Part octopus, part exhibitionist mediaphile, part mad scientist, Carrie Gates work
spanning the last decade+ consists of many artforms: experimental turntablism, VJing, audio art, improv, freestyle scat/beatbox-esque vocals, web design, curation, performance art, installation, sculpture, and situations. Love for diversity, community, and experimentalism is her fuel.

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Carrie creates and teaches workshops in various media arts, including VJing, contact microphone construction, mini-FM transmitter construction, improvised music, experimental turntablism, and vinyl sculpture and theory. In her avant turntablism classes, she often programs multiple lecturers as well as screening indie videos about turntablism, and providing experimental turntablism/DJing demonstrations alongside more hands-on, sculptural activity for workshop participants. She has taught in high schools, national festivals, conferences, and galleries to people from 5-65 years years of age. Demystifying technology, promoting social change, and advancing critical new perpectives and practices about media art drives Carrie's educational outreach activities.

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Once upon a time in the mid 90's, Carrie was known as the Lady Gates to the rave scene in the Canadian Prairies. She performed in many cities at the peak of the rave scene's energy as the only experimental/downtempo/ambient female DJ in Saskatchewan (an interesting position in a huge province with ony one million people for the total population). At raves, Carrie has often been the headliner in chill rooms and the like, presenting a bizarre mix of music that could best be summed up as 'freakbeat oddio'. Often she has combined performance art with her DJing performances, coercing her friends to do things such as hand out Q-tips wearing nurse outfits, hand out pineapple slices in hula gear, or push around a shopping cart wearing a chicken suit. For her wild musical and performance antics, Lady Gates was known to many as an 'experience' that brings a smile to many people's faces still today. As the rave scene metamorphosized over the years, Carrie became more interested in experimental music performance, VJing, event coordination, making small electronics, doing field recordings, and examining very closely exactly what the vinyl record and the turntable are really capable of doing in the hands of a very curious, hungry lady.

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Since 2002, she has been a member of the musical collective, The Vinyl Interventions
Trio, alongside Esther B. (Montral) and Marinko Jareb (St. Catherines, ON). The trio performs together using turntables (new, old, and Fischer-Price), contact mics, condenser mics, homemade record needles, found objects, prepared records, rare experimental vinyl and an appetite for destruction!

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A fascination for the magic of recording media and the way in which it makes ridged
grooves turn into sound has fueled many of the concepts behind her more sculptural
works with records. These sculptural experiments then become fuel for sound
performance. She sometimes uses blank records in her work, choosing to etch, burn,
and otherwise alter the grooves, turning nothing into sound. The spiral of the record
guides the needle in circles at a steady rhythm, allowing patterns and cycles to emerge.
Pattern interference also emerges when Carrie intervenes upon the forms of commercial
detrius of the abandoned vinyl record by cutting, glueing, covering, filing, shattering, and
melting. Yet other vinyl-based works show a tendency towards mimicry, pop,
synaesthetics, and fetishism, such as the flexible vinyl molded record, soft gold record,
or the preserved dust-blanketed record made with Jake Hardy "5 Years of Dust".

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Field recordings and contextual sound experiences are other areas of interest. Performing in places as diverse as university atriums, public galleries, house parties, and artist-run centres, Carrie aims to bring audiences closer to their sensual perceptions of the everyday world. Recontextualizing sounds from within the performance space and focusing on the forgotten, she weaves together beautiful textures and strange details that evoke questions about the self-editing of the personal auditory experience.

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Over the last few years, Carrie has been VJing at electronic music parties, using net.art software, cut-up sampled clips, lo-fi processed video games, live feeds, and footage of strange experiments from The Lab. Carrie's work with the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Saskatchewan has allowed her to research interactive visualizations from an academic perspective, which complements her extensive performance practice. Thanks to a Professional Development grant from the Saskatchwan Arts Board in 2006, Carrie is now using Max/MSP/Jitter/Cylops alongside Arkaos, Cosmic Painter, and Ms. Pinky to create her intriguing visuals for live events. She performs regularly across the Prairies, and is looking forward to an Eastern Canada tour in June of 2007 that will allow her to perform in bigger centres and meet other VJs across the country.

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Carrie's work has been shown in Regina (Neutral Grounds re:mote Symposium, 2005),
Winnipeg (send + receive 2005), Montral (MUTEK, 2001, microphone in a storm of
noise, 2003 and 2004, The Upgrade!, 2005), New York (The Upgrade! International,
2005), and Cologne, Germany ([R][R][F] SoundLab Channel, 2004). She has played at all but one one of the eleven annual CONNECT outdoor electronic music festivals, usually with two themed sets (night/day) over the weekend. Carrie has worked as a Researcher with the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Saskatchewan, and currently works at the University of Saskatchewan in the Division of Media and Technology, developing websites and running broadcast cameras for long-distance learning programs. Carrie also co-Directs the BricoLodge net.label, and is the recent Past President of the artist-run media centre, PAVED Arts.

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In the summer of 2005, Carrie Gates and Jon Vaughn launched a net.label, BricoLodge, as a response to a growing, vibrant community forming from the meeting of the Montral NoType crew and the all-star cast of the quasi-legendary DIGIDOME event that Vaughn and Gates orgainized in a huge inflatable golf dome in Saskatoon in 2002. This group, joined by ideas, but separated by place, includes artists from all over Canada, as well as artists living in the USA, France, and Japan.

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