Performers:
Roberto Granados - Laptop
Konrad Kaczmarek - Laptop
Jeff Snyder - Laptop
Ross Wightman - Laptop
Premiere performance at the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media March 2020.
Condensate
Program Notes:
Condensate is an open form piece for laptop soloist or ensemble. As a new approach to investigating the physical materiality of audio synthesis, performers interface a physics simulation, prodding and coalescing a granulated mass of spatialized pitches, causing them to flock and morph into dense noise textures and oscillating microtonal harmony. The structure of this piece is built around the aforementioned physics simulation created in Max/MSP and rendered in OpenGL and is named in reference to the Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC), also known as the fifth element. The transition between states of matter is figuratively sonified by the dynamically mutating movements of the spherical particles in the projected rendering of the simulation. Individual position of each particle is auditorily replicated via spatialized panning in the performance venue so that the audience perceives each particle and its associated pitch as if it were moving through the physical space of the venue as it appears on the projection screen. Gravity can be changed in the simulation, affecting the sustain and decay of these pitches as the performer(s) exert force on the mass of individual particles to conjure a dynamic, mist-like additive synthesis.
I=N=T=E=R=F=A=C=E Highlight Reel Documentation
I=N=T=E=R=F=A=C=E
I=N=T=E=R=F=A=C=E was a collaboration between painter: Ye Qin Zhu, sound designer: Dakota Stipp, dancer: Kyla Arsadjaja and Wightman and turned into a full production at the Yale Cabaret with other members of the Yale School of Art and Drama. This interdisciplinary experimental theater experience was part performance, part installation that explored themes of cyberspace, data collection, and algorithms through surrealism, shadow puppetry, experimental noise improvisation and sound design.
Wightman co-wrote, performed, and built electroacoustic instruments and scenery for the show which ran for six performances over the course of a week in December 2019.
“for me, the delight of the show is provided by Ross Wightman in a sort of comic relief sidebar.” - Donald Brown, New Haven Review.
Touch System
Touch System for Ran Blake was commissioned by the Yale Oral History of American Music as part of the ReVox Installation, commemorating the 50 year anniversary of OHAM. This piece used material from past interviews that Ran Blake did with the OHAM Archive as well as excerpts from the film noir movie, Mirage which was scored by Quincy Jones.
This piece was installed in the Yale CCAM gallery and played on loop throughout the show in February 2020.
Grave Pact
Grave Pact focuses around sampling advertising and newscasts found on VHS tapes of recorded television from the 80s and 90s along with radio samples and other found media. The music is sound collage or musique concrète that is composed on a Tascam Portastudio 424 4 track tape recorder and edited in Ableton Live. Samples are layered and mixed to create evocative film like sonic collages. One of the tracks on the tape called Track and Field Sifter has a video element which can be found here and deals with news footage of a facility in staten island that sorted the remnants of 9/11/2001.
Steven Long - Quarter Tone Pianos
Recorded 2017
Femur Governed by Kerosene or Gesture
Femur Governed by Kerosine or Gesture is a work for open instrumentation, live video processing, custom electronics and LED lights. Live processed video art is formed from sixteen brief cuts of surveillance footage that capture an inebriated man's movements through a convenience store. Improvising soloist(s) follow flashing RGB LED lights for gestural cues that transmit the rate and length of the cyclically repeated video samples. The projected video art and the performers are able to retain rhythmic cohesion through these cues and an improvised live scoring of improvised video art is achieved.