Stephen Vitiello - A Space Without Distraction 27

iMMERSE! with Charlie Morrow

Vitiello, a New York native, is an internationally recognized sound artist and mainstay of the New York scene since his early days as a punk guitarist. He has been influenced by Nam June Paik, has collaborated with Scanner, Pauline Oliveros and Frances-Marie Utti. He is also an electronic musician and visual artist. And, according to Morrow, “an absolute Geiger Counter for places.”

In 1999 he did a residency at the World Trade Center managing to capture the Towers’s swaying in the wind and recorded the creaking and cracking of the building’s skeleton. He has produced countless recordings on various labels such as Sub Rosa and has had many solo exhibitions that combine sound, installations, photos and drawings at museums and galleries and has been part of many Group shows including Soundings: Contemporary Score at MOMA, the Whitney and the Sydney Biennale. Vitiello serves as a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Kinetic Imaging department.

I met Stephen in the 1980s. We worked together on Nam Jun Paik’s Zapping for Swatch watch. Then on some of Paik’s soundtracks, including "Did George Sand Kill Chopin." Stephen curated the show, New Sounds New York, for the Kitchen in New York. It included the New York unveiling of my patended 3D soundcube with series of commissioned works including his most evocative, “Cinematic, With Crashing Roof,” one of 12 designed for the cube by an array of artists.

Samples Playlist
Question Of Temperature • Balloon Farm
Electrinocellia • MEM1 + Stephen Vitiello
Train to the Plane • Charlie Morrow
Brood IX • Stephen Vitiello
Breath Chant • Charlie Morrow
Bell Bell Horn Horn • Charlie Morrow
Mental Radio • Stephen Vitiello
Cascoplecia • MEM1 + Stephen Vitiello
Genesis Song • Charlie Morrow
Iron Oxide • Stephen Vitiello
Thinking In, Thinking Out • Stephen Vitiello
Trainslation • Steve Roden
Spring Helsinki • Charlie Morrow
Humming • Charlie Morrow