Live in Los Angeles
Chessmachine (Richard Chartier + CoH)
LINE [US] (LINE_023)
CD / edition of 600
2005

A certain humor shapes the conceptual dialectics of the CHESSMACHINE live experience. Their interplay suggests the historical confrontation of East and West; an austere and chilling tete-a-tete over the chessboard that reconstructs the somber milieu of a bygone Europe, even as it conveys a kind of absurdist levity through the rehearsed performance of these roles. The use of MAC and PC computer operating systems by Chartier and Pavlov, respectively, becomes the late-20th century manifestation of classic Cold War combatants. Through their engagement, a process of sonic and aesthetic displacement unfolds, such that one player's strategic manipulation of sound begins slowly to affect and then determinatively shape the compositional technique of the other. CHESSMACHINE's live performances take place in real time with color coded staging, uniforms, lighting, and video projections designed by Russian-American installation/video artists Evelyn Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand.

This live recording of Chessmachine took place on February 25, 2005 at REDCAT in Los Angeles. The performance was presented by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) as part of Visual Music: SEE HEAR NOW!, an experimental music series investigating the synaesthetic resonance between contemporary music and visual art, in conjunction with their exhibit Visual Music.

The CHESSMACHINE project concept was selected by curators of Transmediale 05 [ Berlin, Germany] to be presented in their exhibit "Basic Sound" at the House of World Cultures, February 4-8, 2005. Chessmachine was performed at "klangtransfer ost west" / Musiktriennale Koeln 2007 [ Koeln, Germany ] May 4, 2007, CYNET [ Dresden, Germany ] November 24-27, 2005, CIMATICS [ Brussels, Belgium ] Oct 29, 2005, DIS-PATCH [ Belgrade, Serbia ] Oct 6, 2005, SEE.HEAR.NOW! @ Redcat/MOCA [ Los Angeles, US ] Feb 25, 2005, and MUTEK [ Montreal, Canada] June 2, 2004.

The video element of the live Chessmachine performance was created by Russian/American video/installation artists Evelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand