Stephen Vitiello is a media and sound artist based in New York. Creating sound recordings from New York’s city streets to the flutter of hummingbird wings in the Amazon, Stephen captures the almost imperceptible details of the world around us, and mixes them together to create harmonic reflections on environments and places.
Stephen’s career began as a guitarist in a punk band, but his musical output soon took on a different direction - particularly after meeting artist Nam June Paik in 1991. Vitiello assisted the artist on various projects - shooting video footage, develop sound systems and ultimately curating an album of Nam June Paik’s archive recordings, ‘Works 1958-1979’ (Sub Rosa).
Whilst still maintaining a relationship with his background in contemporary music, Vitiello started to collaborate initially with film-makers and video artists, before developing works that were discreetly his own. His album ‘The Light of Falling Cars’ (JdK Productions) has been described as his “breakthrough work”, and included collaborations with renowned musician Pauline Oliveros and violinist Hahn Rowe. In a piece titled “A Musician In The Artworld”, Kenneth Goldsmith noted: “it feels like Vitiello has managed to fuse several current musical tendencies (glitchwerks, electronica, improvisation, ambient music) into a single compelling practice that’s all his own”. The following year, Stephen performed on stage with Oliveros, Frances-Marie Uitti and electronic musician Robin Rimbaud (Scanner) - which in turn led to further collaborative recordings and releases amongst the players.
In 1999, Stephen Vitiello was awarded a six-month residency on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center. With the use of photocells, Vitiello trapped the algorithms of the incoming light, and subsequently translated that into sound. This was augmented with the sound of the building’s stresses and strains, captured using contact microphones. The result was a site-specific sound installation that has been broadcast and exhibited internationally - and which can be found on the album ‘Bright and Dusty Things’ (New Albion Records), released shortly before the dramatic events of 9/11.
During his career, Stephen has also worked with Machinefabriek, Yasunao Tone and Andrew Deutsch, as well as visual artists Tony Oursler, Julie Mehretu, Joan Jonas and Eder Santos. His work has taken him to Cartier Foundation in Paris, The Tate Modern, London, the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, The Kitchen, NYC, Museum 52, London, the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, Galerie Almine Rech, Paris and many more, including a collaborative work in the 2006 Biennale of Sydney.
Recent work includes ‘A Bell for Every Minute’ at The High Line in New York - a piece which includes the sounds of 59 bells in New York and beyond, from the buzz of the stock exchange to the chimes of church bells, phone and bike bells and the United Nations Peace Bell.
His new soundscapes for Kaldor Public Art Projects - titled ‘The Sound of Red Earth’ - are the basis for atmospheric installations within the former brick-making kilns in Sydney Park, St Peters. Over the past year, Stephen has made two week-long field trips to the Kimberley region in Western Australia to record bird and animal calls in freshwater billabongs, the sounds of tidal flows and marine life. He has even captured the frequency of the starlight and translated it into sound. Resonating with sound and light, the kilns at the Brickworks will be transformed into truly immersive environments, evoking the remote Australian landscape.
