CHATTER BLIP is a duo project of Chuck Bettis (electronics/throat) and Dafna Naphtali (electronics/processing/voice) — an interstellar multi-character audio operetta involving a multitude of human, alien, and machine voices, in a mash-up of primal and classic sci-fi and electro-acoustics….. with performances since 2006.
RELEASED March 2020– Microcosmopolitan — on
Contour Editions, iTunes and Bandcamp features seven brand new tracks, and two reaction poems inspired by the tracks from Shelley Hirsch. Bettis and Naphtali also created a series of audio reactive / generative music videos for the tracks on Microcosmopolitan, featuring footage from their lockdown time in NYC collaborating together remotely. Created for presentation on Harvestworks Twitch TV 9/22/20
Audio/Video of other past performances:
–WhiteNoise IV – July 9, 2021 (First show since the pandemic!)
(part of Brooklyn Sounds: An Out of the Box Project from WhiteBox_)
Curated by Juan Puntes with Katherine Liberovskaya
https://www.facebook.com/whiteboxny/videos/2967166186885278/?t=1614
–Ridgewood Radio broadcast/archive –Live set recorded 12/16/2016 from the Lock It Down series at the Sump/Poppers Locarno
-Clocktower radio hosting our show at Phil Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia, December 2010
–Various other shows on FMA (Free Music Archive): https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Dafna_Napthali__Chuck_Bettis/
Chatter Blip’s debut CD was “Chatter Blip” ((Acheulian Handaxe 2013)
Bios:
Chuck Bettis, (electronics + throat) was raised in the fertile HarDCore soil, nourished within Baltimore’s enigmatic avant garde gatherings, and blossoming in NY’s Downtown Musical tribe. His unique blend of electronics and throat has led him into various collaborations with great musicians from around the globe. He has performed live with John Zorn, Fred Frith, Jamie Saft, and Afrirampo to name a few. Some of the musicians Bettis has recorded and played live with are as follows; Ikue Mori, Nautical Almanac, Audrey Chen, Yellow Swans, Toshio Kajiwara, Mick Barr, etc, plus a long history of punk bands he was in (most notably the experimental punk band Meta-matics as well as the enigmatic All Scars). Currently he is working on many of his experimental projects such as Snake Union with Dave Grant, Die Trommel Fatale with Brandon Seabrook/Marika Hughes/Eivind Opsvik/Henry Fraser/Dave Truet/Sam Ospovat, Mossenek with Mick Barr & Colin Marston, Chatter Blip with Dafna Naphtali, and Pretty Clicks with Berangere Maximin, in addition to improvising, recording, or composing with an array of musicians from around the world. http://chuckbettis.com/
Dafna Naphtali (voice – electronics – live-sound-processing) composes and performs experimental, interactive electro-acoustic music using her custom Max/MSP programming for live sound processing of voice and other instruments, and works for multi-channel audio and musical robots. She draws on her musical background in jazz, classical, rock and near-eastern music, and interprets Cage, Stockhausen and contemporary composers, in projects with well-regarded musicians around the world, and grants/fellowships/residencies. CD “What is it Like to be a Bat?” digital punk trio w/Kitty Brazelton (Tzadik), and several CDs forthcoming in 2017.
Tuesday, March 1 (8 pm)
Dafna Naphtali, singer/composer/electronics/programming with music robots (Bricolo system and Xylophone bot by Nick Yulman)
Tangents at the 2016 Avant Music Festival closes with Dafna Naphtali’s Robotica inspired by the work of Al-Jazari, the 13th century Mesopotamian inventor and author of the “Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices.” Songs/texts as meditations on mechanical motion– Flow, Spin, Lift and Pulse, are interspersed with cutup texts created by a Google poetry robot, Morse Code messages driving rhythms, live processed sound. Drawings from Al-Jazari’s book are projected in the background as Naphtali uses a Wii controller to direct the robots, rhythms, and processing of her voice in real time, via algorithms and computer programs she wrote.
Work-in-progress since 2008, this new iteration of Robotica is extended to an evening-length solo show and includes other of Naphtali’s solo pieces Dripsodiac, Mechanical Eye, new songs/texts written especially for the performance, and a world premiere of a new multi-channel “Audio Chandelier” mini-installation on tiny speakers. Naphtali’s themes include “technological angst, memories (past and future), machine codes, surveillance and the breakdown of communication.”
Robotica was originally created with a grant from the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art.
Unfortunately, Peter Geisselbrecht was not able to make it to New York this time, and so this show had to be changed to a different program with Hans Tammen, Dafna Naphtali, Chuck Bettis, Yoni Kretzmer, and others see http://bit.ly/1ipjnjD.
My dad was a chemical engineer (now retired), my mother was a dancer and later a sociologist (worked on her doctorate throughout my teens).
Their debates and viewpoints on science, philosophy of science, social science, politics and their library (enormous) were the background noise and foreground content that made my home life growing up *always* extremely interesting and set me and my sister up for lifetime of inquiry and curiosity about so many things.
The other day, clearing up some papers, they came across this article they wrote together in 1983 for Chemtech magazine. Reading it and seeing that collaborative spirit in the article is reminding me how lucky I was to grow up with the two of them.. (plus they look really cute in their backpacks..) .. grateful ! ! <3
Videos on Vimeo, YouTube videos
More videos on Vimeo, more YouTube videos
Dafna with Robert Dick and Satoshi Takeishi
Chatter Blip duo with Chuck Bettis at Panoply Oct 2013:
“Robotica” excerpt from Flea Theater — piece inspired by Al-Jazari, 13th century Mesopotamian inventor of musical automata.
Robotica excerpt: Dafna Naphtali & LEMUR music robots from Dafna Naphtali on Vimeo.
Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) 2013
PLOrk 2013 Super Cut from Daniel Iglesia on Vimeo.
here I appear in an AP interview about PLOrk and writing for laptop orchestra..
Dafna with LEMUR Music Robots
Kathy Supové playing Dafna’s piece “Landmine” at NIME 2007:
Landmine @ NIME conference 2007 from Dafna Naphtali on Vimeo.
With Yair Reshef “TV bendind” at Jerusalem Film Festival 2006.
tvwaves from Yair Reshef on Vimeo.
documentation of Warren Neidich’s NSA:USA Sound as Prophecy, Nov. 2013 NYC
http://vimeo.com/79990535
Performing Stimmung with Daria Fine and Magic Names sextet:
More videos here:
Videos on Vimeo
More videos on Vimeo
YouTube videos
more YouTube videos
RICARDO ARIAS
Artists: Ricardo Arias, Diego Chamy, Luis Conde & Gabriel Paiuk, Pascal Boudreault, Dafna Naphtali & Yasunao Tone, Sean Meehan, Jefferson Rosas & Juan Sebastián Suanca, Roberto García, Daniel Leguizamón, Daniel Prieto & Rodrigo Restrepo, Nate Wooley & Hans Tammen, Tim Feeney & Vic Rawlings.
Track 5. Miscelánea en General
Ricardo Arias, interactive mapophone, recordings; Pascal Boudreault, computer; Dafna Naphtali, sampling and processing; Yasunao Tone, wounded CD’s. Recorded by Jim Staley live at Roulette (228 W. Bway), New York City, March 26, 2000.
more information: http://tammen.org/cd-ricardo-arias-new-york-bogota-2000-2010/
Exciting things happening..
Words.. a short article of mine was just published in Almanac of Contemporary Instruments–
“What if your instrument is invisible?”
Mixing / Overdubs / Thinking — I’m busy and excited about finishing work on my upcoming release “Machines and Memory” representative of my larger scale projects for chamber ensemble, voice and electronics, LEMUR music robots and voice, and a vocal sextet with live processing; all commissions, premiered and recorded between 2010 and 2014.
still have some guitar and vocal overdubs to do..
Teaching Teaching Teaching — at NYU (Electronic Music Performance: Laptop orchestra, and Advanced MaxMSP) and at New School — Music Technology and Electronic Music. lots of reading and creating going on..
Future .. and for the 2nd summer, I will be directing GEMS (Girls Electronic Music Seminar) a summer workshop for middle school girls at New York University.
