Turbulence.org Presents Two World-Premiers at Issue Project Room: The Occupants by Stephan Moore + Moments of Inertia by R. Luke Dubois, with Todd Reynolds :: April 9, 2010; 8:00 pm :: Issue Project Room, At the Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor, Brooklyn, NY :: Admission: $10 — Tickets.

The Occupants — by Stephan Moore — is a generative composition with some aspects that can be influenced through single- or multi-user interaction. Moore has used the piece to search for answers to both profound and insipid questions, such as: What does it mean to compose a “site-specific” composition when the site is the internet? Can a generative algorithm be imparted with a sense of long-term form that is also not pre-determined? How successfully can humans be programmed to be good collaborators with software algorithms, towards the latters’ goals?

The Occupants is a long-term project that will eventually encompass multiple sub-compositional personalities. The premiere performance will focus on a single personality, i.e. the first occupant, with its (mostly) monophonic voice and (mostly) agreeable disposition. A number of copies of this personality will be distributed throughout Issue Project Room’s array of Hemisphere speakers and set loose to compose themselves.

Moore dedicates this concert to Suzanne Fiol.

Stephan Moore is a composer, performer, audio artist, and sound designer in New York City. His creative work centers around the collection and use of real-world sound, the creation and perception of sonic environments, and technological manifestations of improvisation and interactivity. Many of his performances and installation artworks make use of large, multi-channel arrays of his Hemisphere speakers. He performs regularly with Scott Smallwood in the electronic duo Evidence, and with a variety of musicians, live-video artists, and dancers. He has created custom music software for a number of composers and artists, and has taught college-level courses in composition, sound art and electronic music at several schools. He is currently the Sound Engineer and Music Coordinator of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and one of its core musicians.

Moments of Inertia by R. Luke DuBois, with Todd Reynolds (violin and electronics)

Moments of Inertia is an evening-length performance based on a teleological study of gesture in musical performance and how it relates to gesture in intimate social interaction. The work is written for solo violin with real-time computer accompaniment and video. Moments consists of twelve violin études — ranging from 3-5 minutes in length — each of which uses a different violin performance gesture as a control input for manipulating a short piece of high-speed film (300 frames-per-second) — of a person performing a social gesture. Taking its cue from principles in physics that determine an object’s resistance to change, the violinist’s gestures time-remap and scrub the video clip to explore the intricacies of the performed action.

R. Luke DuBois is a composer, artist, and performer who explores the temporal, verbal, and visual structures of cultural and personal ephemera. He holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University, and has lectured and taught worldwide on interactive sound and video performance. He has collaborated on interactive performance, installation, and music production work with many artists and organizations including Toni Dove, Matthew Ritchie, Todd Reynolds, Michael Joaquin Grey, Elliott Sharp, Michael Gordon, Bang on a Can, Engine27, Harvestworks, and LEMUR, and was the director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra for its 2007 season. Exhibitions of his work include: the Insitut Valencià d’Art Modern, Spain; 2008 Democratic National Convention, Denver; Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis; San Jose Museum of Art; National Constitution Center, Philadelphia; Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art, Daelim Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul; 2007 Sundance Film Festival; and the Sydney Film Festival. An active visual and musical collaborator, DuBois is the co-author of Jitter, a software suite for the real-time manipulation of matrix data.

CREDITS

The Occupants is a commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence.org website. It is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Moments of Inertia is a commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence.org website. It was commissioned through Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program, which is made possible by the generous support of the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Ford Foundation, the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Helen F. Whitaker Fund.