James Hoff
James Hoff is an American artist based in New York, born in 1975, who works with sound, video, painting and publishing. His records use glitches of technology and of the mind, such as computer viruses, inaudible data signals, earworms and tinnitus. He is also known as co-founder, in 2006, of Primary Information, a publisher of artists' books and historical documents. James Hoff released How Wheeling Feels When The Ground Walks Away in 2011 and Blaster (PAN, 2014), an album built from drum machine samples infected with computer viruses. Inverted Birds And Other Sirens followed in 2022.
Shadows Lifted from Invisible Hands
Tip! Shadows Lifted from Invisible Hands is an autobiographical record, comprised of four songs that James Hoff refers to as ambient media. Each track is composed from sources drawn from his own involuntary aural landscape, specifically musical earworms and tinnitus frequencies. Neither sound nor a daydream, the earworm (or stuck song) emblematizes music as a commercial form—immediate, ubiquitous, and persistent. Likewise, tinnitus is inaudible and unscrupulous, manifesting across a spectrum of …
Top Ten: 2008-2018
Edition of 200. 550 pages, LP size. Top Ten: 2008-2018 is the second volume in James Hoff’s Top Ten series. In almost every issue since April 1998, Artforum has asked an individual from the art world to compile a top ten list of their favorite recent exhibitions (or concerts, television programs, books, events, etc.). In 2008, Hoff compiled the first ten years of this column into a new publication, with all of the articles’ accompanying images redacted, rendering the pictorial layout and design …
Top Ten: 1998-2008
Edition of 200. 440 pages, LP size. Top Ten: 1998–2008 is a new edition of the long-out-of-print publication by James Hoff. In almost every issue since April 1998, Artforum has asked an individual from the art world to compile a top ten list of their favorite recent exhibitions (or concerts, television programs, books, events, etc.). In this volume, Hoff compiles the first ten years of this column into a new publication, with all of the articles’ accompanying images redacted, rendering the picto…
Blaster
restocked! New York-based conceptual artist James Hoff returns to PAN with Blaster, a document of his explorations of computer viruses as agents within the composition process. Specifically, Hoff used the Blaster virus to infect 808 beats and then utilized the mutated results as building blocks for seven new compositions. Hoff's interest in computer viruses lies in their ability to self-distribute through (and ultimately disrupt) networks of communication and Hoff's agency as an artist ce…
'How Wheeling Feels When the Ground Walks Away
James Hoff’s “How Wheeling Feels when the Ground Walks Away” presents an audio landscape comprised of various historic riots, from the concert hall and music venue to the sounds of modern warfare. Presented in surround sound, the work relentlessly envelops the audience as the tumultuous panorama of over-layered riots travel around the gallery. Part of Riot Radio Ballad, which explores the performative and futurist aspects of spoken word, audio, and radio material. Curated by Mark Beasley.…