Gladstone Butler
Bio: Gladstone Butler is a New York based artist working with percussion and electronics. His work takes form in recorded music, installations, and performances. Gladstone has performed as a soloist at the Kennedy Center, released multiple tracks charted in the Beatport Top 10, works in fields of research as a technical audio engineer and software engineer, and is an installation artist addressing concepts linking rhythm, geometry, the black body, and technology. Gladstone holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and is an MFA candidate at Columbia University.
www.gladstonebutler.com
Instagram: @gladstonedeluxe
Thesis Exhibition
Artist Statement: As a percussionist, Gladstone is interested in how conceptions and politics of time are embodied, and can bleed into the social topography of a culture through rhythmic performance. As a technologist, he develops systems for the augmentation and amplification of percussive messages. His experimental approach towards interface design is a collision of the spiritual and the cybernetic.
While it is often only tied to the act of striking an object, Gladstone sees percussion as an expressive manifestation of time architectures that bind humans, framed by the larger rhythmical walls of sun-rise and set. In Gladstone's work, musical rhythm becomes a unique tool for celebrating nonlinearity, asymmetry, and difference in society.
Incidental transience (Drum shells, wood, aluminum sheets, steel sheets, auralized metal, amplifiers, computer, custom software, time, spray paint, and acrylic silkscreen ink, 2023)
First Year Exhibition
Passing Time (18" x 22" c 22", Birch drum shell, plywood, sonar sensors, speakers, microcontroller, amplification electronics, computer and software, 2022)
