Stephen Vitiello: The Punk Attitude of Collaborative Sound Art

Today, we’re putting The Tonearm's needle on Stephen Vitiello.

Stephen is an electronic musician and media artist. His sound installations are in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Whitney, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon. He's worked with Pauline Oliveros, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Joan Jonas. By day, he teaches Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Stephen’s latest project is Trinity, a collaborative album with Lawrence English, who you heard on last week's show. Each of Trinity's five tracks brings in a different third musician: Brendan Canty from Fugazi, Chris Abrahams from The Necks, Marina Rosenfeld, Aki Onda, and the late Steve Roden. The album came out last November.

Stephen shares how this project came together, what it's like to work with each of these artists, and how he's built a career turning everyday sounds into sonic experiences.

(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Lawrence English & Stephen Vitiello’s album Trinity)

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Dig Deeper

Artist and Album

• Visit Stephen Vitiello at stephenvitiello.com and follow him on Soundcloud, Instagram, and Bandcamp
• Purchase Lawrence English & Stephen Vitiello’s Trinity from American Dreams, Bandcamp, or Qobuz and listen on your streaming platform of choice
• Previous collaborations: Acute Inbetweens (2011) and Fable (2014) with Lawrence English
• Stephen Vitiello & Brendan Canty: Second (with Hahn Rowe)

Trinity Collaborators

• Lawrence English and Room40 Records
• Brendan Canty - drummer (Fugazi, The Messthetics)
• Chris Abrahams - pianist (The Necks)
• Marina Rosenfeld - turntablist and composer
• Aki Onda - electronic musician and sound artist
• Steve Roden - late sound artist and visual artist

World Trade Center Project

• World Trade Center Artist Residency - Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
• World Trade Center Recordings: Winds After Hurricane Floyd (1999)
• Bright and Dusty Things - album featuring WTC recordings
• Stephen Vitiello: Listening With Intent - documentary by ABC-TV Australia

Educational Institution

• VCU Kinetic Imaging - Virginia Commonwealth University
• Kinetic Imaging Graduate Program at VCU

Influences and Collaborators Mentioned

• Nam June Paik - video art pioneer
• Pauline Oliveros - composer and accordionist
• Ryuichi Sakamoto - composer and musician
• Fred Frith - guitarist and composer
• Ikue Mori - drummer and electronic musician (DNA)
• Maryanne Amacher - sound artist and composer
• R. Murray Schafer - composer and writer on acoustic ecology
• Robin Rimbaud (Scanner) - electronic musician
• Colin Newman - Wire guitarist and vocalist
• Taylor Deupree - 12k Records founder

Key Venues and Institutions

• The Kitchen - New York performance space
• Electronic Arts Intermix - video art distributor
• Anthology Film Archives - New York cinema
• MASS MoCA - Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art
• The High Line - New York elevated park
• Whitney Museum of American Art - 2002 Biennial
• Museum of Modern Art - Soundings exhibition (2013)

Punk and No Wave References

• Fugazi - influential post-hardcore band
• DNA - no wave band
• The Clash
• No Wave movement - late 1970s NYC

Music Theory and Practice

• Fluxus movement - experimental art movement
• John Cage and prepared piano
• Ambisonic audio - spatial sound format
• Dolby Atmos - immersive audio format

Articles and Interviews

• Steve Roden and Stephen Vitiello conversation in Bomb magazine
• The Collaborative Recent History of Stephen Vitiello - Fluid Radio interview

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