Immersive audio recordings of decaying asylum interiors in 19th century Kirkbride Plan hospitals expand conventional documentation practice to foster a broader dialogue about architecture’s legacy in the treatment of mental health. [more…]

mem mer mère transforms eight measures of Debussy’s La Mer into one giant slow-motion wave that begins deep in the ocean’s trenches and rises through the Abyss, the Midnight, the Twilight, and finally the Sunlight as it breaks through the brilliant sun glitter on the water’s surface.

Agricultural and industrial pollution, coupled with global warming, have created more than 600 dead zones—seasonal hypoxic zones that can be responsible for mass mortality of fish, damaging coastal ecosystems. mem mer mère is underscored by a roll call reading of these dead zones—compiled by the research of Dr. Robert Diaz (Professor Emeritus, Virginia Institute of Marine Science) and Dr. Rutger Rosenberg (Professor, Department of Marine Ecology, University of Gothenburg).

Being unable to see either the settings of the benjolin synthesizer or each other, Grey & Morneau must rely on active listening and a practiced musical telepathy to confront the inherently chaotic nature of benjolin’s circuitry and shape its sounds into a coherent performance.

Oulipo (short for Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle) was founded in 1960 by the French author Raymond Queneau with a group of authors interested in exploring the potential of literature by applying constraints to the creative process, often rooted in mathematics.

Biophonic Beats  (2018) [structured improvisation for benjolin synthesizer and trombone]

Photon Ecstasy is a performance project that engages music, sound, and interactive light. Created by composer-performers Melissa Grey & David Morneau, it is a concert-length spatial performance for trombone and live electronics—including custom-built interactive wearable technology, the beeps of subverted video game systems, the randomness of the Benjolin modular synthesizer, the data sonification of star maps, field recordings of pre-dawn coyote vocalisation, and samples from the NASA Audio Collection. Commissioned by University of Pennsylvania Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Photon Ecstasy is an adaptation of The DNA-Photon Project, an artist book and twenty-five machine-sculptures by Dan Rose. New York Arts wrote that with repeated listenings "there’s more to be moved and impressed by, to learn from…."

Bourdon is a sound meditation performance of sine waves and delayed trombone tuned to a utility frequency.