Keith Fullerton Whitman is a Composer & Performer based in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Initially active in more trangressive forms of improvised & electronic music, his work over the past two decades has dealt largely in the creation of & delineation of control to algorithmic & generative systems.
Since relocating (back) to New York City in late 2018, Keith has performed, set up installations, presented commissioned work & radio programs, & given presentations at Opus 40 (Saugerties), Montez Press Radio (Dimes Square), e-flux (Brooklyn), the Performa Biennial (New York), Le Poisson Rouge (New York), Frequency Festival (Chicago), Silent Night (Prague), NEXT (Bratislava), Luc Ferrari: Stereo Spasms (Brooklyn), Bach to the Future (Providence), w/ André Gonçalves, Sofia “Clothilde” Mestre, & Simão Simões at OUT.Fest 19 (Barreiro), Meakusma (Eupen), w/ Tarek Atoui, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, C. Spencer Yeh, C. Lavender, Chuck Bettis, & Victoria Shen at Kurimanzutto & the Guggenheim (New York), Remote Viewing (Philadelphia), Expo 74 @ Mass MoCA (North Adams), Musica Practica / Elettronica Viva (Philadelphia), the Kranzberg Arts Foundation (St. Louis), Elevate (Graz), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), as well as solo & ad hoc club gigs at Washington Baths (Portland), Never-Ending Books (New Haven), the Acid Loft (Greenpoint), Shift @ FourOneOne (Williamsburg), Kazerne (Basel), Alice (Copenhagen), Cave12 (Geneva), Human Resources (Los Angeles), The Rattle (Vancouver), Record Shop (Red Hook), Union Pool (Williamsburg), Market Hotel (Bushwick), St. Vitus (Greenpoint), the Schoolhouse (Bed-Stuy), Pioneer Works (Red Hook), and Bar Laika (Clinton Hill).
Active from the early 90's onwards while working towards a Bachelor's Degree in Music Synthesis (Computer Music) at Boston's Berklee College of Music, Keith began exploring Experimental Music's many facets, yielding dozens of recordings for influential labels such as kranky, Planet µ, Nakid, Editions Mego, PAN, Carpark, Room40, Amethyst Sunset, Amish, Dekorder, Melted Mailbox, NNA Tapes, No Fun Productions, Agents of Chaos, Arbor, Digitalis Limited, Ekhein, Heavy Tapes, Rare Youth, and Root Strata, as well as his own Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge, Entschuldigen, Protracted View, Industrial Abbotsford, & Hi-Res AUDIO.
Over the past 30 years, Keith has given over 500 performances of everything from solemn held-tones to pointillist reckless-abandon at venues ranging from "Punk" basements to some of the most celebrated European & North-American festival stages: Akousma (Montreal), Berliner Festspiele (Berlin), the Boston Cyberarts Festival (Boston), Brainwaves (Boston), Cable (Nantes), Cicle OUT.SIDE (Barcelona), CTM Festival (Berlin), DEAF (Dublin), Dissonanze (Rome), Documenta 14 (Athens/Kassel), Electronica En Abril (Madrid), Elevate (Graz), Festival SOY (Nantes), Geometry Of Now (Moscow), High Zero (Baltimore), Hopscotch (Raleigh-Durham), Immersion (Paris), InSonic (Karlsruhe), Impakt (Utrecht), Kontraste (Krems), Labyrinth (Naeba), Lanaudière (Joliette), LUFF (Lausanne), MaerzMusik (Berlin), Mutek (Montreal), Neon Marshmallow (Chicago), NEXT (Bratislava), No Fun Fest (Brooklyn), Novas Frequencias (Rio De Janeiro), On Land (San Francisco), Performa Biennial (New York), Présences Électroniques (Paris), Propensity of Sound (New York), Sampler Series (Spain), Semibreve (Braga). Send + Receive (Winnipeg), Skanu Mesz (Riga), Silent Night (Prague), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), Sonic Circuits (DC), Sound Summit (Newcastle), Stereo Spasms (Brooklyn), Suoni Per Il Popolo (Montreal), TEDx (Boston), Terraforma (Castellazzo), Ultrahang [UH Fest] (Budapest), Unsound (Krakow), Werkleitz (Halle), the WFMU Record Fair (New York), The Wire’s Adventures in Modern Music (Chicago), etc. In 2011 he co-curated the EARBRAINS: Sonic Research Underground festival at EMPAC (Troy).
In addition to recording, performing, & releasing music, he has given dozens of workshops, artist talks, & lectures at prestigious conferences & institutions including Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Banff), Casa Rolão (Braga), the Columbia University Computer Music Center (New York), Cycling ‘74’s Expo 74 (North Adams), Dartmouth (Hanover), The Echo Nest (Somerville), EMPAC (Troy), Harvard University’s HUSEAC (Boston), Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music (Riga), Johns Hopkins (Baltimore), Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), MIT Media Lab (Csmbridge), UPENN School of Music (Philadelphia), & Videopool (Winnipeg) & has taken part in Colloquia, acted as Guest Faculty, co-curated music festivals & organized concerts & film events in the Boston, Troy, Melbourne, & New York City areas.
Keith has collaborated on stage & in the studio on music & art projects with Oren Ambarchi, Chuck Bettis, Caboladies, MV Carbon, Rhys Chatham, Seth Cluett, Tony Conrad, Greg Davis, Frans de Waard, Deerhunter, JD Emmanuel, Lawrence English, Mark Fell, Robin Fox, Carlos Giffoni, David Grubbs, Glenn Jones, C. Lavender, Graham Lambkin (Shadow Ring), Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Michael Karoli & Malcolm Mooney (Can), Eli Keszler, Tomas Korber, Felix Kubin, Okkyung Lee, Jon Leidecker (Wobbly), Alan Licht, Matmos, Thurston Moore, Norbert Möslang (Voice Crack), Geoff Mullen, Bill Nace, Benjamin Nelson, Laura Ortman, Charlemagne Palestine, Terry Riley, Joel Ryan, Jessica Rylan, Uwe Schmidt (Atom™), Victoria Shen, Subtle, Brandon Terzakis, JG Thirwell, TV Pow, Ben Vida, Pierce Warnecke, Nate Wooley, & C. Spencer Yeh. He has also performed on instruments by & realized works of composers & artists such as Tarek Atoui, Luciano Chessa, Luc Ferrari, Ilhan Mimaroglu, Phill Niblock, Dick Raaijmakers, Conrad Schnitzler, & Joep Van Lieshout. He has composed for dance & his compositions has been set to motion by choreographers & dance ensembles including Chantal Yzermans, Le Supplici, the Andersson Dance Company, and the NYU New Music and Dance Ensemble. In the early/Hrvatski days he remixed and/or was remixed by 13 & God (Anticon), Aeron & Alejandra, Kim Cascone, Chessie, Clor, Electro Organic Sound System, Fennesz, Fluoroscopic Kid, God Is My Co-Pilot, Kid606, Merzbow, Thurston Moore, Neon Hunk, Nettle, No. 9, Jim O’Rourke, Pita, Push Button Objects, DJ /Rupture, Salvo Beta, Solvent, Soplerfo, Suetsu, Sun, The New Blockaders, Themselves, V/Vm, Glen Velez, Violetshaped, & Voice Crack. He has supplied music and sound-design for several video game & "music for picture" projects, advertisements, and assorted environments, including film & audio installations.
A 2011 joint commission from Sonic Acts, Kontraste Krems, and the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) led to a week-long session in the fabled INA-GRM studios at Radio France, during which Keith realized a life-long dream by completing an 80-channel, long-form Musique Concrète work entitled "Rythmes Naturels" utilizing many of the idiosyncratic, early-electronic instruments held in the studio's archive. In 2015 he completed a second piece, “Trilogie d’Erreur” for the GRM's "Présences Electroniques" event held at Centquatre, and in 2017 a third, “Coupigny Redactions”, for their “Immersion” festival. These works remain unreleased in a commercial context.
From 2003 to 2015, Keith helmed a highly specialized experimental-music distribution company, Mimaroglu Music (Sales), charged with helping labels & artists all over the world with the preparation & dispersion of their tangible music artifacts. Prior to this he was the Sales-Manager of noted New England distributor Forced Exposure, for whom he personally penned hundreds of "capsule" descriptions of new arrivals. After Mimaroglu’s dissolution & his relocation to Australia in late 2015, Keith ran Broken-Music out of his Brunswick garage, & currently operates a small label-group & dealership of rare and obscure experimental music, Alpha State NYC, out his project studio in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NY, USA.