-fire sets from ambient to gabber and back. At its best, Algorave softens the tech wall of mystery, opening exchange between performers and audience.
ALGORITHMS ARE INFECTING DISCOS AND RUINING LIVES
".. not so much a revolution as a de-volution, a rolling back to the backend of music production, where the possibilities of the encoded information inside computer software is open and endless" - Mixmag
Seth De Silva is a Sri Lankan born, London raised DJ & visual artist. For over 12 years he has brought his unique brand of visuals to clubs & parties across London and beyond. Collaborating with seminal labels & collectives such as Body Motion, Never Sleep, Dialled In, Bone Soda, Algo Rave, Bokeh Versions and more.
His visceral DJ sets & performances, explore contemporary club sounds from his native London to global bass music & Sri Lankan folk rhythms.
hellocatfood is the alias of Antonio Roberts, an artist and curator based in Birmingham, UK. For his live performances he uses software including Pure Data to explore the creative potential of algorithms, glitches, and feedback loops. He has provided visuals for the likes of MTV, Com Truise, Blood Sport, Steve Davis, Renick Bell and My Panda Shall Fly and at events including SXSW, Supersonic Festival, Barbican, Green Man festival and more.
Mahalia is an artist hailing from London working on fusing together multiple disciplines. With a background in architectural and spatial design, her current research centres around experimenting with combining technology and performance particularly within physical environments. Live coding allows her to continue these experiments of manipulating and augmenting experiences with code, and she relishes the chaos that ensues.
Eye Measure is a Sheffield based artist making weird and dark computer music with live coding and algorithmic composition. Their performances have taken place at venues such as Cafe OTO, Corsica Studios, Venue MOT, and No Bounds festival.
They have released music with the labels Cherche Encore and Edited Arts, and have a release forthcoming on TT. Alongside making music they are doing a PhD, and co-run Pattern Club, a workshop/event series exploring algorithmic patterns.
Yaxu is the solo project of Alex McLean, who also works as part of collaborations including Slub, CCAI and Canute. He has live coded music since around the year 2000, co-founding the Algorave and TOPLAP live coding movements and creating the free/open source TidalCycles live coding language. He's performed widely including at No Bounds, Sonar, Glastonbury, Transmediale, Bluedot and Shambala festivals. He also directs the AlgoMech festival of Algorithmic and Mechanical Movement, currently planning the fourth edition for November 2020. By day Alex is a textile researcher, investigating weaving as an ancient digital artform as part of the PENELOPE project. He lives in Sheffield UK with his family of people and cats.
“Yaxu’s polyrhythmic and hyperreal strand of techno is showcased on cuts like Public Life and Cyclic showing that he is not just tes ng the confines of how music can be consumed but also how genres can sound. A truly forward-thinking in-flux of material” bleep.com
“Complexity emerges from simple instructions. With a few keystrokes, McLean transforms an arpeggio and a simple set of beats into complex polyrhythms that pan in decaying arcs” - Emily Bick
“Software artists such as Alex McLean are such hardcore outsiders that their art is in the computer code they write”, Grayson Perry
+777000 produces melodramatic code that deals with extending, resurfacing and adjusting memories. The sonic spectrum ranges from rhythmic waves of ambient to RnB infused walls of glistening noise. London-based, they also run the Edited Arts platform.