photo: performance of Static Room at Dissonanze 07

Scott Arford b.1967
Media Arts

Biography

Scott Arford is one of the leading figures of new media arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has produced numerous works for sound and video including multichannel installations, live performances, CD and DVD projects. He was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2005 Prix Ars Electronica. Arford has shown his in numerous venues including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Dissonanze 7 in Rome, Italy; LUFF Festival in Lausanne, Switzerland; Observatori Festival in Valencia, Spain; the Sounding Festivals in Guangzhou, China and Taipei, Taiwan; the LEM festival in Barcelona, Spain; Liquid Architecture in Melbourne, Australia; the Festival de Video/Arte/Eolectronica in Lima, Peru; Sonic Light in Amsterdam; and the Center for Contemporary Arts in Kitakyushu, Japan.

Arford received a Bachelor of Architecture from the College of Architecture and Design at Kansas State University in 1991. He is currently an instructor at the California College of Arts in Oakland, CA.
In 1995 Arford founded 7hz, a warehouse/performance space. From 1995 to 2002, 7hz was San Francisco's leading venue for noise and experimental music featuring numerous international artists including Francisco Lopez, Kit Clayton, Blechdom from Blectum, Zbignew Karkowski, The Haters, Mayuko Hino, and John Duncan. It still used as a studio and workspace for Arford and others.


Educational/Lectures/Presentations

Lecturer/Instructor, California College of the Arts, Oakland, CA
Sounding Guangzhou, Guangzhou, China, 2004
Sounding Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan, 2004
Dimension 7, San Francisco, CA, 2003
Center for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia, 2003
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, 2003
CCA, Center for Contemporary Art, Kityakyushu, Japan, 2002
Dorkbot, San Francisco, CA, 2002
SFEMF, Southern Exposure Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2001

Organization Affiliations

Director and Founder 1995–present
7hz San Francisco
7hz was founded in 1995 by Scott Arford as a venue for noise and experimental media. A space where new combinations of image, sound, and experience can be realized. Since its inception it has had the privilege of hosting performances for many of the world’s most interesting, progressive, and challenging sound and media artists. 7hz also operates as an A/V studio for many artists.

Board of Advisors 1999–present
23five Incorporated San Francisco
23five Incorporated is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development and increased awareness of sound works in the public arena, and to the support and education of artists working with and discussing the medium of sound. 23five was founded in 1993, and secured federal 501(c)(3) status in 1995.

Board of Advisors 1996
2AES (Art and Architecture Exhibition Series) San Francisco
2AES is a component of the Center for Critical Architecture, a non-profit organization committed to the investigation and presentation of innovative thinking and practice in the fields of architecture and design.

Selected Projects

Static Room Series

Static Room is an ongoing series of performances and installations for sound and projection. These projects merge the audio and visual environment into a single whole. The raw video signal itself generates the audio component. Thus, the video is composed and created for its sound qualities as much as for its visual qualities. The result is an immersive, synesthetic environment where the perceptual and physical qualities of sound and light merge to create a very direct singular experience. Tones and abstract color fields break down into vibrating sheets of interlaced flickering and shredding static, the abstract projections and resultant sounds make it possible to hear the buzzing images and see the flickering sounds.

What Sound Does A Color Make?, Eyebeam, New York, NY, 2005
Solo Exhibition, Swift Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2004
7 Festival de Video/Arte/Electronico, Lima Peru, 2003
Liquid Architecture, Australian Center for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia, 2003
Sonic Light, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2003
The Lab, San Francisco, CA, 2002

Activating the Medium Festival, 2002
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco CA
Beyond Baroque Literary Arts, Venice, CA
Cuesta College, College of Fine Arts, San Luis Obispo, CA
Chico State University, Chico, CA

San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, San Francisco, CA 2001
Audio Visual Chaos, King Street Garage, San Francisco, CA, 2001
Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA, 2001

Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA, 2001
Joypad, San Francisco, CA, 2000
7hz, San Francisco, CA, 2000

The Song of the Station, Video, Performance.
The title is borrowed from Giorgio de Chirico's 1912 poem. The inspiration for the work is a remark made by my friend Sukhwant Jhaj many years ago. We were standing in fromt of 7hz, when he pointed to the immense metal warehouse building several hundred feet distant, resting silently on Pier 82. "That," he said, "is the Little Station."

Field Effects, 924 Natoma Street, San Francisco, CA, 2005
Radical Cuts, Crazy Space, Los Angeles, CA, 2005

Total Static Takeover, Conceptual video work, 8 pages typed text, website.
Total Static Takeover decrees that all erroneous video transmission and/or reception is to be considered part of an ongoing video. "I Scott Arford, hereby decree, that from this day forward, April 13, 2003, all instances in which the phenomena of VIDEO STATIC occurs shall be constituted as a screening, partial screening, or instance of the video TOTAL STATIC TAKEOVER."

TV-IV, Performance, two video monitors, sound.
Two television monitors are fitted with special microphones which pick up the sound of the picture tube. This sound is processed and sent back to the monitors as a video signal as well as played out through the sound system. The result is a buzzing strobing audio-video feedback loop in which the audio can be seen and the video can be heard.

Honorable Mention, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, 2005
Sounding Guangzhou, Guangzhou, China, 2004
Sounding Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan, 2004
Sonic Light, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2003
7hz Tour, 15 dates throughout Europe, 2002

Altzero2, Installation, video projection, sound.
A collaboration with London's multimedia collective Squid Soup. This project creates a slowly transforming, mesmerising drone-scape. A room within a room presents a vaguely underwater sound and projection environment. Movement through this virtual environment was controlled by the visitorís movement in real space. The resulting audio composition is a function of the location in the virtual environment.

Institute for Contemporary Art, London, UK, 2002

Menacing Pong Room, Installation, four video monitors, Pong video games, sound.
This installation was created as a member of the Bureau of Low Technology (B.O.L.T.). A war-damaged shipping container was the site for this sinister ode to dead/obsolete/unsupported technology. The space is dark except for the glow of several broken, flickering monitors, their screens covered with translucent prints of the Mona Lisa rendered in ASCII. An old Pong game stands in the space, supported on dead TVís, for people to play. A steady, static drone is periodically interrupted by disembodied voices and deranged samples from old video games.

Salon 26, Zagreb, Croatia, 2001

Night of the Living End/Happy Future, Performance, four video monitors, dual synched video projection, sound.
Night footage from specifically positioned surveillance cameras of San Franciscoís industrial wasteland caressed by Lina Romayís hypnotic eyes from "Female Vampire". Shipyard landscape as seen through the night-vision eyes of a zombie The world of detached surveillance and digital desire. Both events are eventless. The non-event as stasis (static) and static as an event.

-40 deg. Wind Chill Tour, Prague (CZ), Woroclaw (PL), Vienna(AU), Dresden (D), 1999ñ2000.
The Third Annual Activating the Medium Festival, Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA, 2000

Radiant-Index, Performance, four video monitors, sound.
The sound of 4 video signals are mixed and processed. The video was specifically prepared for its rhythmic and tonal qualities.

7hz. San Francisco, CA, 1999

Manifst. Performance, four video monitors, video projection, sound, lecture.
For the occasion of 5 years of noise at 7hz it seemed appropriate to deliver a Static manifesto. It could have been a sermon? Perhaps it was a warning: Beware the image. There was also a three paragraphócut and pasteólecture delivered by a machine (with sexy voice).

7hz Fifth Anniversary, 7hz, San Francisco, CA, 1999

Terrible June, Performance, dual(ing) video projections, eight video monitors, sound.
Dual video projections combat and cooperate in a symmetric/asymmetric struggle. A bi-polar videoscape of lurid summer fever. A blue video sunset populated by swarming insects, consumed by marching ants.

Cognitive Dissidents, The Lab, San Francisco, CA, 1999

Evil Dreams, Performance, seven video monitors (many were suspended over the audience), projection, sound.
Video and audio were mixed live to portray the somnambulistic twitches of the unconscious mind. Fragments of nightmares are juxtaposed against a hallucinatory cityscape and shredding static. An incomplete story is told.

Aim For the Brain, ATA, San Francisco, CA, 1999
The Vault, San Francisco, Ca, 1999
Sound Unwound, The Lab, San Francisco, CA, 1998

Set:Pattern, Performance, two video monitors, radios, electronics.
The magnetic interference patterns between two video monitors (an amber one and a green one) and various radios were mixed and processed. The monitors were slowly tuned and adjusted by altering the horizontal/vertical hold and brightness/contrast controls until a scintillating hum was achieved.

7hz, San Francisco, CA, 1997
NORCAL Noise Festival, Sacramento, CA, 1997
Making Waves, performed under the Central Freeway, San Francisco, CA, 1996
40th Street Warehouse, Oakland, CA, 1996

Selected Screenings

2005

Untitled for Televisions, Rotterdam Film Festival, Rotterdam, NL
Untitled for Televisions, Dumbo Film Festival, New York, NY
Untitled for Televisions, The Connectors, Bristol, UK
Untitled for Televisions, Video as an Instrument, New York, NY
Airports 2, The Connectors, Bristol, UK

2004

Airports 2, Swift Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2003

BIAS, Taipei, Taiwan
Beware the Image, Scott Arford Selected Works 1995-2003, Cinematheque, San Francisco, CA
Airports for Lights, Shadows, and Particles, Fear of Flying, Cinematheque, San Francisco, CA
Static Room 5, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

1999

A Dogs View of Television, Fifth Avenue Cinema, Portland OR
Pilot, Aim For the Brain, ATA, San Francisco, CA
Cut-up/+ - (A year of Fuck TV), Aim For the Brain, ATA, San Francisco, CA

1998

Airports for Lights, Shadows and Particles, RISD Museum, Providence, RI
Airports for Lights, Shadows and Particles, Clinton Street Theatre, Portland, OR
Fuck T.V., Monthly episodes (10 total), Channel 53, San Francisco, CA
Institutional Broadcast, Techno Casualties, ATA, San Francisco, CA

1997

Beyond Desire, Samhaine, Headlands Center for the Arts, Marin, CA
Scot Jenerik: Pyromaniacial, Gothic, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA
Scot Jenerik: Pyromaniacial, Ear Art Sound Exhibition, 1079 Gallery, Chico, CA
Institutional Broadcast, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI
T.V. Homicide, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI
Airports for Lights, Shadows and Particles, The Bacchanal Film Festival, New York, NY
Chamber of Horrors, Defenestration, San Francisco, CA, March

1996

Nemeis, Flicker: Visit to a Celluloid Planet, Four Walls Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Marking Time (with Crawl Unit), Sound Culture 96, San Francisco, CA
T.V. Homicide, 2nd Annual Cacophony Drive-in Festival, San Francisco, CA
T.V. Homicide, The Bacchanal Film Festival, New York

1995

Transmarginal Inhibition, 1st Annual Cacophony Drive-in Festival, San Francisco, CA
Institutional Broadcast, NORCAL Noise Festival, Sacramento, CA
Airports for Lights, Shadows and Particles, The Red Vic Theatre, San Francisco, CA

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