RETRO: Ultra Vivid Scene “Mercy Seat” video

Posted May 23rd, 2007 by eric

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/uFzwhZ0WrQA" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

I always wondered what happened to Kurt Ralske. According to AMG, he dropped off the face of the planet after 1992’s Rev, only to resurface again as a producer for Lloyd Cole and Ivy a few years later. In 1999, he put out a record called Amorphous under the name Cathars.

Tags: video

2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 bigcitysheep // May 24, 2007 at 1:40 pm

    I love this song!
    I remember this CD compilation Guitarrorists featured a song from him (along with Dean Wareham, Thurston Moore, Wayne Coyne, Mark Robinson, Steve Albini, etc. etc.

  • 2 dickiestardust // May 26, 2007 at 8:36 am

    I loved UVS back in then…although it doesn’t exactly seem like Kurt Ralske dropped off the face of the earth:

    Kurt Ralske
    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Jump to: navigation, search

    Kurt Ralske is an artist and composer. During the mid-eighties he was a guitarist in the band Crash. In the late eighties and early-ninties he released three albums as Ultra Vivid Scene. After his last album under the Ultra Vivid Scene moniker, he produced, engineered, and performed on numerous albums for a variety of arists. In 1999 he self-released two albums on his miau-miau label, one under his own name Kyrie Eleison and the other > as Cathars. In 2001 he released another two albums, Kurt Ralske Amor. 0 + 01, and as Cathars Early Bells and Voices. The Amor. 0 + 01 album featured several digital video clips. Since then he has focused on digital video. His video installations and performances are created exclusively with his own custom software and his work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Guggenheim Bilbao, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art.

    Kurt programmed and co-designed a 9-channel video installation that is permanently in the lobby of the MoMA in NYC. In 2007, he received a Rockefeller Foundation Media Arts Fellowship grant. In 2003, his work received First Prize at the Transmediale International Media Art Festival in Berlin, as a member of the video ensemble 242.pilots. He is also the author/programmer of Auvi, a popular video software environment in use by artists in 22 countries.

    Kurt has also just finished working on Mathew Rosenblum’s RedDust Opera in which he did live video art for.

    Kurt is currently Visiting Professor of Digital Art at the School of the Museum of Fine Art, in Boston, and is also on the faculty of the School of Visual Art, in NYC, in the graduate program in Computer Art.