FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Tamar Fortgang
213-237-2873 (do not publish)
REDCATpr@calarts.edu

UK Artists Alistair MacDonald and Sarah Rubidge Present Sensuous Geographies, an Interactive Audio-Visual Environmental Installation, at REDCAT

January 28, 29
6:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.
$5 - general
Free for students

View the event

January 6, Los Angeles - Electroacoustic composer Alistair MacDonald and choreographer/digital media artist Sarah Rubidge, present the U.S. premiere of Sensuous Geographies at REDCAT on Wednesday and Thursday, January 28 & 29. The interactive environment is open from 6:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. both evenings.

REDCAT - the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater - is CalArts' new performance venue and gallery in Walt Disney Concert Hall. Admission is $5.00 for the general public and free for students. Tickets may be purchased at the REDCAT box office located at the corner of 2nd and Hope streets, by calling 213-237-2800 or online.

Sensuous Geographies is an immersive, responsive audio-visual installation into which the artists invite viewers "to discover, generate and manipulate rich sensual worlds of sound and color." The installation features a forest of translucent projection surfaces and rich, polyphonic sound that creates both a space for play and a meditative environment in which the barriers between the audience and the artwork are dissolved. As viewers move into and through the installation space they generate and influence and change both individual musical layers and the overall texture of the sound environment. At the same time shadowy virtual echoes of the visitors float in and out of vision in the installation environment. Those visitors who choose to interact with the installation are clothed in richly colored costumes before they enter the space. Once robed, their movement as individuals begins to have an effect on the sound within the installation, and as they enter the interactive space they become a part of the visual environment-integral elements of the visual environment.

Alistair MacDonald is a composer of electroacoustic music. Based in Scotland, his work draws on a wide range of music which reflects a keen interest in improvisation and the human voice. Many of his works are made in collaboration with other artists working many different media, and explore contexts beyond the concert hall. His music has won a number of awards including, recently, a Creative Scotland Award, and is performed and broadcast in the UK and abroad. Several works are available on compact disc. Recent commissions include music for choreographer Anna Krzystek and clarsach player Catriona McKay. He also works with composer Jo Hyde and saxophonist Paul Dunmall in free improvisation involving live sampling, sound processing and mixing. He worked extensively with the electroacoustic ensemble BEAST producing and diffusing concerts, and was, for many years, on the board of Sonic Arts Network, the UK association for electroacoustic music. He teaches composition and regularly directs workshops in schools, colleges and arts centres, and is Director of the Electroacoustic Studios at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama in Glasgow.

Sarah Rubidge is a choreographer, digital installation artist, dance writer, and currently an AHRB Research Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts at University College Chichester. Co-founder of the Bristol Community Dance Centre in the early 1980s, she later worked for several years as a dance artist in education with Britain's top contemporary dance artists (including Richard Alston, Siobhan Davies, Shobana Jeyasingh, Ian Spink), helping to make their challenging works accessible to a wider audience, and developing her own choreography. She continues to create work, lecture and conduct workshops for dance artists and other arts practitioners in Britain, Europe, East Africa, East Asia, and the USA.

She has worked extensively with artists from other disciplines (composers, visual artists, digital artists and theatre practitioners) both as an educator and a choreographer. Her choreographic work is generally generated in close collaboration with other artists and covers a variety of genres. Pieces have included dance works, music-theatre works, mixed-media performance and digital installations. Her work has been presented in The New Territories festival, Glasgow, The Place Theatre, The Bonnie Bird Theatre and as part of Dance Umbrella at The South Bank Centre in London; The Barber Institute, Birmingham; The Fabrica Gallery, Brighton; Arizona State University, Phoenix; The National Theatre, Uganda, and other venues.

The installation by MacDonald and Rubidge is the first in a series of artistic exchanges between CalArts and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

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