Artists' Association MUU / BABEL-ON

suomi - english

Thu 19 August 5-7 pm Presentation
(before ISEA2004 opening in Kiasma Museum) A reception with the artists Katherine Liberovskaya ja Phill Niblock who will be present to answer questions about the installation and about their respective processes.

The first collaboration between New York intermedia artist/composer Phill Niblock and Montreal video/multimedia artist Katherine Liberovskaya, BABEL-ON is a sound based audio-video work-in-progress exploring the melodic and rhythmical dimensions of human spoken languages as musical instruments of communication and concentrates on the sound of verbal expression rather than on its meaning.

The four simultaneous projections display different successions of video clips of a wide variety of very tight shots of the faces of women and men of different nationalities and/or origins speaking in their mother-tongues about the musical rhythmical properties and idiosyncrasies of their respective languages as well as strive to remember tongue twisters or rhymes. In counterpoint to these video projections with their sync sound,concurrently plays a sound composition, derived from voices and languages, by Phill Niblock. Constructed from the actual utterances in the video footage, this thick, numerous track, composition forms an acoustic environment that interacts with the multilingual speech, at times accompanying it, at others overriding and replacing it, at still other times growing silent, thus creating a sonic conversation of sorts.

BABEL-ON is meant to create a very physical, living audio-video flow of variations of associations and dissociations, of different tensions, between image and sound, speech and music, words and significations, intention and chance, a constant flux of unstable, slipping, shifting meanings and perceptions. It is an experiential piece that evokes the non-verbal possibilities of vocal communication, suggesting various relationships between diverse geo-political regions, cultural traditions and civilizations.

Sync-sound video: Katherine Liberovskaya
Sound piece: Phill Niblock


Katherine Liberovskaya is a Montreal-born multidisciplinary artist who has been working predominantly in experimental video and multimedia since the late eighties. Over the years, she has produced numerous single-channel videos and several installation works some of which have earned awards and mentions in Europe and North America. Her works have been presented at various artistic events around the world and are included in the video art collections of The National Art Gallery of Canada and The Art Bank of The Canada Council as well as in several private collections. She has held numerous grants and arts awards in Canada and in France where she completed her art education. She is currently based in Montreal where, in addition to her artistic practice, she has been teaching television production at the university level and pursuing doctoral studies in communication, culture and art . Her articles have been published in ESSE-Arts + Opinions, la Revue Electronique du CIAC and the Canadian Journal of Communication. Moreover, she is involved in the programming and organization of diverse media art events, notably with Studio XX, a Montreal cyberfeminist resource and presentation center dedicated to women's media/on-line art founded in 1995 (www.studioxx.org), of which she was president from 1999 to 2003. She is currently on the board of directors of the Independent Film and Video Alliance of Canada. liberovskaya@compuserve.com	Phill Niblock is an intermedia artist using music, film, photography, video and computers. He makes thick, loud drones of music, filled with microtones of instrumental timbres which generate many other tones in the performance space. Simultaneously, he presents films/videos which look at the movement of people working, or computer driven black and white abstract images floating through time. He was born in Indiana in 1933. Since the mid-60's he has been making music and intermedia performances which have been shown at numerous venues around the world. Since 1985, he has been the director of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York (www.experimentalintermedia.org) where he has been an artist/member since 1968. He is the producer of Music and Intermedia presentations at EI since 1973 (about 1000 performances) and the curator of EI's XI Records label. In 1993 was formed an Experimental Intermedia organization in Gent, Belgium - EI v.z.w. Gent - to support the artist-in-residence house and installations there. Phill Niblock's music is available on the XI, Moikai and Touch labels. A DVD of films and music is available on the Extreme label. pniblock@compuserve.com
For more information: MUU gallery +358-9-625 972 muu@muu.fi
Artists’ Association MUU (The Other) is artist run, Finnish interdisciplinary artist association, founded in 1987 to present and promote new and experimental forms of art.
Isea2004 – 12th International Symposium of Electronic Arts Sonic, Wearable and Wireless Wxperience www.isea2004.net