A Synesthete's Atlas: Real time cartography performances

Community Made with Open Stage Control
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A Synesthete's Atlas

Real time cartographic improvisations using projected, manipulated digital maps by Eric Theise, in live collaboration with improvising musicians and other time-based artists . A visual wash of street grids, land masses, water bodies, and curiosities from built and natural environments. Saturated colors. The subtlest of tints. Glitches in crowdsourced data. Jittery zooms and pans. Orphaned information and free-floating symbology.

Performances typically last 50 minutes and occasionally introduce strobing effects that may affect photosensitive viewers.

There's additional information, including video, in the performances section of my site and there's a larger video archive at Vimeo.

These performances were given in 2022:

21 Apr 2022, 8p. Free.
with cellist Helena Espvall
Hangar: Centro de Investigação Artística
Rua Damasceno Monteiro, 12, Lisbon, Portugal

23 Jun 2022, 7:30p. Free.
with saxophonist/flautist Ken Field
Magazine Beach Powder Magazine
719 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, Massachusetts

28 Jun 2022; 8p. $5-15.
with saxophonist/clarinetist/shakuhachi player Ned Rothenberg
Millennium Film Workshop
167 Wilson Av, Brooklyn, NY

30 Jun 2022; 7p. $10-20.
with multi-instrumentalist Jim Ryan and drummer Darien Baiza
Rhizome DC
6950 Maple St NW, Washington, DC

15 Sep 2022, 8p. $20
with composer/performer Carl Stone
Indexical
Tannery Arts Center, Santa Cruz, California

25 Sep 2022, 7p. $10-25 sliding scale.
with oboist/composer Kyle Bruckmann
Shapeshifters Cinema
567 5th St, Oakland, CA

22 Oct 2022, 7:30p.
with upright/electric bassist Liz Draper
MirrorLab Studios
3400 Cedar Av S, Minneapolis, MN

5 Nov 2022, 8p. $7.
with percussionist/samplist Kevin Corcoran
Other Cinema
992 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA

13 Nov 2022, 7p. $10-25.
with instrument builder Krys Bobrowski on Gliss Glass and Sliding Speaker
Mosswood Sound Series
3630 Telegraph Av, Oakland, CA

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Prior to the Minneapolis gig with Liz Draper I gave a presentation at the North American Cartographic Information Society's annual meeting. They've made the video available in their YouTube channel. I regret walking away from the microphone to point at the screen a few times but I'm pleased that I managed to talk about all the key points and still have time to take one question.

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I'm beginning to line up 2023 performances. I'm giving two in San Francisco at the beginning of March.

1 Mar 2023, 8p. $10-20 sliding scale, NOTAFLOF
with Headboggle
Luggage Store Gallery New Music Series
1007 Market St (@ 6th), San Francisco, CA

2 Mar 2023, 7:30p. Pay what you will.
solo. Soundscape inspired by the Library's cartographic and geographic holdings.
Prelinger Library
301 8th St (@ Folsom), #215, San Francisco, CA

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Later in March I will perform at several venues in Colorado in advance of a technical talk at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting in Denver. Working on the details of other performances but here are the first three:

10 Mar 2023, 7p. $12-20 sliding scale, NOTAFLOF
with cellist Daniel Zamzow
presented by Radical Open Science Syndicate (ROSS) and the Geospatial Centroid
Wolverine Farm Publick House
316 Willow St, Fort Collins, CO

12 Mar 2023, 7p. $5-10 sliding scale
with Bob Marsh's Spontaneous Combustion Arts Performance Ensemble (SCAPE)
Blo Back Gallery
131 Spring St, Pueblo, CO

18 Mar 2023, 8p
with noise magician Brett Darling (aka Spider Lights)
Noise Floor 8
Art Lab Fort Collins
239 Linden St, Fort Collins, CO

23 Mar 2023; doors: 7:30p, performance: 8p
with Carl Ritger on prepared lap steel guitar & modular sampler
Counterpath
7935 East 14th Av, Denver, CO

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I am also lining up April performances in the midwest. Working on the details of other performances but here are three performances and a lecture:

5 Apr 2023
with upright bassist Ari Smith
Mills Folly Microcinema
Arts + Literature Laboratory, 111 S Livingston St, #100, Madison, WI

7 Apr 2023
with multi-instrumentalist/composer Ben Zucker
Block Cinema
Northwestern University, 40 Arts Circle Dr, Evanston, IL

13 Apr 2023
lecture
American Geographical Society Library
Golda Meir Library, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI

17 Apr 2023
w/Tamarisk (Christina Carter, David Menestres, & Andrew Weathers) and additional performances by Ghost Dance & Normal Rituals (Eli Smith & Peter J. Woods).
Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts
926 E Center St, Milwaukee, WI

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Wow! This is so cool!! So you convert the images to Base 64 and manipulate and show them using Open Stage Control❔
How is your workflow❔ If you don't mind me asking.

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Thanks for your enthusiasm @rafaews. It's all live vector graphics running in a browser. The main pieces are OpenStreetMap data (I have the whole planet on my laptop), MapLibre (a fork of Mapbox GL JS), and Open Stage Control. I've written a few thousand lines of JavaScript that turn the OSC messages into style and behavior instructions for the map.

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A lot more complicated that I thought! Hahaha
Thank you and congratulations (:

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Edited earlier posts to include a just-scheduled Denver show with Carl Ritger (prepared lap steel & modular sampler) at Counterpath on 23 March and to update the link to the show with Ben Zucker at the Block Museum on 7 April.

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Edited an earlier post to include tonight's performance with Tamarisk at Jazz Gallery and last week's (oops) lecture at the AGSL, both in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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Heading out on the road with my maps again.

1 Oct 2023
with The Asthmatic (one-woman band and sound collage artist)
The Apohadion Theater
Portland, ME
Kerry Laitala opens with three pieces, 16mm & digital video

2 Oct 2023
with The Asthmatic
Russell Hall Theatre
University of Southern Maine
Gorham, ME
Lecture, performance, Q & A. Sponsored by the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, and the Department of Theatre at the University of Southern Maine.

4 Oct 2023
Brown University
Providence, RI
I'll speak to Ed Osborn's Time Deformations course. If a public performance with Ed comes together at Mayday for the 5th, 6th, or 3rd, it'll be sponsored by The Map Center.

7 Oct 2023
with Veronica Mercedes Jurkiewicz and Carlos Santiago Jr (strings)
Fire Museum Presents at The Perch
Philadelphia, PA.
This is a multi-act benefit for Fire Museum Presents.

8 Oct 2023
with Darien Baiza (drums) and Abe Mamet (French horn); Tangent Universes opens
Rhizome
Washington, DC

14 Oct 2023
with Trē Seguritan Abalos (flutes and electronics)
Creative Coffee & Supply
Pittsburgh, PA
This one's a co-production with Pittsburgh Sound + Image and is in conjunction with a talk I'll give at the North American Cartographic Information Society's annual meeting.

23 Oct 2023
with percussionists Darien Baiza and Paul Neidhardt; Max Gong opens
Red Room/High Zero
Baltimore, MD
This one's in conjunction with the annual FOSS4GNA (Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial, North America) conference.

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Two upcoming shows on the homefront (San Francisco Bay Area).

1 Dec 2023, 8p. $15.
with Santomieri-Farhadian Duo, electric resonator guitars, violin, and electronics (including radio)
Shapeshifters Cinema
567 5th St, Oakland, CA

6 Dec 2023, 8p. $10-20 sliding scale, NOTAFLOF
with saxophonist John Ingle
Luggage Store Gallery New Music Series
1007 Market St (@ 6th), San Francisco, CA

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I've been remiss in posting about 2024 performances. Two of the three have already taken place. But I'm thrilled that the one coming up in a few days is at CNMAT on the University of California Berkeley campus; it's where the OSC protocol was invented!

2 Mar 2024; 8p. $12
with Sean Ocean, techno DJ
Other Cinema
992 Valencia St (@ 21st), San Francisco, CA

3 Mar 2024; 7p. $10-$25 sliding scale
with Unpopular Electronics (Gino Robair & Tom Djll)
West Oakland Sound Series
Dresher Ensemble Studio, 2201 Poplar St, Oakland, CA

13 Mar 2024; 11a-12:30p. $free
lecture, and performance with Mat Muntz, primorski meh (Croatian bagpipe) & electronics
UC Berkeley GIS & Mapping Community of Practice
Center for New Music and Associated Technologies
1750 Arch St, Berkeley, CA

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I've been doing a printmaking residency in the Netherlands at AGA LAB; I've been screenprinting maps based on my performances so I have Open Stage Control to thank for this, too. Two events coming up in Amsterdam before I leave (a performance, a gallery show), and I've been sitting in with the Raw Dates Sessions at iii in Den Haag so I'll put those down for the record, too.

22 Sep 2024
Raw Dates Sessions @ iii
Willem Dreespark 312, Den Haag

19 Oct 2024; doors: 7:30p, performance: 8p. Pay what you will.
with Edward Schocker, p'iri, hichiriki, shō and found objects
De Bouwput
Ferdinand Huyckstraat 74, Amsterdam, NL

21 Oct 2024
Raw Dates Sessions @ iii
Willem Dreespark 312, Den Haag

24 Oct 2024; 5-7p.
Group show with Clara Aramburo & Nina Djekic, fellow AGA LAB Artists in Residence
De Bouwput
Ferdinand Huyckstraat 74, Amsterdam, NL

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I leave Amsterdam on 25 October and plan to pass through Rotterdam and on into Belgium (Antwerp, Brussels, maybe Ghent), Germany (Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Berlin), and perhaps Prague and Vienna. I have to return to North America by 18 November. If you're on that path I'd be happy to try and meet up and, more importantly, if you have suggestions of venues that could host a performance on short notice, please pipe up.