Generator Sound Art is an experimental arts and culture organization based in New York City, co-owned by the sound artists Gen Ken Montgomery and Scott Konzelmann. It focuses upon the work of dedicated Sound Artists, and is an umbrella organization that either facilitated or continues to facilitate the activities of the Generator Gallery / exhibition space, the Generations Unlimited audio recording label, and a second, eponymous audio recording label. Generator as a physical gallery / exhibition space existed in the East Village and then in Chelsea from 1989–1992.
The organization is non-commercial. Profits earned from Generator-related activities are split between the artists and a fund to support future sound art projects. Generator's emphasis on handmade, self-released audio works derives from the "cassette networking" or "Cassette culture" milieu of the 1980s–1990s,. The embrace of spontaneity and unintended consequences is another recurrent theme within Generator-affiliated work.
History
Gen Ken Montgomery
Generator's founder and proprietor Ken Montgomery (aka Gen Ken Montgomery) (b. 1957) is a New York-based sound artist raised in Churchville, Pennsylvania, where he studied violin in his late childhood and early teens. Since 1994, he has used the "Gen Ken" moniker for sound art / noise music (he also uses the anagrammatic moniker "Egnekn" for "more whimsical and especially lamination-based projects.") As to the latter, Montgomery's "lamination ritual" is a staple of his performance oeuvre, described by the artist as "a people-participatory activity and sonic listening experience which stimulates the mind and body in-the-moment, while producing an original, tangible, transformed personal object that will last…almost forever." Among Montgomery's formative influences are the theories of composer John Cage – particularly those outlined in Cage's 1961 collection of writings, Silence – and the participatory work ethic of the German electronic musician (and Joseph Beuys protégé) Conrad Schnitzler (for whom Montgomery gave the first U.S. concerts, and first met during the sole German performance of 'KMZ' in 1982.)
Having originally planned to work as a filmmaker – briefly studying at NYU for this purpose – Montgomery claims "I quickly discovered I was approaching [filmmaking] with the soundtrack already in my mind." Montgomery worked, from the early 1980s until 1991, with traditional electronic music instruments such as analog synthesizers and cheap toys, originally recording this material under the project name "Gen Ken & The Equipment." The artist also enjoyed a period of access to a professional recording studio with synthesizers, samplers and signal processing equipment. At the end of this period of creativity, an interval of flagging inspiration led Montgomery to experiment with the use of quotidian household devices as instruments: these included an 'Ice-o-Matic' commercial icemaker which was used both in concert and in the CD recording Icebreaker. This was not an abrupt shift in methodology, but rather a return to an expressive style previously experimented with. As he explains:
"In my East Village apartment in the late '70s, I remember throwing parties and instead of playing music I turned on kitchen appliances, tape players, fans, radios and a TV tuned between stations…I made my first installations before I knew that audio installations and sound art existed."
Other forays into appliance-based sound works included recordings and performances made with a Keystone Model 16CC film projector, a radiator, a coffee maker, and a refrigerator (Montgomery claims that refrigerator recordings were originally made as a protest to his landlord about the excessive noise of the unit he then owned.) The 2002 double CD compilation Pondfloorsample collects much of the audio material created from re-appropriated devices and appliances.
By 1994, citing another period of creative burnout, Montgomery took a sabbatical in Europe and then set up residence in rural Pennsylvania. This period saw the initiation of another project using found objects – the Eight Track Magic series of recordings – which were made of audio re-recorded from severely damaged eight track cassettes.
Montgomery is also allied with the Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland micronation established by artists Leif Elggren and Carl Michael von Hausswolff, for whom he oversees the Ministry of Lamination.