Mendi + Keith OBADIKE
Mendi + Keith Obadike
Mendi + Keith Obadike
Mendi + Keith Obadike
Mendi + Keith Obadike
Mendi + Keith Obadike
Mendi + Keith Obadike

An explosion of light and imagery blasting onto the facade of CFA, accompanied by live performance of songs and poems inspired by historic, scientific, and mythic tales about light.

Mendi + Keith Obadike work collaboratively to make music, art, and literature, creating ethereal works rooted in African-American and African cultures, that address timely and relevant issues in beautiful and powerfully poetic ways. Book of Light, is an explosion of light, imagery and sound, with imagery blasting onto the facade of the College of Fine Arts building, and accompanied by a live performance of songs and poems inspired by historic, scientific, and mythic tales about light. The performance is about light itself, with images inspired by Mendi + Keith’s research into human bioluminesce and biophotonic microscopy. The use of color and aesthetics in scientific imagery inform the images; data found in the scientific studies was used to generate sounds for the performance. In the performance, Book of Light, Mendi + Keith play songs and poems, pulling from historic, scientific, and mythic tales about light. *In collaboration with Yongxin (Leon) Zhao’s Biophotonic Lab

MENDI + KEITH OBADIKE have exhibited and performed at The New Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art. Their projects include a series of large-scale, public sound art works: Blues Speaker (for James Baldwin) at The New School, Free/Phase at the Chicago Cultural Center & Rebuild Foundation, Sonic Migration at Scribe Video Center & Tindley Temple, Philadelphia and Compass Song, an app for Times Square (commissioned by Times Square Arts). They have released recordings on Bridge Records and books with Lotus Press and 1913 Press. They have contributed sounds/music to projects by wide range of artists including loops for neo-soul singer D’Angelo’s first album and a score for playwright Anna Deavere Smith at the Lincoln Center Institute. They were invited to develop their first ‘opera-masquerade’ by writer Toni Morrison at her Princeton Atelier. Their museum exhibitions include the group shows Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966) at The Whitechapel Gallery in London, I Was Raised on The Internet at The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art at The Whitney Museum of American Art. They were invited by the Netgain Partnership (Ford Foundation, Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, and Open Society Foundations) to perform their work “Numbers Station” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Their other honors include a Rockefeller New Media Arts Fellowship, Pick Laudati Award for Digital Art, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award. Their recent projects include Cosmologies (for Two Voices) , a text-sound performance commissioned by Lévy Gorvy Gallery and Utopias: Seeking for a City, a sound installation commissioned by Weeksville Heritage Center, Brooklyn. Mendi received a BA in English from Spelman College and a PhD in Literature from Duke University. She is a poetry editor at Fence Magazine and an associate professor of Writing and Media Studies at Pratt Institute. Keith received a BA in Art from North Carolina Central University and an MFA in Sound Design from Yale University. He is a professor in the College of Arts and Communication at William Paterson University and serves a digital media editor at Obsidian. Mendi + Keith serve as art advisors to the Times Square Alliance and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics.

http://obadike.com

MENDI + KEITH OBADIKE

Book of Light
Sound-Light Performance

Fri 08 Nov 2019
6:30 Performance, CFA west facade
7:30 Reception, CFA Great Hall
8:00 Artists Talk, Kresge Theatre
Mendi + Keith OBADIKE
Mendi + Keith Obadike
Mendi + Keith Obadike
Mendi + Keith Obadike
Mendi + Keith Obadike
Mendi + Keith Obadike
Mendi + Keith Obadike

An explosion of light and imagery blasting onto the facade of CFA, accompanied by live performance of songs and poems inspired by historic, scientific, and mythic tales about light.

Mendi + Keith Obadike work collaboratively to make music, art, and literature, creating ethereal works rooted in African-American and African cultures, that address timely and relevant issues in beautiful and powerfully poetic ways. Book of Light, is an explosion of light, imagery and sound, with imagery blasting onto the facade of the College of Fine Arts building, and accompanied by a live performance of songs and poems inspired by historic, scientific, and mythic tales about light. The performance is about light itself, with images inspired by Mendi + Keith’s research into human bioluminesce and biophotonic microscopy. The use of color and aesthetics in scientific imagery inform the images; data found in the scientific studies was used to generate sounds for the performance. In the performance, Book of Light, Mendi + Keith play songs and poems, pulling from historic, scientific, and mythic tales about light. *In collaboration with Yongxin (Leon) Zhao’s Biophotonic Lab

MENDI + KEITH OBADIKE have exhibited and performed at The New Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art. Their projects include a series of large-scale, public sound art works: Blues Speaker (for James Baldwin) at The New School, Free/Phase at the Chicago Cultural Center & Rebuild Foundation, Sonic Migration at Scribe Video Center & Tindley Temple, Philadelphia and Compass Song, an app for Times Square (commissioned by Times Square Arts). They have released recordings on Bridge Records and books with Lotus Press and 1913 Press. They have contributed sounds/music to projects by wide range of artists including loops for neo-soul singer D’Angelo’s first album and a score for playwright Anna Deavere Smith at the Lincoln Center Institute. They were invited to develop their first ‘opera-masquerade’ by writer Toni Morrison at her Princeton Atelier. Their museum exhibitions include the group shows Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966) at The Whitechapel Gallery in London, I Was Raised on The Internet at The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art at The Whitney Museum of American Art. They were invited by the Netgain Partnership (Ford Foundation, Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, and Open Society Foundations) to perform their work “Numbers Station” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Their other honors include a Rockefeller New Media Arts Fellowship, Pick Laudati Award for Digital Art, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award. Their recent projects include Cosmologies (for Two Voices) , a text-sound performance commissioned by Lévy Gorvy Gallery and Utopias: Seeking for a City, a sound installation commissioned by Weeksville Heritage Center, Brooklyn. Mendi received a BA in English from Spelman College and a PhD in Literature from Duke University. She is a poetry editor at Fence Magazine and an associate professor of Writing and Media Studies at Pratt Institute. Keith received a BA in Art from North Carolina Central University and an MFA in Sound Design from Yale University. He is a professor in the College of Arts and Communication at William Paterson University and serves a digital media editor at Obsidian. Mendi + Keith serve as art advisors to the Times Square Alliance and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics.

http://obadike.com

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SPIKE WOLFF

Curator, Artistic and Executive Director

https://soa.cmu.edu/spike-wolff

lwolff [at] andrew [dot] cmu [dot] edu

Spike Wolff is Special Faculty in the College of Fine Arts and School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University. In addition to her work as Artistic and Executive Director of the wats:ON Festival, Spike is Curator of the School of Architecture Lecture Series and has curated exhibitions for the Miller Gallery on Carnegie Mellon’s campus. Spike assumed directorship of the wats:ON Festival in 2010 and has been instrumental in its revitalization, bringing an eclectic and diverse range of internationally acclaimed and emerging artists and their work to Carnegie Mellon. Spike’s work and interests are interdisciplinary in nature. Recent design projects include ‘Shadow’ an installation for the Mattress Factory Museum, ‘The Hurricane’ a temporary jazz club for the Hill House of Pittsburgh, and exhibition design for ‘Contrarreloj, Felix de la Concha’ at the Frick Art Museum. Spike holds a Master of Architecture from SCI-Arc and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University.
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CASSIE HOWARD

Curatorial Assistant

cmhoward [at] andrew [dot] cmu [dot] edu

Cassie Howard is a student in the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University entering her fourth year. Cassie has been an invaluable member of the festival team since 2017 and is Curatorial Assistant for 2019: NOW. Cassie is interested in the intersection of contemporary practice and activism, especially in how the arts can bring a voice to people who are continuously marginalized, engaging and empowering diverse communities.
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LIZ FOX

Assistant Dean for Staff Engagement

https://www.cmu.edu/cfa/about/leadership/bios/liz-fox.html

lizfox [at] cmu [dot] edu

Liz Fox is an assistant dean in the College of Fine Arts. She has been with the university for more than 30 years and most recently served as the assistant dean for Research for the College of Fine Arts and was a certified research administrator. Recently, Fox took on a new role in CFA, managing staff engagement. To that end, she focuses on the following priorities: staff morale, professional and personal development, diversity, recognition and events. A graduate of the Pennsylvania State University, Fox is working to develop workshops and opportunities for the College of Fine Arts staff, as well as meaningful occasions for recognition and rewards.
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EDDY MAN KIM

Associate Curator Emeritus

https://soa.cmu.edu/eddy-mankim

eddymankim [at] cmu [dot] edu

Eddy Man Kim is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, where he serves as a Co-director of the Computational & Tangible Interaction Design Laboratory (CoDe Lab). Eddy Man is a designer, researcher, educator, and entrepreneur who was awarded the George N. Pauly, Jr. Fellowship to join Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture faculty as a Visiting Assistant Professor for the academic year of 2014/2015. A technologist and futurist at heart, Eddy Man is interested in interdisciplinary efforts to mutually augment design and technology—especially as they relate to current trends in web technology. Eddy Man is also one of the founding members of openUU, a design research agency based in Hong Kong. While holding the position of Technical Director, Eddy Man marketed for, managed, and delivered openUU projects that won four Best-of-Year Awards by Interior Design magazine and the 40-under-40 Award by Perspective Global magazine. While managing his practice in Hong Kong, Eddy Man taught graduate students at The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Architecture as a visiting design studio instructor and design workshops for Hong Kong Interior Design Association. Eddy Man received his Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University College of Architecture, Art & Planning and obtained his Master in Design Studies at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, with a concentration in Design Technology. Upon completion of his Masters thesis, Sandbox3D: Web App for Real-time Design Collaboration, he was awarded the Digital Design Prize for _“the most creative use of digital media in relation to the design professions.”_ Eddy Man has worked in the offices of POSCO A&C of Seoul, South Korea; Robert A.M. Stern Architects in New York City; EPIPHYTE Lab of Ithaca, New York.
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GOLAN LEVIN

Curator Emeritus

https://www.cmu.edu/cas/people/levin_golan.html

golan [at] andrew [dot] cmu [dot] edu

Golan Levin develops artifacts and events which explore supple new modes of reactive expression. His work focuses on the design of systems for the creation, manipulation and performance of simultaneous image and sound, as part of a more general inquiry into the formal language of interactivity, and of nonverbal communications protocols in cybernetic systems. Through performances, digital artifacts, and virtual environments, often created with a variety of collaborators, Levin applies creative twists to digital technologies that highlight our relationship with machines, make visible our ways of interacting with each other, and explore the intersection of abstract communication and interactivity. Levin has exhibited widely in Europe, America and Asia. Levin’s work combines equal measures of the whimsical, the provocative, and the sublime in a wide variety of online, installation and performance media. His work has been exhibited at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Kitchen, the Neuberger Museum, and The Whitney Biennial, all in New York; Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, Taiwan; The InterCommunication Center in Tokyo, Japan; and the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe, Germany, among other venues. Levin received undergraduate and graduate degrees from the MIT Media Laboratory, where he studied with John Maeda in the Aesthetics and Computation Group. Between degrees, he worked for four years as an interaction designer and research scientist at Interval Research Corporation. Presently Levin is Associate Professor of Electronic Time-Based Art at Carnegie Mellon University.