Plutopia Productions Announces Headliners for Signature 2011 Event
"Plutopia 2011: The Future of Play" will feature "Text of Light" with Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, Ulrich Kreiger, Alan Licht and Tim Barnes as the event's main attractions on March 14th in Austin, TX.
- (1888PressRelease) February 25, 2011 - The future-focused events and entertainment company Plutopia Productions today officially announces that Text of Light will headline its 4th annual signature event, "The Future of Play." Plutopia, an official evening event of the SXSW Interactive Festival will take place March 14th at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center from 6:30pm to Midnight. . This year's headlining Act Text of Light include renowned Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo along with experimental musicians Ulrich Kreiger, Alan Licht, and Tim Barnes. The four musicians will improvise live soundtracks on stage, creating soundscapes to films by seminal American avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage. The group will perform their improvised soundtracks in a powerful mixed media manifestation of this year's theme -- the future of play -- as a high-tech, creative and multi-sensory experience. "We are beyond thrilled to be hosting Text of Light," stated Plutopia Chief Creative Officer Derek Woodgate. "These are musicians who have radically changed the way music is created in the modern age, and they fit very well into the nouveau paradigm of interactive, inspired experimentation as both an art form and an experience."
The upcoming "Future of Play" official SXSW event is a compelling extravaganza of gaming, toys, music, performances and art as a transformative, expansive and upbeat experience of the future. A full-service events and entertainment production company, Plutopia Productions creates future-focused interactive "sense events" that interactively engage participants through multi-sensory stimulation and performances. Through their artistic contributions, all featured performers partner with Plutopia Productions to create an augmented experience unlike any other.
About Text of Light
The Text of Light group was formed in NYC in 2001 with the idea of performing improvised music to the fabulous but obscure poetic films of Stan Brakhage from the American Avant-Garde era, sometimes referred to as "expanded cinema." Members of the group include Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, Alan Licht (guitars & devices), Christian Marclay and DJ Olive (turntables), William Hooker (percussion), Ulrich Krieger (saxophone & electronics), and most recently Tim Barnes (percussion). The group has previously headlined the Victoriaville Music Festival in Canada (2002) and the Three Rivers Film Festival in Pittsburgh. In addition they have performed at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and have completed two tours of Europe and the United States. Plutopia Productions is proud to have them headline the upcoming 2011 "sense event."
Lee M. Ranaldo is an American singer, guitarist, writer, record producer, and visual artist, best known as a co-founder of one of the world's best loved rock bands, Sonic Youth. The band was a founder of the No Wave art and music scene in New York City, and was pivotal to the rise of the alternative rock and indie rock movements. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Ranaldo as the 33rd "Greatest Guitarist of All Time." Ranaldo has also worked with jazz drummer William Hooker on improvised music, reading and poetry. Plutopian Derek Woodgate's company Fringecore has worked with the Duo, and Lee has also appeared on the Fringecore record label. His current main side project is Drift with his wife Leah Singer, with whom he has performed many live installation pieces with improvised music and Text of Light.
Ulrich Krieger is a composer, performer, improviser and experimental rock musician. His main instruments are saxophone, clarinets, didjeridu and electronics. He calls his style of playing "acoustic electronics." He creates sounds that appear to be electronic, but are in fact produced on acoustic instruments with electronic treatments, blurring the borders between the two fields. Ulrich usually works in the nirvana between experimental rock, ambient and contemporary composition. Krieger's works are being performed by the California EAR Unit, zeitkratzer, KontraTrio, Soldier String Quartet and Wandelweiser Ensemble, among others. He has released over 50 CDs of his original compositions and improvisations with his groups and as a collaborator with other musicians.
Alan Licht's music draws on a wide range of different sounds, from tape-loops and noisy guitars to pure pop. His musical trajectory was initiated when his guitar teacher gave him a copy of Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians," which would lead to his discovery of minimalist music. Licht has released five albums of pieces for solo and multiple guitars, and has worked with the bands Lovechild, Run On and The Pacific Ocean, as well as with other avant-garde musicians including Jim O'Rourke, Rudolph Grey, and Loren Mazzacane Connors. Licht has performed at various festivals throughout the United States and Europe as a guitarist with Tom Verlaine (2001), Brokeback (2001), Papa M (1999-present), Royal Trux (1999) and Plush (1999). His sound installations include "Today I Am A Fountain Pen," "Studio Five Beekman" (NYC 1998) and "The Downsizing of Don Dokken" (Brooklyn 1996).
Tim Barnes is vital to Text of Light as an expansive experimental percussionist who has one foot in the downtown New York avant-garde jazz community while contributing to more traditional indie rock projects. Barnes emerged as a musician in the late 1990s while contributing to indie rock staples like the Silver Jews and Essex Green, as well as to avant pop mainstay Jim O'Rourke. Barnes found a kindred spirit in another O'Rourke pal, drummer Glenn Kotche, with whom he tandem-drummed on O'Rourke's Halfway to a Threeway and Insignificance. Like Kotche, who went on to drum for Wilco, Barnes uses the drum kit as a melodic tool, filling rock rhythms with textures pulled from an innate knowledge of his kits' textures.
Barnes also contributed to the recordings of New England noise guitarist Matt Valentine in Tower Recordings and MV & EE. He hovered on the edge of Sonic Youth's world, as well, joining the band for their deeply psychedelic Koncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui release.
About Plutopia Productions
Plutopia Productions, Inc. was founded in 2007 in Austin, Texas after its founders created a popular Do-It-Yourself (DIY) home of the future installation at Austin's Maker Faire. The name "Plutopia" is a mashup of "pluralist utopias," a concept suggesting DIY, configurable, "maker" environments of the future. Numerous cutting-edge events later, Plutopia is now a full-service experiential events and entertainment production company that helps future-focused clients create their own interactive events for consumer engagement. The highly professional Plutopia management team has years of successful global experience in cultural development, the arts, entertainment, event creation and production, future studies, marketing and visionary strategic planning. Plutopians are international leaders in the experiential movement and produce enlightening events for their clients, while providing value through the delivery of both services and content. Visit www.plutopia.org to learn more about how Plutopia 2011 will deliver fresh insights into the changing world of play.
About SXSW Interactive
The 18th annual SXSW Interactive festival will take place March 11-15, 2011 in Austin, Texas. An incubator of cutting-edge technologies, the event features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable line up of special programs showcasing the best new websites, video games and startup ideas the community has to offer. From hands-on training to big-picture analysis of the future, SXSW Interactive has become the place to experience a preview of what is unfolding in the world of technology. Join us March 2011 for the panels, the parties, the 14th Annual Interactive Awards, ScreenBurn at SXSW, the SXSW Expo, Accelerator at SXSW and, of course, the inspirational experience that only SXSW can deliver. SXSW Interactive 2011 is sponsored by Miller Lite, Chevrolet, AOL, IFC, Pepsi, PepsiMax, Freecreditscore.com, Monster Energy, Microsoft, Samsung, AT&T and The Austin Chronicle.
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