“Two Rooms from the Memory Palace.”is a multi-channel, multi-part generative audio installation, reflecting the artist’s ongoing exploration of poetic interrelationships between site and time, and between gestural trace and acoustical space. The work is diffused through physical spaces (ìRoomsî) that are adjacent but not acoustically or compositionally isolated from each other. ìRoom 1,î a generative audio installation diffused via 6 loudspeakers, features multi-pitched, slowly shifting layers of electronic feedbacks in interaction with sound recordings generated from the physical activation of objects. ìRoom 2,” features the extensive archive of field recordings that Parkins has been collecting for the past 25 years, representing her longtime and consistent investigation of audio poetics. (What do sounds ìmeanî in relation to each other and when they emerge or intervene in resonant and idiosyncratic locations, as well as in diverse social spaces?) The recording archive is presented in catalogue form, as a randomized ìplaylist,î diffused in stereo. The “rooms'” real-time sonic interaction enables shifting and sometimes startling juxtapositions to take place throughout the duration of the work. Parkins’ focus has been to articulate and build multiple and interdependent compositional structures and systems emphasizing tenuous states, relationships between object, gesture and meaning, and entropy’s potential as a compositional tool. “Two Rooms from the Memory Palace” is a continuation of this work: an investigation of tensions between the concrete and the ephemeral, and of slippages between phenomenological experience, memory and the poetic uncanny.
Opening from May 22 through July 20 2015
Nolan Park Building 5a5b, Governors Island, NY
BIOS
Andrea Parkins is a sound artist, composer and electroacoustic improviser who engages with interactive electronics as compositional/performative process, and explores strategies related to Fluxusí ordered, ephemeral activities. She is an integral participant in sound art and experimental music communities in the US and Europe, known for her pioneering gestural/textural approach on her electronically-processed accordion and self-designed virtual sound-processing instrument. Described as a ìsound-ist,î of ìprotean,î talent by TheNew York Times music critic Steve Smith, Parkinsí laptop electronics and Fender-ampedaccordion create sonic fields of lush harmonics and sculpted electronic feedback, punctuated by moments of gap and rift. Parkinsí audio works include multi-diffusion site-based installations featuring amplified objects; electroacoustic solo and ensemble performances; electronic music pieces; and live sound design for contemporary dance and experimental film. Her work has been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Kitchen, Issue Project Room, and Experimental Intermedia; and international festivals/venues including Mexico Cityís 1st International Sound Art Festival, Kunsthalle Basel, Museet for Samtidskunst (Roskilde), MusÈe díArt Moderne et Contemporain (Strasbourg), NEXT in Bratislava, Cyberfest in St. Petersberg, and Q-02 Workspace for Experimental Music and Sound Art in Brussels. Parkins records and performs as a solo artist, and has also collaborated across genre and discipline with artists such as Stephen Vitiello, Nels Cline (Wilco), Abigail Child, The Body Cartography Project, Vera Mantero, Otomo Yoshihide, David Watson, John Butcher, among many others. On an ongoing basis, Parkins develops her primary project, a series of audio/visual works inspired by Rube Goldbergís circuitous machines. Parkins was awarded artist residencies in 2013/2014 at Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center in NYC and Q-02 Workspace for Experimental Music and Sound Art in Brussels, where she composed a multi-diffusion electronic music work, Room Studies 1 and 2. Since 2013, Parkinsí multi-diffusion Faulty (Broken Orbit) has been featured in ìWith Hidden Noise,î a sound art exhibition curated by Stephan Vitiello that has traveled to Melbourne, Seattle, NYC, Minneapolis and Pasadena. Other recent projects include Austell 1 (2012),Parkinsí 8-channel performance/installation at Fragmental Museum NYC, which funneled real-time sound from the Long Island City, Queens rail yards into a reverberant warehouse space with interventions from a walking bell-ringer and diffused feedback from Parkinsí electronically-processed accordion. She also premiered an audiovisual work at Experimental Intermedia in collaboration with video artist Ana Carvalho and sound artist Ben Owen, and presented her solo electroacoustic project, with performances in Poland, Italy, Brussels and Paris. Parkinsí ìportableî audio work featured in the Lingua Franca show at Cyberfest 2011 in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in 2010 she was invited by Christian Marclay to perform her interpretations of his graphic scores at the Whitney Museum of American Artísí retrospective festival of his work. Since 2009, Parkins has toured with choreographer Vera Manteroís production We Are Going to Miss Everything We Donít Need, for which Mantero commissioned Parkinsí live electroacoustic score, featuring amplified performers, objects and surfaces; and since 2010, Parkins has performed her live 12-channel sound design for Symptom, an intermedia performance work commissioned by The Body Cartography Project. Parkinsí recordings have been published by Important Records, Atavistic, and Creative Sources, and her work has received support from American Composers Forum, NewYork State Council on the Arts, the French-AmericanCultural Exchange, Meet the Composer, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, Media Arts Assistance Fund for New York State artists, and Frei und Hanseastadt Hamburg Kulturbehoerde. Parkins is on faculty at Goddard Collegeís MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program.