ORIGINS ELECTRONICA

Free Electronic Music Concert November 9 at Murray State

2010-11-06T11:32:00.001-04:00

Murray State University will be hosting the "Acousmatic Evening" as an informal lecture/recital in FAH Room 623 Tuesday November 9th. Admission is free. Concert starts at 3:30. Limited seating available. Sabrina Peña Young will be hosting the lecture/recital. This is an ideal event for classes interested in electronic music, music history, feminism, and women's studies. We invite you to come out.

"An Acousmatic Evening" will provide the audience a selection of curated electronic music including fixed media sound diffusion and video projection.

The International Alliance for Women in Music is a global network of women and men working to increase and enhance musical activities and opportunities and to promote all aspects of the music of women.

The program of six electroacoustic compositions has been selected from 22 entries from seven countries for the IAWM 2010 Annual Concert. The official performance of these works takes place in the Musée des moulages de l'Université de Lyon II inLyon, France, on Friday, Oct. 22, in conjunction with the Music Season of GRAME, National Center for Music Creation. The concert will include pieces by the following composers: Magdalena Dlugosz, Poland; Ida Helene Heidel, Norway; Judith Ring, Ireland; Carrie Leigh Page, USA; Bernard Marie-Hélène, France; and Veronika Krausas, Canada (video by Quintan Ana Wikswo, USA).

An identical program of these winning pieces will also played in Maryland, Massachusetts, Kentucky, California and Taiwan, in addition to Lyon and Montana, as part of a global celebration of electro-acoustic music created by women.

More information about IAWM can be accessed at www.iawm.org.

Valley of the Shadow

2008-07-27T08:11:00.002-04:00

Valley of the Shadow was my first complete piece using stop motion animation. The short follows the misadventures of a pink alien and his three eyeballs. The entire movie was completed during spring break in my dorm living area. My roommate was gone for the weekend, and I transformed the living area into a mini-set. Using a large piece of plywood that was leftover from hurricane season, I used trick angles to make the small 3x4 seem like an entire alien universe.

Most of the materials were bought at the dollar store. The goop was this nasty $1 hair gel that nearly poisoned me with its noxious fumes. After nearly passing out, I realized that I had to use it on a limited basis and could not leave the jars unopened on my table! The trees are plastic spoons I burned on my stove, and the eyeballs are marbles covered in goop and pink Saran Wrap. In fact, the alien was a combination of wooden sticks, pipe cleaners, and pink Saran Wrap.

I shot 45 minutes of footage, but my professor said that the 30 minute cut was too long. So I pared it down to 9 minutes of insane alien fun!

The music was composed in Pro Tools. Each character has its own distinct theme. The alien's garble came to me after another sleepless night of mixing. Tired of composing original thematic materials, I started haphazardly hitting keys on a warped percussion patch. It worked! The rest of the soundtrack has my characteristically sci-fi style of sweeping synth pads intermingled with smatterings of rhythm.

Lullaby

2008-07-12T23:29:00.004-04:00

The original video for Lullaby was actually my first video piece created in 2000. Lullaby was a very deep, maybe a little too deep, look into some of the struggles I was having at the time with some extremely painful, and foggy, memories. After that screening, which won an award from the university student film association, I never showed the piece publicly again.

The original Lullaby file sits on my old external hard drive in my closet. I thought I had lost it, and I really didn't mind. Yet, it sits there and I don't have the guts to erase it, just to ignore it. Kinda like the memories.

The music from Lullaby resurrected several times, with several snippets being cannibalized for other works. It was my first time working with video and film scores, and I liked the end result.

Psychosis I: Dissociation, the name of the 3D animation piece shown here, was screened several times. It was my first work with Bryce. I used my old G4, whose rendering time was ridiculously Sloooooooowwww. Psychosis stems from equally screwed up memories, but of a different time.

I am never going to show the original Lullaby again, and when my old external hard drive finally dies on me, hopefully, the memories will, too.

Metamorph

2008-06-03T09:38:00.003-04:00

Metamorph was composed entirely on the Malletkat (a MIDI controller set up like a percussion mallet instrument). The piece was originally created for a live performer on electronic keyboard, tape, and video. After some tweaking, Metamorph was able to stand alone as a tape piece.

I love using the Malletkat for composition. I got mine from legendary composer Pauline Oliveros when I was interning with the Deep Listening Gallery in Kingston, New York three years ago.

The video for this work was created by an above shot of my body in a large bean bag in my New York apartment. By applying some difference filters, mirror effects, and some overlay, I was able to create this semblance of a creature coming to life. It was a similar technique to the piece, MNEO, that I created with Tampa-based composer Seth Keith.

PAULINE OLIVEROS JAMS OUT

ENIGMA

2008-05-20T08:21:00.004-04:00

ENIGMA was the first multimedia piece I created using the rendering features of Final Cut Pro to create animation. The electronic music composed was a combination of sound synthesis using Supercollider, distorting my voice through various audio software, SoundHack, and sounds created using the tar, a hand drum.

I altered the sound clips for ENIGMA by dramatically slowing the speed, creating undulating panning patterns, and adding delays and reverb, to create a constant, slowly morphing musical composition.

ENIGMA has traveled extensively, with screenings in Australia, Cuba, and throughout the United States, with thousands of hits on the net through You Tube.

I have to give a special thanks to Dr. Kristine H. Burns at Florida International University for her painstaking help and advice with creating ENIGMA.

Looking Glass

2008-05-09T11:55:00.000-04:00

Looking Glass

Looking Glass is based on a journal entry from August 30, 2003:

I look in the Mirror
And who do I see?

Hollowed Eyes
Looking Back at me

Sensuous Lips
Wrinkled and Torn
Sallow Skin and Soul Forlorn

But when I breathe, she breathes, too.
Those tears in her eyes I knew

We hold hands in our looking glass
The moments melting into the past

And underneath the hardened shell
Is a little girl I knew so well

Someday she'll learn to laugh again
And love, maybe she will find it in the end
But today I am left with my mirrored mate
Goodnight, Lovely Alice, for it's getting late

The moon has risen above the dying trees
Forgotten wishes float away with the breeze

Each moment passes quicker than before
And our Alice, She sleeps Forevermore.

The text of Looking Glass reflects on my own struggles of living a double life, the reference of a Looking Glass referring to Alice's long decent into the dark abyss of the bizarre, out of control, Wonderland.

World Order #1

2008-05-09T11:37:00.000-04:00

World Order #1

World Order #1 was originally composed as part of a filmscore for Kalup Linzy's Conversations Wit De Churen. While the rest of the score was used for the movie, which premiered at the New York Independent Film Festival, World Order #1 was not used. The Dance Remix version was used for the film.

World Order #1 and the Dance Remix has been played at dance clubs, festivals, and internet radio stations throughout the globe.

A small excerpt of World Order #1 was used for this short video:

The text is as follows:
Dental Floss
It may save the world some day
Those countries that do have dental floss
They won't share
They never do
NUKE EVERYONE!
And now, they have barely any teeth at all
They are too busy bombing each other
and witholding dental floss from the world