SOUNDVISION Gallery is pleased to present TRIBRYD:GENOMETRICS - a new audio/visual installation project by TJ Norris. DATES: SEPTEMBER 4 - OCTOBER 18

"Unless you are a resident, there is no catching up with the underground."

TRIBRYD:GENOMETRICS is part 1 of a 3-part new audio/visual installation project by TJ Norris. The work includes sculptural elements and audio provided by nine international composers, available on a limited edition (500), hand numbered CD released by Beta-lactam Ring Records (#BLURR02) http://www.blrrecords.com. This installation, loosely based on concepts of dna in all its forms, will include natual elements and sounds by Beequeen (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Illusion of Safety (Chicago, IL) and Humectant Interruption (NY, NY). September 4-October 18, Gallery Hours: 12-6PM Fri + Sat, and by appointment.

It has been a curious few decades on our cultural horizon. We have been mused and decimated, preached to, overexposed and censored. Through the many sharp turns and curve balls, the artist has prevailed, with or without the support and prevalence of popular culture. Having been a true punk during my teen years, the early 1980s was a time to embrace an essentially radical lifestyle. On a limited basis I was only partially exposed to groups like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, Negativland, SPK and Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft. These pioneer artists had nothing in common with the status quo of the American suburb in its gothic surrealism. Discovery of such subversives (and knowing that it was a part of my own genetic makeup), is like pirate treasure, a message in a bottle from a world set adrift, passing histories that were restricted to word-of-mouth (folklore), not broadcast on the internet for mass consumption. It is in the sweat and blood of each small-run, numbered edition and handmade work that define the DIY generation. In fact, if it weren' t for the working class, I may have been completely shut out of this entire subculture, even as an artist myself.

As the many in-between years attest, my introduction to the deeper, darker worlds of Nurse with Wound, Kapotte Muziek, Coil and Nocturnal Emissions set off a chain of events and significant realizations. In the 1990s I was exposed to many avant gardists in the world of sound and other forms. Some of these seminal creatives have fostered new generations of visionary noise makers and outsider artists who continue to work on the edges of the post-urban canvas. Other like-minded composers, musicians and experimenters had long been working in the field of transforming one of our primary senses, dating back to the turn of the 20th century. Sound and visual art balance disparate and psychic energies in the development of patterning, tonality and overall composition. The arts as a richly interrelated breeding ground, through an ultimate universal language, seemed clearly my vocation.

Tribryd is my attempt to filter this collective energy. When I started the process, very basic concepts sprouted from my fascination with the science of human dna and the theory of time as infinite, despite signs of intelligent life in space. In sharing these concepts with the composers appearing on this recording there was an immediate welcome response. In the innovative, communication-driven age ideas emerged in the course of this ongoing three-year work-in-progress. The collaborators titled all of the works in the project, and these titles inform a part of the installation components. This cyclical and regenerative process ignites artists' collaborative voices through different modes, freely sharing common and contrasting ideas. The first of three in a forthcoming installation series will be presented in September 2003. The collaborators here are artists in the truest sense of the historical model, prolific and freethinking, acting without regard to outcome or commission. Before embarking on this series I only imagined working with some of these artists through a passive symbiosis commonly referred to as "audience" . As the project has developed some have become friends, all are now peers. Genometrics will launch this series, to be presented at Soundvision, in my adopted Pacific Northwest home, Portland, OR, a center for truly innovative community art spirit.

The next two legs of the journey, Nucleo and Infinitus, will take me on the road to other national and international sites. One thing is for sure; the future will hear our voices in tiny art galleries and remote coffee shoppes, the museum construct and industrial loft spaces. Procrastination equals death. - TJ Norris (April '03)