Thursday, August 24, 2006

Is Godfried-Willem Raesm the World's Most Overt Artist?

Nothing is happening today, so I thought I'd send you over to Music Thing for the classic three-part series on one of their heroes, Godfried-Willen Raesm, who I believe is maybe the most Overt artist ever. In fact, he's so Overt that he almost loops back around into being Advanced. Here's a bit why he is their hero and why he is also Overt:
  • He was thrown out of Ghent Royal Conservatory in 1971 for being ‘antimusical’ because of his experiments in electronic music. He is now professor of experimental music composition there.
  • In 1968 he founded the Logos Foundation, which explores new musical interfaces, including “wireless gesture control, microwave radar, acceleration sensors, pyrodetectors, lightsensors, myoelectric devices, brainwaves, EEG and ECG”.
  • He’s created his own computer language for music composition, GMT which he uses to drive an orchestra of robot instruments.
  • He wrote a symphony for bicycles.
  • He has a fantastic beard, smokes a pipe, and is usually nude during performances (unless he's wearing a silver jumpsuit).

Be sure to read the whole series so you get to see the wonderful pictures.

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