Scheduled on February 18, 2019
Jliat is the alias of one James Whitehead; noise artist, composer, writer, philosopher extraordinaire. Whitehead has created programs just to mimic a certain album by Merzbow in certain randomized ways. He's created variations on classical compositions made with car crash sound effects and explosions. His list of conceptual work continues endlessly. I still need to ask him if he ever finished his 233 dvd box set of randomized noise that he hasn't even listened to in its entirety. I was told that there is a CD which seems to be totally silent, but in actuality it is sound transformed or extracted from a jpg file, and is said to have caused speakers to smoke when set to full volume.
James and I have argued a ridiculous amount about art, and this is a fella who studied in proximity to John Cage, AMM, various early fluxus artists, and has lectured on noise music, and all I have done is play a piano that John Cage first prepared once! Jliat has sent me his PDFs of what would be his power point lecture clips, complete with animated Gifs, and they are a treat for those who have an interest in the subject. I believe he also has a book available soon. As a reviewer, JW is notorious for waxing philosophical all over an artist's work, to a degree that several complaints have been mounted and others have claimed to be made delirious (I did an article about it on WFMU's blog, with hand selected reviews from Whitehead here). I enjoy what he gave us here, and I hope you do to.
https://nopartofit.blogspot.com/2019/08/interview-series-6-james-whitehead-jliat.html