David Lee Myers

Last Name: 
Myers
First Name: 
David Lee

David Lee Myers is a sound and visual artist living in New York City. He has produced music based on feedback principles since 1987, using his unique "feedback machines". As Arcane Device, and more recently under his own name, Myers has had twenty recordings released by Generator, ReR, Silent, RRRecords, Staalplaat, and many other labels. His fourth collaborative album with Hamburg's Asmus Tietchens is to be released in February 2004 on the Line label in New York. Several new projects are in progress, including a major work with legendary electronic music pioneer Tod Dockstader. Over the past three years Myers has developed numerous prints and paintings based on traces generated by his sounds and has exhibited in New York and around the US. www.pulsewidth.com STATEMENT: Since the late 80s I have been developing specialized circuitry and electronic systems for the production of my signature "Feedback Music", whose original sounds claim unique sources. The outputs of electronic devices - particularly those intended to create a modification of some kind to an audio signal, such as time delays - are fed, via custom-built mixers, to their own inputs. The resulting sounds represent nothing other than the free circulation of electrons within. In effect, these sounds come from nothing, and more than one observer has proclaimed them to arise "from the ether". In 2001 I began to produce images based on oscilloscope traces of the Feedback sounds. These traces form the skeleton of compositions which attempt to portray in visual form the electromagnetic impulses plucked from the void. Both my sound and visual works are the result of capture, selection, processing and combination. Essentially, I do not make sounds or draw pictures, but allow latent or unseen forces and processes to present themselves via simple technologies. I select the methods, set the stage, and as the phenomena emerge I of course introduce my own aesthetic judgements to the mix. Therefore the sounds and visuals which are presented are neither completely random science nor the gesture of an artist's hand, but something between the two, and I believe this to be the most effective approach toward evoking meaningful impressions of unseen worlds. -David Lee Myers