Juraj Kojs’ TOUCH EM HEAR is an experimental multimedia work that explores the relationship between touch, sound and movement. Marco Donnarumma’s OMINOUS embodies before the audience the metaphor of an invisible and unknown object enclosed in the composer’s hands. Mari Kimura’s & Tomoyuki Kato’s ONE is an interactive audio/graphic multi-lingual opera, with the theme of “love, humanity, faith and global solidarity”. This event is part of 2013 New York Electronic Art Festival, in partnership with River To River Festival.
[Jun 30] Juraj Kojs, Marco Donnarumma, Mari Kimura & Tomoyuki Kato
Sunday, June 30, 2013. 7:30 pm
Admission: Free
Juraj Kojs, Stefano Trento, Carlota Pradera, JoAnna Ursal, Kim Yantis: Touch Me Hear
Marco Donnarumma: Ominous
Mari Kimura, Kyoko Kitamura, Tomoyuki Kato, Cassatt String Quartet: One
Location:
Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University
3 Spruce Street, New York
Touch Me Hear
Juraj Kojs’ Touch Me Hear is an experimental multimedia work that explores the relationship between touch, sound and movement. Body parts and its extensions such as hair and clothes become performable musical instruments. From skin sensations to complex digital tactile simulations, the piece exposes disappearing awareness between what can be felt and what actually is. A continuum of scenes filled with humor, solitude and emotionally charged movement contemplate the contemporary world of intertwined vibrations and modalities.
Marco Donnarumma’s Ominous is a sculpture of incarnated sound. The piece embodies before the audience the metaphor of an invisible and unknown object enclosed in the composer’s hands. This is made of malleable sonic matter. Similarly to a mime, he models the object in the empty space by means of whole-body gestures. The bioacoustic sound produced by the contractions of his muscle tissues is amplified, digitally processed, and played back through loudspeakers. The natural sound of his flesh tissues and its virtual counterpart blend together into an unstable sonic object. This oscillates between a state of high density and one of violent release. As the listeners imagine the object’s shape by following his gestures, the sonic stimuli induce a perceptual coupling. The listeners ‘see through sound’ the sculpture which their sight cannot perceive.
Mari Kimura’s & Tomoyuki Kato’s ONE is an interactive audio/graphic multi-lingual opera, with the theme of “love, humanity, faith and global solidarity”. Hailed as a “revolutionary” (The New York Times), violinist/composer Mari Kimura, teams up with an award-Japanese movie director Tomoyuki Kato, creating a large-scale composition for an ensemble and herself on stage. Kimura will use a state-of-the-art motion sensor technology called “Augmented Violin” developed at IRCAM in Paris. The musicians’ sounds and the “Augmented Violin” system interact in real time with the sophisticated real-time computer graphics created by Kato on stage.
BIOS
Juraj Kojs is a Slovakian composer, performer, multimedia artist, producer, researcher and educator permanently residing in the US. His compositions received awards at Europe—A Sound Panorama, Miami New Times Best Off Award, Eastman Electroacoustic Composition and Performance Competition and the Digital Art Award. Kojs has received commissions from The Quiet Music Ensemble, Miami Light Project, the Deering Estate Chamber Ensemble and Meet the Composer. His research articles appeared in journals such as Organized Sound, Digital Creativity, Leonardo Music Journal, Journal of New Music Research and International Journal of Arts and Technology. Kojs is the director of the Miami-based Foundation for Emerging Technologies and Arts (FETA). He holds a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies from University of Virginia. Kojs taught at Medialogy Department Aalborg University (Copenhagen, Denmark), Yale University and University of Virginia. Kojs is currently on faculty at University of Miami and Miami International University of Art and Design in Miami, FL. www.kojs.net
Carlota Pradera. She holds a BA in performance and choreography from Florida International University, 2009. Carlota has been involved in the professional contemporary dance scene of South Florida since 2001 to the present through performance collaborations and original works at Florida Dances, The Emerging Choreographers Series, Here & Now, Moving Currents, and more. In 2011, she presents and produces “Pradera & Collaborators” with original works ‘Looking Back’ and ‘Think Like a Guy’, and in 2012, “Aquarius Juice” is commissioned for the Here & Now: 2012 by Miami Light Project. She has received support by CCE Miami and Anchor Arts Management (Professional Dancers Fund) and has been awarded the professional development grants Artist Access Grants (Movement Research | Winter Melt, 2004 and Trisha Brown Summer Intensive, 2007), and an Artist Enhancement Grant (Trisha Brown Summer Intensive, 2007). Carlota is strongly inclined and interested on interdisciplinary approaches to create works that hold originality and risks in relation to contemporary times as well as building conscious community outreach endeavors by bringing movement to the underserved. carlotapradera.blogspot.com
New media and sonic artist, performer and teacher, Marco Donnarumma was born in Italy and is based in London. Weaving a thread around biomedia research, musical and theatrical performance, participatory practices and subversive coding, Marco looks at the collision of critical creativity with humanized technologies. His biophysical system Xth Sense won the first prize in the Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition and was named the 2012 “world’s most innovative new musical instrument” by the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, US. Recently, he curated the publication Biotechnological Performance Practice (eContact!, 14.2). His projects have been reviewed on BBC, Reuters, Wired, Create Digital Music, We Make Money Not Art, Rhizome, Weave, El Pais, Digicult, and appeared in the book “New Art/Science Affinities” (CMU and Studio for Creative Enquiry, US). He was artist in residence at STEIM (NL), Inspace (UK), and the National School of Theatre and Contemporary Dance (DK). His work has been funded by the European Commission, British Council, Creative Scotland, New Media Scotland, and the Danish Arts Council.
Currently, Marco is a PhD student for the Embodied Audio Visual Interaction (EAVI) Research Group at Goldsmiths, University of London, supervised by Professor Atau Tanaka, and fully funded by the European Research Council (ERC).
Mari Kimura Photo by Noel Fowler
Mari Kimura is at the forefront of creative violinists, widely admired as the inventor of “Subharmonics” and works for interactive computer music, winning the Guggenheim Fellowship, Fromm Commission, and Residency at IRCAM in Paris in 2010. She received numerous grants including NYFA, Arts International, Meet The Composer, Japan Foundation, and NYSCA. Mari’s CD, The World Below G and Beyond, features her “Subharmonics” and interactive compositions using IRCAM’s “Augmented Violin”. www.marikimura.com
Tomoyuki Kato is a renowned Japanese visual artist/movie director who works in a wide range of high-tech projects including advertisements, commercials, museums exhibitions and theme-parks. Mr. Kato’s work is known for the superb quality, high impact, originality and new technical methods. Mr. Kato has been active in creating corporate future vision, such as “concept car,” incorporating live action, computer graphics and animation and interactive video. Mr. Kato has received and nominated for numerous awards at international and national festivals, including Japan Ministry of Culture Media Arts Festival, Los Angels International Short Film Festival, Montreal International Film Festival and London International Advertising Festival.
Kyoko Kitamura
Kyoko Kitamura is a vocal improviser and composer residing in Brooklyn. She does weird things with her voice and is often a side-person for various amazing musicians. Her own songs have mildly disturbing content which may stem from her experience as a one-time war reporter. Most recently, she can be heard on Anthony Braxton’s first-ever studio-recorded opera Trillium E and his Syntactical Ghost Trance Choir as well as on her solo release “Armadillo In Sunset Park.“ www.kyokokitamura.com
Cassatt String Quartet. Acclaimed as one of America’s outstanding ensembles, the Manhattan based Cassatt String Quartet is equally adept at classical masterpieces and contemporary music. Established in 1985, the Cassatt has performed throughout North America, Europe, and the Far East, with appearances at New York’s Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Tanglewood Music Theater, the Kennedy Center and the Library of Congress, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and Maeda Hall in Tokyo. Named three times by The New Yorker magazine’s Best Of The Year CD Selection, the Cassatt String Quartet can be found on YouTube. www.cassattquartet.com
Image Programming: Yoshito Onishi
Visual Producer: Chisako Hasegawa
Marco Donnarumma
River To River Festival
The annual River To River Festival is produced by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in partnership with Founding Partners Arts Brookfield, Battery Park City Authority, and South Street Seaport. LMCC, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has been a leading voice for arts and culture since 1973, presenting cultural events in Manhattan, advocating for artists and the arts, and working in partnerships to improve the quality of life for the New York City’s workers, residents, and visitors. River To River is made possible with support from the Alliance for Downtown New York, American Express, The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, HUD, The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Westfield World Trade Center, and in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, as well as other underwriters.
