The Computing in the Arts program will host a lecture by R WE WHO R WE (Ted Hearne and Philip White), which will outline the creative process and concerns relating to the artists’ appropriating, rearranging and orchestrating popular music for homemade and hacked hardware, software and voice. This FREE event will take place on Thursday, April 11, 2013, at 2 p.m., in room 315C of the Simons Center for the Arts, 54 Saint Philip St.
R WE WHO R WE mixes the free theft/collage style of Girl Talk with the raw noise of Merzbow. Philip White’s mixer feedback, controlled through a homemade rig of circuits and low-fi electronics, conjures the sound world of legendary experimental musician David Tudor, but becomes something entirely new when fused with the production aesthetics of pop pioneer Dr. Luke. Ted Hearne’s voice – inflamed, athletic and powerfully stark, with the operatic drama of a latter day Jeff Buckley, the experimentalism of Mike Patton and party chic of Ke$ha herself – does battle with his own auto-tune. A tribute and commentary to both classic and ephemeral artists of the pop landscape, R WE WHO R WE uses pop music like graffiti uses public space, exploiting the tension between theft and tribute, like collage artist John Oswald did 30 years ago with his seminal and mischievous Plunderphonic.