Elemental
by Piotr Szyhalski
Media Archeology: In The Beginning
Friday, May 16, 6-9PM: Performance
Saturday, May 17, 6-8PM: Artist Talk and Reception

Elemental is part of a series of experimental performative projects exploring new approaches to sound and media hybridity. This two-night show will feature an evening of multi-media performance that will result in an installed art exhibition on display the following night. Audiences are encouraged to attend both nights to see the art as it exists in two forms: as a performance and the resulting remnants that create an installation. Saturday will feature an artist talk, as well as a Closing Reception courtesy of Phoenicia Specialty Foods and Saint Arnold Brewery.

Szyhalski explores the fundamental concepts defining sound through electricity by investigating the relationship between the most rudimentary electronic sounds and other conceptual frameworks that can be defined as "elemental" such as foundational components of language, prehistoric social structures.  Elemental unfolds from the intersections of visual, audio and performative media into the oldest existing traces of human music making, as a way of understanding the roots of harmony and structure in sound.  The resulting work draws a connection between "foundational" sounds from deep history, and contemporary sound building blocks generated by rudimentary electronic systems.

Elemental is presented as part of the 10th anniversary of Media Archeology, a festival that showcases artists who use media to create live multidisciplinary events and performances, Aurora Picture Show welcomes Steve Dietz, Founder, President, and Artistic Director of Northern Lights.mn, as Curator of Media Archeology 2014. In The Beginning will feature three nights of performances that look to the deep time of pre-history to create compelling experiences of how the world was formed and how the world of our ideas is shaped. Artists include Miwa Matrayek (April 9), Lynette Wallworth and Piotr Syzhalski.