Professor of Technocultural Studies and Music, UC Davis
Composer, performer, historian, instrument builder, journalist, activist, kayak instructor Bob Ostertag’s work cannot easily be summarized or pigeon-holed. He has published 21 CDs of music, two movies, two DVDs, and two books. His writings on contemporary politics have been published on every continent and in many languages. Electronic instruments of his own design are at the cutting edge of both music and video performance technology. He has performed at music, film, and multi-media festivals around the globe. His radically diverse collaborators include the Kronos Quartet, avant garder John Zorn, heavy metal star Mike Patton, jazz great Anthony Braxton, dyke punk rocker Lynn Breedlove, drag diva Justin Bond, Quebecois film maker Pierre Hébert, and others. He is rumored to have connections to the shadowy media guerrilla group The Yes Men. In March 2006 Ostertag made all of his recordings to which he owns the rights available as free digital downloads under a Creative Commons license. He is currently Professor of Technocultural Studies and Music at the University of California at Davis.
Links: Home Page | All Music Guide| Wikipedia Article
Quote:
The meeting of the machine and the body is an uneasy one. In the realm of performance, this uneasiness is reflected in the fact that, as technology has grown more and more sophisticated, the successful design of “instruments” that can be manipulated during performance with anything like the fluidity and intuition of conventional musical instruments has remained elusive. This failure, however, is not due to a lack of imagination on the part of artists, but a reflection in art of the uneasiness of the meeting of machine and body throughout culture today, which can be seen in every human activity: war, work, play, reproduction, and so on. How machines and bodies will co-exist is thus not a problem to be “solved,” but the central tension of our time in human history. Thus, it is a compelling terrain in which to locate art.
