Some upcoming events that I’m involved with:
- July 29-31 (Thursday-Saturday) Odd Act presents Peter Pan at the Paul Robeson Center for the Arts, Princeton, NJ
- They’ve borrowed a bunch of my homemade instruments for this musical adaptation of Peter Pan. I’ll be there for the Thursday night show!
- September 19 (Sunday noon-6pm) Move About Myrtle Festival along Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn, between Clermont Ave & Hall St.
- The Case of the Curious Pedestrian is a one-day exhibition of performance art and ephemeral installations as part of the Myrtle neighborhood festival. I’ll be hiding a bunch of little mechanical music machines along (above) the avenue- can you find them all?
- August 2010-June 2011 Wind through the Trees – an outdoor sculpture exhibition of sound & motion at Jenkins Arboretum, Devon, PA
- I’ve got two pieces in this show of environmental and kinetic sculpture – good old Trumpet Marine and a new one, Spiracles, that’ll twist its way all the way up into the treetops. The opening party will be the evening of Saturday October 2.
- September 23-26 Festival of Music for People and Thingamajigs, Oakland, CA.
- This year I’m helping to curate this festival of handmade instruments and alternate tunings, but I’ll probably have some sort of noisemaker in there too!
- January 20-30, 2011 Pulse Art and Technology Festival, Telfair Museum of Art,, Savannah, GA
- I’ll be conducting some instrument-building workshops, and possibly performing. Don’t know the exact dates yet.
- January 24-February 25, 2011 Artistic Mediums at the New Art Center, Newton, MA.
- My sound and micro-radio installation Songs from the Portugese will be part of this exhibit about mysterious phenomena and things that go bump in the night
…and maybe some other stuff.
Motherboard tv was kind enough to ask me to make a music machine for them. Here’s their video of the process!
Noise Carnival is my sound sculpture/music machine with Nick Yulman, permanently installed at Coney Island USA – Coney Island’s combination history & art museum, sideshow, and bar.
The machine has three parts, though we may add more in the future: a bass guitar, a xylophone, and a percussion section. I recently wired it up to play a short tune whenever someone drops a coin into nearby donation funnel. As you add more coins, it adds more layers to the tunes.
We want to invite composers to create new original mini-tunes for the machine. Here’s information about how to write music for Noise Carnival! We’re also interested in proposals for live performances incorporating the machine – all the parts can be played live through midi.
(more…)
My little toy piano robot survived about 20 straight hours of playing “Vexations” (see previous coverage). Though I did find a few retaining nuts in the bottom of the case that had been shaken loose by all the vexing. You can see & hear an excerpt from the performance on ustream.
I spent a few hours listening to the audio streams from both the robot performance and the human Vexations marathon in Seattle. It was kind of eerie and kind of comforting. What was it like? Like this: [19 minute mp3]
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The human and robot performances were mentioned in Seattle’s weekly, The Stranger, here and here.
“In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities.”
In the 1890s, Erik Satie wrote a very short piece called Vexations, with a note suggesting that it should be played 840 times in a row. That’s a challenge, right? Jack Straw Productions in Seattle is putting on a Vexations marathon this weekend, starting Saturday at 4pm Pacific time, with more than 30 pianists playing non-stop through the night until they reach #840, and you can listen in on Hollow Earth Radio. It’s a great idea, but we have machines to do our dirty work for us, so the robot toy piano is going to play Vexations at NYC Resistor 840 times, or until it falls apart. It’ll start at 7PM (Eastern time) this Saturday, and you can watch and listen online, or in person on Saturday at the Halfway-to-Halloween Party, or on Sunday at the Vexations Meetup & Jam Session.
Yes, on Sunday (May 16) from 3-6PM, join other music nerds to jam along to Vexations until your head explodes, or we reach #840, whichever comes first. Bring instruments if you want. (Bring your own 1/4″ cables, if your instrument is electronic. Inputs are limited so if you can bring a small mixer to share, that would help!) Feel free to bring vexing drinks or snacks to share. NYC Resistor is at 87 3rd Avenue, 4th Floor, in Brooklyn.
As long as you’re in the neighborhood on Sunday, consider going to Share at ISSUE Project Room (3rd Av & 3rd St), a weekly open jam session for experimental music! When we get sick of Vexations, we’ll take a dinner break and head over there.
A bunch of my handmade instruments from the Noisy Noises project are going to be exhibited as part of the Scrapcycle show at Devotion Gallery through the end of May. The show opens on Friday May 7th, and the Glass Bees and I will be performing at the opening around 8pm! Bring a used plastic water bottle to barter for admission.
Asami Tamura and I are performing as part of the Music with a View Mini-Marathon at the Flea this Sunday in Tribeca. The show is from 3-6, and it’s free! It should be fun and noisy.
Oh, look! Jason and Chris of the Glass Bees posted audio files from our performance at Barbes in March! You can listen here, or go over there where there’s pictures and brief descriptions of each of the pieces.
Blinky
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Gongs-O
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The Toy Factory at Midnight
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Older PostsNewer Posts
>>> more photos on flickr
