FLOATING SOUND GALLERY

Vienna

Stephen Vitiello

Photo by Jessica Soumphontphakty

Stephen Vitiello (b. 1964, New York City)

Solo exhibitions include All Those Vanished Engines, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (2011-(ongoing)); A Bell For Every Minute, The High Line, NYC (2010-2011); More Songs About Buildings and Bells, Museum 52, New York (2011); and Stephen Vitiello, The Project, New York (2006). He has participated in such group exhibitions as Soundings: A Contemporary Score, Museum of Modern Art, NY (2013); Sound Objects: Leah Beeferman and Stephen Vitiello, Fridman Gallery, New York (2014); September 11, PS 1/MoMA, LIC, NY (2011-2012); the 15th Biennale of Sydney, Australia (2006); Yanomami: Spirit of the Forest at the Cartier Foundation, Paris; and the 2002 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2002). Vitiello has performed nationally and internationally, at locations such as the Tate Modern, London; the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival; The Kitchen, New York; and the Cartier Foundation, Paris. In 2011, ABC-TV, Australia produced the documentary Stephen Vitiello: Listening With Intent. Awards include Creative Capital (2006) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2011-2012). Vitiello is a professor of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University. He lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

“Electronic musician and sound artist Stephen Vitiello transforms incidental atmospheric noises into mesmerizing soundscapes that alter our perception of the surrounding environment. He has composed music for independent films, experimental video projects and art installations, collaborating with such artists as Nam June Paik, Tony Oursler and Dara Birnbaum. In 1999 he was awarded a studio for six months on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center’s Tower One, where he recorded the cracking noises of the building swaying under the stress of the winds after Hurricane Floyd. As an installation artist, he is particularly interested in the physical aspect of sound and its potential to define the form and atmosphere of a spatial environment.”

Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain catalog for the exhibition
Ce qui arrive/Unknown Quantity, 2002

Rush and Lullaby, December 2005

Performers: Michael J. Maccaferri (clarinet), Molly Alicia Barth (flute), Nicholas Photinos (cello), Lisa Kaplan (piano)

Four members of Eighth Blackbird were recorded individually, provided not so much with a "score" but a list of tasks to perform - a very high note, a very low note, percussive sounds, the sound of an unspecified animal. These samples were then collected and treated as raw material for the composition. By layering tracks, collisions of time, pitch and sensitivity were discovered and singled out, sometimes manipulated but not always. I was interested among other things in how the players might be connected (psychically or otherwise) even when not playing together - how each even when not playing together-how each one would deal with time and choice of notes without knowing what the others had done.

Stephen Vitiello is a sound and media artist. In his work, he is particularly interested in the physical aspect of sound and its potential to define the form and atmosphere of a spatial environment.