Brian Kirkbride
Art form(s):Music, Film score, installation, film/video
CAPE Teaching Artist since 2023
Education:
B.S. Computer Science, Virginia Tech
Bio:
Brian Kirkbride (b. 1976, United States) is a sound artist, composer, DJ and programmer based in Chicago whose cross-disciplinary practice integrates data, field recordings, synthesizers, software and found sound from records & films through conceptually-driven processing. As an artist, his work investigates the re-contextualization of complex scientific/social systems through musical and other auditory representations—often within immersive environments. Musically, he explores the emotional and psychological effects of the uncanny by playing with near-musicality, arrested narrative and the subconscious recognition of appropriated pop. Kirkbride’s audio/visual work has shown at Whitechapel Gallery, opened the Ann Arbor Film Festival and has been selected by Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival (Switzerland), Alchemy Film Festival (Scotland), Biennial of Moving Images (Argentina), Montréal Underground Film Festival, Onion City Film Festival, Videoex Festival (Switzerland), Kinodot Experimental Film Festival (Russia), Video Art Miden (Greece), Nonplussed Ultra Film Festival, Simultan Festival (Romania) and Fovea (France). He has collaborated on a number of large-scale sound art and data-driven installations, which have been exhibited at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Arts Club of Chicago, EXPO Chicago, the Lincoln Park Conservatory (for Experimental Sound Studio) and at Millennium Park (for the Art Institute of Chicago).
Artist Statement:
I am motivated by a curiosity in the complex dynamical systems that make up our world, cause and effect and feedback loops. Of particular interest to me are the parallels between physical systems and the systems present in intersubjective experience between conscious beings. I find sound and music, along with imagery, produced and assembled in surreal and uncanny collages to be provocative in ways that allow for discussion of intersubjective experience between artist and audience—especially so when narratives emerge organically.
