Alex Keller

Artis's statement extracted from this web:

In my work I explore contrasts: the tension between the organic and the inorganic, the quiet and the loud, the bright and the dark, the musical and the non-musical. Confusing two contrasts is an interesting technique. What sort of sound piece can have musical qualities without being deliberately musical? What makes a sound feel like it was created organically, instead of electronically?

Low technology sound sources, from cassettes to toys, intrigue me. The work that I do is not about technological development, but about the creative use of any sound source. I have performed with a laptop in the past, and like that it raises questions about the nature of performance, but right now I have a problem with the technology being completely absent in live performance.

Some of my work has been released on CD, but I think that's one of the least interesting ways to hear sound work. A simple recording is almost too open of a way to release sound work, and refers too much to the pop music tradition. Installations, while harder for an audience to access at the time and place of their choosing, are more effective ways to present sound work in its own context.

While I've always been interested in presenting sound pieces as abstractions, I've never believed that it is possible to really abstract sounds from their sources or any other reference. Some recent work I've done has used manipulated musical recordings to make tonal musical pieces. I've avoided working in a musical context for a long time and am excited to come back to those ideas.

I've always been interested in suburban and urban architecture, and the spaces that people live and work in. While making public art is as much administration as creativity, I'm considering a few pieces in the public arena. In 2009 I curated an exhibition, Recreating the domain, that worked with artist's impressions of and takes on the north Austin mixed-use development, the Domain.