March 16, 2012: Zach Layton for Radio Boredcast

ZACH LAYTON – FOR RADIO BOREDCAST

Slowness is perceived and experienced as an accumulation of heaps of sound events layered upon each other like an ourobouros eating its own tail. Different ways of thinking about slowness are anchored by the cello and piano movement from Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time (louange a l'eternite de Jesus). As this material, which transcends notions of measured time, plays itself out it collides and melts into other ideas about slowness from the voices of children (non-adult time), the song of the humpback whale (non-human time), pygmy song (non western time), the buzzing of dragonfly wings (insect time)....an hour of your time outside 21st century western time...

Zach Layton is a guitarist, composer, curator, improviser, teacher and video artist based in Brooklyn. His work investigates unconscious and automatic musical impulses through the practice of free improvisation and indeterminacy. Using an EEG which can interpret and read brainwave signal in realtime, he is able to sonify and visualize this stream of unconscious data. His music involves a combination of digital and analog processes, field recordings and electric guitar played in non-standard tunings. Often controlled by brainwave impulses, these sounds interact with monochromatic computer generated video produced through complex deformations of basic geometric forms.

Zach has performed and exhibited at The Kitchen, Issue Project Room, Roulette, Diapason, PS1/MoMa, Anthology Film Archives, Joe’s Pub, Performa, Exit Art, Art Forum Berlin, Sculpture Center, Transmediale, and many other spaces. He has collaborated with Luke Dubois, Vito Acconci, Elliott Sharp, the Joshua Light Show, Jonas Mekas, Tony Conrad, Bradley Eros, Alex Waterman, Nick Hallett, Andrew Lampert, Matthew Ostrowski, Michael Evans, MV Carbon, Ryan Sawyer, Peter Gordon, Tristan Perich and many other artists, filmmakers, curators, musicians and friends. Zach is also founder of Brooklyn’s monthly experimental music series, “Darmstadt: Classics of the Avant Garde” co-curated with Nick Hallett featuring leading local and international composers and improvisers, former co-curator of the PS1 warmup music series and curator at Issue Project Room.

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