Faculty composer Joseph Klein will present an academic paper titled "Practical Applications of D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s On Growth and Form on Musical Materials and Structures" at the On Growth and Form Centenary Conference, 13-15 October 2017 at the University of St. Andrews (Scotland). The paper includes an analysis of three original compositions that are related to Thompson's research: the road in its unfoldings, Occam's Razor, and Interstices.
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Martin Back is currently involved in an ongoing collaboration with Sean Miller investigating how digital processes which simulate real-world phenomena can reify those phenomena when imprinted onto and/or coupled with physical materials. This work has and will continue to take the form of generative audio-visual installations and the production of objects made with computer controlled industrial tools, such as laser cutters and CNC routers. One of these works Diffusion Imprint has been recently featured in the End and the Beginning group show, curated by Danielle Avram, in the East/West Galleries at Texas Woman’s University, Denton, TX.
Marco Buongiorno Nardelli has started the miniature opera project from the idea of making space become an interactive score and of allowing the audience to create unique musical sequences by acting directly on a physical art piece. These installations are designed as a large interactive electronic “game boards” made of numerous “electronic tiles” that can be connected to each other in a completely reconfigurable way. Each tile contains a light sensor that triggers a unique sound event when covered. Among the electronic tiles, we place “word (or guide) tiles”, typically marked with specific words or characters’ names, to provide the participants with a stage for an operatic libretto. The audience is then invited to create connections between guide tiles by placing bean bags on the tiles of their choice, thus activating the light sensor circuit and starting the associated musical gesture. The miniature opera project installations are first and foremost “games” for the audience, whose reward is the creation of a unique piece of music that they will be able to bring home on their own portable device.
David Stout, Cory Metcalf, Reilly Donovan
Premiered at CURRENTS International New Media Festival
2017
Vesica Pisces is a hybrid virtual reality and multi-channel projected video installation that provides a speculative glimpse into an inter-dimensional state where the viewer-participant enters a world nested within a world within a world. The term, Vesica Pisces refers to a symbol made from two circles of the same radius, intersecting in such a way that the center of each circle rests on the perimeter of the other. The artist team of Donovan, Metcalf and Stout utilize generative techniques in realtime algorithmic image, sound and music synthesis to create a tangible experience that allows the viewer-participant to traverse liminal boundaries. The work is a continuum of the landscape tradition that explores classical figure ground relationships within a simulated environment that allows for powerfully visceral experiences including extreme fluctuations of scale revealing seemingly infinite heights and horizontal expanses. This vast scale is contrasted by moments of intimate interaction with impossibly small objects that are able to retract into, or emerge out of, a single point within the apparent fabric of reality.