Stephen Vitiello has collaborated with musicians, visual artists and choreographers, among them Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Constance DeJong, Nam June Paik, Scanner, Frances-Marie Uitti ... His music has been heard at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (New York), Museum of Contemporary Art (Lyon), Cheekwood Museum of Art (Nashville), Texas Gallery (Houston), The Performing Garage (an off-site event of the 1997 Whitney Bienniale), National Galerie Hamburger Bahnhoff (Berlin), New York World Trade Center, Festival of Film and Architecture (Graz), Philadelphia Museum of Art ... on WDR Radio, on the web, as part of Tetrasomia (a project of Dia Center for the Arts) ... He directed the video Nam June Paik: SeOUL NyMAx Performance, 1997 - Dress Rehearsal and The Last Ten Minutes. He curated the Sound Art segment of 'The American Century: Art and Culture 1950 - 2000' for the Whitney Museum, and organized 'Young and Restless', a video program which toured to over 40 venues internationally, for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Statement: "I am interested in the physicality of sound and its potential to define the shape, feel and color of a room. I am also interested in exploring how people receive sound and to what extent I may create a work, with no visual component, and offer an environment in which a gallery or museum viewer will be enticed into listening with the attention that they would give to a visual or audio-visual work."
Six pieces by Stephen Vitiello, Peer Bode and Andrew Deutsch.
" an improv disc that sounds like no other I’ve ever heard; it’s remarkable for its gentleness, intelligence and likability." (New York Press) "One of the highlights of the year so far" (The Wire) Experimental recording with guests Pauline Oliveros (accordion), Hahn Rowe (electric violin), Rebecca Moore (voice and sampler), Paul Geluso (double bass).
Early collection of soundtracks for film, video and performance, re-mixed for CD release. Lyrical, evocative sounds for electric guitar performed with percussionists Decio Ramos and Josephina Cerqueira, members of the Brazilian group, Uakti.
Sounds Building in the Fading Light is a mix of sounds recorded during a 5 month "WorldViews" residency on the 91st floor of The World Trade Center, floating above the lights of New York City and the void of New Jersey. Inexpensive contact microphones were fixed to the windows and routed into a mixing board, tweaked by equalization and a Sherman Filter Bank. Additional experiments were done at night with an amplified photocell placed into the eye of a telescope. The result was the chance to listen to the building and to all that passes it by: airplanes, helicopters, people on the streets below, wind, the intensified movement of the building after Hurricane Floyd. "WorldViews" is administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Thundergulch. A special thank you to Bob Bielecki for technical assistance and conceptual collaboration.
10" LP
Uitti/Vitiello - Frances-Marie Uitti and Stephen Vitiello
Fascinating mini cd filled with controlled improv and an effervescent freeform art of noises makes a "magical world of micro dynamics, swirling dervishes of harmonic twists, hoarse melodies on the Mongolian violin add to the mystery of this exposed-nerve musical world. A 20-minute journey through a land not yet inhabited...."
3" Compact Disc
Installation documentation and a short concert recording, created at the Texas Gallery, using a small photocell to amplify sounds of light in the gallery. Pauline Oliveros adds an overdub for the CD release.