JAMES HARVEY

James grew up a farm boy in Michigan and was educated for 12 years by nuns and religious brothers before taking up university studies in music and observe the cultural progressions and social up roars of the late sixties; which he remembers, along with a whole lot else. 

Being a deep feeling and reflective person his artistic career evolved out of core interests in environmental sound, a classical music education and three decades of musical performances in world, jazz, classical and experimental music with recording and radio broadcasting supported by his interests in psycho-acoustical phenomena, the psychology and philosophy of consciousness, neo- shamanism and entheogenetic rites of passage.

James fascination for the evolution of digital technology and its relation to the analog world began in 1989 with his seminal digital recordings of didjeridu with Tom Wasinger in Boulder Colorado.  It was in Boulder that his eclectic and gonzo attitudes also had him in performance art projects with many experimental artists including Antero Alli, Robert Bly, Allen Ginsberg and Robert Anton Wilson while also founding Aries Brass Quintet, teaching at the University of Colorado and working as a freelance musician.

The didjeridu recordings made in the early 1990’s represent the tip to a much larger iceberg concerning James immersion into aboriginal cross cultures associations. This began in N. America in 1984 and then shifted more deeply into Arnhem Land and Central Australia.  Experiences of sacred music, dance ceremony and cross cultural activities from these times are documented in an un-published memoir The Sound Of It and in various other media.  These and other cross cultural projects and experiences constitute a non-ordinary and profound form of ascetic/ artistic balance to an intuitive and instinctual conceptual world view that informs James long held dream of immersive real time physical theatre. 

Grasping the tools of illusion provided by digital technologies in 1999 / 2000 he commenced a deeper relationship with digital media and processes for the purpose of integrating his previous analog experiences with the modality of cyber based environments.  Today with his son and partner Shannon they have emerged to create together as Alchemica. 

Alchemica is a production team exploring the possibilities of digital projected 3D multi media and its potential to augment theatre and spectacle narrative.  James impulse to creation comes from his experiences and a progressive desire to help people dream, feel and think in new and transformative ways.  He believes that multi media immersive theatre is a means to expand the scope and dimension of live performance communication through layers of real time story telling.