Elka Bong is Al Margolis (If, Bwana) and Walter Wright. Margolis has been an activist in the 1980s American cassette underground through his cassette label Sound of Pig Music; was co-founder of experimental music label Pogus Productions, which he continues to run. Active under the name If, Bwana since 1984, making music that has swung between fairly spontaneous studio constructions and more process-oriented composition. He has recorded and/or performed with Pauline Oliveros, Ione, Joan Osborne, Monique Buzzarté, Katherine Liberovskaya, Adam Bohman, Ellen Christi, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Jane Scarpantoni, Ulrich Krieger, David First, and Dave Prescott, among others.
Walter Wright is an interdisciplinary artist, his practice includes computer programming, electro-acoustic music, and video performance. His focus is on “improvisation as a way of being present in the world.” Wright was one of the first video animators. At Computer Image Corp he animated letters, words, and titles for Children’s Television Workshop. He was a video animator for Ed Emshwiller’s Thermogenesis and Scapemates, aired by WNET’s Artists Television Workshop. Scapemates was the first computer graphics video nominated for an Emmy Award (1971). He showed his work at the first computer art conference at the Kitchen (NYC, 1973). In 1973-76, as artist-in-residence at the Experimental Television Center, he pioneered video performance touring public access centers, colleges, and galleries with the Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer.
Factory Streams: Live Vids for Covid is a live-stream concert series featuring experimental, electronic, free jazz, noise, and other genre-bending musicians based in Columbus, OH and elsewhere. All of the performances in the series are streamed from our official Twitch account: twitch.tv/thefusefactory.