Richard Chartier

Infobox musical artist
Name = Richard Chartier

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Img_capt = At Gladefestival, Aldermaston, UK 2007
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Background = solo_artist
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Born = birth date and age|1971|3|29
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Origin = Washington, DC
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Genre = Minimal, Sound Art, Microsound
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Years_active = 1998 – present
Label = 12k/Line, Raster-Noton, Spekk, Die Stadt, Trente Oiseaux and others
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URL = [http://www.3particles.com Richard Chartiers's homepage]
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Richard Chartier (born March 29,1971, Arlington, Virginia, USA) is a sound/installation artist and graphic designer. Chartier is one of the key figures in the current of reductionist electronic music sometimes described as microsound: a form of extreme minimalism in which the music is sometimes very quiet, sometimes very sparse, often both. Musicians in the broader pan-global scene include Francisco Lopez,
Ryoji Ikeda, Kim Cascone, and Carsten Nicolai.

About

Since 1998, Chartier has created critically acclaimed recordings for labels such as 12k/LINE (USA), Raster-Noton (Germany), Die Stadt (Germany), Spekk (Japan), Mutek rec (Canada), DSP (Italy), and ERS (NL), Trente Oiseaux (Germany), and Fallt (Ireland), Intransitive (USA), including collaborations with noted artists Taylor Deupree, William Basinski, COH, *0, Kim Cascone, and Asmus Tietchens and has appeared on numerous international electronic music and sound art compilations. His digital minimalist work explores the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, and the act of listening.

History

Chartier's sound works and sound installations have been presented internationally including at the exhibits Sounding Spaces at ICC (Tokyo, Japan), I Moderni / The Moderns at Castello di Rivoli (Torino, Italy), 2002 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art (NY), Resynthesis at The Art Institute of Chicago and with the traveling sound exhibit Invisible Cities created by digital media curators Fehler as well as solo and collaborative installations for Fusebox (DC), 1515 Arts/G Fine Art (DC), Die Schachtel (Milan, Italy), and Diapason (NY). He has performed his work live across Europe, Japan, Australia, and North America at MUTEK (Montreal, Canada), GRM/Maison de Radio France (Paris, France), Observatori (Valencia, Spain), DEAF (Dublin, Ireland), Transmediale (Berlin, Germany), Lovebytes (Sheffield, UK), The Leeds International Film Festival (Leeds, UK), The Rotterdam International Film Festival (NE), Garage (Stralsund, Germany), La Batie (Geneva, Switzerland), and other noted digital art/music festivals and at exhibits such as Frequenzen [Hz] at the Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt) and A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968 and Visual Music at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles).

The book "Blocks of Consciousness and the Unbroken Continuum" (Sound323, UK, 2006) contains the chapter "On the surface of silence: reticence in the music of Richard Chartier” in which author and critic Will Montgomery writes "Chartier's work has this overriding singleness of formal vision. While it is clearly formed of discrete parts, the work doesn't look beyond itself, it doesn't refer to other sounds or musical instruments, it is entirely conceived within the field of digital sound. And, like (Donald) Judd's three-dimensionalobjects, it is faithful to itself as a medium: the audio is self-sufficient. Chartier allows his pieces to be governed by their own internal dynamics,finding specific arrangements of sound that integrate the various sonic objects he chooses to work with into coherent wholes.... The music has tended to be categorised in terms of an exemplary austerity. It is easy to see why. However, close listening reveals both a vacuum– that absolute digital silence – and an answering fullness. The counterpart of the work's vanishing quality is its urge to make itself present. Toa degree, this is attributable to the way in which the ear bodies out the sounds it cannot quite grasp – the aural fantasy that the work brings intoplay. At the same time, it is work of extreme concentration and the sounds that are there in the music are rich with information. The work is ultimatelyexperienced in terms of density as well sparseness, sensuality as well as coolness. The form of minimalism that Chartier has developed onhis CDs favours listening conditions that are private, introverted and solitary. Yet the bareness of the works is illusory: under the microscope thathe obliges each listener to peer down, a pulsating aural life becomes apparent."

In 2000 he formed the critically acclaimed recording label LINE and has since curated its continuing documentation of compositional and installation work by international sound artists and composers exploring the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism ( including noted artists such as Bernhard Gunter, Steve Roden, Taylor Deupree, Christopher Willits, Roel Meelkop, Carsten Nicolai/Alva Noto, Asmus Tietchens, Mark Fell and the first full length CDs by Miki Yui, Skoltz_Kolgen, and Steinbruchel). The premiere release on LINE, Chartier's 'Series' as awarded Honorable Mention in the category of Digital Music by the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica, 2001 (Austria). In 2006 he was commissioned by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden to create a collaborative sound performance work in conjunction with the Hiroshi Sugimoto retrospective exhibit. This work, entitled Specification. Fifteen, was recently awarded one of five Honorable Mentions for outstanding contemporary artistic positions in digital media art by the Jury of Transmediale.07 Award Competition (Germany) and exhibited as a recording and presented as a live performance with a new video work created from Sugimoto's Seascapes at the Akademie der Kuenste (Berlin).

In 2007 Chartier was asked by the Washington Project for the Arts/Corcoran to curate 2 evenings of video and sound at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and at G Fine Art and Ellipse Art Center, entitled ColorField REMIX with an array of internationally noted new media artists responding to the 1950s and 1960s Color Field visual art movement and the Washington Color School, as part of a city wide celebration of this historical movement. This project continues to tour.

Chartier studied at James Madison University (Harrisonburg, VA) from 1989-1993 and received Bachelor of Fine Arts Cum Laude with a Concentration in Graphic Design and Painting.

Currently Richard Chartier's installation work is represented by G FINE ART a comtemporary art gallery in Washington, DC.

elected Discography

olo Recordings

*"Further Materials" CD (2008, flagicon|USA LINE)
*"Absence" CD (2008, flagicon|USA 3particles)
*"Incidence" CD (2007, flagicon|Germany Raster-Noton)
*"Current" CD (2006, flagicon|Australia Room40)
*"Levels(Inverted)" CD (2006, flagicon|USA LINE)
*"Tracing" CD (2005, flagicon|Austria NVO)
*"Opening Coccyx" [Die Schachtel, Italy] CD/Edition 2005
*"Retrieval 1-5" [ERS, Netherlands] CD 2005
*"Re'post'postfabricated" [DSP, Italy] (reformed+remixes) 2xCD 2005
*"Set or Performance" [LINE, US] CD 2004
*"Archival1991" [Crouton, US] CD 2003
*"Overview" [3particles, US] CD 2003
*"Two Locations" [LINE, US] CD 2003
*"Other Materials" [3particles, US] CD 2003
*"of surfaces" [LINE, US] CD 2002
*"typeof" [Fällt, N.Ireland] 3" CD 2001
*"decisive forms" [Trente Oiseaux, Germany] CD 2001
*"series" [LINE, US] CD 2000 / reissued 2001
*"a hesitant fold" [Meme, Japan] CD 1999
*"post-fabricated" [Microwave, Netherlands] CDR 1999
*"direct.incidental.consequential" [Intransitive, US] CD 1998

Collaborative Recordings

*Untitled 1-3 (with William Basinski) [LINE, USA] CD 2008
*Fabrication (with Asmus Tietchens) [Die Stadt, Germany] 2CD 2007
*Specification. Fifteen (with Taylor Deupree) [LINE, US] CD 2006
*Live in Los Angeles (as CHESSMACHINE) [LINE, US] CD 2005
*Chessmachine (with COH) [Mutek_rec, Canada] CD 2004
*William Basinski + Richard Chartier [Spekk, Japan] CD 2004
*Varied as 0/r (with Nosei Sakata) [12k, US] CD 2002
*after (Cascone + Chartier + Deupree) [12k, US] CD 2002
*SPEC. (with Taylor Deupree) [12k, US] CD 1999
*0/r (with Nosei Sakata) [12k, US] CD 1999

elected sound installations + Exhibits

"Specification. Fifteen" @ Akademie der Kuenste (Berlin, Germany) 2007
"Mixing Desk" @ Montalvo Arts Center [San Jose, CA] 2006
"incidence" @ Raster-Noton Essential Room Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelone / SONAR [Barcelona, Spain] 2006
"Title on Request" in Other Than Art / G Fine Art [Washington, DC] 2006
Levels(Inverted) @ 1515 Arts Building [Washington, DC] 2005
Opening Cocyxx (collaboration with Evelyn Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand) Die Schachtel [Milan, Italy] 2005
Of Surfaces 2 @ PROGR-Zentrum fur Kulturproduktion [Bern, CH] 2005
Invisible Cities "untitled(dc)" @ Maison d'Art Actuel des Chartreux [Brussels, Belgium] 2004
Invisible Cities "untitled(dc)" @ Sintesi Electronic Arts Festival [Naples, Italy] 2004
Sounding Spaces - 9 sound installations "Specification.twelve" collaboration with Taylor Deupree@ International Conference on Communications [Tokyo, Japan] 2003
I Moderni / The Moderns "location_composition" @ Castello di Rivoli [Torino, Italy] 2003
Medium as the Message "untitled_location" @ The Contemporary Museum [Baltimore, MD] 2002
Opening Coccyx (with Evelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand) @ Diapason Gallery (NY) 2002
3_components @ Fusebox (Washington, DC) 2002
Whitney Biennial 2002 "series (3 excerpts)" @ Whitney Museum of American Art (NY) 2002
Re:synthesis "of surfaces" @ Betty Rymer Gallery (Chicago, IL) 2002

Links

* [http://www.3particles.com Richard Chartier's homepage]
*MySpace: [http://www.myspace.com/richardchartier]
*Audio interview about "specification.fifteen" with Hirshhorn Museum [http://www.hirshhorn.si.edu/podcast/archive/Chartier2006.mp3]
*Audio interview with Radio France 2005. [http://www.ina.fr/grm/radio/web/WebRadio_V_3.08_content.html]