hot pink history

Last week, I had the privilege of meeting a pioneer of experimental electronic music whose work is receiving much belated recogniton. His name is Warner Jepson, and this partial chronology of works ought to be enough to convince anyone of the man's largesse.

His latest exhibition is "Metamorfaces," a collection of portrait images discovered at the National Center for Experiments in Telelvision, on display until August 16, 2009, at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. Blending buchla synthesizer audio signals with those of one of the earliest video synthesizers, Jepson creates a series of self-portraits that mesmerize and terrorize the viewer, sometimes becoming so fractured as to evoke evisceration of the self, and often brightening to heights of synesthetic beauty. Humor is thrown into the mix, too, as can be seen below in his work, "Hot Pink Guys."

Warner Jepson | "Hot Pink Guys" from Shinkoyo on Vimeo.

With more exhibitions and a Shinkoyo DVD release planned for the future, Jepson's work is being discovered, rediscovered and uncovered by a younger generation of electronic composers and video artists. Over at the Mutant Sounds blog, they're hosting Totentanz, a recording from a score to a ballet first performed in 1967 here in San Francisco. A real gem, well worth the time of anyone interested in what Kyle Gann has called 'American Music,' especially those interested in the unheralded composers of the new music and electronic era.

Later today, a little check-up on Monika Kruse...