The 2007 Harvestworks Artist-in-Residence Program recipients are commissioned to create a new work in the Harvestworks Digital Media Facility. The review panelists were composer/programmer Luke DuBois, video artist Lauren Petty and composer/media artist Guillermo Brown.
New Works Residencies
Christopher Bailey
Composer and sound artist Christopher Bailey plans to create an open-source freeware software application and companion database that allows composers to request a series of found sounds by their tonal or auditory properties (attack, duration, agitation, decay) and be presented with a random selection of matches which can then be altered and composed with as desired. To demonstrate the power of this system once it is finished, a ten to fifteen minute composition will be produced using the software.
Nurit Bar-Shais
Nurit Bar-Shais project “Nonetheless Im Still Here” is an online performance in which participants telematically control a simple scene of a curtain flowing in space. Mechanical motions change the overall scene only slightly, but over time they combine to move the curtain in a way that conveys the natural sway of fabric in the wind. The work examines how real-time, telematic performance, in which objects are controlled collaboratively, can be used to explore tensions between the organic and the inorganic, human intervention and natural spontaneity and the poetics of the mundane and the fleeting in life.
John Brattin
Director John Brattin will produce A Half-Forgotten One, a 30-minute experimental film shot in Super 8 and told from the perspective of a small child, exploring themes of intolerance and fear of the unknown. Brattin has worked in film for more than 15 years, exhibiting across the US as well as in the Netherlands.
Monique Buzzarté
Monique Buzzarté will create an eight-channel surround sound composition scored for twelve pre-recorded parts, of which only eight (nine, if live performance is added) will play during each performance. Each part is made up of dozens of smaller sound files, the order and duration of each being controlled via Max/MSP. The resulting work will have nearly infinite variation, sounding completely different each time it is heard.
Rebecca Cherry
Violinist Rebecca Cherry will create a sound installation using a selection of popular music processed with Max/MSP. Using triggers caused by certain chords, notes, and key structures, she hopes to mix the works with newly-sampled music, creating an altered soundscape descended from the original music. Cherry has performed in the Baltimore, Annapolis and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras, the London and Bergen Philharmonic, and with pop music performers including Jay-Z, Kanye West, Stevie Wonder, and more.
Melanie Crean
Melanie Crean proposes will create Phrenology, a series of 360 degree photographic panorama housed in a modified game engine, that interconnect with one another through writing worked into the landscapes. The text will be derived from a writing workshop for incarcerated women at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, where women will write about their relationship to space and where they would ideally like to be. The piece will include an abstract 5.1 sound score, also based on the women’s writings. Crean is a media artist from Brooklyn who has received commissions from Art in General and Creative Time. She is Director of Production Emeritus at Eyebeam and currently teaches at Parsons and Pratt.
Ximena Diaz
Ximena Diaz’s Differentiation uses multiple video clips of an identical sidewalk scene, with each clip set to correspond to a specific subjective categorywhite, black hair, unemployed, short, etc. Within each clip, all people not conforming to the clips set category are digitally removed, suggesting the futility of such categorization. Diaz has exhibited and taught extensively in her native Bogotá, Columbia.
Vijay Iyer will create Menagerie, a multi-channel audio installation where musical agents move through the sonic space, generating musical streams based on the physiological processes (breathing rate, heart rate) of various animals, in essence creating a garden of invisible musical life forms. Iyers award-winning work as a composer and performer spans ten albums and dozens of projects around the world.
Mari Kimura
Composer and performer Mari Kimura will produce Vitessimo, a collaborative music project utilizing Augmented Violin technology. The Augmented Violin system allows for realtime bow-tracking and analysis using sensors and Max/MSP; Vitessimo, from the French Vitesse (speed), aims to explore the possibilities of this exciting new interface between performer and computer. A winner of the 2006 Artist Fellowship for the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), Kimura has performed around the world in more than twenty countries and has received numerous accolades for her work in investigating computer-extended violin technique.
David Stouts
Video artist and new media researcher David Stouts proposed Archipelago utilizes interactive 3D animation to simulate a series of virtual ecosystems, each inhabited by an evolving population of artificial intelligences. The work will be exhibited in multiple locations around the world, with each site possessing a unique aesthetic and diverging population of organisms. A hybrid cinema experience, the work is part video art installation and part interactive game, placing viewer-participants in an expansive ecology in which they are equal, rather than dominant, to the evolving artificial organisms. Stout has toured extensively throughout Europe and the US, and has received the Sun Microsystems Award for Academic Excellence and a Harvestworks Interactive Technology residency.
Mem1
Mem1, comprised of cellist Laura Thomas-Merino and M. Cera, will explore the sonic possibilities of her instrument using electronics, extending her performance beyond the cello itself. Using an array of internal and external microphones projected into 5.1 surround, her recording will provide a visceral sonic tour of the cellos body, immersing the listener in the richness of its sounds. Supplementing this work, Thomas-Merino will also utilize a bow equipped with accelerometers for gestural control, as well as video tracking software in order to sonically embody the physical space around the performer. Laura has performed with numerous orchestras on the West Coast, and has exhibited her work throughout the Los Angeles area.
Tres Warren
Tres Warren plans to produce a surround sound installation centered on a short recurring loop set against a background of changing sonic textures, eventually evolving into a semi-programmed composition. The result will be chaotic and meditative and serves as an investigation of the theme of urban disorientation. Warrens previous works have been shown throughout New York City.
Anne Wellmer
Anne Wellmer will create an audio-visual performance environment, using old fashioned technology: by putting audio on the video input of a variety of TVs and video monitors she controls black and white noise patterns. The multi channel audio consists of field recordings which are manipulated on the spot, and live generated sounds from an analog synthesizer; the audio is processed live and distributed via maxmsp… for the New York Electronic Art Festival performance at 3LD sonic environmentalist Anne Wellmer will collaborate with live video artist Adam Kendall. Supported by the Gaudeamus Foundation.
Educational Scholarships
The following artists were awarded educational scholarships: Christopher McIntyre, Sasha Welsh, Karl Mulholland, and Sean Hagerty.
2007 Van Lier Scholarship Recipients
Tobaron Waxman
Tobaron Waxman will use the scholarship to create Block of Ice + 1/60. The work uses the artists own brainwave patterns to control a Max patch, which will dynamically locate Web images pertaining to water in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and affect and project them onscreen using Jitter. Among other awards, Waxmans work has received three Canada Council for the Arts grants, and his films have been screened in Brazil, Germany, and across the US.
Hisao Ihara
Video artist Hisao Iharas installation will consist of multiple screens and an array of sounds and video altered through realtime processing. Ihara, who has received NYFA and NYSCA fellowships, has exhibited throughout the New York and Seattle area.