Zachary Lieberman – In the Air (2009)
In the Air is a performance in which drawings on the pages of a book being flipped through come to life. The performance is designed to start small and ends with a dense universe of drawn forms, all coming off the page and floating above and around the book. The performance employs custom created software. The drawings will be created in collaboration with media artist, Taeyoon Choi. The project will match his expressive drawing style with computational techniques for animation and composition that lead to completely probable, impossible forms of drawing. In the Air is a mixture of magic, visual illusion, and gestural expression. The goal is surprise and wonder.
Zachary Lieberman, works as an artist and educator, teaching at Parsons School of Design. Lieberman is also one of the creators of openFrameworks, an open source, cross platform C++ library that helps artists make interactive works.
Laura Vitale – Aleatory Din (2009)
Aleatory Din is a site-specific installation in which a live audio feed travels from the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge into a small listening booth in JFK airport. In the booth, visitors will see an explanation of what they are hearing and a map of the area. Surrounded by recessed speakers, travelers will hear the live sounds of the bird sanctuary less than a mile away, along with sounds of the planes. In the bird sanctuary’s visitor center, a computer will turn the incoming audio into an internet feed. On the airport end, a computer concealed in the booth will receive the audio feed and play it back through speakers.
Laura Vitale has been making audio works and installations from field recordings since 2002. The audio incorporates music and language into field recordings so that the disparate elements complement each other while maintaining the integrity of their individual traditions. Vitale’s works have been projected and distributed in various cities including Chicago, New York City, and Boston. Vitale has been artist-in-residence at Harvestworks in 2008.
Julia Heyward – Points of View (2009)
Points of View is a series of ‘faux windows’ using large flat screens displaying simulated real time of urban and natural continuums intermittently interrupted by vicious cycles of violence. The ‘windows’ function as clocks in that each have 24 scenes that change on the hour. The installation involves multiple ‘windows’ from varied locations. This project was shown at the World Financial Center, in New York City in October 2009.
Julia Heyward’s installations, including “Nothing Random Access Memory,” have been shown in various museums, galleries, media festivals and performance spaces in America, Europe, Korea, and Mexico. Nothing RAM is the end product of a relatively long evolutionary process of merging multimedia, performance and new music. This process has led Heyward to non-linear structures and interactive interfaces while retaining her cinematic aesthetic and deeply personal narrative.
Alex Chechile – Data Decay / Rebirth (2010)
Taking inspiration from a vintage computer data storage format using reel to reel audiotape, Data Decay/Rebirth is a series of surround sound, dual projection performances that use computer data as the primary sound palette. Images are converted to sound, performed, and recorded back onto reel to reel tape for the computer to concurrently project the “performed” data in real-time.
Drawing from the artist’s work in the field of biofeedback, the data includes cognitive and physiological information (brainwaves/heartbeat), still images, and video. The project will relate it’s technological recursive nature to cyclical mind-body-performance feedback loops and biological information storage and retrieval.
Sound artist Alex Chechile’s work examines the connected relationship between the body/brain and the creative act through the use of self-constructed biofeedback systems and modular electronics. These systems allow implicit cognitive and physiological involvement in the performance to directly effect how the work is sounded.
Ikue Mori
A commission to create a work for live performance with LEMUR’s robotic musical instruments. The work is approximately 20-25 minutes in length and includes a live performance by the composer with the robots. Produced by Harvestworks, it premiered at the New York Electronic Art Festival in October 2009.
Composer, improvisor, and performer, Ikue Mori has been a key member of the downtown music scene since moving to New York from Tokyo in 1977. She has subsequently collaborated with numerous improvisers throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, while continuing to produce and record her own music.
LoVid – Cross Currents Resonance Transducer Project (2009)
Cross Current Resonance Transducer is an exploration of environmental signals and energy through physical materials, sound, and movement. The artists develop systems for monitoring, manipulating, and interpreting natural signals such as tidal patterns, sunlight, and wind. CCRT addresses the processes of interpretation and evaluation that are inherent in human attempts to understand natural phenomena. Their interest is not so much in presenting the phenomena themselves, but rather in exploring the often flawed but revealing interpretations of those phenomena that ultimately lead to greater human understanding and scientific progress.
LoVid (Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus) employ new media in their performances, videos, objects, and installations. They have toured widely in the US and Europe extensively performing, exhibiting, and lecturing.
Douglas Irving Repetto is the Director of Research at the Columbia University Computer Music Center. His work, including sculpture, installation, performance, recordings, and software is presented internationally.
Hans Tammen – Cladogram (2009)
To write a new 45-minute open form composition “Cladogram” for 13-piece ensemble THIRD EYE ORCHESTRA and live electronic sound processing. The piece is inspired by Earle Brown’s Available Forms, and fuses contemporary classical elements with minimal music and jazz.
Hans Tammen creates sounds that have been described as an alien world of bizarre textures and a journey through the land of unending sonic operations. He produces rapid-fire juxtapositions of radically contrastive and fascinating noises, with micropolyphonic timbres and textures, aggressive sonic eruptions, but also quiet pulses and barely audible sounds – through means of his “Endangered Guitar” and interactive software programming. His THIRD EYE ORCHESTRA open form compositions for large ensembles and live sound processing, or laptop/electronic ensembles, are inspired by Earle Brown’s Available Forms, and based on numerous scored “building blocks” that are constantly rearranged when performed.
Fabrizio Villegas: Monseñor – The Last Journey of Oscar Romero (2009)
This film tells the story of the last three years of Oscar Romero’s life. The narrative of Monseñor, The Last Journey of Oscar Romero is developed through the words of Romero in extracts from his Sunday homilies and from his personal diary, including the story of El Salvador as the war approaches. It is told through the experiences of a cross section of Salvadorans: campesinos, guerrillas, soldiers, politicians, priests, nuns and catechists. They provide a chorus of voices who all shared with Romero the tragic history of their country. As this history evolves, so too will the reasons for Romero’s murder. It is the first film about Romero that goes beyond the classic genre of a filmed biography, to explore and probe the contemporary significance and legacy of his life and tragic death. Finally, it is the first film about Romero to place the iconic figure of the Latin American campesinos at the center of the story. It was they who inspired Romero to find his mission; it was because of the relationship he developed with them that he was killed. In her essay in The New York Review of Books, the film is described by Alma Guillermoprieto as a “hagiography,” and as “an astonishing compilation of footage” of the final three years of his life.
Fabrizio Villegas, is a New York-based composer and music producer. His style of music ranges from instrumental and avant-garde to popular genres, such as electronic and pop music. Fabrizio’s goal is working toward a long-term career in music as a composer, producer and arranger of a wide range of projects including scoring for film and multimedia, and songwriting for artists. His educational background includes a master’s degree in music technology with a focus on scoring for film from New York University, a one-year program in instrumentation from the Juilliard School, and a bachelor of science in communications from Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, México.