meeting with author Brian Evenson

Had a pleasant discussion with author and Brown U. writing Professor Brian Evenson about the influence his collection of short stories Windeye, and in particular the title story, has on themes of fading memories,  false memories, and the momentary confluence of different planes of reality that I have been working with recently.  This includes the work I have been doing on the further development of the Curtain Room installation, and the music I am writing for Andie Springer's upcoming audio/visual album.  I'm hoping the projects will combine, probably next spring/summer, into an installation and performance setting of the Curtain Room in which Andie will perform.  Prof. Evenson allowed me to some text from his work for the voice/violin music I am working on for Andie.  I will continue to work closely with him to make sure my use of his work is properly credited/attributed as this rather amorphous project develops.






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Curtain Room - revisited

I am reworking the servo motor control system for the Curtain Room (the hanging curtain installation space used in The (unfinished) Ballad...).  The goals are to make the control more flexible, to be able to control each curtain motor individually no matter how many I use, and to bring the control for this all into Max rather than leaving much of it processed in the Arduino programming.   I am more familiar with Max and it has more dynamic potential to control the curtains manually, algorithmically, and using external sensors.  I approximated a number of these controls for The (unfinished) Ballad..., but for a long time had trouble getting the data from Max formatted properly and sent to the Arduino (which controls the curtain motors) through the serial port.  Serial data can be finicky, especially large streams of data, and overloads in the serial port can CRASH EVERYTHING!  After a lot of trial and error, and help from pretty much every help forum on the internet, this control seems to work more or less.   Below is a little video (with no sound) of me demonstrating the individual control of servos using a usb slider.  It might seem pretty boring, but the fact that I can move many different servors independently and AT THE SAME TIME!(see note on serial port overload) is a pretty major achievement for me.  Next step will be to re-sew and repair the curtains and get them up and moving in various patters using various input types of control.

I am folding this installation work into a collaboration with Andie Springer, who paid me and Kirsten a visit from NYC to talk about the piece.  Music and video that will be used in this new curtain installation and performance setting will be recorded in January 2014 and produced for Andie's upcoming audio-visual album.  Congrats to her, Kirsten, and Hotel Elefant for their fantastic performance at New Music, New Voices at Carnegie Hall on Weds!

Thanks to Karen and Audie at MSUMC for letting me work in there again!

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Meridian Project - 2014

Working with an incredible group of my favorite people – Kirsten Volness, Josh Lantzy, Jamie Topper, Caroline Doherty, and Jeremy Chapman – on a multimedia performance series that will take place spring 2014 at the Cormack Planetarium at Roger Williams Park in Providence.  Performances will mix music, live-processed imagery using the Planetarium's historic Zeiss Star Projector (!!!), and presentations on topics in astrophysics and cosmology, including Jeremy's ground breaking work in Dark Matter Detection.

PLEASE HELP SUPPORT:
https://www.newmusicusa.org/?project_preview=7963&msg=preview






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Violin Music for Upcoming Recording Session with Andie Springer

I am honored to be working with an incredibly talented friend, violinist Andie Springer!  I am writing short pieces for violin and voice for her inspired by the short story "Windeye" by Brian Evenson.  Recording will be in January in NYC.  I'll post any progress...






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What next?...

Dissertation performance went fantastically well in Nov., diss paper in to my readers, defense April 12.

Thinking about what next.  Working on stuff with "Adam Emery" dancer Brandon Shaw, and have my eye on this incredible space: The Pawtucket Armory drill hall.  Huge, wood, gorgeous.   Video tests hopefully in the next couple of weeks...






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