Spectrum

Michael J. Schumacher/Nisi Jacobs

SPECTRUM is an extended installation across both of Diapason's exhibition spaces consisting of three-channel spectrographic video and eight-channel sound (SPECTRUM SUITE), archival prints of spectrographic compositions, and a twelve channel sound work (GLACIER WITH STILLS) with dual-channel video.

"A sound spectrum is a representation of a sound...in terms of the amount of vibration at each individual frequency. It is usually presented as a graph of either power or pressure as a function of frequency." The process at the core of SPECTRUM is the visualization of sound through spectrographic analysis, which breaks up a complex wave into its constituent parts and displays them on a 2 or 3 dimensional grid. These analyses and their corresponding sounds form the basis for each complex layered composition.

DRAW

DRAW's compositions form the basis for improvisations involving processed video, algorithmically generated sound and live musicians. Through experimentation and dialogue, they explore in depth the relation between sound and image. Their practice involves a number of strategies, such as coupling specific sound and image sequences, using multi-channel setups for video + sound, role-switching, and exploring notational techniques.
http://www.drawnyc.com

reviews: PDF

QUARTET WITHOUT PYRAMID SCHEME

Jordan Topiel Paul / Reed Evan Rosenberg /
Eric Laska / Richard F. Kamerman

Saturdays, September 5-26, 2-8pm
Closing reception on September 26 at 8pm

Quartet without Pyramid Scheme is a collaborative sound installation inhabiting the gallery and lounge spaces at Diapason.  Its sound is the sum of a rotating collection of sound samples which loop continuously in unpredictable variations. Through its duration, the four artists successively alter this sound by recording and integrating new samples to be looped, some of which replace old ones.  The sound content heard at any point in the piece will be the product of this collaboration.  The sources and contents of these samples will roughly adhere to the themes of found sound, noise, and field recording. Working as something between improvisers and curators, the artists will recompose the sample banks for the gallery and lounge rooms in the following pre-determined order:

Gallery 9/5: Paul
Lounge 9/5: Paul

Gallery 9/12: Rosenberg
Lounge 9/12: Paul / Rosenberg

Gallery 9/19: Laska
Lounge 9/19: Paul / Rosenberg / Laska

Gallery 9/26: Kamerman
Lounge 9/26: Paul / Rosenberg / Laska / Kamerman

By the end of the month, what is heard at Diapason will reflect a collective layering of the artists' individual perspectives and sonic experiences.

reviews: PDF

Diapason Gallery presents current perspectives on the idea of "microsound"- a technical term and also a musical genre - in honor of the 10th anniversary of the .microsound.org mailing list (founded by Kim Cascone). 10ms features multi-channel installations, sound objects, performances, lectures, texts, and other media.
 
Microsound is a term that encompasses explorations of sound on a time scale "shorter than musical notes." It includes and overlaps genres such as glitch music, granular synthesis, lowercase sound, etc.
 
Participating artists: Brett Ian Balogh, Riccardo Benassi, Kim Cascone, Thanos Chrysakis, Rob Curgenven, Taylor Deupree, Ian Epps, Patrick Franke, Heribert Friedl, Richard Garet, Sarah Karp, Kenneth Kirschner, Thomas Köner, Tomas Korber, Damian Marhulets, Mamoru Okuno, Kamran Sadeghi, Erik Schoster, Phillip Schulze, Bernd Schurer, Keiko Uenishi and Tamara Yadao. Curated by Daniel Neumann

Join us for a special celebratory dance party with djs showcasing microhouse through the past decade and live acts playing contemporary microsounds for the dancefloor.

Brett Ian Balogh - "Chora" - http://www.brettbalogh.com
Riccardo Benassi - "Always the same gate, but in different days" -  http://www.365loops.com/
Kim Cascone - "Language of Ghosts" - http://www.anechoicmedia.com/
Thanos Chrysakis - "Encounters"
Rob Curgenven - "Unsilenced Landscapes" - http://recordedfields.net/
Taylor Deupree - http://www.taylordeupree.com
Ian Epps - http://www.ianepps.com/
Patrick Franke - "Hirundo Rustica" - http://biophonie.info/
Heribert Friedl - www.nonvisualobjects.com
Richard Garet - http://www.richardgaret.com
Sarah Karp - "Passagen"
Kenneth Kirschner - http://www.kennethkirschner.com/
Thomas Köner - "Kanon" - http://www.koener.de/
Tomas Korber - http://www.tomaskorber.com/
Damian Marhulets - www.displaced-meanings.com
Mamoru Okuno - "Etude No. 12" - http://www.afewnotes.com
Kamran Sadeghi - "Micro Series" - www.kamransadeghi.com
Erik Schoster - "Growing" - http://www.hecanjog.com/
Phillip Schulze - "Cause Unfold Proceed" - www.phillip-schulze.de
Bernd Schurer - http://www.heterophenomenological.net/
Keiko Uenishi - "Shifting Blanks" - http://www.soundleak.org/
Tamara Yadao - http://www.tamarayadao.com/
Daniel Neumann - http://danielneumann.wordpress.com/

Tall Poppies (2009)

Nicolas Collins
Multi-channel video and sound installation

In Tall Poppies contact mikes on the stems of sparklers
pick up the whoosh of the burning magnesium and the
subsequent ping and pop of the wire cores as they cool.
Video projectors beam synchronized recordings of
individual sparklers onto the walls of the gallery, each
image accompanied by its own sound channel. The
vagaries in burn-time and cool-down produce an odd
polyphony.

Videography by Tommy Heffron.
Duration: 2-minute loop

Diapason Gallery Nicolas Collins, Diapason Archive Jukebox, Kamran Sadeghi.
Every Saturday, 2-8pm

Nicolas Collins

Nicolas Collins was born in New York City in 1954. He studied composition with Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan University, where he received his B.A. and M.A. He has performed as a composer and presented audio installations throughout the United States, Europe, South America and Japan. His work is represented on many recordings and has been broadcast on radio and television around the world. He was a pioneer in the use of microcomputers in live performance, and has made extensive use of "home-made" electronic circuitry, radio, found sound material, and transformed musical instruments. His recent work emphasizes spoken word, and combines idiosyncratic electronics with conventional acoustic instruments
Collins is also prominent as a curator of performance and installation art, and has been a board member, curator and policy advisor for numerous cultural organizations, including PS1, The Clocktower, The Kitchen, Roulette, Studio PASS, the Relache ensemble, De IJsbreker, Podewil and the Internationalen Musikfestwochen Luzern. In 1992 he relocated from New York to the Netherlands, where he was for three years Visiting Artistic Director of Stichting STEIM in Amsterdam. In 1996-97 he was a DAAD composer-in-residence in Berlin. He lives in Berlin with his wife, writer Susan Tallman, and their son and daughter.

http://www.nicolascollins.com

Concrete

December 5 & 12
Reception Dec. 5, 6pm
free

Concrete is a sound installation exploring the interplay of two species of sounds: real-time vibrations emitting from objects physically present in the space vs. the virtual sound produced with a mutli-channel sound system .  Physical objects in the space are activated (stuck, vibrated with motors, etc.) and are combined with field recordings and virtual sounds created using speakers.  Sound is our perception of the vibration of physical objects (transmitted to us via the air around us).  However, when sound is recorded with a microphone, and then replayed over speakers, we create a virtual sound space which is more a product of simulating the way our ears work (the microphone as a virtual ear) than it is is a recreation of the original physical vibration.  In some ways, combining these two ideas shouldn't work-- these two ways of producing sound are intrinsically and philosophically at odds with each other. This installation explores this possibility / impossibility.

Shawn Decker

Shawn Decker is a composer and artist who creates sound and electronic media installations and writes music for live performance, film, and video. His work has been frequently performed, seen, and heard in the US and Europe at a wide variety of venues. He frequently collaborates with other artists, including most recently Jan Erik-Andersson and Anne Wilson.  Recent exhibitions of both solo and collaborative work have shown at venues such as: the Kiasma Museum in Helsinki, the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Pritzker Pavillion in Chicago’s Millenium Park, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the 2003 Biennial of Electronic Art in Australia, Art Basel Miami,  the Klosterruine in Berlin, ISEA2002 in Nagoya,  the 21st Century Museum in Kanazawa, Japan, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, CAM Houston , ISEA2000 Paris, the Waino Aalto museum in Turku, Finland and numerous others. Decker is a Professor in the Art and Technology and Sound departments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

http://www.shawndecker.com/

Daniel Teige's Xenakis interpretations
5 electro-acoustic works

Performance only - February 6, 7pm $10
Installation - February 13, 20, 27, 2-8pm  Free

As part of the festival IANNIS XENAKIS: COMPOSER, ARCHITECT, VISIONARY organized by the Drawing Center and curated by Sharon Kanach and Carey Lovelace, Diapason will present an overview of Xenakis’s tape pieces in a multichannel environment. On Saturday February 6 at 7pm, German sound artist Daniel Teige will perform a selection of these works adapted to the architecture and acoustics of Diapason’s main space. The concert will consist of five major works, some of the most important electronic music compositions of the 20th century, and last 3 plus hours. Thanks to the generosity of the Electronic Music Foundation and Joel Chadabe, Diapason will use a special 8 channel system for the diffusion of these pieces. The concert is not to be missed!
 
The concert will be recorded and played as a sound installation in the gallery for the remainder of the month of February.
 
Daniel Teige, works as a freelance sound artist, composer and Klangregisseur in Berlin. His focus is on arts and audio-technology, in particular on sound installations, improvisation and new concepts of interaction. His works have been shown at international festivals. He has given lectures and workshops about sound and interactive design. As an audio designer he has worked with the American composer Jonathan Bepler on the music of Matthey Barneys
"Cremaster3".  In 2005 he was invited as a composer in residence to work at the EMS Studio in Stockholm. During the last years he has remixed new multichannel versions of Iannis Xenakis "Kraanerg", Persepolis" and
"Polytope de Cluny" in collaboration with Mode Records New York and Edition RZ in Berlin.
 
Program:
Persepolis (1971)
Polytope de cluny (1972)
Hibiki hana ma (1969-70)
Légende d'Eer (1977)
Bohor (1962)

Colour Projections
Theo Burt

Hands in the air, reach for the laser
Roc Jiménez de Cisneros
Computer-generated piece for 12-channel diffusion system

Saturdays in March, 2-8PM
Free

Colour Projections is a computer-based audio and video work creating precise relationships between sound and geometry. Through a progression of geometric systems, rules are established and shapes are created, intersected, combined and destroyed. Each resulting shape is both drawn and sonified - a shape’s outline is directly transformed to an audio waveform.

Although the systems use only fixed, stateless geometric operations, through certain coincidences there is a tendency to attribute identity to individual shapes and perceive a level of causality within the systems. We are reminded that these perceptions are illusive when the geometric behaviour diverges from our expectations, causing apparent shifts in plurality and ambiguities of identity. The work builds in complexity over its duration, playing with perceptions of time and predictability.

Theo Burt is a UK-based artist working with sound, video and light. His work draws on interests in perceptual relationships between sound and image and aesthetic applications of technology. Recent projects have focused on the use of related sound and video to create a transparency of process, and the effect of partial-predictability on perceptions of time. His work includes installations, live performance and fixed-media pieces. The sound and video work ‘Colour Projections’ was recently released as a CD-ROM by Entr’acte.

In physics, a multistable system is one which is neither stable nor entirely unstable, constantly shifting between various mutually exclusive states as a result of the coexistence of several system attractors. ‘Hands in the air, reach for the laser’ uses generative algorithms to implement this behaviour in the synthesis, organization and diffusion of sounds. The output of each speaker constantly shifts between different states, thus changing the listener’s perception of the system, which sometimes appears as an organised whole, and other times as a juxtaposition of isolated, independent sources or subgroups engaging in complex trajectories and subroutines.

Roc Jiménez de Cisneros (Barcelona, 1975) is an artist and composer. Since 1996 he has been the core member of the computer music project EVOL. His work has been released on internationally acclaimed record labels such as Entr’acte, Mego, Presto!?, Diskono, Lucky Kitchen, and his own Alku among others. de Cisneros has followed the ’computer music for hooligans’ motto since the late nineties, giving birth to musical forms built upon a collision of structural ideas inspired by fractal geometry, glimpses of quantum theory, noise and rave culture. From impossible synths to glowsticks, air horns, elastic bass lines, and mathematical equations, his work displays a radical and playful approach to algorithmic composition, somewhere in between Denis Smalley’s concept of ‘spectromorphology’, black magic and what Agostino Di Scipio called ’functional iteration synthesis’.

http://vivapunani.org

Saturdays in May, 2-8PM Free
with a special event

Monday, May 10
7 - 8 pm
Installation

8pm
performance

SKIF++ (Robert Van Heumen and Jeff Carey
with Ursula Scherrer (live video)
Suggested donation: $ 8

Diapason
882 Third Avenue, between 32nd and 33rd Streets, 10th floor
BROOKLYN (Sunset Park)
(718) 499-5070

www.diapasongallery.org

Slash' is like the skin; it breathes, it gives and takes, it holds back and lets pass through, it is about the border between darkness and light, between sound and silence, between what we see and what we don’t see, between what we hear and what we don’t hear.

The music is composed of recordings of acoustic bass, accordion, cymbals and room noise, using four pairs of stereo microphones. All the sound elements have been filtered, cut and spatialized for the eight-channel system, in order to create sharp contrast and tonal gradation between sound, noise and silence.

Scherrer lets only narrow strips of her video projections be seen on the walls of the gallery, a drawing of the shadows of slashes that have been cut through black paper. Shapes and colors crawl up and down and across these cracks, sometimes barely visible and almost still, and sometimes dynamic and colorful. The projected image as a whole is hidden in the dark and of no importance.

Slash’ is about light within darkness, sound within silence; glimpses of something real which invites the viewers and listeners to use their imagination to fill in the gaps.

Kato Hideki (Kato: family name; Hideki: given) is an independent composer/bassist/multi-instrumentalist. His projects include: Death Ambient with Fred Frith & Ikue Mori; Green Zone with Otomo Yoshihide & Uemura Masahiro; and OMNI with Nakamura Toshimaru & Akiyama Tetsuzi. Kato has collaborated with Nicolas Collins, James Fei and Ursula Scherrer. He is a member of the analog synthesizer collective, Analogos at Diapason Gallery. http://www.katohideki.com/

The poetic quality of Ursula Scherrer’s work reminds one of moving paintings, drawing the viewer into the images, leaving the viewer with their own stories, transforming a landscape into a serene, abstract portrait of rhythm, color and light, where the images have less to do with what we see then the feeling they leave behind.
Scherrer is a Swiss video artist living in New York City. Her work has been shown in festivals, galleries and museums internationally. 
Scherrer has worked with the composers/musicians Shelley Hirsch, Michelle Nagai, Kato Hideki, Flo Kaufmann, Domenico Sciajno, Michael J. Schumacher, Monya Pletsch, among others, in the creation of video and sound installations, live performances and single-channel videos and she has collaborated with choreographer Liz Gerring.

Together with Katherine Liberovskaya, Scherrer organizes OptoSonic Tea in New York, a series dedicated to the convergence of live visuals with live sounds. OptoSonic Tea on the Road has toured in Switzerland, Austria, Slovakia, Spain and Italy.

Scherrer’s work has been shown at the New York Video Festival 2004, BAC 36th International Film and Video Festival, Brooklyn Museum of Art, at the Chelsea Art Museum, the d.u.m.b.o art festival 2005 and 2008, Experimental Intermedia, Diapason, Roulette, Issue Project Room, the LAB, San Francisco, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Dissonanze Festival in Rome, Live!iXem 2007 in Palermo, O'artoteca, Milan, 9e Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement, Saint-Gervais Geneve, Tesla, Berlin, Tresor, Stuttgart, Galerie Rachel Haferkamp, Cologne, Kunstraum im Walcheturm, Zürich, Plug-in, Basel, the Media Test Wall / MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, New Genre Festival 2008, Tulsa OK, Polli Talu Arts Center, Estonia, among others. 
http://www.ursulascherrer.com

SKIF++
The electronic audio-visual trio SKIF++ is a collaboration of Jeff Carey (laptop SuperCollider), Robert van Heumen (laptop LiSa) and Bas van Koolwijk (laptop Max/MSP/Jitter). Sound gets processed into video and back, ranging from sonic bursts to melodic melancholy, using joysticks and selfmade controllers to keep it all in line (most of the time). Every SKIF++ performance is improvised, but based on structures that give each set its distinct character.

This time SKIF++ will play as a duo, joined by Ursula Scherrer (live video).
http://hardhatarea.com/SKIF++ Electronic music composer Jeff Carey, based in the US and in the Netherlands, has been working with experimental, improvised and composed electronic, electro-acoustic, and acousmatic music since the early 90's. Originally from the suburbs of Washington DC, he has performed a handful of hardcore bands and has played electronic music or presented pieces and installations in the US and Europe at festivals and venues such as Boralis (NO), Gaudeamus Music Week (NL), Chelsea Museum of Art (US), Transmediale (DE), NuMusic(NO), Sonic Acts (NL), Ekko Festival (NO), Cave 12 (CH), DNK-Amsterdam (NL), Trondhiem Matchmaking (NO), MOCADC (US), The Network (BE), and Placard (UK). Having studied Audio Technology at American University (1994), and computer music composition at the Instituut voor Sonologie in the Koningklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag (2002), his work has evolved from an interest in no-input­mixer and field recordings to include a focus on non-standard synthesis, algorithmic composition and digital instrumentalism. Apart from purely acousmatic and electro-acoustic composition, he is focused on performative aspects of computer music and improvisation. He has played in the groups 87 Central, Office­R(6), SKIF++, USA/USB, N-Ensemble, and collaborated or performed with Francis Marie Uitti, Gert-Jan Prins, Cor Fuhler, Oren Ambarchi, Tobias Delius, Jaap Blonk and the numerous members of the N-Collective to name a famous few. Recent compositions include the acousmatic pieces 'Blueshift', 'Music for Broken Flute and Stolen Computer', and 'Point Source 01' for Double Bass and computer. Carey builds custom electronic instruments for musicians (most notably, MoHa!) and teaches courses in the synthesis programming language SuperCollider 3, recently at new media/arts institutions including NoTAM, BEK, TEKS (NO), STEIM (NL), and ITP (US). He is one of many founding members of the N-Collective, a pan-European music collective, and works to promote and present N-Events in the Americas.

Robert van Heumen works with electronic means to create soundworlds. As a musician Van Heumen uses STEIM's live sampling software LiSa and real-time audio-synthesis software SuperCollider, controlled by various physical devices. His soundworlds are a mixture of digital crackles, heavy distortion, melancholic melodies, environmental sounds, voices and sounds from kitchen appliances, some of the time smashed beyond repair. Live sampled source sounds are gesturally manipulated and reworked within open ended narratives, exploring cycles of repetition beyond episodic improvisation.

Recent fixed-media works include the compositions Stranger and Fury, which are performed in multichannel and semi-improvised environments. Fury was presented at ICMC08, and Stranger premiered as a diffused work at Culturelab in Newcastle (UK) and was performed live at the Sound and Music Computing Conference in Porto in 2009. Both compositions are available on Creative Sources Recordings. In the fall of 2008 Van Heumen constructed the radioplay No Man's Land, commissioned by the CEM studio at WORM in Rotterdam, NL.

Van Heumen is performing regularly with the audio-visual trio SKIF++ (with Jeff Carey & Bas van Koolwijk), Shackle (working with electro-flutist Anne LaBerge on restriction), ABATTOIR (with cellist/vocalist Audrey Chen) and Whistle Pig Saloon (with guitarist John Ferguson deconstructing the guitar). He has shared the stage with dj sniff (Takuro Mizuta Lippit), Michel Waisvisz, Richard Barrett, Sakata Akira, Nicolas Collins, Oguz Buyukberber, Luc Houtkamp, Guy Harries, Tom Tlalim, Nicolas Field, Morten J. Olsen, Daniel Schorno, Roddy Schrock, Nate Wooley a.o.
Van Heumen is Managing Director of the STEIM foundation in Amsterdam, curator of the Local Stop concert series and member of STEIM's Artistic Committee. In a previous life mathematician, trumpet player and software programmer. He still reads L.E.J. Brouwer.

http://hardhatarea.com

Diapason presents

June

a sound and image installation

by DRAW

(Nisi Jacobs and Michael J. Schumacher)

Saturdays, June 5, 12, 19 and 26
2-8pm

free

Diapason
882 Third Avenue (between 32nd and 33rd Street)
10th Floor
Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Info: 718.499.5070 | www.diapasongallery.org

Subway: D, N, R to 36th Street/4th Avenue

Notes:

June is a new audio-visual installation by DRAW, the duo of Nisi Jacobs and Michael J. Schumacher. June uses 23 channels of sound and multiple video projections to create an environment of potential relations between disparate events.

DRAW's activities form the basis for performances and installations involving processed video, algorithmically generated sound and live musicians. Through experimentation and dialogue, they explore in depth the relation between sound and image. Their practice involves a number of strategies, such as coupling specific sound and image sequences, using multi-channel setups for video + sound, role-switching, and exploring notational techniques.

Nisi Jacobs earned a BFA in Painting from The Cooper Union and creates multichannel video performances and installations. She is a co-curator at Diapason Gallery and collaborates with composer/sound artist, Michael J. Schumacher as DRAW (www.drawnyc.com); other collaborations have been with poet Bruce Andrews, violinist Tom Chiu, sound artist David Gailbraith and percussionist James Gailbraith (Padtech), sound artist Andre Goncalves, and percussionist Tim Keiper. Previous curation efforts include 5.1 programs for SYNCH Electronic Festival, The Phatory Gallery, and HOWL Film Festival. Jacobs has exhibited in festivals at the Jeu De Paume Museum in Paris, Tribeca Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Circulo de Bellas Artes of Madrid, Maya Stendhal Gallery, SONAR festival at the Caracas Contemporary Art Museum, CalArts Film/Video Cinematheque, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, The Alejandro Otero Museum, National Cinématheque of Spain, Manchester Metropolitan University of England, River-to-River film festival, Ear to the Earth Festival; a CD release entitled 'Weaves' includes two videos by Nisi Jacobs with six sound tracks by Michael J. Schumacher, distributed by En’tract, 2009. Past video performances include The Bowery Ballroom, Pianos, Living Room, Mercury Lounge, Williamsburg Music Hall; recent DRAW performances include Optosonic Tea with Philip White and Suzanne Thorpe, VCW Performance, and Brooklyn Arts Council with Stuart Popejoy and Sarah Bernstein.     
Jacobs has helped to launch a new video scoring workshop with Adam Kendall which focuses on the development of video scoring systems, Video Composition Workshop (VCW) and teaches video editing at NYU’s Center for Advanced Digital Applications, NYU’s Department of Film, Video and Broadcasting, The Art Institute of New York City, Apple Authorized Training Center Soho Editors NYC, and has been editor for (and sometimes collaborator) with filmmaker Ken Jacobs since 2001.  Among the numerous works she has assist-edited, STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH (a 4-part internationally distributed documentary) won The Douglas Edwards Experimental/Independent Film/Video Award by the LA Film Critics in 2005, enjoying screenings in Brussels, Paris, Vienna, Holland, Hong Kong, MoMa, Lincoln Center, London Film Festival, and Slovenia, among others.  http://www.drawtoy.com

Michael J. Schumacher is a composer, performer and installation artist based in New York City.
He works predominantly with electronic and digital media, specializing in computer generated sound environments that evolve continuously for long time periods. In their realization, Schumacher uses multiple speaker configurations that relate the sounds of the installation to the architecture of the exhibition space. Architectural and acoustical considerations thereby become basic structural elements.
Schumacher’s sound installations have been heard at Art in General, Apex Art, PS 1, The Kitchen and Sculpture Center in New York City, CCNOA in Brussels, Singuhr Gallery and Tesla in Berlin, the Museum for Applied Arts in Frankfurt , the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon, Triskel Arts Center in Cork, Ireland, Transmissions Festival in Chicago, Tone Deaf in Kingston, Ontario, The Sound Art Museum in Rome, )toon Festival in Haarlem, RADAR in Mexico City, Ostrava Music Days and others. 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. Schumacher’s composition “Grid”, a computer generated score that unfolds in real time, has been in exhibitions in New York, Barcelona and Houston. His latest CD, "Weave", was released this year on Allon Kaye's Entr'acte.
He is the composer in residence of the Liz Gerring Dance Company. In August 2007 Schumacher and Nisi Jacobs began DRAW, an audio-video performance group. Joined by Tim Keiper, Alex Waterman, Bruce Andrews and others, they create immersive live sets based on collaborative compositions.  DRAW’s website is http://drawnyc.com.
Schumacher has lectured at Bard College, The New School, The School for Visual Arts and Juilliard. He has taught piano, composition, theory and ear training privately since 1983. He currently teaches at Polytechnic Institute of NYU in Brooklyn.  www.michaeljschumacher.com

http://www.diapasongallery.org

Diapason is supported by NYSCA, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Phaedrus Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, The Trust for Mutual Understanding, Kirk Radke, and by generous individuals. Diapason is a 501(c)3 organization.

Diapason presents

VOCIFEROUS: Sound Works by 21 Contemporary Colombian Artists

Curated by Ricardo Arias

Opening Thursday, September 2, 6pm
Installations run Saturdays, September 4, 11, 18, 25, 2pm-8pm
free

Diapason
882 Third Avenue (between 32nd and 33rd Street)
10th Floor
Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Info: 718.499.5070 | www.diapasongallery.org

Subway: D, N, R to 36th Street/4th Avenue

Notes:

The show opens on Thursday, September 2 with a special performance by Ricardo Arias and Carlos Gómez.

Installations by the shows 21 artists will run every Saturday in September from 2pm to 8pm.

Curated by Colombian electroacoustic composer and improviser Ricardo Arias, Vociferous: Sound Works by 21 Contemporary Colombian Artists presents an overview of the current state of sound art in Colombia. It is the first exhibition of its kind to be presented outside of the country, and one of a few recent curatorial initiatives to bring together sound works by artists from a variety of disciplines such as electroacoustic music, video art, sound installation art, and sound sculpture. One of the virtues of the term “sound art,” however vague and undefinable it might be, is precisely that it allows for such a grouping together of apparently disparate practices.
Opening: September 2, 2010

Carlos Gómez and Ricardo Arias started working together in 1988 in Barcelona where Gómez was a frequent guest performer with Sol Sonoro, an electroacoustic improvisation ensemble formed by Arias, Roberto García and Catalan guitarist and composer Luis Boyra. At roughly the same time they formed the proto-rock duo &NiL (which soon turned into a trio with the inclusion of García) and they collaborated regularly in ad-hoc projects until the mid 1990’s. In October, 2009 they renewed their musical collaboration with an appearance in the Phonos Concert Series that inaugurated the new performance space at the Universitat Pompeu i Fabra in Barcelona.
Installations: September 4, 11, 18, 25

Electroacoustic music in all its different guises has a relatively long history in Colombia. It is not surprising, then, that over half of the artists in Vociferous have developed their work, to a greater or lesser degree, within the electroacoustic music tradition: they are Mauricio Bejarano, Juan Reyes, Roberto García, Catalina Peralta, Julián Jaramillo, Daniel Prieto, Ana Maria romano, and Fabián Torres. Alba Fernanda Triana is a composer who, having studied composition and electroacustic music is now focusing her work on Interactive computer installations with specially designed and constructed sculptural interfaces. Carlos Gómez and Beatríz Eugenia Díaz are both trained as musicians and artists and for many years have experimented at the intersection of the two disciplines. Pedro Gómez-Egaña has an interest in improvisation, video and performance art. After studying composition and electroacoustic music, for the past 24 years Ricardo Arias has primarily been devoted to experimental
improvised music using unconventional instruments. Carlos Bonil, Jaidy Díaz, Adriana García, Jaime Rojas, Juan Sebastián Suanca, Leonel Vásquez, and Icaro Zorbar are all visual artists with a marked interest in sound and are part of the first generation of Colombian artists that could be labeled “sound artists.”

There is a bird called Lipaugus vociferans that can often be heard (but rarely seen) throughout the Amazon Basin. This bird sings quite loudly and persistently and its song is among the most characteristic sounds of the Amazon rainforest. The males gather roughly in concentric circles (leks) so that the spatial effect of their collective utterance is akin to that of a multichannel, plurifocal piece of music/sound art. This, and the fact that Lipaugus vociferans are found in Colombian territory, added to the sonority of the word, explain the main title of this show: Vociferous.

Ricardo Arias

Ricardo Arias has experimented with sound for the last 24 years, mainly as an improviser and composer. He uses unconventional instruments and found objects as sound sources for his work and since 1992 has focused almost exclusively on the balloon kit, a number of rubber balloons attached to a suitable structure and played with the hands and a set of accessories, including various kinds of sponges, pieces of Styrofoam, rubber bands, etc. Using this contraption as his main instrument, he collaborates with a large pool of experimental and improvising musicians from around the world, including Mazen Kerbaj, Jane Rigler, Chris Mann, Anne Wellmer, Andrew Drury, David Watson, Sean Meehan, Jack Wright, Tatsuya Nakatani, Vic Rawlings, Michel Doneda, Gabriel Paiuk , Leonel Kaplan, Nate Wooley, Pauline Oliveros, Hans Tammen, Miquel Jordá, Carlos Gómez, Roberto García, Alex Waterman, Juan Sebastián Suanca, Miguel Frasconi, Michael Zerang, and Pascal Boudreault, among many others. Since 2007, he is an Assitant Professor in the Art Department at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.

http://www.diapasongallery.org

Diapason is supported by NYSCA, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Phaedrus Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, The Trust for Mutual Understanding, Kirk Radke, and by generous individuals. Diapason is a 501(c)3 organization.

Diapason presents

Non-Cochlear Sound

Curated by Seth Kim-Cohen

Opening Friday, October 1, 7pm
Installations run Saturdays, October 2, 9, 16, 23, 2pm-8pm

Panel: Thursday, October 28, Goethe-Institut, 72 Spring Street, 11th floor, New York, NY
free

Diapason
882 Third Avenue (between 32nd and 33rd Street)
10th Floor
Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Info: 718.499.5070 | www.diapasongallery.org

Subway: D, N, R to 36th Street/4th Avenue

Notes:

Sound, like everything else (maybe more than everything else), is a product of interaction: stick with skin, wheel with street, wind with grass. Logically, then, sound is also a product of the situations in which these interactions occur. Non-Cochlear Sound addresses sound as a conceptual, contextual construct. Non-Cochlear Sound might function in a sound-like fashion without specifically referencing or making sound, it might use sound as a vehicle for transporting ideas or materials from point A to point B, it might even make sound but only as an excuse for initiating other activities. Sound always makes meaning by interacting with other things in proximity: geographic proximity, ideological proximity, philosophical proximity. Non-Cochlear Sound is nothing more - and nothing less - than the acknowledgement of this reality.

Diapason Gallery for Sound presents Non-Cochlear Sound, an exhibition curated by Seth Kim-Cohen. The exhibition follows from Kim-Cohen’s book, In The Blink Of An Ear: Toward A Non-Cochlear Sonic Art (Continuum 2009), which theorizes a phylum of sonic practice imagined as a continuation of and a complement to Marcel Duchamp's notion of a non-retinal visual art. The opening on October 1 at 7pm will include one-time-only performances which will then be documented for the remainder of the exhibition. Non-Cochlear Sound continues Saturdays in October from 2pm-8pm and features the work of twenty established and emerging artists working with sound as a medium which addresses ideas beyond the act of hearing. Through performance, video, text and sound, the artists examine sonic conceptualism and the mediating/mediated properties of sound.
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Opening: October 1, 7pm
Non-Cochlear Sound opens on Friday, October 1 at 7pm at Diapason Gallery.

Exhibition: October 2, 9, 16, 23, 30
Non-Cochlear Sound features the work of twenty artists from Europe, the U.K., the U.S., and Canada who responded to an open call for non-cochlear sound works. From more than 150 submissions, curator, Seth Kim-Cohen, selected nineteen pieces which expand his own conception of what a non-cochlear sonic art might look like, sound like, how it might behave.

Exhibition Highlights:

• On the first full day of the exhibition, October 2, artist Rozalinda Borcilla will lead Listening for Beginners, a workshop for twenty participants whose documentation will also become part of the exhibition.
• Michelle Rosenberg will install a network of whistles throughout Diapason, allowing spectators to engage the exhibition and interact with each other by blowing into holes at one location, activating whistles at another location inside (or outside) the gallery.
• Doug Barrett’s Violin Tuned D.E.E.D. is a historical revision of Bruce Nauman’s Violin Tuned D.E.A.D. (1968). The piece will be performed live during the October 1st opening, existing subsequently as documentation for the duration of the exhibition.
• Rob Mullender’s work consist of two parts: Daughter’s Voice From Memory is a resin sculpture of a sound wave; Said Object is a video of various individuals confronting the sculpture and responding to the question: “What does it say?” 
• Benjamin Thorp will ship a box containing recording gear to the gallery. When it arrives, Black Box, will be installed, playing back the sound of its journey to the exhibition.

Panel: October 28
A panel of artists and scholars will discuss the exhibition and its implications on October 28th at the Goethe Insitut. Participants will include Seth Brodsky, David Grubbs, Marina Rosenfeld, and Liz Kotz among others.

Seth Kim-Cohen
Seth Kim-Cohen makes as little distinction between his artistic and scholarly practices as he can get away with. His work has been presented around the world at galleries and museums including Tate Modern, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Whitechapel Gallery, Peer Gallery, and Reception Space in London; PS 122, Issue Project Room, Chez Bushwick, Parkside Lounge, and CBGB in New York; Firehouse 12 and Grand Projects in New Haven; and the Zentrum for Kunst und Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. He is Director and Assistant Professor of Art and Theory at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA). He has also taught at Yale University, Pratt Institute, and Tate Modern. Kim-Cohen’s most recent book is In The Blink of an Ear: Toward a Non-Cochlear Sonic Art (Continuum, 2009). He has curated exhibitions in the U.K. and the U.S. (www.kim-cohen.com)

Diapason Gallery
Diapason is a listening space that gives artists and audiences the opportunity to make and experience sound art. Through the exploration of active and varied modes of listening Diapason seeks to engage artists and the public in a dialogue about the place of contemporary music and sound practice in a broader cultural context. For artists, both established and emerging, Diapason provides a space at once accessible and technologically advanced, fostering the creation of unique works that investigate the implications of new sound practices. For audiences Diapason provides an optimal listening environment and access to artists, encouraging personal exploration of one’s relationship to sound and listening.

 Over the past fourteen years Diapason and its predecessor program (Studio 5 Beekman) have presented the work of over 350 composers and other practitioners of sound art from the USA and abroad. Diapason presents a broad spectrum of multi-media work, from emerging to established artists. Three years ago, Diapason relocated to its own dedicated exhibition space in Brooklyn, with two galleries in which we present monthly sound installations and regular live performances year-round.

Non-Cochlear Sound
Curated by Seth Kim-Cohen
Diapason Gallery, October 2010

Artists, in alphabetical order:
Doug Barrett, Violin Tuned D.E.E.D.
Rozalinda Borcilla, Listening for Beginners
Seth Cluett, Tracing Moving Circles (Neighborhood Memory)
Chris Cuellar, Tactical Archiving           
Benedict Drew, Drum Loop
Jarrod Fowler, Rhythmsystemics  
Seth Kim-Cohen, Critique of Instrumental Reason (by use of drums)
Chris Kubick and Anne Walsh, To Make The Sound of Fire
Corey Larkin, Monochrome
Lou Mallozzi, Screenplay: one and one
Christof Migone, 4 Feet and 33 Inches
Matthew Mullane, Détourned Down: A Conversation with Seth Kim-Cohen
Rob Mullender, Said Object / Daughter’s Voice From Memory
Michalis Pichler, Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard (Musique)
Michelle Rosenberg, Whistle Wall
Jennifer Schmidt, Hard Times / Scrabble Value: A Conversation in 2 Parts
Benjamin Thorp, Black Box
Heather and Seth Warren-Crow, Grayface
James Whitehead (JLIAT), Esse Est Percipi?

http://www.diapasongallery.org

Diapason is supported by NYSCA, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Phaedrus Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, The Trust for Mutual Understanding, Kirk Radke, and by generous individuals. Diapason is a 501(c)3 organization.

POINT PLAY, Diapason Archive (Jukebox)

Diapason presents

Swiss mountain transport systems

Ernst Karel and Helen Mirra

Opening January 8, 6pm
Installations run Saturdays, January 8, 15, 22, 29  2pm-8pm

Diapason, 882 Third Avenue, 10th Floor, Brooklyn, NY

Swiss mountain transport systems is a long form composition created specifically for Diapason’s eight-channel system, constructed of location recordings and percussion.

The location recordings were made during the summer and fall of 2008 while we were in residence in Basel, Switzerland.  Over the course of frequent walks in the mountains in different parts of Switzerland, Karel recorded the various transport systems which are specific to mountainous terrain -- gondolas, funiculars, and chairlifts -- of different types, of different vintages, and accessing different elevations.  Recorded with high-quality microphones and preamps from within these mostly enclosed mobile environments, the sounds include mechanical drones, intermittent percussiveness, and transient acoustic glimpses of a vast surrounding landscape inhabited by humans and other animals.

The project builds on a performance that we gave in Kyoto, Japan, in January 2009, in the context of Mirra’s exhibition, Case study: Swiss bird houses, at Taka Ishii Gallery. For that live performance, Mirra played drums with Karel doing a live mix of unprocessed recordings of the mountain transport systems.

The project for Diapason opens up and extends this idea.  Mirra subsequently recorded the percussion parts in the studio using multiple microphones in multiple configurations.  The piece makes use of the eight-channel system to create an often abstract sound world that simultaneously evokes a sense of place informed by technologies of transportation enmeshed in the specific cultural geography of rural Switzerland.  Mirra’s minimal percussion activates and modifies the contours of the listening space, as it contrasts with, complements, interrupts, and augments the sounds of transport.

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Bios:

Ernst Karel (b. 1970) works with analog electronics and/or location recordings. His audio work includes electroacoustic improvisation and composition; fieldwork-based research in the anthropology of sound; recording, mixing, and sound design for public radio and for nonfiction film and video; and solo and collaborative sound installations.           
http://ek.klingt.org

Helen Mirra (b.1970) works in varied scrap media, including sculpture, writing, and music. She has been a guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm, the Office of Contemporary Art Norway, and the Stiftung Laurenz-Haus in Basel, Switzerland.
http://hmirra.net

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DIAPASON is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the city council, the Phaedrus Foundation, Kirk Radke, and by generous individuals. Diapason is a 501(c)3 organization.