Composer Michael Miller and video artist Eric Souther, in conjunction with Charlotte Street Foundation, present: Emergence of Post-Human Cartographies, an evening of audio-visual works, performed by improvisational electronica quartet, Mnemosyne. Kansas City Performing Media Festival (KC PMF) takes place on September 29th at Charlotte Street’s La Esquina Gallery (1000 W. 25th St, Kansas City, MO). The event will take place during Open Spaces, Kansas City’s bi-annual outdoor-indoor contemporary art exhibition. Charlotte Street Foundation is excited to combine the unusual and eclectic spirit of Kansas City’s performing arts scene with national contributors and ideas.

In the course of the evening, concertgoers will experience an entirely immersive audio-visual environment, which utilizes eight-channel surround sound, and panoramic video projection mapped to all walls and surfaces within La Esquina Gallery. Embedded within this environment, commissioned collaborative works by Kansas City composers and visual artists will be presented side by side with those submitted to a national call for works.

The following artists will also be featured during KCPMF: Cody Kauhl, Colin Patrick Mosely, David James Witter, Dwight Frizzell, Jeremy Tittle, Lisa Marie Evans, Michael Eaton, Paul Rudy, Sebastian Sanchez-Piotrowski, Seth Davis, Leigh Kaulbach, and Keith Kirchoff.

Artists represented in the festival were considered from a pool of applicants who had to consider the material and and discursive practices of Object-Oriented Ontology, specifically it’s subsets: Alien phenomenology, Agential Realism, and Posthumanism.  Object-Oriented Ontology is a philosophy that maintains objects exist independently of human perception and are not ontologically exhausted by their relations with humans or other objects. Upon consideration of these three philosophical subsets (described below), each composer or visual artist must choose one, on which to focus their work. Miller and Souther will pair composers and visual artists based on their responses to these philosophies and based on their ideal working method.

Learn more about the featured artists below!

Seth Andrew Davis
Seth Andrew Davis is a performer and composer from the Kansas City area. Davis is involved in many different genres including, jazz, rock, classical, electronic, electro-acoustic, and free-improvisation. He is currently studying composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance in Kansas City, Mo with Jim Mobberley, Paul Rudy, and Chen Yi.

As an artist, Davis’s process can be closely related to that of an auteur, the film critic term for a director whose work reflects their creative vision and fingerprint. Davis has released his electronic music under the pseudonyms The Gods Hate Kansas, Mr Sandman, and Ghost In The Machine. Davis is also a founding member of Second Nature, a free jazz/new music/math-rock ensemble, BetaMax, Re-Animator, BL@KLI$T, Lethal Weapon 2, and the Davis and Harte duo.

Colin Mosely
Colin Mosely is a multi-media artist raised in central Illinois. Mosely recieved his BFA in painting from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2013. Post graduation Mosely co-founded Robot Rauschenberg, a new media collective formed in Chicago, Illinois. The group’s most recent project, “Sensitive Plant: 5 Evenings with Robot Rauschenberg”, was exhibited in Chicago, IL at Comfort Station in 2016. Currently, Colin Mosely is studying to receive his MA in studio art from the University of Missouri-Kansas City with an emphasis in new media studies. His art practice focuses on the relationship of plant life to human and technological interventions.

Cody Kauhl
Cody Kauhl is a digital multimedia artist that pairs found sound and video with the intimacy of the human voice. His work has been performed at international and national festivals and conferences including the International Computer Music Conference and Society of Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States. He is currently treasurer of the Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance (KcEMA) and vice-president of No Divide KC. Cody graduated in 2011 with a B.M. in Music Theory/Composition at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and received his M.M. in Music Composition at the University of Missouri – Kansas City in 2015.

David Witter
David Witter is a composer, instrumentalist, and educator active in jazz, rock, and new music scenes in Kansas City and Columbia, MO. Currently a composition DMA student at UMKC, in the last few years he has taught music in Columbia public schools, while maintaining a robust private lesson studio.  His award-winning music has been performed at the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and improvisation symposiums in Ann Arbor, MI and Paterson, NJ.  In addition, his work has been recorded by MU’s University Philharmonic Orchestra and Concert Jazz Band, as well as by Seattle free jazz duo Bad Luck and acclaimed NYC chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound. His most recent project involved playing electronically-processed trombone with Denver/Iowa experimental drone ensemble Venereal Crush.

Dwight Frizzell
Dwight Frizzell, an alumnus of KCAI, is an internationally recognized artist whose interdisciplinary work combines video, performance, installation, music, audio art, and writing. His projects emphasize research and a commonality between the fine and performing arts. Frizzell’s work about his boyhood neighbor, Harry S. Truman, was featured in the Peabody-awarded “Lost and Found Sound” series broadcast on National Public Radio. His art pieces have been shown at major international galleries. Currently, Frizzell is developing an opera based on the life of Charles Darwin. In addition to his B.F.A. degree from KCAI, he holds a terminal fine arts degree in Sound Design from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Michael Eaton
Michael Eaton (b. 1981) is a Brooklyn, NY based saxophonist, composer, and educator.  As a saxophonist and improvising artist, his professional career to date has spanned a variety of idioms, encompassing jazz, free improvised music, soul, rock, western classical, funk, reggae, brass bands, and beyond. He embraces a progressive and holistic vision of jazz, cognizant of its rich historical origins and development, but reaches for a personal outlook with an eye towards future possibilities.

Dr. Paul Rudy
Dr. Paul Rudy (DMA) has been called “The High Priest of Sound” and “Sage.” In addition to composing instrumental and electronic art, he practices sacred sound, sound immersion, sound healing, and leads meditations. His music and sonic art balance conservatory training with shamanic practices, subtle energies, and technology, each of which guide his intuitive performances and compositions, bridging science and spirituality. Performances happen in yoga studios, universities, and festivals, and ranges from free-dance, sound meditation, collaborative theater, group improvisation, and working with choreographers. Some recent venues include: Rootwire Transformational Art Festival, The American Academy in Rome, The Nelson-Atkins and Kemper Museums of Art, The International Society for the Study of Subtle Energy and Energy Medicine, The Council Grove Conference, Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras; dance collaborations with choreographers Gary Abbott, Sabrina Madison-Cannon and DeeAnna Hiett; and a monthly Sound Meditation for Compassion.

Leigh Kaulbach
Leigh Kaulbach is a third year MFA student in Printmaking at the University of Kansas. Her work with zines and machine learning animation derives from an affinity for accessible art forms, creative uses for commercial technologies,  and relational media. Leigh has shown 2D work and performed nationally and internationally, including in Palo Alto, CA, Boston, MA, Kansas City, and Cape Town, South Africa.

Keith Kirchoff
Pianist and composer Keith Kirchoff has performed throughout North America, Europe, and the Pacific Southwest. A strong advocate for modern music, Kirchoff is committed to fostering new audiences for contemporary music and giving a voice to emerging composers, and to that end has premiered over 100 new works and commissioned over two dozen compositions. Specializing on works which combine interactive electro-acoustics with solo piano, Kirchoff’s Electroacoustic Piano Tour has been presented in ten countries, and has spawned three solo albums. Kirchoff is the co-founder and a director of SPLICE and the founder and Artistic Director of Original Gravity Inc. Kirchoff has won awards from the Steinway Society, MetLife Meet the Composer, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and was named the 2011 Distinguished Scholar by the Seabee Memorial Scholarship Association. He has recorded on the New World, Thinking outLOUD, Zerx, Ravello, Tantara, New Focus, and SEAMUS labels.

Lisa Marie Evans
Filmmaker Lisa Marie Evans’ work varies in form from feature length documentaries to short animation and public art installation. As a selected artist for various awards and grants, Evans participates in artist residencies and screens her work internationally, including Hungary, France, the Philippines and Canada.

Evans thrives on being active within her community.  She has developed curricula and taught filmmaking to all ages, programmed films for festivals and screenings, served on the board for multiple film organizations, and currently facilitates professional development programs for artists with Artist INC. Evans co-produced Beyond Belief, a digital storytelling project through AIR’s (Association of Independents in Radio) Localore: Finding America.  Partnering with Kansas City Public Television, the 30-minute film received a regional Emmy nomination in 2017.  Currently, Evans is in production with the feature film project Legacies of Lesbian Literature.