TECH 203: Advanced Electroacoustic Music

Spring 2022 Class Concert program

each work is for octophonic (8-channel) fixed media

Matt Cummings — Cards for a Friend

Phillip Chao — GU 蠱

This work was inspired by Gu (蠱), the name of a mythological venom-based poison, associated with the cultures of Southern China. It was prepared by capturing several venomous creatures (e.g. viper, centipede, spider, toad, scorpion) and sealing them within a closed container, where they would fight and devour one another until a sole survivor remained. The idea is that all the poison from the others would be concentrated within the remaining creature. The body of that creature would be eaten by larvae, and the last surviving larva would hold the poison. The piece itself explores the concepts of consumerism, fear, and decay. You will be able to hear different sonic entities moving around you, as if you are in the container with them.

Alim Wilkins — Rivershaping

Rivershaping is inspired by the motion and formlessness of flowing water.

Penina Biddle-Gottesman — Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down

Amachi Smith-Hill — She Whirls

Arturo Orso-Giacone — Octophonic Fugue

This is a three voice fugue, doubled at the octave, and spatialized to feel like a shifting plane in a perpetual motion. Inspired by Sir Edward Elgar as well as many of the octophonic pieces shown in the 203 class. The players were Safe Jassani. Aria Messina, and Daniel Knapp.

Orson Abram — lineages (after Jonas Mekas)

lineages is entirely composed of sounds from my family's audiovisual archives featuring films made between the 1970s up to my early childhood. Instead of categorizing these sounds based on a calculated system, these sounds rather are used to create an immersive quality in which time is fluid until when it isn't anymore. This work also exists to honor the legacy of and commemorate my loved ones, especially those who have passed over the years (primarily my grandparents). Thus, this work is dedicated to them as well as my family. Jonas Mekas, an avant-garde filmmaker whose work focuses on time and passing memory through personal films and montages of scenes from his past, was the inspiration for the aesthetics of this piece. This piece is very personal and dear to my heart and approaches the subjects of change, the documentation of memory, recollection, and the repurposing of the experiences of others through letting the memories sound for themselves. Please feel free to walk around the space if so desired.

David Skaggs — Saturn

Leo Seligo — granite.PICT

Kayla Shomar-Corbett — __teenage nightmare

Ethan Long — Invisible Man