Divide Light - A New Opera by visual and performance artist Leslie Dill with music by composer Richard Marriott, and additional music by Tom Morgan:: August 13, 2008 :: Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, CA.

Commissioned and produced by Montalvo Arts Center, Lesley Dill redirects the classic form of opera using Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) to celebrate and investigate American Transcendentalism, a school of thought particularly prevalent in mid-19th century New England. Continue reading

I posted about some work of Rodrigo Derteano’s last week (here) but this third work I omitted as it didn’t quite seem suitable to include with the other two works.

Recomputing Space is a sound installation which employs field recordings as a psychogeographic study of urban sound. “Following the commands and rhythm imposed by an algorithm, two persons walk around in chosen locations in the city, recording a mix of noise, language, music and the sound of their own steps. The chosen locations are public places, such as public squares, parks, tram stations etc. Continue reading

Vaibhav Bhawsar wrote the following on A-bog: Udder-Utter is an instrument that utters syllabic sounds derived from the Devanāgarī alphabet, which is used to write Hindi and other Indo-Arabyan languages. It’s playability is inspired by the gestures involved in milking a cow. The sounds that this instrument utters are intended to be a mix of discrete and continuous in nature and are rhythmic due to their syllabic / phonetic origins. I see the Udder as an instrument for constructing and rupturing meaning through its playability, by using syllabic sounds to construct monosyllabic meanings and imagery to extract formal elements. Continue reading