Saturday, March 30, 2013
multiple locations at Amherst College
Similaria is a new electroacoustic composition and performance for the Mead Art Museum during Soundfest. This is part of a two-day showcase of indoor and outdoor sound installation work and performances taking place all around the Amherst College campus. In addition to my work, Soundfest features work by Tim Eriksen, Jake Meginsky, Steph Robinson, Wendy Woodson, and Phil Dupont.
Read more about Soundfest and Similaria:
Soundfest schedule:
- 1:00 pm, Tim Eriksen, Octagon
- 1:45 pm, 2 installations in Webster (Wendy Woodson / Jake Meginsky, Jake Meginsky)
- 2:30 pm, Eric Leonardson, Rotherwas Room, Mead Art Museum
- 3:00 pm, Steph Robinson / Mark Santolucito, Stearns Steeple, Mead Art Museum
“Similaria” explores multiple speaker diffusion in the Rotherwas Room at the Mead Art Museum. The room’s walnut walls were imported, carved, and installed over four centuries ago in the court of English knight Sir Roger Bodenham. The room was dismantled in 1731 and almost two hundred years later, it was purchased by Herbert Lee Pratt, Amherst College Class of 1895, who bequeathed the room to Amherst College in 1944.
Similaria uses sounds made with my self-built instrument, the Springboard, performed with sounds from the surrounding environment—with woods, streams, and melting ice—recorded around the Amherst College campus. Using the particular social and spatial characteristics of the walnut paneled Rotherwas Room, the composition acts on multiple levels to create a transformative listening experience through real and imaginary places.
As current a Copeland Fellow at Amherst College for the spring semester, this is one of several more performances and presentations to come.