2021 Sponsored Projects

Katherine Bennett (LadyK)

As a new media, fiber, and installation artist, LadyK’s practice encompasses interactive and responsive systems exploring how our collective digital experiences are shaping our future. She merges ancient fiber traditions with programming and physical computing to create nervous systems for her handcrafted soft fiber structures. Liminal spaces brought forth by digital technologies fascinate her, as LadyK explores the cultural transformations that result. Her latest environments investigate how communication technologies are shaping our identity, pushing a tighter integration with the machine.

Associated project: The Masquerades of Soft Machines

Dan Joseph

Dan Joseph is a composer, curator and writer based in New York City. He began his career in the early ‘80s as a drummer in the vibrant punk scene of his native Washington, DC. Soon after, he became active in the experimental tape music underground, producing ambient-industrial works for various independent labels. He spent the ‘90s in California where he studied at CalArts and Mills College. His principal teachers include Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran and Mel Powell. Equally influential were his studies with Terry Riley during several workshops in California and Colorado.

As an artist who embraces the musical multiplicity of our time, Dan works simultaneously in a variety of media and contexts, including instrumental chamber music, electroacoustic computer music, free improvisation, electronica, and sound art. Since the late 1990s, the hammer dulcimer has been the primary vehicle for his music. As a performer he is active with his own chamber ensemble, The Dan Joseph Ensemble, as well as in various improvisational collaborations and as a frequent soloist. Recent projects include the JCC Trio with composer-performers Tom Chiu and Jason Cady.
Dan’s work has been presented at Merkin Concert Hall, Diapason Gallery for Sound, Harvestworks, Roulette, Issue Project Room, Experimental Intermedia, Human Resources (CA), Harrison House (CA) and other venues. He has received commissions from the New York State Council of the Arts, Gamelan Son of Lion, sfSoundGroup, baritone Thomas Buckner, and clarinetist Matt Ingalls. Dan has held residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center.

Active for many years as a curator and presenter, he currently produces the monthly music and sound series Musical Ecologies at The Old Stone House in Park Slope, Brooklyn. His writings on music have appeared in Musicworks Magazine (Toronto), The Brooklyn Rail, NewMusicBox.org.

Associated project: Periodicity Piece #10

Periodicity Piece #10 is a new mixed-media, multi-channel sound installation commissioned by Harvestworks for the organization’s exhibition space in Nolan Park, Governor’s Island. Informed by early minimalism, acoustic ecology, deep listening and ambient music, Periodicity Piece #10 will combine a diverse collection of sounds into a slowly changing sonic ecosystem.

Kalun Leung

Kalun Leung is a trombonist, improvisor, composer and creative technologist based in Brooklyn, New York. His work as an instrumentalist is motivated by the exploration of new and unexpected contexts in which the trombone can thrive. This ongoing research-based approach has manifested in audiovisual performances of Keith Haring’s unpublished computer art and a Fluxusinspired trombone sound sculpture. He is a member of the movement and sound improvisation collective ECHOensemble, Eco-Music Big Band, and has a solo project involving electroacoustic improvisation.

Associated project: Die Posaune

Die Posaune is a sound art installation that explores the sonic possibilities of the slide trombone as a self-generating sound object. The trombone, essentially a variable-length tube, is appropriated in this work as an enclosure for propagating microphone feedback. The proposed realization features eight self-sounding trombones, spatially arranged to create an immersive and generative soundscape. Viewers can interact with the installation by engaging the rope and pulley system that controls each instrument’s slide mechanism.

Cecilia Lopez

Cecilia Lopez is a composer, musician and multimedia artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina currently based in New York. She works across the media of composition, video, installation and the creation of sound devices and systems. Lopez holds an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College and an MA from Wesleyan University in composition (2016).

Associated project: Rotating Speakers

Sound artist Cecilia Lopez is creating a collaborative performed- installation work with pioneering sound artist John Driscoll. Lopez will work with Driscoll on continuing the development of an extended performed-installation work resulting from their above-mentioned performance.

Alfredo Salazar-Caro

Alfredo Salazar-Caro is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. He has been integrating VR/AR into his artistic practice since 2013 and has been lecturing on the subject since 2014 at institutions such as NYU, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Johns Hopkins University. He is also the co-founder and Creative Director of DiMoDA, the Digital Museum of Digital Art, a virtual museum dedicated to commissioning and exhibiting XR artworks by contemporary artists.

Associated project: Dreams of the Jaguar’s Daughter

Dreams of the Jaguar’s Daughter is a Surreal VR Documentary where Achik’, the spirit of a young immigrant, guides viewers through her dreams and memories of her arduous journey north. Starting in the Guatemalan jungle, traveling through central Mexico and reaching the Arizona Desert. Each dream is composed from documentation of immigrants’ journeys during the 2018 Caravan through today, using 3D scans, drones, traditional footage, interviews and 360 footage.

Michael J. Schumacher

Michael J. Schumacher (lead artist) has a long history working with multichannel sound, sound art installations, as a curator, gallery director and composer. He earned his Doctorate in Music Composition from Juilliard and has been creating computer-based installations since the 1990s. He founded and directed Diapason, New York’s only gallery devoted to sound art, from 1996-2014. Diapason’s archive continues to be presented in spaces throughout the world. Schumacher also has extensive experience in the popular music world, having released three records with his rock band, dinmachine.

Associated project: urMix

urMix is an interactive listening project based on the idea of multitrack recording and surround-sound listening. It is a metal box, about 16x8x4, with 8 jacks, an LED screen, buttons to control playback, a USB socket and a power cord. Inside is a power supply, a sound card, 8 preamps and wires. A USB storage device containing music formatted as 8 separate audio channels is inserted into the box and it’s ready to go.

Cecelia Lopez

Cecelia Lopez received her Masters in Music Composition from Wesleyan University and her Masters of Fine Arts in Music and Sound from Bard College. Cecelia has been apart of various international programs and residencies in countries such as, Lithuania, Italy, and the Czech Republic.