Sunday, August 03, 2008

Mr. Meridies

Mr. Meridies

Mr. Meridies is the alter ego of San Francisco multi-media artist, Bob Boster. Boster works with live electronics, graphical composition and performance art, and was the station manager at award-winning radio station WXYC, in Chapel Hill, NC. He's also the founder of independent record label, Friction Media.

Mr. Meridies has a solo album, and tracks featured on Illegal Art’s Deconstructing Beck and Commercial Ad Hoc CD, and one on the Friction Media compilation Cognitive Mapping Vol. 2. Bob has scored dance, theatre, film, and video, and collaborated with a wide range of visual artists, in addition to work in radio, performance and theatre.

Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with Mr. Meridies...


*Name: Mr. Meridies

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: I record & perform both under the name Mr. Meridies & Bob Boster.

*Do you use a pseudonym? See above.

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Generally I refer to the Mr. Meridies work as “appropriative sound collage.”

*Why you use this descriptor: Pretty self-explanatory, first got exposed to the idea via academic work in critical theory.

*Location: I currently live in the SF Bay Area. During the time I have been making this work I have also been based in Chapel Hill, NC; Plymouth, MI; Hoboken, NJ & Horsham, West Sussex – UK. I have performed in London, Brighton, LA, NYC, Seattle, Portland, Kansas City, around New England, Detroit, Ann Arbor, and extensively in the Triangle in NC and around the Bay Area.

*Original Location: I was born in Trenton, NJ and have lived in various places around the US.

*What is your creative/artistic background: I started in theatre at age 8 and have acted, directed, done technical design for theatre, as well as producing and writing plays. I started singing in choirs when I was 15 and trained in voice for 4 years. I played in a variety of bands playing pop and jam-band styles during my 20’s… during that period I started actively working in scoring theatre and dance productions on my home 4 track. I started actively doing sound collage while working as a DJ (and later station manager) of WXYC, the student station at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. At the same time as the early radio collage work was happening I was actively studying critical theory and the two experiences gradually merged into my solo audio persona, Mr. Meridies. Taking a pseudonym was both related to the threat of legal action demonstrated at that time by the Negativland and Pluderphonics lawsuits as well as to fit into the common Chapel Hill music scene idea of naming solo projects with “band names.”

*History: Mr. Meridies has existed since around 1990 or so. There was a gradual transformation into that formation, as well as development of work under my regular name, starting at Mills College in 1996.

*Born: Trenton, NJ – 1965.

*Motivations: Creative outlet. Social contribution. Way to support other creative efforts (I do a lot of collaborations outside of music world).

*Philosophy: Once audio has been released into the commercial sphere it is available fodder for reconfiguration. If you need to make something to express an idea in the audio domain there is a vast, rich amount of expressive material in the domain of our common culture – why wouldn’t you try to harness those ideas for your new statement?

*How would you like to be remembered: Someone who made sound art that touched people’s lives in ways that made them think something new or conceive of sound or music in new ways.

*Web address: Not really current on the web.


www.some-assembly-required.net

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