A Performance by Rue Bainbridge

Rue Bainbridge, the media art duo comprised of Gryphon Rue and Benton C Bainbridge, explores the intersection of expanded cinema with experimental music in relation to specific sites and audiences. Their work can be viewed as a live conversation between a sound artist and video artist.

More specifically, Bainbridge uses a hacked game console, driven by custom video synthesizers, to generate light drawings. For Rue, these light drawings become a kind of score for improvised music—an abstract calligraphy with visual rhythms suggestive of sonic arrangements. Like Calder’s kinetic sculptures composed of steel wires, Rue Bainbridge’s light drawings are made of carefully rendered lines that are, nevertheless, open to the unpredictable. Perception shifts as images and sounds contrast with one another or momentarily harmonize in the creation of a totally immersive experience.

Rue Bainbridge is the first recipient of the Nam June Paik and Shigeko Kubota Video Art prize (2019) and has been presented by Hauser & Wirth, The Hepworth Wakefield, Center for Visual Music, Public Works at Governor’s Island, Andrew Freedman Home, Slate Projects, and Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation.