Recipient of CuratorSpace Bursary

Vicki has received a Bursary from CuratorSpace to spend some time exploring what people are up to currently with AI:

https://www.curatorspace.com/about/news/curatorspace-artist-bursary–vicki-bennett/270

“As a collage artist combining disparate narratives, the ever-emerging, growing availability and use of AI software appeals, with its creation and manipulation of imagery using keywords and phrases. This resonates with my own methodology of using database content searches and mind maps. Both result in juxtapositions and styles that one would not have thought of, a springboard for new ideas and directions.

My current project will involve developing my skills through learning from a number of artists, writers and technicians with working knowledge of AI (e.g. dall.e, disco diffusion, artbreeder, midjourney and also GPT-3) about how to integrate this with my present digital AV collage work. This includes researching the viability of creating a new touring AV performance, to be later expanded to be a real space 360 immersive cinema work and exhibition.

This project builds on my previous work, including the immersive 360 real-space cinema, Gone, Gone Beyond. This work was a 10 screen / 6 or 8 speaker piece, with seamless wrap around projection and surround sound, and was commissioned by Naut Humon, the founder of immersive theatre project RML CineChamber. It comprised of movie and musical compositions, animated and sample-based, musique concrète collage juxtaposed with filmed and recorded content. The project has been a work in progress since 2017 and was shown for the first time in Autumn 2021 in a feature-length format in venues including The Barbican.”

Rhapsody in Glue Ltd Edition Lathe Cut LP


PEOPLE LIKE US & ERGO PHIZMIZ – Rhapsody in Glue
Limited edition 12” lathe cut clear vinyl LP & download
Release Date: 26 November 2022
Pre-order on Bandcamp from Friday 7 October 2022

https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/album/rhapsody-in-glue-lp

People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz are pleased to announce the release of a new limited edition vinyl album, “Rhapsody in Glue”.

Rhapsody in Glue began its journey as part of the Codpaste podcast on New York tri-state area radio station WFMU in 2008. With Rhapsody in Glue we find a unique approach to constructing a record. People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz decided to publicly tear apart their respective practices and create an album “in the open”, presenting on a seafood-filled-platter the process of collaborative collage composition – informally discussing and jabbering nonsense to one another, resulting in the Codpaste free podcast series. Rhapsody in Glue was the culmination of the ideas explored in the podcast series.

The album was initially released as an online-only release on Bleep in 2008, and now for the first time ever we are making it available in a Limited Edition of 100, hand numbered copies on 12” high quality remastered stereo lathe cut vinyl, hand cut by Bladud Flies! It comes with 300gsm inserts, lyric sheet, digital download codes, both for this, and also the original digital album release from 2008. The vinyl will ship with a polylined inner sleeve.

The vinyl will ship within a polylined inner sleeve. Includes a ‘lathe cut’ care card. Limited edition of 100, hand numbered.

Gone, Gone Beyond 360 Real-Space Immersive Cinema

“Hey, hey, have you ever tried… reaching out to the other side?”

Gone, Gone Beyond is an immersive a/v spatial cinema work by People Like Us (Vicki Bennett), which breaks the rectangle, smashing the thin screen into tiny fragments, looking beyond the frame, climbing through to see what’s behind.  

The initial work was commissioned by Naut Humon, the founder of immersive theatre project RML CineChamber, Gone, Gone Beyond is a 10 screen / 6 or 8 speaker piece, with seamless wrap around projection and surround sound where the audience sit inside. It comprises of movie and musical compositions, animated and sample-based/musique concrète collage juxtaposed with content filmed/recorded by the artist, all sewn together in a giant patchwork. Pull on a thread and watch whole new narratives expand and unravel all at once on a 360º palette. The project has been a work in progress since 2017, and showed for the first time in Autumn 2021 in feature length format.  

The work’s title and underlying concepts come from the Heart Sutra, a key Buddhist text, describing how all phenomena are empty in form yet ultimately interconnected. The last lines of the Heart Sutra say ‘gate gate pāragate pārasamgate bodhi svāhā’, which means “gone, gone beyond, gone beyond that a bit more, and then beyond that a bit further”. This reflects perfectly the action of going beyond the frame to where there are no edges to the narrative – just emptiness.

In this 360º format, time and space becomes elasticated, with the use of collaged video furthering the reflection on how information comes to us as fragments and that nothing is fixed. A new narrative-thread is woven in the mind of each viewer every time the work is seen, limited only to that exact time and space – just as the Heart Sutra reminds us that the only constant is change, and everything is related with no fixed source.

The initial in-process tester movie screened in San Francisco in October 2017 at RML’s own Recombinant Festival at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. Since then the work has been in development, with a private screening event in April 2019 Goldsmiths SIML for potential partners. The work will screen at nyMusikk, Oslo; SPILL Festival, Ipswich; Attenborough Centre (ACCA), Brighton; and London Barbican, in Autumn 2021. Version 2 of GGB screened in San Francisco’s Gray Area in May 2022 to great critical acclaim.

SAN FRANCISCO Gray Area
12-27 May 2022 https://grayarea.org/gonegonebeyond/

PAST:

OSLO Black Box Teater present KinoKammer with nyMusikk
13-16 October 2021 https://blackbox.no/en/e5115e56-702e-41a2-badb-cb21d1626082/

IPSWICH DanceEast as part of SPILL FESTIVAL
28-30 October 2021 https://www.danceeast.co.uk/performances/gone-gone-beyond-au21/

BRIGHTON Attenborough Centre (ACCA)
4-6 November 2021 https://www.attenboroughcentre.com/events/4028/gone-gone-beyond/

LONDON Barbican Centre
10-13 November 2021 https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2021/event/people-like-us-gone-gone-beyond

Reviews and Interviews:

The Wire January 2022

Eat Drink Films (2) – another review of Gone, Gone Beyond at Gray Area, San Francisco (May 2022) (file)
Eat Drink Films (1) – review of Gone, Gone Beyond at Gray Area, San Francisco (May 2022) (file)
KALX Radio (Berkeley, CA) interview (May 2022)
48 Hills – review of Gone, Gone Beyond at Gray Area, San Francisco (May 2022) (file)
Clot Magazine – interview/review of Gone, Gone Beyond at Barbican Centre (January 2022) (file)
The Wire Magazine – full page review (January 2022) (file)
Crack Magazine Barbican review (November 2021)
https://crackmagazine.net/article/live-reviews/gone-gone-beyond-people-like-us-at-barbican/ (file)
Rosa Magazine (November 2021)
https://www.instagram.com/therosamag/?hl=en (file)
brutjournal (November 2021)
https://brutjournal.com/login/ (file)
Crack Magazine Movie Top 5 (October 2021)
https://peoplelikeus.org/2021/crack-magazine-abstract-viewing-5-must-watch-films-chosen-by-vicki-bennett/ (file)
The Quietus Interview (October 2021)
https://thequietus.com/articles/30721-people-like-us-vicki-bennett-interview
Jon Wright – SPILL Festival feature on BBC Radio Special Feature (October 2021)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p09xvj2h (listen)

Scenekunst (October 2021)
http://www.scenekunst.no/sak/psykedelisk-meditasjon/ (translated file)
Shakespeare Tidsskrift (October 2021)
http://shakespearetidsskrift.no/2021/10/pa-tide (translated file)
Klassekampen (October 2021)
https://klassekampen.no/utgave/2021-10-16/en-kveld-pa-kammerset (translated file)
Ballade (October 2021)
https://www.ballade.no/kunstmusikk/lasse-marhaug-og-people-like-us-dystopisk-stoyfilm-fra-groruddalen-og-eit-draumebad-i-kinokjensler/ (translated file)
Interview with Hearty White about the making of Gone, Gone Beyond (2017)

Solo Exhibition: MIND MAPS in Lleida, Spain at intangible festival d’art

MIND MAPS


The first edition of the new ‘Intangible’ festival, takes place from October 27 to November 6 2022 in Lleida, focuses on creative arts and welcomes British multimedia artist Vicki Bennett as a special guest. It includes the solo exhibition MIND MAPS: THE ART OF VICKI BENNETT which first showed at Sheehan Gallery, Walla Walla earlier in 2022.
https://intangible.paeria.cat/#

People will have the opportunity to delve into Bennett’s creative universe with a solo exhibition, as well as enjoy a conference at Lleida CaixaForum gallery and an audiovisual performance of The Mirror live at Espai Orfeó. The event’s artistic director, Antoni Pinent, said that Intangible offers “a wide range of activities” aiming to reach different types of audiences and not only art experts. The festival “wants to be informative but reflective and critical at the same time,” he added. 

New summer mix from People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz

https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/track/in-the-waking-2022-extended-mix

An extended, taking-a-line-for-a-walk remix of People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz “In the Waking”, created for one of the opening concerts of King’s Place, London in the late 2000s. The song, a lullaby of a summer place, was created through the Codpaste podcast sessions which led to the collaborative album “Rhapsody in Glue”, and was later released as a 7″ on Touch. This unreleased version lets the song twirl off into a gentle polyphonic fantasia.

Radio Art Zone – New 22 Hour Radio Piece

People Like Us has made a brand new 22 HOUR radio piece for Radio Art Zone, a radio art project by Radio ARA and Mobile Radio for the European Capital of Culture Esch2022

https://radioart.zone/thursday-23-june

Broadcast date for our piece is 23 June 2pm – Noon 24 June, Luxembourg Time Zone UTC +2. That’s 1pm start time in the UK.

https://radioart.zone/thursday-23-june

People Like Us – 108

“Well, you know how I adjusted to that problem of the radio in the environment – very much as the primitive people adjusted to the animals which frightened them, and which probably as you say, were intrusions, they drew pictures of them on their caves. And so I simply made a piece using radios. Now, whenever I hear radios, even a single one, not just twelve at a time…I think, well, they’re just playing my piece!” – John Cage (and Morton Feldman in Conversation, WBAI, NYC (1967))

In Buddhism, according to Bhante Gunaratana this number is reached by multiplying the senses smell, touch, taste, hearing, sight, and consciousness by whether they are painful, pleasant or neutral, and then again by whether these are internally generated or externally occurring, and yet again by past, present and future, finally we get 108 feelings. 6 × 3 × 2 × 3 = 108. 

Listen to the whole archive: https://radioart.zone/thursday-23-june

Imagine a radio that sounds different every day…

Radio Art Zone is a 100-day radio art station for Esch2022, which will be broadcast in the south of Luxembourg by Radio ARA on 87.8 FM. It will also be live-streamed for a worldwide audience and transmitted by a network of international partners.

The Radio Art Zone schedule consists of two daily programmes: newly-commissioned 22-hour radio productions created by more than 100 international and local artists, and 2-hour live shows from kitchens in the community.

Radio Art Zone is on air from 18th June — 25th September 2022

list of participants