Victoria Shen is a sound artist, experimental music performer, and instrument-maker based in San Francisco.

Shen's sound practice is concerned with the spatiality/physicality of sound and its relationship to the human body. Her music features analog modular synthesizers, vinyl/resin records, and self-built electronics. Eschewing conventions in harmony and rhythm in favor of extreme textures and gestural tones, Shen uses what she calls "chaotic sound" to oppose signal and information, eluding traditionally embedded meaning.

Her personal identity; her body; is the space her work utilizes to restructure sonic meaning. In her live performances, she proposes an exploration between meaning and non-meaning through the physical activation of noise tropes. Her probing into these melodic voids interrogate the ways we perceive value within aural experiences. The appendage-like instruments and objects she makes, exemplify Shen’s ability to embody through sound her interest in the tension created by opposition: control and chaos, the unique and the mass produced, the practical and the absurd.

Shen’s multimedia practice extends beyond musical composition and performance to include installation and non-traditional methods of distribution. Her DIY approach to deconstructing the concepts of “materiality, value and mass production” both integrate and re-contextualize the formats of the readymade and assemblage techniques. For example, the album art for her debut LP, Hair Birth, utilizes copper to transform the cover into a loudspeaker through which the record can be played. In 2021, Shen produced a series of cut-up records in cast resin embedded with found materials, functioning not only as playable music media but as unique art objects. For recent performances, she pioneered the use of Needle Nails, acrylic nails with embedded turntable styluses, which allow her to play up to 5 tracks of a record at once. Needle Nails, Levitating speaker, and her Noise Combs are some of the objects created by her as part of an extensive repertoire of innovations in the design of sound augmentation. These sculptural elements invite the viewer to unpack one’s relationship with the material possibilities for creating sound.

Shen has performed solo across North America, Japan, Mexico, and Europe as Evicshen and as half of the duo TRIM in North America and the UK. Some notable venues in which she has performed include Boston City Hall, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, ISSUE Project Room NY, DOMMUNE Tokyo, and Petreon Sculpture Park Cyprus. Shen has also been an artist in residence at Elektronmusikstudion EMS Stockholm SE, WORM Rotterdam NL, Kurimanzutto New York US, the Sound Laboratory of The Royal Danish Academy Copenhagen DK, and AUDIUM San Francisco.

Shen currently teaches at Harvard University and the School of Visual Arts NY.

https://evicshen.com/index

AUDREY CHEN is a 2nd generation Chinese/Taiwanese-American musician who was born into a family of material scientists, doctors and engineers, outside of Chicago in 1976. Parting ways with the family convention, she turned to the cello at age 8 and voice at 11. After years of classical and conservatory training in both instruments, with a resulting specialization in early and new music, she parted ways again in 2003 to begin new negotiations with sound in order to discover a more individually honest aesthetic.

Since then, using the cello, voice and occasional analog electronics, Chen’s work delves deeply into her own version of narrative and non-linear storytelling. A large component of her music is improvised, is completely un-processed and her approach to this is extremely personal and visceral. Her playing explores the combination and layering of an analog synthesizer, preparations and traditional and extended techniques in both the voice and cello. She works to join these elements into a singular ecstatic personal language.

For nearly two decades, her predominant focus has been her solo work with the cello, voice and electronics, but she has more recently, in the last four years, begun to shift back towards the exploration of the voice as a primary instrument. Aside from her solo concerts, Chen performs currently in duo with Phil Minton; as BEAM SPLITTER with trombonist Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø; as MOPCUT with Lukas Koenig and Julien Desprez; as HISS & VISCERA with modular synth player Richard Scott; as trio in SEN RYO NO with modular synth players Tara Transitory and Nguyen Baly; in duo with electronic music artist Kaffe Matthews; as AFTERBURNER for voice/live electronics/light with Doron Sadja; and as VOICE/PROCESS for voice/live digital process with Mexican sound artist Hugo Esquinca. Notable past collaborators include German conceptual artist John Bock and abstract turntablist Maria Chavez.

Among her more recent album releases include, "By the Stream" with Phil Minton - Subrosa (Brussels), "Hiss & Viscera" with Richard Scott - Sound Anatomy (Berlin), "Rough Tongue", BEAM SPLITTER'S debut LP - Corvo Records (Berlin) and her solo album "Runt Vigor" - Karl Records (Berlin).

Chen has performed across Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Taiwan, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Canada and the USA.

"Audrey Chen has created an uncompromising and idiosyncratic music, tightly disciplined yet acoustically wild and heavy with implication. Her ultra-verbal vocalising, often reminiscent of the visceral and emotionally charged sound poetry of François Dufréne or Henri Chopin, exposes physiological aspects of utterance that are concealed within standardised articulation and day to day speech. Fleshy, breath-driven and flecked with spittle, Chen's voice emanates not just from her mouth but from an ensemble of upper body surfaces, channels, passages, and cavities." - Julien Cowley THE WIRE

Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø is a trombonist and sound artist based in Berlin and Trondheim, focusing on live performance as well as a wide range of compositional and cross disciplinary projects. His current solo setup consists of heavily amplified trombone, analogue electronics and occasional field recordings, and undulates between claustrophobic tension and moments of ecstatic release. Breath is at the core of the project, and Nørstebø is utilizing an air compressor-like use of lungs, nuanced microphone technique and gain adjustments in order to unearth the intense physicality of the inherent low volume sound material.

“DYSTOPIAN DANCING” from 2022, his third solo release, showcases this unprocessed material along with an expanded section for “object orchestra”.

Nørstebø has toured extensively since 2010, and released numerous records, spanning from solo to large groups. His collaborative projects include duos with Audrey Chen (BEAM SPLITTER), Daniel Lercher and JD Zazie, the “freejazzpop-band” Skadedyr, new music ensemble Aksiom and a myriad of collaborations with improvisers, visual artists, dancers, entities from around the world.

Eroteme is a Manchester based concert series championing experimental music from the hinterlands. Home of the Uncategorizable. Foraging new sonic territories in electronics, improvisation and beyond.