James Hoff’s work often relies on misusing technology as a generative act.

For Lampo, he presents a site-specific version of his most recent audiovisual project HOBO UFO, which uses a custom hack of Google Maps’ Street View to make the platform sound reactive. Hoff’s performance takes place physically and virtually in Chicago, starting at Madlener House and then moving beyond, driven by the real-time music the artist creates from pilfered radio frequencies that transmit GPS and other data streams.

Tonight Hoff also premieres a new work—part of an opera about intelligent machines, written with Marian Kaiser.

James Hoff (b.1975, Fort Wayne, Ind.) works in a variety of media, including painting, sound, writing, and performance. In recent years, his interests have focused on language and media systems at the intersection of developing technologies and traditional artistic genre forms. He has created paintings and music using computer viruses and developed several bodies of work that examine how the language of network communication has changed our contemporary notions of landscape and nature.

Hoff is also one of the founders of Primary Information, a nonprofit arts organization devoted to publishing artists’ books and art historical documents. He has two releases forthcoming on PAN in 2019, HOBO UFO (Cherynobyl) and an LP of works for French horn and tuba.

James Hoff first performed for Lampo in December 2015.

Presented in partnership with the Graham Foundation

Artist Talk: Hoff describes his studio practice as a painter and sound artist, including his reliance on self-distributing and language-based systems, which for him are both metaphors for creation and generative tools. He also discusses HOBO UFO, his idea of an “ambient capitalism,” and its relationship to his work and the exclusion zone around Chernobyl and Pripyat, Ukraine. Lampo Annex, Monadnock Building, 53 W. Jackson Blvd. #1656. Friday, April 26, 6 p.m.