Multimedia Artist Rashaad Newsome is Remixing Everything

By Kathleen Flood

NYC-based multi-media artist and New Orleans native, Rashaad Newsome, grew up during the era of the music video in the late 80s and early 90s. His work, which encompasses collage, performance, and video, is partly influenced by hip-hop music. His artwork consistently samples and remixes aspects of both high and low culture, working against the stigma that art can be esoteric, available and understandable to only an elite few.

One of his most notable works, FIVE, was a performance piece showcased at the Whitney Museum's Biennial celebration last year. Combining five different mediums, it explored the street-dance practice of "voguing," with musicians, an opera singer, play-by-play commentators, and a custom-built computer program that Rashaad developed to track the dancers' movements in real-time.

For one of his other pieces, Rashaad hacked a Wii controller to function like a guitar effects pedal, allowing him to record samples of both audio and video and mix them into the performance in real-time. In his ongoing Shade Compositions series, which highlights culturally specific and stereotypical gestures, movements, and vocalizations, he wields the rigged controller like a maestro conducting a symphony, triggering audio and visual loops.

Read more at The Creators Project