2016 Artists – New Media Art & Sound Summit

Tarana is Ravish Momin (drums, electronics) & Rick Parker (Trombone)

Ravish Momin, Drummer, Composer

11:00pm Friday 6/24/2016

Ravish Momin is a versatile percussionist/composer/electronic musician and composer currently residing in New York City. He has performed and recorded with artists as diverse as pop-star Shakira and legendary AACM saxophonist Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre. He started performing and recording with his own shape-shifting band Tarana in 2004.
Amongst Tarana‘s highlights, they have performed at MOD: Encuentros de Musica Electronica Viva (Mexico City, 2015), Unyazi Festival of Electronic Music (Johannesburg, South Africa, 2014), Columbia University (New York City, 2014), The Mexico City Sound Encounter (Mexico, 2013), Kaunas Jazz Festival (Kaunas, Lithuania, 2012), The San Servolo Jazz Festival (Venezia, Italy, 2010), The Calgary Jazz Festival (Canada, 2009), Jazz Lent (Maribor, Slovenia, 2009), Cultural Festival Zacatecas (Mexico 2009), Jazz Ao Centro Festival (Coimbra, Portugal, 2008.) Mediawave Festival (Hungary, 2006), the Jazzin’ Tondela (Portugal, 2005), the prestigious Smithsonian Institution’s Freer Gallery (Washington, DC, 2005), the New Music Circle (St. Louis, MO, 2005), 9th Annual Asian American Jazz Festival (Chicago, IL, 2004), the Taipei Arts Festival (Taiwan, 2004), amongst other performances. They have extensively toured China in 2010 and the UK in 2008 as well. They’ve performed on multiple occasions at the Rubin Museum of Art (New York, NY), the Yardbird Suite Jazz Club (Edmonton, Canada), and the Detroit Institute of Art. They have also been recently featured in Vice|Thump, TimeOUT Magazines (London, Lisbon, HongKong and Chicago), ‘Village Voice’ (New York), ‘Jazz.pt (Portugal), ‘JazzImprov’ (France), Redstar Magazine (China) amongst various other domestic and international publications.

They had released a critically acclaimed debut entitled “Climbing the Banyan Tree” in 2004, on the Portugal-based CleanFeed Record Label. Of their debut CD, AllAboutJazz.com had said: “It is fair to say that Trio Tarana is without precedent in the world of improvised music. A true synthesis of North African, South and East Asian motifs with classical organization and the immediacy of free improvisation has probably not existed prior to “Climbing the Banyan Tree.” Their follow-up CD, “Miren” (2007) was also very well-received. They released a critically acclaimed full-length album entitled “A Fire of Flowers Grows Around Us.” September 2015 on the Swiss-based Wondermachine Records.

As a side-man, he has also toured and recorded with saxophonists Sabir Mateen and Peter Epstein, guitarist Brad Shepik, bassists Wilber Morris and William Parker, violinists Billy Bang, Jason Kao Hwang, percussionist Susie Ibarra, trumpeters Roy Campbell and Raphe Malik, and Pianist Ursel Schlicht’s Ex Tempore.
He has also worked with Hip-Hop artist Alap Momin (from Dalek), toured with the rock band Fulton Lights, and has recorded for the CleanFeed, Delmark, NuBop, CIMP, Entropy Stereo, BlueRegard, Plasma Torus and Wondermachine record labels.

Rick Parker, Trombonist, Composer

Combining jazz, experimental, electronic and rock, Rick Parker casts a broad net with his trombone playing augmented by electronics and synthesizers. His music is “anexpressive new-breed fusion, informed by a few generations of downtown experimentation.” Nate Chinen, New York Times, and his sound described as “a seductive, burnished tone that’s animated by conversational improvisations.” John Murph, Downbeat Magazine.

Parker has resided in New York City since 2001 when he began studies for a masters in jazz performance and composition at NYU. He has worked with a large cross section of notable musicians and groups including Tim Berne, Mingus Big Band, Darcy James Argue Secret Society, Charli Persip, Frank Lacy, Super Hi-Fi, Tim Kuhl, Beninghove’s Hangmen, Cage the Elephant, hip hop legends the Wu Tang Clan and DMC and mexican pop stars Ximena Sariñana and Natalia LaFourcade. Since 2012 he has been a member of Ravish Momin’s Tarana, performing at festivals, universities and major concerts in USA, Mexico and Europe. Parker’s innovative use of electronics with the trombone have allowed him to cross through many musical genres and even garnered the attention of manufacturers Electroharmonix and Eventide with whom he has consulted on the development of new pedals and effects.

As a bandleader, Rick Parker’s music traverses multiple cultures and musical genres. His jazz quintet, The Rick Parker Collective, has released two albums on Fresh Sound New Talent and WJF records. Parker also has two albums with Little Worlds, a collaboration that ventures into the music of classical composer Bela Bartok. 9 Volt, with Israeli guitarist Eyal Maoz, is a brash experimental jazz/rock trio, whose debut album on OutNow Recordings featured Tim Berne. Alongside Mexican musicians Hernan Hecht and Mark Aanderud, the band 4Limones has toured the USA and Mexico. Most recently, Parker has entered into a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Li Daiguo (cello, pipa, throat singing, beatboxing).

Parker has performed at major venues and festivals across Asia, Europe, North and South America including the Montreal Jazz Festival, Montreux Jazz Fest, Blue Note, Jazz Standard, Blues Alley, the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center. Parker was twice honored with an ASCAP Young Jazz Composer award and frequently arranges music for rock/pop groups and jazz big band.

I Speak Machine
3:00pm Saturday 6/25/2016

I Speak Machine are vocalist/composer Tara Busch and filmmaker Maf Lewis. Together they make brooding soundtracks and horror/sci-fi films, creating audio and visual in unison and giving both elements equal prominence. Their short films include the UK filmed sci-fi thriller “The Silence,” ghost horror short “Gagglebox,” and their newest creation, “Zombies 1985” – a blood-drenched period zombie piece shot in Los Angeles. The soundtrack to “The Silence” was released in 2015 on Lex Records on limited edition vinyl and digital download. 2015 saw I Speak Machine performing UK/ EU dates plus supporting the legendary Gary Numan during his 3 night residency at the Teragram Ballroom in LA and The Forum in London. I Speak Machine are currently working on the groundbreaking graphic novel and feature film “STRATA,” with comic book legend Tommy Lee Edwards, Lex Records, Penguin/ Random House and Google.

I Speak Machine will be screening their sci-fi horror short films THE SILENCE, GAGGLEBOX & ZOMBIES 1985 with live electronic score, as well as some special one-off pieces created just for NMASS.

(related live links on youtube 1 , 2 )

Sound Cycle
9:00am Sunday 6/26/2016

Organized by Austin based composer and performer Laura Brackney and George Pasterk, Creative Director of COTFG and co-curator of NMASS, the 2016 New Media Art and Sound Summit (NMASS) Sound Cycle will be a site specific sound installation performed by interested cyclists following a planned route throughout the city of Austin, Texas. Participants will play one of four prepared tracks via bike speakers, boomboxes, or mobile devices and portable speakers. The shifting position of each rider/performer within the group creates an ever-changing rotational aural effect. Volunteers will lead and close the group as we navigate the city with a large mass of bikers moving as a single unit.

The theme of this sound installation seeks to explore location and perception of environment, dislocation and serendipitous occurrences. It is our goal to present an imaginary landscape consisting of shifting pieces that our collaborators believe represent the sonic identity of their location.

To participate please download one track from the event’s Soundcloud page. During the ride play your track through the device of your choice. In the past riders have used bluetooth speakers, cassettes and boomboxes, aux inputs and phones with empty cups as resonators. Be creative, every new innovation adds to the experience!

Note: Coffee and breakfast tacos will be available at SVT starting at 9 AM before leaving on the bike ride. Feel free to bring other beverages or treats to share.

Start: 9:00 AM – SVT 2803 Manor Road, Austin TX 78722
End: 10:45 AM – SVT 2803 Manor Road, Austin TX 78722
Map: Link to probable route

Duration: About 6 miles & 45 minutes. This is a no drop ride, no one will be left behind. If you have any questions please email laura(dot)cotfg(at)gmail(dot)com or george(dot)cotfg(at)gmail(dot)com. Thank you!

Safety Guidelines: We cannot be held liable for personal injury or other such accidents. Riding as a single large group will give us more visibility than the average cyclist, but not all vehicles on the road are cyclist-friendly. We will follow designated leaders, stop at all stop signs and red lights, and wait for the cyclists at the back of the group. Don’t forget to bring your helmets and bike lights! Stay hydrated!!!

GABI
10:00pm Friday 6/24/2016

Gabrielle‘s formal training began at an early age, studying Balinese dance and gamelan in Indonesia while learning both the clarinet and piano. Herbst continued her training at Bard College where she studied voice and composition under the tutelage of Joan Tower, Zeena Parkins and Marina Rosenfeld. Her work has already been showcased at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, as well as Roulette, who in 2014 commissioned and premiered her first opera, Bodiless.

Herbst’s experience writing for chamber orchestra and mixed instrumentation inspired her to develop a repertoire of short-form, vocal-centric compositions under the name GABI. These were driven by solitary explorations in early 2013 with a dual-track loop pedal. The nine songs composed for Sympathy embrace the vast potential of the human voice as instrument, story, and landscape.

Her 2015 album, Sympathy was recorded in the studio where she was joined by her band Matthew O’Koren (percussion), Rick Quantz (viola), Josh Henderson (violin), and Aaron Roche (electric guitar / trombone). With production by Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never) and Paul Corley (Oneohtrix Point Never, Tim Hecker, Ben Frost), these open-ended sessions yielded a suite of compositions that capture that Gabrielle’s metamorphosis into GABI via an intimate exploration along the edges of song-form.

(related press via Noisey | video on youtube | review in Pitchfork)

Dana Lyn + Kyle Sanna + Alon Ilsar trio
9:00pm Saturday, 6/25/2016

Brooklyn-based Multi-instrumentalist and composer Dana Lyn is at home in multiple musical worlds, ranging from classical to folk, contemporary and improvisatory music. She has worked and performed with Grammy Award-winning vocalist Susan McKeown; Tony Award-winning musician and playwright Stew; Irish poet Louis de Paor; actor-director Ethan Hawke; performance artist Taylor Mac; D’Angelo and the Vanguard, Florence and the Machine, Will Oldham, and the Elysian Fields, among others. As a composer, Lyn has received commissions from the Brooklyn Rider, the Apple Hill String Quartet and the New Orchestra of Washington, and she leads a number of her own projects, including her quintet, Mother Octopus, and Slim Bone Head Volt, a spoken-word collaboration with actor Vincent D’Onofrio.

Guitarist, composer, and producer Kyle Sanna works in a variety of musical idioms and, most often, in the spaces between them. He is a gifted collaborator, drawing on his trusted sensibilities and a wealth of musical knowledge to work with singer-led bands, classically-trained instrumentalists, jazz musicians and improvisers, as well as with choreographers, filmmakers, and theater directors. Kyle has collaborated with and performed alongside many of today’s virtuosos (Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, Mark Gould, Theodosii Spassov), with some of the greatest living interpreters of Irish music (Kevin Burke, Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill), and with many members of New York’s experimental scene. He has performed his original music throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East. He has received commissions from Beta Collide, Brooklyn Rider, the Knights, and flutist Alex Sopp. Festival acceptances include the International Symposium on Electronic Art (Sydney), the Irish Sound, Science, and Technology Convocation (Dublin), The Oregon Bach Festival, and Art Basel Miami Beach. He is a Meet the Composer grant recipient and was a Finalist in the Turner Classic Movies’ Young Film Composers Competition. His first video work, “LULLABY”, was a finalist in the Fresh Minds Festival (Texas A&M University).

Alon Ilsar is a Sydney based drummer, composer, sound designer and instrument designer. He is currently designing a new interface for electronic percussionists called the AirSticks, using the instrument in projects such as The Sticks, Silent Spring, Malarkey, Kirin J Callinan and Brian Campeau. He has also been heavily involved in theatre and film as drummer, composer and sound designer. His diverse projects include Keating! the Musical, Eddie Perfect, Meow Meow, Tim Minchin, Circus Monoxide, Zohar’s Nigun, Aronas, Captain Kirkwood, The Colors Tribute Band, Gauche, Trigger Happy and Darth Vegas. Most recently he underscored the STC production of ‘Mojo’ on solo drum kit and Scottish production ‘Kind of Silence’ on AirSticks and drum kit.

(related videos: Dana, Kyle, Alon)

Sarah Hennies
7:00pm Saturday 6/25/2016

Sarah Hennies (b. 1979, Louisville, KY) is a percussionist and composer currently residing in Ithaca, NY. Her work is primarily concerned with an immersive, psychoacoustic presentation of sound brought about by an often grueling, endurance-based performance practice that Nathan Thomas of Fluid Radio described as “a highly sophisticated and refined performance technique…that starts and ends with listening and encourages a different way of listening from its audience.” She received her M.A. in percussion from the University of California-San Diego in 2003 where she studied with renowned percussionist Steven Schick, and is currently a member of Meridian, a percussion trio with Tim Feeney and Greg Stuart. Prior to relocating to Ithaca, Hennies was based in Austin, TX, for ten years where she performed with the Austin New Music Co-op, The Weird Weeds and a variety of other projects.

In 2013 Hennies also founded the record label Weighter Recordings for releasing her own work and other new and unusual music by living composers.

Stine Janvin Motland

8:00pm Friday 6/24/2016

Stavanger born, Berlin based vocalist Stine Janvin Motland works with experimental music, sound and audiovisual performance. Through a diversity of projects such as the live radio play In Labour, the performative installation The Subjective Frequency Transducer, field recording adaptations duo Native Instrument and pop experiment alter ego Stine II, she explores and challenges the physical features of the voice, the acoustics of her external/internal surroundings and new performance strategies. Her interest in the ambiguous and unrecognisable qualities of the voice, pushes her to constantly search for new ways to expand her vocal repertoire. Her recent work significantly involves imitation and abstract storytelling through sound collages referring to a variety of genres and traditions of electronic music, sound poetry, folk music and languages of various peoples, birds and animals. In 2014 Motland made a double solo record debut, releasing two contrasting albums. OK, WOW (+3db) represents her background as an extreme and virtuosic vocalist, while In Labour (Pica Disk) dogmatically combines minimal, sound poetic storytelling with a selection of sonic environments. Her next solo album, another collaboration with Lasse Marhaug, is to be released on Pica Disk in 2016. For her performance at NMASS Stine Janvin Motland will perform material from this coming release, which is based on the concept of using acoustic voice to make fake electronic music.

Graham Lambkin (b. 1973, Dover, England)

9:00pm Friday 6/24/2016 + 1:00pm Saturday 6/25/2016

Graham Lambkin is a multidisciplinary artist based in Upstate New York, who first came to prominence in the early 90′s through the formation of his music group The Shadow Ring. Combining a D.I.Y. postpunk ethic with folk music, cracked electronics, and surreal wordplay, The Shadow Ring created a unique hybrid sound that set them apart from their peers and continues to show as an influence today.

Following the dissolution of The Shadow Ring Lambkin embarked on a series of striking and highly original solo releases, including Salmon Run (2007) and Amateur Doubles (2012), a critically acclaimed trilogy with experimental tape musician Jason Lescalleet: The Breadwinner (2007), Air Supply (2010) and Photographs (2013), and Making A (2013) a collaboration with renowned tabletop guitarist and founding member of the AMM group, Keith Rowe. His latest release, Schwarze Riesenfalter sees Lambkin paired with Wandelweiser composer Michael Pisaro in a musical reimagining for the texts of Georg Trakl.

Lambkin also curates the Kye label, which, since it’s conception in 2001 has published audio work by contemporary artists such as Vanessa Rossetto, Malcolm Goldstein, and Joe McPhee, as well as archival collections from the likes of Henning Christiansen, Moniek Darge and Anton Heyboer.

Lambkin’s reputation as a visual artist came into focus during the 1990′s, designing record sleeves, t-shirts, posters/flyers for a slew of underground labels and bands including The Dead C, Harry Pussy, and Double Leopards. His playful combination of figurative and abstract elements lend Lambkin’s work a jarring, dreamlike quality, placing childlike totems against a darker adult undercurrent. Five books of Lambkin’s art/text have been published to date: Unfocused Hands (2004), Dumb Answer To Miracles (2009), Dripping Junk (2010) Millows (2012), and most recently Came To Call Mine (2014) a sumptuous collection of illutration and prose for children. To date Lambkin has had his artwork exhibited in three solo shows: Came To Mine at Audio Visual Arts, NYC (2014), Marble On The Rot, at 356 Mission Gallery, Los Angeles (2015), and most recently Moon blows close at Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany.

Lambkin is currently working on a long term collaborative project with Tokyo based conceptual artist Taku Unami.

Dusking

7:45pm Wednesday, 6/22/2016 Location: Outdoors ( click here for location )

Dusk is a time for change. A motion that the earth makes that sets a calm to the horizon. The bustling heart of the city beats fast before it relies upon the night to calm its rapid pulse and constant mechanical churning. The sounds of humanity are all around and are the music of the golden hour . The members of dusking are here to give a canvas to the voices of the dimming light. A rotating group of ambient troubadours will meet in a public place to give a musical backdrop for the violet crown. People around them become unknowing participants and the soloists in a performance that is just a part of their daily commute.

The Dusking activity is lead by R.Lee Dockery, Lee Dockery is a sound artist from Austin TX and is Co-curator of Somatic.

Join Lee Dockery, Brent Fariss, Justin Sweatt (Xander Hariss), Christopher Royal King (This Will Destroy You) , Michael Cockrell (Jezzebeam) for sunset on Wednesday 6/22/2016

Peter Stopschinski – Massacre of Spring

8:00pm Thursday 6/23/2016

Massacre of Spring, an interpretation of Stravinksy’s ‘Rite of Spring’ by Peter Stopschinksi and percussion trio

Peter Stopschinski (Composer) has composed music for Madeleine George’s Pulitzer Prize nominated play The Watson Intelligence, string arrangements for Grupo Fantasma’s Grammy Award winning album El Existential, and the film score for two-time Academy Award winning director Al Reinert’s film Rara Avis: The Life of John Audubon. His operas and musicals have been performed across the country from Arena Stage (DC) to Playwrights Horizons (NYC) to Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theater (LA).

Chuck Fischer makes a living out of hitting things with sticks and teaching kids how to play nice with each other. He works at Hill Country Middle School as an assistant band director and regularly performs with Mistress Stephanie and Her Melodic Cat, Mr. Fabulous and Casino Royale, and the Invincible Czars. He is really happy to work once again with Peter Stopschinski, as Mr. Fischer has played for many Golden Hornet Project shindigs. He is happily married to the world’s cutest cellist and is completely wrapped around the finger of his 6 year old daughter, Marlo.

Thomas Burritt received degrees from Ithaca College School of Music (BM – Education and Performance), Kent State University (MM), and Northwestern University (DMA). Active in the creation and performance of new music for percussion Burritt has built a reputation in chamber music, as a percussion soloist and a concert marimbist. He is currently Professor of Percussion and Director of Percussion Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and is a clinician/endorser for Majestic and Mapex Concert Percussion, Innovative Percussion, Zildjian Cymbals, beetle percussionand Grover Pro Percussion.

Cullen Faulk is a founding member of the Austin based percussion trio line upon line percussion, in which he vigorously commissions, performs, and promotes new music in the percussion genre. The group has selfreleased a full length album and has performed both locally and nationally at places including the Round Top Percussion Festival (Roundtop, TX), Fast Forward Contemporary Music and Arts Festival (Austin, TX), South by Southwest Music Festival, and the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC). line upon line also believes strongly in educating young musicians on the practice, performance, and importance of percussion chamber music and has performed in showcases, clinics, and master classes at schools of all levels around the United States and beyond. In Sept 2013, the group introduced their Austin concert series, in which they selfpresent four different programs a year, bringing their brand of new music to their home community.

Also an active freelance performer and teacher, Cullen has performed with various local groups and artists including Graham Reynolds, Tom Burritt, Texas Choral Consort, Austin Chamber Music Center, Ballet Austin, Salvage Vanguard Theater, and Peter Stopschinski; as well as many rock and pop acts in Austin. As a teacher, he has taught both privately and in a classroom setting throughout Austin and South Texas at the middle and high school levels since 2005.

Bardo:Basho

9:00pm Thursday 6/23/2016 and 8:00pm Saturday 6/25/2016

Seattle based musician Bardo:Basho creates hypnotic loops using software synths, drum samples, field recordings, and her own voice to create pastoral and medieval sounding textures. Her music fits somewhere between ambient/new age and techno, with apparent drone and avant-pop influences. Having just released her debut self-titled album in March of this year, her sound has evolved from structured songs to slow-changing ragas designed to create a meditative state in the listener.

( Related press on femmecult | Video on youtube )

ATOP

10:00pm Thursday 6/23/2016

Akkad the Orphic Priest (ATOP) is a project started by M C McPhail in 2000 c.e focusing solely on the creation of music. It is the outcome of a reverence and worship of artistic creation. M C has been creating music since childhood but as technology progressed and electronic music creation became more readily available, he delved in to see how far he could go. An interest in digital music production led to studying the subject at college in 1999. This was the catalyst for the formation of this project and has been M C’s passion since its inception.

Atop – Tentacles attached, I Cannot Move – This piece is an expression of life as a free thinking person being oppressed by conformity. Tape manipulation and overdubbing onto tape were used in the process of its creation. The analogue sound being amplified sounds glorious as it pushes through to the ear drum. The end of the piece expresses breaking free from conformity and being comfortable with who you are at your core.

Cameron Shafii

12:30am Thursday 6/23/2016

Cameron Shafii is a San Francisco-based composer practicing generative and systems music. His compositions are inflected by software processes involving spectral analysis, convolution, recombination, file handling, and stochastic elements. His works do not impose upon the listener any temporal scheme – ‘engagement/disengagement’ in Greimassian terms – refusing to form what we call a narrative tension. But his music has kinetic movements and climaxes; a functional exploration of sounds that range from microscopic and minimal, to macro and maximal.

Cameron Shafii has remixed and reprocessed works by CoH, Dalglish and Sote. Currently, he is working in collaboration with Japan-based sound artists Kôzô Inada and Christophe Charles for a forthcoming 2xLP titled i[] . He runs the label Ge-stell.

Press: http://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/tracks/listen-coh-ep-return-to-mechanics

Alex Keller
10:40pm Thursday 6/23/2016

Alex Keller is an audio artist based in Austin, Texas. His work is in the media of performance, installation, and recorded release, and reflects his interests in architecture, acoustic ecology, abstraction, and hidden things. For this set in NMASS2016 Alex will explore the usually-hidden world of electromagnetic sound fields. Created by both interference in consumer electronics and induction in magnetic fields, electromagnetic sound is normally inaudible to the human ear and microphones alike.

11:45pm Thursday 6/23/2016

The Sun Is Going Down The Moon May Rise In Blood is a performance piece by Spencer Dobbs and Robin Kathleen Williams for two voices, tapes, bells, stones, red ochre, cloth and string. Williams applies red ochre to her hands and performs a languid series of gestures that evoke the paleolithic artist in the cave and the illusory phases of the moon. The primeval materials of ochre and stone are worked with in an attempt to resurrect and strengthen the ancestral memory of pre-historic artists whose work with these materials can be tracked back 75,000 years. Bells, cloth and string, common elements of ancestor veneration rituals, are handled intuitively by the ochre-smeared hands of the performer. The piece is not a ritual itself, but serves as a reorientation of the artist to the earliest elements of art—not through artifice but rather in ways that organically situate the performers in the present and in their dislocated relationships to an unknown past.

Dobbs creates the score to the performance piece with a chopped and screwed approach to tape tracks of voice and various instruments. The voices of Williams and Dobbs interpenetrate on tape and in live performance as they read from a poem, and dismantled fragments of that poem, written for the piece. The pre-recorded voices of the performers cut through the work and flood it with language.

The title of the piece is a line from Blind James Campbell’s song “The Moon May Rise In Blood,” which describes the coloration of the moon during a full lunar eclipse.

Montopolis Chamber Ensemble
7:00pm Friday 6/24/2016

A suite inspired by the Central Texas landmark known as Enchanted Rock, “Monolith” is the latest project by composer Justin Sherburn and his Montopolis Chamber Ensemble. Modern classical compositions for string trio, pedal steel, and piano evoke the sheer mass and magnificence of the southwestern landscape. Western themes are slowed to a geologic tempo and wrapped in layers of slowly morphing harmony, paying homage to the mythological and the sacred. Interviews with Austinites revealed a treasure trove of stories about the rock, from personal accounts to native american legends. These recorded stories are woven into the compositions and complete this sonic tribute to the mysterious granite dome. Performance features a projected photo essay by photographer Leon Alesi.

Justin Sherburn is a composer, producer, and musical director based in Austin, Texas. He recently received the Austin’s Critic’s Table 2015 Excellence in Composition Award for his work with Brent Baldwin and the Convergence vocal ensemble. His scores for the films “Above All Else” and “Yakona” premiered at the SXSW film festival in the spring of 2014 and continue to show at festivals across the nation. His music can be heard on PBS programming and appears regularly on Austin radio station KUT. Justin has composed for television, theater, and dance performances and is the resident composer for Austin’s Troublepuppet Theater Company. His chamber ensemble “Montopolis” performs live scores to silent films. Justin arranged the “Sanctus” Movement of Mozart’s Requiem for the Golden Hornet Project’s presentation “Mozart Undead” in spring 2014. He has had a long and varied career as a touring musician, working with Okkervil River and the 8 1/2 Souvenirs, sharing the stage with legends such as Willie Nelson, Roky Erickson, Brian Setzer and Wilco, appearing on the David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, and Jimmy Fallon television shows, and performing at festivals around the globe from Coachella to Primavera Sound in Barcelona to the Laneway Festival in Australia. He currently records and performs with Okkervil River, Ethan Azarian, and Glovertango, a traditional Argentine tango ensemble. Awards include the audience award at SXSW Film Festival for Yakona, “Best Music” at the Ocean Blue Film Festival for Yakona, the B Iden Payne award for best musical director and best original score for “The Red Balloon”.

Aqualude
10:00pm Friday 6/24/2016

Aqualude is an album by Mother Octopus, the five-headed musical stepchild of violinist-composer Dana Lyn. the inspired by Dana Lyn’s extra-musical fascination with the ocean and some of its more unusual inhabitants; the Aqualude album includes track art and also works as a soundtrack to a folk-like narrative that Lyn has written in place of liner notes. It was released in October 2013 via Ropeadope Records. Drawing upon a wide range of musical (and aquatic) influences, Lyn’s compositions flow with the easy give-and-take of a chamber group while also pulsing with the energy of a rock band. Fast-moving, angular lines contrasted with pensive thematic material, Mother Octopus takes its listeners on a journey through alternating musical structures of chaos and uneasy tranquility.

For this set in NMASS2016 violinist/composer Dana Lyn will perform in collaboration with guitarist Kyle Sanna (NY), percussionist Alon Ilsar (Syndey, Australia), Austin based cellist Henna Chou and Austin based clarinet player Ben Saffer.

Brooklyn-based Multi-instrumentalist and composer Dana Lyn is at home in multiple musical worlds, ranging from classical to folk, contemporary and improvisatory music. She has worked and performed with Grammy Award-winning vocalist Susan McKeown; Tony Award-winning musician and playwright Stew; Irish poet Louis de Paor; actor-director Ethan Hawke; performance artist Taylor Mac; D’Angelo and the Vanguard, Florence and the Machine, Will Oldham, and the Elysian Fields, among others. As a composer, Lyn has received commissions from the Brooklyn Rider, the Apple Hill String Quartet and the New Orchestra of Washington, and she leads a number of her own projects, including her quintet, Mother Octopus, and Slim Bone Head Volt, a spoken-word collaboration with actor Vincent D’Onofrio.

Jen Hill
12:00am Friday 6/24/2016 (Thursday night)

Jen Hi l l (b. 1993) is a composer and sound artist living and working in Texas. Their compositions explore the formal and conceptual dichotomy between the individual (event) (self) (isolation) and the whole (ecosystem) (society) (engagement) and examine the construction of /musical impossibilities/ that challenge logical compositional techniques. Hill has had works performed across the United States and has been praised by Zachary Woolfe (New York Times) for a “subtle, ominously hushed” voice and by conductor Christopher Rountree as “angsty and brutal.” Hill has also performed regularly with their Denton-based projects *~~, and Gin Hell and the Austin-based band More Eaze, while remaining active in the local new music community through the Errant New Music Collective, which they co-founded in 2013.

Cory Allen
11:00am Saturday, 6/25/2016

Meditation with Cory Allen

This session will focus on the restoring, centering, and illuminating practice of meditation. We’ll begin the session with an explanation of basic sitting postures and meditation styles. As we continue, Cory will lead a guided group meditation in several parts, moving through different breathing techniques, astral visualizations, chants, and approaches to cultivating mindfulness. Each section will be accompanied by different binaural beats composed by Cory, specifically for use during meditation.

Cory Allen is a composer, mastering engineer, meditation teacher, and podcast host from Austin, TX. Allen’s music is deep, patient, highly-conceptual and has been called “elegant” by The Wire Magazine and an “artistic engineering achievement” by Was Ist Das. Cory has taught hundreds of people the basics of meditation in his guided workshops and delivered lectures on mindfulness and expanding human consciousness. Allen is also the host of The Astral Hustle podcast where he speaks with friends on philosophy, music, and the nature of the cosmos.

François Minaux & Laura Brackney
2:00pm Saturday, 6/25/2016

François and Laura have been collaborating in projects that use experimental improvisation since the fall of 2014. Their current project incorporates prepared tape, flute and unprepared piano. This piece explores the relationship between innocence and violence, seeking to represent those two human behaviors through sound.

Laura Brackney lives and learns in Austin, TX. She serves as a clarinet and piano private lesson teacher, composer/arranger, freelance musician, and is a member of the UT Javanese Gamelan Ensemble. Additionally, she volunteers with the COTFG and works on her garden in the morning.

Ongoing collaboration and experimentation with choreographers, painters, actors, composers, videographers, writers, journalists, activists and audiences have led François Minaux to perform and compose multi-media performances that are based on world events, modern psychology and modern taboos. He also composes and performs on an electro-acoustic glissando headjoint. He has called Austin his home since 2007.

Corey Dargel + Steve Parker
5:00pm Saturday 6/25/2016

Rainbows End
Corey Dargel, voice
Steve Parker, trombone + electronics

Corey and Steve will perform new works written for amplified voice, layered and processed trombone loops.

They will also perform “Everyone But Jones” — a work for trombone and found audio: In 1978, after the Jonestown mass suicide, investigators discovered a cassette tape that the cult members recorded as they were preparing to die. Much of this tape consists of Jim Jones’s preaching, but there are also other people’s testimonies, instructions, microphone noises, strange jump-cut edits, pleas on behalf of loved ones, and music that appears to have been recorded at the wrong speed setting on the tape recorder. Dargel’s playback track includes a version of the cassette recording minus all of Jim Jones’s preaching (hence the title) as well as some synthetic instruments. The solo (live) instrumental part is conceived as a reflection on—and sometimes a representation of—the wide range of feelings that a person in the cult might have experienced during the cassette recording.

Corey Dargel (b. 1977) is an Austin-based composer and singer-songwriter whose gentle assault on pop and classical idioms creates a tension that pervades his music. Deadpan and detached vocals reveal heartbreaking intimacies, awkward and obtrusive drum patterns struggle against fragile harmonies, vocals and music uneasily oppose each other as songs stumble to their ends. The New Yorker calls Dargel “a baroquely unclassifiable” composer “of ingenious nouveau art songs.” Minnesota Public Radio singles him out as “a wonderfully difficult artist to define.” According to the New York Times, “Dargel [is] one of the more original and consistently provocative artists pushing at the margins of modern classical music and adventurous pop.” New Yorkmagazine says, “His ghostly baritone, precise delivery, and transfixing stage presence transform his performances into intimate plumbings of the audience’s psyche.”

Dargel studied music composition at Oberlin Conservatory with John Luther Adams, Pauline Oliveros, and Brenda Hutchinson. In the summer of 2001, he moved to Brooklyn, NY, where he performed as a singer-songwriter with self-produced electronic accompaniments. He eventually earned the attention of classical music critics Alex Ross, Anthony Tommasini, Amanda MacBlane, and Steve Smith, who recognized an appealing level of intricacy and quirkiness beneath the surface of his songs.

Dargel has been the subject of in-studio interviews broadcast on PRI’s Studio 360, NPR’s Weekend Edition, KALW San Francisco’s Then and Now, WFMT Chicago’s Critical Thinking with Andrew Patner, and WNYC’s Spinning On Air. He even earned a tweet from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow for his art-song settings of the remarks of Condoleezza Rice. Dargel moved from Brookly, NY, to Austin, TX, in May of 2015.

Steve Parker is a musician living in Austin, TX. He is the curator of SoundSpace at the Blanton Museum of Art, Artistic Director of COLLIDE, an artist of Ensemble Signal, and teaches at UTSA. Previously, he has worked as a Fulbright and Harrington Scholar.

As a soloist, he has performed throughout the US, Europe, Asia, and South America at many notable festivals and venues, including Spoleto, Lucerne, Tanglewood, the Stone, Roulette, Miller Theatre, Bowerbird, and BACKFABRIK. He has commissioned or premiered over 100 new works, working closely with many leading figures of contemporary music, including David Lang, Pierre Boulez, and Helmut Lachenmann.

Steve is particularly interested in art projects that serve as community building tools. To this end, he has organized performances for 80 carhorns, honeybees, 100 marching tubas, pedicab drivers, 80 trombones, 99 percussionists, and installed large interactive instrument sculptures in parking garages and alleyways. His compositions have been featured at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Ballet Austin, the Fusebox Festival, thirdbird, the Asian Arts Initiative, and in numerous public elevators in Chinatown Philadelphia.

Steve can be heard on NPR’s Performance Today, seen on PBS’s Newshour and Arts in Context, at the SXSW music conference, and in numerous print publications. He holds degrees in Math and Music from Oberlin, Rice, and UT Austin.

Alien Knife Fight
11:00pm Saturday, 6/25/2016

Alien Knife Fight are a creative duo based in the small junction town of Creedmoor, Texas (population 202). They work from their home studio, Big Bottom Farm, at all hours, creating their unique sound. Monique’s powerful, punch in the gut vocals and grinding slide & fretless chops, backed by Mike’s primal beats, are frequently described by fans and bloggers as “Slide Punk”, and “Gothic Blues”. Over the years, Monique’s voice has drawn comparisons to Patti Smith, Nina Simone, and Robert Plant among other greats.

A fine art graduate of Pennsylvania College Of Art, Monique Ortiz arrived in Austin after nearly 15 years of collaborating with some of Boston’s most notable players ( A.K.A.C.O.D. with Morphine saxophonist Dana Colley and Binary System drummer Larry Dersch. And Bourbon Princess with original Morphine drummer Jerome Deupree, guitarist Jim Moran, and Either/Orchestra band leader and saxophonist Russ Gershon).

After a year in Austin she met Michael Howard, a bassist, drummer, and producer. With Mike coming from more of a metal, hard rock background, and Monique having grown up with new wave and post punk, the two began creating tom-heavy, bass-driven music that is as much a nod to the desert rock of QOTSA, as it is to punk innovators Wire.

A.K.F. have recently independently released a 5-song EP which is available on their bandcamp page.

Experimental Response Cinema + SET

2:00pm Thursday 6/23/2016

Experimental Response Cinema presents: SET organized by Liz Rodda and Joey Fauerso. SET is a collaborative exhibition program by visual artists and musicians, re-defines the moving image through the context of divergent sites and live soundtracks. The project includes commissioned silent works by Cheryl Donegan (NY, NY), Joey Fauerso (San Antonio, TX),Celeste Fichter (Brooklyn, NY), Duncan Ganley (London, UK), Tatiana Istomina (NY, NY), Susan Jacobs (Melbourne, AU), Maura Jasper (Muncie, IN), Saul Levine (Boston, MA), Liz Rodda (Austin,TX), Luz Maria Sánchez (Mexico City, MX), Barron Sherer (Miami, FL), and Michael Velliquette (Madison, WI) that will travel to multiple exhibition sites accompanied by a wide range of live soundtracks. Experimental in nature, the project considers the ways in which artists work in anticipation of an unknown auditory response and, in turn, how musicians and performers reply to a divergent range of imagery. In essence, the video becomes the written word, and the sound, the pronunciation. Like a homograph, the performed interpretation defines the meaning of the word. At the center of this project are chance procedures, unforeseeable juxtapositions and an evolving set of meanings propelled by the mechanics of translation. The resulting collaborations will be featured collectively on a website designed to serve as a hub for viewers to observe the project in its entirety.

CELESTE FICHTER holds an MFA in Photography and Related Media from the School of the Visual Arts in New York City. She has had solo exhibitions at the Point of Contact Gallery at Syracuse University, Go North Gallery (Beacon,NY), PH Gallery (NYC), and the Boyden Gallery at St Mary’s College, MD. Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Islip Art Museum and the Bronx Museum of Art. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times and the Village Voice. She lives and works in Brooklyn.

JOEY FAUERSO is an artist and Associate Professor of Art at Texas State University. Her paintings and videos have been exhibited nationally and internationally with recent shows at the Centro Cultural Border in Mexico City, and the David Shelton Gallery in Houston Texas. Fauerso has been the recipient of numerous grants and residencies and is currently participating in the Open Sessions program at The Drawing Center in New York City. She lives in San Antonio with her husband Riley, and their sons Brendan and Paul.

MAURA JASPER is a visual artist and filmmaker whose work explores the intersections of history, pop culture and mass media as influences that inform our individual and collective sense of self. Much of her work involves or is inspired by the lives of regular people. Works range from large scale participatory projects (Punk Rock Aerobics, Weather You Remember) to studies of people and place inspired by existing historical documents (Wish You Were Here, The Gates, Without Words). Oftentimes her work functions as a bridge between art and non-art experiences, inviting participation and bringing people back into the process of cultural production. By taking on the trappings of mass media forms not normally considered art -such as, karaoke, aerobics instruction, or weather reports, these forms become vehicles for empowerment, ones that function as backdrops in which each individual’s stories, dreams, and expectations can unfold. Her work has exhibited and screened at venues such as Artist’s Space, Vox Populi, and the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston. She is probably best known for her work as a co-founder of Punk Rock Aerobics, the DIY workout and her album art for Dinosaur Jr. Born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, she is currently an Assistant Professor of Intermedia Art at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.

SUSAN JACOBS engages with latent potential inherent in the materials, spaces and contexts she responds to. Discursive research and material experimentation inform her practice, which encourages lateral associations to be drawn between diverse forms and ideas, inviting chance and the unforeseen to direct her process-driven approach. Through drawing, sculpture, video and site-responsive installation, Jacobs’ work considers the nuances of physical forces and material properties in relation to psychological and spatial dynamics. Susan completed Post Graduate study at the Victorian College of the Arts (Melbourne, 1999) She has participated in solo, group and collaborative projects in artist-run and private galleries in Australia, New Zealand and Chile as well as exhibiting in public institutions throughout Australia. Susan was a resident studio artist at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne (2010-12) and has been supported by various awards and grants and awards from the Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Victoria and Qantas Australia. She has undertaken residencies with The Wassaic Project, New York, and the MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire, USA. She is represented by Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne.

LUZ MARIA SÁNCHEZ Sound and visual artist, Luz Maria Sánchez, was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, where she studied both music and literature. Through the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Sánchez has focused on the role of sound in art since its inception in the 19th century through its evolution as an independent art practice in the 20th century. Within these studies, Sánchez places emphasis on radiophonic art and examines in her doctoral dissertation the radio plays of Samuel Beckett linking them to the sound practices that emerged in the mid-20th century. Working with both sound and moving images, Sánchez’s pieces are arranged to envelop the subject in a sensorial experience while preserving a feeling of physical immediacy. Her work moves in the political sphere, working with themes like the Mexican diaspora, violence in the Americas and the failure of the Nation-State.

DUNCAN GANLEY is a British artist based in London. Working with a variety of lens-based media, his work is shown internationally. Solo shows include: midnight, mid-Atlantic & Location Shots (Inman Gallery, Houston), Millennium Panic (Fire Station 3, Houston), Endless Filmset 2 (Plains Art Museum, Fargo) and Opening Shots/End Titles (Cornerhouse, Manchester). Group shows include: RE:PRINT / RE:Present (Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge), I Am Not So Different (Art Palace, Austin), Learning by Doing (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), Inman Gallery at Pulse (Pulse, New York), Impossible Exchange (Lawndale Art Center, Houston), A Thousand Words (Inman Gallery, Houston), Character Studies (UTSA Gallery, San Antonio) and EAST International (Norwich Gallery, Norwich). From 1999 – 2001 he was a recipient of the Core Program Studio Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Until 2008 he was Head of the Digital Imaging Department and a faculty member in the Photography Department at the Glassell School of Art / University of St. Thomas, Houston. His docu-drama film ‘midnight, mid-Atlantic…’ has been screened in the USA and UK. Duncan is currently a Lecturer in Photography and Fine Art at Cambridge School of Art / Anglia Ruskin University, UK. He is represented by Inman Gallery, Houston.

CHERYL DONEGAN received her B.F.A. in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.F.A. at Hunter College in New York. Donegan’s work integrates the time-based, gestural forms of performance and video with forms such as painting, drawing, and installation. Direct, irreverent, and infused with an ironic eroticism, Donegan’s works put a subversive spin on issues relating to sex, gender, art-making and art history. Using her body as metaphor in her earlier works, Donegan’s performative actions before the camera often resulted in or related to process paintings and drawings. More recently, the paintings often lead the video work as Donegan derives abstraction from debased images of consumer objects and spaces. As critic Nick Stillman writes in Art Forum: “Donegan’s recent work remains acidic, but it has turned abstract.” Her work has been exhibited internationally including at the 1995 Whitney Biennial, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Tang Museum of Art; New York Film and Video Festival; 1993 Venice Biennale; and the Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, France. Donegan recently exhibited new work at David Shelton Gallery, Houston, Galerie VidalCuglietta, Brussels, and White Flag Library in St. Louis. Donegan was a faculty member in the Fine Arts Department at the School of Visual Art, New York from 1997-2013. She has been a frequent seminar leader and guest critic at Yale University, was a faculty member at Skowhegan School of Drawing and Painting, Summer 2011, and a visiting artist/lecturer at numerous art programs in the United States. She lives in New York with her two sons and husband, writer Kenneth Goldsmith.

MICHAEL VELLIQUETTE is a mixed media artist working in drawing, collage, and sculpture, and is most known for his works with cut paper. These works engage the nature of matter, sensation, perception, reaction, and consciousness. Velliquette’s work insists on a new spiritual vocabulary-one that combines aspects of early 20th century formalism, and contemporary sensibilities about the handmade, with the visual lexicon he has developed in his works over the past decade. Velliquette’s vocabulary is bright, dense, ornamental, and is punctuated with recurring motifs such as eyes, flowers, feathers, and mandalas. Art, architecture, and design from broad periods and places inform this work. However, there are rarely direct quotes-they maintain a certain ambiguity over how, when, and where they were made. Color also plays a powerful role in Velliquette’s work and acts to convey a sense of optical fullness, or visual generosity in the viewer. The labor-intensive nature of Velliquette’s practice is also foregrounded in much of his work and correlates to a kind of studio-induced mindfulness.

TATIANA ISTOMINA is a Russian-born multi-media artist living in New York. She holds a PhD in geophysics from Yale University (2010) and MFA from Parsons New School (2011). Her works have been shown at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum, the Drawing Center, and UC Irvine, among other venues; she had solo exhibition in New York and Houston. Istomina has completed several artist residencies, including the ACA residency (Florida, 2012), the Core Program (Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, 2012-13), and the Bronx Museum’s AIM program (New York, 2014). She was nominated for the Kandinsky prize and Dedalus foundation fellowship and received awards such as the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award and the American Austrian Foundation Prize for Fine Arts.

BARRON SHERER (b. 1967, Rock Hill, South Carolina) is a Miami-based time based media artist, archivist and researcher. His films and videos have screened locally, nationally, and internationally. His experimental film/video and photography installations generally incorporate repurposed sound and images and he creates referential and critical works by juxtapositions and chance. Sherer’s installations are also media archeology in a fine art milieu. Motion pictures, photo fragments and detritus are often rephotographed, optically printed and projected with notions of the fetishism of spectatorship. His work features examinations of cinema’s conventions and images as a product, while questioning cultural memory and modernity. Sherer has also curated and co-produced many film programs and festivals for local cinemas, museums, galleries and moving image archives. As a film archivist and preservationist, he has researched thousands of moving images for award-winning productions including Academy Award nominated films such as The Weather Underground, Milk, and The Cove. Sherer has a B.A. in Media Arts from the University of South Carolina. In 2015, He co-founded Obsolete Media Miami (O.M.M.), which is Cannonball Miami and Warhol Foundation supported. O.M.M. is also a 2015 Knight Arts Challenge winner. This experimental art project functions as a makerspace for analog media techniques and A/V club with scheduled audiovisual presentations, lectures, performances, collaborations and workshops that showcase obsolete media materials in new contexts.

SAUL LEVINE Saul Levine, born in New Haven Connecticut, is a maker and advocate of avant- garde film and more recently video. He is currently a professor at MassArt where he has taught for over 30 years and programmed the longstanding MassArt Film Society. His work has been screened nationally and worldwide, most recently in Ontario, MOMA (NYC), Lima and Prague. He is based in Boston and hardly leaves town.

LIZ RODDA is an Austin, Texas based artist working primarily in video and sculpture. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at David Shelton Gallery and Lawndale Contemporary Art Center (Houston, TX) and the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum (St. Augustine, FL). Past screenings and group exhibitions include The Festival of (In)Appropriation, The Anthology Film Archives (New York, NY); The Texas Biennial, Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum (San Antonio, TX); Surf Club, Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA); and Kiss The Future, Schwartz Gallery (London, UK). Rodda was a 2015 artist-in-residence at Fountainhead (Miami, Florida), and is currently an Assistant Professor at Texas State University, School of Art and Design.

Böhm with special guest Therefore

Disgraced physicist.
Relic.
Shut in.
Daniel K. Böhm

Best known for causing the reactor meltdown in Wüttenschlesig. He now lives on an abandoned cotton farm near Spur, Texas. He is continuously monitored by the IAEA. I met Daniel in 2009 after a chance encounter on a country road. Stranded, he invited me to his small, dilapidated house. His home was warm, womb-like. I remember layers of wallpaper, peeling, flaking, floating down to settle on a book or a pile of magazines. There was a cat in the corner, drawing in the warmth of an amplifier. Faint sounds warbled through a speaker. On the floor, several feet of audio tape lay in a magnetic nest. A low table sat in the center of the room, overflowing with circuit diagrams, potentiometers, a dozen cans of Lone Star beer and a working Geiger counter. In dim light, he rocked as he spoke. He still wore a lab coat. He silently placed a few cassette tapes in my hands. Artifacts. Wobbly spools rattled inside the cassette enclosures. He was a minor curiosity at the time—until I listened to the tapes. Then, an obsession. Much later, a letter arrived. It included an almost illegible signature, making me executor of his estate, which consisted solely of cassette recordings.

more eaze is the project of composer/multi-instrumentalist marcus m. rubio. The project focuses on collage based work and the destruction of song forms. Recordings and performances often feature a set of stylistically disparate pieces stitched together through complex tonal/timbral relationships that constantly challenge exactly what the music actually “is”. For example, it’s not uncommon to hear American primitive guitar, chopped and screwed r & b/rap, lush synth drones, and deconstructed pop melodies throughout the course of a more eaze album or even in just one song! In 2015, more eaze released several albums for Kendra Steiner Editions, Full Spectrum, and Already Dead Tapes. More Eaze has worked collaboratively with artists such as Seth Graham, Amulets, and Andrew Weathers and shared bills with Gary Wilson, John Wiese, Chris Corsano, and Circuit des Yeux amongst others. Rubio has also released music for a myriad of small labels under his own name and has had his compositions performed by the Soli Chamber Ensemble, Ensemble Pamplemousse, and the Dogstar Orchestra.

Troller
Reemerging from a long and self-defining stint in the studio, Austin’s darkwave metal trio Troller returns with their pleasurably harsh second LP, Graphic. Despite the underground success of the critically acclaimed 2012 self-titled debut, Graphic manages to eclipse the broad appeal of the first record’s addictively ominous pop anthems. Troller’s focus on layered composition and biting sound design has resulted in a highly developed work that embodies the band’s unique raw form while raising the benchmark on fidelity and experimentation. Graphic arrives perfectly unhinged and hideously sophisticated, reinterpreting familiar elements from their debut LP, and propelling the trio’s provocative sensibilities explicitly further.

Troller formed in 2010 out of Austin’s dense electronic and experimental scene and played a key role in the founding of Holodeck Records. The trio’s synthesizer and drum machine half-time rhythms impeccably complement bassist and vocalist Amber Goers’ heavy riffing and charismatically tortured voice. From the onset, Troller‘s compelling live performances immediately distinguished them as a promising up-and-coming project yet to reach its peak.

Mongoose is an improvisational music group based in Austin, Texas. They create original music based on John Zorn’s Cobra rules. In 2004, The Austin Cobra players were one of the regular occurring improvisational music groups in the original COTFG location of 209 Pedernales St. of east Austin. Years later the group has grown and morphed into ‘Mongoose‘ which incorporates movement and actors.

The Mongoose ensemble for NMASS2016 includes:

Lisa Mims, Paul Shelton, Kevin Foltinek, Sarah Norris, Content Knowles, Philip Moody, Sarah Ann, Rebecca Ramirez, Jennifer Micallef, Dillon Buhl, Shannon McCormick, Greg Cooksey, Madeline Malka, Jakob Marsala under the leadership of Christopher Petkus.

LSJ is a trio comprising of psychedelic rock drummer Lisa Cameron, avant-guitarist and songwriter Shawn David McMillen and neo-fluxist, multi-disciplinary artist Josh Ronsen. All three live in Austin and play many instruments and electronics. They have worked with ST37, Jandek, Arnold Dreyblatt, Roky Erickson, Tom Carter, Susan Alcorn, Three Day Stubble, Warmer Milks, Pauline Oliveros and many others. Friends for two decades, they have played hundreds of shows under such names as Venison Whirled, Iron Kite, Brekekekexkoaxkoax, Mancat House Band, Austin New Music Co-op. The music of LSJ is collectively improvised from all of these different sources and experiences, shifting between stylistic modes of playing.

Austin Cooley / Carol Sandin Cooley / Sandy Ewen / Damon Smith

Austin Cooley is a non-musician based in Houston, Texas. He was a founding member of the early Texas noise rock band Turmoil In The Toybox, had a long-running harsh noise project, Concrete Violin, and co-hosted KPFT Houston’s Funhouse, a legendary punk and experimental radio show. He is currently a member of Black Leather Jesus, a Houston harsh noise/power electronics project led by Richard Ramirez that has been active for over 25 years, as well as a number of other experimental music and noise projects including Illicit Relationship, Unified Space over America and perhaps the world’s only intentionally funny wall noise duo, Painful Vigil. Austin has hosted Genetic Memory, radio station KTRU Houston’s sound oddity showcase, for the past 23 years.

Carol Sandin Cooley has been active in the Houston experimental and underground music scene for over 30 years. Carol was formerly involved in such projects as Rotten Piece, Sad Pygmy, Trailor Trash, Disband, Ouroboros and Glass Snake Lizards. She is also a member of Black Leather Jesus, Illicit Relationship, Unified Space Over America and Painful Vigil and is a member of the improvisational group Garden Medium. As well as playing bass in Poor Dumb Bastards, Carol’s current solo project is Zahava and she is an accomplished photographer and painter.

Sandy Ewen is an experimental guitarist, artist and architect based in Houston. Her current projects include the trio Etched in the Eye, a duo with Tom Carter called Spiderwebs, the trio Garden medium, and an ongoing collaboration with bassist Damon Smith. She has performed alongside Roscoe Mitchell, Keith Rowe, Lydia Lunch and many others, and has performed and recorded with Weasel Walter, Jaap Blonk, Henry Kaiser and more. In 2014 she performed at San Fransisco’s 13th Annual Outsound New Music Summit, and she has made several appearances at Austin’s annual No Idea Festival. Her groups Garden Medium and Spiderwebs both have recently released CDs and performed in Mexico City in February. Ewen’s approach to playing is centered around found objects and extended guitar techniques.

Damon Smith studied double bass with Lisle Ellis and has had lessons with Bertram Turezky, Joëlle Leandré, John Lindberg, Mark Dresser and others. Damon’s explorations into the sonic palette of the double bass have resulted in a personal, flexible improvisational language based in the American jazz avant-garde movement and European non-idiomatic free improvisation. Visual art, film and dance heavily influence his music, as evidenced by his CAMH performance of Ben Patterson’s Variations for Double Bass, collaborations with director Werner Herzog on soundtracks for Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World, and an early performance with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Damon has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including: Cecil Taylor, Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra’s Arkestra), Henry Kaiser, Roscoe Mitchell, Michael Pisaro, Wadada Leo Smith, Marco Eneidi, Wolfgang Fuchs, Peter Brötzmann and Peter Kowald. After many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, he is now based in Houston, Texas and works regularly with Alvin Fielder, Sandy Ewen, David Dove & Chris Cogburn. Damon has run Balance Point Acoustics record label since 2001, releasing music focusing on transatlantic collaborations between US and European musicians.

Dieter Geisler & Randy Reynolds are an ambient duo based in Austin, Texas. The two first came together at an impromptu recording session for the PBS music documentary series, Hardly Sound. After the session, Geisler and Reynolds stayed in touch and when the opportunity to finally work together on the Accrue Cassettes release, Win: An Austin Tribute to David Bowie, they jumped at it. Geisler and Reynolds use keys, guitar, and loops to explore the positive aspects of ambient, improv, and drone.

Gerritt Wittmer is a sound and performance artist based in Oakland, California. His work often articulates abstract narratives through vocal expression, body performance, and intense theatrical lighting. He has performed and recorded as Gerritt, Ginnungagap (with Stephen O’Malley and Tim Wyskida), Deathroes (with Sixes), and has performed and/or collaborated on projects with Sunn O))), Sissy Spacek, John Wiese, and Paul Knowles. He is the lead singer of the band Names and also directs the publishing house Misanthropic Agenda.

Rick Reed (b. 1957) has been creating audio compositions since 1982. His recent works are intuitive studies of electricity, frequency fluctuations, and improvised ‘on the fly’ solutions to symmetry problems in electronic sound. Over the past decade he has centered his live work on using short wave radio, synthesizers, and sine wave generators to create otherworldly synthetic sounds with a surface of aesthetic elegance and beauty. Reed lives in Austin, Texas, and has performed throughout the United States and Europe. His music has been used by filmmaker Ken Jacobs in three of his experiential magic lantern films, Spiral Nebula, Mountaineer Spinning, Capitalism: Child Labor.

In addition to his solo work, he’s been a member of Austin groups such as Fear and Tension Corporation, The Abrasion Ensemble, Frequency Curtain, SIRSIT, as well as international group, The Voltage Spooks (w/ Keith Rowe). Along with Brent Fariss, he is currently a member of the world’s only CM von Hausswolff cover band in existence, The House of Wolves. You can hear his work on such records as Dreamz/Blue Polz (2008), The Way Things Go (2011), and Dark Skies at Noon (2005), to name but a few.

“My set will consist of improvised electronic sounds using the Buchla Music Easel. I will also be showing recent video work that features contrasting images of different cities around the world.”

Dope Dungeon is the solo project of Alex Kacha from Los Angeles, California. It is a grimy excursion of noise, industrial and power electronics through a multitude of contact mics on alarm clocks, slabs of metal, chains while slow beats churn throughout. Influenced heavily by Boyd Rice, Crass, and Throbbing Gristle.

The Azmaris are a day dream come true and the brainchild of saxophonist Jason Frey, who then lured trumpeter Derek Phelps and drummer Stephen Bidwell (all three in afrobeat 10 piece, Hard Proof) to begin the group. Over the next year the ensemble was solidified with vibraphonist John Best and upright bassist Janie Cowan. Beginning as a cover band of sorts, playing the music of Ethiopian composer Mulatu Astatke and others of the Ethiopian golden era of instrumental jazz and funk. Now performing original music influenced by these great musicians of Ethiopia, composers Phelps and Frey both bring their own musical experiences to the conversation. Just on the heels of rapping up the first studio recording documenting the group, their performance at NMASS 2016 will include a larger ensemble and incorporate electrified instruments as well as their normal acoustic set up. The set will include new arrangements of original music as well as some large ensemble improvisations.

The band this performance will be: Derek Phelps (trumpet), Jason Frey (sax), Stephen Bidwell (drums), Brad Houser (bass), Alan Retamozo (guitar), Carolyn Trowbridge (vibes, percussion), Phil Davidson (violin), Henna Chou (cello)

(Video)

Amulets is the solo project of Austin-based audio + visual artist Randall Taylor. Amulets employs handmade cassette tape loops and live processed guitar loops to create live, lush soundscapes and immersive drones. Through the recontextualisation of cassettes, sampling, field recordings, and looping, these long-form compositions blur the genres of ambient, drone, noise, and electronic music.

Brent Fariss – Stockholm, Sweden: September 8, 1977 (for string trio and soprano)with Misha Penton – soprano | Travis Weller – violin | Elizabeth Warren – viola | Brent Fariss – contrabass

“The International Criminal Police Organization – INTERPOL, has expressed its concern about copyright piracy to all of its member national police forces. (Resolution adopted at INTERPOL General Assembly, Stockholm, Sweden, September 8, 1977.)”

Stockholm, Sweden: September 8, 1977 is a conceptual music theater piece scored for string trio and a (possibly unreliable) narrator, played by Houston-based soprano, Misha Penton. The ensemble will seek to recreate the events of this mysterious meeting, and the events leading up to the piracy crime. The group will investigate these incidents by going over text (meeting minutes) from this mysterious Interpol meeting, incorporating stolen musical fragments from other composers, handling / dismantling pirated VHS tapes, destroying xerox copies, and other sundry activities to get to the point of their investigation.

“I was born in Sweden, and in Sweden we are known for the piracy services.” – Daniel Ek

“Good composers borrow. Great composers steal!” – Igor Stravinsky

“The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.” – Gabe Newell

“Shiver me timbers!” – Anonymous

Brent Fariss is a composer / performer living in Austin, Texas. He has collaborated in several modern music settings including the Gates Ensemble, Waco Girls, and Frontal Spanking. In the past decade, he has worked alongside Phill Niblock, Leif Elggren, Michael Pisaro, Jandek, Radu Malfatti, Pauline Oliveros, JG Thirwell, Ellen Fullman, and Arnold Dreyblatt. Fariss holds a Master’s degree in Composition from Texas State University, where he also studied the contrabass. He has become increasingly interested in the ideas of conceptualism; using minimalist techniques to unite texture, form, room/instrument resonance, and abstracted programmatic ideas to create a musical environment. He is the recipient of two Meet the Composer grants for the compositions, “Dim Gleam” (for choir, 2 basses, 2 percussionists and choir chimes) and “The Water Bowl” (for 4 performers, horn, trombone and percussion). His goal in music is exploring the nature of sound (timbre), elevating it to the same level as melody, harmony, rhythm, and form.

Colin Andrew Sheffield + James Eck Rippie

Performing together for the past 16 years, Colin Andrew Sheffield (samples, processing) & James Eck Rippie (turntables, samples, processing) are an improvising duo who sculpt primarily with commercial recordings to create works interested in turning aspects of plunderphonics, glitch, and sound art into a form of abstract beauty. Their work together has always been about their dialogue within a given piece, unfolding dreamscapes and hints of musicality within a form rewarding for the meditative listener. Their debut LP, “Variations” (Elevator Bath), originally released in 2001 (with a 2016 reissue), was recorded “live” with no additional production. Each of the album’s pieces utilizes sounds from a single acoustic instrument as its sole source material. These sources are manipulated and shattered in multiple ways inside the performance. Since the release of their album, Sheffield & Rippie have continued to perform and to record, expanding the concepts utilized in the “Variations” cycle, along with similarly themed installation recordings. They will be preparing new work for NMASS. After a hiatus of nearly 10 years of performing, Sheffield/Rippie are gathering new concepts, aesthetics, and thrift store records to transform.

James Eck Rippie (b. 1977) is a visual/sound artist originally from outside Nashville, TN, spending the last 6 years in New Orleans, and has recently returned to Austin, Texas. His recorded work has been as a turntablist . But has also worked extensively with other instruments and mediums. His focus with turntables has been creating abstract sound and concrete assemblages from various records while utilizing altered needles, turntable feedback, effect pedals, damaged records, resampling,etc. While decomposing the original sound source, Rippie’s intentions are to understand the transcending possibilities of sound as well as testing the capabilities of the turntable as an instrument. He releases his work for the Cronica Electronica (Portugal) and Elevator Bath (US) labels. And has collaborations with sound artist’s Simon Whetham (UK), Paulo Raposo (PT) and erikM (FR).

Colin Andrew Sheffield (b. 1976, El Paso TX) is a sound artist focusing on the strict re-contextualization of other commercially available recordings. His aim is to distill the essential qualities of these works and to then utilize that essence for new recordings. Usually only very brief sections of the original works are selected. These raw components are then contracted, expanded, layered, and/or otherwise processed until something new is forged. The resultant music is an atmospheric soundscape, gradually shifting and unfolding. In 1998, Sheffield founded the Elevator Bath recording label which has continually issued experimental works from a variety of artists from the United States and abroad (including Rick Reed, Tony Conrad, Merzbow, Francisco López, and many more). Sheffield has released a number of solo recordings, including 2005’s “First Thus,” his debut long-player, as well as 2009’s “Signatures” (via the Invisible Birds label), 2010’s “Slowly” (on the Mystery Sea label of Belgium), and 2012’s “Time Will Tell” (on the Quiet World label of the UK).

Adam Pacione (b. 1971, Detroit, Mi.) a graphic artist and medium film format photographer since the late 80s, Pacione started pursuing field recording and sound manipulations in the late 90s after borrowing a 4 track recorder and effects pedals from a close friend. Driven by influences such as Fibreforms (later known as Kiln), U.K. bands AMP, Flying Saucer Attack, Boards of Canada, Seefeel and My Bloody Valentine, Pacione released his first albums Sisyphus (Elevator Bath) and With Wakened Eyes (Primary) in 2005. Additional releases such as From Stills to Motion (Infraction), the Still Life series (Bee Eater) and remixes for Simon Scott (Slowdive), Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) and Milieu (Brian Granger) followed shortly after. Pacione is currently working on follow up releases for the Austin based label Elevator Bath, and contributing soundtrack work for the short video travel series, Letters From Japan.

Pacione‘s current sound work centers around a marriage of Musique Concrete and modular synthesis to create auditory pareidolia.

Soft Healer is a band from Austin, TX that began in 2009. We play drums, guitar, organ and bass, and we sing some too. The music comes from people hung up on the hypnotic trance of John Lee Hooker, Can, James Gadson and Henry Flynt, just to name a few. We like a loose script.

Drew Liverman is an artist and designer living in Austin, TX. Since receiving his BFA in painting and printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2002, Drew’s drawing, painting and installation work has been featured in Beautiful Decay Magazine and shown in The Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, Scotland; Big Medium in Austin, Texas; and the Lawndale Art Center in Houston, Texas. In addition to his personal work, Drew contributes to the Austin, TX based art collective, Boozefox and has been on the staff of MASS Gallery in Austin, TX since 2007.

Drew will project and manipulate various video sources, improvising along with Soft Healer. Classic!

Brent Fariss – Stockholm, Sweden: September 8, 1977 (for string trio and soprano)
with Misha Penton – soprano | Travis Weller – violin | Elizabeth Warren – viola | Brent Fariss – contrabass

“The International Criminal Police Organization — INTERPOL, has expressed its concern about copyright piracy to all of its member national police forces. (Resolution adopted at INTERPOL General Assembly, Stockholm, Sweden, September 8, 1977.)”

Stockholm, Sweden: September 8, 1977 is a conceptual music theater piece scored for string trio and a (possibly unreliable) narrator, played by Houston-based soprano, Misha Penton. The ensemble will seek to recreate the events of this mysterious meeting, and the events leading up to the piracy crime. The group will investigate these incidents by going over text (meeting minutes) from this mysterious Interpol meeting, incorporating stolen musical fragments from other composers, handling / dismantling pirated VHS tapes, destroying xerox copies, and other sundry activities to get to the point of their investigation.

“I was born in Sweden, and in Sweden we are known for the piracy services.” – Daniel Ek

“Good composers borrow. Great composers steal!” – Igor Stravinsky

“Shiver me timbers!” – Anonymous

Performing together for the past 16 years, Colin Andrew Sheffield (samples, processing) & James Eck Rippie (turntables, samples, processing) are an improvising duo who sculpt primarily with commercial recordings to create works interested in turning aspects of plunderphonics, glitch, and sound art into a form of abstract beauty. Their work together has always been about their dialogue within a given piece, unfolding dreamscapes and hints of musicality within a form rewarding for the meditative listener. Their debut LP, “Variations” (Elevator Bath), originally released in 2001 (with a 2016 reissue), was recorded “live” with no additional production. Each of the album’s pieces utilizes sounds from a single acoustic instrument as its sole source material. These sources are manipulated and shattered in multiple ways inside the performance. Since the release of their album, Sheffield & Rippie have continued to perform and to record, expanding the concepts utilized in the “Variations” cycle, along with similarly themed installation recordings. They will be preparing new work for NMASS. After a hiatus of nearly 10 years of performing, Sheffield/Rippie are gathering new concepts, aesthetics, and thrift store records to transform.

Pacione‘s current sound work centers around a marriage of Musique Concrete and modular synthesis to create auditory pareidolia.

Drew will project and manipulate various video sources, improvising along with Soft Healer. Classic!

T.E.F. is the long running, solo harsh noise project of Texas native Kevin Novak, and has currently been active since early 1995. Utilizing an array of effects, sampling and looping devices T.E.F. creates a fast paced, cut up, dynamic style of noise which can range from loud and abrasive to quiet and droning, sometimes all within the span of several seconds. Occasionally described as being “musical” and noise for people who hate noise T.E.F. mines the tenuous gap between aural abstraction and composition.

Aunt’s Analog is the alias of Matt LaComette, a solo Harsh Noise / Avant-Garde recording artist and performer, active in Austin, TX since 2001. LaComette uses a variety of instruments and sound sources, including contact microphone feedback, no-input mixer, audio tapes, junk metal, violin, and synthesizer, warped and distorted by an array of electronic effects. As a recording project, Aunt’s Analog produces psychedelic instrumental soundscapes, with brute electro-acoustic sounds and jarring blasts of high frequency feedback, often produced in the cut-up style. During live performance, LaComette presents a condensed version of his harsh recorded sound, with a focus on motion within the space and its interaction with sound. Elements of performance art influence Aunt’s Analog sets, which often entail a 5-10 minute outburst of extreme tones and quick movement. Performances are improvised and exploratory, and can vary greatly set to set, evolving and devolving over time as instrumentation changes and equipment setups are reconfigured.

Hear No Evil is a contemporary ensemble committed to providing live, multi-media shows in the greater Austin area.

Member Bios:

A native of Los Angeles, Marley Eder is an active freelance musician in Austin, Texas. As the founder and co-director of Hear No Evil, he advocates for classical music in unorthodox settings where a greater awareness and appreciation of this incredible repertory can be fostered amongst new audiences. He has recorded experimental and improvised music with several bands in the greater Austin area including Magnets, Cordas e Ventos, and Farago. In the realm of modern music in the classical tradition, Eder has performed in the John Cage Festival at Red Cat of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and participated in live premiers of music by John Cage, Mike Keneally, and Philip Glass. Additionally, he has premiered over forty works for solo flute and chamber ensembles by composers based in Bloomington, Los Angeles, Seattle, Ithaca, and Austin.

Considered an active clarinetist, Shih-Yen Chen has participated in various solo and ensemble performances. Particularly interested in contemporary music, Miss Chen was invited to perform “Kheir: Fantasy for clarinet and Sinfonietta” by Max Grafe with UT New Music Ensemble and “Der Klein Harlekin” by Karlheinz Stockhausen in UT Wind Ensemble concert as a soloist. She also played as a regular substitute clarinetist in San Antonio Symphony Orchestra in 2013. She was invited to Fischoff Chamber competition live audition held in Indiana and a featured artist in Jo Ann Dunn Fargason Memorial concert in Houston in 2014. In addition, Miss Chen was invited to perform in International Magic Clarinet Quartet Summer Festival in 2011 and has performed Clarinet Concerto by Aaron Copland with National Taiwan Normal University in NTNU Grand Auditorium and Song-Yi Concert Hall in Taiwan.

Based in Austin, Texas, Sara Sasaki is a violinist dedicated to the performance of contemporary music. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin College and Conservatory, Master of Music degree at The University of Texas Butler School of Music, and will be starting an Artist Diploma degree at UT in August. She is an active performer for the UT composition department and has performed with the New Music Ensemble under the direction of Dan Welcher for two of their performances in 2014. Her most recent project was a performance on February 9, 2016 of Michael Daugherty’s Ladder to the Moon (2006), conducted by Steven Knight and students at the UT Butler School of Music.

Originally from Savannah, Georgia, James Burch is a cellist currently based in Austin, Texas. As a soloist he has performed works by Dvorak and Maslanka at the Rialto Center in Atlanta, Georgia and Bates Recital Hall in Austin. He has also performed internationally including most recently at the soundSCAPE festival in Maccagno Italy, where he was awarded the Performer Prize. Committed to the performance of contemporary music, he has worked with numerous composers including Xi Wang and Donnacha Dennehy. In addition to his role as a performer, James is also the co-director of Tetractys, a new-music concert series in Austin.

Pianist Monica Kang is a versatile performer, teacher, and avid scholar. She has premiered solo, collaborative, chamber, and large ensemble works and given presentations on contemporary repertoire in various theory and pedagogy conferences. Her book, “Post-Tonal Affinities in Piano Works of Bartók, Chen, and Crumb,” is due for publication in 2016. Having concertized in the U.S., Taiwan, and Italy, impactful chamber experiences include a week-long tour of the Tuscany region and most recently, performances in Austin as part of Hear No Evil. Monica obtained her doctorate from UT-Austin and holds dual bachelor
degrees in math and piano from Northwestern University.

Percussionist Cory Fica is currently pursuing a Master’s in Music Performance degree from the University of Texas at Austin. A versatile percussionist, Fica performs with many ensembles at UT, local rock bands, and contemporary chamber ensemble, HEAR NO EVIL Later this summer, Fica will compete in the Great Plains Marimba Competition and the Northwestern International Percussion Competition. Additionally, Fica will perform Dinuk Wijeratne’s percussion concerto “Invisible Cities” with the Interlochen Wind Symphony, led by Jerry Junkin. Fica holds a Bachelor’s degree in Music Education from the University of South Carolina. His teachers include Dr. Thomas Burritt, Tony Edwards and Dr. Scott Herring.

Derek Rogers (b. 4 September 1980) is a Dallas-based musician active in electronic composition, drone, free-improv, ambient, and noise textures. He utilizes computer processes as well as traditional instrumentation and field recordings to create emotionally resonant work, tending toward long forms and soundscapes. Rogers works predominantly as a solo artist, with some 50+ albums released since 2007. Recent collaborations include projects with musicians such as Marcus Rubio and A.F. Jones, and also with Lee Noble as Circuit Rider UK.

Sonya Gonzales + Meason Wiley

Movement is all around us. From the colliding of simple shadows to the phasing of varying sounds, our senses are inundated with vibrations that shape and form. By capturing those waves, we begin to open up and understand ideas ranging from collision to harmony, realizing the emergence of new forms. This large-scale, outdoor installation will attempt to capture exactly that. A dual presentation that will showcase during the day as well as at night, ~concord will be displayed on the west-side wall of the Salvage Vanguard Theater in a mural-like fashion that will be complimented with a corresponding sound element.

The following ideas will be explored:

Sonya Gonzales is a new sound artist living in Austin.

Meason Wiley is a teacher, musician, sound designer, multimedia artist, and fabricator based out of Austin and Los Angeles.

Tonal Proximity installation by Douglas Laustsen
June 22 – 26 in Salvage Vanguard Gallery

Tonal Proximity is a sound installation for forty eight small speakers and twenty four mp3 players designed to aurally explore the gestalt principle of proximity. As the work begins, the unique sounds assigned to each speaker occur with space in between them, both physically and temporally, allowing the listener to think of the sounds as discrete gestures. As the piece progresses, the density increases, eventually causing the listener to perceive the sounds as a single entity. At its climax, all forty eight speakers will be playing simultaneously. The work then loosely reverses by slowly reducing the abundance of sounds until they can again be heard as individual utterances.

As a metaphor, it represents how social media offers people the false promise to express their unique opinions. While services like facebook and twitter seem to provide users with the opportunity to directly express their individual thoughts, any meaningful individuality is lost on readers. This is especially true for those who have heavily filtered their online experiences so they see different shades of the same ideas. Rather than unique opinions, people will often walk away with a generalized notion of what their following or friends think about a topic, whether it is politics or grand spectacle media. Even with forty eight unique sound cues, it is impossible for a person to process them individually.

Douglas Laustsen is a musician and educator living in Austin, Texas. As a composer, he is interested in exploring logical structures in sound and using electronics to augment acoustics. Before moving to Texas, he led the Philadelphia based chamber group Beta Test Music, performing as a trombonist, composing and arranging works for the geek flavored new music ensemble. He has composed and arranged music for concerts, fixed media, and games. Some of these projects include working with Meerenai Shim, Mark Zelesky, Steve Lakawicz, and ThingNY’s Spam Series. He currently teaches music with Austin Soundwaves and performs regionally as a trombonist in a wide variety of projects ranging from classical to reggae. He also hosted a radio program on WRSU-FM called Endless Possibilities where featured the music of all stripes.

Star Cycle is a visual installation created by Vivian Hua for this installation at NMASS2016 she will be collaborating with sound artists Aux Aux + Mediums + The Kraken Quartet.

Vivian Hua (華婷婷) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator who, in true Sagittarius fashion, resides in Los Angeles but frequently lands in the Pacific Northwest. She is fascinated by synthesizing divergent styles, groups, and schools of thought, and this can be found throughout her work, which unifies her interest in the metaphysical with her belief that art can positively transform the self and society. For the month of June, she is in Austin doing a residency at Museum of Human Achievement, entitled, “Where Does ‘I’ End & You Begin”, which will open towards the end of June. Her work, astrological chart, etc. can be seen at www.inallthings-patterns.net / vimeo.com/hellomynameisvee / www.instagram.com/hellomynameisvee.

The Kraken Quartet is a genre-crossing percussion group known for its highly energetic and engaging performances. Since their formation in 2011, the group has been heralded by media outlets including Time Out New York, WNYC, KUTX, I Care If You Listen, and The Ithaca Times for merging elements of indie rock, minimalism, electronica, jazz, and the avant-garde.

Currently based in Austin, TX, The Kraken Quartet maintains an active schedule, frequently performing with local and touring artists. The group recently made its Fast Forward Austin debut in April 2016, where they collaborated with Jason Treuting of So Percussion, The University of Texas Percussion Ensemble, and the Baylor Percussion Group. This past spring, Kraken joined Line Upon Line Percussion to perform works by Steve Reich in honor of his 80th birthday year. This summer, The Kraken Quartet will embark on its third tour, visiting cities in the Southern U.S.

After forming at Ithaca College, members of The Kraken Quartet pursued graduate degrees at the Eastman School of Music, Indiana University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. In addition to performing, The Kraken Quartet holds a strong educational vision. All four members give individual percussion instruction and master classes, and together they are developing workshops focused on collaborative composition as a tool for helping young musicians grow. The Kraken Quartet is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. The group proudly endorses Vic Firth sticks and mallets, Grover Pro Percussion, and Hammerax cymbals.

Mediums is the ongoing musical project produced by Travis Austin, an Austin-born sound artist and composer living in NYC.

Aux Aux is the ambiguous entity of experimentation and composition lead by Henna Chou, environmental scientist and resident of Austin, TX.

Three Lines is a generative digital projection by John-Michael Reed of Bleep Labs.

Join Lady Brain Studios to explore the creative world of hand-built electronic music, learn the basics of building sound circuits, and create your own instrument that plays lights!

No experience is necessary to enjoy this workshop where beginners and seasoned electronics enthusiasts alike will:

-learn how to read basic schematics-discover how electrical circuits work-build a sound circuit on a breadboard-learn how to use light to create sound!-produce sound using different creative methods (touching a VHS strip, sliding along graphite, among others)

Students will get to take home their electronic creations, along with a collection of components and reading material for future learning.

Teacher Bio:

Lady Brain Studios is the creative alliance of Darcy Neal and Haley Moore, who specialize in expressive electronics and teach workshops that spread a passion for electronics to artists, musicians, and creators of all kinds. Neal is a self taught artist and musician focused on creating hand-built electronics, and Moore is a skilled transmedia artist with a knack for creating tangible environments. Lady Brain Studios wants to share their excitement for electronics through hands-on learning and discovery that equips students to continue to create their own works of electronic art.

See related video [ here ] Sign up for the workshop [ here! ]

Tarana is Ravish Momin (drums/electronics) and Rick Parker (Trombone/electronics)

Their mission is to create a seamless blend of multiple electronics and acoustic instruments. They will discuss the creative process of blending North-African and Indian rhythmic concepts that are unique to the music of Tarana. They will further discuss the fundamentals of Indian rhythmic sub-divisions, odd-time signatures and adaptation of Indian rhythms to the drumset.

They will then individually discuss the use of triggers and microphones which can be used to alter the sounds generated by acoustic instruments and delve into the process of the creation and layering of real-time loops, textures and sound-effects. Momin will discuss using Ableton Live Software and various MIDI and USB controllers (including using the iPad as a MIDI controller), in order to integrate acoustic drums with digital laptop-based electronic sounds. Parker will in turn discuss technical issues such as connecting the trombone (or another acoustic instrument) via microphones to various effects such as delays, phasers, harmonizers, distortion and reverb. He will also explore looping pedals and different ways to incorporate them into one’s performance, from overdubbing tracks to using advanced features such as reverse, half-speed and double-speed recording.

Ravish and Rick will both discuss performance and compositional strategies using LIVE in an improvisational setting by creating spontaneous arrangements, adding analog and digital effects and shifting between complex time signatures. They will also discuss creative approaches to MIDI mapping in order to achieve specific performance end-results. The workshop will be interactive throughout, involving the participants in discussing individual approaches to improvisation as well as synthesizing electronics with acoustic instruments for performance or compositional purposes.