PROJECTS
Quick note...
Much of what is featured on this page could be called installation work merged with musical performance or sound art. These projects are representative of my research examining questions about how and why we use modern tools to express through music, sound, and other media.
The installation components tend to involve lights (lamps), basic circuitry to make use of sensors on microcontrollers mapped to softwares (like Max / MSP), speakers, microphones and instruments, miscellaneous everyday objects, and other materials and fixtures from the environments in which the installation-performances take place.
Faraday Dream...
Faraday Dream represents the culmination of Dayshon Mathis (colleague-roommate-friend and Ph.D. in theoretical physics, Stanford 2023) and my work in the Transmission Arts Residency Program at Wave Farm (WGXC) in Acra, NY in August 2023.
We were interested in creating an interactive sound sculpture exploring 1) the interplay of human bodies and radio signals around Faraday cages (metal enclosures that mostly block radio waves), and 2) the "beating" / heterodyning between frequency-adjacent radio transitions in the VHF frequency range. We used locally sourced (around Acra) trashed/recycled parts, cheap Baofeng radio trancievers, and basic circuits.
We are so thankful for the assistance and support provided by Galen Joseph-Hunter, Tom Roe, Bianca Felix Biberaj, and Tony Fallon during our residency.
You can listen to some sounds from the project and hear Dayshon and I speak about our work "on the air" at WGXC here.
Also, I was lucky to have the chance to perform a two-hour live set of songs and improvisations on WGXC hosted by Tom Roe, which you can listen to here.
"Home" | work-in-progress with LEIMAY
I was lucky to have the chance to work with choreographers Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya with four dancers from LEIMAY Ensemble in January 2023. The work-in-progress was choreographed and directed by Ximena and Shige and features dancers Akane Little, Krystel Copper, Maitlin Jordan, and Masanori Asahara.
I reworked the audio for "All Of It" as the material to stage a choreography exploring themes of transience, home, and the beauty in wasted effort. Below are some excerpts from the work-in-progress.
Co-creative installation + performance work...
I have been passionate about creative accessible and engaging musical experiences for all participants. Since the summer of 2023, I have had the opportunity to host co-creative hybrid installation/performance experiences with talented musicians/artists and other friends. I attempt to curate / create an open environment in which participants feel welcome to express themselves as they wish and work to merge our various expressions towards one consistent group production. This can take several forms, not limited to those listed here:
1. As an installation work in which performers and artists improvise and augment the environment via a variety of expressions.
2. As theatrical-leaning productions in which participants bring something of their own to share and we work to meld their expressions into one cohesive whole via applying form with narrative or conceptual elements.
3. As shows with musicians and artists entering/exiting stage to join the band in a theatrically-augmented set.
Take a look at a few examples of this work below...
"All At Once" with Share Music (September 2023)
This performance was produced in collaboration with artist-performers of Share Music in a 4-day residency in Malmö, Sweden in September 2023. Each artist brought something of their own to offer to the production (a song, composition, a specific representation of a creative practice). From scratch, we worked to merge the expressions into one cohesive multimedia performance involving two spaces within a storefront, the construction of an old-timey looking stage, and real-time sculpture and set rearrangement with materials all sourced from nearby or within the venue.
The artists featured in the video include Peter Larsson, Hannah Harvigsson, Joel Mansour, Lovisa Larsson, Ronald Heu, and William Hedendahl. Thank you to Jan Hansen and Frida Genberg for supporting the production on the group in real-time and Sophia Alexandersson (Executive and Artistic Directory of Share Music) for enabling the residency in the first place. It was a joy.
"Concert Music II" with Share Music (June 2023)
In another residency with Share Music in Jönköping, Sweden in June 2023, three members of Share Music and I explored an improvisation practice centered around turning on and off lamps and activity-emergent form. We improvised together, musically, via dance, and theatrically, and would discover that we could transition to new material when certain processes would begin or end, or when certain events happened.
For example, Lollo and I would build a sculpture – an unstable tower made of Pilates blocks, hula hoops, and inflated rubber balls – in real-time during performance, and when it fell this would cue the four of us to move on to another section. Or, Lollo, Joel, and I would toss three balls around on a contact miked floor to each other, simulating a child-like game of pass/catch. We threw or rolled them progressively harder. When we lost all three balls (i.e. when they rolled out of the performance area), we moved on...
I
thank Lovisa (Lollo) Larsson, Peter Larsson, and Joel Mansour deeply for their energetic engagement in this process. I think it resulted in a beautiful whimsical performance.
This performance was thought of as a folow-up to the "Concert Music" | Mike Mulshine & Friends concert at CCRMA on May 11, 2024.
Less formalized co-creative workshops...
I have also hosted a few similar, more informal co-creative workshops. These are always exciting for all involved.LGMF Co-Creative Installation / Jam Space
I enjoyed the chance to co-create with composition and performance students at the Lake George Music Festival in August 2024 in Lake George, NY. Thanks Alex Lombard and Alyssa Weinberg for the opportunity to bring my creative practice to the festival, near my hometown.
I created an adaptable sound and light installation in a small room in Caldwell Presbyterian Church. I invited participants in the festival to bring their instruments and/or join me in developing the installation through creative improvisation / jamming together. This resulted in a lot of fun music-making that reflected on the nature of the festival and its community. Check out this piece, Motel 8, that participant Justine Leichtling and I co-devised during our few days there together, reflecting on the odd mix of music-making, experimentality, and commercial tourism going on around the Lake George Music Festival in the summer.
And here was the initial installation setup for the space, interfacing as best I could with the space, using some tech I brought and materials graciously supplied by the Church and festival.
BYOx at the CCRMA Open House (May 2024)
Installation jams at Monash University (March 2024)
For anonymity's sake, I left out documentation of students jamming in the space. A few of the music students, especially Liam Baillie (briefly featured below) spent a lot of time in the installation and used it as a space to jam, practice, and create.Installation jams at NIME (CDMX 2023)
I installed my work "near and far" (a wall of suspended speakers with a distance sensor and three lights mapped to a varying soundscape) for presentation at NIME 2023 in México City. Iran Sanadzadeh, Celeste Betancur, Davis Polito, and others spent a lot time jamming in the installation space. Iran setup her Terpsichora floor instrument within the installation. Here is a quick excerpt of their jam.shades of...
shades of... is an interactive installation involving light, sound, and visuals. Many lamps are placed around a gallery space. Passersby are welcome to turn them on and off. When they do, sounds play. One-minute delayed projection extends the space visually, and towards the past.
Materials: lamps, projection, 4 speakers, 2 webcams
near and far (an installation)
near and far is an interactive sound and light installation that explores how proximity and distance influence our relationships with spaces, people, and things. Observers are invited to explore the area in front of a hanging array of speakers (14.2). A set of three lights with pull-strings ask to be turned on and off. Sensors embedded in the environment (on the speakers and lights) map movements and interactions to sound, providing observers true agency to explore and co-create the sonic experience.
The sonic content is made up of recordings of various musical experiments across several genres, recordings of songs and live performances, recordings of found sounds (like fog horns), and real-time synthesized sonic landscapes of clicks and held tones.
The installation was first on display at the CCRMA Open House (Stanford University, California) on October 21st, 2022.
This installation has gone through a couple of iterations. Previously, I made an 11.2 suspended speaker array coupled with a distance sensor. With it, I mapped a sonic path between two metaphorical spaces: the exoticized ideal of nature as majestic wilderness and the lived (and more mundane) experience of actually being in it.
MP5: explore spatialized tunes here...
MP5 is a mobile and desktop interactive album/EP. The user navigates a 3-dimensional virtual space and encounters objects that emit sound. These are snippets and outtakes from songs. The user is encouraged down a straight-ish path through the album-space, but may vary and linger around as long as they like at any object / song / sound.
light: get up and move w/ your mobile device...
light is a mobile web app that uses and revisualizes the webcam to dynamically change the relative volumes of the beat, instrumental, and vocals in a song.
Hairdresser: play with stick figures here...
Hairdresser is a mobile and desktop web app that allows the user to engage with and transform the various layers of a song ("Hairdresser") and the sounds of other objects in aesthetically quirky 2D space.