Peter van Riper (July 8, 1942 – November 18, 1998) was an American sound and light environment artist, musician and pioneer of laser art and

holography Holography is a technique that allows a wavefront to be recorded and later reconstructed. It is best known as a method of generating three-dimensional images, and has a wide range of other uses, including data storage, microscopy, and interfe ...

Biography

Van Riper was born in Detroit's

Inner City The term inner city (also called the hood) has been used, especially in the United States, as a euphemism for majority-minority lower-income residential districts that often refer to rundown neighborhoods, in a downtown or city centre area. Soc ...

, Michigan, the son of a psychoanalyst and an avid record collector. During the 1960s he received a B.A. Far Eastern History, and Art History from the

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC, UNC–Chapel Hill, or simply Carolina) is a public university, public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. Chartered in 1789, the university first began enrolli ...

, graduated in Art History at

Tokyo University The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...

and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and took part in

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers, and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental performance art, art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finishe ...

performances and exhibitions in Japan. He later appeared on

Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine ''Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine'' was an audio cassette magazine publication on cassette active from 1983 to 1993. Originally intended as a subscription bimonthly, it was launched on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to create an avant-guard med ...

#24 ''FluxTellus'',

Harvestworks Harvestworks is a not-for-profit arts organization located in New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's ...

, 1990, as part of an ensemble performing

George Maciunas George Maciunas (; ; November 8, 1931 Kaunas – May 9, 1978 Boston, Massachusetts) was a Lithuanian American artist, art historian, and art organizer who was the founding member and central coordinator of Fluxus, an international community of ...

's ''Solo For Lips And Tongue''. He collaborated with Fluxus members during exhibitions and performances, but Van Riper's influences are much wider. He is a true sound artist whose music is often inspired by Far Eastern traditions from Japan or Indonesia. From 1967 to 1970, van Riper was a member of Editions Inc., an

Ann Arbor Ann Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the List of municipalities in Michigan, fifth-most populous cit ...

, Michigan gallery of

, animated along laser physicist Lloyd Cross and artist Jerry Pethick (1935–2003). In 1970 they organized an exhibition at the Cranbrook Academy, and at the

Finch College Finch College was an undergraduate women's college in Manhattan, New York City. The Finch School opened as a private secondary school for girls in 1900 and became a liberal arts college in 1952. It closed in 1976. Founding Finch was founded in ...

Museum in New York. Both Cross and Pethick co-founded the School of Holography, San Francisco, California. Van Riper exhibited holograms during ''The Nature Of Light: Exploring Unconventional Photographic Techniques'' exhibition, Joyce Goldstein Gallery, New York, 1996, and also created a sound performance during the exhibition opening.

Collaborations

With choreographer Simone Forti
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Van Riper worked with dancer

Simone Forti Simone Forti (born March 25, 1935) is an American postmodern artist, dancer, choreographer, and writer. Since the 1950s, she has exhibited, performed, and taught workshops all over the world. Her innovations in Postmodern dance, including her se ...

, providing lighting design and live sound accompaniment to her dance performances. An avant garde dancer and choreographer, Forti took part in some of

Allan Kaprow Allan Kaprow (August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) was an American performance artist, installation artist, painter, and assemblagist . He helped to develop the " Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. ...

's 1960s

happenings A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow in 1959 to describe a range of art-related events. History Origins Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happening" in t ...

and specialized in

improvised Improvisation, often shortened to improv, is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. The origin of the word itself is in the Latin "improvisus", which literally means un-foreseen. Improvis ...

dancing. While working with her, Van Riper mostly used soprano and sopranino saxophones but also various devices and objects or even tape music. He also moved freely around the stage and dancer. With visual artist Eugènia Balcells Van Riper provided what he calls ''Acobxcvxcvustic Metal Music'' and small percussion works to Barcelona video and

installation artist Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often cal ...

Eugènia Balcells (born 1943), who settled in New York from 1979 to 1988. For ''TV Weave'', an installation with TV screens first showed at Metrònom gallery, Barcelona, 1985, Peter Van Riper played chiming music from suspended aluminium baseball bats. An excerpt from aluminium baseball bats music can be found on ''The Aerial'' #4 CD. Says Balcells: With performance artist Sha Sha Higby Van Riper collaborated with yet another performance artist: Sha Sha Higby.

Other works

On December 6, 1982, he performed together with

Jackson Mac Low Jackson Mac Low (September 12, 1922 – December 8, 2004) was an American poet, performance artist, composer and playwright, known to most readers of poetry as a practitioner of systematic chance operations and other non-intentional compos ...

and percussionist

Z'EV Z'EV (born Stefan Joel Weisser, February 8, 1951 – December 16, 2017) was an American poet, percussionist, and sound artist. After studying various world music traditions at CalArts, he began creating his own percussion sounds out of indu ...

, during a show called ''Language/Theater: Language/Noise'', at Martinson Hall,

Public Theater The Public Theater is an arts organization in New York City. Founded by Joseph Papp, The Public Theater was originally the Shakespeare Workshop in 1954; its mission was to support emerging playwrights and performers.Epstein, Helen. ''Joe Papp: A ...

, New York. That same year he was included in a collective exhibition called ''Young Fluxus'', Artists Space gallery, New York, 1982.

He composed music for ''Seven Days in Space'', a 90' video of NASA space exploration:

List of sound works

* ''The Simple Existence of Any One Thing'', in 'Everson Video 75', Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY, 1975 * ''Big Room'' for kalimba, saxophones and plastic hose (w/ Forti choreography), 1975 * ''Red Green'' (w/ Forti choreography), 1975 * ''Plumbing Music'', tape music created for a Simone Forti choreography 'Planet', 1976 * ''Three From Piru'' for a Simone Forti choreography 'Fan Dance', 1975 * ''This'', a 3 channel installation with book, The Kitchen, New York, NY, December 1976 * ''It'' readings for performance, The Kitchen, New York, NY, December 1976 * ''Art on the Beach'' collective exhibition, Battery Park, Lower Manhattan, NY, 1978 * ''Home Base'' for plastic hose named 'molino', moku gyo (Japanese wooden bell) and mbira (African thumb piano), for a Simone Forti choreography, The Kitchen, New york 1979 * ''Indian Cicle'' for sopranino (video performance by Eugènia Balcells), 1981 * ''TV Weave'', for aluminium baseball bats, music for Eugènia Balcells' installation, Metrònom gallery, Barcelona, 1985 * ''Sound/Light'' for Japanese gong to an Eugènia Balcells installation, Metrònom gallery, Barcelona and Experimental Intermedia Foundation, NY, 1985 * ''Shadows'', sound installation w/ Eugènia Balcells, Roulette, NY, 1987 * ''Seeing/Hearing'', 1991 (w/ Forti choreography) * ''Collaboration'', 1991 (w/ Forti choreography)

Recorded music

* ''Sound To Movement. New Music For Saxophones'', LP, 1979 VRBLU, (A-1982-48) * ''Room Space. New Music For Saxophones'', LP, 1981 VRBLU (A-1982-49) * ''Windows to the Sky '', LP * ''Music for Spaces'', LP * ''Indian Circle'', cassette, self-release * ''Direct Contact'', cassette, Deep Listening Institute * ''Sustainable Music'', cassette, Deep Listening Institute * ''Music for Spaces'' CD, Van Riper Editions, 1997 * ''Marking Time'' CD-ROM, in collaboration with Jerry Pethick, Kamloops Art Gallery, 1998 Appears on: * George Maciunas ''Solo For Lips And Tongue'', included in

#24 ''FluxTellus'', Harvestworks, 1990 * ''Heart'' included in The Aerial #4 cassette & CD, What Next? label, 1991 * ''Acoustic Metal Music'' included in ''Anti-Disc I'', 33rpm flexi disc, Anti-Utopia, 1990 * ''NAP CD Connection'', CD published by New Arts Program, Pennsylvania

References

External links

* Van Ripe
page
at Deep Listening Institute * Eugènia Balcells' we
site
* Holograph

* Kalvos & Damian 2 radi

with Peter Van Riper, November 1997.
Tumblr weblog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Van Riper, Peter American postmodern artists American contemporary artists American sound artists Laser art American people of Dutch descent American experimental musicians 20th-century American male composers 1998 deaths 1942 births 20th-century American composers