Browse Items (868 total)

• Infernum: Images from the Solar Dynamic Observatory

  While Infernum is 100% an electronic work, its surface texture recalls acoustic instruments in real spaces — transformed and heightened in ways only possible through digital means. Fleeting moments of nervous calm alternate with a terrifying wall of brass glissandi (up to 60 trombones!), creating the effect of a fear-response oscillating between the conscious and subconscious.

• Amplifying Altitude

  site-specific, multi-channel, immersive installation

• Moment of First Awakening

  In the spring of 1985, conductor Clive Wearing suffered from a virus that attacked his brain’s ability to form short-term memories. He was left with less than 2 minutes of recall at any given time.
  
  To this day, Clive keeps a journal in a stilted attempt to record his existence:
  
  8:31 AM: Now I am really, completely awake.
  9:06 AM: Now I am perfectly, overwhelmingly awake.
  9:34 AM: Now I am superlatively, actually awake.
  
  Clive lives in a perpetual state of temporary standby. His entire awareness is limited to a tiny window of time — a momentary gap that creates for him a continuous moment of first awakening.

• Interlude

• Sonification Study No. 1: Music from the Isomer Project

  By deconstructing the sonic features of a recorded sound and applying a model-based musical framework to the result, it’s possible to re-imagine the original audio in an instrumental context.
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  Hollis Wittman- NIME Introduction

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  Midwest Archives Conference 2022 Poster

  This item was presented as a physical poster, 24"x36", at the 2022 Midwest Archives Conference (MAC). The physical item is held by the creator.

• Hazy Moonlight

  "Hazy Moonlight for soprano saxophone, percussion, and electroacoustics takes its inspiration from five haiku by poet Wally Swist:
  
  thistledown seeds the falls
  a full moon shatters
  into stars
  
  slipping through moonlight
  a waterthrush rushes
  rock to rock
  
  cloud wisps across the moon
  gusts of rain patter among
  piles of fallen leaves
  
  bracing the chill
  moonlight rushes
  in the icy river
  
  mountain laurel blossoms
  a luminous moth
  ascends into moonlight
  
  Swist’s vivid scenes depict the moon’s appearance across the seasons, creating an organic foundation for the work’s structure and soundscape. The instrumentalists’ virtuosic foray through Swist’s evocative work conjure varied images of the moon as a brilliant force, a mysterious beacon, and a luminous orb. Hazy Moonlight was commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University for the Bent Frequency Duo, and is dedicated to both with admiration and appreciation. The haiku appear with the author’s permission and are published in Modern Haiku, The Silence Between Us (Taylorville, IL: Brooks Books, 2005), and The Windbreak Pine (Ormskirk, UK: Snapshot Press, 2016.)"

• Plasticine

  Plasticine explores the organic and gestural aspects as well as the semi-chaotic and generative possibilities afforded by modular synthesis, specifically the Eurorack format, in the context of electroacoustic composition. The plasticity and malleability of sound, space, and motion is a central theme to the composition. The piece focuses on the juxtaposition of abstract synthesized sounds and natural sound textures.

• I stood on the shore and looked up at the birds

  Ten years before composing "I stood on the shore and looked up at the birds", I composed my Trio, for violin, piano, and percussion (plus electronics) for Toronto’s Arraymusic Ensemble. I developed several important compositional practices during my work on that piece that I still employ today, one of which is my approach to combining electronic sounds with live performers. In my Trio, the electronics are fairly sparse, consisting entirely of a few sustained tones that support the instrumentalists and help to define the formal structure. Although electronics are often more significantly audible in many of my works, the relationship between performers and electronic sounds, which places a more significant emphasis on the acoustic sounds made by performers, has remained fairly consistent.
  
  I composed the Trio at an important transitional period in my life, right as I started my first academic position and shortly after getting married and finishing my Ph.D. For whatever reason, I found myself thinking about that time and composing the Trio while I was working on I stood on the shore and looked up at the birds, and so as a kind of homage to myself I decided to blatantly rip off the technique I first developed for the Trio of dropping in a couple of sustained sounds to help differentiate form. I stood on the shore and looked up at the birds was composed in fall/ winter 2013-14.