Ben Owen
Ben’s current work includes improvised and graphic score based performance, audio and video collaborations, and a weekly internet radio program.
early sound studies began with cassettes and live radio, in tandem with stone lithography printmaking and photographic slide projections. his process of lithographic printing is balanced by the intended preservation and natural degradation of marks. he finds complimentary inherent similarities between the cycles of inking and surface reception of printmaking, mark making through drawing on printing stones and audio marks amplified by contact mics and environmental recordings. he is interested in the relationship between the spacial aspects of existing sound fields, intervened environments, and the projection and reflection of light. locations are an active and physical palette, much like an improvisational setting where control is relinquished. through mark making, and an attention to instability he continues the practice of listening and response.
Ben Owen is an investigator, explorer and illustrator of the physical properties of the world we inhabit. His work across multiple media, including sound, video and, importantly, stone litho printmaking, is motivated by a desire to more deeply understand the inner life and character of the materials he works with, rather than an impulse to control or implement them. While Ben doesn’t shy away from the use of the computer, he is much more interested in the rich dynamism of the structures and forces he investigates electricity, light, ink, spacial acoustics, field recordings than in the power and precision of software-driven techniques. – Morgan Packard.
Ben has presented work with The Kitchen, free103point9 Wave Farm, Millennium Film Workshop, the White Box Gallery, 106BLDG30, Tonic, Engine 27, the 6 & B Community Garden, Issue Project Room, Diapason Gallery for Sound and Intermedia, and The Tank in New York; das kleine field recordings festival in Berlin, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Kichijoji Museum in Tokyo; as well as various ongoing radio programs on stations Resonance FM in London, WKCR Columbia University New York, Radia Network, and Free103point9.org in New York.
He has performed and in some cases recorded with tiptip, ting ting jahe, mpld, ea, Sawako, Civyiu Kkliu, The Beige Channel, Radio_Ruido, Bruce Tovsky, Richard Garet, Takefumi Naoshima, Scott Allison, Katherine Liberovskaya, Michelle Nagai, John Hudak, Tommy Birchett, Tianna Kennedy, Andy Graydon, Andy Hayleck, Ian Epps, Tom Roe, Shimpei Takeda, Kay Nishikawa, Bruce Tovsky, Patrick McGinley (Murmur), Hitoshi Kojo, Jack Wright, Bryan Eubanks, and Albert Ortega.
He has released audio works on winds measure recordings, addenda, unframed recordings, free103point9 dispatch series, Autumn Records, Petite Sono, Throat, Phonography.org, con-v, Frozen Elephants Music, Asthmatic Kitty, and room40.
Gruenrekorder:
Ben Owen: “two” (Gr 070/09)