1996 Aritists in Residence
Awarded Artists:
Annie Gosfield
Annie Gosfield is a composer whose work combines notated and improvised music, electronic and acoustic sounds. During her New Works Residency she will create a large-scale spatialized work inspired by the processes, perceptions, and sounds of jammed radio signals. Fragments of the original rare recordings will be used, from abstract timbres to text-based transmissions. She will also reference the jamming process by digitally altering the sounds of acoustic instruments, with elements shifting in a sound field where music, noise, and pure signal meld and collide. The end result will be displayed in NYC and Prague. Active as a writer and teacher, she is a regular contributor to the New York Times series “The Score,” and has been the Milhaud Professor of composition at Mills College, a visiting lecturer at Princeton University and a visiting artist at Cal Arts.
Leopanar Witlarge
“Architecture of Sound Spaces” is an audio surround experience using bell chime sounds as the main sound source. The chimes are electronically processed and positioned in moving and stationary patterns in space. Various sound objects — including glass, wood, and steel — are also processed and added to the mix. The work is an element in a live improvisation performance by the composer on Taiwanese Horn, with projections of architectural drawings and images. Leopanar was born in Guyana and recently performed in the Harvestworks DVDVDVDA Festival of surround sound and visual works.
Myra Melford
Myra Melford (Music) for the development of the live interactive music performance system to use with My Face of Us All, a full length multi-media work with choreographer Dawn Saito and architect Michael Haberz. This work was first workshopped in Graz, Austria in the fall of 2000 as part of the Sytrian Autumn Arts Festival. Myra is a composer currently living in Brooklyn, NY.
Lawrence Brose
Lawrence Brose (Film/Video) for the completion of his film Crossing, which focuses on the use of rare 8mm footage. Lawrence continues his Structural/Materialist film practices and his committment to Queer avant-garde cinema with this new work. Lawrence has been showing his films since 1983 and is the Executive Director of CEPA Gallery in Buffalo.
Caterina Borelli
Caterina Borelli and Sandra Seymour for the soundtrack on “Metrics,” the second in a series of three video tapes that investigate the similarities and differences between literary work and works that employ moving images. The music will be composed with found/recorded sound of industrial machinery. The first of the series, “Prologue” was shown at the third Mostra Video Independent, Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona, Spain. It will also be screened in June 1996 at the Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh.
Sandra Seymour
Caterina Borelli and Sandra Seymour for the soundtrack on “Metrics,” the second in a series of three video tapes that investigate the similarities and differences between literary work and works that employ moving images. The music will be composed with found/recorded sound of industrial machinery. The first of the series, “Prologue” was shown at the third Mostra Video Independent, Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona, Spain. It will also be screened in June 1996 at the Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh.
Tom Cora
Tom Cora for the creation of a sound track to Dziga Vertov’s, “The Man with the Movie Camera.” In this particular piece, Cora plays the cello using a STEIM-built controller, while his feet are engaged in live editing and reconstruction of the material. Samples of the created sounds are sped up, slowed down, frozen in “stills,” collaged in various modulations, recalled for flashbacks, reversed and re-edited on the run to create this unique composition. The audio CD is expected to be released by Tellus in 1997.
Nick Didkovsky
Nick Didkovsky for a suite of compositions and improvisations that incorporate solo, duo, and multitracked electric guitar. This project will complete a body of work that will be released on CD.
Linda Dusman
Linda Dusman for “The Voice in Rama,” a visual and sonic gallery installation which investigates the impact of human beings on the natural world — specifically the songbird population. The title of the piece, the “Voice in Rama,” makes an analogy between the plight of the songbird population and the Biblical slaughter of the innocents. The installation will be exhibited at the Clark University Gallery, Worcester, Massachusetts, in February 1996 and also at the International Computer Music Conference in Hong Kong in August 1996.
Masahiko Kono
Masahiko Kono for a new music composition that incorporates trombone, space, electronics, and computer. The CD will be aired by KPFA-FM in Berkeley California and FM MINI in Tokyo, Japan.
Lou Mallozzi
Lou Mallozzi for sound work on the radio show “Drift.” In this piece, Mallozi will investigate language’s dual nature as bodily utterance and conveyor of meaning by using a combination of studio recordings, location recordings, and electronics to explore texts and narrative structures that drift, slip, or decompose in meaning, utterance, intent, and materiality. The radio show will be aired by: WHPK-FM, Chicago; CJSR-FM, Edmonton; WZRD-FM, Chicago; WLUW, Chicago; KNUM-FM, Albuquerque; and CKDU-FM, Halifax.
Neta Pulvermacher
Neta Pulvermacher for sound tracks for “Long Story Short,” “To Bite an Orange with its Peel,” and “Matza Matzot.” All three are dance/theater projects. “Long Story Short” is a site piece created for the Danspace Project. It draws from the common human experiences of desire, loneliness and alienation. Musically it is a collage of various John Zorn pieces with recorded and live texts and whistling. “To Bite an Orange with its Peel” investigates the interplay of rhythmic patterns in music and movement. Driven by the passion of Schumann’s Lieder, this suite of ten dances evokes images of nature while exploring the human stages of love and infatuation. “Matza Matzot’ is a solo for Pulvermacher with a bunch of Matzas. “Long Story Short” and “To Bite an Orange with its Peel” will be presented by Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church in February 1996. “Matza Matzot” will be presented at the Knitting Factory in April 1996.
Frank Ortega
Frank Ortega for the recording of the radio show, “Toward Akaba.” This audio journal will track a personal journey through the Middle East during the “Gulf Crisis,” starting in Istanbul on the back of a Bedford truck and ending in Cairo on a “flying coffin.” “The soldier watches the border, that absurd cyclone fence representing a new line on the map, a change of stationary.” The show will be offered to Pacifica Program Service, NPR, and American Public Radio as well as individual radio stations.
Nelson Smith
Nelson Smith for sound work on “Human Radiation,” a performance piece that occurs within a self-contained installation. The work explores the idea of human mental energy. Objects which include small appliances and house objects are used as mediums for communication or generating energy. In performance, the performer interacts with the objects and speaks/intones texts that are integrated with an electronic sound/music score as well as with audio samples that emerge from the environment itself. The installation/performance piece will be shown at The Theater at Marygrove College, Detroit, and at the Performance Network in Ann Arbor in fall 1996.
Catherine Weis
Catherine Weis for sound work on the video/performance piece “FRACTURED, Just the fracts, ma’am.” In this piece Weis poses the question, “When technology and the human body become partners, who leads?” Video imagery, sound elements and live performers move separately throughout the piece, coming together at odd moments to ignite in flamboyant vignettes. The incredible downtown cast of six unacceptable yet inspired divas include: Scott Heron, Anne Iobst, Ishmael Houston Jones, Jennifer Miller, Jennifer Munson and Cathy Weis herself. The piece will be performed at the Dance Theater Workshop, NYC in March 1996.