“Bushwick is a decadent and sometimes punk town, it is hipster but not silly hipster like Park Slope; it’s geek and psychoactive at the same time.”
Like the man who fell to Earth, Adriano landed in my lap inside the Twitter-scape . Out of nowhere. Up through the social media Rabbit Hole, straight into my DM inbox. The universe was uncanny in its thinking, this year. Upon meeting we both knew that we were embarking the age of innovation and re-awakening within the hybrid of music, technology, and performance. We knew that we both had something to offer and that it’s all happening right here in Bushwick.
And speaking of uncanny, two months after ‘meeting’ on Twitter we began to collaborate and perform together. Four months after we started performing we were both featured in two of the most important publications in Italy, one of them being Rolling Stone. Today Adriano is responsible for an exhaustive list of gallery shows, music projects, compositions, and is a Certified Ableton live Instructor. Adriano is also responsible for what could easily be a breakthrough invention in performance-technology for the year 2012: The Kin-Hackt. In simpler terms, it’s Body Instrument able to map the joints of the human body, tracking movements that are translated into musical impulses and sounds. Yeah, that happened in Bushwick. Here’s what’s next:
“Living here you, and being surrounded by amazing artists and visionaries from all over the world makes me feel home.”
Ana Lola Roman: When you landed here, it was in Bed-Stuy. From there, you moved to Bushwick. So, why New York in General?
Adriano Clemente: When I moved to New York I actually landed in East Village for a month and then I moved to Bed-Stuy, a neighborhood that made me totally love Brooklyn. After a year I moved to Bushwick. New York was not in my plans actually, I wanted to move to San Francisco but after living here for three months I just got magnetized and somehow connected to the city in a mystic way.
Do you think Bushwick is the best place a musician should be?
I think Bushwick is a great place for a creative person in general. Living here, and being surrounded by amazing artists and visionaries from all over the world makes me feel home.
You describe yourself as a sound sculptor, what does that mean?
I describe myself more as a Interactive Sound Designer but I like the idea of sculpting sounds, modeling waves and craft samples. I work a lot with interactive technologies applied to music and visuals and as a profession I teach a software called Ableton Live that makes all this even more magic.
Do you think technology can be emotional?
I think that we can make technology more humanized, and so as a result it might get more emotional than what we expected.
Would you say that Bushwick loves to dance more than any other neighborhood in NYC? Why is that?
Bushwickers love to party more than anybody else on the planet! This is because there are venues and underground parties popping up constantly here, and this makes the events more genuine than the pre-packed parties that happen in the city for example, which are controlled by different economic and logistic rules.
What inspires you the most about Bushwick?
Bushwick is a decadent and sometimes punk town, it is hipster but not silly hipster like Park Slope; it’s geek and psychoactive at the same time. Bushwick runs on creative workflow, music and galleries and balance with the “natives” in a process that pushes more to the integration vs. a gentrification.
It inspires me everyday and I believe that we can all make a difference here.
You have made an impact in NYC, with your innovations and some of your projects in various galleries, venues, etc. Do you think Bushwick has had a huge influence on your output and creativity in that regard? Is it a good bouncing board for you?
Bushwick is not exactly the place where I work, beside the private work I do in my studio on Wyckoff. I can say that I have had the chance to express myself, perform and show my works in several galleries, clubs, music venues and private events in Manhattan and Brooklyn as well, but the city remains the main container for what concern big events, and this most of the time happen because there are more money behind the events and some work based on interactive technology most of the time are expensive to install.
Honestly, I feel that Bushwick is my home neighborhood, and it works great as a incubator of ideas that then can be exported everywhere.
What aspects of the future can you see here?
As I told you I think that we can re-invent (and we are already doing it) the concepts of venue, gallery, shop. The keywords here are: Singularities inside the Collective. The energy that a lot of creative people create in the same space is enough to power an entire neighborhood. It’s up to us and to all the people who will decide to live here to be responsible and contribute to keep Bushwick a wild, sweet place.
One of your recent projects was at Brooklyn Lyceum. It was a piece called “Meta-Born-Birth for the Re/Mixed Media Festival. Can you tell me a bit more about this project and what it meant for you?
Meta-Born-Birth was an exclusive piece for ReMixed Media Festival 2012.
The piece represented a complete re-visitation of the performance as a medium and transformed the body in a facilitator that was able to transport the music and deliver the messages directly to the audience. All this taking advantage of a dress made of light, a prototype that worked perfectly and helped the computer to communicate directly with the body of the performer. The piece was a complex work that involved several type of technologies and was made in collaboration with a small group of artist/friends and Ana Lola Roman, do you know her? 🙂
There are artists, and then there are artists who are inventors. Do you consider yourself an inventor? Why?
I consider myself a digital adventurer. It’s like a dungeon-and-dragons type of game; I love to discover and try new technologies. I also have to be careful not to get stuck and enslave myself to just one way of doing, but trying to re-invent my visions constantly. My key interest is the human evolution. I love the concept of evolution, and when working on my projects I offer to people new ways and perspective to see the world, and evolve to the next level of interaction, then yes I can also define myself an inventor.
We met on Twitter, and then discovered we only live 2 train stops from each other. Do you find Bushwick magical like that?
Ahahah, that is true, but unfortunately the magical thing here is Twitter, not Bushwick. I mean yes, you can experience the magic in Bushwick as well, but Twitter and few others smart social media are changing the way we interact between each other and this is pretty cool. We <3 Twitter.
In the summer I remember you gave a lecture on the technological and philosophical differences of Digital vs. Analogue at Body Actualized. Do you think Bushwick is Digital or Analogue?
Yes, I love Body Actualized and the community that lives and loves the space on Troutman. That specific event was called AOS, and is one of a series of parties and workshops that I have started here in New York with some friends and then exported to Japan and Europe.
I go back to your question and my answer is: Bushwick is DigiLogue!!!
One of the things you describe yourself as is ‘Interactive Sound Designer.’ Amongst Interactive Art, do you find that there is and audience in Bushwick for Futuristic Interactive Art?
Interactive Arts is pretty young right now but it is evolving really fast.
I think that Bushwick is a really good place to experiment any new form of art, because you can get a frank feedback here, a place where you can present your idea, other people who might be interested in growing your project and a community ready to support and enjoy.
Tell us what you have coming up?
Next week I’ll be at the Brooklyn College doing a lecture about the evolution of the way electronic music producer interact and control their software. I’m producing the new work of the Arrested Aliens and I have a new EP coming out by the begininning of 2013 with my new project Capcom, and live shows for the winter season, so stay tuned and follow me here.
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