Browse Items (868 total)

• Protect Your Domain Name

  Protect Your Domain Name was commissioned by the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication for a conference on business communication. Poet Ava Haymon collaborated with the conception of the work, contributing found techno-babble from the World Wide Web, and excerpts from her poem “The Word”, which parodies the use and misuse of language for religious and political discourse. Protect Your Domain Name raises the issues of identity and anonymity on the internet, and the embodiment and manipulation of meaning within words that are both conversant and unspeakable.
  
  The music/sound design of the piece took recitations by Ms. Haymon of the found techno-babble and recomposed their temporal, spectral and pitch contours. The transformations were done independent of one another and then assembled in collaboration with animator Michael Daugherty. The interaction between sound and image was organically derived through a regular interchange between artist and composer. All of the sounds were derived from those recordings.

• Prism

  An interactive acoustic piece for pianist, Disklavier, and Max

• Primary Experience C

  Electro-acoustic piece composed using primtive tape techniques and recordings of children. Early tape music piece using sounds of children composed at the University of Oregon.

• Primary Experience B

  Electro-acoustic piece composed using primtive tape techniques and recordings of children. Early tape music piece using sounds of children composed at the University of Oregon.

• Primary experience A

  Electro-acoustic piece composed using primtive tape techniques and recordings of children. Early tape music piece using sounds of children composed at the University of Oregon.

• Premonitions, Landscape at Twilight for electronic fixed media

  Premonitions, Landscape at Twilight for electronic fixed media (2017) is based upon Salvador Dali’s pastoral, Spider of the Evening (1940). In this work we see the painter’s signature depiction of misshapen figures: a stretched female nude, a molten cello, and a softened airplane; each of which have lost their familiar rigidity, existing beyond the boundaries of conscious reality. These are cast before long shadows in an arid landscape at sundown. Amidst the leafless olive tree, the weeping cherub, and the two lonesome figures dancing a dispirited Spanish sardana, we are witness to a scene that is both apocalyptic and tragic. Salvador Dali drew from French peasant folklore which claims that the sight of a spider in the evening was auspicious, a sign that must have filled the artist with the hope for a speedy end to armed conflict. However, history shows that the war was still to proceed for another five tumultuous years, the worst of the devastation yet to unfold.

  In our time, the U.S. has been at war continuously for numerous years. Although much has been done to dominate and suppress our adversaries to preserve our way of life, much has also been spent in the cost to life, limb, peace of mind, and property for an incalculable many along the way. In our time, there is talk of endless war. In our time, there are those who wield great power and influence to profit from the pursuit of war at the expense of untold others. There are never any easy solutions to dire political conflicts, but there are arguably far fewer persuasive justifications for the scale of terror and destruction that affects innocent, vulnerable lives as a consequence of war.

  The recorded cello samples featured in Premonitions, Landscape at Twilight were drawn from an improvisation by Noah Johnson at the Dancz Center of New Music, Hugh Hogdson School of Music, University of Georgia, Athens, on 08MAY17.

  Note: It is recommended, but not required, to project an image of Dali’s Spider of the Evening during playback of the work in a darkened hall.

• Prayer Flags

• Pranayama

  for fixed media with optional video

• Post-Apocalyptic Biscuit

  Post-Apocalyptic Biscuit, jawbreaker, sea biscuit or Hardtack as it was commonly known. This biscuit, made of three ingredients was rationed out to soldiers in the American Civil War as well as other soldiers and sailors in various Countries throughout history. It will last a very long time, at least 20 years. This was what there was left to eat after the apocalypse.
  
  “Post-Apocalyptic Biscuit” (2020) is for Buchla 200, Electric Music Easel, Voice, and a variety of post-processing digital algorithmic plug-ins. The work is my response to the Strange Times that we are living through; especially the dark political tragedies playing out around the world, along with the horrific pandemic, and the subsequent self-isolation that we must all endure; a cautionary tale. The structure of the work follows this pattern of variants:
  
  “Post-Apocalyptic Biscuit” (8:12)
  Variants: I , III, IV, VI, VII, IX
  Watchtower
  Cathedral of the Winds
  Wailing at the Wall
  Bones
  Klangs & Drones
  Reminiscence

• Playing Fields