2009 Sponsored Projects

Hans Tammen

Hans Tammen is just another worker in rhythms, frequencies and intensities. He likes to set sounds in motion, and then sit back to watch the movements unfold. Using textures, timbre and dynamics as primary elements, his music is continuously shifting, with different layers floating into the foreground while others disappear. This flows like clockwork, “transforming a sequence of instrumental gestures into a wide territory of semi-hostile discontinuity; percussive, droning, intricately colorful, or simply blowing your socks off” (Touching Extremes).

Associated project: Cladogram

Hans Tammen has been commissioned 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.

Zachary Lieberman

Zachary Lieberman is an artist, researcher, and educator with a simple goal: he wants you surprised. In his work, he creates performances and installations that take human gesture as input and amplify them in different ways — making drawings come to life, imagining what the voice might look like if we could see it, transforming people’s silhouettes into music. He’s been listed as one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People and his projects have won the Golden Nica from Ars Electronica, Interactive Design of the Year from Design Museum London as well as listed in Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of the Year. He creates artwork through writing software and is a co-creator of openFrameworks, an open source C++ toolkit for creative coding and helped co-found the School for Poetic Computation, a school examining the lyrical possibilities of code.

Associated project: In the Air

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. […]

Laura Vitale

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.

Associated project: Aleatory Din

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 […]

Julia Heyward

Julia Heyward began her career as a solo performance artist touring America and Europe throughout the 1970s with work that incorporated video, film, monologues and a cappella singing. She has received a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Associated project: Points of View

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 […]

Alex Chechile

Alex Chechile is a New York based artist and composer whose work explores the relationship between sound, physiology, psychoacoustics, and cognitive science. His work takes advantage of room acoustics and uses psychoacoustic phenomenon to evoke unusual responses in both the ear and the body. Often focusing on specific brainwave behavior, his work examines the recursive relationship between cognition and the creative act.

Associated project: Data Decay

Revisiting a vintage computer data storage format using reel to reel audiotape, Data Decay is an installation that uses data as the primary sound palette and room acoustics as a modifying agent. Images are converted to sound and played back in a tape loop. The looping audio is decoded and the encrypted visual content is displayed. The size and volume of the audience changes the acoustics in the room, and thus alters the visualization of the image.

Ikue Mori

Ikue Mori is a composer, improviser, and performer who began as a drummer in the No Wave band DNA before moving on to work with drum machines and laptops. She has collaborated with artists like Fred Frith, Ensemble Modern, and John Zorn, and has received numerous awards, grants, and commissions for her cutting edge work.

Associated project: Ikue Mori & LEMUR Commission

New York-based sound artist Ikue Mori will perform in collaboration with an electronic music robot ensemble provided by LEMUR (League of Electronic Musical Robots). 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 […]

LoVid

Associated project: Cross Currents Resonance Transducer Project

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 […]

Fabrizio Villegas

Associated project: Monseñor – The Last Journey of Oscar Romero

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.