Welcome to the only official site for People Like Us and Vicki Bennett
People Like Us will perform “Genre Collage” at Issue Project Room on Thursday 15th April 2010. Also in the evening we’ve very pleased to have WFMU’s Ken Freedman with a DJ set and Aki Onda with a live set.
http://issueprojectroom.org/2010/02/17/people-like-us/
ISSUE PROJECT ROOM
At the Old American Can Factory
232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11215
Doors Open: 8pm
Directions
Admission: $15 door ($12 advance)
Buy tickets
People Like Us will perform Genre Collage on Saturday 12th December 2009
at Good Night Stuff at Grand Cafe zum Rothen Krebsen Linz,
The evening starts at 10pm.
Here are some photos from the concert and Linz visit…
Tuesday 8th December 2009 at 20:30
BFI Southbank, London – NFT3
Tickets £5
This will be the UK Premiere of Genre Collage, the new People Like Us live a/v set.
BFI Southbank are taking booking now. We recommend booking tickets in advance or you may find yourself without a seat!
http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/bfi_southbank/events/genre_collage_the_new_live_set_by_people_like_us
Telephone booking is often easier: 020 7928 3232
BFI Visitor information here.
On 21 November, People Like Us will perform Genre Collage at NEW NEW! 2009 Festival
at Fléda
Štefanikova 24, 60200 Brno, Czech Republic
On stage at approximately 10pm.
“GENRE COLLAGE” by VICKI BENNETT
The new A/V performance by PEOPLE LIKE US (created March-October 2009)
Media: Music and Moving Image
Length: 45 minutes
By combining compositing techniques, audio/music collage, and animation, People Like Us (in collaboration with Tim Maloney) examine the concept of “genre”. By manipulating patterns, syntax, moods, narrative elements, recurring icons, characters and film stars held within selected movie genres/sub-genres (i.e. action, adventure, comedy, crime/gangster, drama, epics/historical, horror, musicals, science fiction, war and westerns), we are creating a humorous, surrealistic, yet informative take on the content held within. The sound is partially taken from the films and partly from music holding corresponding messages, mood and lyrical content. The moving parts are cut around and collaged into each scene, complete with the source’s accompanying audio and added contextual musical collage.
People Like Us – The Sound Of The End Of Music [2010]
Since 1991 British artist Vicki Bennett has been an influential figure in the field of audio visual collage, through her innovative sampling, appropriating and cutting up of found footage and archives. Using collage as her main form of expression, she creates audio recordings, films and radio shows that communicate a humorous, dark and often surreal view on life. These collages mix, manipulate and rework original sources from both the experimental and popular worlds of music, film, television and radio. People Like Us believe in open access to archives for creative use, and have made work using footage from the Prelinger Archives, The Internet Archive, and A/V Geeks. In 2006 she was the first artist to be given unrestricted access to the entire BBC Archive. People Like Us have previously shown work at Tate Modern, Sydney Opera House, Pompidou left and Sonar, and performed radio sessions for John Peel and Mixing It. The ongoing sound art radio show ‘DO or DIY’ on WFMU has had over a million “listen again” hits since 2003. The People Like Us back catalogue is available for free download hosted by UbuWeb.
This work replaces my previous live performance, which you can now only watch and download at UbuWeb.
We are taking bookings for this concert, which can be performed in cinemas, auditoriums and concert halls. If you are funded festival organiser or curator get in touch through the Contact link on the front page of our site.
Here is a presentation from Vicki Bennett, creator of Genre Collage – at AV Festival 2010.
Recycled Film Symposium: 08 Vicki Bennett (People Like Us) from AV Festival.
Genre Collage has been screened at:
October 2011 – Almost Cinema, Ghent Film Festival, Belgium
June 2011 – The Sage, Gateshead, UK
May 2011 – Auditorium of Rome, Italy
May 2011 – Mapping Festival, Geneva, Switzerland
May 2011 – Online on Ken Freedman’s Show, WFMU.org
April 2011 – Open Ears, Kitchener, Canada
March 2011 – Ambulante Festival, Mexico
February 2011 – Transmediale, Berlin
January 2011 – Art’s Birthday Party/Swedish Radio, Stockholm
November 2010 – The British Film Festival, Kiev, Ukraine
September 2010 – Press Play Film Festival, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne
August 2010 – Vintage Goodwood Festival, UK
August 2010 – Genre Collage in the Ukraine (Lviv and Sevastapol) presented by Forma and the British Council
July 2010 – Bristol Arnolfini in conjunction with Encounters Film Festival, UK
June 2010 – De La Warr Pavilion, UK
June 2010 – tv.dk – cable TV in Copenhagen, Denmark
May 2010 – Liverpool Sound City, in conjunction with Sound and Music, UK
April 2010 – Baltimore Transmodern 2010
April 2010 – Issue Project Room, Brooklyn
March 2010 – AV Festival, Newcastle, UK
December 2009 – BFI Southbank, London
December 2009 – Grand Café Zum Rothen Krebsen (IFEK Institut für erweiterte Kunst), Linz, Austria
November 2009 – NEW NEW! 2009 – Fleda, Brno, Czech Republic
October 2009 – WFMU Record Fair, NYC
October 2009 – Vancouver New Music Festival, Canada
| Here are some stills from Genre Collage. Click on images below to download a larger version. Please note: the film stills are from the original QuickTime movies, and therefore the maximum original size you get them is the size that they will always be, in 72dpi resolution. We have resampled the originals in Photoshop to make “higher resolution” images. If you need it to be a different dpi then do go to Photoshop and resample the image as such yourself. | ||
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Article on Genre Collage in Film Comment, January 2010
Download the magazine version here
People Like Us have been working on a brand new live set entitled “Genre:Collage”, which will be given a world premiere at Vancouver New Music Festival 2009. Other dates are being lines up for Genre:Collage in these coming weeks, including WFMU Record Fair in October (which will be free once in the fair), BFI Southbank in London, and also Linz, Austria – both in December 2009.
VANCOUVER NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL 2009
COPYRIGHT/COPYLEFT
A festival of sonic collagism, and the art of sampled and repurposed sounds and images.
21 – 24 October 2009
Show starts 8pm each night
Free Artist Chats at 7pm each night
Negative Landscapes: free symposium on 24 October 2009, 2:30pm
Scotiabank Dance Centre
677 Davie Street
Tickets $20 regular, $15 students/seniors each night; available at Zulu Records (1972 West 4th Avenue), Scratch Records (726 Richards Street), through Tickets Tonight (www.ticketstonight.ca; 604.684.2787; surcharges apply) and at the door.
Passes for all four nights $60 and $40, available only through Vancouver New Music (604.633.0861) and at the door.
Wednesday 21 October 2009
Andrew O’Connor and Doug Horne
Jackson 2bears
John Oswald
Thursday 22 October 2009
Eric Hedekar
DJ Tapes
Chris Cutler
People Like Us
Friday 23 October 2009
Sonarchy
Holzkopf
Scanner
David Shea
Saturday 24 October 2009
Mark Hosler
Uri Caine
plus free symposium
Our concert at Cafe Oto on 1st August just got Critics’ Choice in Time Out.
http://www.timeout.com/london/music/event/154237/people-like-us-ergo-phizmiz
People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz will be playing a joint set at Cafe Oto in Dalston, London on Saturday 1st August.
Doors open 8pm, Tickets £7 – which we recommend you buy in advance now since Cafe Oto is popular!
Cafe Oto site programme/tickets
The live performance will combine material from the last four People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz releases. Vicki & Ergo perform a set that crosses sampling with the English nonsense tradition, traditional composition with electronic music, and contemporary approaches to sound with melodic and textural fragments of orchestral music. The sound of the two artists collaborating has often been compared to circus or carnival music, and stands as a separate and distinct entity to the two artists individual work. It is perhaps best described as “woozy dream circus”.
There will be two 25 minute sets preceded by a number of short films by the artists, starting shortly after 8pm.
Special offer: the first 15 people arriving at Oto for this performance will receive a People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz CD.
Want to hear some People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz?
Cafe Oto site programme
Want to see what we sound like?
14-15 March 2008
People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz play SightSonic 2008
York International Festival of Digital Arts
We are pleased to People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz will be playing a double bill, both separately and also a rare duo performance as part of York International Festival of Digital Arts. This will take place at the National left for Early Music on Friday 14th March between 7.30pm and 9.30pm. More info and tickets available at the SightSonic website. On 15th March Vicki will also be doing an artist talk, also as part of the festival at York St John University (YSJU), in Fountains Lecture Theatre. The talk is scheduled for around 11.30am, and will last about an hour.
Excerpt here – Blame It On The Waltz (Live in York)
“I composed a silent collage of found film footage partially layered with computer graphics to provide a framework in which live music can develop. Moving images and graphics give musicians visual cues suggesting emotion, energy, rhythm, pitch, volume, and duration. I believe in the power of images to evoke sound.”
– Christian Marclay
By Christian Marclay
Trio I: Vicki Bennett, Ergo Phizmiz
Trio II: Steve Beresford, John Butcher, Roger Turner
Trio III: Blevin Blectum, J G Thirlwell
“Having combined excerpts from Hollywood films to cacophonous effect in previous work, Mr Marclay leapt back in film history, making a demonically spliced silent movie whose visually noisy pulsing black and white sequences were complicated by computer animations of bright, jumpy abstract dots, stripes and shapes reminiscent of work by John Baldessari. It was an extraordinary evening of looking and listening.”
Roberta Smith, The New York Times
Forming part of The Wire 25 anniversary celebrations marking 25 years of The Wire magazine and co-curated by Electra, London & New York based visual artist and composer Christian Marclay presented the UK premier of Screen Play, a moving image musical score in which found film footage is combined with computer animation to create a visual projection, to be interpreted by live musicians in an evening length performance.
In the tradition of graphic scores, Marclay designed a “video score” combining found footage and computer animation to be interpreted by three small groups of musicians, to initiate performances while leaving ample room for interpretation and improvisation. For the London performance, Marclay assembled three groups made up of a wide-ranging collective of musical talents, including Vicki Bennett, Ergo Phizmiz, Steve Beresford, John Butcher, Roger Turner, Blevin Blectum and J G Thirlwell.
Screen Play follows The Bell And The Glass, Marclay’s first experiment with the use of video projection to convey instructions to musicians, which was commissioned by the Reloche ensemble and performed at the Philadelphia Museum Of Art in 2003.
First, a pretty bad recording from the mixing desk of the concert…
People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz – Live Score to Christian Marclay’s Screen Play, Bush Hall, London
“I never heard it performed like THAT before…” – Christian Marclay
And then the raw tracks that People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz composed for the live score. You may notice that these experiments then went on to be developed in Codpaste, and then Rhapsody in Glue.
Beginning
Enya With Her Accordian
Honeysuckle Bollocks
Be My Baby Beat
Chase 1
Chase 2
Chase 3
Chase 4
Chase 5
Chase 6
Screen End
Screen End Opera
Fashionette by The Piccadilly Players
People Like Us have been performing live audio-visual sets since 1996 (for a selected list of venues see here). This started as a fairly crude set up with minidiscs and scratch-video cut up VHS tapes, and swiftly moved on to computer animated and composited collages, very parallel, at least in the mind of People Like Us, to the accompanying music. Here are five live excerpts, made between 2002 and 2007. This set is almost retired – only brought out on special occasions, and a new live A/V set will be available and touring from Winter 2009.
Download from UbuWeb
Using the internet and file sharing as our primary means of communication and collaboration, People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz have produced this material over a period of almost a year (Spring-Winter 2006-7).
These recordings document a collaborative research and development process using live performance (with vintage dansette turntables and vinyl dubplates), a CDr album ("Boots!"), a 10" vinyl record ("Honeysuckle Boulevard"), and a CD album ("Perpetuum Mobile").The files available here constitute the research, CDr, and the live performance. The concert is represented by an edit from that which was recorded through the mixing desk and miked up record players, a full unedited microphone recording, and an archive of the tracks which were used on the vinyl dubplates – comprising music from the research period split across various records either through splits in time (so one minute of the track may play on one deck, the next three minutes on another player, etc) or through splits in the actual layers on the tracks (so two or more records playing simultaneously would create the "full" track).
Concert – video edit
Sketches For Boots
Summer 2006
Composed 2006 as R+D for live performance, CD, Honeysuckle Boulevard 10″ Record, and Perpetuum Mobile CD (released 23 April 2007).
1. Domino
2. La Ronde
3. Erotic Ballroom Dream of Bill
4. Last Tango in Parish – Cumshot
5. Bloody Waltz
6. A Cup of Cha Cha Cha
7. Honeysuckle Roads
8. Let’s Dance with Charlie’s Loop
9. Mack
10. Puppet
11. Roy Fucks
12. Singing Lesson
13. Song For Babs
14. Sorry
15. Perpetuum (First Try)
16. Fruity Peter
17. Bed Music (Boopy Doop Doop Scoop)
18. Honeysuckle Ideas
19. Last Tango in Parish
20. Air Hostess
21. Balromulus Machinus
22. Spanked Latin
23. Tiny Mambo
24. Mambobela Rmx with Felix Kubin
info.txt
Dubplates from “Boots!” Performance
Summer 2006
In which tracks from research are torn apart for live recomposition, then pressed to vinyl dubplates
1. Crying Man
2. Enoch the Drummer 01
3. Enoch the Drummer 02
4. Fat Henry’s Mambo 01
5. Fat Henry’s Mambo 02
6. Gunshot 01
7. Gunshot 02
8. Harpo’s Ambient Love Groove
9. Harpo Boulevard 01
10. Harpo Boulevard 02
11. Harpo Segue
12. Hollers 01
13. Hollers 02
14. Hollers 03
15. Hollers 04
16. Hollers 05
17. Hollers 06
18. Honeysuckle Rose & Perpetuum Mobile 01
19. Honeysuckle Rose & Perpetuum Mobile 02
20. Honks
21. Instruments of the Orchestra 01
22. Instruments of the Orchestra 02
23. Instruments of the Orchestra 03
24. Instruments of the Orchestra 04
25. Mack The What 01
26. Mack the What 02
27. Merry Go Loop
28. Merry Go Round 01
29. Merry Go Round 02
30. Oh No Not Another Cha Cha 01
31. Oh No Not Another Cha Cha 02
32. Oh No Not Another Cha Cha Segue
33. Parp 01
34. Parp 02
35. Parp 03
36. Perpetuum Mobile 01
37. Perpetuum Mobile 02
38. Sad Waltz Because His Dog Died – Solo Flute
39. Sad Waltz Because His Dog Died – Solo Sax 01
40. Sad Waltz Because His Dog Died – Solo Sax 02
41. Sad Waltz Because His Dog Died
42. Singing Lesson A
43. Singing Lesson B
44. Singing Lesson Solo 01
45. Singing Lesson Solo 02
46. Sit Well Back 01
47. Sit Well Back 02
48. Sorry 01
49. Sorry 02
50. Sorry Extra
51. Stalling Samples 01
52. Stalling Samples 02
53. Stalling Samples 03
54. Stalling Samples 04
55. Stalling Samples 05
56. Stalling Samples 06
57. Stalling Samples 07
58. Stalling Samples 08
59. Stalling Samples 09
60. Stalling Samples 10
61. Stan’s Voice
62. Tango & Leer 01
63. Tango & Leer 02
64. Valse For Lydia 01
65. Valse For Lydia 02
info.txt
Saxophone by Ben Whiting-Wilbee www.myspace.com/benwilbee
Flute by Heather McCallum www.myspace.com/coo6B
Boots! Live
Summer 2006
1. Sit Well Back
2. Sorry
3. Merry Go Round
4. Perpetuum Mobile
5. Tango and Leer
6. Harpo Boulevard
7. Mack the What
8. Sad Waltz Because His Dog Died
9. Enoch the Drummer
10. Fat Henry Perpetually Spanked
11. Oh No Not Another Cha Cha Cha
12. Boots! – Full microphone recording
info.txt
Recorded live at Quay Arts, Newport, Isle of Wight, June 2006
Performed on Dansette Record players and vinyl dubplates, with piano, euphonium, horn, and accordian.
Track 12 “Full Microphone Recording” recorded by Simon Perry www.ventnorblog.com
Setlist Images : images/People-Like-Us-+-Ergo-Phizmiz_Boots_Setlist_2006.zip
Concert Images : images/People-Like-Us-+-Ergo-Phizmiz_Boots_Concert_Pictures_2006.zip
Boots! CD
Summer 2006
1. Sit Well Back
2. Fat Henry’s Mambo
3. Merry Go Round
4. Tango and Leer
5. Harpo Boulevard
6. Mack the What
7. Enoch the Drummer
8. Honeysuckle Rose & Perpetuum Mobile
9. Sad Waltz Because His Dog Died
All tracks given away on limited CD at “Boots!” Live performance, Isle of Wight, June 2006
Artwork : images/People-Like-Us-+-Ergo-Phizmiz_Boots_CDR_Artwork_2006.zip Ergo Phizmiz website
UbuWeb (many thanks!)
In case you were wondering why this project is called “Boots” we really couldn’t remember for a while (good eh), but then recalled it’s the dancing boots graphic that we named it after. Not Boots the Chemist.
