2001 Aritists in Residence

Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist working with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live digital looping techniques, she processes her voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, and sampled concrète sounds. She uses MAX MSP and Isadora software on a MacBook Pro along with custom MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound and image with physical gestures. Her performances range in scale from small concerts in galleries to large-scale multi-media works in theaters and concert halls. In addition to her performances, she has a growing body of installation works using multi-channel sound and video.

Pamela Z has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan – performing in international festivals and venues including Bang on a Can at Lincoln Center (NY); La Biennale di Venezia; San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox, the Japan Interlink Festival; Other Minds (San Francisco); and Pina Bausch Tanztheater’s Festival (Wuppertal, Germany). She has received commissions to compose live and fixed-media scores for choreographers and film/video artists. Her large-scale, performance works, including Memory Trace, Baggage Allowance, Voci, and Gaijin, have been presented at venues like the Kitchen in New York, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Theater Artaud (Z Space) in San Francisco, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, as well as at theaters in Washington D.C. and Budapest. Her one-act opera Wunderkabinet inspired by the Museum of Jurassic Technology (co-composed with Matthew Brubeck) premiered at The LAB in San Francisco, and was presented at REDCAT in LA and Open Ears Festival in Canada. She has shown work in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (New York), the Whitney Museum (New York); Savvy Contemporary (Berlin); the Tang Museum (Saratoga Springs NY); the Dakar Biennale (Sénégal); Krannert Art Museum (IL), the Kitchen and Merkin Hall (NY).

Ms. Z has received commissions from chamber ensembles including Kronos Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, The Living Earth Show, Eighth Blackbird, Bang On A Can All Stars; Ethel, Del Sol Quartet, California E.A.R. Unit; Left Coast Chamber Ensemble; and Empyrean Ensemble. She recently composed a work for soprano Julia Bullock and the San Francisco Symphony. She has collaborated with a wide range of artists including Joan La Barbara, Joan Jeanrenaud, Brenda Way (ODC Dance), Miya Masaoka, Jeanne Finley + John Muse, Shinichi Iova Koga (Inkboat), and Luciano Chessa. She has participated in New Music Theatre’s John Cage festivals, and has performed with The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.

Pamela Z is the recipient of many honors and awards including the Rome Prize, MIT McDermott Award, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Dorothea Tanning Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, United States Artists, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation residency, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts; Creative Capital; the MAP Fund, the ASCAP Music Award; an Ars Electronica honorable mention; and the NEA Japan/US Friendship Commission Fellowship. She holds a music degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Ina Archer (Installation) for work on an installation that explores issues surrounding labor and ownership in the film industry, the interactions between racial/ethnic representations and transitional technological movements in media. Ina is an installation and video artist whose works include: Bert Wheeler(ing): Just keep On Doin’ What You’re Doin’ and A Minstrel Show, exhibited in Whitney Independent Study Open Studios Show.

Guillermo Brown (Music) for development of a live solo and ensemble performance piece for CD, mp3 and vinyl focusing on the absorption of perfected jazz techniques into contemporary musical expression. Guillermo is a musican/perfromer and member of the David S. Ware Quartet.

Justine Cooper (Installation) for work on Excitation, an installation focusing on the mediation of spacial experience by information, medical and telecommunications technology. Justine is a multimedia artist whoese work has been exhibited and screened throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Jay Critchley (Film/Video) for the creation of a “documentary” entitled Theater in the Ground@Septic Space – The Dirt. Jay Crichley is a multimedia artist and the founder of Septic Space, a subterranean septic tank turned gallery/performance space in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Alexandra Gardner (Music) for completion of the electronic portion of Spotted Jasper, a composition for bass clarinet, marimba and electronics. Alexandra is a composer and performer whose work has been performed throughout the United States and Europe.

Yael Kanarek (Web) for the development of the sonic component of World of Awe, in collaboration with composer, Yoav Gal, World of Awe is an ongoing multi-media project based on an orginal narrative where determination to find a lost treasure meets nostolgia for speculated technology. Yael has been creating work for the web since 1995.

David Grubbs (Music) for production of an audio work combining live audio performance and electronic music. David is a composer, recording artist and founder of the Blue Chopsticks label.

Mary Jane Dean (Film/Video) for work on IN-CAMERA, IN-FLIGHT, a cinematic and photgraphic inquiry of perception observed through the subject of flight. Mary Jane is currently an artist-in-residence at The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Rhode Island.