INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION: FALL 2011

BYTE GALLERY INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS feature works that are judged and selected by Transylvania University faculty for inclusion in the BYTE Gallery.  Professional artists, composers, and dramatists from around the world enter this competition.  These exhibits give Transylvania students an exclusive front row seat at the leading edge of international digital art and music scenes.

This exhibition, as part of the STUDIO 300 Festival presents twenty-eight works submitted by professional composers and artists from across the globe, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany.  These 28 works were selected from a pool of over 125 entries.

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MUSIC SELECTIONS:

Ritual Attacks by Panos Amelides

The piece is based on recordings of the rituals that take place in Corfu island during Good Friday and Easter Saturday. It’s not a religious piece. Structurally the piece is divided into two parts, following the dramaturgy of the two-days rituals but in inverted sequence.  First part embodies the dynamic profile of “resurrection” (Easter Saturday) while the second is about the inner, sad character of Good Friday.

Panos composes electroacoustic music and music for instruments. His research at De Montfort University targets at the representation, irritation and/or creation of political and cultural memory, and does collaborative work with visual artists and dancers. He is a member of the artistic collective 'Hear This Space’, which is active in Leicester, England, member of the organising committee of the 'Sound, Sight, Space and Play (SSSP)' conference and a member of the Hellenic Electroacoustic Music Composers Association.

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Approximating PI by Clarence Barlow

This piece directly results from the converging series pi = 4 –4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7 + 4/9 etc. Take for instance the first four convergences up to ten digits: 4.000000000, 2.666666667, 3.466666667, 2.895238095; these ten digits finally converge to the well-known value_3.141592654.  In each of eight channels, encompassing 4000 convergences, the digits equal the binary logarithms of the amplitudes of ten square waves sounding together in the relationship of the harmonic series.

1945 born into Calcutta's English-speaking minority. 1957 first compositions. 1962-65 studied natural sciences in Calcutta. 1968-73 studied composition and electronic music in Cologne. 1971 first used a computer as a compositional aid. 1982-1994 taught computer music at the Darmstadt Summer Courses. 1984-2005 taught computer music at Cologne Music University. 1990-2006 Professor of Composition and Sonology in The Hague. Since 2006 Corwin Professor and Composition Program Head at the Music Department, University of California Santa Barbara.

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Cyan by Robert Bentall

Cyan is focused on two main compositional techniques – use of gesture and use of organically-structured harmonic content. The primary source-sounds used were the Marimba, the Vibraphone and the Viola Da Gamba. The opening sections rely on vast energy build-ups and sharp silences to create tension, and strong kinetic releases subsequently allow more expansive textures.

Rob Bentall (b. 1989) is an electroacoustic composer and sound artist currently living in Sheffield, UK. He read for an undergraduate degree in Music at the University of Manchester, winning the Peter J. Leonard prize for composition. He is currently reading for an MMus at the University of Sheffield.  His compositions have been performed across the UK, and his primary research interests are acousmatic music, sound diffusion and the aesthetics of electroacoustic music.

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Anthozoa by Daniel Blinkhorn

Structurally, the composition depicts the many and varied shapes of coral reefs, from their jagged yet intricately textured features, to the dramatic variegations of size, depth and density. The sound shapes created in the piece are designed to describe my impressions of coral reefs. There are only two sound sources within the composition, that of a prepared piano (more specifically a single D note) and a composite recording of a coral reef.

Daniel is an Australian composer and digital media artist currently residing in Sydney. Recent activities in 2010‐11 include: radio national artist in residence ‐ ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), extensive field recording trip throughout the West Indies, Composer‐in‐Residence at the Visby International Centre for Composers, Sweden and artist‐in‐residence as part of an artist/ scientist led expedition on a traditionally‐rigged tall ship throughout the international waters of the Arctic Circle.  For more info, visit www.bookofsand.com.au

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TrainSong by David Gedosh

Train Song is an acousmatic work, The majority of the sound sources were recorded in Denton TX, and range from the ubiquitous sound of the train, the industrial sound wash of the factories near the railroad tracks, to power tools, traffic, concerts, and weather. The sounds are removed from their original context, processed in various ways, and re-contextualized, moving the listener through various locations, and creating an abstraction of the sound of the city.

David Gedosh is a composer, and sound artist whose works include fixed media, electro-acoustic music with live performers, video, and dance, and have been programmed at conferences including ICMC, SEAMUS, Bourges Festival Synthese (IMEB), and Zeppelin Festival. He earned a DMA in music composition from the University of North Texas, and is currently adjunct faculty at the Academy of Contemporary Music at the University of Central Oklahoma, where he teaches composition and music technology.

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Hexagonal (Facets 1-6) by Josh Goldman

"Hexagonal (Facets 1-6)" is a stereophonic sound

structure composed entirely of sounds produced on a prepared electric guitar. I am performing all of the sonic material.

Josh Goldman is an award-winning composer and performer whose compositions and performances have been presented at a number of international festivals and conferences. Mr. Goldman has studied music at New England Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn College (CUNY), and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

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L-R by Omar Jamil

The work was created by taking commercial recordings and systematically processing them through a variety of digital and analogue means before arbitrarily structuring and assembling them. Such processing techniques included; header munging, audio file binary rearrangement, feedback modulation and analogue phase cancellation. The work is about reinforcing the progression of what can be understood as music and what can be created when we look outside the musical systems of the current dominant narrative.

Omar Jamil is a composer and musician based in the U.K. He was recently awarded an MA from the Music Research Centre (MRC) at the University of York, where he specialised in computer and electronic music composition. He has had his works performed and exhibited at a variety of festivals, such as Sonic Art Oxford, Lightworks festival and the Resound festival.

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Waiting for Spring by Coralie Lonfat

“Waiting for Spring” is a piece mixing field recordings and electronic sounds to create a peaceful space with resonance under-control. Ambient music generates a sound scope that brings minimalism space. And a hint of improvisational sounds creates a colorful palette of energy reminding the rite of spring. Different layers tend to create more deepness along the piece, as a way to transcribe the gestation of life, the transformation, and (re)birth of the being.”

Coralie Lonfat, born in Switzerland, is an emerging electronic musician working on sound design, electronic compositions, and experimental improvisation with her laptop. She is currently living in New York, studying electronic music with downtown laptop virtuoso Ikue Mori. She has been performing in several venues in New York with other experimental musicians including a duo with laptop musician Chuck Bettis, the bands Silver Process, Crying Acorn, Yokai, Third Eye bent Festival Orchestra, among others.

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Failing to Resist by Robert McClure

It was my wife who pointed out to me that I tend to fidget with objects for long periods of time.  Feeling, manipulating, figuring them out as if touch were the only sense available to me.  It was this vice that became the germ for this piece.

Robert McClure has received a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education from Bowling Green State University. He completed a Master’s Degree in Composition from the University of Arizona where he studied with Daniel Asia and Dr. Craig Walsh. He is currently pursuing a DMA at Rice University where he serves as the Rice Electronic Music LABS Teaching Assistant under Dr. Kurt Stallmann.

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88 Attempts to Linger by Sean Peuquet

The piece is a presentation of 88 harmonic sets. The size of each set decreases by one with each iteration, such that the initial set comprised of 88 harmonics, is followed by a sequence of 87, then 86.. and so on, down to 0. For each subsequent set, the fundamental is determined by dividing the highest harmonic of the previous set by thenew (n-1) set size.

Sean Peuquet is a Ph.D. candidate in Composition at the University of Florida, studying under Paul Koonce. Sean received his BA in Music and Psychology from the University of Virginia in 2005 and in 2007, Sean graduated from the Electro-Acoustic Music program at Dartmouth College. His work often explores the use of algorithm and process in providing not only musical form and structure but also a meaningful engagement with extra-musical representation.

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Shahida by Kala Pierson

Shahida ("she who witnesses" in Arabic) is made from three types of acoustic sound sources: unprocessed vocals by my collaborator Sukato; processed shimmering sounds made from my voice saying "Shh"; and minimally processed metallic sounds and changing-harmonics I recorded using a piano's strings, keys, and metal frame.

Kala Pierson is a U.S.-born, primarily New York-based composer.  Her long-term projects include Axis of Beauty (setting texts by living Middle Eastern writers, in an ongoing answer to her government's "Axis of Evil" propaganda) and Illuminated (setting texts about sex and sexuality by writers from a wide range of world cultures).  Trained at Eastman School of Music and Bard College at Simon's Rock, she has had performances and installations in more than 15 countries.  More at unfurl.org.

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Hemispheric by Philip Reeder

Part of Hemispheric’s aesthetic stems from the use of super-wide angle photographic lenses, sometimes known as fisheye lenses. They tend to create an inhuman hemispherical field of vision, with objects toward the periphery becoming increasingly distorted often requiring a remapping of the image in an attempt to create a less skewed projection. Continual recycling of sonic material in this piece give rise to viewpoints which are similarly distorted and re-mapped, exploiting the expansive potential of the medium.

Philip Reeder is a composer in the UK pursuing a PhD under Antti Saario and is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Philip has developed music and sound projects which interact with public space and ‘liveness’ in a variety of contexts, however the focus of his research is on  fixed media composition, applying an acousmatic approach to wide ranging compositional activity. His work has been recognised and performed internationally (Bourges/IMEB, Prix Ars Electronica, ICMC, Frieze). 

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kernel_panic by Jerod Sommerfeldt

kernel_panic is a fixed-format work that explores the use digital audio artifacts as musical material: The byproducts of aliasing, quantization noise, and clipping are liberated to the forefront of the composition process. Tiny grains of nearly inaudible sounds collide and mix with one another in a sonic collage that follows a trajectory from quietude to loud fervor.

A graduate of the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati (DMA), Jerod Sommerfeldt composes music in both acoustic and electronic environments. Focusing on the creation of algorithmic and stochastic processes, utilizing the results for both fixed and real-time composition and improvisation, his music explores digital audio artifacts and the destruction of technology, resulting in work that questions the dichotomy between intended and unintentional.

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Eight Gluons by Dan Tramte

Eight Gluons (2009) is a synthesis of eight short electronic works called Gluons. These so-called Gluons were commissioned by percussionist Olman Piedra to be played in between pieces to avoid the awkward silence during percussion setups. They function as miniature soundscapes that can be rearranged and 'glued' together. Each corresponds to an elementary particle. The Gluons chosen in Eight Gluons are Photon, Boson, Top, Lepton, Fermion, Electron, Quark, and Strange.

Dan Tramte is currently working towards his PhD in music composition with a specialization in computer music media at the University of North Texas. He also holds degrees in percussionperformance (BM) and Composition (MM) from Bowling Green State University (Ohio). His primary teachers have included Elainie Lillios, Mikel Kuehn, Andrew May, and David Bithell.  His music has been programmed on numerous computer music conferences and can be heard on the CDCM computer music series, vol. 38.

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Germination Variations by Brett Wartchow

Germination Variations is a sonic meditation on my memories of wondering through the vast and ancient botanical multiverse of Oregon’s old-growth forests. As successive sections of the composition unfold, the contour of periodic rhythmic patterns and granular textures become more and more tightly woven. The piece emerges gradually as a flourishing sonic landscape of lyric percussive lines braided in gestural polyphony.

Brett Wartchow is a composer, sonic artist and intermedia collaborator currently based in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. His creative output includes acoustic concert works for chamber and large ensembles, interactive electroacoustic and multimedia pieces, improvisations and installations. Brettʼs most recent work investigates how uniquely designed performance environments inspire musical exploration and interaction among diverse participants. These works fuse custom software with utilitarian objects to form interfaces for expressive gesture, sonic navigation and collaborative improvisation..

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VIDEOMUSIC/ANIMATION SELECTIONS:

Between the Scan Lines by Mike Celona

Footage of common household surfaces processed with editing software to the point of complete abstraction thus offering a colorful glimpse into what goes on behind even the most life-like video images and serving as a reminder that no matter how hard people try to capture ‘reality’ with a camera, at the end of the day it’s all just pixels and scan lines, bits and bytes.  Mixed in real-time using Arkaos Grand VJ and Ableton Live.

Mike Celona is an American video artist, photographer and musician who is interested in exploring the creative possibilities of media beyond it's traditional forms. His experimental works generally deal with the interplay between technology and nature as well as the effects of media messages on our collective psyche. In 2005 he graduated from Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing with a BFA in Art Video.

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Devil on a Dam by Russell J. Chartier, & Paul J. Botelho

The piece Devil on a Dam portrays the fragile emotional and cognitive state of a woman’s final moments as she writes her death note. The piece stands as a record of the woman’s fleeting perception of isolation to the decaying world that slowly envelops her.

Russell J. Chartier attended the College of Santa Fe. Since that time he has spent many years working in television for networks including A&E and The History Channel. His work explores multiple layers and focuses heavily on texture and color. The work of composer Paul J. Botelho focuses on the interaction between live and computer performance. His compositions utilize extended techniques, alternate tuning systems, as well as the interaction of new and old mediums.

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fuzee by Louise Harris

A fuzee (fusee) is a cone-shaped pulley with a spiral groove used in chord  or chain-winding clocks. Fuzee is an 8-minute audio/video piece in which  sonic momentum is translated into visual movement in a pre-defined and  very specific way.

Louise Harris is an audiovisual composer and lecturer in music at Kingston University, London.  Her particular research interests are the nature of audio/video relationships and the creation of audiovisual works in which neither component is perceived to have perceptual primacy; works which exhibit audiovisual equilibrium.

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Drive by Mike Celona

Dreamlike ride through Rochester, NY during a heavy rain storm as seen through the passenger side window of a car in which the water streaking across the glass causes the landscape to seemingly melt into another world.

Born in 1982, Mike Celona is an American video artist, photographer and musician who is interested in exploring the creative  possibilities of media beyond it's traditional forms. His experimental works generally deal with the interplay between technology and nature as well as the effects of media messages on our collective psyche.  In 2005 he graduated from Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts.

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Floats by Justin Lincoln

This abstract animation is a loosely coupled visualization of sound. The visual component was made in Processing while the sound was produced in Ableton Live. The soundtrack is composed of voices that have been pushed to resonant limits. It is an homage to Alvin Lucier and Takehisa Kosugi. The material is licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial - ShareAlike and can be viewed or downloaded from http://vimeo.com/25959255.

Justin Lincoln is an experimental artist and educator. He lives in South East Washington State, where he teaches at Whitman College. He attended Virginia Commonwealth University and the California Institute of the Arts. His current work involves generative and algorithmic systems for producing sound and image.

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Echoing Spaces by Dennis Miller

Echoing Spaces (2009) is a nine‐minute work for single‐channel video and stereo audio. The work explores a number of virtual environments in which the primary elements recur (echo) both in immediate succession and at different times throughout the piece, always in varied form. The visual imagery employs a numberof similarly shaped elements that appear in overlapping, morphing configurations, and the restricted color palette helps maintain a focus on the primary objects.

Dennis Miller is on the faculty of Northeastern University in Boston. His works, which apply principles drawn from music composition into the visual realm, have been performed at venues throughout the world. Miller is the founder and artistic director of the Visual Music Marathon (www.2009vmm.neu.edu). His music and artworks are available at www.dennismiller.neu.edu.

 

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Colorful Movements by Ryan Olivier

Colorful Movements features four short experimental pieces for video and surround sound. The first movement, Metronomic Hommage, explores metronomic synchronization by simultaneously starting 40 instrumental boxes set to one of the original metronome markings. The second movement, Additives, is an experiment in timbral transformation.  The third movement, Partial Imitation, is a quasi-fugue whose imitation is based on partial numbers rather than scale degrees. In the last movement, Polypartials, the sound is represented visually by translucent spheres.

As a military brat Ryan Olivier primarily grew up in the South. Born in New Orleans, he eventually returned to his birthplace to pursue compositional studies at Loyola University New Orleans College of Music. Upon graduation he made his great journey north of the Mason-Dixon line to study at the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University in Philadelphia where he is currently a doctoral student studying with Maurice Wright.

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Telsonic by Michael James Olson

Telsonic is a piece that explores the juxtaposition of individual sonic events and larger sound masses. Throughout the piece, rapid sonic gestures give way to explosions of dense sonic material, careening from moments of dense complexity, to simple rapidity.

Michael James Olson is a composer and media artist currently residing in Indiana. His work focuses on the intersections of traditional instrumentation with various media such as video, interactive electronics, and multi-channel audio. His works have been performed at festivals and venues such as NYCEMF, SEAMUS, Noisefloor Festival, EMM, EAJJ, and ICMC, among others. Michael holds a M.M. from Georgia Southern University, and is presently a doctoral student at Ball State University.

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Borgesian Zoo - Suite no. 1 by Alessandro Perini

Three pieces about animals described in the "Book of imaginary beings" by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.

Alessandro Perini was born in 1983 in Italy. He studied Composition, Electronic Music and Science of Musical Communication in Italy and Sweden. He works in the fields of music and media art. His works are available at www.alessandroperini.com .

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Micro-Coastings by Timothy Polashek

While recording sound sources for “Micro-Coastings“, I performed and produced rhythms through moving, striking and scraping objects, and captured the natural rhythms of sounds.  I focused on short expressive gestures and close microphone positioning, sometimes rapidly moving the microphones.   The video camera, like the microphone during the recording of my sound sources, was likewise positioned to frame objects more closely to capture things expressively.  I applied my musical intuition to video production while creating.

Timothy Polashek writes in a variety of media and styles, including vocal, instrumental, electro-acoustic music, text/sound compositions, and interactive performance systems.  His music has been performed throughout Europe and Asia. He is an Assistant Professor of Music and the Music Technology Program Coordinator at Transylvania University. Dr. Polashek earned his Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition from Columbia University, an M.A. in Electro-Acoustic Music from Dartmouth College, and a B.A. in Music from Grinnell College.

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Singleton by Lars Ullrich

The Audio-Video Sequencer is based on a custom C++ framework that communicates with a Java/OPENGL scripts to generate sound and graphical environments. Using a calculus of probabilities, the sound triggers formulas which generate graphical patterns. Each sound is identified by a graphical pattern and these graphics combined draw lines and communicate with nodes and dots, thus creating layers of complex geometry. 

Born 1979 in Neuenbuerg/Germany, Lars Ullrich studied sound engineering in London.  A composer and media artist, his works focus on sound art and interactive visuals, experimenting with acoustic and visual symbols in the space between art and science.  Without relying on classical structures or theories, his pieces are diffusions of musical freestyle, each showing the actual physics of sound exploration.  His compositions make use of minimal and basic rhythmic elements and incorporate self- designed code.

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Visiting Dora Maar by Ellen Wetmore

Visiting Dora Maar began as a study of “falling apart” and “pulling oneself together”, visually considered in the lens of the canonical art history portrait. Dora Maar, an artist, was Picasso’s lover. He created a portrait where her features seem to fracture, move about in space and time and come undone. I evolved this into a moving image meditation of identity and self-assembly using video images of myself.

Ellen Wetmore was raised in Saginaw, Michigan.  Since her emergence in 2004 with her first Boston Sculptors show, she has blended the influences of Surrealist and Feminist art with her own unique iconography. Her work explores the corporality of the female body and its surreal transformations through sculpture, video, photography, and large digital wall drawings. She is an assistant professor of art at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell; her work can be found online at www.ellenwetmore.iwarp.com.

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Dans l’ombres de soi-même by Mark Zaki

Dans l’ombres de soi-même grew out of a commission by Dancer and Choreographer Annie Loui for the exhibition “Bits and Pieces” at the UC-Riverside Museum of Photography”. Inspired by a poem about the Orpheus Legend by Rilke, the piece uses a dancer’s movement to explore the relationship between motion and sound in a virtual dance. Trajectories of motion and sound are fragmented and transformed, combining to create interplay between the visual and aural domains.

Mark Zaki’s work ranges from traditional acoustic music to computer music, visual music and music for film, which have been presented on many international electronic music festivals. Notable film projects include scores for the The Eyes of van Gogh, and the Peabody award nominated The Political Dr. Seuss for PBS. Zaki teaches at Rutgers University and is director of the Rutgers Electro-Acoustic Lab (REAL). Mark has a Ph.D. degree in composition from Princeton University.

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STILL IMAGE/ART WORKS SELECTIONS:

Images from "Passing" by Kremena Tordova and Kurt Gohde

Information about this work will be added soon.

Information about these artists will be added soon.