Presented in partnership with CAP UCLA, this pair of performances by artists William Basinski and Bethan Kellough sparks a powerful conversation between art and science.
In On Time, Out of Time, Basinki creates a one-of-a-kind sonic bed with recordings from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) that captured billion-year-old sonic impressions made by two colliding black holes. Kellough’s Still the Fragments Move is a new composition that follows the journey of ocean waves from sea to shore. Both pieces explore the profound connection between sound, vibrations, and waveforms with the human body.
The performance will be followed by a brief panel discussion with artists William Basinski, Evelina Domnitch, Dmitry Gelfand, and experimental physicist Rana Adhikari, about their time together at LIGO at Caltech in 2016 and the artwork that resulted from this fruitful collaboration.
Bethan Kellough
Hailing from Scotland, Bethan Kellough is an artist who incorporates strings, electronics and environmental sound recordings to produce immersive installations and compositions. Kellough employs a variety of recording techniques, including ambisonic microphones, hydrophones, electromagnetic and VLF (Very Low Frequency) receivers, to capture the vibrations and spatial nuances of the natural world. Her debut release, Aven was named as one of the top 20 avant albums by Rolling Stone in 2016.
William Basinski
William Basinski is a Los Angeles–based avant-garde composer and sound artist renowned for his pioneering work in ambient music, soundscapes, and tape-loop compositions. Born in 1958, he has spent decades exploring the ephemeral nature of sound, memory, and decay. Basinski’s most acclaimed project, The Disintegration Loops (2002–03), is a four-album series that captures the sounds of magnetic tape loops deteriorating as they are played again and again; Basinski conceived the work as an elegiac response to the events of September 11, 2001.