Their strange distorted visual soundscapes filled with noise, whispers, omnipresent frames, cuts, glitches, and beauty emerging where you least expect it remind us of net art gone loud. Their source and their medium is the network and the innumerable live streams currently traveling through it 24/7. In Somnifacient Signals – their upcoming online performance at the NEXT Festival – visual artist Matthew Biederman and sound artist Pierce Warnecke take on the role of livestream jockeys. We talked about their past and present artistic productions and future plans, and about what it’s like to work together remotely and live in a reality framed by the logic of the desktop and browser forced upon us by the pandemic.

Let’s start with the obligatory question: where are you, and how are you coping with the second wave of the pandemic and COVID-19-related measures? 

PW: I’m in the countryside in France where my wife is from (in the Alps). We had been living in Spain for the past 5 years (Valencia) where I taught master’s students at Berklee College of Music. We are happy to not be in a city right now, the restrictions feel like less of an imposition here. It’s a huge change in terms of travel and presenting work, but I’m trying to see it as an opportunity to work on things I haven’t been able to finish up. In some respects, it’s been a positive reminder that having a lot of free time is important for creativity – and not just getting things done because there’s a deadline. I feel like I have more room to experiment and test things I might not normally, to try silly things, to make mistakes or fail. Obviously this is super subjective and privileged… I realize daily life for a lot of people is very hard when being limited to home. 

MB: I’m in Montreal, Canada, the same place that I was for the first wave. For the first time since I immigrated to Montreal (from San Francisco about 13 years ago), I have seen the seasons go from winter to spring to summer and fall without ever leaving the city. Prior to this, I was moving through airports at least once a month for exhibitions and performances – so on one hand, it’s been interesting to be in one place for such a long time, but it’s been a huge adjustment. I thrive on meeting other artists, seeing/hearing their work, and having the opportunity to exchange ideas and perspectives.

At the NEXT Festival, which is taking place online this year, you’ll be performing your new piece called Somnifacient Signals, which will be using live streams. Can you tell us a bit more about this performance? 

PW: The idea came from Matthew to try and use what we had at our disposal being stuck at home: mainly, the internet. We wanted to do something in real time and thought it would be interesting to use live streams of audio and video from around the world as a starting point and transform them. We couldn’t travel, barely even go outside, but we have this amazing technology that really allows you to peek and listen in on what’s happening in many places. We compiled a big list of live camera streams from around the world that operate 24/7, some are static, some are operated (pan/tilt/zoom) by volunteers from all over the globe who sign up for slots (‘zoomies’, I think they call themselves…). We zoom in on the zoomies. Not all the cameras have sound, so in addition to Matthew’s video choices, I use sound maps (like radio aporee) which use user-uploaded geo-tagged recordings to add sounds of similar nature or from places nearby. Those field recordings aren’t happening live, but I do select them on the fly while performing. We have a chat open as we play (in parallel) which allows us to communicate as the piece unfolds. The sound is then streamed out from me to Matthew who combines it with his processed images and compiles them together for broadcast.

MB: To build a little on what Pierce mentioned or maybe look at it as a slightly darker reaction to what we have been fed about the internet’s so called ‘ability’ to take us places from the comfort of our homes, which I find to be totally false. I’ve long been interested in using ‘live’ imagery that I have no control over and have made a number of pieces using broadcast television in the old days when that was still a relevant medium. Here the streams are totally banal, they are interesting to me, as there is no agenda being pushed through them, people that appear, if they even know there is a camera, aren’t acting – it’s a bit of an antidote to TikTok and Instagram where what we are seeing isn’t curated or performed in any way.

Your previous two big joint projects Perspection and ∆T (Delta‑T), which span from installations to performances, both revolve around very interesting concepts. For Perspection, it is anamorphism and the idea of embodied perception; in ∆T, your framework is the concept of time in quantum gravity theory. Is there a central concept serving as a framework for Somnifacient Signals?

PW: Somnifacient Signals looks at the internet itself as a medium for audio and video: available streams, how interesting they are (or not), and the quality of their sound/video becomes a variable that we don’t control and have to work with – or change. We sort of look at it like a third performer we react to. I like to think of it as virtual real-time field recording mixed with a kind of found footage approach. We tried to group the different sources into common themes of common online activities in realtime (vanilla version… nothing extreme, for now): chats, zoom calls, live streams of animals, city centers, etc. I think the theme is related to this very new and very global experience of confinement the pandemic has imposed on our lives. The sound and image processing is quite noisy, focusing on more of a destructive approach to the source material – possibly related to the frustration and desire to escape the lockdown…

MB: The destructive impulse is a way to try and shake up or just react to a situation that has been felt globally. It’s also why visually, you’ll see the interface and browsers and windows – I mean, this is what we all were forced to live through and have been living with for such a long time, our reality is framed by the logic of the desktop and browser maybe now so more than ever before.

The idea of the internet as the third performer or as a source of real-time found footage makes me think of John Cage’s use of indeterminacy, where the intention is “to let things be themselves.” How do you relate to this aleatory approach? Is it something you enjoy working with, or do you usually prefer to be fully in control of the performance? 

PW: I use indeterminacy very often for composing music, most of the time through custom software (Max). Even if I use a more traditional digital tool like Ableton I’ll try to use as many random modulation sources, timings, etc, as I can. This being said, I’m not 100% about ‘letting things be themselves’, sonically. Randomness can end up really sounding unthoughtful and rough if there’s not some reworking or limiting of it. I love aleatoric approaches as an initial gesture, to let things run the course and see what kind of permutations develop. A lot of the time, I’ll record a first, more random generation of sounds, then go back through and pick out parts that speak to my artistic ideas and to the piece at hand. And for performance, I’ll try and do that process in real time. For this piece I built 6 different custom samplers that process incoming sound in very different ways. They all have multiple parameters, and I have a big ‘random’ button for each of them. I flip through random generations until my ear says ‘ah interesting, let’s start here’. So just like we have to work with (and sort of curate) incoming audio and video, I try to work with (or modify) my semi-chance sounds.

MB: Great question, I think for me this work has really been a return to many earlier concerns and maybe even getting back to the core of my interest in working with media in particular. I have been a huge fan of early Nam June Paik works and his methodology, particularly before he started making sculptures and was more involved directly with Fluxus where he met and became friends with Cage. In many ways, what I often do is to build tools to manipulate existing imagery, in my case through software, but Paik had to build hardware to directly manipulate the video signal, like his famous “wobbulator” that you can see being used in many of those works. Furthermore, his experiments at WGBH (public television in Boston MA) utilized the wobbulator as well as the Paik/Abe video synthesizer to treat footage from the video tape library, there and then re-broadcast the treated material back out through the airwaves creating a beautiful loop of receiver-response-retransmit that can only shake up the viewer in order that they can ask themselves what is actually going on? It gets down to that question of who owns your attention and for what purpose? So to get back to your question, the idea of being in control isn’t totally the concern with this particular work, and it’s been a bit of a reset – the audiovisual milieu seems to be overly concerned with control and razor sharp synchronicity that in many ways is a technical hurdle that can be cleared quite easily these days. So hopefully we can see a return to works that are more engaging conceptually and aesthetically rather than technical juggernauts and gee whiz programming.

In your previous performances, you have successfully avoided the trap of sound-driven visuals and image-driven “soundtracks.” What is the relationship between these two components in Somnifacient Signals? How do they interact?

PW: That’s been a core component for us since the beginning. We’ve always tried to keep both mediums balanced, neither being more of a focus than the other. Interaction happens in both directions for inter-influence and in order to avoid one sense becoming primary and the other an accompaniment. In this case, it’s a little trickier since there’s delay on everything sent through the internet, a delay that’s variable, too. So our focus for this performance will have some synchronicity done at the point of broadcast, but it’s actually evolved to be more of an open audiovisual dialogue as we comb through our online sources together.

MB: I see this as a very improvisational work as well, where I’m playing a visual instrument and in a large way, the interaction comes from listening and reacting to what Pierce is doing and vice versa. I love the delay Pierce mentions and the tension it can create.

How did you get to know each other, and what inspired you to start working together? 

PW: We met in 2013 (I think?) at Bozar Festival in Brussels where we both were showing installation pieces. We hit it off and spent a good amount of time together and then started working on Perspection in 2015 which was a big piece that travelled quite a bit until 2018. In 2019 we created ∆T (DeltaT) but were only able to perform it once before the pandemic started slowing international travel… Hopefully, we can perform it again in the near future!

Matthew’s visual work is really striking, he’s passionate about the history of media art, which I think gives sense and place to his work. He has a very strong work ethic, which I really enjoy. We can get a lot done together, even from a distance (we did a lot of work separated even before the pandemic). His visual approach is really unique to me, and I appreciate that there’s always a strong conceptual core to whatever he works on. 

MB: Pierce covered the how, but in terms of why I worked and continue to do so is that I enjoy he is not only a composer/musician but also has his own visual and installation practice – so he has a strong understanding not only what works conceptually but also what it takes to get these works done with a strong aesthetic. As for our performance work, he pushes the envelope of what the work needs rather than creating variations on a well established theme within the audiovisual world – which very few artists are willing to do or to take the risk.

You live on two different continents, and even without travel restrictions like we’re experiencing this year, remote collaboration can be challenging. What are your tactics for making the best of this? Can you describe the process of developing an artistic project together remotely?

PW: We’ve always worked more or less from a distance – mainly through regular talking and setting up deadlines. Working from a distance means having a lot of trust in the other person’s ability to get their side of the work done. It also means being open to letting the person come back, after a period of individual research, with something that might differ from a starting idea since there’s less room for immediate feedback. I think we both respect each other’s work and capacity to follow through which has made working from a distance feasible. Not all collaborations work this easily. 🙂

MB: This might be a little too distanced for me, I do like the occasional face to face meeting and side by side working, but for this performance in particular, it all makes sense. I find our process to be a great way of working individually and each bringing something different back after periods away.  I find it a very different process working on video vs audio and I don’t think it always works to be working with one another anyway.

What is the place of your collaboration in the context of your individual artistic trajectories? How are your individual backgrounds and practices reflected in your joint work? 

PW: I’ve learned a ton from Matthew, he’s inspired me to get more serious, perhaps professional, about my work. Both from what one sees as a final result, but also everything leading up to that moment (communication, floor plans, and riders, grant applications, etc). Our collaboration generally has me on sound and Matthew on video, although we both have good knowledge of both fields so we can share quite a lot across the aisle. I work on my own quite a bit with video, but I love being able to just focus on sound and see what kinds of visual elements that inspires, or seeing Matthew’s video and coming up with sounds or a composition that might fit his idea.

MB: While Pierce and I have done an installation, we’ve also been quite focused on performances as well, which for me is a really important aspect of my work – it’s more free than other projects in many ways. The work has room to breathe and evolve and change in ways that, let’s say, an installation doesn’t.  I think working alongside Pierce has definitely pushed me to reconsider the possibilities of A/V work in very interesting ways – his take on what these works can and could be is always fascinating.

What are your plans in the coming months? Artistic or otherwise…

PW: I have some big parties, clubbing, travel in crowded spaces and lots of time in bars and restaurants planned. Or not, ha. I have a few new collaborative pieces coming up, FLUX with my friend Clément Edouard here in France is a long term research piece about the disappearance of an imaginary river. It will feature large scale kinetic sculpture of stones that move in an aquatic way. I have an album on Room 40 called The Noise of Time that focuses on disappearance via the deterioration of sound and form. That will be released soon, I think, I actually don’t know. I’m working on a new piece with Frank Bretschneider as well, for sometime next year. And a ton of music I need to finish!

MB: I’ve got a couple of things coming up, a group show at MAXXI in Rome early next year, so I am prepping that, and I’m slowly finishing a new sculptural light work that I’ve been working on for what seems like ages. Otherwise,  I’ll be surfing live streams, dreaming of my next destination, wondering where that lone person walking the streets of Osaka is headed to. 

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Matthew Biederman has worked across media and milieus, architectures and systems, communities and continents since 1990. He creates works where light, space, and sound reflect on the intricacies of perception. Since 2008, he has been a co-founder of Arctic Perspective Initiative, together with Marko Peljhan, working on projects throughout the circumpolar region. He has served as artist-in-residence at a variety of institutions and institutes, including the Center for Experimental Television on numerous occasions, CMU’s CREATE lab, the Wave Farm, and many more. His work has been featured at Lyon Bienniale, Istanbul Design Bienniale, The Tokyo Museum of Photography, ELEKTRA, MUTEK, Montreal Bienniale (CA), Bienniale of Digital Art (CA), SCAPE Bienniale (NZ) and the Moscow Biennale (RU), among many others. Biederman is currently represented by Art45 / Sedition (online) and lives and works in Montreal, Quebec. 

Pierce Warnecke is a multidisciplinary digital artist. His work, on the border between experimental music, digital arts, and video art, is influenced by the observation of the effects of time on matter: modification, deterioration, and disappearance. He frequently collaborates with prominent figures such as Frank Bretschneider, Matthew Biederman, and Keith Fullerton Whitman among others. He has presented his work in the form of performances, concerts, and installations at MUTEK, ZKM, CTM, Elektra, KW Institut, La Biennale NEMO, Sonic Acts, Martin Gropius Bau, MAC Montreal, Scopitone, LEV Festival, SXSW, FILE, etc. From 2017 to 2019, he composed several audiovisual pieces for the Institute for Sound and Music’s Hexadome project in Berlin, San Francisco, Montreal, and more. His music has been published on raster-media (DE) and Room40 (AU), and he is represented by DISK Agency in Berlin.

PICS: Stills from Somnifacient Signals, courtesy of the artists