Atrium Display: Hammer, Ink & Key: Scores and Sculptures by Mauro ffortissimo Opening Reception and Concert July 22, 5pm Mauro’s work is complex and varied, ranging from hand painted scores which express the immediacy and humanness of intention while relying prominently on chance operation; to prepared, burning, planted and “liberated” pianos; to Flower Piano, a […]
Margaret Noble: Resonating Objects
Margaret Noble: Resonating Objects Opening Reception: Thursday July 12, 6pm Artist Statement I create interactive, multi-sensory sculptures and installations layered in sound and gesture. I design these works with recycled objects, raw materials, and circuitry. I use tactile controls to integrate light, electro-acoustic sounds, and field recordings into my projects. This practice enables users to […]
Space is the Plate
Space is the Plate: Shifting Resonances in Contemporary Instrument Design Works by: Tom Nunn, Richard Waters, Neil Feather, Fred “Spaceman” Long, Brooks Hubbert III, Bart Hopkin, & Brothers’ Quarrel (Saxton/Samas) after Harry Bertoia Many musical instruments employ soundboards – that is, thin boards, plates, sheets or diaphragms designed to provide a surface for radiating vibrations […]
Tonal Access: the Ratio Keyboard Designs of Harry Partch
Atrium Display: Tonal Access, the Evolution of the Keyboard Part I: The Ratio Keyboard Designs of Harry Partch Harry Partch (1901-1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and instrument inventor. He composed in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century composers in the West to work systematically with microtonal scales. His instruments were created in these […]
The Universal Music of Dr. UM: Works by Darrell DeVore
About the Artist Darrell DeVore (1939-2005), also known as Dr. UM, was a musician, instrument maker, graphic artist, wordsmith, philosophizer, and an inspiring and uplifting presence for all who came in contact with him. Darrell grew up in St. Joseph, Missouri. He taught himself jazz piano and as a young man made a place for […]
Ken Butler: Hybrid Visions
Atrium Display: Ken Butler, Hybrid Visions Artist Statement Contemporary urban life is a bewildering collage of multiple images, ideas, sounds, and objects in a constant state of flux as information overload becomes the touchstone of our age. As we move from the mechanical to the electronic, this churning mass chews up and spits out material with re-assigned […]
Robby Gilson: Shimmer
atrium display: Shimmer Shimmer is a work of visual art created for a work of music. Shimmer is a collaboration between architect/visual artist Robby Gilson and composer D. Riley Nicholson. Each drawing is a distillation of the projected artwork that accompanies the five self-contained movements of the piano and electronics composition Shimmer. Characterized by large and […]
Banjofrogs and Humanitars: Instruments and Art by Fred Carlson
About the Artist Innovative California luthier Fred Carlson got his start in rural Vermont, where as a teenager in the early 1970s he worked with artist Ken Riportella, a maker of musical sculptures. In 1975 Fred studied guitar-building with acclaimed lutherie teacher Charles Fox. Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s Fred built and repaired stringed instruments […]
Zoophoneum: The Sonified Wilderness
Atrium Display- Zoophoneum: The Sonified Wilderness The Zoophoneum began its conceptual life in 2015 when artist and curator David Samas was co-curating his first exhibition of imaginary instruments with the Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments; an exhibition which included illustrator and sound sculptor Monte Thrasher. Samas’s unique focus on biological sources reflects his deep and […]
Terry Berlier: Resounding Desire Lines
Artist Statement I am an interdisciplinary artist working with sculpture, kinetics, interactivity and sound to focus on the environment, ideas of nonplace/place and queer practice. My work emphasizes the essential role played by history, social relations, cultural memories and environmental conditions in the creation of our identities. Using humor, I provide tools for recovering and […]