Commissioned Works/Special Projects is our program offering financial and administrative assistance to individual artists. We act as a fiscal agent for those artists applying for grants from federal and state programs and private foundations. Through this program we help develop collaborative projects between artists and assist with the presentation of their work. We are excited to announce four Sponsored Projects supported by the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York State Legislature, featuring recipients Emmett Palaima, Katherine Bennett, Alice Shields, and Shaun Irons.
Emmett Palaima: ShiftDriver-32
We’re excited to share that Emmett Palaima has received a Support for Artists Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts to advance the ShiftDriver Spatial Audio System, an instrument designed to control large-scale spatial sound using 1-bit audio. This project continues to evolve, building toward Temple-65536, envisioned as the world’s largest spatial audio instrument. We’re proud to have supported Emmett through our New Works Residency Program and look forward to seeing this work develop.
Emmett Palaima is an artist working with electronics and esoteric processes of sound creation. His practice is conceptually rooted in the idea that technology and magic are one and the same, and that electricity is a manifestation of the divine or elemental forces underlying physical reality. He is interested in crafting experiences of sound as an embodied physical process and in sharing the sculptural beauty of systems used in sound creation. He is additionally interested in the relationship between the instrument, labor, and the body, which he explores via performance and photography incorporating sculptural work. IG: @hammerhead_audio
Shaun Irons: All That Is Seen and Unseen
Shaun Irons has received support for All That Is Seen and Unseen, an interdisciplinary installation opera exploring the profound impact of technology on human consciousness. This work confronts the erosion of truth and trust in an era shaped by A.I., computational propaganda, and deepfakes, weaving together processed video, music, and text to envision a world overtaken by malfunctioning intelligent machines. We’re proud to support Shaun through our New Works Residency Program and look forward to the evolution of this timely and thought-provoking project.
Shaun’s hybrid work has been exhibited in diverse locations in New York and internationally including BAM’s Next Wave Festival, The Brooklyn Museum, Abrons Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory, Anthology Film Archives, REDCAT (Los Angeles), Z Space (San Francisco), CURRENTS New Media Festival (Santa Fe), Rencontres International Paris/Berlin and the Museo Nacional (Havana, Cuba). Shaun has received numerous awards including two NYFA Fellowships, multiple grants from the NEA, NYSCA, Jerome Foundation, Greenwall Foundation, Experimental Television Center, the Asian Cultural Council, Bel Geddes Design Fund and the Mertz Gilmore Foundation as well as creative residencies from MacDowell, Yaddo, LMCC, Harvestworks, Signal Culture, Bogliasco Foundation, the Camargo Foundation, and the Tokyo Wonder Site. www.shaunirons
Alice Shields: A Festival of Lights in the Court of Love
Alice Shields has received support to develop A Festival of Lights in the Court of Love, a chamber opera blending live performance, electronic sound, and video. Featuring four singers and six musicians, the piece transports audiences into a world where Eleanor and Marie compel men to speak in poetry and sing in the language of love among the clouds. We’re proud to support Alice through our New Works Residency Program and look forward to the continued evolution of this visionary work.
Alice holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University, where she was associate director of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and later director of development of the Columbia University Computer Music Center. Her music has been performed at the New York City Opera Vox Festival, Academie der Künste (Berlin), Venice Biennale, the Arangham Dance Theater (India), among others. The New York Times describes Alice’s work as “intense” and “richly scored”. http://www.aliceshields.com
Katherine Bennett: The Masquerades of the Soft Machines: Data Devourers
Katherine Bennett has received a Support for Artists Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts to develop The Masquerades of the Soft Machines: Data Devourers, a fiber and electronic installation that makes visible the hidden algorithmic forces shaping our world. Set within a soft, colorful, forest-like environment, the piece invites viewers to witness their data being recycled and fed into artificial intelligence models, revealing the intricate and often unseen relationship between human interaction and machine learning. We’re proud to support Katherine through our New Works Residency Program and look forward to seeing this immersive work come to life.
Katherine is a recent recipient of the Harvestworks New Works Residency (2019). Her work appears in the Spring 2019 issue of Fiber Arts Now. She has exhibited at the Inst-Int Festival, ODETTA Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), ISEA (Vancouver, BC & Singapore), Maryland Art Place (Baltimore, MD), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, IN), Obro (Canada), Collar Works (Troy, New York), The University of the Arts (Philadelphia), The Electrofringe Festival (New Castle, Australia), The University of Nevada, Reno, Zhou B Art Center (Chicago), and the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati, OH), among others. She has received grants from Fiber Arts Now, The Ohio Arts Council, the Puffin Foundation and the Illuminating & Engineering Society. Her other residencies include Jentel, Weir Farm and the Vermont Studio Center (full grant). She teaches workshops and courses centered on human-computer interaction design, programming, physical computing at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering.