[Microsound-announce] [LINE] new release STEVE RODEN 'AIRFORMS' LINE022

[richard chartier / LINE]

LINE PRESENTS:

NEW RELEASE:
artist: STEVE RODEN
title: AIRFORMS
cat.no: LINE022
edition: 600
packaging: new LINE packaging, 5" 4 color process printed sleeves w/ 
shrinkwrap

SHIPPING SEPTEMBER 1ST
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LINE is proud to present the latest full length recording from visual 
and sound artist Steve Roden. Airforms was first presented at the 
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art [ Scottsdale, Arizona ] in April 
of 2004. The work was inspired by a group of experimental houses 
designed by Wallace Neff in the 1940’s using a process he called 
airform construction. The houses were built by spraying concrete over 
an inflated balloon structure. Inspired by the nautilus sea shell, the 
houses were an investigation into the aesthetic possibilities of 
structures formed by air, and the psychological effects of living 
inside a kind of organic space.

The installation attempted to reflect Neff’s ideas in the use of air as 
an inspirational skeleton and physical presence in the construction of 
the forms as well as the audio. Five objects were built by laying 
plaster over small balloons. The sound work was created using the 
transformed sound of a breath blown through an old wooden organ pipe. 
Both essentially built from Roden’s own breath.  The original 
multi-channel audio work consisted of five small speakers, each placed 
within a single plaster form. The version for this cd has been 
re-organized for stereo listening. The lack of narrative structure 
attempts to create an audio space in line with Neff’s architectural 
interests in the airform projects.

Steve Roden is a visual and sound artist from Los Angeles. His work 
includes painting, drawing, sculpture, film/video, and sound 
installation. Roden’s involve a combination of conceptual strategies 
and intuitive movements. Found structures are lifted from their 
original intentions and combined with invented systems to be used as 
the basis for improvisation and abstraction. In the visual works, 
printed language, graphic design, maps, and other forms of specific 
visual notation are sent through various self invented systems of 
translation to create open readings and new meanings. In the sound 
works, singular source materials such as objects, architectural spaces, 
and field recordings, are abstracted through electronics to create new 
audio spaces, or ‘possible landscapes.’ The sound works present 
themselves with an aesthetic roden describes as “lower case’’ - sound 
concerned with subtlety and the quiet activity of listening.

The LA Weekly recently called Roden “the most idiosyncratic abstract 
painter to emerge from LA in the 90’s”; while The Wire magazine 
recently referred to Roden’s cd the radio as “a particularly modest 
form of genius”.

Roden has been exhibiting his visual and sound works since 1986 in 
numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally, including museums, 
galleries and arts spaces in USA, EU and Japan.

Recent shows include the Stadt Galerie Museum (Saarbrucken, Germany), 
San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, 
UCLA Armand Hammer Museum & the Mak Center for Art and Architecture los 
angeles, the drawing center, nyc; susanne vielmetter la projects (LA), 
Jennjoy Gallery (SF), Kunsthallen Brandts Klaedefabrik (Odense, 
Denmark), Podewil (Berlin, Germany) and many others.

Roden has performed live improvised soundscapes in arts spaces, 
galleries, museums, theatres, and alternative spaces worldwide 
including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the ICA & the Hayward 
Gallery (London, UK) MIT (Boston), The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), 
and The Musee de Beaux Artes (Nantes, France) as well as performance 
tours of Brazil and Japan and music/art festivals around the globe.

Roden has released cd’s of his sound works under his own name, as well 
as under the name ‘in be tween noise’on labels include Trente Oiseaux 
(Germany), Sonoris (France), GMBH (France), Digital Narcis and Meme 
(Japan), and LINE (US). Roden’s work has appeared on a number of 
international compilations, including the Tulpas project on Selektion 
(Germany).