Two Halves
Zouning Anne Liao
Felipe Tovar-Henao
This month’s CLEAT Series is packed with unique approaches to spatial audio, featuring four performances from a diverse range of composers. Chicago-based artists Lola Ayisha Ogbara and Andres L. Hernandez perform as the group Two Halves. They regularly employs improvisation, sampling, collage, and chance for their audio-visual experimentation, and taps into rich legacies of creative, intellectual, and spiritual practices across the African diaspora.
Jack Hamill (he/him) is a multimedia artist focused on sound. His creative practice ranges across electro-acoustic music, noise, experimental film, digital visual art, and more. He has worked with aesthetic media including DIY eye-tracking devices, computer-generated scores, Disklaviers, an ultrasound fetal doppler, video projections, and acoustic ensembles. In this set he’ll be using a supercollider patch based on Frequency Modulation (FM) synthesis to create vibrant worlds of sound, resonating with electricity across the frequency spectrum.
Felipe Tovar-Henao is a US-based multimedia artist, developer, and researcher whose work explores computer algorithms as expressive tools for human and post-human creativity, cognition, and pedagogy. His music is often motivated by and rooted in transformative experiences with technology, philosophy, and cinema, and it frequently focuses on exploring human perception, memory, and recognition.
Born in Guangdong, China, Zouning Anne Liao is a composer, electronic music improviser, and sound artist whose work draws inspiration from nature and noise. She is passionate about DIY electronics and enjoys field recording in the woods.
$15 / $10 w/ Student ID - Tickets Available at the Door
program notes for Anne Felipe:
hypothetical particles--Zouning Anne Liao
Hypothetical particles in physics refer to particles that have not yet been observed and proven to exist. However, these particles are necessary for maintaining consistency within a given physical theory. In this composition, I explore this phenomenon by examining the interaction between particles of light and sound. The amplitudes of the lights trigger changes in the music, revealing connections between the natural and synthetic realms of sound.
To facilitate this exploration, I created a digital photo-controller modeled after the light.void~ designed by Felipe Tovar-Henao, who is a current Postdoctoral Fellow in Music Composition at University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. His iteration of light.void~ was acknowledged as an 'inferred replica' of Leafcutter John's light thing.
I dedicate this piece to Felipe Tovar-Henao, who is not only a good friend but also an important mentor and a significant source of inspiration that motivated me to pursue music composition
These creatures, unseen-- Zouning Anne Liao
I have always had a desire to create a composition dedicated to nature. To fulfill this aspiration, I embarked on recording adventures near lakes to capture the sounds of late summer, primarily focusing on the chirping of crickets and the songs of birds. I was amazed by the richness of the cricket orchestra in the forest and how it transformed throughout the day.
In the opening of the piece, you will hear eight different recordings of crickets simultaneously. This auditory experience will take you on a journey, exploring the spectrum between real and synthetic sounds.
«ludus vocalis»-- Felipe Tovar Henao
«ludus vocalis» (latin: vocal game) is a collection of short audiovisual vignettes that explore musical features of paralinguistic vocal sounds. The interest in exploring nonverbal forms of vocal expression as opposed to speech, comes from the rich semiotic qualities of these sounds, and the kinds of highly visceral reactions and subjective associations we make when listening to them. Laughing, crying, screaming, gasping, moaning, and so on, carry a unique emotional charge that is hard to substitute through speech or even singing. Even within a given paralinguistic category, the particular features of the sound, such as timbre and intonation, can substantially modify their meanings — for instance, the crying of an adult vs. a baby, of a male vs a female, etc. The unique characteristics of these semiotically rich sounds made them an interesting point of focus for this work.