Max Lord is a Boston-area percussionist who works with treated instruments and electronic sound. He is one of few musicians to adopt the Buchla Marimba Lumina, an expressive electronic mallet instrument. His drumset is often augmented by unusual objects and electronic treatments. As an improvisor, he is known for restless changes of mood and texture, a sense for the absurd and frequent high-volume excursions. He now performs regularly in the northeast, both solo and in group improv situations.
Sara June is an American performance artist and choreographer. Currently, her work focuses on the use of ‘personal technologies’ in performance as a means of enhancing relationships with the self. She utilizes simple AI machines, complex software, and personal notation systems as a means to 'unpack' the possibilities for human self-improvement. A strong focus of her work lies in the interconnections between ethological research on imprinting, psychoanalytic and neurobiological theories of human attachment, and modern construction of AI systems. This has led to an interest in how personal technologies can be used as emotional self-regulating tools. Currently, she is working on the CALM project, a 6-month attempt at improving emotional self-regulation through writing, image based meditation, and the use of neuro-linguistic software. Past work includes a multi-year performance series with an autonomous, intelligent, robotic dinosaur named PLEO through which she explored the basis of human and non-human attachment through performance.
Sara June has been performing for over 20 years. Her artistic training and influences span Japanese and American experimental performance methods, particularly Butoh, Body Weather Training, Modern Dance, Improvisation, and Viewpoints. She has trained with Katsura Kan, Hiroko Tamano, Diego Pinon, Su-En, Vangeline, Deborah Butler, Jennifer Hicks, Liz Roncka, Zack Fuller, among others. She is a former dancer with Butoh companies the Vangeline Theater (NYC) and Kitsunebutoh (BOS). Her work is deeply influenced by her academic and research background. She completed undergraduate training as a visual artist (Rhode Island School of Design) in 1997, and graduate training in Developmental Psychology (Harvard University) in 2005, and Clinical Social Work (Boston University) in 2011.
She has collaborated on projects and performed independantly with artists such as composers Max Lord, Matt Samolis, Jonathan Morrison, Matt Everett, choreographers Nathan Andary, Deborah Butler, Yuka Takahashi, Liz Roncka, Olivier Besson, Callie Chapman, and filmmaker/photographers James Ellis Coleman and Bob Raymond. Since 2007, I have co-curated the Zeroplan Performance Series with Max Lord which has hosted a bevy of acclaimed national and international experimental musicians and dancers
PLEO Blog: http://lifewithrobot.posterous.com/
Video: http://vimeo.com/user7941452/videos