Daniel Conrad
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Daniel Conrad is an American light artist, painter, sound artist, teacher and writer. His father Arthur Conrad, a portait painter whose work hangs in the U.S. Senate reception room, worked with Everett Warner during World War II in designing dazzle camouflage for the US Navy. His brother Tony Conrad is a video artist, filmmaker and musician.
Conrad began his light-work in the late 60s while in the Berkeley area, where he began to create colored light performance instruments derived more from Buddhist thought and minimal art than from the more glib psychedelic light shows of his mileu. He also performed in Daniel Moore's Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company and produced an experimental film, "Circles," which explored color afterimage, before relocating to his native Baltimore, where he earned a MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
He has further elaborated his light-work into automated objects and the performance-driven Chromaccord Light Organ, designed as, according to his description, "an instrument designed to manipulate kinetic color to invoke visual responses. It places an area of color (the object) on a background of another color (the surround). The instrument is performed by changing the color areas. [...] By using such an arrangement, the Chromaccord becomes a tool for exploring the visual experience of continually changing sequential and simultaneous contrasts." In particular, the Cromaccord exploits visual phenomena including after-image and retinal fatigue. Conrad has collaborated as a "visual musician" with Jordan de la Sierra, Ian Nagoski and many others.
He is also an inventor of musical instruments, including the Wild Wave (used on record by Ian Nagoski) and veena bambeena, which he plays in free improvisation contexts.
