Mendi & Keith Obadike
Encyclopedia
Mendi Obadike and Keith Obadike are a married Igbo
Nigerian American
couple who create music and art. They were both born in 1973. Their music
, live art
, and conceptual Internet
artworks have been exhibited internationally. Mendi is a poet
and Keith is a composer
and sound designer. They are among the first artists in America
to explore the Internet as a creative medium.
while her parents were completing graduate work at Stanford. Mendi grew up writing poems, singing in bands and acting in theater as a child. Early on she experimented making songs with cassette overdubs of her Casio keyboard and computer graphics on a Commodore computer. Her mother’s research in linguistics and father’s stint as the founding director of Black Studies at the University of California at Berkeley sparked her interest in language and culture. Later Mendi studied Latin
, became fluent in Spanish
and lived and studied in Venezuela
and later the Dominican Republic
.
Mendi wrote her first play and edited Focus literary journal while living in Atlanta and studying at Spelman College
. She graduated with honors in English and was awarded a fellowship to pursue a Ph.D. in Literature and Sound Theory at Duke University
and joined the Cave Canem Poetry Collective.
) was an electrical engineer from Nigeria
. While growing up in Nashville, Keith studied classical piano
, woodwinds and began programming BASIC
on a TRS-80 computer. As a teenager he became a sought after sound designer and producer on the local hip-hop scene. He later joined the experimental, New York based Modern Hip-Hop Quartet as guitarist and producer. He was subsequently discovered by Kedar Massenburg (Motown Records
president) and was signed to MCA records
where he worked with R&B artists such as D’Angelo and Angie Stone and Hip-Hop as well as performed in concert with Laruyn Hill/ the Fugees and P-Funk. He later met and was influenced by electronic music composers like Paul Lansky
and Olly Wilson
while working at Duke University
. Keith went on to study painting and digital art at North Carolina Central University and later became the first African-American to earn an MFA in Sound Design from Yale University
. He currently teaches in the College of Arts and Communication at William Paterson University
in Wayne, NJ.
, Artthrob, Meridians, Black Arts Quarterly, El Pais and Tema Celeste, and in new media texts such as Internet Art
(Thames and Hudson,Rachel Greene),Sound Unbound: Writings on Contemporary Multimedia and Music Culture (MIT Press, edited by Paul D. Miller). In 1998 they studied art and conducted interviews with artists in Ghana on electronic media. After requesting sound submissions from friends by email created the Uli Suite a sound art piece based on the Igbo abstract art form.
In 2000 they created My Hands/Wishful Thinking an Internet art memorial for Amadou Diallo
. This work was exhibited the MIT List Visual Art Center. Their work generated much discussion online and offline when they offered Keith's blackness for sale on eBay in 2001 as an Internet performance. Mendi also created the minimalist hypertext piece Keeping Up Appearances, the first Black feminist net.art work.
In 2002 Mendi+Keith premiered their Internet opera The Sour Thunder
(Bridge Records, Inc.
) which featured hypertext writings by literary critic Houston Baker, performance artist Coco Fusco
and musician DJ Spooky
among others. This was the first new media work commissioned by the Yale
Cabaret and they launched The Interaction of Coloreds (commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art
).
In 2003 Keith worked with playwright Anna Deavere Smith
as sound designer and composer for play her play Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 at the Lincoln Center Institute, and Mendi's poetry was featured at the Studio Museum in Harlem
in response to an exhibition of visual artist Gary Simmons’ work. Also in 2003 they launched The Pink of Stealth, an Internet/ DVD surround sound work commissioned by the New York African Film Festival and Electronic Arts Intermix and The Sour Thunder was broadcast internationally from 104.1 fm in Berlin and was released on CD from Bridge Records in 2004.
They received a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship to develop an installation and album entitled TaRonda Who Wore White Gloves. Their Internet opera, entitled Four Electric Ghosts, was developed for Toni Morrison
’s Atelier at Princeton University
in 2005 and the Kitchen
in New York in 2009.They’ve curated the sound art exhibition Ya Heard: Sounds from the Artbase for Rhizome
.org and the New Museum of Contemporary Art
. Most recently, Keith was awarded a Connecticut Critics’ Circle Award for his sound design work at the Yale Repertory Theater and Mendi's book Armor and Flesh (Lotus Press) won the Naomi Long Madgett
Poetry Award.
They recently contributed a chapter to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (The MIT Press, 2008) edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky
. In 2008 they produced a compilation CD entitled Crosstalk: American Speech Music
on Bridge Records. The album features music by Vijay Iyer
, Guillermo E. Brown
, Shelley Hirsch
, George E. Lewis, Pamela Z
, John Link
, Paul Lansky
, Tracie Morris
, DJ Spooky
, Daniel Bernard Roumain
and Peter Gordon
/Lawrence Weiner
.
Igbo people
Igbo people, also referred to as the Ibo, Ebo, Eboans or Heebo are an ethnic group living chiefly in southeastern Nigeria. They speak Igbo, which includes various Igboid languages and dialects; today, a majority of them speak English alongside Igbo as a result of British colonialism...
Nigerian American
Nigerian American
Nigerian Americans are citizens of the United States of America who are or descend from immigrants from Nigeria. Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, approximately one million Nigerians have immigrated in to the United States....
couple who create music and art. They were both born in 1973. Their music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, live art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
, and conceptual Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
artworks have been exhibited internationally. Mendi is a poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and Keith is a composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and sound designer. They are among the first artists in America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to explore the Internet as a creative medium.
Mendi
Mendi Lewis Obadike was born in Palo Alto, CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
while her parents were completing graduate work at Stanford. Mendi grew up writing poems, singing in bands and acting in theater as a child. Early on she experimented making songs with cassette overdubs of her Casio keyboard and computer graphics on a Commodore computer. Her mother’s research in linguistics and father’s stint as the founding director of Black Studies at the University of California at Berkeley sparked her interest in language and culture. Later Mendi studied Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, became fluent in Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and lived and studied in Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
and later the Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
.
Mendi wrote her first play and edited Focus literary journal while living in Atlanta and studying at Spelman College
Spelman College
Spelman College is a four-year liberal arts women's college located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The college is part of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium in Atlanta. Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman was the first historically black female...
. She graduated with honors in English and was awarded a fellowship to pursue a Ph.D. in Literature and Sound Theory at Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
and joined the Cave Canem Poetry Collective.
Keith
Keith Obadike was born in Nashville, TN. His mother worked as an administrator at the Post Office and his father (who studied briefly with inventor Buckminster FullerBuckminster Fuller
Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society....
) was an electrical engineer from Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
. While growing up in Nashville, Keith studied classical piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
, woodwinds and began programming BASIC
BASIC
BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....
on a TRS-80 computer. As a teenager he became a sought after sound designer and producer on the local hip-hop scene. He later joined the experimental, New York based Modern Hip-Hop Quartet as guitarist and producer. He was subsequently discovered by Kedar Massenburg (Motown Records
Motown Records
Motown is a record label originally founded by Berry Gordy, Jr. and incorporated as Motown Record Corporation in Detroit, Michigan, United States, on April 14, 1960. The name, a portmanteau of motor and town, is also a nickname for Detroit...
president) and was signed to MCA records
MCA Records
MCA Records was an American-based record company owned by MCA Inc., which later gave way to the larger MCA Music Entertainment Group , of which MCA Records was still part. MCA Records was absorbed by Geffen Records in 2003...
where he worked with R&B artists such as D’Angelo and Angie Stone and Hip-Hop as well as performed in concert with Laruyn Hill/ the Fugees and P-Funk. He later met and was influenced by electronic music composers like Paul Lansky
Paul Lansky
Paul Lansky is an American electronic-music or computer-music composer who has been producing works from the 1970s up to the present day .-Biography:...
and Olly Wilson
Olly Wilson
Olly Woodrow Wilson, Jr. is a prominent American composer of contemporary classical music, pianist, double bassist, and musicologist. He is one of the preeminent living composers of African American descent.-Life:...
while working at Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
. Keith went on to study painting and digital art at North Carolina Central University and later became the first African-American to earn an MFA in Sound Design from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. He currently teaches in the College of Arts and Communication at William Paterson University
William Paterson University
William Paterson University is a comprehensive public institution located in Wayne, New Jersey serving nearly 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students through five colleges: , , , , and ....
in Wayne, NJ.
Career
In 1996 Mendi and Keith started making conceptual Internet art and sound art works together with the goal of creating Internet Operas. Since then their writing and art projects have been featured in many publications including Art JournalArt Journal
Art Journal may refer to:* Art Journal , 1941–present, published by College Art Association of America* The Art Journal, 1839–1912, London* Art diary, art journal or visual journal, a daily journal kept by artists...
, Artthrob, Meridians, Black Arts Quarterly, El Pais and Tema Celeste, and in new media texts such as Internet Art
Internet art
Internet art is a form of digital artwork distributed via the Internet. This form of art has circumvented the traditional dominance of the gallery and museum system, delivering aesthetic experiences via the Internet. In many cases, the viewer is drawn into some kind of interaction with the work...
(Thames and Hudson,Rachel Greene),Sound Unbound: Writings on Contemporary Multimedia and Music Culture (MIT Press, edited by Paul D. Miller). In 1998 they studied art and conducted interviews with artists in Ghana on electronic media. After requesting sound submissions from friends by email created the Uli Suite a sound art piece based on the Igbo abstract art form.
In 2000 they created My Hands/Wishful Thinking an Internet art memorial for Amadou Diallo
Amadou Diallo
Amadou Diallo was a 23-year-old Guinean immigrant in New York City who was shot and killed on February 4, 1999 by four New York City Police Department plain-clothed officers: Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon and Kenneth Boss. The four officers fired a total of 41 shots...
. This work was exhibited the MIT List Visual Art Center. Their work generated much discussion online and offline when they offered Keith's blackness for sale on eBay in 2001 as an Internet performance. Mendi also created the minimalist hypertext piece Keeping Up Appearances, the first Black feminist net.art work.
In 2002 Mendi+Keith premiered their Internet opera The Sour Thunder
The Sour Thunder
The Sour Thunder is a studio recording of Mendi + Keith Obadike's internet opera. The opera was commissioned by the Yale Cabaret and supported by the Digital Media Center at Yale...
(Bridge Records, Inc.
Bridge Records, Inc.
Bridge Records, Inc. is an independent record label based in New Rochelle, New York that specializes in 20th century classical music. Its president is Becky Starobin...
) which featured hypertext writings by literary critic Houston Baker, performance artist Coco Fusco
Coco Fusco
Coco Fusco is a Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist and writer who began her career in 1988. Fusco has performed and curated throughout America and internationally, and currently is full-time faculty in the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design...
and musician DJ Spooky
DJ Spooky
Paul D. Miller , known by his stage name DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics or his fans as "illbient" or "trip hop". He is a turntablist, a producer, a philosopher, and an author...
among others. This was the first new media work commissioned by the Yale
YALE
RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...
Cabaret and they launched The Interaction of Coloreds (commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
).
In 2003 Keith worked with playwright Anna Deavere Smith
Anna Deavere Smith
Anna Deavere Smith is an American actress, playwright, and professor. She is currently the artist in residence at the Center for American Progress.-Early life:...
as sound designer and composer for play her play Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 at the Lincoln Center Institute, and Mendi's poetry was featured at the Studio Museum in Harlem
Studio Museum in Harlem
The Studio Museum in Harlem is an American contemporary art museum in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, New York. It was founded in 1968 as the first such museum in the U.S. devoted to the art of African-Americans, specializing in 19th and 20th century work as well work of artists of...
in response to an exhibition of visual artist Gary Simmons’ work. Also in 2003 they launched The Pink of Stealth, an Internet/ DVD surround sound work commissioned by the New York African Film Festival and Electronic Arts Intermix and The Sour Thunder was broadcast internationally from 104.1 fm in Berlin and was released on CD from Bridge Records in 2004.
They received a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship to develop an installation and album entitled TaRonda Who Wore White Gloves. Their Internet opera, entitled Four Electric Ghosts, was developed for Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...
’s Atelier at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in 2005 and the Kitchen
The Kitchen
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary art and performance space located at at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...
in New York in 2009.They’ve curated the sound art exhibition Ya Heard: Sounds from the Artbase for Rhizome
Rhizome
In botany and dendrology, a rhizome is a characteristically horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes...
.org and the New Museum of Contemporary Art
New Museum of Contemporary Art
The New Museum, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to presenting contemporary art from around the world...
. Most recently, Keith was awarded a Connecticut Critics’ Circle Award for his sound design work at the Yale Repertory Theater and Mendi's book Armor and Flesh (Lotus Press) won the Naomi Long Madgett
Naomi Long Madgett
Naomi Long Madgett is an African American poet, born Naomi Cornelia Long in Norfolk, Virginia. Madgett was a teacher and an award winning poet, she is also the senior editor of Lotus Press, which is a publisher of poetry books by black poets.- Life and work :Madgett was the daughter of a Baptist...
Poetry Award.
They recently contributed a chapter to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (The MIT Press, 2008) edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky
DJ Spooky
Paul D. Miller , known by his stage name DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics or his fans as "illbient" or "trip hop". He is a turntablist, a producer, a philosopher, and an author...
. In 2008 they produced a compilation CD entitled Crosstalk: American Speech Music
Crosstalk: American Speech Music
Crosstalk: American Speech Music is a compilation album of speech-based music by various composers, poets, visual artists and DJs.- Track listing :# "Declaratives in First Person" – 5:04# "Electroprayer 5.0" Crosstalk: American Speech Music is a compilation album of speech-based music by various...
on Bridge Records. The album features music by Vijay Iyer
Vijay Iyer
Vijay Iyer is a jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, producer, electronic musician, and writer based in New York City.-Biography:Born in 1971 and raised in Rochester, New York, Vijay Iyer is the son of Indian Tamil immigrants to the US. He received 15 years of Western classical training on violin...
, Guillermo E. Brown
Guillermo E. Brown
Guillermo E. Brown is a free jazz drummer who has performed or recorded with Matthew Shipp, David S. Ware, George Lewis and others. In 2008 his work "Electro Prayer 5.0" was included on the compilation album Crosstalk: American Speech Music produced by Mendi & Keith Obadike.- References :...
, Shelley Hirsch
Shelley Hirsch
Shelley Hirsch is a singer, performer, and composer. Central to Hirsch's work are her versatile vocal abilities, which are often enmeshed in a kaleidoscope of electronic music and sound effects....
, George E. Lewis, Pamela Z
Pamela Z
Pamela Z is an American composer, performer, and audio artist who works primarily with her voice and live electronic processing.-Music career:...
, John Link
John Link
John Link is a New York composer and is one of the founders of Friends and Enemies of New MusicIn 2008 an excerpt of his work "Life Studies" was included on the compilation album Crosstalk: American Speech Music produced by Mendi + Keith Obadike...
, Paul Lansky
Paul Lansky
Paul Lansky is an American electronic-music or computer-music composer who has been producing works from the 1970s up to the present day .-Biography:...
, Tracie Morris
Tracie Morris
Tracie Morris is an American poet, performer, vocalist and academic originally from Brooklyn, New York.-Career:Morris emerged as a performer and writer from the Lower East Side poetry scene in the early 1990s. She became known as a local performer in the "slam" scene located in the Nuyorican Poets...
, DJ Spooky
DJ Spooky
Paul D. Miller , known by his stage name DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics or his fans as "illbient" or "trip hop". He is a turntablist, a producer, a philosopher, and an author...
, Daniel Bernard Roumain
Daniel Bernard Roumain
Daniel Bernard Roumain is a classically trained composer, performer, violinist, and band-leader noted for blending funk, rock, hip-hop and classical music into an energetic and experiential sonic form. DBR is of Haitian-American heritage and he attended Dillard Center for the Arts in Fort...
and Peter Gordon
Peter Gordon
Peter Gordon may refer to:* Peter Gordon , celebrity chef from New Zealand* Peter Gordon , composer and musician based in New York City* Peter Gordon , radio presenter in Surrey, England...
/Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner was a central figure in the formation of conceptual art in the 1960s His work often takes the form of typographic texts.- Life and career :...
.
External links
- http://www.wnyc.org/shows/newsounds/episodes/2004/11/30
- http://www.elpais.com/especiales/2003/netart/2002_4.html
- http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/music/279626,CST-FTR-house02.article
- http://www.codezonline.com/2007/03/sweat_it_out.html
- http://www.experimentaltvcenter.org/history/search/search.php3?id=617&base=bios
- http://www.classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=8725
- http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/search?q=obadike
- http://www.kunstogdesign.no/form402/atle_barcley.html
- http://mediaartists.org/content.php?sec=artist&sub=detail&artist_id=694
- http://blacknetart.com/coco.html
- http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S17/68/15S66/index.xml
- https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/MarkTribe/Mendi+and+Keith+Obadike