Chessmachine - Live in Los Angeles

LINE is proud to present Live in Los Angeles by the collaborative performance project CHESSMACHINE by Richard Chartier (US) and Ivan Pavlov (aka COH) (RUS).
A certain humor shapes the conceptual dialectics of the CHESSMACHINE live experience. Their interplay suggests the historical confrontation of East and West; an austere and chilling tete-a-tete over the chessboard that reconstructs the somber milieu of a bygone Europe, even as it conveys a kind of absurdist levity through the rehearsed performance of these roles. The use of MAC and PC computer operating systems by Chartier and Pavlov, respectively, becomes the late-20th century manifestation of classic Cold War combatants. Through their engagement, a process of sonic and aesthetic displacement unfolds, such that one player’s strategic manipulation of sound begins slowly to affect and then determinatively shape the compositional technique of the other. CHESSMACHINE‘s live performances take place in real time with color coded staging, uniforms, lighting, and video projections designed by Russian-American installation/video artists Evelyn Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand.
This live recording of Chessmachine took place on February 25, 2005 at REDCAT in Los Angeles. The performance was presented by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) as part of Visual Music: SEE HEAR NOW!, an experimental music series investigating the synaesthetic resonance between contemporary music and visual art, in conjunction with their exhibit Visual Music. The CHESSMACHINE project concept was selected by curators of Transmediale 05 [ Berlin, Germany] to be presented in their exhibit “Basic Sound” at the House of World Cultures, February 4-8, 2005. Chessmachine was performed at “klangtransfer ost west” / Musiktriennale Koeln 2007 [ Koeln, Germany ] May 4, 2007, CYNET [ Dresden, Germany ] November 24-27, 2005, CIMATICS [ Brussels, Belgium ] Oct 29, 2005, DIS-PATCH [ Belgrade, Serbia ] Oct 6, 2005, SEE.HEAR.NOW! @ Redcat/MOCA [ Los Angeles, US ] Feb 25, 2005, and MUTEK [ Montreal, Canada] June 2, 2004
Ivan Pavlov is a former acoustic engineer from Russia, currently resident in Sweden who has been releasing his work under the name CoH (Russian for “sleep” and “dream”) through various record labels including Raster-Noton (DE), Mego (A), Eskaton (UK), souRce-reSearch (UK), IDEA (USA), Wavetrap (UK/SE), Staalplaat (NL) and Error (RU). His work is distinguished by the somewhat emphasized emotional content of the sound forms as well as a certain level of humor in both concepts and execution. He has collaborated with artists Coil, Cylobe, Annie Anxiety, and Richard Chartier. COH has performed at numerous festivals/events across Europe and North America including 20 to 2000 (Volksbeuhne, Berlin), ARS Festival (Linz, Austria), Rotterdam International Film Festival, MUTEK (Montreal, Canada), Frequenzen/Shirn Kunshalle (Frankfurt, Germany), Wien Modern Festival (Vienna, Austria), and Acces(s) (Pau, France).
Richard Chartier, sound/installation artist has created critically acclaimed recordings for labels such as 12k/LINE (USA), Trente Oiseaux (Germany), Spekk (Japan), and Fallt (Ireland), including collaborations with artists Taylor Deupree, William Basinski, COH, and *0 and has appeared on numerous international compilations. His digital minimalist work explores the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, and the act of listening.
Chartier’s sound works and sound installations have been presented internationally including at the exhibits Sounding Spaces at ICC (Tokyo, Japan), I Moderni / The Moderns at Castello di Rivoli (Torino, Italy), 2002 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art (NY), Resynthesis at The Art Institute of Chicago, as well as solo and collaborative installations for Fusebox (DC) and Diapason (NY). He has performed his work live across Europe, Japan, and North America at MUTEK (Montreal, Canada), DEAF (Dublin, Ireland), Observatori (Valencia, Spain), Transmediale (Berlin, Germany), Lovebytes (Sheffield, UK), The Rotterdam International Film Festival (NE), and other noted digital art/music festivals and at exhibits such as Frequenzen [Hz] at the Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt) and A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968 at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles).
In 2000 he formed the recording label LINE and has since curated its continuing documentation of compositional and installation work by international sound artists and composers exploring the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism. The first release on LINE, Chartier’s Series as awarded Honorable Mention in the category of Digital Music by the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica, 2001 (Austria).
The video element of the live Chessmachine performance was created by Russian/American video and installation artistsEvelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand

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