We’re excited to share that Emmett Palaima has received a Support for Artists Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts to advance the ShiftDriver Spatial Audio System, an instrument designed to control large-scale spatial sound using 1-bit audio. This project continues to evolve, building toward Temple-65536, envisioned as the world’s largest spatial audio instrument. We’re proud to have supported Emmett through our New Works Residency Program and look forward to seeing this work develop.

Emmett Palaima is an artist working with electronics and esoteric processes of sound creation. His practice is conceptually rooted in the idea that technology and magic are one and the same, and that electricity is a manifestation of the divine or elemental forces underlying physical reality. He is interested in crafting experiences of sound as an embodied physical process and in sharing the sculptural beauty of systems used in sound creation. He is additionally interested in the relationship between the instrument, labor, and the body, which he explores via performance and photography incorporating sculptural work. IG: @hammerhead_audio

Shaun Irons has received support for All That Is Seen and Unseen, an interdisciplinary installation opera exploring the profound impact of technology on human consciousness. This work confronts the erosion of truth and trust in an era shaped by A.I., computational propaganda, and deepfakes, weaving together processed video, music, and text to envision a world overtaken by malfunctioning intelligent machines. We’re proud to support Shaun through our New Works Residency Program and look forward to the evolution of this timely and thought-provoking project.

Shaun’s hybrid work has been exhibited in diverse locations in New York and internationally including BAM’s Next Wave Festival, The Brooklyn Museum, Abrons Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory, Anthology Film Archives, REDCAT (Los Angeles), Z Space (San Francisco), CURRENTS New Media Festival (Santa Fe), Rencontres International Paris/Berlin and the Museo Nacional (Havana, Cuba). Shaun has received numerous awards including two NYFA Fellowships, multiple grants from the NEA, NYSCA, Jerome Foundation, Greenwall Foundation, Experimental Television Center, the Asian Cultural Council, Bel Geddes Design Fund and the Mertz Gilmore Foundation as well as creative residencies from MacDowell, Yaddo, LMCC, Harvestworks, Signal Culture, Bogliasco Foundation, the Camargo Foundation, and the Tokyo Wonder Site. www.shaunirons

 Alice Shields has received support to develop A Festival of Lights in the Court of Love, a chamber opera blending live performance, electronic sound, and video. Featuring four singers and six musicians, the piece transports audiences into a world where Eleanor and Marie compel men to speak in poetry and sing in the language of love among the clouds. We’re proud to support Alice through our New Works Residency Program and look forward to the continued evolution of this visionary work.

Alice holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University, where she was associate director of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and later director of development of the Columbia University Computer Music Center. Her music has been performed at the New York City Opera Vox Festival, Academie der Künste (Berlin), Venice Biennale, the Arangham Dance Theater (India), among others.  The New York Times describes Alice’s work as “intense” and “richly scored”. http://www.aliceshields.com

Katherine Bennett has received a Support for Artists Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts to develop The Masquerades of the Soft Machines: Data Devourers, a fiber and electronic installation that makes visible the hidden algorithmic forces shaping our world. Set within a soft, colorful, forest-like environment, the piece invites viewers to witness their data being recycled and fed into artificial intelligence models, revealing the intricate and often unseen relationship between human interaction and machine learning. We’re proud to support Katherine through our New Works Residency Program and look forward to seeing this immersive work come to life.

Katherine is a recent recipient of the Harvestworks New Works Residency (2019). Her work appears in the Spring 2019 issue of Fiber Arts Now. She has exhibited at the Inst-Int Festival, ODETTA Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), ISEA (Vancouver, BC & Singapore), Maryland Art Place (Baltimore, MD), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, IN), Obro (Canada), Collar Works (Troy, New York), The University of the Arts (Philadelphia), The Electrofringe Festival (New Castle, Australia), The University of Nevada, Reno, Zhou B Art Center (Chicago), and the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati, OH), among others. She has received grants from Fiber Arts Now, The Ohio Arts Council, the Puffin Foundation and the Illuminating & Engineering Society. Her other residencies include Jentel, Weir Farm and the Vermont Studio Center (full grant). She teaches workshops and courses centered on human-computer interaction design, programming, physical computing at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering.

Judy Dunaway, an interdisciplinary artist, proposes to document and innovate her work with latex balloons as experimental sound conduits and sculptural instruments. This project will involve recording improvisations, pressing LPs, and creating more durable sculptures as she adapts to the discontinuation of Qualatex balloons. (Portrait photo courtesy of the artist)

SUN_FLOWER: embracing complexity will be a fully immersive installation that explores the connections between plasma physics and the sun. This installation will explore the complexities and varying factors that affect the process of fusion by projecting images of solar flares from NASA and JPL, which will be processed and edited in 3D to create a “mandala of complexity”. This imaging will be accompanied by a soundscape comprised of recordings taken inside of a magnetic fusion device, solar flares, echoes of human sun salutations, and sun worshipping hymns.

Victoria Vesna is an experimental creatve research artist and educator from Washington, D.C. Often working in collaboration with neuroscientists, nano-scientists, and evolutionary biologists, her installation work explores the impact of communication technologies on collective behavior and the ways in which perceptions of identity change amidst scientific advancement. Her work has been exhibited extensively around the world, and she has contributed work to numerous papers during the course of her career.  Currently, Victoria is a professor at the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts, Director of the Art|Sci Center at the School of the Arts, and the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI). Victoria also holds a Ph.D from CAiiA (The Centre for Advanced Studies in Interactive Arts) at the University of Wales. https://victoriavesna.com

Anaïs Maviel will present an experiential & durational music piece in collaboration with chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound. Métadire is inspired by the less obvious details of perception, and immerses its audience in the contemplation of space, time, and human existence. Co-commissioned by Alarm Will Sound and Harvestworks, Métadire is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. 

Anais Maivel is a vocalist and composer whose work fuses traditional and experimental approaches to investigate the power of sound to shape reality, unite, and lay “common ground for utopian futures”. Anais has conducted scholarly research on music & utopia in Black American music, and holds a Master’s degree from Paris Diderot University. Her solo albums, hOULe and in the garden both received international acclaim. Anais performs and teaches throughout the Americas and Europe, and has been the recipient of several fellowships including the 2022 NYFA Artists Fellowship. https://www.anaismaviel.com

Woody Sullender will develop an AI avatar of himself that is able to act as a performer of music. He has created digital replicas of several performance spaces, including Harvestworks Art &Technology building on Governors Island, in order to project these replicas back into the original spaces.

Woody’s work explores the mediation of musical performance, and is intended to be engaged and interacted with. Woody describes the current version of his avatar as the “puppet incarnation” of this project, as opposed to the more advanced, upcoming version, which is more intelligent and suitable for a live music setting. This “puppet incarnation” has been commissioned for a video on display in the Kitchen’s online Video Viewing Room, and At the Public Works Administration in Times Square on an interactive website, and available in a downloadable game. Woody Sullender is a music practitioner who has performed extensively in the United States and abroad. His works explore the space and interaction between the physical event of live performance and the more “mediated” album. His work has been reviewed internationally by Wire Magazine, Art in America, Fast Company, and Maximumrocknroll. Woody is a founding co-editor of the sonic arts publication EAR WAVE EVENT. https://www.woodysullender.com

All That is Seen and Unseen is hybrid opera and media installation designed by Amy Mascena and created by collaborative duo AutomaticRelease (Lauren Petty & Shaun Irons), in collaboration with composer Zach Layton. The installation in its current version includes moving image and text by AutomaticRelease via AI, and a soundscape generated by Zach using a neural
network Max patch. In her developing design process for this work, Amy will draw artistic and poetic connections between past (including inspiration from Greek and Roman statuary, Rococco paintings, and 17th Century stage design) and present (using AI generation and modern technology to realize the work).

Amy Mascena is a multidisciplinary visual artist, whose work includes drawing, painting, handmade
books, installation, as well as set pieces, costumes and props for theater and film. She has presented her work in New York and Los Angeles. Her drawings and mixed media works are regularly exhibited at the TV Projects Gallery in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

AutomaticRelease is the multiplatform art duo of Lauren Petty and Shaun Irons. Together, the two create interdisciplinary  performances, installations, experimental films, documentaries and interactive video scores. Their work has been exhibited at numerous venues including BAM, The Brooklyn Museum, Tokyo Wonder Site, and the Venice Biennale. http://automaticrelease.org

Zach Layton is a guitarist, composer, curator, teacher and visual artist. He has composed for composed orchestral music for the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, and has performed and exhibited internationally, including venues such as the Guggenheim Museum and the International Computer Music Festival. http://www.zachlaytonindustries.com

House of D is an art installation and workshop series that explores the history of The Jefferson Market Library, which previously served as a jail to punish and reform women, transgendered male, and non-gender-conforming people. The artist, Alex Strada, will continuously investigate the related history and use the material she encountered to build this installation within a feminist, queer and abolitionist framework. She will bring together an array of scholars, students, and professionals to discuss House of D as a case study in parallel with the public exhibition. The project resonates with the ongoing issues related with history, abolition, LGBTQA+, women rights, and anti-racist activism, and will be available to the public by partnering with New York Public Library.

Alex Strada is an Brooklyn-based transmedia artist and educator who explores the topics of collectivity, critical legal studies, and political transformation through installations and films. Her works have been shown at Queens Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Anthology Film Archives, UnionDocs, etc.

BodyMouth is a bespoke computational sound/movement tool that turns the body into an instrument for speech. Wearing sensors on various body parts, a dancer sounds out full words by performing specific gestures in sequence, as if their body is turned into a mouth. The project explores the alternative modes of speech as an underground approach against totalitarian and oppression. The artists will develop and premiere a full-length evening work titled “Ielele.” In a series of live performances, they will deploy this instrument to sound out ‘lost’ histories and voices, focusing specifically on female East European figures, to conjure an alternate, modern feminist mythmaking that transcends traditional male-centered heroics. “Ielele,” are female forest creatures in Romanian folklore whose eerie voices led men astray—whoever heard their songs became instantly mute. This performance forms a series of linked narratives for 1-5 performers each, and experienced together as a full-length evening.

Composer David Behman and artist/technologist Bob Bielecki will collaborate in a new to-be-named composition piece. It will feature a unique multi-channel sound system developed by Bob, as well as a 3-dimensional soundstage.The installation will be a combination of multiple audio compositions and instruments that presents an uncanny ability to reproduce the acoustic properties of sounds and direct sounds outward in an enclosed space. The audiences will be localized by the sonic murals created and immersed in a new sonic experience.

David Behrman is an composer and artist who made multiple sound and multimedia installation. He explores the interactive real-time relationships with imaginative performers with a unique use of technology and structures.

Bob Bielecki is a media artist who creates instruments and sound designs for installations and performances, especially in the fields of technology and electronic effects. He has collaborated with many artists, including John Cage, Alvin Lucier, La Monte Young and Pauline Oliveros.

 Harvestworks Sponsored Projects Program is made possible

Garden for Drowning Descendant is an experimental participatory mixed reality installation on ecological disaster, interdependency, and manipulation of information. It explores the emergence of collective action from the mixture of individual ones, resulting in a “dance of agencies” between the audience, flocks of virtual animals, and performers from the past. Upon entering the installation space each audience member is linked to an animal avatar, joining “herds” and “flocks” inhabiting the scenes. By moving, the viewers exponentially influence the movement of the entire flock/herd, and eventually, that of the rest of participants.

Eva Davidova is an interdisciplinary artist with focus on new media(s) and their socio-political implications. Davidova has exhibited at the Bronx Museum, the Everson Museum, the Albright Knox Museum, MACBA Barcelona, CAAC Sevilla, Instituto Cervantes and La Regenta among others. Davidova’s work addresses ecological disaster, interdependency, and the political implications of technology through performative works rooted in the absurd.

All That Is Seen and Unseen is a new live performance which investigates the multifarious effects of technology on our collective human consciousness. The work confronts the dangerous erosion of truth and trust in our society, which is rapidly intensifying due to social media run rampant, conspiracy theories, computational propaganda, and other tools that have the ability to distort, manipulate and obscure reality. This vital new project communicates across boundaries by incorporating live performers, multi-screen video, live-feed cameras, custom programming, fabricated environments, and a vibrant, reactive soundscape.

Lauren is a digital media artist working in the intersection between interdisciplinary performance, multimedia installation, digital design, documentary and experimental film. She is a longtime collaborator of multi-disciplinary artist SHAUN IRONS under the name AutomaticRelease.  Lauren is also a Professor with many years of experience teaching courses at Parsons (Art, Media and Technology), New York University (Integrated Digital Media) and Brooklyn College  (Television, Radio and Emerging Media).

“Silver Fleece “ is the second part of an interdisciplinary presentation called “Black Lives Suite”, first presented in the Fall of 2021 with sponsorship of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. This project includes music, spoken word, dance and visuals. The evolution of this piece will continue in 2022 with the assistance of Harvestworks and the Fridman Gallery, where the actual performance will take place. The artist’s vision of this work is to show and document aspects of the arts from a “black” perspective. This new interdisciplinary project will feature music, dance and poetry and will include jazz/experimental music as a foundation for this artistic statement which shows how far we have come in great black music, poetry (and spoken word) and dance(movement). The stylistic features of this work will present new artists (Ras Moshe-sax, Charlie Burnham-violin, On Davis and Jesse Henry-guitars, Jair-Rohm Wells on bass) making statements in their respective fields of music, showing how their works can be integrated into American culture at large. This will build on the interdisciplinary works Hooker has presented in the past which include “James Baldwin Suite”, “The Great Migration” and “Chimes” – all presented in the New York City area.

William Hooker (drummer,composer and poet) has created works that range from jazz and “new” music to experimental genres. He has released over 70 CDs as a leader. Mr. Hooker has performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Edgefest Jazz Festival, The Vision Festival, The David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, The Kitchen, Roulette, and Real Art Ways. He has also presented his work at the JVC Jazz Festival, Vancouver Jazz Festival, Vilnius Jazz Festival, Experimenta Argentina,The Knitting Factory and the Victoriaville Music Festival.

These projects were sponsored by Harvestworks and funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Tiny lights amidst the soft fiber structures and objects and a low hum beckon the viewer to explore the forest-like installation. As you peer inside the structures, you notice small screens, speakers, lights and motors are hidden within. Each is busy with activity, churning an endless sea of personal data captured from our smart devices and phones. As you step back from that area, you take in the surrounding environment and the diversity of soft hives buzzing with activity. You are within a soft machine that is mining real-time information, analyzing nations of data.

As a new media, fiber, and installation artist, LadyK builds interactive systems exploring our emerging futures of the digital experience. She utilizes sound and light to represent people, relationships and activities that happen in other spaces and times. She creates a delicate presence of these entities, developing the architecture to facilitate them; choreograph within time; making each visceral. She codes and incorporates sensors, electronics, fibers and computer vision to create her pieces. She is fascinated by the liminal spaces created by digital communities and the cultural changes that result. Her latest environments investigate how communication technologies are shaping our identity and pushing us towards a tighter integration with the machine.

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.

Dan Joseph is a free-lance composer, curator and writer based in New York City. He began his career as a drummer in the vibrant punk scene of his native Washington, DC. During the late 1980s, he was active in the experimental tape music underground, producing ambient-industrial works for independent labels in the U.S. and abroad. As an artist who embraces the musical multiplicity of our time, Dan works simultaneously in a variety of media and contexts. 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 an occasional soloist.

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.

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

Sound artist Cecilia Lopez is creating a collaborative performed- installation work with pioneering sound artist John Driscoll. This multi-generational collaboration continues a working relationship between Driscoll and Lopez started in 2018. They have performed together numerous times since, most notably an untitled performed-installation work at the Fridman Gallery (NY) in 2018. Lopez will work with Driscoll on continuing the development of an extended performed-installation work resulting from their above-mentioned performance.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

This 66 minute experimental video by Velez examines how we confront aging and decay. It is an impressionistic road movie where the viewer travels through a literal and figurative landscape of aging human faces, towns, and landscapes. This project was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) via Harvestworks.      

Through rich imagery and an acute sense of visual metaphor, Edin Velez,  one of the pioneers in video art, has consistently expanded the paradigms of the genre. He has been awarded both Guggenheim  and  Rockefeller Fellowships as well as the American Film Institute’s Maya Deren Award for Excellence in Film and Video. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Edin moved to the US in the early seventies and became part of the first generation of video artists working in SoHo. His works have been exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, Documenta 8, Sao Paolo Biennial, The Tate Gallery, and the Louvre Museum , among others and are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art: New York, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Hara Museum, Japan, and others.

AITA is a music and image installation that critically and poetically excavates the history of Verdi’s opera for Cairo through archival images, present-day Western representation of Egypt, and a radical scrambling of the libretto and score. AITA was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) via Harvestworks.

Joe Diebes combines sound, visual media, and the human voice in multifarious ways.  His sound installations, video, performances and works on paper have been exhibited in numerous galleries, museums, and public spaces including Paul Rodgers/9W (New York), The Hammer Museum, the Torino Winter Olympics, David Winton Bell Gallery (Brown University), Yuanfen Gallery (Beijing), Prix Ars Electronica and the Liverpool Biennial.

mARine mamMLs is an immersive, concentrated Augmented Reality experience of marine mammal communication (dolphins, seals, and whales) in New York City water ways.This project was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) via Harvestworks.

Kristin Lucas has presented her work nationally and internationally and is the recent recipient of a BAU Summer Arts Residency at the Camargo Foundation, Engadget Alternate Realities Grant, Eyebeam/Oregon Story Board/Upfor AR/VR Artist Research Residency, Harvestworks New Works Residency, NYSCA Media Arts Assistance Fund, Pioneer Works Tech Residency, and Print Screen Festival and Yafo Creative Digital Art Residency. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, and is represented by And/Or Gallery in Los Angeles, and Postmasters and Electronic Arts Intermix in New York. She holds degrees from The Cooper Union and Stanford University, and teaches in the University of Texas at Austin art department.

“All Over Everywhere” by Lauren Petty is a multifaceted, trans-disciplinary performance art installation, which addresses jeopardized natural environments, by engaging connections and confrontations between human beings, technology and the natural world. This project was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) via Harvestworks.

Lauren Petty is a digital media artist working in video, film, sound, installation, interactive design and performance, she is a longtime collaborator of multi-disciplinary artist Shaun Irons. Their work has been exhibited in diverse locations in New York and internationally and was recently seen at BAM’s Next Wave Festival, Abrons Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory, HERE, The Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, The Governors Island Art Fair, and was broadcast on PBS’s Reel NY.

Premiering with the support of Harvestworks, Alien Star Dust is meant to be experienced as a guided meditation bringing to life the sensations of meteorites and micro-meteorites falling on all continents and mixing with the anthropogenic dust falling on our planet from many dimensions. Layers of sounds from inner and outer space with animations of dust and data driven by corona deaths are presented with the intent of honoring those who left their bodies without preparation and all who are suffering. This online version was created as a meditation that is guided by the artist following the extra-terrestrial, terrestrial, and human-made dusts traveling far and wide and creating complexity that is part of an invisible reality. Most go about their daily life without being aware of ever thinking about the extraterrestrial dusts that could be on their kitchen floor, right here on earth. The alien signal is lost in the human noise and the group meditation reclaims our vision of planetary citizenship. Alien Star Dust was sponsored by Harvestworks and funded by the David Bermant Foundation.

View Vesna’s Alien Start Dust.

Victoria Vesna, Ph.D., is an Artist and Professor at the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts and Director of the Art|Sci Center at the School of the Arts (North campus) and California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) (South campus). Although she was trained early on as a painter, her curious mind took her on an exploratory path that resulted in work that can be defined as experimental creative research residing between disciplines and technologies. With her installations she investigates how communication technologies affect collective behavior and perceptions of identity shift in relation to scientific innovation. Her work involves long-term collaborations with composers, nano-scientists, neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists and she brings this experience to students. Currently she is working on a series Art Science & Technology based on her online lecture class.

Bye For Now, is an elegiac new film that offers a meditation on loss, mortality, and location, using water as a metaphor for the variable flow of time and memory. Filmed in Venice, Italy this deeply personal work is an attempt to directly communicate with the dead and to share the experience of a beloved and evocative place with a loved one who is now gone. Composed of meditative passages juxtaposed with quick, rhythmic cuts, the film evokes a mysterious and ghostly maritime city, imbued with a combination of beauty and decay. Throughout the film, images and sounds of life in the city – the swirling green lagoon, the variable Venetian light, the whir of passing boats – are experienced, marking time as the days progress.  Bye For Now is a meditative requiem, using landscapes, natural and manmade, as a conveyor of loss and a repository of deep emotion. This project was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) via Harvestworks.

Throughout his career, Shaun Irons has engaged a provocative synthesis of video, film, audio and sculptural objects to create multidisciplinary performances, multimedia installations, experimental films, documentaries and interactive video scores to accompany live performance. Irons does not make distinctions between these forms but sees them as deeply interconnected and equally part of his ongoing artistic output.In addition to media work, Irons maintain a daily, ritualistic practice of drawing and photography.

Walkie Talkie Dream Garden is an interactive soundwalk developed by sound artist and composer Dafna Naphtali using the U-GRUVE AR Audio Augmented-Reality platform by Richard Rodkin. The free app, available for Android and iOS mobile devices, uses geo-tagged audio files and electroacoustic compositions created with recordings made on-site. The audio is played / altered by the physical (GPS) location of the participants listening over headphones. Launched in Brooklyn and Hamburg, Germany in 2018. This project was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) via Harvestworks.

Dafna Naphtali is a singer/instrumentalist/electronic-musician who composes/performs experimental, interactive electro-acoustic music, drawing on a wide-ranging musical background in jazz, classical, rock and near-eastern music and using her custom Max/MSP programming.  She’s performed in the US, Canada, Europe, India, Russia and the Middle East, with current projects including: “Audio Chandelier” multi-channel audio works presented in US, Berlin, and Montreal (after 2019 Harvestworks New Works residency to be presented on Governors Island summer of 2020, but postponed due to Covid-19).

Summerland is an audio installation based on a choir of 24 computer-controlled antique telegraph sounders. Algorithms coordinate the sounders to generate pitches, moving clouds of sound, and even attempted voice emulation, all from masses of simple clicks. This project was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) via Harvestworks.

Watch Ostrowski’s Summerland.

A New York City native, Matthew Ostrowski has worked as a composer, performer and installation artist, exploring work with music, multimedia, video and theater. Using digital tools and formalist techniques to engage with quotidian materials — sonic, physical, and cultural – Ostrowski’s work explores the liminal space between the virtual and phenomenological worlds. His work, which has been seen on six continents, ranges from live electronic performance to installations incorporating video, multichannel sound, and computer-controlled objects. He is a freelance developer of interactive technology for artists, and teaches at NYU and Columbia University.

“The Tramp’s New World” is a film about a scenario that James Agee wrote for Charlie Chaplin in 1948. New York is destroyed. In the ruins the Tramp starts a utopian community in Central Park.The destruction of the city is a metaphor for the tearing apart of society heralded by the Trump administration. This project was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) via Harvestworks.

More on “The Tramp’s New World” here.

Zoe Beloff is an artist and filmmaker. Her projects often involve a range of media including films, drawings and archival documents organized around a theme. Her current work addresses the relationship between American fascism in the 1930’s and its resurgence today. Both thematically and formally Beloff draws timelines between past and present helping us to imagine a future against the grain of reactionary ideology. She aims to make radical art that educates, entertains, and provokes discussion. Most importantly, as her work attests, she believes protest should be vibrant, humorous and colorful, a carnival of resistance to light the way in dark times.

“Movement Activated Sound in Liminal Space” is an interactive system which uses Theremin and webcam as controllers that change channels of a radio by the performers’ proximity and speed of movement, by using customized SDR (software defined radio) to access local and international broadcasts. This project was commissioned by Harvestworks with funding from the New York State Council on the Arts.

David Simons composes music for theater, dance, film, installations, and concert ensembles. His unusual collection of sounds from self-built and non-European instruments combines with digital sampling technologies to create a unique pan-cultural music. He has devised his own method of using the Theremin as a Midi controller. David has researched and performed music from many of the world’s cultures, and furthered his music studies in Bali, Bangkok and Seoul. As a founding member of the FUTURE PRIMITIVE ENSEMBLE his pieces were heard live on radio and in concert throughout the U.S. He has also performed on tour in Java, Bali, Korea, Japan, Eastern and Western Europe, Canada, Cuba and Hawaii.

Continuing his decade-long work with large ensembles using electronics, Tammen’s “Crossing the Lagrangian Point” uses performers who create sound, light and visuals at the same time, in that multiple threads come together in one unifying whole. The piece is a large 60-minute sonic and visual multi-movement piece for several light and sound artists, and is part of Tammen’s ongoing Dark Circuits Orchestra concept. It unites contemporary visual and musical styles and techniques, bridges the cultural gap between many historically divergent practices, and is the logical next step in Tammen’s work with large electronic ensembles. This project was sponsored by Harvestworks with funds by the New York State Council on the Arts.

Watch “Crossing the Lagrangian Point” here.

Hans Tammen 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. Whether richly processed guitar sounds from his hybrid interactive guitar/software instrument Endangered Guitar, traditionally notated material for his Third Eye Chamber Orchestra, or graphically notated elements for the all-electronic Dark Circuits Orchestra, his music 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).

Find Me is a 3-D sound installation and performance-without-performers that explores the phenomena of getting lost and finding one’s way. A mesmeric, immersive environment created by composer/performer Christina Campanella and sound designer/writer Jim Dawson. Find Me is composed of sonic ephemera in which field recordings, music and industrial drones swell into electro-symphonic motifs. The audience moves through and around invisible walls of sound deployed via a 12:1 multi tiered system of speakers that emanates sound from all sides and above. Find Me uses the potential of sound spatialization to manipulate the internal mapping sense that shapes our perception of where we are.  This project was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) via Harvestworks.

Watch an excerpt of Campanella’s Find Me.

Christina Campanella is a composer, vocalist and sound artist who creates music and sound-based works across disciplines. Her pieces for theater, film, installation and playback blend songwriting and composition with aural design, weaving found sounds, ambient textures, and a dreamy avant-rock sensibility into cinematic soundscapes and deconstructed art songs.

The Solar Particle Wind Chime is a data sonification system made from hand blown glass that retrieves solar wind data from the NASA ACE Satellite located at Lagrange Point L1, between Earth and the sun, at a distance of 1.5 million KM from Earth.  Solar particle and wind flare data is streamed from The Space Weather Prediction Center in real-time, and the sounds you hear are affected by the stream of energetic particles coming from the sun. This project was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) via Harvestworks.

Watch Morris’ Solar Particle Wind Chime here.

Joseph Morris is a transdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn. He is an expert craftsman and coder who believes in the possibilities enabled through the integration of technology in the arts. His emotive machines have been on exhibition in New York, Chicago, Brazil, New Haven, New Mexico and Arizona by galleries and organizations such as Chazan Family Gallery, Creative Arts Workshop, Gibney Dance Center, 4heads, ACRE Projects, Oi Futuro and more.

Bird Song Diamond is an interactive installation based on long-term research (2011- present) allowing multifaceted, interdisciplinary perspectives — uniquely connecting the nodes of evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, spatial sound, mechatronic art and interactive technologies. The diamond as a crystal lattice of connected nodes reflects the commitment of each node to its disciplinary rigor held together in balance through shared interests. The sound art installation is an effort to include multiple new facets of the larger public — from children to art lovers and from academics to theoreticians. Bird Song Diamond was sponsored by Harvestworks and funded by the David Bermant Foundation.

Watch Vesna’s installation.

Victoria Vesna, Ph.D., is an Artist and Professor at the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts and Director of the Art|Sci Center at the School of the Arts (North campus) and California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) (South campus). Although she was trained early on as a painter, her curious mind took her on an exploratory path that resulted in work that can be defined as experimental creative research residing between disciplines and technologies. With her installations she investigates how communication technologies affect collective behavior and perceptions of identity shift in relation to scientific innovation. Her work involves long-term collaborations with composers, nano-scientists, neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists and she brings this experience to students. Currently she is working on a series Art Science & Technology based on her online lecture class.

B-O-O-K is an hour long choral work for fifteen singers musing on the subject – Book, and words/objects, connected to it ie.paper, bark, tree, body, spine, tablet, text, cuneiform, kunta which are all explored from sonic, etymological, multi-lingual personal and poetic perspectives. B-O-O-K was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) via Harvestworks.

Watch Hirsch perform B-O-O-K.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, vocal artist, performer, composer, storyteller, interdisciplinary artist Shelley Hirsch has been pushing boundaries with her unique vocal art and performance work, drawing on her life experiences, her memory, and her vivid imagination for decades. Hirsch’s multimedia performances, compositions, improvisations, electronic music pieces, sound installations, collaborations and radio plays have been presented worldwide.

Evidence is an hour-long multimedia tribute to novelist and social critic James Baldwin. It is choreographed by Juan Michael Porter and celebrates Baldwin’s great works and adherence to his number one conviction: speaking truth to power, regardless of how painful. William Hooker was sponsored by Harvestworks with funding from the New York State Council on the Arts to create this composition. 

Watch the performance of Evidence here.

Drummer, composer, and poet William Hooker has created works that range from jazz and “new” music to experimental genres. He has released over 70 CDs as a leader. Mr. Hooker has performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Edgefest Jazz Festival, The Vision Festival, The David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, The Wadsworth Atheneum, Queen Elizabeth Hall, The Walker Art Center, the first on MTV, The Kitchen, Roulette, Harvestworks and Real Art Ways. He has also presented his work at the JVC Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, Vancouver Jazz Festival, CMJ Music Festival,Vilnius Jazz Festival, Experimenta Argentina,The Knitting Factory and the Victoriaville Music Festival.

Oyster is an algorithmically generated sound and video installation that poetically explores the field of ethnomusicology (study of world musics) while using it as a lens to examine broader issues of globalization and a Western, technologically mediated, understanding of other world cultures. Oyster was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) via Harvestworks.

Watch an excerpt of Diebes’ Oyster.

Joe Diebes combines sound, visual media, and the human voice in multifarious ways.  His sound installations, video, performances and works on paper have been exhibited in numerous galleries, museums, and public spaces including Paul Rodgers/9W (New York), The Hammer Museum, the Torino Winter Olympics, David Winton Bell Gallery (Brown University), Yuanfen Gallery (Beijing), Prix Ars Electronica and the Liverpool Biennial.

Why Why Always is a new interdisciplinary performance which embraces a dynamic interplay between theater, dance, installation art, and technology by integrating live performers, multi-screen video, live-feed cameras, fabricated environments and a vibrant tapestry of sound. A hybrid work, Why Why Always explores the rapidly evolving relationship between man and machine, considering the multifarious effects of technology on our collective consciousness. The piece draws on a variety of sources, namely Jean-Luc Godard’s prescient 1965 film Alphaville, a poignant and timely parable of societal alienation and dehumanization, set in a dystopian future controlled by a sentient supercomputer, where feelings (and the words that describe them) are not only against the law but considered obsolete. Using the film as a point of departure, Why Why Always, searches for the human, irrational and emotional amidst a landscape of mechanization, isolation and control. This project was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) via Harvestworks.

Watch the trailer for Why Why Always.

Lauren Petty is a digital media artist working in video, film, sound, installation, interactive design and performance, she is a longtime collaborator of multi-disciplinary artist Shaun Irons. Their work has been exhibited in diverse locations in New York and internationally and was recently seen at BAM’s Next Wave Festival, Abrons Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory, HERE, The Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, The Governors Island Art Fair, and was broadcast on PBS’s Reel NY.

háček presents a physical installation, VR experience, and printed data maps. It employs data to inform an immersive installation while positioning it’s larger impact towards metaphors of networked landscape, security and wayfinding. The data used is taken from real network traffic logs, tracking hackers in real time as they race to be the first in line at the Shmoo Group website, pummeling the site with DDOS, port scans, and sneaky malware as they compete to be the first to get their hands on the prize. The valiant defenders deflect bots, cheats, and attacks at every turn as they try to keep the site online. háček is not just data visualizations or VR gaming in the formal sense—but more akin to abstractions and metaphorical art works that reflect the data, pieces potentially to be enjoyed entirely out of context. háček was sponsored by Harvestworks with funding from O’Reilly Media.

Margaret Schedel is a composer and cellist specializing in the creation and performance of ferociously interactive media whose works have been performed throughout the United States and abroad. Her research focuses on gesture in music, the sustainability of technology in art, and sonification of data. As an Associate Professor of Music at Stony Brook University, she serves as Co-Director of Computer Music and is the Director of cDACT, the consortium for digital art, culture and technology.

Melissa F. Clarke is a Brooklyn based interdisciplinary creative whose work often employs generative and interactive custom-programmed environments. Melissa is an educator, designer, and an artist working at the intersections of research, science, architectural and user experience. She extrapolates research into multimedia installations, generative video and sound sculptures, performances, printed images and experiential design work. Clarke is a graduate of NYU’s ITP program with a Tisch Fellowship. Clarke has been a lecturing professor at SUNY Stony Brook University teaching Interactive Installation Art, Introduction to Computational Art, Animation and Web Art. And, she has been a practitioner of experiential and user experience design for several years.

Voce-MO is a 15 – 18 minute composition for voice, violin with interactive graphics projected on dresses, accompanied by a string quartet. Voce-MO explores the relationships and conflicts between people who have the same ethnicity but live in alternative cultural and geological environments. This project was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) via Harvestworks.

Watch the performance here.

Mari Kimura is at the forefront of violinists who are extending the technical and expressive capabilities of the instrument. As a performer, composer,  researcher, and entrepreneur, she has opened up new sonic worlds and new musical possibilities for the violin, earning international acclaim as a soloist and recitalist in both standard and contemporary repertoire.

“Talking Drums” is a 20 minute composition for percussion, text and electronics that investigates musical rhythm and language. Using technology developed for his PhD in Computer Music, Krakowski creates video projections of speech and music that are controlled by percussion through a real time dialogue between percussionist and computer. “Talking Drums” was commissioned by Harvestworks with funding from the NY State Council of the Arts and presented in a myriad of stages such as The Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao, Drom – NYC, (Le) Poisson Rouge – NYC, Oi Futuro – Rio de Janeiro, and at the Museum of Moving Image – Queens – NYC, as part of the NY Electronic Art Festival 2015.

Watch “Talking Drums” here.

Born on December 18th 1979, Krakowski has dedicated his whole life to the Pandeiro, also known as the Brazilian Tambourine. A complete “hand drum kit”, this instrument has always been considered a symbol of Brazilian Music and Culture. Crossing whatever national and cultural barrier, Krakowski made this instrument a possible tool in various musical genres, from the Choro, the fundament of Brazilian Music, to Jazz, Contemporary and Electronic Music.

I WENT TO THE LIGHTHOUSE (AND IT WASN’T THERE) is a 3D sound installation-performance by Christina Campanella/Latitude 14. The audience wends through a forest of speakers; fractured sonic dispatches evoke the dimensionality of future landscapes; an imagined world replaces one erased by rising seas. The installation is primarily sonic architecture, the parameters of the space and the outlines of the narrative are conveyed by the sounds as they move through the 8:4:1 multi-tiered system of speakers. LIGHTHOUSE seeks to free listeners from any physical space, except for being inside the environment and out. The system creates a hermetic world that people can enter; their ears complete the piece by experiencing the logarithmic movements of sound. Listeners can also experience the piece from outside, as a considered whole, a distant thickness of separate yet complete sound. LIGHTHOUSE was developed through a residency at Harvestworks, commissioned with funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Watch the performance here.

Christina Campanella is a composer, vocalist and sound artist who creates music and sound-based works across disciplines. Her pieces for theater, film, installation and playback blend songwriting and composition with aural design, weaving found sounds, ambient textures, and a dreamy avant-rock sensibility into cinematic soundscapes and deconstructed art songs.

Standing By: Gatz Backstage is an atmospheric portrait of backstage life during Elevator Repair Service’s acclaimed, theatrical work Gatz, during which every word of The Great Gatsby is voiced and enacted on stage. This observational and poetic documentary, shot over six days in London, follows the company through a composite day, condensing a series of 8-hour performances into a 79-minute film. Standing By was made with support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Individual Artists Program via Harvestworks.

Watch the trailer for Gatz.

Throughout his career, Shaun Irons has engaged a provocative synthesis of video, film, audio and sculptural objects to create multidisciplinary performances, multimedia installations, experimental films, documentaries and interactive video scores to accompany live performance. Irons does not make distinctions between these forms but sees them as deeply interconnected and equally part of his ongoing artistic output.In addition to media work, Irons maintain a daily, ritualistic practice of drawing and photography.

The Open Hardware HD Video Synthesizer project is dedicated to the design and creation of an open hardware based modular analog HD video synthesizer and signal processing system. This project was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) via Harvestworks.

Phillip Stearns is a Brooklyn based artist and designer producing both physical and intangible works, performances, and experiences using electronic media. His practice spans several disciplines from creative coding and physical computing to interactive light and sound installations, computational weaving to performances using light and sound.

This wave, sound and site specific installation and website uses our full senses and a telemetry system to explore, amplify and reinforce the sonic architecture of a contained chapel (Cornelius) space and the sound and waterscape surrounding the Island (Governors Island). Wave Crossings was sponsored by Harvestworks through commission from the NYSCA. Additional funding was received from the David Bermant Foundation through Parabola Arts Foundation.

Watch the video of Wave Crossings here.

Queens-based artist Liz Phillips has been making interactive multimedia installations for the past 50 years, which combine audio and visual forms with new technologies to create an interactive experience. Phillips has exhibited interactive installations at numerous art museums, alternative spaces, festivals, and public spaces. These include multiple installations at the Queens Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Lincoln Center, The Milwaukee Art Museum, the Spoleto Festival USA, the Walker Art Museum, Ars Electronica, The Kitchen, and Creative Time.

DISTILLE, as the title suggests, is the distillation of an existing work into a new form—specifically, Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, a book that has been with Binion her entire life, embodying the conflicts of passion, religion, family, and fulfillment, brought to life through Flaubert’s extraordinary capacity for detail and linguistic rhythm. DISTILLE is conceived as a multilevel path for the viewer to navigate a contemporary reconfiguration of the book. It is not a recreation of the original narrative structure, nor does it use any of Flaubert’s language. Instead, it presents a constellation of images and scenes composed as an installation of evocative moments, impressions, and fragments—a remembering (re-membering) of the book in video, sound, photographs, objects, and scents, conjuring associations and poetic states without words. DISTILLE was sponsored by Harvestworks with funding from the Dew Foundation.

Sandra Binion is an interdisciplinary artist with training in classical ballet as well as fine arts. Binion began incorporating film and video into her performance pieces in the early 1980’s and soon decided to pursue an MFA in filmmaking from from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1992. Binion’s work has since underwent a further expansion in the early 2000s beginning a serious practice of painting and digital photography. Binion’s photographic work often focuses on details of surface, light, architecture and bodies—crystallizing, in a sense, the ongoing interests in site, space, gesture, and the choreography of the everyday. At present, video, photography, and painting have now become synergistic elements in multi-disciplinary thematic projects intended for exhibition.

SOUND OFF is a salon and concert series of sound art and experimental music curated by ((audience)). It is an intimate performance series that connects audiences with composers, musicians, artists, and one another. The SOUND OFF Project was funded by the Department of Cultural Affairs via Harvestworks.

((audience)) is dedicated to the advancement of aural arts by providing wide distribution and new contexts for works by emerging and established sound artists and composers.

“Cholera Nocebo” is a multi-media electro-acoustic performance presented at the Marrakech Biennale, Morocco. It is using prepared piano, autoharp, e-bow, multiple music boxes, computer, one bit synthesizers, Kaos pad and other sound objects. The 50 minute piece unfolds over a projected image of a car traveling thru darkness on the Long Island Expressway, ending in New York City in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. The piece provides an opportunity to work in an elastic form of composition that uses both predetermined sound programming and improvisation. Versions have previously been performed in Stockholm (Jan 2013), Istanbul (May 2013) and at the Lausanne Film Festival (Oct 2013). www.foetus.org

Natural Life, an experimental documentary installation produced in conjunction with the legal efforts of The Law Offices of Deborah LaBelle (LODL), challenges inequities in the juvenile justice system by depicting, through documentation and reenactment, the stories of five youths who received the most severe sentence available for convicted adults–a sentence of “natural life” or “life without parole”.

Tirtza Even is a practicing video artist and documentary maker for the past fifteen years. Even has produced both linear and interactive video work representing the less overt manifestations of complex and sometimes extreme social/political dynamics in specific locations (e.g.. Palestine, Turkey, Spain, the U.S.. and Germany, among others). Natural Life is  sponsored by Harvestworks with funds by the The Fledgling Fund.

BLUE MORPH is a site-specific interactive installation that uses nanoscale images and sounds derived from the metamorphosis of a chrysalis into a butterfly. Nanotechnology explorations are changing our perceptions of life in the world around us and this is symbolized by the newfound reality of the Blue Morpho butterfly. With the use of advanced optics it is recognized that the beautiful blue color of this butterfly is not pigment at all but rather patterns formed by nano. Blue Morpho has intrigued scientists for generations because of its subtle optical engineering that manipulate photons in amazing ways. The lamellate structure of their wing scales has been studied as a nanoscale model for the development of fabrics, dye-free paints, and anti-counterfeit technology such as that used in currency.

Victoria Vesna is a media artist and Professor at the UCLA Department of Design | Media Arts and Director of the Art|Sci center at the School of the Arts and California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI). She is currently a Visiting Professor and Director of Research at Parsons Art, Media + Technology, the New School for Design in New York and a senior researcher at IMeRA – Institut Mediterraneen de Recherches Avancees in Marseille, France and Artist in Residence at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Bristol.

DOCTOR NERVE is an eight-piece New York City band which injects the furious energy of rock into tightly composed contemporary music. The result is an intense and precise live show, infused with spontaneous improvisation and intricate counterpoint. DOCTOR NERVE has been annihilating the boundaries between metal, contemporary music, and improvisation since 1984. The band’s repertoire includes tightly composed, complex, fast-changing music, and is executed by a white-hot team of musicians, each of whom have carved out their own niches in New York City’s new music scene.

The Zappanale and More Festival has been celebrating the legacy of the music of composer Frank Zappa for over 20 years. Doctor Nerve’s music has been profoundly influenced by Zappa’s iconoclastic innovation, and has been active for over 25 years. This was a unique opportunity for Doctor Nerve to participate in an international community that shares deep roots.
http://www.zappanale.de/zappanale/en/zappanale-22/bands-mainstage/298-r-doctor-nerve.html

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Radio Landscapes is a series of radio documentaries that explore how landscape can make community, how communities are formed by history, circumstance and opportunity; how they are propelled to form creative collaborations and alliances; and what issues they now face. Radio Lanscapes Two (in New York) will be set on the Lower Manhattan landfill where Art On The Beach was created and performed. Interviewees will include performing artists and venues which were active in the 1980s and how they contributed to the present-day art scene globally. As a whole, the piece should shed light on the community as a whole as it began, and the contributions and contrasts which exist in the present day. Radio Landscapes One focussed on the San Ildefonso Pueblo during World War II, a time when Oppenheimer and the Los Alamos Lab were making the atomic bomb.

Central Park Sound Tunnel is an interactive sound installation that reflects the multi-faceted sonic landscape of Central Park, by using digital live alteration of the Delacourt Chimes and field recordings of Central Park. An array of six speakers installed on or near the ceiling of the pedestrian tunnel north of the Central Park Zoo, will take advantage of the bi-hourly Delacorte Clock Chimes to “compose” variations of the chimes and “sonic accompaniments” that dissipate over time. These accompaniments include a harmonic blend of environmental sounds such as horse hooves clopping, birds, chirping, playground sounds, or text articulated with chime rhythms. Each unique “performance” will last approximately up to 20 minutes, responding to sixteen different tunes of the Delacourt chimes which play over a period of 8 hours.

The R/nR is a room-sized musical instrument and multi-channel sound system designed for live interactive movement and sound performance, played by a combination of active and passive input from dancers, musicians and audience members. The R/nR will be set in a black box theater roughly 25′ x 30′ enclosure built of clear Plexiglas, with “in the round” seating on all sides. Created in collaboration with choreographer Daria Fain, poet/builder Robert Kocik, lighting designer Kryssy Wright and a cast of 5 dancers and 2 musicians, the R/nR will premiere in December 2008 as the performance setting for an evening-length dance work choreographed by Fain, called “The Extent to Which”.

A variety show and still-life, “It It and the Gimme Box” is a playful multi-channel video installation that toys with our object obsessed culture. “It It and the Gimme Box” is made up of five portraits of consumer objects, represented through video, song and viewer interaction. Five enclosed portals will be mounted around a gallery or (preferably) an empty retail space. They will extend from the wall’s surface, built for the viewer to partially enter. Each portal will contain a 12″ monitor and surround sound speaker installation. Incorporated into the design of each portal are explicit instructions for the viewer to perform a gesture (for example, “extend your arms forward”). Using movement sensors and Max/Jitter technology, this gesture triggers and sustains various video clips and acts as a form of “currency” between the viewer and the work.

Spook is a multimedia installation project that tells the true story of Armistead Lafayette’s experience as a double-agent for America’s first Director of Central Intelligence, George Washington. The installation consists of several media elements including film trailers, 3-D game graphics and 18th century images. These elements will be staged in combination, on three full-scale, “mock” film sets. The life-size tableaus, handmade and drawn by the artist, will render an immersive abstraction of the espionage landscape that James navigated en route to winning our freedom. This project was commissioned by Harvestworks and made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

“The Complete Victrola Sessions” is an interactive performance piece focusing on the allure and danger of addiction in the 1920s. The work for violin, piano, computer and video uses black and white silent film, neo-virtuoso and surreal music for violin and piano, together with video, musical and audio interfaces. Each section creates a story unique to the characters. Video, musical and audio interfaces are triggered by the performers along with a pre-recorded film creating the “actual” characters of the performance. This project was commissioned by Harvestworks and made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

“The Collapsing Wall”, a video installation, involves a series of war documentary film clips spanning from the early 20th century to the present. The presentation includes a series of synchronized video projections which create a monolithic video projection space. The Collapsing Wall attempts to interpret history and events as patterns. This project was commissioned by Harvestworks and made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Points of View is an interactive installation that displays three large flat-screens as faux-windows showing competing city and landscapes scenes of feeding frenzies, staged murders, and army maneuvers. These windows’ outdoor scenes are layered with internal/domestic scenes seen nightly in the reflections of the window panes. All three faux windows have movement sensors and a gun as input modules that trigger changes in the window scenarios. The windows meditate on the cyclical nature of life and demonstrate dualities in life. This project was commissioned by Harvestworks and made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

This continuously running audio/visual installation will interface a multi-channel audio diffusion system with a poetically and technologically reflexive visual environment (composed of sonified objects, photographs, and projected moving images). Both sonically and visually, the work aims to create purposefully “faulty” structures, built up into dense layers from a variety of sources. Audio recordings will document the specificity of objects as they are set into awkward motion. Through the use of Max/MSP-based generative sound processing programmed to arrive at an indeterminate sonic outcome, an aurality should occur that weaves playful connections between physical objects and their sonification. In addition, the tiny photographs and small video projections situated throughout the installation space will provide multiple, fragmented and flawed representations of the objects. With this movement and sketchy repetition of sound, object, and image in space a slippage of language and meaning occurs: one that encourages an exploration of a new logic of poetic (yet wordless) association.

Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger (O+A) will perform their composition, Requiem for fossil fuels, playing an 8-channel “Orchestra of Cities”, with Hai-Ting Chinn, mezzo soprano; Martha Cluver, soprano; John Young, tenor; and Joshua South, bass. Materials for Requiem for fossil fuels come from O+A’s “alphabet of sounds”. This collection of recordings is the result of an ongoing search for a “Hearing Perspective” of the sounds we make as a culture. Each section of Requiem for fossil fuels uses a location recording and its real-time flow as a cantus firmus. Over this cantus firmus, or baseline song, come soloistic voices of helicopters, jets, traffic, busses, horns, train wheels, footsteps of commuters, sirens: the found “Voices” of a fossil fueled culture organized as music. O+A have constructed this playable digital orchestra of extraordinary sonic voices extracted from cities around the world.

Requiem for fossil fuels is the culmination of twenty years of work by Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger, listening to and intervening in urban soundscapes. The duo makes large scale sound installations in public spaces by extracting the harmonic material from city noise, filtering it, shaping it, and playing it back. They distill this noise into rich, harmonious chords which transform the perception of space. “Requiem for Fossil Fuels” is presented by Ear to the Earth 2007 and produced by Electronic Music Foundation.

Squall [skwawl]-noun 1. a sudden, violent gust of wind, often accompanied by rain, snow, or sleet. 2. a sudden disturbance or commotion. 3.to blow as a squall. -Related forms 1. to cry or scream loudly and violently. 2. to utter in a screaming tone. Using improvisation with instruments, short wave radio, environmental field recordings and electronic transmissions, we, the duo Radio/Guitar, incorporate the surrounding sounds in daily life of the visible and invisible spectrums pulsing in the aural landscape and make music of these interactions. Our proposal is to travel to locations and record where there is drama in the weather and a resulting impact on the social landscape. This soundscape will be the basis for our studio recordings. Radio/Guitar consists of artists Peggy Ahwesh and Barbara Ess, who have produced film, digital media, photography and music. As a duo they mix noisy, unpredictable field recordings and electronic transmissions with instrumental improvisations to create rich soundscapes.

Cross Current Resonance Transducer stems from cross-pollination between LoVid (Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus) and Douglas Repetto. The work records natural signals using environmental sensors and present its raw form on lab equipment such as oscilloscopes, graphing calculators, and Geiger counters. Visitors will be able to manipulate signal paths, introduce distortion, mix signal sources, and process the original data through contemporary and vintage output devices including video monitors, pen plotters, hi-fi sound systems and as physical 3D sculptural objects.

“Drawn” is a concert-performance in which live painting is radically augmented in real time, creating a fictional world in which painted forms appear to come to life, rising themselves off the page and interacting with the outside world. The performance explores the musicality and immediacy of drawing by turning simple brushstrokes into complex and energetic life forms.

“The Light Bead Curtain” is an interactive musical installation that can be freely played by person’s touch. The installation takes the form of a beaded curtain, consisting of strings of simple clear beads that lights and emit a unique sound when touched.

“In The News” is a locative-based opera cued and performed on the cell phone. Users are summoned by a flashmob message. The server queries their cell phones to determine each person’s capability to allow everyone to participate. A sophisticated and interactive score generates cues and musical interludes from RSS newsfeeds that lead each singer through the piece.

“Open Currents” presents the World Ocean Database — a vast compilation of the oceanographic data for the Earth’s global circulation system recorded between 1800 and 2001 — as the numerical bases for a multi-channel sound and sculptural installation.

“TrombOrgan”, a wind instrument with both fixed-length and sliding, variable-length pipes; “HydroBot,” which takes advantage of the rich sonic qualities of metal combined with water; and “Gam-e-tron”, a robotic gamelan are three new robotic musical instrument and instrument groups created for LEMUR (League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots) offering new creative opportunities and experiences for performers, composers and audiences.

“Violet Fire”, mutimedia opera about pioneering inventor Nikola Telsa, combines music with a constant flow of multiple projections, dance and theatre. The opera brings to life Telsa’s extravagant imagination by pioneering minimalist composer Jon Gibson, a senior member of the Philip Glass Ensemble, to a libretto by writer and critic Miriam Seidel. Media elements designed by Sarah Drury and Jen Simmons, include voice-activated video projections that allow viewers to follow an emotional arc with Telsa, revisiting his greatest breakthoughts, confronting some of the darker implications of his work, and returning to his childhood wonder at the miracle of electricity.

LEMUR commissioned new work by composers Morton Subotnick and George Lewis for “Music for Robots”, an evening-length program of world premieres of contemporary music for robotic instruments. Subotnick is a pioneer in the development of electronic music and an innovator in interactive computer music systems. Lewis is an improviser-trombonist, composer and computer/installation artist who has explored electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, text-sound works, and notated forms. LEMUR’s growing ensemble includes: “GuiterBot”, comprised of four independently controlled strings units which can rapidly pick and slide; “ModBots”, miniature modular percussion robots that vary from singing bell bots to percussive “beater” bots; “TibetBot”, a robotically-controlled percussive instrument that created atonal rhythms and droning soundscapes; and “TrombOrgan”, a wind instrument with both fixed-length and robotically-controlled sliding, variable-length pipes.

“Beamed” is an interactive public art installation using advanced technologies to explore surveillance, mass entertainment, and their impact on contemporary life. Beamed turns a public space into an environment in which an unsuspecting individual encounters video and audio ‘apparitions’. In a Web-interface version, any individual can control the installation remotely via the Web, ironically simulating a video game, yet affecting real people in real time. In a live version, an actor hidden at the installation performs the characters improvising dialog and actions.

Inspired by a series of photographs and texts on hysteria published in an insane asylum in Paris in the 1870s under the title “Iconographie photographique de la Salpetriere”, Beloff explores the origins of narrative cinema in the psychological case history. The film focuses on the case of Augustine, the most famous star of the asylum. The film shows how her story can be considered a founding moment in the birth of narrative cinema and how notions of hysteria still haunt the cinema we know today.

“Memobile” (Memory and Mobile) is performance that explores the transition from a static to a nomadic life. Using interactive video and sound, Eng recreates the poetics of movement and one’s relation to space through symbols. Marcel Duchamp coined the name mobile in French, a pun that suggests both motion and motive for Alexandre Calder’s kinetic sculpture. Eng addresses these concepts to explain how one wanders from place to place to make sense of the world.

Reminiscence, Shreds of Memory (2002)
“Reminiscence, Shreds of Memory” is a mixed-media art which combines sculpture and audio to represent an often overlooked population in our society, the elderly. The installation consists of audio recordings of each participant, sculptures of the hands of senior citizens to which the artist adds wax, shredded paper, and images of participants printed on transparencies and embedded between two thin sheets of Plexiglas.

Bone: Uses Wrist Grab (2002)
This is the first album by guitarist Nick Didkovsky, bassist Hugh Hopper and drummer John Roulat, composed by Nick Didkovsky and Hugh Hopper. Electronics such as synth and tape loops, played by Hopper, and digitally based computer software instruments played by Didkovsky produce wailing, distorted guitars, and driving rhythms delineate compositions that are brilliantly constructed, compelling and concise.

The Influencing Machine of Miss Natalija A (2002)
An interactive video installaion inspired by the Vienese psychoanalyst Victor Tausk’s account of Miss Natalija A, who believed that her mind and body were being manipulated by a mysterious electrical apparatus operated secretly by physicians in Berlin. The installation consists of a large stereoscopic diagram simulating the “Influencing Machine”, placed on the floor. Inside it is a small frosted glass panel onto which video images are projected according to the participant’s interaction.

Kneepoleon (2002)
In this work, the vision of Napoleon is seen as Kneepoleon, a character devised entirely from the human knee down. The film is a fleeting series of flashbacks of moments of glory: the coronation, the many battles and marches, moments at sea, the snowy battles in Russia, Waterloo, and final exile in St Helena.

Ereia (2000)
Featuring compositions for ensemble and solo viola composed by Nick Didkovsky, Ereia was recorded live and in studio, composed in part by traditional means and in part computer generated, written to include complex composition as well as improvisation, and performed by a classical quartet and an orchestral-sized rock group.

Squared (2000)
A joint biography in the form of a cantata for live performance, narrated through video interviews, digital imagery and songs. The piece examines two very different cultural, political and personal histories, whose only conjunction seems a common surname, but which in fact, have striking correspondences. The music draws on the traditions of Welsh folk and choral music and African American church and jazz idioms.

The White Dove (2000)
A multimedia opera encompassing text, music, live performers, video images and electronic effects based on the life of visionary inventor Nikola Tesla (1856_1943). “The White Dove” uses new media technology to embody Tesla’s radical experimentialism. The libretto by Miriam Seidel emphasizes Tesla’s existence in an intensely creative, dreamlike state, as a pigeon he befriended in a New York park sings to him of nature’s secrets, as he moves through memory and reverie.

And the Other Replied (2000)
“And the Other Replied” is a sequel to “What is It Like To Be A Bat?”, which looks like high tech, rhythmically exotic punk trio with percussionist Danny Tunik. Both Kitty Brazelton and her collaborator Dafna Naphtali sing from startling 4-octive ranges, play electric guitars, and create cutting-edge computer music as well as challenging scores for traditionally instrumented chamber ensembles.

The Hudson River Radio Series (2000)
Ginger Miles received grant from New York Council for the Humanity to produce “The Hudson River Radio Series” for WNYC. The series included: “Women on the Hudson: A Profile of Lorena Hickockis”, “Hudson River Occupations: Profile of a Shad Fisherman on the Hudson”, “The Lower Manhattan Hudson: Meditations in an Emergency”, and “The Marriage of a Boat with Ecology on the Hudson: Pete Seeger”.