Richard Chartier


Richard Chartier is a sound/installation artist and graphic designer from the United States. He works in reductionist microsound electronic music, a form of extreme minimalism characterised by quiet and sparse sound.
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Early life and education

Chartier was born in Arlington, Virginia, in 1971, and studied at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, from 1989 to 1993, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Cum Laude with a Concentration in Graphic Design and Painting.

Career

Chartier's sound works and sound installations have been included in the exhibits Sounding Spaces at ICC, I Moderni / The Moderns at Castello di Rivoli, 2002 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Resynthesis at the Art Institute of Chicago and with the traveling sound exhibit Invisible Cities created by digital media curators Fehler as well as solo and collaborative installations for Fusebox, 1515 Arts/G Fine Art, Die Schachtel, and Diapason. He has performed his work live across Europe, Japan, Australia, and North America at MUTEK, GRM/Maison de Radio France, Observatori, DEAF, Transmediale, Lovebytes, the Leeds International Film Festival, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Garage, La Batie, and other digital art/music festivals and at exhibits such as Frequenzen at the Schirn Kunsthalle and A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968 and Visual Music at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
In 2000 he formed the recording label LINE, which releases compositional and installation work by sound artists and composers working with contemporary and digital minimalism, including Bernhard Gunter, Steve Roden, Taylor Deupree, Christopher Willits, Roel Meelkop, Carsten Nicolai/Alva Noto, Asmus Tietchens, Mark Fell and the first full-length CDs by Miki Yui, Skoltz_Kolgen, and Steinbruchel. The first release on LINE, Chartier's Series, was awarded Honorable Mention in the category of Digital Music by the Prix Ars Electronica, 2001. In 2006 he was commissioned by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden to create a collaborative sound performance work in conjunction with the Hiroshi Sugimoto retrospective exhibit. This work, entitled Specification. Fifteen, was awarded one of five Honorable Mentions for outstanding contemporary artistic positions in digital media art by the jury of the Transmediale.07 Award Competition in Germany, and exhibited as a recording and presented as a live performance with a new video work created from Sugimoto's Seascapes at the Akademie der Kuenste.
In 2009, Richard Chartier presented a collaborative installation with visual artist Linn Meyers. Untitled, exhibited at the Art Gallery of University of Maryland two by walls meet in an enfolding chevron, creating both a sound chamber and a drawing surface. The swirling lines of Meyers' drawing were drawn directly on the surface of the walls, accompanied by a sound piece by Chartier. With eight audio transducers applied directly to the back surface of the walls, Chartier's composition modulates and transfers through the surfaces. Untitled, a stereo composition based on Untitled was released on Non Visual Objects as a limited edition CD.
In March 2010, Chartier was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Artist Research Fellowship to study the National Museum of American History's collection of 19th Century acoustic apparatus for scientific demonstration. Chartier will focus specifically on the many sirens, waveforms, and other inventions of the German physicist Rudolf Koenig including the Grand Tonometer, the only instrument of its kind in existence.
Since 1998, Chartier has created recordings for labels such as LINE, Raster-Noton, Die Stadt, Spekk, 12k Mutek rec, DSP, ERS, Trente Oiseaux, Fallt, Intransitive, and collaborated with artists Taylor Deupree, William Basinski, CoH, Kim Cascone, and Asmus Tietchens.

Selected discography

Solo Recordings

  • A Field for Recording CD
  • Untitled CD
  • Further Materials CD
  • Absence CD
  • Incidence CD
  • Current CD
  • Levels CD
  • Tracing CD
  • Opening Coccyx Die Schachtel, Italy] CD/Edition 2005
  • Retrieval 1-5 CD 2005
  • Re'post'postfabricated 2xCD 2005
  • Set or Performance CD 2004
  • Archival1991 CD 2003
  • Overview 3particles, US] CD 2003
  • Two Locations CD 2003
  • Other Materials CD 2003
  • of surfaces CD 2002
  • typeof Fällt, N.Ireland] 3" CD 2001
  • decisive forms Trente Oiseaux, Germany] CD 2001
  • series CD 2000 / reissued 2001
  • a hesitant fold CD 1999
  • post-fabricated CDR 1999
  • direct.incidental.consequential CD 1998

Collaborative Recordings

  • Fabrication 2 2CD
  • Untitled 1-3 CD 2008
  • Fabrication 2CD 2007
  • Specification. Fifteen CD 2006
  • Live in Los Angeles CD 2005
  • Chessmachine CD 2004
  • William Basinski + Richard Chartier CD 2004
  • Varied as 0/r CD 2002
  • after CD 2002
  • SPEC. CD 1999
  • 0/r CD 1999