(note: most video recordings are of substantially lower quality than in reality!)
Oscillioscope 3D
live A/V performance system
Three sine waves generate XYZ coordinates. Nothing else. Click through to vimeo to see the HD version.
Inspired by the work of Ray Sweeten and Zach Layton
Industry 3D
live A/V performance system
Based on photos from my visit to the Vitkovice Industrial Heritage Site, Ostrava, Czech Republic.
Installation for Welcome Sound
generative A/V installation, with Victoria Estok
Installation, for wooden structure, generative video for 3D glasses, and audio played through resonating physical objects. Exhibited at Welcome Sound, a town-wide opening of homes to public sound installations, Roosevelt, NJ, May 2009.
City Sonata 3D
live A/V performance system
City Sonata 3D began as a mixture of a previous live performance system, and a desire to create a new mode of video interaction suited specifically to 3D. I wanted to make connections between audio and video as explicit as possible, at least at the start. For the “city” portions, audio elements created on the fly (sequences of samples, synthesizers, drums, etc) are mapped to city elements (buildings, mailboxes, lampposts, etc), to create a unified audio & video rhythm. These relations become strained in the middle, more abstract portion, in which shape size and position are mapped to less tangible audio parameters.
Phase Vidcoder
live A/V performance system for dance
This performance, with dancer and choreographer Tze Chun consists of several short dance phrases with music. Each is recorded and then played back in multiple streams. The playback (in which audio and video remain tied to one another temporally) is improvisationally controlled with patterns of skips, displacements, etc. This yields a range of possible fragmentary, looping, and polyphonic effects, which Tze explored to find movements specifically suited to each.
Premiered by Tze Chun, CSV Cultural Center, 2008
Contrapositive Antidote
concert work for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, live electronics, and live 3D video
In Contrapositive Antidote, audio characteristics control video parameters.
Premiered by the Talea Ensemble, Music with a View Series @ the Flea Theater, 2008
Ghost Jockey
generative A/V installation
An automation of a performance system, this creates a continual stream of mashed up music and video out of music samples and their accompanying music videos. The relative ease with which a computer subsumes the role of DJ and VJ comments upon the lack of originality required to make interesting non-hierarchal collage.
Ghost Jockey 3D
generative A/V installation
A version of the above, with video analysis creating shapes to pull “forward”.
Bin 3D
generative A/V installation
Bin 3D is an amalgam of several of my previous A/V works. Visually, slices of the videos are interspersed by a complex rhythm of moving screens. Then a system of spatial repositioning (first occurring around 1:3) is repeatedly added and withdrawn. The parameters of these repositionings are also mapped onto the audio, chaotically altering the displacement of different frequency ranges. On all of this, a slowly moving pattern of 3D rectangles highlights the surface nature of the work.
DX-Heaven
generative A/V installation
I was invited to create a new work for the group show BITMAP:As Good As New, featuring artists repurposing antiquated technology. DX-Heaven is an installation celebrating the (in)famous DX-7 synthesizer (“the synthesizer that launched the 80s”). It generates a continuous stream of musical information, which is realized simultaneously on the DX-7, and as scrolling ASCII-character video. The vertical-scrolling of the installation is an intentional evocation of early music sequencing softwares (trackers), and the whole setup is a nostalgic glimpse at what I (and many other young composers) first used in their childhood bedrooms circa the late 80’s through mid 90’s.
The Draftmasters
live video system for printer performers
The Draftmasters (Victor Adan and Jeff Snyder), performing live on hacked pen-plotter printers. I take their two video streams, and run analysis on it to create a 3D video in real time. Click through to vimeo for the HD version
Foniesin Anteconcert uses a variety of processes to shuffle, interpolate, loop, reconfigure, and generally fragment a piece of source material (here, the paragon of a classical form). This is an attempt to distill out the building blocks of a particular musical language through minimalistic means (repetition, phase shifting, etc); these elements are scattered by chaotic transformations, each veering in and out of intelligibility. In this case, the result is a sharp divide; we hear the flowing nature of the original without its forward tonal motion. Groups of instruments extract spectra and tonalities without rhythms; others distort rhythms and tonalities away from the original. The overall effect makes the style and syntax of the original tangible though obscured, creating a whole new experience through cubist obliteration.
Premiered by the Ostravska Banda, Ostrava Days Festival, Summer 2009
Hard Square
for percussion quartet (2 sample pads, vibraphone, temple blocks, and sampler)
Hard Square is a fantasy on the link between the means and result of electronic music hardware. Itis a programmatic progression through homogenous families of sounds. The sounds are played simultaneously with their decomposition into pitched and non-pitched componenets, reflected by the vibraphone and wood blocks.
Premiered by So Percussion, Roulette, Spring 2009
Renegotiation
for flute, clarinet, horn, trumpet, violin, viola, cello, piano, and electronic percussion
Renegotiation combines the sounds of city ambiences along with varying degrees of instrumental reductions of those sounds. Decide amongst the city's chaos, the instrument's intention, and the sine wave's constancy.
Premiered by the International Contemporary Ensemble, Merkin Hall, 2008;
Excerpt from Out and About
for tape, with dancers
This work (total duration 26 minutes) was commissioned by the Tze Chun Dance Company for 5 dancers. In it, they portray a night out in New York, aurally relflected by many different means and sound sources. The choreographer works in larger themes of identity, socializing and drunkenness, and the social, technological, and political isolation of today’s youth.
Premiered by the Tze Chun Dance Company, CSV Cultural Center, 2008
Mashup aka Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?
for electronic percussion and tape, with dancers
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photo-Paula Court
Commissioned by the Armitage Gone! Dance Company, for premiere along revivals of her (Karole Armitage's) early “punk” works. She wanted a new piece that could reflect on the time that has passed between then and now, regarding issues such as commercialism, borrowing, destruction versus creation, and today’s musical outlets for youthful energy. It is built from samples of Mozart and (70’s British Punk Band) X-Ray Spex, along with a dash of Game Boy synthesizers. Premiered at The Kitchen, March 2009
Premiered by the Armitage Gone! Dance Company, The Kitchen, 2009
Transfaction
for string quartet and live electronics
Instead of using electronics to abstract a sound into the unrecognizable, Transfaction reinforces and expands the instruments only by applying a range of transpositions. This reproduces each instrument's sound as a variety of different possible chords, spectra, clusters, and so on. Through this method, the instrumental part becomes the foundation for an extra dimension of compositional choices.
Premiered by the Allsar Quartet, Rose Studio at Lincoln Center, 2006
