Sunday, March 05, 2017

Imagining Sound at Central Features in Albuquerque, NM

Modes of the Major Scale, acrylic on canvas, 24" x 28", 2017

Edgard Varèse suggested that "music is organized sound". Physics suggests that matter is also organized sound.

The Tonal Relativity Series offers a way of organizing sound visually...wavelengths of light evoke wavelengths of sound in the mind's ear. 

The TRS is an "open work" (see Umberto Eco) – musicians and non-musicians alike are invited to experiment with the concept. The immaterial part of the project is freely available here.

Material and quasi-material parts of the project (in the form of works on canvas, objects, and sound) will be presented at the end of this month through the end of April in Albuquerque, NM. 

"Imagining Sound" opens at Central Features Contemporary Art on March 24 from 6 - 8pm. 

I'll be giving an talk on the project at ARTS Lab New Mexico at 5:30pm on on March 22

Then, on the evening of April 29 (the exhibition's closing day), Prepared Ear (composer/guitarist Julian Mock and I) will present a concert at UNM ARTS Lab in collaboration with members of the Albuquerque-based Death Convention Singers and University of North Texas flute professor-pioneer/Sounds Modern co-founder Elizabeth McNutt. The program will feature works by Pauline Oliveros, LaMonte Young, Mario Lavista, and Brian Harnetty, as well as several frameworks for improvisation developed by us especially for the Tonal Relativity project. We are honored to have the opportunity to present this particular combination of works with this phenomenal group of practitioners at this particular moment.