SPLICE Festival VI 2025 Concert 4 Program
Saturday January 25, 2025
10:30am EDT
Multimedia Room, Western Michigan University
Scott Deal & Jason Palamara : Thinking of Solis
Scott Deal, vibraphone
Marcin Pączkowski : Here Comes a Candle to Light You to Bed
Marcin Pączkowski, electronics
Anthony Marasco : Migration Script
Anthony Marasco, electronics
Stephanie Vasko : Michigan: Flow State
Stephanie Vasko, live interactive electronics, software synthesis, field recordings, video synthesis
Zeynep Özcan : Customs and Borders
Zeynep Özcan, electronics
Notes
Scott Deal & Jason Palamara : Thinking of Solis
Thinking of Solis is music from the futuristic science fiction opera titled "Lexia" (2024), created and composed by Scott Deal. "Lexia" is a parable about AI memory, climate catastrophe, and extraordinary transformation. The title character, Lexia, is a nomadic doula displaced by social and ecological upheaval, who bears witness to an unsettling consequence of human-caused climate catastrophe: that drastic shifts in the earth’s ecology are causing human babies to be born with the features of birds. The musical score features a soprano voice and the use of a unique AI instrument, AVATAR, that is both a compositional tool and realtime improvisation application. AVATAR is a machine-learning-enabled choice engine that responds in real time to sound inputs from a performer and provides its own improvised lines. AVATAR is co-developed by Scott Deal and Jason Palamara, Assistant Professor of Music Technology in the Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University Indianapolis. "Lexia" was premiered at the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, Indiana in January 2025, and will receive its New York debut in February 2025.
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Marcin Pączkowski : Here Comes a Candle to Light You to Bed
The title of the piece comes from a nursery rhyme referenced in George Orwell’s book “1984”. Throughout the book the main character struggles to remember the poem’s ending, which is revealed to him at the key moment, right before he is captured: “Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head”.
This thread in the whole story resonated with me, as it touches on the volatility of one’s memory, with the backdrop of large-scale manipulation of recorded knowledge performed by the totalitarian regime in the book. While Orwell mostly deals with the memory that exists within humans and memory that’s written down, today we deal with omnipresence of recorded media of multiple sorts, particularly sounds, images, and videos. As we produce larger and larger amount of such records, not only through traditional books, audio records and movies, but also in social media, blogs, podcasts etc., I find it fascinating how we navigate this oversaturated space and how it is being transformed by both large-scale phenomena as well as targeted actions. In my piece I am seeking to explore these transformations by employing a machine learning model that embeds the memory of the piece. While being performed, the piece re-composes itself, as the model is being re-trained to embed new “memories” of the performance gestures.
This work is supported by the Department of Digital Arts and Experimental Media at the University of Washington, as well as eScience Institute with support from the Washington Research Foundation.
The piece is realized in 3rd order Ambisonics spatial sound format and employs custom motion sensors developed by the composer.
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Anthony Marasco : Migration Script
Migration Script centers on the unrelenting forces of nature that push creatures to live their lives as molded through centuries-old patterns without question. Using Mark Wheeler's 'Overwintering' script and Zach Scholl’s 'granchild' script for the Monome Norns, the performer reacts to and shapes the slowly evolving harmonic content generated in real-time from bird migration patterns captured across Europe. Building new polyphonic and rhythmic overlays from bird song field recordings and the aforementioned sonified data, the performer uses granular engines and digital sample reduction processing to impart their fleeting influence on an unrelenting force. This piece also uses the 'CH-Norns' package developed by the composer, allowing wireless collaborative data sharing between multiple Monome Norns instruments, mobile devices, and computers. During the performance, one Norns transmits audio-reactive control data to the other two computers, allowing the sonic properties of the music it synthesizes to adjust properties such as the grain density, bit reduction amount, and modulation depth of the signal processing machines in real time. In this manner, the musician gains an improvisation partner out of one of their own instruments, another source of stochastic drive they must attempt to sculpt and decide how to react to in each performance.
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Stephanie Vasko : Michigan: Flow State
Michigan: Flow State is a 10-minute audiovisual love letter to the lakes, rivers, and waterfalls of Michigan. This performance will combine 1. field recorded and manipulated audio performed with software and Midi controllers with 2. projected live coding video synthesis and 3. live sound creation. Field recordings and video/photography from on, in, and Michigan locations will be supplemented with sounds created by modular virtual synthesis, hydropowered instruments, and by live manipulation of water sources and hydrophones. Sounds and images will flow from one to another, with triggers between the two, highlighting the interconnected of our senses and of our lives with our water sources.
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Zeynep Özcan : Customs and Borders
Customs and Borders is a transducer-based interactive live performance that challenges the audience’s perception on social identities through playful engagement and critical reflection. Utilizing objects symbolic of immigration, such as passports, stamps, and single-hole punches, the performance highlights the tangible artifacts of border crossing. As the performer takes on the role of a customs and border protection officer, the performance intentionally blurs the lines between authority and absurdity, inviting the audience to question the power structures at play in such contexts.
Become part of the performance!
This performance is interactive, and I invite volunteers to participate. Please pick up a passport near the stage and approach the performer with it. The performer will then decide whether to grant you entry with a stamp or deny it.
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Bios
Percussionist Scott Deal engages new works of computer interactivity, networked systems, media, and music. Hailed as “a riveting performer” who “exhibits phenomenal virtuosity”, Deal has performed at venues worldwide, with groups that include ART GRID, ESC, Callithumpian Consort, Percussion Group Cincinnati, Miami Symphony, Sonic Arts Ensemble, and Big Robot. His recordings of Pulitzer Prize/Grammy Award-winning composer John Luther Adams were listed in New Yorker Magazine’s and WNYC’s “Top Ten Classical Picks” and featured in the soundtrack of the Academy Award winning movie The Revenant, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In 2011, Deal and collaborator Matthew Burtner won the coveted Internet2 IDEA Award for their co-creation of "Auksalaq", a telematic climate opera called “an important realization of meaningful opera for today’s world”. His work has received funding from organizations that include Meet the Composer, New Frontiers, Indiana Arts Council, Clowes Foundation, Indiana University Arts and Humanities Institute, and the University of Alaska. Deal is a Professor and Director of the Donald Tavel Arts and Technology Research Center at Indiana University Indianapolis and is an Indiana University Presidential Arts and Humanities Fellow.
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Anthony T. Marasco is a composer, sound artist, and instrument designer who takes influence from the aesthetics of today’s Digimodernist culture. His music and installations showcase emerging technologies to highlight their creative flexibility, combining interactive sensor systems and cyber-hacked circuit-bent hardware with modular synthesizers and tabletop sound computers. An internationally recognized artist, Marasco’s works have been featured at the SEAMUS conference, the Networked Music Festival, MoxSonic, NIME, the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, NYCEMF, Mise-En Festival, Montreal Contemporary Music Lab, and more. Anthony’s research centers on developing collaborative and networked performance tools for electroacoustic music performance. He is a co-developer of Collab-Hub, a framework that lets remote, physically distanced performers share control of virtual and tangible instruments across the internet. Marasco is an Assistant Professor of Composition and Technology at Michigan State University’s College of Music.
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Dr. Zeynep Özcan is an experimental and electronic music composer, sound artist and performer. She explores biologically inspired musical creativity, interactive and immersive environments, and generative systems. Her works have been performed and presented throughout the world in concerts, exhibitions, and conferences, such as AES, ICAD, ICMC, ISEA, NIME, NYCEMF, WAC and ZKM. She is an Assistant Professor and a faculty director of Girls in Music and Technology (GiMaT), Summer Institute at the Department of Performing Arts Technology at the University of Michigan, School of Music, Theatre & Dance. She specializes in the implementation of software systems for music-making, audio programming, sonification, sensors and microcontrollers, novel interfaces for musical expression, and large-scale interactive installations. Her research interests are exploring bio-inspired creativity, artistic sonification, playfulness and failure in performance, and sonic cyberfeminisms. She is passionate about community building and creating multicultural and collaborative learning experiences for students through technology-driven creativity.
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Marcin Pączkowski [`marr-cheen pawnch-`koavz-kee] is a composer, conductor, digital artist, and performer, working with both traditional and electronic media. As a composer, he is focused on developing new ways of creating and performing computer music, and his pieces involving real-time gestural control using accelerometers have been performed in the United States, Poland, Canada, and South Korea.
As the Music Director of Evergreen Community Orchestra, he presents concerts of diverse repertoire to local communities. He is also involved in performing new music and has led premieres of numerous works in Poland and in the United States.
He received grants and commissions from the Seattle Symphony, eScience Institute, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, and from Polish Institute of Music and Dance. He received his Ph.D. in Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) from the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. He also holds Masters' degrees from the Academy of Music in Kraków, Poland, and from the University of Washington.
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Dr. Stephanie E. Vasko (b. 1984) is an interdisciplinary artist who works with sound, electronics, sculpture, software, video, performance, coding, and photography. A tinkerer and experimentalist at heart, her work uses combinations of vintage and current technologies, instruments, and techniques to warp perceptions, play with the distinction between natural and built spaces, and explore embodied experiences. She performs online and in-person, most recently, as part of Sound Scene 2024 at the Hirshhorn Museum, and has participated in solo and collaborative residencies. Dr. Vasko is the co-founder of the bimonthly Ambient Annotations experimental music series in Lansing, MI. You can find out more about her at http://www.stephanievasko.com or on Instagram at @stephanievaskostudio.
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