Our 2022 Technology Immersion Program master classes continue with Michael Schumacher who will talk about his projects and interests including his sound art gallery “Diapason”, his approaches to composition and his thoughts on social and architectural spaces and their effect on listening.
Saturday Feb. 26, 2022 – 1 pm to 3 pm. online
Composer Michael Schumacher has worked in the areas of algorithmic composition and performance, improvisation, sound installation, multi-channel sound, sound art curation and presentation, and pedagogy since the 1980s. Working during the transition time between the radical experimentation of the 1950s and 60s and the co-optation of the experimental by corporate interests that will occur in the near future, he has some thoughts on how the arts, both at the community and individual level, can continue to develop independently. He will discuss his sound art gallery Diapason and how creating a space for listening, in the technological, architectural and social senses, matters. His compositional interests have centered around translating improvisational and performance practices to automation in the form of algorithms. He has developed a system in response to the limits and possibilities of computer technology, which he’ll talk about in detail. He’ll also present two projects – a portable multichannel sound system and a sound installation for the home “Living Room Pieces.
BIOS
Michael J. Schumacher has worked with spatialized sound, computers and electronics since the 1980s, creating multi-channel, generative “Room Pieces” presented in galleries, museums, concert halls, public and private spaces. XI Records has published a DVD set of five sound installations as computer applications, playable on up to eight speakers, which may be installed on a computer to create sound environments in the home. “Living Room Pieces” is another generative installation designed for home listening; in 2021 Schumacher created an edition of 10 for Raspberry Pi. “The Portable Multi-channel Sound System” is an 8 or 12 channel system that fits in a suitcase, with which he has toured Europe and the United States.
His interest in the intersections of musical form, architecture and social spaces led to the founding, in 1996, of Diapason, a gallery devoted to the presentation of multi-channel sound installations, long-duration performances and intermedia artworks. In its 15 years of existence Diapason presented over 300 artists, at a time when sound art was emerging as a distinct practice in the United States.
Schumacher is the music director of the Liz Gerring Dance Company and performs regularly with choreographer Sally Silvers.
He studied music composition with Stanley Applebaum, Bernhard Heiden, John Eaton and Vincent Persichetti and piano with Seymour Bernstein, John Ogdon and Shigeo Neriki, and has degrees from Indiana University and Juilliard. He also worked with La Monte Young and Milton Babbitt. He has collaborated with choreographers, poets, architects, musicians and filmmakers including Oren Ambarchi, Bruce Andrews, Tom Chiu, Charles Curtis, Ken Jacobs, Victoria Meyers and Ursula Scherrer.
PRESS QUOTES
Schumacher…enables sounds rather than their source to hold the attention, and his results are outstanding.
Julian Cowley, Wire
…he carefully builds interior and exterior architectures that have the potential to coincide in the mind’s ear to create awareness of space in all its variations of light and dark, opaque and translucent, smooth and rough, sinuously organic and geometrically straight.
Stefaan Van Ryssen, Leonardo Music Journal
Schumacher is the Morton Feldman of Glitchwerks.
Kenneth Goldsmith, NYPress
https://www.michaeljschumacher.com/
https://www.livingroompieces.com/