User:Sotrab
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| Sotrab | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Joshua Adam Bartos |
| Born | October 28, 1975 Greenfield, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Genre(s) | Experimental Techno Mashup Progressive Trance Break Beat |
| Occupation(s) | Multimediaaudiovisualist Producer Video Editor |
| Instrument(s) | Turntables & Sampler |
| Label(s) | Independent SotrabDesign |
| Associated acts | SotrabDesign |
| Website | [1] |
Joshua Adam "Sotrab" Bartos (born October 28, 1975 in Greenfield, Massachusetts, U.S.A.) is a Multimedia Audio Visualist.
[edit] Biography
Sotrab grew up in a small New England town helping create a sub-culture there in the early 1990's with the help of many of his fellow Artist/DJ friends. From there he moved to Chicago in late 1999 in which he established a broader fanbase and eventually transcended his talents to Los Angeles in 2005 where he currently produces, edits, engineers, and designs in a video game medium of audio/video/gameplay/graphics. He has always had a love for music, his first piece of vinyl was acquired in 1979, it was the infamous KISS Dynasty. In the aftermath of Warholian revelry, the appropriation and manipulation of pop culture through soundscapes and technotopia Sotrab is an image/sound manipulator working with film, digital video, turntables, samplers, and live media. His films/videos, CD-ROMs, live audio/video mixes, and installations are regularly seen in bars, galleries, and living rooms internationally. He performs at various locations in the U.S. and Internationally. He is originally from Massachusetts and currently lives and works in Culver City, California.
When George Thomas first projected photographic images alongside a live rendition of the song The Little Lost Child in the 1890's, visual music was born. Since this disastrous first attempt, visual music has followed a long and myriad history culminating in its complete appropriation by the music industry and other systems of commoditization and commercialization. Visual music transformed into music video and the entire artistic genre and outlet became synonymous with MTV.
I seek the lost chapters and epilogue of visual music, an art medium whose roots extend not to the music industry and the increased revenue proffered a song with visual accompaniment, but toward an untainted world that feels and sees the visual embodiments of music. I summon the explorations of Maya Deren & Stan Brackage to the experimentations of Bruce Nauman & Vito Acconci, while thumbing through the creeds of their video techno-wonderland. Each of my films, videos, live audio-video mixing performances or Internet-based interdisciplinary transmissions, emphasizes the preconceived notions and knee-jerk translations that pigeonhole the visual music artist. Using the same tools of the music video industry, warping similar pop iconography and sensationalized visuals and thereby fully confronting the viewer with his or her own assumptions, the audience is challenged to deconstruct and transcend the orienting paradigms offered by mainstream marketing systems. Entering a performance arena or gallery arena, can they unplug the extension cord leading from cerebellum to television and process the artwork in any other way than music video? Do they immediately start chiming pop-up video and build associations to previously seen music videos? Recreating what ostensibly could sell for an electronic music video yet demanding its translation as an art form and personal expression, the murky merits of visual music belly to the surface of attention. Is the decontexualization of the audio-visual work outside the music industry sufficiently to allow new readings? Appropriating the music video craft, must the video artist always succumb to its connotations and interpretations? Will image-sound manipulation ever break the fetters of MTV? Is the avant-garde film artist delusional to believe his work is any different than the thousands of videos produced for the music industry?
Each of my pieces is a self-contained experiment in the history and future of visual music.
