The Benders Circuit Documents The LA Underground Audiovisual Performance Scene

The Benders Circuit is a documentary, currently in production, about the underground audio-visual performance scene in and around Los Angeles, California.

This movie features performing artists in the Los Angeles area who use customized electronics and/or modular synthesizers to create unique audio-visual experiences.

Producers Eric Zimmerman & Angela Izzo are funding production of the documentary via an IndieGoGo project.

Here’s what they have to say about the project:

The mainstream needs to be challenged. This movement is a totally independent and original scene, and although not driven by commercial concerns, sustains itself and keeps growing creatively. Although unknown to much of the outside world, these performing artists are on the cutting edge of what’s happening in underground art culture.

We have been shooting shows and interviews for two years, and are working to include as many acts as possible in this first release.  It’s time to share this with the world.  You can help us to complete the shooting, editing, and post production for this documentary with your contribution to make this happen.

The documentary is being made available to backers for US $20 in digital form and $40 for the DVD. See the project site for details.

via vj_avant

11 thoughts on “The Benders Circuit Documents The LA Underground Audiovisual Performance Scene

  1. makes me miss the heyday of the 90s-early 2000s around here in the bay area when there was a real noise/experimental scene – before so many of the venues that hosted them were shut down or moved out due to noise complaints or torn down to make condos. there used to be at least 3-4 nights a week in SF at any given week and most of the time I would just show up with something and play with whoever was there that night…. those were the days.

  2. i guess noise is better than nothing but being from l.a. i know that the experimental composition community isn’t supported very well and it’s a shame. it’s hard to hear anything more subtle with all the loud noise around…

    1. respectfully disagree. the wulf, south of sunset, human resources, among other spaces, host well-attended experimental composers from all over the world. there is also the cal-arts contingent. lots of support in the academic community for these types of artists.

  3. Okay, this is interesting because my wife and I run (or ran) an organization in LA called CEPA, the Center for Electronic Performance and Art, and we put on an event a couple years ago called ConCon, the Controllerist Convention, and man, was it hard as hell to find Visualists or any particularly interesting Noise or Sound artists. We had a couple, but I was a little amazed, considering that LA is such a “visual” town, how hard it was to find anyone who wasn’t doing stuff we were doing in the early-90’s. In other words, not good. As a Noise/Sound Artist myself, I’ve been dismayed at the lack of others like me who aren’t just running radios through distortion and reverb, or running the same VJ plug-ins everyone else does. Every year or so I try to revitalize the scene, but I don’t really know how to find other artists like me. So I’ll have to check this Doc out to see what it yields in that respect. I would still really love to get a serious Art-scene in LA for the very experimental going.

  4. It’s a little difficult to see those visuals. What I’m talking about is stuff that isn’t “psychedelic” or just drag and drop, with visual delays and whatnot. I want to see visuals that actually go with the music or sounds, rather than just effects on a screen, you know? This is just personal, it means nothing about what visuals people choose to use. Lots of people like Picasso, but not me, but I don’t care about him either way. I just wouldn’t hang him in my house, dig? I’ve seen some stuff coming out of Europe and Asia that is stunning, highly creative, and took a great amount of know-how and planning to pull off, and I just rarely see that Stateside. It’s really just like Music, you see far more “out of the box” stuff than you do stuff that people took a great amount of time to craft from scratch. But, again, that’s just me, and has nothing to do with others’ opinions and likes. I mean, people like Olive Garden in droves…

    1. alex pelly, who is interviewed here and will hopefully be featured a lot more in the film, is that know-how artist you’d dig. she has a complicated vhs feedback system and tons of gear, not dissimilar to a typical noise artist.

  5. Check out The Center for Visual Music and Prism Pipe at pehrspace, both LA based visualist scenes. Also the BYOP (projector) events worldwide.

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