Ben Vida is a Brooklyn based artist and composer. He has been an active member of the international experimental music community for the past seventeen years with a long list of collaborations, bands and releases to his credit. In the mid 90’s he co-founded the group Town and Country and has since worked as a solo artist under his own name and as Bird Show with releases on such labels as PAN, Alku, Thrill Jockey and Kranky. He has presented his work in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, South Korea and Japan. Recent activities include performances at the Kitchen, NYC with David Behrman, the debut of the Tyondai Braxton/Ben Vida Duo at the Sacrum Profamun festival in Krakow, solo performances at Electrónica en Abril festival in Madrid and Akousma Festival in Montreal and the publication of his long form sound poem Tztztztzt Î Í Í ... from Shelter Press. Past art exhibitions include Slipping Control at Audio Visual Arts in Manhattan, NY; Bloopers #0 presented by Triple Canopy/Performa, NYC and, in collaboration with artist Jeff Degolier, Metal Fatigue Music (music for Boom Car) at NADA Miami. In 2013 he was Artist In Residency at ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn and at The Clocktower in Manhattan.
Damaged Particulates is a composition by Ben Vida for fixed and live electronics. Organized into a number of short movements this new work derives its compositional strategy from the concept of 'Particulate Systems Construction'. Rather than building up multi-voiced sound events Damaged Particulates emphasizes the morphology and spatialization of single and dual voiced sonic particulates. These particulates are ordered and aggregated to create stark juxtapositions. This process is occasionally disrupted when four voices are presented in parallel, all interrelated through a shared system of control sources. Though minimal in elements this composition is at once sonically dense, grossly visceral and disjunctively rhythmic. Sound objects take on an almost physical presence within the performance space allowing spatialization to become a compositional material, and discordant sonic composites act to complicate traditional compositional logic.