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“Grodzilla” is the name bestowed upon Michael Grodsky by his student Roy at Citrus College in the 1999-2000 school year. Another student, Abhi Taranath, coined the name Running with Scissors for the sound improvisation ensemble that spontaneously combusted into being during a studio recording techniques class.
Michael has since affectionately used Grodzilla for solo and ensemble sound performances that can include imagery and suspect activities.
PERFORMANCE COLLABORATORS
Todd Gray and Michael Grodsky
Video and image projection, percussion and sounds.
C.A.G.E. (California Avant-Garde Ensemble)
Michael Grodsky, Jeff Hawley, Paul Cummings. Original works.
Running With Scissors
Michael Grodsky, director. Sound improvisation ensemble.
Reduced Listening Ensemble
Michael Grodsky, director. Sound improvisation ensemble.
Dynamo Hum (1996-2002)
Punkish rock band. Michael Grodsky, Jeff Jones, Scott Zeidel, Doug
Metzgar, Jennifer Hung, Martin Rogers.
Michael Grodsky & Heidi Swedberg
Performing works by Weil, Jobim, Woody Guthrie, Lou Reed, and many others.
Michael: guitar; Heidi: ukulele, vocals
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ARTIST STATEMENT
Imagine a sweet, deaf, sentient being. If this being heard something for the first time, it/he/she might focus on the qualities of the sound itself (pitch, timbre, etc.) rather than listening for the purpose of gaining information about either the sound’s source or what is communicated in the sound. From birth onward, though, we hearing humans pay increasing attention to what things mean and less to direct visual and aural perception.
When I was a little boy I liked humming & singing along with my grandmother's big electric fan. I was thrillled to learn how to slide under and over a fan's pitch with my voice, to creating 'beat tones' I could feel in my chest. This early 'work' informed two assumptions upon which I base my sound improvisation activities: The ability to divert attention to the present moment is necessary in order to go through life without becoming a jerk. The second assumption is that sounds themselves are interesting, funny and beautiful.
A distant car horn beeps repeatedly inside a concrete parking structure. Like bubbles blown by a child using that stick thing with a circle on one end, the horn thrusting its sonic pelvis spits out a sound creature into this world with each bleat, the emerging aural singularity at first no larger than a pea. It expands wildly in all directions, blossoming into a rushing harmonic spectrum of merging and separating frequencies, covering all hard and soft surfaces with pulsating kisses, winding around corners, wall and floors, bringing vibration and silliness to glass, wood, flesh and bone, birds, green plastic spiders and dust.
---Michael Grodsky
