Artist Statement
As a Sonic/Visual Artist and extended guitar musician, my work focuses on psycho-acoustics, audio phenomena and the intimacy of the listener's experience. My process is entirely improvisatory in nature and requires me to record in real time.
Using a 12-string acoustic guitar and a range of processing techniques, such as negative frequency responses, formant synthesis and multi-channel surround sound, I construct feedback systems that resonate the guitar’s strings, ringing out sympathetic tones. On the surface, my compositions have many elements of musicality, with harmonic color and multilayered arrangements, but it’s beneath the surface where my interests lie.
My fascination is with the boundaries of perception, the permeability of the body and the space between what exists and what is felt. It’s here where I start to build and shape the unseen and unheard, magnifying these concealed murmurations and indeterminable intrusions that exist below the scope of our hearing, but have real resonant affect upon the body.
So as to invite a physical and emotive experience of sound as swarms, swells and cavitating shifts that perforate the acoustic field and engulf the listener. I try to produce aural equivalents to seismic violence, akin to the calving of an ice shelf or the unnatural silence before a storm.
My work has been exhibited in museums and institutions internationally by way of temporal event or installation at venues such as the Walker Art Center, MoMA PS1, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Lovebytes Biennial (Sheffield, UK), Garage Projects (Atlanta, GA), A.I.R. Gallery (NY, NY), EYEDRUM (Atlanta, GA), free103point9 Wavefarm, SIGGRAPH (Los Angeles, CA) and Queens Museum (Queens, NY).
I've composed, recorded or played performances alongside some of the following musicians:
Ann Hamilton,
Rafael Toral,
Ogurusu Norihide,
Kenneth Kirschner,
Mountains,
Koutaro Fukui, Richard Devine,
EVOL, Dave Gross and Liz Tonne,
Joe McPhee, Andrew Deutsch, and
Pauline Oliveros. and collectively with
Dan Walsh (Shy Layers), and Jason Forrest aka
Donna Summer under the name "the Computers".
1977 Born in Lakenheath, UK
1999 Alfred University, BFA
Resides in Brooklyn, NY, USA
Selected Discography
2021 At the Edge of the Meander: Nightingales in Petite Camargue Alsacienne, Twinned Air, Brooklyn, NY
2020 Cave of the Eye, Twinned Air, Brooklyn, NY
2009 V/A
I/D/V 02 [Guitar], Unframed, recordings and multiples, Brooklyn, NY
2005 V/A
35 Mutant Seconds: based on Rafael Toral's Creamy Burst, Grain of Sound/Baskaru, France/Portugal
2005 Rmx
Memories of Sasakisan, Powershovel Audio, Japan
2003 CD
Ian Epps finds... the4yearoldchild - Courtside: Volume I, SoftL music, Germany
2003 CD
Pinwheels (Rmxs), Institute for Electronic Arts, USA
2001 CD
Audiophone (86 micro tracks) Dead CEO, USA
2001 CD
tennis|match (collaborative audio network game)
Recent Recording Collaborations
2015 One Day: Le Petite Camargue – with Vera Lutter, Gagosian Gallery, NY.
Recorded and engineered by Ian Epps.
2012 One Day: Carré d'Art – with Vera Lutter, Musée d'art contemporain, Nîmes, France.
Field recordings of nightingales in Le Petite Camargue, Alsace, France.
Recorded and engineered by Ian Epps.
2008
Musical, with Dara Friedman (Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, NY), commissioned by Public Art Fund.
Grants and Awards
2014
Media Arts Assistance Fund Grant, the
New York State Council on the Arts &
Wave Farm.
Affiliations
Art Handlers Alliance, Co-founder
Arts Union, Co-founder
Arts & Labor, Co-founder
The Electric Arts Alliance of Atlanta, Co-founder, Atlanta, GA
download::: Curriculum vitae