dethlab

TOO FAR GONE... NO WAY BACK: Saturday, 5.24.08
The new black.
Veteran multidisciplinary artists Bethany Shorb and Michael Doyle have been working together as Dethlab since 2005. As event producers, they have brought international live acts such as Vitalic, Motor, Lowfish and Solvent to Detroit. As DJs, they have performed by invitation at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the 2006 Movement Festival at Detroit's Hart Plaza and have opened for acts including T. Raumschmiere, Chemlab, Ectomorph and Pas/Cal.
Holding a BFA from Boston University and an MFA from Cranbrook, New York area native Bethany Shorb has excelled in disciplines ranging from sculpture, to fashion and graphic design, to photography, to multimedia and music. She has performed with her own circuit-bent instruments around the country as Toybreaker and a member of seminal noise band God and His Bitches. As founder of Cyberoptix , she has designed high-tech couture for Siggraph and costumes for screen and stage, including Skinny Puppy 's 2004 world tour, as featured in FiberArts and Industrial Nation. Her current neckwear line has graced the throats of Motor's Bryan Black and actor/director Crispin Glover, and is to be featured in Details, the New York Times Fashion Magazine and BPM this spring.
After living in New York during the rise and fall of both the dot-com bubble and electroclash, designer, lecturer, curator and blogger, Michael Doyle moved to Detroit and promptly co-founded the Dorkwave collective. Doyle coined the name and concise manifesto, "music for freaks", with the goal of creating a haven for all who fell between the cracks of Detroit's techno, rock and goth scenes. Doyle has served on the CAID board of directors, where he co-curated the highly acclaimed Other Auto Show exhibition in 2005, and is currently a senior designer with Royal Oak-based experience design firm o2 Creative Solutions . His award winning design work can be seen everywhere from auto show exhibits and museums to record covers, and his group blog Burnlab.net has been a favorite bookmark among taste makers for more than six years. Doyle served as graphics chair for the 2003 IDSA National Conference, has spoke about communication and experience design around the country, and is a contributing editor to Core77.com and Archinect.com .
With the Dethlab project, Shorb and Doyle seek to define "the new black" - connecting the dots between trends in music, fashion, design and culture: mashing Ballardian reality with a romance for the glory days of postpunk and the cyberpunk future promised by Blade Runner. Like a modern day McLaren and Westwood, Doyle and Shorb are obsessive consumers, creators and curators of all things dark, innovative and beautiful... often with tongue firmly in cheek. In addition to DJing and event production, they are currently recording original music, have facilitated "outings" such as Alice In Wonderland themed tea parties and period costumed croquet socials in abandoned factories, and have used nearly as much fake blood as GWAR since the project's inception. Both have collaborated closely with Ann Arbor/New York-based indie-electronic label Ghostly International on package design and merchandise development, and share the idea of "one foot in the gallery, one in the club." The Machines That Feel series is the best example to date of their combined interests in art, music and social commentary. Metro Times articles on Machines That Feel can be found here and here .
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